[Dev Update] Farming and Loot Scaling

Quoted for truth.

Also, I just came back from a 2-ish year hiatus, after realizing that it was extremely repetitive (and I never even farmed). Coming back I was pleased by the aoe-nerf, because I now had to account for them doing something other than blindly swinging at a meat-shield. Now that's gone, and if I ever want to be able to afford ascended armor I need to farm golds and spend an afternoon trying to get some attention amid the constant spam from a 12-year old kid on a sugar-high?

What we need are smarter monsters that require more tactics than would be workable for a bot; and the oft mentioned trade system. However, judging from the word about Hard Mode, the a.i. is not an area of focus for the devs, and they've had about 2 years to get some trade system up so... Not going to hold my breath. I will be watching the next week or two with interest, as it may well determine my future here.

I think the true problem is that ANet, in many and varied updates, have had a choice.

And the choice is this:

Do we reward players for doing what we encourage, or punish them for it and make it more difficult?

Now, if ANet's stance on farming wasn't an official encouragemnt, and Gaile came on saying "how dare thee plebian heathens for violating the non-farming pact?" then farmers wouldn't have much of an argument.

Problem is, ANet says one thing, and does another. Confuses the playerbase, and makes them angry for being lied to (on purpose or by omission).

So if ANet wanted to encourage party play by altering the loot system, why not just double the amount of drops for those in full groups of 8? That way, the solo and various size team farmers would still be happy, AND players who don't want to or can't figure out how to farm can instead play in groups without falling vastly behind the curve.

This "solution" merely serves to artificially level the field by making an entire activity pointless.

And by trying to socialize the loot system, expensive items will quickly spiral upwards in price, and even basic commodities like Identification kits which are static priced will cost more! Why you ask?

Because prior to the update, if you wanted something nice, you could farm for it, generating increased cashflow in a shorter span of time.

So if you look at time spent vs. monet earned, now there is no difference between anybody, so gold value goes up, static priced items like armors and such value goes up, and no one can afford anything.

Controlled markets don't work, just ask the Soviets... er Russians.

here is casual farmer speaking

dear Anet

these changes bring prices to the hell and stop: just look at "bot web sites", now they are selling golds (illegally) at double price, ecto are straight to the sky.

if u want to stop "botting" this is not the right way. You know where bots there are and how they work: just implement this tricks of 1/8 the stuff dropped only for they, and not for all the community.

i'm seriously thinking to leave guildwars game for ever, and i think i'm not the only. After beating the game is just fun to make some money to buy or chestrunning some nice rare items. I'm not interested in pvp play.

thanks if u do something.

bye

I've followed with a great degree of amusement Gaile's posts re: loot scaling. I've never seen so many contradictions, convoluted arguments and reasoning, and contrived 'solutions' to a problem that only exists regarding botters.
The problem is bot farmers, gold sellers, whatever. So they try to institute a code that obviously backfired and created a lot of ill-will. Now they back largely off that, and the result is this contrived code that seeks to rule out the possibility of bot farming (which will only drive up their prices and keep them a step ahead by altering how they bo).
There's no coding alternative for what it really takes to exclude botters: having staff observe the botters, and ban them one at a time. I consider this laziness on Anet's behalf. Then having the dev's trot Gaile out to try to spin this with glossy terms like the grand vision of the devs and the altruististic benevolence of the gaming gods, with her added insults to the community at large, and we've got the present situation.

fun. well, not really.

Well I was one of those farmers who wanted all the crap drops.

I was salvaging for materials needed to craft the Rolls needed for the "8k" monk armor. In the end I saved myself over 53k doing it the crafting way. So casual farming yes, but actually needed the white drops for something other than money.

On the other hand I did UW this morning just before we lost favor. It was me, my bro and 6 heroes. And I've done both UW and FOW so many times like that, that I can ussually say off the top of my head what the average loot we'd get for both areas would be if we do all the quests and clear them all.

And today I made alot of money in the UW. Course it will never beat that time I got 4 ectos in one run ( in a party of 8 too ) but it was more then what use to get after selling all the crap to the merchant.

In fact for the first time in a long time I actually had to salvage stuff in my inventory halfway through the UW. And also I noticed alot more gold dropping. And this was in normal mode.

So IMHO I can see why Anet did this. If you wanna make money. Play Hard Mode in High End areas in parties of 8. In fact, it kind of sounds like how they want people to play the game.

btw I still plan to solo farm. The 130 dervish is way too fun.

So, in short, you are admitting that Arenanet has been screwing over ordinary players of Guild Wars for the past year and a half just because of your own inability to deal with the botting problem? Gee, thanks!

Contrary to what the dev's think, as many people have pointed out, this nerf does absolutely nothing for the casual farmer - fair enough, the mobs no longer run from AoE etc, but you get no drops, so now have to do tonnes more farming to make the same money. This is called GRIND and something Anet has always said is not part of GW. I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that the Dev's actually do not understand how people play their game, and cannot comprehend the effect these changes have on the casual (1-2 hours a day, 5-10 hours a week) player. How on earth is a casual player, starting today supposed to even get anywhere near 1.5k armour with all the runes necessary for a char with any kind of survivability or creativity in builds (don't forget we need money to buy skills in factions and nighfall - there goes any diversity in build let alone the Elite skill hunter titles)?

I totally, totally agree that professional farmers ie 55 monk bots and e-bay gold are wrong and should be stopped, but ligitimate "professional" farmers ie people who farm to get money to get FoW armour, or farm the Deep etc for good drops to sell on are not creating a problem in the economy as the Dev's seem to think - crashing the merchant prices then not rolling it back did that 18 months ago!!!

FoW armour might as well be taken out of the game now coz their is no way anyone will ever get close to buying it unless they already have the money - even though they say things like ecto will drop as normal all the discussions I've read say the total opposite, plus how can you get the 75k gold when a smite run doesn't even generate enough gold to cover your entry into UW??!! I think most people agree - after this nerf, the rich will simply get richer and the rest of us will be stuck with 1.5k armour at best.

I'm just glad that I declared genocide on the Margonites last weekend so I could get my Primevil armour for my ranger otherwise I'd be screwed now. Just a shame I spent 20k plus on new armour and runes for a 130hp dervish build on Thursday

Tbh, I think this has taken a fair bit of the shine off the game for me - I enjoyed solo farming, just for the satisfaction of being able to do it. I may have used cookie cutter builds but I wasn't bothered - the challenge for me was pulling it off. I think in my almost 2 years on GW I only ever sold 1 gold item to another player (for 50k iirc), all the rest has gone to the merchant or is used on my chars or heroes. I just can't undertand where the dev's are coming from with this idea, and nothing I've read anywhere has answered my questions including Gailes comments.

I've played through the AoE nerf, and through all the other "tweaks" that Anet has undertaken, seen some of my builds buffed and some totally destroyed through pressure from the pvp mob, but I've always come back for more, adapted and moved on. But this is just down right silly, to the point of verging on stupidity - how can this adjustment meet the criteria and have the result that Anet are saying it will? In a nut shell.....it won't. The casual player is now buggered good and proper. No more money, no more new armour, no more new skills coz they simply will not be able to afford it, no matter whether they farm solo 24/7 or do every quest and every mission with 8 real people.

Oh yeah.................there is alway e-bay, but I thought Anet didn't want us to go there??!!

Sorry for the longish rant - been mulling this over the last couple of days, and I guess this is me kinda barfing it all out............I feel much better now!!

Rich

This is not a rant about the soloing farm nerf in fact this topic is just a branch off from today’s events.

I have read some of the other threads and people have made comments that A-nets actions will serve to hurt the GW economy while others have ridden in for A-nets defence stating that it will help the economy.

This is an enquiry as to what will happen to the Guild Wars economy in conjunction with the implementation of A-nets actions today into the game.

All I ask is this does anyone think that if solo farmers are to be shunned out of the game.

What will happen to the economy in Guild Wars?

Will soloers having a “hard” time help to improve the economy?

Or will it serve to hurt the economy

Please I don’t want to have this turn into troll, flame and spam bait or to be even locked.

I would like a decisive answer with credible evidence and coherent text put forth from both parties from those for the “change” and those against the “change”.

I know you don't want to be flamed, but nothing is happening to solo farming, other than they'll be getting slightly less gold (money) drops from enemies. Your question can't be answered, because you are basing your question on something that didn't happen.

I don't know why so many people are confused by this, the update notes are incredibly clear.

It'll pretty much do both probably.

Prices will go mad for a while, while they adjust to the new amounts and new items. Also it'll be hard to tell how the new gold drop rates will affect things, mods and such might drop quite alot in price and depending on how many rare skin weapons are found they might drop in price too.
But on the benefit, all the bot farmers will be quite heavily crippled, and there will be alot less ebay and real money gold going around

Eventually it'll even itself out over time and as long as Anet keeps an eye on things it should be benefitial in the long run, but for now some players will be screwed, some will be well off

Well, if you question can't be answered then I am going to try the impossible.

I thought I was going to be happy with the compromise of keeping certain high end items from being affected by the loot-scaling. I was wrong.

After playing a great deal today, I realized that the immediate rewards, though small, are what made the game fun for me.

True, certain high end items will still be plentiful for those dedicated gamers who like to solo or play in hard mode (in fact, drops in hard mode seemed to be pretty good). But by loot scaling the low end stuff, the immediate reward for the casual gamer is gone.

I had not realized how much I was getting off of cash drops and white and blue items. It turns out that the rare gold item drop wasn't having as much impact on my playing as I thought.

Rather, there was a small sense of immediate satisfaction at the end of fighting a group to look around and see 6 or 7 drops - even if they were only white or blue. Secondly, it turns out those were adding up. I don't solo, but I will often go out with only a partial party of heroes (sometimes just a healer) to increase my share of the drops. Even with anti-farming code, the small drops eventually added up. (kinda like taxes - you could tax the rich at 90% and still not come anywhere near equaling the money the government gets from the middle class. A lot of small amounts can add up faster than a very few large ones)

So, in the end, I was getting small immediate rewards with the reasonable expectation that, even though I would never be able to buy a mini-yeti, I could anticipate eventually being able to afford 15k armor or most nice weapons I might want. (it was a nice balance of small immediate rewards with a reasonable goal of large long term rewards)

Today that is all different. After fighting large groups in normal, I look around and there are only 1 or 2 drops - often just cash. Once I pick up the 100 gold pieces or so and it is shared between myself and 3 heroes, I get a grand total of 25gp. The sense of immediate satisfaction is gone and my hope of affording moderate high end stuff is so far into the distance that it makes it hard to want to work toward. Frankly, even if they had left anti-farming code in I doubt I would have noticed it because there were so few drops that it would not have mattered one bit. Had this happened once or twice, that would have been fine. But it was consistent all day long.

So, now i have a choice, always play in hard mode or learn to farm very high end areas. (but neither one of those fits the definition of "casual player") Frankly, I don't know if I really want to put that much effort in.

So in the end, what will be the effects on the economy? Overall, I don't know. There will still be rare items available. People will still farm for ectos. But I suspect we will see the casual players begin to leave in droves. I predict 2 groups of people. There will be those who buy the game and are in the middle of playing through the storyline. They will stay long enough to finish the story but then there will be no real reason to hang around. Also, there will be no sense of loyalty or anticipation that will make them want to buy GW2. They will move on to other games. The other group will be the very wealthy who will find and exchange high-end items. But the causal gamer who has finished the game and stuck around for other things, those who form the bulk of guild wars society, will gradually fade away.

I've enjoyed playing for the last year. And I will not quit out of anger. But unless something else happens I certainly see myself moving on our of boredom.

In my opinion, farming as it were, was perfect.

You could get greens by flagging henchies/heroes away.

You could do some money.

Easy areas like vermins granted 10k per hour.

Harder areas like UW/Fow were farmed for the ectos and shards, mostly for completion of obsidian armors, but they still payed for their fee and you showed proffit (well if u sold the ectos/shards it showed lots of profit).

Solo farming was like any other title. You did it if you wanted it. And you wouldnt gain a competitive advantage over anyone else, speciall because all could do it.

Apparently, the farmers were destroying the game cause rare items would go very high.

Others were professional farmers running bots to farm money, and selling gw money in ebay type auctions for real money.

So Anet decided that if playersa couldnt make money, items would drop price. They chose to ignore the fact that some people already have hoarded incredible amouts of money, and since the lower level players cant get money, they can easly grab all the good stuff, and the other players need to content themselves with the rest.

Also, they think that reducing the money profits bots could do would affect them, cause BOTS WOULD GET BORING AND QUIT, maybe to see their girlfriends BOTS and whatnot. They decided that since money would decrease, farming industries would make less money. They chose to ignore that since players cant get money themselves, gw money will increase their value.

They also chose to prevent new players from get high end items, like obsidian armor, cause players should play PvE and their new hard mode, and not thinking of getting luxury items THAT HAVE NO EFFECT IN THE GAME OTHER THAN STYLES ONES.

Apparently someone stoped smoking, whatever they were smoking in ANET, and said something like this "Hey if players take more time to get stuff like ectos, wouldnt that increase the value of the ecto, either in game currency or in real currency?".

So they patched something.

Dont ask me if ectos drop as before in normal mode or in hard mode, cause they didnt said and euro servers are down and i cant test it.

About greens, I cant get a coherent answer if flagging the henchies/heroes away, so their names get grey increase the green drops for you or not. Or if it increases in HM only and not in NM. Again euro servers are down and I cant test it.

As you can see I m in favour of farming.

Why?

Because I could get the stuff I wanted by myself, not needing to trade to anyone.

I want a dwaynas grace! I go and farm for her. It can take 10 minutes or 2 hours, but I will get her in reasonable time span. Or would. Dunno anymore.

I wanted an Obsidian Armor, cause I m vain, or I m bored. I would go there spend something like 50-100 hours farming and I would get it. My time, my effort, my reward. !00 is too few? Well Prophecies take like what 40 hours if that? I cant even remember.

Some will say, farmers are a disgrace, they kill the game cause stuff gets too expensive, or all missions areas are empty and I cant get a pug, cause those stupid farmers should be helping me getting my protector title instead of going after their vanity objectives.

You see, I help my guildies getting their protector titles. I wont waste 1 hour doing a mission+bonus to help some random dude get its vanity title.

I can easly give my guild mates good modes, good greens, some money for their major vigour. I wont spend 100 farming to give something to a dude I dont know.

I also wont be doing more general PvE, like going after the vanquisher title cause they KILLED FARM. I ll stop doing pve at all. And just keep doing my PvP.

And maybe get myself a copy of a MMORPG where I can go after my objectives, prolly WoW.

Traders are happy because they can still farm rare items and weapons. Bots are only slowed down, which will only raise the price of cash to gold exchanges. The casual gamer now has the option of paying cash for gold or to become a farmer himself in order to make profit in the game and build a valuable gold nest for armour and the like.

Has it occurred to anyone that this update will most likely just widen the gap between the rich and the poor?

`


Well isn't that what every single farm nerf did?

Farming isn't for the rich. It's for the poor. Rich players just buy items for 100K + 20 ecto's, and sell it for double that amount a while later.

And rich people who bought their ecto's for 5K each back in the good days, got their little fortune doubled, with ectos being ~10K now.

Can't say I like the update...

I've been a casual farmer (I made lots of gold but I never considered myself a pro farmer) since soon after I bought Prophecies. With this update, the main sources of my gold are gone. Greens don't drop every time and golds are frequently difficult at best to sell with the archaic trade system Anet thinks actually constitutes as usable. Everyone has better or more interesting things to do than what they'd have to do now. Farm several more times a day just to get how much you had before and then spend an hour + tryng to sell anything of discernable value in trade chat.

I don't think this just affects casual farmers either. Buying ascended armour sets can be considered just window dressing so thats not as vital (though I love my multiple ascended sets), its the fact that players now have to grind for a while just to be able to afford basic items like salvage kits and more importantly to buy skills. At 1 plat a pop, those skills look to add up to even more farming needed.

What this does for the community is mean that many players will have no choice but to limit the skills they buy. This may not seem like a big deal to most but I see it as possible that people will just copy builds they've seen used effectively so they only buy 7-8 skills for their character. If this were to happen, we'd have fewer and fewer original builds being thought up.

If they want to eliminate bots, there's better ways to go about it. If they want to promote teamwork, they could always just increase drops in parties and leave solo farming alone. Till then, the market will get ridiculous. The rich will end up having everything of value and charge a fortune for anyone wanting the items and the new players just entering GW will find a world where its pretty much impossible for them to even out the divide between them and players that have played for more than a year and have great builds, equipment, etc.

Traders would probably refer to Rare Material/Dye trader-kind NPC's.

I'd disagree, as this would lead to mere speculation about hypothetical situations (that possibly could be), rather than reflection on the observed 'real' situation (that was). Having first-hand experience with the changes helps get a better overview of the issue.

Ontopic:
As someone playing casual, I prefer the Pre-Searing part of Prophecies as my main base of operations. I prefer the atmosphere there, so I conduct most of my gameplay from there. I enjoyed leveling there, as well as farming; I love to kill an enemy and be excited about the possible item it might drop, especially around the special events.

However, it has come to my attention that (even in a FULL Pre party, 2/2), enemies sometimes do not drop anything at all (no gold/whites/blues/etc). When that happens, I get no satisfaction of playing the game. Since the items exempt from the scaling procedure do not drop in Pre-Searing, this modification has some heavy influences on the Pre-Searing economy.

Bottom line: Pre-Searing depends solely on the items being scaled and as such is heavily affected. Giving feedback on Gaile Gray's initial comment, I quote:Typically, in terms of Pre-Searing, the exempt only affects Dyes and Special event items, the latter of which are only around within limited timeframes. So, while referring to 'have a wide variety of things that they can enjoy farming', Pre just isn't as enjoyable anymore...

Counter Botting
Perhaps a hint, bots are usually automated programs, right? To discriminate bots from the game, you should be looking at ways to tell a human and computer apart. Perhaps thinking along the lines of CAPTCHA's (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) might help in resolving the issue better. I.e. confront the player with a problem that's easily solvable as a human, but impossible for an automated bot.

Casual players can still make quite a bit of money just by playing the game. You can get 27 Trade Contracts by doing all the Vabbi quests on a single character. That'll earn you about 32 plat. Getting all the Treasures in Nightfall is worth about 20 plat per character. The average quest nets about 200 or so gold, with plenty more obtainable from typical drops. With Hard Mode, you can easily make lots of money by doing Vanquisher with somebody and collecting the drops. Going to UW or FoW with a group (and splitting the entry fee) is still fairly profitable.

You won't make as much money as you would by farming, but if you're reduced to eBaying gold, you must be doing something wrong.

I don't understand the reasoning behind this statement. The "poor" are most likely the ones who don't farm, and usually play in 8-person groups. They will be completely unaffected by this, unless they do Hard Mode, in which case they'll earn more money than normal. The "rich" are people who farm, and if the nerf is as bad as people are suggesting, they won't be able to get as rich from farming.

The only gap I can see widening is the one between people who try to buy every cool thing they can get their hands on, and everyone else.

Well, yeah. Isn't that the whole premise about GW? Everyone is equal, stat-wise? The only thing we have is vanity, and some of us like it. That's why we farm.

KANE

Simply put..

Anet made farming boring to make it uprofitable.

However bots dont get bored so they will still be around.
Money will be harder to get so more people will use gold merchants.

Looks like the online gold merchants are on to a winner with this one.

Still think a simple mission entry test like the crystal desert teleporters would solve the problem. Only those making money from them would dislike the implementation of this idea.

As has been shown in various threads, many more people disagree than agree with those sentiments.

And I have to ask, what problem caused someone to come up with "anti-inflation" goals, when the previous system before nerf 1 had a relatively stable economy?

And I've been solo-farming since the update to test out your beliefs. The challenge is there still, at least in Hard Mode, but the rewards CERTAINLY aren't.

So please, instead of only quoting and answering those who agree with you, try explaining to those of us who are discontented why any change was necessary in the first place?

If its botting you're trying to get rid of, this nerf was asinine, as it only ends up making their services more valued and desired.

If its to maintain interest in titles while decreasing interest in items, to entice players to purchase EN and 2, then this move is beautiful in its subtlety.

But a STRAIGHT answer as to why the nerf to human players was enacted in the first place, rather than "belief doublespeak" would be nice for a change. I don't want to know what you think is good or not, I want to know WHY the developers felt it was necessary.

Doing a quick run in with my 55 Monk, I netted 107g and a white longbow - in total!

Previously, I would have about 2k in gold and whites sold to the merchant.

So much for any titles that actually require gold, like Title Hunter, Drunkard, and Sweet Tooth.

Hello poverty alley.

While I didn't like the original change, I think this little edit to it helps the situation a lot.

I still feel that the people who were saying that loot should scale upwards in partys with extra players but that is another debate.

Not true, anet doesn't understand my different playing way and it doesn't matter to him.
Solo farming damage the economy like virtual dragons or any other good guild damage the ladder, they play that they like and they are good, or other players damage the game doing chest runs with an easy gold item oportunity for those who complete all quest and areas in the game and they obtained the wisdom title with the slow way, I damage the game when i buy an item little expensive because the item price could rise, it hasn't no sense like farming nerf. This nerf is destroy a type of game that like many players, simply this.

Simply, let them play their games (solo or not). I farm for gold (for weapons, armors and more) but could be funny spend every day some time on it.

If you want a 8 member party increase their loot, don't nerf our game loot without reason, with the illogical equality of get the same alone or with 7 friends more when the effort is different and the objective too.
I farm but never with a bot, I play that i like but i am punish too, like if i farm with a bot. Don't try to show you receptive to the other part (with littles updates like a hidden favor) when punish many players without reason.

But between "it can damage the game for other people" and damage the game for the other people, better directly damage the game, at least we do damage.

Kaleban, I don't use "belief doublespeak," and I'd prefer to keep this discussion away from the personal. Disagree with my position all you wish, but there is no need to be truly disagreeable, is there?

I will explain the reasoning for the change:

• It could be said that in the past, when certain players were receiving 800% the rewards of other players, there was an inequity.
• All players were seeing high prices for the most desirable items; they noted a push to unattainable of items they wanted to get.
• The only players able to attain the coolest items fell into a certain player type, the farmer.
• This reduced the fun factor of the game, in that the game seemed to require that players play in a certain way if they wanted to get those items.
• Farming is ok with us, no problem at all, but we did not intend that farming would be "required," or that only farmers would be able to obtain the coolest items.
• Loot scaling was implemented, in part, to adjust for the changes to the game that affected normal mode with the addition of Hard Mode. If you're able to enter a map more often without a reduction in loot, and if you can complete a map or kill X number of mobs faster, then loot scaling makes the rewards more fair and more appropriate. See the original post in this thread for more information.

Here's one way of looking at it, perhaps this will make sense to some: The intention of loot scaling is not to "punish" the expert farmer. The intention is remove the numeric punishment that was previously inflicted upon those who play casually and/or who play in a party.

I realize I keep going back to this post and taking it apart as things occur to me, but its late, and I'm tired.

This line got me. Specifically, HOW does solo farming damage the game for other people? I think many respondents in this and other threads kind of latched onto this point as some sort of dogmatic gospel.

I really don't get it. If I put in extra effort and time to get more loot than others, that's both mine and the other's choice, isn't it?

However, with the availability of crafters and collectors, who's game is being damaged by certain players having better skins, but not better stats? I mean, gameplay can't suffer technically, because your Ascalonian collector sword does the same damage as the crystalline sword.

[edit] Oops, I must have posted at the same time as you. I understand your points, but I still fail to see how the game is wrecked for those without the "cool" gear.

Why have FoW armor, something designed so that the majority can't have, then punish those who think creatively to get it?

But I'll respond to each of your bullet points:

1. It can't be said there was an inequity, because solo players did 8 times the work of an 8 man group. See my and others math earlier in the thread.

2. As has been noted desirable items are not needed, my Droknar's Forge armor is the same protection as Obsidian. If people want those items, they can work for them, making farming MORE fair than trying to socialize the economy.

3. As it should be. Extra work = extra reward.

4. It doesn't reduce the fun, you kill a monster just as fast with a crystalline sword as you do a katana, which is what GW is all about. Those that WANTED super rich items could acquire them, if they put in the effort.

5. Then please explain how with reducing gold drops but leaving prices for items like Vabbi and FoW static (and seeing material prices go up in spite of the "un-nerf") the average player is supposed to obtain them through regular play?

6. If this is about Hard Mode, why not leave the old loot system in place for normal mode, allowing new players the ability to acquire the materials and gold they need to outfit not only their characters but ALSO the heroes, and implement the new loot system only in Hard Mode as "hardcore loot" which makes sense that you'd get better chance at good items but reduced "normal" drops?

I'm sorry if I've been caustic, but the reasons don't seem to be realistic. As I posited to another poster, if your father was expected to do the work of 8 people on a project, but received only 1 person's worth of compensation, is that fair or balanced? I don't think so, do you?

The point is that they earned way less than you did simply because there were 8 people in their group. That's how it affects parties. Say all you want that it takes more skill or whatever to solo, but that is not how the game was originally designed to be played, and people shouldn't be punished for playing the way it was "meant to be played."(tm)

I"m curious how the heck people are going to afford skill points after this update.

Previously when I wanted to make a build I would farm for an hour or two to get the 10-12k required. Post update, I would need to spend more than 50% of my time farming to get skills to play with. Do you plan on making skills more affordable now that you've removed the ability to get gold to buy them with?

What Anet is saying is BS. I am a casual gamer and a casual farmer. But I still like so solo farm the easier areas of the game. I don't care about making 50k a hour, I am happy with 10k a hour.

But guess what, I can't ANet. Because Hydras and Vermin drop jack shit now. You think that is going to attract new players? In order to make gold, you gotta either got UW, FoW or DoA or The Deep which is dominated by specific builds and if you can't get them its all to waste?

God, how the hell does this help casual gamers. Making gold just got freaking harder for casual gamers. Thanks a lot.

^^^ ^^^ ^^^

1st: Look here at this section. It makes a lot of sense as to what they did and why they did it.

2nd: To my astonishment, farming is NOT the only way to make money anymore! (no sarcasm or self-contentness intended, I was really suprised) Missions, quests, and just regular old PvE'ing are good for making money, especially in Hard Mode. (eg: I got 5k in drops and gold from doing Vanquisher in Plains of Jarin, with heroes, and it was FUN. I bet with a half- decent build in a better place I'd gain a nice fortune) Even though the amount of money may not be the same, money is still VERY obtainable, if not in as exorbiantly large amounts. With less money coming in, less gold will circulate, and items will become even more common. Prices will drop on things. A great idea now would be to add an auction house as well as a public trade system, to increase trade and smooth out the economy in this time of enroaching deflation. Basic ideas of economy.

3rd: Lighten up and have fun. If not you're cheating yourself.

Will post later as new things come to mind. Please comment.

EDIT- To further address the situation, affording skill points is not a problem. I never farm, and I make at least 40k a month. For a casual player like me, this is enough, and for people who farm in groups or alone (because loot scaling has some exceptions), will still have surpluses of money. Still... 1k is too much.

*Hurries to the suggestions forum*

Wait does the solo farmer loot scaling exception thing help at all? I don't really see a lot of complaints about that anymore.

I really do appreciate everything that Anet has done, so when I say this 1) please don't think I'm ungrateful and 2) I don't know if this has been addressed by the devs yet, so if it has been, forgive me, but...

Please please please fix the heroes and henchies! Please! Something in the update has made it so that they don't kite. At all. Ever. Once they come under attack, they stand still and attack/cast until they die, or whatever is attacking them is dead.

I'm really enjoying vanquishing areas, even with heroes and henchmen. It's just unecessarily frustrating when I'm the only monk and 2 of the heroes are standing completely still, taking copious amounts of damage that, even with unlimited energy, I could not heal through myself.

I can't tell if this was intended to make hard mode harder or it's an accident but either way, I'm not a fan. If at all possible, Gaile, could you let us know (if you haven't already)?

This was answered earlier; the update "dumbed down" some of the AI in normal mode, so it would be easily exploitable and make farming easier than it already is.

The analogy is flawed, because Guild Wars is a game and not a career. Farming doesn't creating any value to society that needs to be compensated with a salary. Payment in the game is determined by a simple set of rules that, up to this point, paid players based solely on the number of enemies killed. That set of rules happens to give huge (by a factor of eight or more) advantages to one playing style over others.

As other posters have said, ArenaNet doesn't want to discourage any one playing style, but the existing loot system gave a massive advantage to farmers, which is counter to Anet's stated original goals for the game.

Again, as has been said many times, and I apologise if this sounds rude, but this just does not make sense.

I am a "casual player" who farms from time to time to build up money to pay for 15K armour, because I want it, and I want it before I beat the game (that is, I want it before my character completes both Factions and Prophecies).

As I said, I count myself as a casual player (one of the people who was supposed to benefit from the update). I doubt I'll play much or at all on hard mode because once I've finished the campaign I probably won't want to play through it again and will move on to something else.

If someone else doesn't farm and wants to buy 15K armour than stopping me from farming doesn't affect that person one bit.

I note that you said that its removing "the numeric punishment that was previously inflicted upon those who play casually and/or who play in a party". It's really hard to see how you can remove a punishment by taking something away from other people . Perhaps you meant "it's punishing everyone equally", which seems like a really strange goal to have.

Why not: increase the drops for the people playing in a party (or whatever the ANet approved way of playing is) as that would be, in your words, "removing the punishment".

So let's go back to the market in gold items, if this is really the issue there are many other ways you can deal with prices being too high, here's one: put a ceiling on the prices for them. Let's face it you are already interfering to a large extent in the market so there is no philosophical reason not to do this.

As a final point, the drop rate for a full party (1 in 8 items) is pretty low for a "loot driven" game, doubling the rate for large parties might go a long way to increasing everyone's satisfaction.

I'm probably done with this topic, as frankly the rationale that is being given for the change is completely illogical.

The only way to help out the common player, without screwing the farmer, would be to scale drops UP , instead of scaling them down. When a monster drops something, let their be 8 copies of it, one for everyone!

It only makes sense that if a farmer is going to do 8x the work, he deserves 8x the loot. I have been farming the last few days...a group of 12 monsters. The first drop, from the first monster in the first run, was a gold. Since then, I've gotten 1 gold. Each run averages 1-2 whites, 100g, and maybe a crafting item. Is that fair?

The problem with this whole notion of spreading out wealth, is the same as the problem with the level 20 cap, lack of real functionality for titles, and lack of real variety in weapon damage. The playing field has been made waayy too level. If a player chooses not to farm, that is his choice - and with that choice, he is accepting the fact that he is not going to make as much money as someone who does farm. It is not the farmer's fault that almost every drop throughout playing through the game is terrible. But Anet doesn't seem to get this - of course everyone deserves equal opportunity, but this is something different. This is stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, in order to better 'balance' everything (even though money really has no significance in this game, in PvE or PvP - buy a collectors staff or melee weapon, get 7.5k for max armor, and you're as good as anyone else!)

Hopefully with GW2 Anet will learn from this - I fear that the only difference between a level 20 and a level 80 in GW2 will be a stupid aura around the player, or maybe special armor (that has the same defense as a player with level 20). Anet needs to let people shine - the people that work harder, should be able to better advance their character...monetarily, aesthetically, and in ways that can actually help the character through the game...weapons that actually ARE better than others (besides looks), and more powerful attributes/spells. The more elite/better players would certainly have to earn these rights, but they do deserve them more than the common player. This is why I believe that the recent update is unfair. (And, I should add, I am far from 'rich' in this game - I farm a little, have a decent amount of gold, but will never be able to afford FoW armor, endgame armor, etc).

Don't forget, this also included scaling loot way down, so its easier to farm for no loot. How fun.

No, its not a flawed analogy. Since this is an RPG with an economy, reward system, player customization, and MANY things to spend gold on, then the analogy of work=compensation is perfectly valid. The prior ruleset made sence, having monsters that are precognitive and toss out their drops because a player is alone is not logical at all.

This massive advantage you speak of is only for vanity items. The average player, playing an average amount of time, can acquire average LOOKING gear with the same stats mechanically as the most expensive stuff in the game.

The only advantage is a blinged out appearance, which provides no in game advantage!

If ANet were against farming (which Gaile has said they are not) then it wouldn't matter who farms what or where. The only reason people ebay gold is to get rare items, with the same stats as collector items.

Changing the way they're acquired while preserving rarity won't change the "need to acquire" dynamic in the game. I'm sorry, but the rationale behind this update fails logically.

This subject has me annoyed to the point of wanting to crawl out of the woodwork for once....
I have a few choice words I would absolutely love to direct at Gaile, but I will keep them to myself for civility sake and try to be as polite as I can.
I swear....

• If they honestly did %800 of the work, took %800 of the aggro and damage (and survived no less!), and did %800 of the monster killing, I really don't understand where the problem lies.
  
  Quote:

  Originally Posted by Gaile Gray All players were seeing high prices for the most desirable items; they noted a push to unattainable of items they wanted to get.

  Now, instead of a select few "desireable items" being ludicrously overpriced - things such as ectos and rare greens - EVERYTHING is ludicrously overpriced - runes, armor, skills, everything.
  
  Quote:

  Originally Posted by Gaile Gray The only players able to attain the coolest items fell into a certain player type, the farmer.

  Subjective. What is "cool" to one player is "crap" to another and vise-versa. It is purely dependant on the individual.
  
  Quote:

  Originally Posted by Gaile Gray This reduced the fun factor of the game, in that the game seemed to require that players play in a certain way if they wanted to get those items.

  No, farming used to be a fun and entertaining passtime with the rewards being more of the high-end prizes such as 15k armor or that perfect vamp bow mod you were looking for everywhere.
  Again, now everything is relatively overpriced to the point where many casual players, without some sort of horde of money they've saved from before, or without the "perfect" knowledge of how to elite farm 100k per milisecond or whatever it is the "l33t haxxor" farmers claim they can get per hour are going to be practically forced to farm for hours on end just to get enough steel ingots and the like for normal (and what was supposed to be "cheap") armors and the unpopular runes they most likely won't want more than anyone else does.
  Now farming, in any form, really has become pure grind.
  Something I understood the devs were against.
  
  I feel nothing but the deepest pity for any players new to the game trying to get skills and armor for even one single character now.
  
  Quote:

  Originally Posted by Gaile Gray Farming is ok with us, no problem at all, but we did not intend that farming would be "required," or that only farmers would be able to obtain the coolest items.

  Now there's a contridiction.
  With even less of a cash pool and things being the prices they are, farming is now required even more than before to obtain anything but the cheapest of items.
  
  Quote:

  Originally Posted by Gaile Gray Loot scaling was implemented, in part, to adjust for the changes to the game that affected normal mode with the addition of Hard Mode. If you're able to enter a map more often without a reduction in loot, and if you can complete a map or kill X number of mobs faster, then loot scaling makes the rewards more fair and more appropriate. See the original post in this thread for more information.

Some people find the game challenging enough as is and wouldn't want to lay a finger on hard mode - personally I know of six of them on my friend list so far (not many I know, but it's the principle if nothing else). Though it is their choice not to play, it seems they almost have to to get any loot that's worthwhile.
You have not "punished" the expert farmers.
You have not "punished" the bots either, as they will continue to farm 24/7 without boredom, frustration, or the need to eat, sleep, or have a life outside of GW.
You have punished the casual players who only want to earn some extra cash for that extra piece of shiny armor or fancy weapon, without the desire to "expert solo farm" or to somehow destroy GWs excuse for an economy with a flood of ectos and the likes.

And you have officially lost any respect I had for you personally for abandoning your position as "voice of the players" and becoming a lap dog filled with nothing but excuses for ANets terrible decisions.

People keep saying that farmers are doing 8x the work of other people. That's completely flawed. Do you see 1 farmer going through THK or RoT all by themselves? No. You see them killing the easily exploitable monsters that drop good loot. A group of 8 people working their way through RoT is (imo atleast) working harder individually than a solo farmer(and still only getting 1/8 of the loot). Most solo-farmers copy/paste their builds from GWiki or the like, and go out to get inordinate amounts of money easily.

And about Gaile protecting the update, do you expect her to say "I hate this update I'm quitting Anet and GW"? That would cause so many more people to quit and destroy the community. Instead she does sugar-coat it (maybe a little too much) to try to get the community to see it in a good way. Instead though, people bash everything that Anet slips up on. You see hardly any "this update is great" threads, and when you do most of them are flamed to death and the posters labeled as "fanboys".

I'm sorry, I just had to mention that one of my guildies actually did THK with only herself and Talkhora about a month ago - and no, there were no "cookie-cutter" builds used - just to prove to the other guildies she could do it.
I kid you not.

Most of the drops she sold to the merchant, and she simply gave me a nifty purple staff I had my eye on for a hero since she didn't want it anyway.

She did indeed make some serious cash at the end of it all, and as far as I'm concerned, she earned every last penny!
Now, a feat like that would yield nothing but garbage.
And that's pathetic.

(now, if only I could get her to divulge the build she used... )

I'm sorry, what's your point? Whether I decide to farm the Northern Wall in normal mode or Gate of Madness in HM I'm doing all the work. Regardless of how easy/hard it is I'm still doing all the work.
As for where most people get their builds it's, quite frankly, no business of yours.

Actually, from what I've seen, you've got the fanboys jumping all over the people who aren't happy with the update.

Try doing the A/E sliver build and go do Sunreach and Falaharn simultaneously, and tell me how many successful runs you have out of how many total runs, then tell me solo farming is EASY. Or try the same build farming Rajazan's Fervor. Doing this type of farming (the kind I mainly do) takes skill and timing, with no tank or monk to hide behind.

Regardless, solo farmers don't exploit anything. They simply use effective builds to kill in a non-tank/nuker/mm/bip build way.

And I wish people would stop thinking the loot system was based off of solo farmers. The loot drop amounts were based on an 8 player group as far as I can see. Then people figured they could get more by doing more work and taking fewer players.

Which is perfectly logical. But now, regardless of effort put in, skills used, or playstyle, everyone gets the same, no matter how they play. While that may be fine for some, it amounts to /roll 100 in Hero Battles. No risk, but you get rewarded.

I'd rather take risks and be rewarded, rather than be guaranteed the same thing as everyone else regardless of my effort. Down that path lies stagnation, loss of ingenuity and the creative spirit. Not a good path to trod I think.