[Dev Update] Farming and Loot Scaling

I think so far from what i can tell the drop rate of them in hard mode is better however it is a bit tougher. I see no reason to reduce the entrance fee's as you can farm scrolls to enter fow/uw for free now so thing seem pretty decent at the moment.

Something I still don't understand, in the update notes here emphasis was still put on botters. So a big part of the reason this change was made in the first place was because botters are making so much money.

Then why not take measures to specifically get rid of these bots..? It would not be difficult to weed them out when you see them advertising to sell gold and running around in key areas like granite citadel etc. You can easily pick them out. Why is it we still see bots all around us? If we can see them surely you can, yet nothing is done?

Some insight from Gaile would be much appreciated on this matter.

Excellent compromise, even though this probably hurts guys like me (people who solo for the challenge but do not farm) the most. When I play the main storyline, I accumulate most of my funds via cash drops and white drops, since I wind up killing everything in my path (which is necessary to complete the mission/quest I'm doing).

Either way, I really don't play to accumulate wealth, so I don't mind the change much. I definitely understand the economic reasons for the change, especially after seeing rare material prices go heywire over the past 24 hours.

I think one thing people don't get.

Anet dislikes bots, but thats not all they dislike.

Anet dislikes *inflation*. Bots are just one of the worst causes of this.

They've made farming nerfs that will curtail inflation of the value of gold. Bots and players farming trolls/vermin/smites both cause this inflation, so they both get scaled back. Selling valuable greens and golds to players is like manufacturing a product, wheras selling to the merchant is like minting money. Its obvious which one would cause inflation....

P.S. what this game tells you for the most part? You can't make money in groups. That's not "letting everyone play how they want."

Wrong, because you don't understand basic logic.

Monster carries X amount of loot.

1 Player kills monster, gets 1X loot.

8 Players kill monster, each player gets X/8 loot.

That's simple math, which allows a player to choose to play in a group and accept that drops will be shared in a party (duh) or take the more difficult road of learning how to solo or small party, thereby increasing the chance they will get the drop (up to 100% when soloing).

A solo farmer cannot hope to compete with bots for inflation. Most solo farmers (like my A/E) focus on uniques and/or rares, which can then be sold to other players. As I and others have done this, supply has gone up, which means prices have come down. Remember when Reaper's Blades were 100k or more? Now you can barely get rid of them for around 30k if you're lucky, and weekends like Green Drop make the prices even lower.

If ANet wants to get rid of bots, increase drop rates for EVERYONE such that it is easier to afford high priced items. If you DEVALUE the super rich items by increasing supply, then there's not as much of a demand for them and they become more accessible, making the need for bots less and less because people no longer need to ebay gold for the things they want.

Again ECON101 is a good prerequisite for commenting on subjects such as this.

solo isnt more difficult or challenging, theres no need for tactical thinking or teamplay its just pressing buttons and repeating...

Well one thing that can't be denied to me is the logic and principals behind the update. Sure the bots and pro solo/duo farmers did dominate but now-a-days they're going to be filthy rich whilst the economy tries to recover and the bot farmers are probably going to get more custom anyway

The only thing I disagree with there is the parts about casual farmers, its total bullplop really. Sure I fit into this catagory cause I would grind together 50-75k to buy skills or amours and the like. You could get 5-10k quite easily if you needed the cap sigs or whatever in about an hour or less but now you'll have to party or quest which will only get you a couple of k's in half an hour or so. So we get more golds, for those that hate trading that only means a slim chance at a decent weapon for heros or yourself or 200-400gold. Also the casual farming greens seems ruined too, unless they've tweaked the drop rates now?

If you were any good at soloing, you'd know its vastly more efficient than killing with 8 players in good farming spots.

No-one parties up for money unless its tombs, urgoz/deep, or maybe a DoA group that really knows what they are doing.

Same thing could be said of the rest of the game. PUG much?

I am good at soloing. And whether you want to admit it or not, the JUICY areas to farm can be vastly sped up with a dedicated tank and one or more dedicated damage dealers, which is why team farming is actually quite popular. A 2 or 3 man build is VASTLY more efficient at farming UW for example, whereas it takes a much longer time for a soloer, and is much more risky.

And just like solo farming, I'm not against party farming. I don't care how other people play, as long as its fun for them. Why do you and others seem to want to be the GW Have Fun Our Way Or The Highway Gestapo?

I'm glad farmers can farm again, but i'm pissed that my drops while vanquishing and shit in hard mode suck as much as before.

Perhaps loot should still be scaled in hard mode? :S

I form a PARTY every time I solo farm, a PARTY of one. If I solo a mission, before I enter it, GW gives me a warning that my PARTY may be too small. When I'm out soloing, my name appears in the PARTY box.

Now unless things drastically change, I'm going to have a big LoTR PARTY, and a GW funeral to go along with it.

Flame here:

KANE

You're just unlucky man, my group got 8 rares tonight as drops. Plus 3 lockpicks. Well it was just me and my girl and heros. I've gotten over 15 rares and 5 lockpicks in the past day, so I don't think it's been that bad.

I like that A-Net is trying to do something agianst the pro bot farmers, however I feel this is a step in the wrong direction. Materials & Rare Materials are still affected by loot scaling (iron, steel, fur, tanned hide squares, scales etc.) The prices on these materials are starting to rise already. Before this loot scaling if someone needed alot of Iron or other mentioned materials for new armor, they could just go do a few runs in a certain area that dropped the loot they needed to salvage into the materials. Now that these are scaled back, it will take alot longer to get this loot to be salvaged into the materials they need, this will also drive the cost of materials up at the traders. Last night Iron was 10 for 200g...scales were 10 for 180g. Ive been playing for almost 2 years and have never seen Iron cost more than Scales. This could be the result of the release of new 15k Knights Armor requiring 400 iron, but I think we will see Materials & Rare Materials rise in price as well, as they will be harder to come by.


TJ72's idea about the Crystal Desert Teleports to enter an area was great, maybe something like this could be implemented to stop gold farming.

one question:how can i get rare items and then sell them if i cant farm them?

What's the problem? Nothing changes for solo-farmers.

Drops scale up with party size, from what I read from Gaile a party of 8 will have a total (added) drop rate of 4 times solo.

So, assume D is the base dropvalue for a solo-farmer before the update. A party of 8 would share this value, meaning every individual player received D/8.

After the update the solo-farmer will still get D, but now a party of 8 will see 4*D dropping, so now each player get D/2.

What is the problem?

Hmm, so they think more 'rare' drops will keep the 'normal' players in loot because they can sell them on.

But...how will they sell them on if nobody has the money to buy them? And they can't make that money to buy the item for sale, because they themselves can't sell theirs forward, or make loot from trash drops.

I may get a max gold Sword of wonderfulness, but who is going to be able to buy it once they've bought their armor, their dye, their runes, their weapons, runes and wepaons for their heros, etc?

Sure, stop the gold sellers accumulating lotsa gold to sell, but you've also stopped people being able to actually buy the good stuff that you've put in place to drop more often.

Hello. First off, I would like to say thank you to Anet for listening to us and implementing at least half of what we said in other threads. However, as many of you know, the new "unnerf" only applies only to golds, greens, rare materials, scrolls, dyes and tomes. But, as many people who farm know, white drops also make up a large amount of the profit of a run. This especially applies to farming areas like Trolls and Hydras, where golds do occasionally drop but selling the whites and purples makes most of the money. Underworld farmers are also greatly affected by this, as any UW farmer has stacks of Demonic Remains and Phantom Residues lying around totaling well over 40k ^.^.
I don't want people to think I'm not happy over this new update, but it is simply not enough. It may be for people on EU servers who farm UW all day, but for us farming hydras and trolls to buy that set of 15k, it simply is not cutting it.
Ideas? Thoughts?

i still got nothing drops although i only tried 3 times a place to test if its true
and dunno if i'm unlucky or something
my uw loots (always no ectos for me),are always less than 1k and i'm losing money going into uw , its my situation , i guess

After reading the first page of posts, I feel the need to clarify some things and make some comments.

Loot scaling effects the drop rate of common items, uncommon items, gold, and common materials.

Everyone CAN solo farm, not everyone wants to. Your comment seems to suggest that just because everyone can solo people that do not want to should be forced to farm to make money. Bots are now less rampant than ever before. Bots run easy things like Minotaurs in Elona's reach, get white drops and gold, merchant, repeat. Now they get 1/8th drops while everyone else is unaffected (Unless you farm like a bot).

You know, I wish people would quit rage posting. It's really annoying, if you have a complaint you can say it without insulting ANET.

The purpose was to limit the actual amount of new gold coins coming into the economy and causing inflation due to bots.

It works exactly like they say it does.
Trolls aren't advanced farming, they're a bot run. Since they drop all whites/gold you aren't going to get anything from them solo. You need to farm places with good gold/other unaffected drops to make money now.

The aim isn't to limit solo farmers, it's to limit bots.

Currently, with bots running like crazy despite repeated nerfs, gold is accumulating in surplus, and would drive up the price of items to astronomical levels through inflation. The update simply aims to balance the gold coming into the game with the gold leaving the game through money sinks. Gold is only a means of representing relative value, and a common trade medium. If you trade your axe for 30k, then trade that 30k for a sword, no money ever left the sytem, it stayed balanced. You have to look at the big picture.

Team of 8 = 1/8th drops, team of 1 = 1/8th drops. Lose - lose situation for the Chinese.



For everyone crying about bad drops: If your going to solo get some skill and solo something worth it instead of trolls. As soon as HM came out (BEFORE THE LOOT SCALING EXCEPTIONS) I found a nice spot in Hard Mode to solo and got 12 golds + 2 Elite Tomes + 4 Lockpicks + 3 Major Vigors in 3 hours.

Does anyone else remember the original AOE nerf were every ele in the game went "OMGWTF/RAGEQUIT" and People dumped Rago's staffs for 10k? People need to learn to chill and adapt to changes, a static game is a boring game.

For the record, yes, Guild Wars has been in desperate need of a trade system since the start, and moreso now.

Lastly - Thank you ANET for the best update I've seen since I started playing two years ago.

The problem is you're assuming the drop rate is calculated from the solo farming point of view.

As far as I can tell, its not now, whereas it may have been pre-update.

Loot doesn't scale up to a party of 8, 8 is the baseline by which smaller parties loot drops WERE judged by.

So now, any player is ALWAYS getting D drops. The problem is D is calculated with a baseline party size of 8, even if you're soloing, you now have a "virtual" party of 8 along with you.

So now, instead of hench/heros stealing drops, its the ghosts of rationality and logic.

Having to actually pay the 1k uw entrance fee instead of finding 1ks worth of demonic remains is a small price to pay for the massive crippling of botters, dont you agree ?

They'll just have to lower prices in order to sell.

More rares in HM + more people farming them because thats only good money at the moment = greater supply, + less money from trash drops = lower rare prices = non-farmers can afford more rares.

This nerf is more subtle and effective than you might think.

P.S. why bring a tank in UW when you have earth ele or channeling rit spike? Hard to beat killing everything so fast it can't even hurt you or run away...

True, and they never stated as much, I see. The only thing Gaile said was

"Thus, our goal is that solo farmers can still earn as much money as they did before, but they'll have to earn it in different ways. Instead of looking for things to sell to merchants, solo farmers should now be looking for things to sell to traders or other players."

This is indeed a load of sales-talk trying to cover up that, indeed, a solo-farmer will get fewer drops when compared to before the update. If drops for solo-farmers would have remained equal in value they would have clearly stated as much, in stead of using this smoke screen.

And nobody in his sane mind will want to waste time trying to sell items to other players unless they have to.

That is nonsense. There are better ways to make farming difficult for bots. The old bot-farming spots are still there, unchanged. Makes me wonder if they're just honeypots.

Ehm no, if you FARM for rare weapons, and you can't sell the weapons, you just keep them in your storage till you see someone type 'WTB'. Meanwhile you continue farming more rare items. At this rate, there's BOUND to be an item someone wants to buy.

I farm for rare weapons frequently, and hell I'm not dropping my prices, I'm thinking of asking more since less people will get the item, so we'll see more WTB's. If players have no cash, they need no rare items either.

do you really think that collector items should be included into this to? as a casual gamer who doesnt really farm greens, collector weapons are usually my outlet :b

I'm still wondering what Gaile meant by "traders?" As it is now, we can spam trade messages for several hours, in a random district and hope someone bites.

Or we can merch it for 1/50th the market value. Is there a Trader NPC somewhere that I'm just not seeing who gives us fair market value for our golds?

Don't get me wrong, I AM grateful for A-Net trying.

The problem is that these rare drops never drop. They're... kinda rare. Even before this update, I only got 1 gold, ecto in maybe 2 days. The real reason why we're solo farming is for the quick cash. I wanna buy a skill, cool, I'll farm some trolls for the quick 1K and buy it.


And if ALOT of this community is against the update, it says something about the quality of the update. If A-Net just removed PvE, we'd all whine. The PvP'ers, however, don't care and just say 'look at how the community whines'.

This is the same you are doing. It's not called whining, it's called trying to continue to have fun in the game, and don't step up to another game. If people weren't allowed to whine at all, and just had to leave, Guild Wars would have a population of 0, because everybody has something he wants to see changed.

Then you aren't selling anything in the future. More people will be farming rares now. How are less people going to get the item when more are being sold, or they might even find them without needing to buy in HM? And if players have no cash for your items, neither will you.

Of course it will take some time for the economy to adjust... but it will.

So does that mean if I go green farming with henchs of 8, flag them away and solo the boss, they still get my drops no matter how far i flag em b/c its a party of 8 and they still take my drops.

Okay, so I like your attitude about holding on to stuff and dealing with trade as it is convenient. Great outlook, and I think more people should behave that way. Thank you for that.

As far as being able to sell rares and uniques at higher prices, though, you are slightly mistaken. The drop rates of these are not affected by scaling, so they will not be able to sell for more. As gold brought in to the game transitions from simple bots to the average joe schmoe, who will also get more rare drops due to hard mode, prices will actually drop because demand will be more elastic.

From my perspective the part in bold is just nonsense. I'm a casual farmer and I also like playing parts of the game solo (I had a lot of fun finding a functional build to solo The Gates of Kryta), and I'm not in any way a "professional farmer".

The update means that my vermin farming now gets me less loot to save up for goodies, and is easier. From my point of view both these things are bad. ANet's reasoning is now that its easier I can do again and again and again, and then spend more time selling the gold items I find.

But now that it is easier to farm it is less fun. So I get a fun quick activity replaced with repeatedly doing a less fun (slightly quicker) activity followed by more time spent trying to sell the gold items (another unenjoyable activity).

It seems like ANet's idea of a "casual player" is someone who doesn't like any sort of challenge, and enjoys doing the same boring activity over and over again. If this really is part of their design philosophy it doesn't bode well for the future.

One thing that would help, and has been asked for numerous times, is to create item traders, I do hope this is something that is being considered.

The bottom line for me is that I enjoyed the solo farming, which I will now do a lot less if at all. It's not a big deal, but it does mean the game is less fun.

I happen to agree that it was a good adjustment, myself. I'm nowhere near an expert farmer, but I believe that the changes and the expansion of the exempt list will achieve the necessary anti-inflation goals while preserving the challenge and rewards for those who are the high-level farmers.
Sure, no problem. The question is about using your Heroes or henchmen to trick the system. The theory is this: "If I enter an explorable area and flag my henchmen and Heroes near the entrance, then precede to clear the EA, don't I get the benefits of a full party plus keep all the rewards for myself?" Answer: No, bad idea! Here's why: Drops are determined by, let's call it "active party size." Your active party size is determined by presence in the "area of interest" or, for simplicity, the enlarged aggro bubble. So a monster isn't going to say "Hey, back there at the entrance, this Ele has 7 other friends, I shall therefore drop a generous drop appropriate for an 8-member party!" No, the monster is going to say, "What is this guy nuts, trying to solo me?" No, seriously, the monster is going to say "Huh, one guy, my loot is therefore appropriate for a one-person party." And he will drop a smaller reward based on that assessment.

The problem--the "gotcha" is--all the gold that the monsters drop will be split between the full 8-member party, even if the other 7 Henchies and Heroes are off having a picnic with the Res Shrine Priest and aren't lifting a finger in battle.

So while it's creative to think of staking non-combatant party members outside the combat zone, you're only shooting yourself in the foot.

So what you're saying is, the in game justification is that all monsters know how many people they're facing beforehand, and throw all their loot into a big secret pile that is invisible?

IMHO it makes MUCH more sense to have drops based on monster type, level and area, then let the PLAYER decide if they should take a full party or can try soloing it.

By doing this, you're basically removing a huge part of the "after-game" once you've done all the missions and quests what else is there to do in PvE? Oh sure, there's Hard Mode now, but that's so reminiscent of Nightmare and Hell difficulty (hey do the same things over again, only get killed twice as much! fun for everyone) that I lol'd.

I'm actually very surprised that solo farming was such a massive concern. I figured, being the dumb player I am, that bots were the main problem, not players, and a solution would be tried that got rid of bots directly, rather than punishing anyone who doesn't group. How about a patch that auto-kicks anyone who doesn't respond to a GM chat request? Or something more proactive than just nerfs across the board?

Maybe the super mega important list could be updated to reflect things players actually want? And I hardly think that after thousands of posts on multiple forums that a few people quoted supporting a socialized system of loot is proof positive.

Thanks Gaile, its good to see the reasoning behind the changes. Though i have to agree that a better trading system is needed to meet your economic goals. Hopefully we will see auction houses, trade searching, or somesuch with or before GW:EN.

The exemption list is the perfect solution for making loot scaling work.
On top of that, the items on the list are exactly what is needed to make loot scaling work.

In other words, loot scaling works. Kudos to Anet.


I remain completely baffled as to why so many people continue to complain after the 4-20 update.
The only reason I can think of is selfishness.

gaile i think you should past this suggestion along to the developers:

with updates like this, release the update notes a few days or weeks beforehand and see what the players think about it. make a poll too to see if they agree with it or not. if players in favor of it wins the poll release the update as planned but if players not in favor of it wins, do not release that part of the update. along with that acknowledge the players suggestions that work better than the developers' idea where everyone can agree with and put those into the updates

That's funny. The only reason I can think of for someone wanting the same reward as someone who did 8x the work is ALSO selfishness! How amusing that we agree...

Thanks for the explination ^^

But only one type of farming i do works now, but with no more anti code i guess i can do it all i want :P.

Hmmm but this also means that leechers/AFK'ers 'eat' from the party loot. The only exception is that nobody gets the loot.

The update worked great for high-level farmers. But what about casual players trying to make a quick 5K for a new skillbar, a quick rune or ? In the past, you could just kill some trolls, and then you had cash for a small something needed. No use to farm any more. The big money makers are ecto's, after all.

By removing the 'quick money makers': whites and blues, alot of casual players got stabbed. I can't think of a quick way to earn a little 3K now to buy some basics to prepare for the upcoming mission. Unless you want to kill stuff in a group of 8, but that's gonna take an hour or 2.

How about changing the drops back to normal, and give people more loot in groups of 8? Good loot in PuG's = encourages team play (the loot we now get in an 8 man team isn't worth the effort), and if cash is easier to get, bots will sell less (what's the point in buying gold if you can get it by helping someone with a mission), and because people have a bit more cash, they can buy more weapons. More people have the weapon, less people want it: price decreases---> everyone happy.

It's the same as now actually, but instead of minimizing the drops on both areas, try to maximize them instead.

It's kind of a punish/reward situation. Now the people NOT going in an 8 man party are punished, and forced to go 8 man. Instead of that, you could also REWARD them for going with 8 man parties.

<Rare materials not afected>

Are u sure about this.
Iv solo farmed uw 8 run's 0 Ecto, 0 gold, and not made the entry Free on any of the runs, b4 the nerf update i would get avged out over 10 runs 1 Ecto per run..




btw: if this is just to combat bot's why not stop them from using there botting programs? patch up the code were they able to hock into GW. ban ppl who use bots, as they are tampering with your code dont think they have any legal rights, pluss you could make some cash from them as they would have to re perchis GW to play or try botting again..