[Dev Update] Farming and Loot Scaling

Merchants in Guild Halls are handy for people who have lag in town. No one wants to lose a nice weapon due to an accidental lag double-click.

KANE

Not everyone just makes money off ecto's and shards, I've done UW and FOW runs, and I found I made more money off selling just regular drops in areas like the desert in less time than I ever did in UW. I would usually take smaller groups on missions and for questing for this reason so I could make the money I needed while getting through the game on my various characters.

Here is a copy of what I sent to support because this hurts me a lot, and I hate that after being with this game for so long, I feel I've been punished.

I have 30 characters in Guild Wars across 2 accounts, and I did not spend all that money and time so I could be punished but now I feel I have been. I wanted to get several sets of armor for my many characters, Many of which were the ascended versions, so obviously I need a lot of money in the game. Now I had found early on, that if you were good enough to fight through an area on your own, you could make far more money than if you took a group or henchmen, I saw it as a way for the truely skilled players to rise above the rest. A way for them to legitimately make the money needed to get the prestige armors.

Today however, I loaded one of my characters to make some money for one such armor set, and found that all that had changed. Loot now scales according to group size...

WHY ARE SKILLED PLAYERS BEING PUNISHED???

Because that is all this amounts too. This will not stop the farmers from selling money over the internet, they will just group farm and raise their prices, and in fact it may help them because now it's harder for players to make money on their own.

Why should someone who is a good enough player to take on the monsters in an area that usually would take a group, not be rewarded by receiving all the loot that a group would get. The only way this would make sence would be if the monsters in the area were scaled to be easier acording to group size as well.

Perhaps the loot scaling would be alright if say the normal amount of drops was tripled... but the way it is now, in order to make enough money for 1 set of armor will take hours and hours of play time; Time I for one, don't have.

I have been playing Guild Wars nearly from the beggining, but never have I seen a change made that amounts to nothing more than punishing your most skilled and loyal players as I feel I have been. I was looking forward to Eye of the North, but now I feel it will be a waste of my time because of how incredibly long it will take me to make the money for the new armor sets as well as the ones I want already for my many characters...

on the official GW site is your answer from the developers.

basically it says that if someone comes up with what amounts to an exploit (invincimonk my example) they will take action to stop a person from single handedly looting a high end area they intended to be a challenge for a full party of 8 players with loot FOR 8 players.

you are still getting a bit more than your fair share but not getting the full 8 peoples loot all for yourself.

The loot scaling is having virtually no effect on me whatsoever. The only difference is that I don't get a load of useless white and blue trash to sell to the merchant. I still get plenty of gold coins..

@Buster, I garee about the 15k and FoW armour tempting people in to buying gold. It's a shame though because it was supposed to have the opposite effect of sinking gold from the economy.

This is another thing, If they want people to make money only by selling things to other players then they need to make it easier to sell to other players!!! I HATE STANDING AROUND IN TOWN FOR HOURS CALLING WTS WTS WTS!!! They need an in game auction house where players can put things up for sale and walk away. THAT is why I made all my money in the past by just farming regular items and selling them to vendors, I even often have sold greens and most golds to vendors for that reason, I could make 20 times as much farming in the time it would take me to sell it.

I refuse to waste my limited play time standing around!

Hard mode is to easy, probably said by 1000 other people, all you need to do is find a build that slays those particular enemys and that is the build that people run for the rest of its existance, like Tombs, B/p builds. Sure people try and think outside the box but, its not favored by most simplistic minds. All hardmode really was, was the buffing of monsters, increased lvl (hitpoints/dmg) More skills used, everything for them is faster at pace, that Isn't really hard to get around.

Now for the Finding items to ''sell'' to other people, and putting items into the game that have a high demand?, eventually, everything loses its ''demand'' someway or somehow, this system wont really last, another thing is, there is no REAL way to sell items, except spamming WTS and WTB for days, weeks, months on end, (wow i could have made hundreds of k in this time if I'd have been out soloing.) so i don't think thats really favored. And rewards? i mean, seriously. I was out farming and got myself a req.9 golden max dmg brute sword, so I'm like: "Ok neat, finnaly something that can supposedly be good and worth something, or even to use.'' But, when I'd, it only had Zealous and +5 armor on it, No inherent dmg mod, Wooow.. so i get this gold brute sword as a reward, but it has crap on it, any white max dmg is just as good, and Purples are even better, it had nothing i could have even used, except salvaging. i don't find this rewarding to me, now thats just a small thing but still.. it urks you after awhile. That's about all i have to say though, Not a rant, just a piece of mind and maybe insight.

I have been with GW since the beta.
Yes,the beta.(It Rocked!)

I have noticed 3 things about this.
1. It was based on party size AND I think level in beta.
2. It was redone for better party play but equal farm potintal.
3. It was redone yet AGIAN but only on party size.

Solution-
Get a team of Henchies without rez.
(You fill in the rest or PM me IN GAME!)

There I told my secret to everyone!
Go copy it down and give A-net a week to fix it.

ANet has complete controll over how skills function. So as long as you don´t use a bug, your not exploiting anything. They created skills that make it possible to get zero damage, so how is it an exploit using that.

What the developers said was, instead of changing overpowered skills, we change the loot tables. But by changing the loot tables they don´t stop anyone from looting a high end area alone. It is just not so provitable.

I 100% agree - as I am now playing several games right now, my GW time is even shorter than it used to be. Actually, as my time feels more or less wasted when I log into GW now, I may just finally break off from it. My drop luck has never been good, and solo farming was the only way I made enough money to buy the armor sets I wanted... I didn't and dont even really enjoy farming; but it was a means to an end.
Now I'm supposed to get good items (which I seem to never get - ) and stand around spamming? lol, I'll pass.

Abusing the AI is mad skillz

They claim this is to help the economy of the game, but let's look at that. What do people need that many buy.

Crafting Materials: Near worthless, most have dropped to the minimum sale price or near to it at the traders.

Runes: With a few exceptions Most runes have also dropped to the minimum price.

Green Items: Because of over farming (Which will now be enhanced with the improved drop rates in Hard Mode) Most green items don't even sale for 10k now and take hours to sale anyway.

What else do people buy? oh, the overpriced Gold Items. oh yay, maybe they will come down in price... I never bothered with gold items anyway and I'm willing to bet the Casual players that they are supposedly trying to help afford these items never bothered with golds before either. I just get the green item that has the stats I need, and sometimes they have a unique skin such as my favorite shield, Tanzit's Defender.

Another thing, as I stated before, this game needs a way for players to put something up for sale and walk away, and if you want the economy to become a little more stable and for prices of some rediculously priced items to drop, that is how. Prices will drop if people have to list their items for sale with other peoples prices right beside theirs. Right now if somone is selling something for less people just jump to another town and start spamming there. and it will also help prevent people from ripping off new players.

But farming requires months of practice and training. It took me 2 YEARS to get good enough to hit 1,2,3,4 over and over on my monk in order to make money.

Now they took it away from me!!!! It's not fair!!!!

Now all my skill will have to go to waste in pvp or something silly!!!! Can you imagine that??!

Um yea, uh, PVP is a complete waist of time to me. I would be fine if the game had none. And another thing, it's real anoying to me that everyone assumes people farm with the same old generic builds. I built all my characters myself and found my own builds to farm in different areas. None of my builds make farming as simple as 1,2,3,4, Mine require thought and strategy, they make farming fun.

But here's the simple fact, they made this game so that everything can be bought, if you have the money you really don't have to work for anything. So if they want to stop people from buying off the internet, they will have to make it so anyone can easily afford anything in the game.

well with 2 yrs of hitting 1,2,3,4 you should be an expert at PvP then cause thats what mostly is PvP. I quit PvP abut 19 months or so for that very reason. Hell i even considered buying a monkey to farm PvP for me.

Last night I went on a solo UW smite run... grand total of 3 ecto during the last 9 full runs. That's several hundred smite kills, with only 3-ecto to show for it, and perhaps 5 blue/purple drops average per trip. I've also noticed a dramatic decrease in drops accross all locations.

The loot scaling code supposedly exempts the listed items now from Post#1, and there is supposed to be no more static-location diminishing returns code, yet this is exactly what I've been seeing during the last week.

Is the diminishing drops code really gone, or did it get re-introduced back into production?

I think that Anet are trying to please al the players who cannot be arsed to put in an extra effort to gain the nicer items, by making everything accesible to all, they are dumbing down the game so that the less experienced players can have all the elite and shiny items that used take a long time and a lot of effort to gain.
Once people have finished all three campaigns with several characters the replay value is diminished, and the story lines and missions become a grind, all that is / was left was the challenge of soloing areas, well it was for me anyway, and i feel that if you were good enough to put in the time and effort into devising a build to be able to do that you should be rewarded as such, but the whiners and whingers who cannot be bothered to finish a game ,or indeed work for them want all the nice and elite items for no effort .
Personally i think that sucks, i was brought up on the ethos that if you wanted something badly enough then you bloody well work for it, being basically handed everythng on a plate will in fact decrease the replay value even quicker for now once the campaigns are completed and the nicer gear is easily accesible then there really is nothing left to work for in my opinion, (discounting pvp )
For me the real skill in this game was being able to clear an area that was intended for party size, and im not talking about rinsing trolls or minos repeatedly.
Im lucky i guess in that after 18 months i have experienced the best of this game as it now seems to be sliding inexorably downhill.

The answer is in Gaile Gray's 1st post in this thread. Certain items (rare/gold items, dyes, special event drops, rare crafting materials like ecto, etc...) are no longer being scaled with party size -- they are exempt from the scaling code. This means that soloing is supposed to still reap full benefits with regards to the items listed.

However, here's the catch: based on personal experience, current drop rates (as of this post) are still ridiculously low. I'm getting about 1 ecto every 3 full smite runs, or 120+ smite kills. If ecto is really exempt from the scaling drop code, I cannot verify it based on current in-game observations. It's almost like the latest scaling-loot exemptions patch was backed out.

Gaile, can you please verify if the loot-scaling-exemptions code is still in place?

I can't speak for anyone else than myself, but I can give multiple reasons to solo:

1) I pick a handful of spots that I use as "test areas", in which I use to test new builds. These areas are relatively easy, not newb island or pre- easy, but more like Kryta, Pongmei Valley, and Marga Coast easy. The builds are generally self-sufficient (couple of self-heals), and are designed to be damage dealers, so they solo okay in these areas, but is challenging enough to give me a good idea how good the build will be in a team.

2) Chestruns, nuff said

3) Greens and Ectos are exempt from loot scaling, so people can solo those all day long

4) Pre-Searing dye farming is still quite viable, since dyes are also exempt

5) Pure challenge. Got an area you think would be impossible to solo, for the challenge junkie, that's the perfect spot to just try and do it - who cares about monetary rewards when you can get an adrenaline rush trying to "beat the system".

6) Hardmode rare-item farming. Since rares are also exempt, and you get them more often in hard mode, find a good, easy spot and farm away (like the Nebo Terrace undead).

That's all I can think of for now, but I'm sure there are more reasons.

Try clearing Snake Dance without evading the Heretics or dying even once.

That's harder than PvP where you and all the other players use the exact same builds over and over and over and over again. And when they're nerfed, a new cookie-cutter build comes and that gets used over and over and over again.

Well, now there isn't any reason to clear snake dance (except for the vanquisher title, but why not do it with 8 people if you get the exact same rewards, anyway -.-)

Face it A-Net, you friggin ruined the game for the people that beat the game. And I thought you 'wanted to reward the people who've been playing from the beginning'. Well start with giving farming back, and give us a goal to work for.

People keep saying that farming is a waste of time, but I wonder... What is a bigger waste of time, killing monsters for a decent amount of money, or standing in an outpost hours long trying to sell 1 item.

For chest run, you need keys. Keys need money and for money you need to solo-farm.
They did exemt greens, but even so, they still only have a 0.001% chance to drop (Same with golds).

The point is that without money, there isn't much to do in this game. Only thing you can do when poor is missions/quests. After doing these for multiple times, that's old. So most people NEED to farm to do cool stuff, cause everything is so expensive and A-Net kills off all our ways of getting some nice cash.

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Well the high prices being there is a fault on A-Net's side. THEY are the ones making stuff like Miniature Kanaxai/Panda unobtainable for most people.

However, a Panda for 100K and 7 stacks of ecto's would be fine for me, cause I'd have a goal to work for then.

Lots of people complain about grinding. But why do players grind? I think this is about the only game I know where people who are playing 3 months+ are not yet millionaires. And that is nothing to be proud of!

The choices made to balance an economy were wrong from scratch. Droprate should be **MUCH** higher! Playing an hour in an 8-person party should give you at least 2-3 k gold and lots of white items. But no, we have to do it with a crappy 100-200 gold and 3 or 4 mostly useless items dropped. Than take a look at the price of basic stuff like some runes. Everyone likes to max out on Vigor for chr's and heroes. Still wondering why players start to grind??

i hate to say it but sense they did the drop scaling i have noticed less people playing in my guild, alliance, and Friends list. Not sure if its just going on in my guild/alliance or if its happening everywhere, I have already see quiet a few people talking about just starting a group on other games because of the solo Nerf.

The loot scaling has just about killed off the solo farmer, and i have noticed fewer of the older players on anymore and a lot of talk of people just moving on to others games. I know the scaling helps the newer players but at the same time it is driving away the older players. Personally i don't mind being dirt poor on the game but I'm scared that the scaling is going to make a lot of people quit playing and eventually end guild wars.

loot scaling is killing solo farmers!

The only thing you can do while poor is play the game? That's a shame!

lol:

Anet's support team:

No, it's the opposite. You can only do Quests and Missions when you're poor. All the FUN stuff actually requires cash.

It's like in order to have fun in this game, one NEEDS cash and one NEEDS to grind.

(ohh, and missions/quests are NOT fun after doing them 16 times)

Absolutely agreed. I can't even count how many times I've done the same missions and quests. GW's official storyline doesn't have prepetual replay value.

If anything, all the scaling patch has done is favor the bot farmer. Bots can farm 24/7, no sleep required. This allows them to out-gather any human player by ridiculous margins.

Also, the Diminishing-Returns-by-Revisiting (farming the same area over and over) code is definitely still active based on plenty of eye-witness accounts. It was supposedly removed according to Gaile's previous post, but I'm still experiencing it first hand. Gaile, is there anyway to confirm/deny this from your side?

the only high cost is show off items which most people cant see (weapons/etc) or fow/high end armor which most of us would not even recognize much less be impressed at seeing.

the game is the missions/quests/exploring/etc.

the farming disease syndrome is not the game it is some aberation caught after playing the game.

the real prpblem are the people who have made similar posts to the following examples.

1. I HAVE FINISHED THE GAME AND DONT PVP ............WHAT DO I DO NOW?

2. I HAVE PLAYED AND FINISHED THE GAME X TIMES SO HELP ME FIND SOME WAY TO CONTINUE PLAYING.

the game has a start, the game itself, and a finish.

if the people dont have the brainpower to do something else after FINISHING THE GAME instead of forcing themselves to play a game that now *bores me to tears* (one poster) that is their fault as Anet never said we promise you endless new content to keep you busy.

take a break until it is fun again as most players wont recognize or even care let alone being *impressed* at your fow/15k/etc armor and going into an outpost spamming *look at my 1000 plat item* join my party is stupid at best

I agree/disagree. Loot scaling does not help new players at all. the things they need are still the same price they were before. Most crafting materials are still about where they were. Armor still costs the same. Weapons from crafters still cost the same (most new players aren't going to be looking for gold rare skins till much later in the game). And some of the basic minor runes have actually jumped in price because the farmers aren't bringing them in anymore. Meanwhile, the blue and white drops the new players depended on have been nerfed. Loot scaling has hurt both new and old players!

When I aquire gear for my characters, it is because I find the item(s) visually appealing. If others happen to notice the items, that's fine, but ultimately I'm buying gear for my own enrichment/entertainment and not others.

The above points apply only to linear storylines. This is perfectly fine for movies and books, but RPG-style games are supposed to be open-ended, entertaining players until they choose move on to other activities.

Games are supposed to be fun and entertaining. So long as players can derive entertainment from the game, then that game is working as designed. The problem is that ANET is contantly choosing to downgrade instead of upgrade their flagship title, much to the player community's chagrin.

In the end, I still find GW fun to play, but the recent changes "annoying" to say the least...

It depends what you see as high cost. I now am totally broken, and 1K is ALOT for me. If I want to buy a single skill, I gotta kill monsters for 3 hours.

If I want to do cool stuff I most of the time need new builds/weapons, and for that, I just don;t have money.

Also, stuff like chest runs, alcohol, sugary items - most of the title-based items are WAY too expensive.

Content doesn't have to be new, and the content WAS there. A few months back before the release of Nightfall, everything was good and well. Prices were low (6,5K for 1 ecto, even less than now), and people had easy ways of obtaining cash, making it possible to buy keys, skills, greens for special builds, new armor etc. There was LOTS to do, and you were free to do it as well.

After Nightfall came out, we were forced into the storyline more and more with each update. A-Net is really narrowing the game. Sure, we can still work on titles, chest run, etc, but only if we've got cash.


And other stuff besides the storyline is ALSO the game. If only the storyline was the game, it'd be a VERY, VERY short, small, repetetive and simple game. (Ohh wait, without cash, it the game IS that.)

What it all comes down to is they Arenanet should never have brought in Hard Mode in the first place.The game was fine as it was as most would just be working on titles they still want to finesh before EoTN comes out.I would of just left the farmers alone they all new there was a code and new how many hours they could farm one spot and move on or take break.I don't and will say Hard Mode was never needed all it does it but more confusion in the game.

Don't play Heroes Ascent. -_-Off the top of my head I'd say an assassin with the attack chain of your choice, Shadow Form, Shadow of Haste, Dash and a self heal. I'm sure you'll try to say it's cookie cutter or some other such nonsense, but it accomplishes the challenge you put forth.... albeit very slowly.

Yeah, that's harder than making top 50 with a balanced buld, or actually beating things that can out think and out play you.

Creativity doesn't win matches, out playing your opponent does.


Anyway, my point was not to rehash any pve vs. pvp arguments, it was to point out the ridiculous nature of certain poster's comments. Saying that skilled players are being punished is asinine. First, the majority of players players are bad at the game, second most farming builds come from these forums or simply transplanting a common build to a new area, third the skilled pvers who do exist think up new builds and new locations to get around the proclaimed drying up of hard mode.

Also, thirty characters? Jesus. No wonder that guy has money issues. -_-

So using the same skills in PvE with farming is a bad thing, while doing it in PvP is okay? Right... I wasn't talking about tournaments or something like that, either. I was talking about stuff like IWAY, crip rangers, spikers, etc.

Also, you can't get 'around' the loot scaling. It's everywhere now, wether you kill smites in UW or Hulking Stone Elementals in Ascalon, you only get 1/8th of the drops. Builds weren't a problem, I could solo about 90% of Tyria.

(Hmmm actually not that impressive how 60% of tyria isn't even lvl 20 :P)


Also, it's not the 'skilled' people who get punished, it's all people. Except for the people who are still in the missioning/questing fase of the game.

And what's wrong with taking builds from forums? It shouldn't matter how 'original' someone is when it comes to making cash. I don't do stuff original at work either, I just do it using the most efficient way.

Oh and btw, 30 characters isn't that much, if you have 2 accounts and often delete/remake characters.

[QUOTE]you still get more than a straight 1/8 ask Gaile to post what she said earlier about the general formula as i dont have the time to look it up.

you are still getting your fair share and a bit extra not shorted.

you say your broke?

you say it takes hours to farm enough for a single skill?

on another thread or this one i posted my results of a quick random low level vermin run in the lowlands and someone else said they had similar rsults.

about 2.5 plat per hour not counting dyes (one silver) or the value from fur squares traded from char hides.

gold and junk off the ground with no salvage kits and merch when the inventory was full.

that is 5 skill points an hour not counting value of the dyes/furs/steel (2 items i expert salvaged for steel got 1 steel and 1 iron ingot)

I never implied that. The guy with the 30 characters brought up the fact that he made up his own builds as if it was an indication of skill, or somehow made him better than the 55 monk farmers. I was only pointing out that most people don't make their own builds, and that making up your own builds doesn't really mean anything. Anyone with a semi-decent understanding of the game can create builds tailored for a certain area. It's nothing to brag about, and certainly nothing to merit reward.

Farming for liquid money is mostly done, I agree (although I still get ~20k an hour from some spots just by merchanting drops). Farming for certain items, however, is not; loot scaling does not effect gold drops, for example.

The whole skilled thing wasn't something I originally brought up, it was just in reply to that guy with all the characters.

I don't think loot scaling is actually punishing anyone though, my drops seem to be fine, and my guildmates get nice drops all the time. I've managed to make over a mil since hard mode was introduced as well, and I'm not even a pve player. I say this not to brag, but to illustrate that making money by solo farming is still quite possible.
I agree. Originality doesn't matter in pvp either, only how well you play. You either play well and win, or you don't.

People frequently refer to 'cookie cutter' builds, or otherwise standard and copied builds, as something 'negative' and degrading. If there is no merit to designing builds yourself, there is no negative to not doing that. If designing your own builds, or not, is of no 'value' then there is no point in referring to it, in either a negatieve or a positive way, in discussions. Still, the fact is that people, including you, use the phrases as 'cookie cutter' builds in a negative sense.

What formula? I haven't seen any formula.

Umm, from the original post from Gaile on this thread:

"The loot scaling for gold and common loot is not linear with the number of players in the party, and it includes an element of randomness, so while the difference is not easy to quantify, it is by no means a factor of eight. Advanced solo farmers may now earn about twice as much gold and common loot from farming solo as they would if they farmed in a party. While gold and common loot are thus reduced for these players by loot scaling, certain other types of loot are completely unaffected. For example, Skill Tomes are completely unaffected by loot scaling, so they still drop eight times as frequently for solo farmers than they do for people who play in parties."

So, the "general formula" is "gold earned = (2*(1/8)*(full party drops))+(full party excluded drops)+(a small random modifier)". Since this is the original post of this thread I hope that helped some - especially since you have never seen it. Though I suppose that if you are American word problems have always been an issue, I know they even started skipping them when I was in school (graduated high school in 93).