[Dev Update] Farming and Loot Scaling

This is not my issue. You guys are arguing about the loot nerf, and I just dropped in and saw the quote-post-quote-post long responses you come up with that are pretty funny.

So you want me to answer your questions? What questions? I am reviewing your first ranty-post, and I see two questions where you did not presuppose my answer, which you complain other people do. Pot, kettle, etc. Now that's funny.

So, for "why would you want to do that", doesn't matter because you did not, so I don't care. The humor is more important to me than understanding you, when you are advocating an obviously incorrect position in the first place.

For how it directly conflicts your view, that is because you are advocating that the nerf helps casual players, and it does not. It does not hurt them either. So once again, don't care. You seem to unable to concretely articulate your viewpoint if you say:

So I say:

and then you say:

I dunno bro. How does it conflict with your view?

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Edit - Thank you Secorsky, I have never had to delete a double post, but I figured it out.

Hmm I thought that was only for the solo farmers

My experience in HM is that roughly 99% of rare (gold) drops are merchant food. Unless a gold item has perfect stats (or sometimes 1 point away from perfect) and a low req you won't get much more from players than you would from the merchant - and the merchant is a guaranteed instant sale.

I don't believe for one second that you make more in HM than was possible to make solo before HM was put into place, but if you say it's true then so be it. You may make a little more playing the game in HM, but it probably takes a little more time to go through an area, thereby bringing the $/hr of normal play probably very close - close enough to be irrelevant anyway.


Define reasonable.

To me it's a relative thing. If the cost of something now is 100K and the average stored wealth is 50K then the item is still far out of reach of the average player. If the cost drops to 70K and the average wealth has dropped to 30K, it's still well beyond the grasp of the average player. (Those numbers are for illustration.)

Sure prices went up. They aren't getting as much "new gold" per run. So what? It's not like the bots get tired. They just leave them running and get what they get. They still can make GW money far faster than a human because the bots can run essentially 24 hours a day. They are still able to dump GW money into the economy at a much faster pace than humans can earn it, so even though prices may drop a little the effect is still the same or perhaps intensified. And because they raised their prices online, the botters are still making real money at such a pace that there's no reason to quit doing it. In other words the update hit humans at least as hard as bots, so in relative terms there's either very little change or a slight advantage to the botters compared to pre-update. One thing you can be sure of is that the botting hasn't slowed significantly or stopped. As I mentioned before, you can stop in at one of the favorite bot locations to see for yourself.

Right. They see no difference in drops, but farmers do. In case you haven't farmed before I'll explain it to you a little. On many farm runs there used to be far too many items dropped to fit in your inventory. Typically the human farmer takes along salvage kits so he can salvage common items and get some value out of every drop rather than leave them lying around. When he gets back into town he sells these to the material traders and rare material traders. Since those traders raise/lower prices based on what has been bought and sold, the farmers ensured that most of the material prices stayed low. Now there's no longer a need to salvage items on most runs and therefore fewer materials being sold to traders. How this will play out long term I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me to see some materials rise in cost.

As for the runes, with a few notable exceptions most runes never were more than a few hundred gold pieces. The ones that were significantly more expensive while desirable were certainly not necessary and probably not frequently purchased by "casual players". I seriously doubt that very many of them spent over 30K on a Superior Vigor for instance. So even if the price drops to 15K now, it's irrelevant because it wasn't something they purchased before. In fact they may now be more likely to purchase one and thereby put a further drain on the same level of income as before.

Now for the items costs. Many green items started out very expensive, but rapidly dropped to what I consider reasonable levels. With a few exceptions most of them could be obtained between 5 and 30K just a couple months after their introduction into the game. Many of these also have good skins on them and all the higher level versions have "perfect" stats. These already offered a good solution to the casual player who wanted a spiffy weapon at a reasonable price. If they couldn't afford those, they certainly won't be able to afford the "coolest" stuff even at a reduced price.

Personally, if I can't get at least 5-10K from an item I won't even bother advertising to players at all. It's just not worth the hassle of WTS spamming in town when I could be playing. Unless it's worth 25K or more I probably won't post more than a few WTS messages before moving on, but I may store it for a while rather than sell it at the merchant. Many of those items eventually go to the merchant.

So the bottom line is the only items I'm even remotely interested in selling to other players are the high dollar items that the casual player can't and never will be able to afford anyway. I may not represent the farming community as a whole, but I know quite a few others that feel the way I do.

You find attending to posts funny? I guess you don't like logic then. I guess you don't expect people to actually answer your bungles.

I love it.. MY post is ranty and yours isn't? All this started because I pointed out listing all of one viewpoint & saying it is the only one that matters is disingenuous. Then you come in making untrue statements about what I said because it's "funny"?
Oh, yeah, where did I complain people presuppose answers? So far every Pot, Kettle comment you've made is based on things you manufactured. Does it bother you that you have to base all your arguments on non-truth.

I'm advocating an "obviously incorrect position"? Can you point out how the casual player, who uses a full party is worse off? As far as I can tell most people play with a full hench/hero/pug team, since, that's what the game was built around. I think the only thing that's "obviously incorrect" is that most people spend a majority of their time soloing the game.

I know it's really really hard for you, but you can make it up a few and read.

no, I'm not soloing when I do this. Also, the items are much more useful. Especially Runes or items for Heros

I guess it's just different experience. Nothing else I can say.

It is, that's true. But I'm not talking about things that are 50k. I mean like Rare Materials & dye & such.

The difference is that Bots represent an investment that someone put into buying the account. If they can slow the time it takes for them reap enough gold to equal the investment(or not make much) then they can make it not worth doing for them. Bots can ALWAYS make money more consistently than people, that's the point. It's not an issue of the bots getting tired, but the people setting them up saying "this isn't worth the time"

That's my point. I don't think Casual Players are solo farmers.

Most of the stuff you listed is high priced stuff, this still takes time to get, but I pointed out runes because someone used that as a main reason to be against the nerf. It's not so much based on what you said, but what I noticed others had listed as reasons.

Lets try this again.

You said:

I said:

You replied:

I say:

You say:

And the final touch.

Normally I would ask you if you see a logical problem with the thread here on your part with a trailing smiley, but since you seem serious about this topic, I'll tell you.

I never said a casual player is worse off. Maybe you need to take your own advice bro.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Oh you got me there bro! You are, infact, the master of semantics. I'm glad to know that even you can tell the truth sometimes.

As am I in additon to the high price items. Farmers USED to sell far more salvaged rare materials, runes, insignias, etc. to the traders/merchants. Because they now get fewer drops, they aren't reaping nearly as many of these items to sell back to the merchants, and as long as the demand remains steady or increases, that will cause a rise in price. Take a look at the Radiant Insignia if you don't believe me. Dyes are supposedly unaffected as are some rare material drops such as ectos and shards, so that isn't as dramatically affected because of the drop rate. However, fewer people will farm some areas because of the change and therefore there could still be somewhat fewer sales to the merchants for some of these items. For UW farming you have to pay 1K to get in, so if you don't make at least that in drops you go backwards. Most solo builds there are fairly time consuming to master and a second or two of lag or a momentary loss of concentration can mean you wasted 1K.

The change has resulted in some price drops in some areas, but increases in prices in other areas.

When 2 or 3 gold sales will pay for the cost of an account it's not likely to result in the botters feeling it's not worth it. Even with the scaled looting that's probably 24-72 hours worth of botting before it can pay for itself.

I think you should have read the next couple paragraphs a little more carefully. Because of the nature of farming, expensive items were VERY expensive, but at the same time the common materials were about as cheap as they could get. Since casual players are more likely to need/use crafting materials, rare crafting materials, and runes, they received a nice benefit from the human farmers' merchant sales that has been diminished somewhat by the recent change. The high price stuff was already out of range and will remain out of range so there's no benefit there. However, if the commonly used things take a modest jump in price then the casual player is negatively affected compared to pre-nerf. Some things seemed to have already increased a bit in price, but it will be interesting to see what happens long term.

Some of the most expensive runes have decreased in price, but some of the other runes have become more expensive already. I'm not certain about the overall impact on the casual player, but it certainly seems as if low-level character development could become more difficult if very many things rise much at all.

anet pls... stop taking too many of these and revert the game to how it used to be... FUN!

change loot to how it used to drop. we dont need to be tortured just because you cant stop a bunch of bots who are ruining the economy.

change soul reaping... omg change soul reaping to how it used to be before factions came out...

all the recent updates have upset a fair amount of players.. having said that, the extra storage update was good.

[QUOTE]before the rune trader and the guaranteed rune salvage you started out at 1k-5k for any rune including minors.

if i saw a superior vigor under 40k back then i would have been shocked as they were usually at least 60k at the trader/

i spent my plat carefully just to get minor runes and a major vigor was a 10k+ investment.

There is a thread out there about the Soul Reaping nerf started by CountessCorpula which has a poll. Please drop by, vote in the poll, and post your opinion!

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Amen, to that. I've been forced to put majors on several of the heroes as they're still 100g, where the minors are over 1000g.

Bring over a Tyrian or Canthan char and having to equip 5 heroes off the bat with Radiants, Survivors and minor runes can set you back a sizeable amount.

It might not be as bad for those of us who've been playing a long time and amassed tidy fortunes but new players will have difficulties, no doubt.

My apologies. I should have phrased that "since I have been playing". GW was out for nearly a year before I jumped on board so I missed out on all the fun of the economics prior to that.

the more desirable superiors were 40k not kidding to 100k/

my most fun moment came when the first and only superior vigor rune i have found expert salvaged into the most amazing pile of crafting materials.

they were going for 75+k at the time. wimpers at memory

Did it tingle when the gun barrel in your mouth made contact with your fillings?

yes but when runes were more expensive in the early days of GW it was also a lot easier to make cash (if only by farming runes o_O)

please note that i have been here since early beta and got the 1 day head start on April 27th and have missed very few days since.

small breaks as wanted but still a little over 2 hours a day average.

i was playing back in the days of so called easy money

i was squeezed back then to afford 1-5k each for my minor runes along with the 10k for major vigor.

shell out 15+k for a common superior?.........no way

that was after a few months from a fresh new start.

yesterday i emptied everything into the vault and using no elites i vermen hunted the lowlands and got the return of about 2.4 plat per hour which someone else said was about what he got as well.

5 hours farming that trash would give you all the runes except superior vigor with gold left over...........the same runes that i spent many weeks earning enough to get in the good old days of so called easy money.

Having an addictive personality, I always used to laugh at that "Evercrack" sobriquet back in my single-player gaming days.

Then I started playing GW.

And playing, and playing, and playing - every waking moment, including many when I should have been sleeping, was spent playing GW, it seems like.

2 regular Proph, 1 reg + 1 CE Factions, 4 extra char slots, 2 SE NF.

Twenty-one long, fun-filled months.

Well, make that 20 fun-filled months followed by 1 month of, first, dismay, then, disgust.

First came the SR nerf - well, there's goes the fun from playing him, scratch 40% of my time, put it into some of the others, I guess.

Then comes hard mode/loot scaling and suddenly I'm not even making diddly-squat, either while out playing through a campaign or out farming.

I mean, like, WTF?!!!

Aside from the story-lines (which I've liked, btw), that's the whole reason I play PvE and not PvP - WHEN I KILL SOMETING, I WANT SOME LOOT TO DROP, DAMMIT!!!

uuuhm.......kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

EverQuest, single-player? Huh?

No matter what the game is, if you play for the 'stuff' you will always be disappointed in the end. Either you can't get enough of it and get frustrated, or you get too much and end up bored. (Balance may as well be imaginary, as often as we see it, and as brief as it lasts)

Funny, Good players and figured out that the SR nerf isn't really that big of a deal, if you still can't get over it, guess what? You aren't a good player.

[/QUOTE] Then comes hard mode/loot scaling and suddenly I'm not even making diddly-squat, either while out playing through a campaign or out farming.[/QUOTE] funny, I'm making about the same I was before, of course I'm playing more HM then NM.

[/QUOTE] Aside from the story-lines (which I've liked, btw), that's the whole reason I play PvE and not PvP - WHEN I KILL SOMETING, I WANT SOME LOOT TO DROP, DAMMIT!!![/QUOTE] I don't know why people like you keep whining about that, I was just farming SS & LB points in Sulferous Wastes and not even 10 mins in I have 5 golds. again this was on HM.

Oh look, another bitch thread... Stop it! I am so sick of seeing these, and I am pretty sure the MODs are about to pull their hair out... Inde, I believe you need to use meteor shower on these silly threads that have no substance; the woe is my life and OMG Guild Wars is nerfed threads... so OLD.

[skill]"You're All Alone!"[/skill]

yes they are vast and many...and generally kinda clumped together in a neat lil pile....prolly just 1 meteor shower would wipe em out. barrage ftw o_O

Only barrage hits up to 6 targets and there are many many targets on here

Meteor shower would deffo be the best.

Or a good swing of the banhammer?
[skill]Earth Shaker[/skill]

6 with Barrage? what am i missing here?

I know its frustrating, but anet seems to be starting to fix many of the problems.

ah screw it just drop the solo UW trap build under all of em ^_^ not as effective as meteor shower but still fun to watch 21 dust traps go off

[skill]Barrage[/skill]
"Shoot arrows at up to 6 foes adjacent to your target"
7 hits, not 6, but close enough.

ah yes another
OMG TEH ANET STOLED MY FUNZ /rage quite thread. i love these i laugh and laugh at all the reasons people come up with and why we should quit.

I'm with Sol...I go out in HM into any area and come away with at least 2 golds a few purples and crap load of blues. I guess people go out and automatically figure they have to get a crap load of drops in each run and instead of attributing it to a few bad runs its ANET and all their anti-farming codes.

ZOMG look! It's another "Barrage" from the "adapt and quit complaining" crowd. Beyond OLD.

Sounds stupid doesn't it? Wellllll... guess what? So do all the comments about nuking the thread because you happen to disagree with the posters.

Maybe what Inde should do is round up all the posters who come to a thread to hijack it and annoy the people that disagree with them and meteor shower them instead.

Sadly, the adaptable players will just move two feet out of the meteor shower. That's called adapting.

The whiny baby players will try and tank Inde's banhammer while crying emo tears.

Anyway, I'd prefer the use of [skill]ulcerous lungs[/skill].

Will all people just coming here to troll please leave?

This thread is a discussion for the farming and loot scaling, not a flame-the-farmers thread.

If you don't have anything to say except 'whiner this, whiner that', please leave. If you're sick of seeing these topics, just don't look into them :P

As for the people getting loads of golds in hard mode: Lucky you. The people who I know and me aren't getting good stuff in Hard Mode at all. I used to get about 6 golds a day. This has been reduced to 6 golds a week now. Even clearing area's gives me about 6K max. And with that cash I want to buy lockpicks, sup salvage/ID kits and morale boosts, as well. This means about only 600 gold remains.

No the complaining has gotten out of hand, WAY out of hand. People complain about everything, and when anet tries to fix it they jsut complain about the fix.

Some one had the nerve to complain that they were broke cause ecto went down in price and now their stack or 2 of ecto and thier two stacks of shards werent worth as much anymore.

I wonder if some people read the OP or just saw this thread and thought "Yay another thread I get to complain in!" seems thats what the only thing that makes some happy - complaining.

The thread states everything, theres nothing wrong with the update, just makes it so hard core solo farmers dont become unblelievabley filthy rich, just filthy rich, and makes it easier on casual/newer players. and thwarts bots some too. READ THE OP AND DO IT WITH AN OPEN MIND!

I agree with Dr. Strangeglove, the good players will adapt, when SR was nerfed most necros I talked to said it didnt affect them much (an almost limitless source of energy was insane anyways) a few said they had to modify builds a little bit, but thats it. Then you see hundreds of "boo hoo, I cant play my necro anymore im quiting" posts

There was alot of ignorant posts of "PvE is too easy" even though some posted they needed help cause they were struggling, yet the stuck up "elitists" bashed them into the ground, laughed at them and said PvE was too easy. Soooo Anet makes hard mode and makes NM a little easier. Then what happens? Lots of "The HM enemies are cheap and HM is too hard"

I agree anet could have made it more like the Elite missions or Sorrows Furnace instead of God Mode AI, but they gave us hard mode and people just continually bash it. Its HARD mode its supposed to be hard, would you like it if anyone could waltz through Urgoz or The Deep?

If you are having trouble adapting to anything why not instead of complaining about updates, ask help from those who have adapted.

Actually, it's the opposite.

Hardcore farmers can still farm UW and get ecto's like they used to (sure, price is a bit lower, but in the end, they still make huge profit.)

Bots just go in groups of 8, and can sell the gold for even more ingame cash, cause it has become worth more.

Casual players, however, who got their cash from 60-second-runs like trolls/vermins, got screwed. Their source of income (whites, blues, piles of gold) has been nullified.

My problem here is that casual players are leaving. I look at my guild and more than 10 people quit Guild Wars about 2 days after the nerf. I look at my friends list and it's now almost empty because people leave. Also, my own source of income is gone now, as well. Not farming Underworld, there is no way of getting cash now. If I want to buy a cap sig, I first have to clear 2 areas of monsters. (seeing how I only get ~500 gold with each cleared area).

Even the occasional gold item (about 1 per cleared area) are crappy and most of the time, not even max damage. And even IF it was max damage, trying to sell it for cash in outposts (like A-Net wants me to do) is way to troublesome (I somehow don't enjoy standing in an outpost for 6 hours, just to get a scam-attempt)

If it's for rare skins like crystallines, I'd gladly grind my @$$ off for it, but something simple as skills shouldn't be so hard to get.

*YAWN*

Why don't you go make a "I want to complain about people complaining" thread and let the others stay on topic?

This is a discussion about farming and loot scaling. This isn't about adapting or not adapting. It's about perceived benefits/problems due to the change. If you like the change, then post that you like it and explain why. Those of us who don't think the change was healthy for the game in the long run can do that as well.

If you've read through the thread then you probably know that one of the biggest claims by ANet is that this would benefit the casual player without decimating the farmer. Many on here have argued that is not true and have given their opinions as to the reasons for that. That's called a discussion. It has the benefit of letting ANet know how their customers feel about the product they've purchased - and occasionally a good suggestion gets implemented into the game. This has some possibly positive side effects.

Random posts about people who do not agree with you and complaining about those you perceive to be complaining is not a discussion. That is typically what we call flaming or trolling and doesn't do anything positive for anyone.

No more farming scaling plz!!

<blah blah blah, bunch of stuff about my experience since the scaling - deleted>

Why even bother - so some people can say "poor baby, not having any fun?"

I don't recall ever denigrating the ways others choose to derive their enjoyment from the game but I guess some people think it's ok to ridicule others who feel that some of Anet's changes have taken some of the fun of game away for them.

I don't expect "crap loads" of drops eveytime I go out. A nice gold or green drop which I can use is always a delightful surprize and contributes to my enjoyment. But I'm making a fraction of what I'm used to bringing in since they started the scaling.

Now, it's not like I even *need* the money - I probably have a net worth of close to 2 million gold at this point. Sounds like a lot and probably *is* a lot to some people, while merely a pittance to others.

But it's taken me a long time to amass it and I learned to be rather thrifty when it comes to spending it. And now I'll become even more charry in spending it since it won't be replenished as easily as before.

Hmm i swear i read somewhere something about the fun casual or no wait *normal* players will have, well strange but i don't seem to have that fun and i do consider myself as a normal player. To be completely honest i think this update is the biggest bullshit (excuse my language but i dont care) i have ever encountered in any online game, I solo farm and i farm to buy the crap its needed to make armor and skills and lets not forget those are not cheap in this game, so how on earth are you providing fun when i'll have to farm 8 times more??? And no thanks, i wont stand around in a town spamming chat for things noone will buy, unless you make us decent trading system or auction house or whatever.

I'm playing this game for a year now and i had fun before, i think it's a very good game with the most beautiful gfx i ever seen. But now it just went down the drain. You punished normal people because of few bots? Well thanks a lot, it's like bombing the country of innocent people cos it has few bad guys living in it. I'm seriously thinking of quitting game now and yes just becuase of this update (which is crap).

If you want to do good first of reduce silly cost of skills, armor, lockpicks etc. Even takes me shit loads of time to farm that 1k i need for a new skill...oh please i play game for fun, not for grinding and that is exactly what you have done with this (stupid) update. And how on earth would people get together all the cash and materials needed for FoW armor? Why did you even implemented this in game?? If i was you i would reconsider the whole loot thing because a lot of people are annoyed by it and game gets bad reputation, you should rather have done something about bots without affecting normal players. ANd it seems that you only did this so new players will have fun and so on...well think again, they will see very fast that loot is crap and that they can't earn any decent cash to buy things they wish to buy and i very much doubt they are willing to spam general chat for hours without succes of selling anything. In the end it will all end up stored in bank which doesen't have enough space anyway.

If this is gonna stay the way it is, i will turn my back on this game and find something else that's better than this nazi regime. I was looking forward for the next expansion but now i won't even bother buying it nor GW2.

Just an honest post of a normal player (one of many this *update* or should i say downdate was dedicated to)

They don't see negative effect because they won't admit to themselves this downdate was wrong altogether, it seems they are rather seeing people to leave the game than to change it to what it used to be. We made them rich enough so there is room only for noobs that just started playing and *casual* players. Or it's the thing you mentioned correct, they want bots for the profit because it's more than obvious people will start to buy gold cos it's almost impossible to make it now. Well thanks a lot Anet, way to go, great way to ruin a game anyway...

[QUOTE=Loviatar]I disagree completely, this game is not made ONLY for casual players ok, if it was made only for casual players then it shouldn't have 15k armor in it at the begining. Games are made for any type of playstyle which we choose how we'll play it and it should be respected. But now it seems only CASUAL players like yourself will stay so have fun sharing a game with other 12 people, cos according to this posts that's how much will stay, GW is not the only game, there is plenty more around without nerfed looting, HELOOOO NERFED LOOTING !!!! whatta absurd, whoever thought of that should be fired from the job tbh, im not being mean but that is just like giving a rope to suicidal person in this case giving a formula how to ruin a game 100%.

In all my years in gaming this is the first game I have played that has farming issues. Farming is not the sole reason for a game but it sure is an important one if you do not have an alternative to make money.
Wether you are casual player or hardcore gamer,loot scaling just takes away
part of the fun of the game. The reason people farm in the first place is to get nice armor,nice weapons and to make money for their characters.

Why does Guild Wars have farming issues ? Well some people use 3rd party software which Anet does not support and to them it is not legal and I totally agree. I also agree that buying gold ruins the game as well. Why do people do these things ? I can give a few reasons why.

1. Minipets - these are the nice gifts that Anet gives to us and I am glad they do because I like mine but people sell them ! This totally gives people ideas and the incentive to buy gold and to use bots to farm. This totally wrecks the economy and the nature of the game. Selling minipets should be illegal and not part of the game.

2. Merchants in Guild Halls, why do we need them in our guild halls. These guys from what i have been told can be purchased for close to 100k a pop.
We don't need them in halls. We can simply go to any town in any of the 3 campaigns to go do our business.

3. Green Items, probably the first main reason why people started farming in the first place. Everyone loves these things and mostly everyone wants them for their characters. The problem I have with it though is who was the person or group of people who set the prices for these things ? 100k+15 ecto for a green weapon that can probably be duplicated from a weapons merchant and adding mods to it ?

4. 15,10,5k and FOW Armors, need we say much on this ? Its simple, people will farm for money and items too obtain these things. Why do these nice armors need to be 15k in the first place ? I never heard of such a thing in a game. There needs to be a better way to obtain these.

This is not a rant by any means. This is just simply making some realize why people use bots and buy gold in the game. I think some of these items I mentioned should be obtained in a different fashion or not be obtained at all.