Loot scaling... Helping casual players...?

This thread sure make me dizzy reading them.
From my point of view.Comparing my Nightfall monk who was made when NF came out and a Phropercy warrior who just made recently.Both of them playing normally doing quest and missions with full team.I don't notice any different between them.

My warrior still have a few platinum left after buying all skill that he need , signet of capture and the basic max armor with runes and insignias.

I think my play style is casual enough.

I recently visited Granite Citadel to find it empty and went back today.
I've seen perhaps one or two bots there (europe common 1).
Only thing is: loot scaling was introduced because of inflation and that was not only a bot problem. Bots do increase the problem with e-bay gold, but the main problem was that people were 'forced' to farm when they wanted something. And this kept prices high.
Now the farming option is less obvious, prices are lower.

I don't see that.
Balanced party means full or almost full to me.
Those players should not have been affected that much by loot scaling.
In Normal Mode, monsters keep focused at one target, are in AoE longer and kite less. Meaning easier to kill.
Drops are not affected by loot scaling in those teams.
In Hard Mode, drops are better (more chance for uncommon, tomes or rare), but take more effort to get compared to normal mode.

My experience is that for full-party players, the situation is better now.

Loot-scaling only caused the bots to change location, there are plenty of threads about the abundance of bots.

Hmmm, I don't remember Anet saying anything about inflation. I also don't remember Anet saying that players were forced to farm to make coin, rather that farmers (bots are farmers too) were making TOO MUCH coin. Prices of NPC items, like materials, armor, dyes, runes, etc have only changed marginally or not at all. Prices on "some" player sold items are lower, but not necessarily due to less players farming, but perhaps because the overall player base has less money to spend. High-end rare item prices seem unaffected, the farmers appear to still have lots of gold.

It's true, a player in a full balanced party in normal mode is not greatly affected by loot scaling. They didn't get squat before, and they don't get squat now. So, the player that doesn't already have the armor, skills, weapons, heros, etc. to play in hard mode is just out of luck.

You stated that a full party or almost full party should not have been affected much by loot scaling, then say in your experience the situation is better now. Actually, the only players hit hard by loot scaling are those that solo farmed in normal mode, not in an abusive way, but to make enough gold to not be in the lowest level of the economy. As usual, the middle class takes the hit LOL.

First off, lower prices are a joke. The prices are still nowhere near the point where all casual players can buy them.

Second off, *you* making more cash, doesn't mean everyone does. People say Corsair farm runs used to make great money. I killed the Corsairs, and the 3 bugs, and got lik 1 collector's item, and 2 white weapons. And maybe 100 gold. That's it. While a guildy of mine was like: 'Wooo, my second Colossal Scimitar!'

The lootscaling can't make anyone rich. See, there isn't anything that makes more gold drop, or more quality drops. If the loot scaling was removed, nothing would change for you, at all. When playing in Normal Mode, it's also impossible to make more than before, or it's just lucky drops.

A-Net didn't want less inflation. They wanted high-end vanity weapons and rare skinned weapons to be available to the casual players. However, alot of casual players get nearly to no gold income at all. A part of what they get is gone again with buying skills and Kits, an other part is gone with the occasional Special Fun Weekend, which most players DO participate in.

Casual Gamer's purchasing ability did NOT increase, The casual FARMER's purchasing ability increased. Items are still being sold for 100K + ecto's. The price DID lower, but not to the extents where a casual player can buy them. (For that, all weapons must be in the range of 10K and less.) So it didn't work at all, and the casual players still cannot buy anything they couldn't buy before.

I know Hard Mode won't be changed. However, this isn't about Hard Mode, where more golds drop. This is about the Loot Scaling, that does nothing more but reducing drops.

One again, LOOT SCALING DOES NOT HELP ANYONE. What you are talking about, is the exemption list, that made some items drop more, and made prices go down, and Hard Mode, which made other items drop more there, and made the prices on these go down, as well.

LOOT SCALING MAKES PRICES GO UP, NOT DOWN. First few hours with the loot scaling in effect, the trader items' prices increased FAST. And it's really logical. Less items, same amount of people that wants to buy = people will give more for that item. They have to, cause else the guy next to him gets the item.

Yes, but not everyone gets stuff like tomes when playing through the game. Only tome I EVER had was an Assassin tome from a Locked Chest, and a Ranger Tome from farming Corsairs. That's it. Both of these were NOT of playing through the game, cause the needed mission/quest only nets me about 3 items and some gold in high-end-area's.

In Ascalon, I get WAY more items, but... yeah. 3 gold stuff doesn't help.



No, Loot Scaling did NOT cause your drops to be better. Was it ever said that Loot Scaling increases the value, quality and amount of drops? NO.

Loot scaling does not change ANYTHING about the value or quality. one again, this is the EXEMPTION LIST. Exemption list made certain things drop more often. However, these things NEVER DROPPED OFTEN, EVEN BEFORE THE LOOT SCALING. Then there is Hard Mode, with a built-in increase for chances of getting quality items.

Once again, loot scaling is NOT the cause for your better drops, and if it was A-net's goal that players get more better drops, they'd just make gold items, greens, materials etc drop MORE. EVERYWHERE. for EVERYONE. But no, they didn't. They didn't help players in 8-man-teams, and they just screwed farmers. They did get what they wanted, and that is to screw some more farmers, which seems to be their hobby, and make more items out of reach for casual players, so that these players will play the game WAY longer, cause it takes WAY longer to buy these items.


How is the economy balanced from loot scaling?

1-Casual Players still can't buy anything.
2-Rare drops are worth WAY more, as they drop WAY less. If someone gets an ecto now, they can sell for 20K. This is because EVERYONE wants to buy it, but nobody sells, simply because they don't have ecto's anymore.
3-Rich people who already had 250 ecto's, now have their cash doubled. They can just buy about anything, and they don't need to farm anymore.

However, then the exemption list came, and got rid of points 2 and 3. A-Net did NOT do ANYTHING that made Casual Players buy more, though. Sure, they did uppen the loot in Hard Mode, but how many Casuals actually play in hard Mode? how many of them are lucky enough to find a good drop? How many are THEN lucky, and stubborn enough to sell that item?

And once they sold, they STILL can't buy anything, cause it's STILL 100K + ecto's. How are people telling they don't get anything reinforce A-Nets decision?

Here's the situation:

Decreasing drops: Some people unaffected, other people UNHAPPY.
Increasing drops: No people unaffected, everyone HAPPY.

So why did A-Net choose to screw a wide area of players, and not improve the game for the rest? It was only later when A-Net realized their economy was breaking, and they added the exemption list.

Directly from the loot scaling comment on original wiki: "This huge influx of new gold caused inflation and made it harder for casual players to afford the items they wanted."

So A-net did say something about inflation.

When I said something about high prices (when only proph was out), the reaction I got was "STFU and farm".
I've seen those responses quite often on forums and in game.
Remember, a bot does not introduce new gold in the economy till he's able to e-bay his gold.
A casual solo farmer will bring new gold in the economy for sure!

Prices on traders did change, but only the high priced.
Player items also dropped in price, but not in the high-end market.

However, for every starting player it's now possible to equip a decent (green) weapon and have full armor with runes in reasonable time.
This has been different, specially with the Factions and Nightfall greens and some runes in that time.

Furtermore, A-net did not want to lower all prices: "Instead of looking for things to sell to merchants, solo farmers should now be looking for things to sell to traders or other players."


Back when I started playing Prophecies, I was able to get the skills, armor (collectors ftw) and weapons by just playing the game in fullsize teams.
This has not changed and most runes are only a fraction of the price at that time. In Factions, my characters were able to buy their own stuff, again playing fullsized teams. Same for NF, where I was even able to get my 2 characters 15K armor before they reached Vabbi (again, fullsized parties).

Let's see, how hard is it to play HM?
Getting a character through the game should not be that hard, except when you are a new player (and those don't need truckloads of cash).
When you have access to HM, you join PuGs or guild teams.
If you can't find any, search for a better guild

You don't need anything besides a decent skillset, which is about 10K (when you know your builds).
Max weapons are nice, but can also be found for as little as 5K.
You don't need heroes, but they do add value.
You got your max armor by playing through the normal game.


Drops in full parties have not been affected, yet many trader items got cheaper. That's one part why full-party players are better of now.
The other has not that much to do with loot scaling, but with the introduction of Hard Mode.
A-net introduced HM and loot scaling at the same time and while people view them as two seperate instances, I think they are not.
HM offered more profit from the start for full parties, mainly because of the HM-only items and the higher uncommon/rare droprate.
While A-net was cutting income, they provided a way for players to compensate some of that by playing/farming HM.
Loot scaling backfired, causing introduction of the exemption list.


Agree, but I don't think that's really bad.
I have a new guildie in the guild that used to HA a lot.
The high-end items are their only source of income.
As long as there are people willing to offer high amounts of gold for those items, they will remain expensive.
But I think playing HA is a very bad way to make gold.
It's a lot of 'work' for a chance of a good item.
The only worse ways to make gold are RA/TA/GvG

I don't want to jinx it but Anet seems to be smiling down upon me! Lots of golds allthough no lockpicks yet...

I'm a casual player, about 6-10h/week; since the change I've been gradually increasing my bank ballance... and this is with completely outfitting many of my heros with full runes (including sup vigor in some cases).

One thing I don't do... is buy lockpicks. If you do the economics, they just are not worth it. I do convert regular rewards into keys if I'm going to be in the area, but usually I'll just convert them to an xp scroll, and sell that.

[QUOTE]that is flat out Bandini as high end vanity items are exactly that..........high end

that is why so many equally effective items are available for shoppers of all grades from casual to hardcore.

THEY NEVER MEANT THE CASUAL PLAYER TO HAVE BLACK FOW ARMOR WITH A MILLION GOLD SWORD/SHIELD

that is why they have the 1.5 K armor that protects just as well as the 15 K or the FOW

in an earlier post you even mentioned that you cant get the boardwalk tickets to get those ticket titles

wanting to be able to buy tickets for an event meant to burn up gold by the million while you are AFK doing something else simply proves you are so far removed from the casual person playing the game it is hopeless

you want every luxury vanity item handed to you for an hour or so a day.

sorry (not really) but that will never happen

Why did Gaile Grey post here they DID want casual players to be able to buy rare weapons, too, then? Was it all a lie, quickly to be forgotten?

And I never talked about wanting black-dyed FoW Armor, I think. Even WITH being able to farm, that's just too far out of reach.

They DID say something about a million gold sword/shield. It was something among the lines that these items shouldn't be worth that much. I agree with that, but the loot scaling simply didn't lower their prices, as they expected it would.

And once again. Casual Players aren't like drones or computers that have no will. Of course people want their characters to look good. It's not wrong, you know.

How is wanting to work on titles in any way connected to wanting every vanity item in the game? How is doing stuff in the game in any way connected to NOT being a casual player?

They didn't put in the boardwalk games just for burning up cash. Could it be that they might've had a good idea that might be fun? I happen to love standing on the rings with guildies, talking with the people there while drinking ale or whatever. Are you saying it's forbidden to do that, as I am forced to do nothing but the main storyline?

I wouldn't even WANT to be casual in your world, as you're seeing casual players as mindless drones who do the exact same things without thinking, and do NOTHING except that.

Admit it, there are alot of cool stuff in the game which casual players can't get. This does NOT mean they don't WANT that cool stuff. I'm happy with my life, but if it were possible, I'd like a brand new shiny Ferarri. However, life is life, and to get that, I have to work for it.

Guild Wars, however, is a GAME. Shouldn't we be able to get some nice stuff WITHOUT grinding for years?

And please do not tell what I do want and do not want. You to me, it seems as if you only see 3 groups of people, the casual, brainless people, who only do the storyline without wanting anything else, the hardcore farmers, who want everything possible in the game, and you, the perfect being, able to judge others, and know them from inside out. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're not God, and you can't tell what each and every casual player does, thinks, and wants.

Tc.. please this has got to be a joke.
I have made 50k in 2 days of farming.. I have sold some weapons... I made 40k from those...

2 days, 90k... so I don't see why you would have to save up for 5 months to purchase 1,5k armor... lol

Wow that's a lot, how much money did you make before lootscaling? x8? 720K in 2 days?

And more imporant; where do you make it?

How about the people that want other nice things besides items.
Like the HA players that have been 'grinding' for more than 2 years now and no player has the highest rank yet.
Or the max Kurzick/Luxon titles that are way out of reach of the casual players. I'm not sure how many people have the highest Campion or Gladiator title, if any.

If you want something, work for it. Even if it's for years.
If you can't stand that, look for an other job.

Loot scaling doesn't help casual players because the primary money-sink in the game has remained consistent.

When the amount of money flowing into the economy is raised or lowered dramatically, you will see a shift in the prices of luxury goods traded between players. High-end desirable skinned perfect weapons, for example. However, the price of armor and skills remains the same as before.

Sure, casual players can afford non-elite armors just as well as they could before, but who wants those? You'll note that some rich players (who became that way long before the solo farming and loot nerfs) believe, however, that elite armor should never be accessible by anyone not as hardcore as they are, and therefore they will ridicule anyone who suggests it's even harder now for casuals to earn elite armor legitimately. But it is. And that's a problem.

[QUOTE]maybe most of the player base who are playing GW instead of the i am an elitest who wouldnt touch that 1.5 k junk who think this is GW TYCOON

thats who wants those non elites

A very valid point, which I think most people misunderstand...

Ectos have gone down (due to the exemptions list, bear in mind), materials in general have gone down in price, and weapons.

1 gold coins is much more worth today, than say, when Prophecies was out. since gold and platinum is mostly harder to get now (and by that I mean that you only merch every item you get, even the top good gold items), you can get much more for much less cash. So why can't A-net skale down the prices on other items then? I'm not saying 15k, or FoW armor should cost zero cash, but things like skills, IHMO, be skaled down (the price, that is). They are, unlike armor, actually important for your character to evolve

Oh, and I don't believe the definition of a casual player is standing a 2-3 hours in Kamadan spamming "WTS!!!!" every time they get a decent gold drop. But then again, we might need a better definition of a "casual" player.

[QUOTE=Loviatar]Ehm no, you see, alot of casual players still WANT the best looking armor. They just can't afford it. If an 1,5K armor happens to be your favourite, they'd happily buy it.


There are big differences between these examples and the grinding for cash.

One: about EVERYTHING in PvE costs cash, so it's needed alot more than just the Kurzick/Luxon facton.
Two: It WAS easy to make cash before, so we KNOW it's possible, we KNOW it was better before. If you never give a dog a bone, he won't miss it. If you DO give him one, and then take it away, it will try and take it back, cause it knows what it's missing. This is exactly the same.

Three: The examples used above are titles which don't do alot. The PvP title doesn't mean anything except for showing off, and the Kurzick/Luxon title is just for skills, which shouldn't be linked to a hard-to-get title, at all. Gold, however, is used in like everything in the PvE part of Guild Wars. We're not just talking about farmers here. Chest Runners, Title Hunters, Casual players, casual farmers, UW/FoW teams... they ALL got hit by the loot scaling.

Four: If A-Net were to make the titles you mentioned above easy to get, the people would most likely stop playing that thing after obtaining the highest title. This does NOT count for removing the loot scaling. If the loot scaling is removed, it STILL takes some time before the item can be bought, and people will still keep on playing.

See, if they remove the loot scaling now, the situation will be before Nightfall came out. That situation was good. Items weren't overpriced (Well maybe a little, but it adds up, because it was VERY easy to obtain gold back then), one would get the right amount of reward after doing the right amount of work, and vanity items were about the same price as they are now, maybe a few ecto's higher.

My numbers arent that high but discounting the items I already had and happened to sell this weekend, I've made about 20K this weekend just playing through the game. Granted, I use bonus items for heroes and runes I find for them so I'm basically not spending any more except for a few skills here and there.

Mind you, this is in NF which also gives you plenty of cash when doing quests and missions.

[QUOTE=reetkever]You forgot:

Five: They enjoy doing what they are doing. People don't play HA for years to get the title. People HA for years because they enjoy it. Comparing that to a mind numbingly boring task is pointless.

Just my $.02 but I can't see how you can have any money problems. Since I got myself NF, I've spent around 95% of the time playing (questing and missions) while the other 5% was farming and what I noticed was my bank account increase. After an hour or two, after a few missions and quests I put in around 3k or so into the account and I don't touch it, this is gold from stuff that drop for me and as rewards however I do not sell runes or any good golds (nor quest reward items like Kournan Coins) since I just give them to my heroes. Because of this I have accumulated a fairly large supply of collectible drops which I use if I ever need to get an item for my heros

Now the only way you don't make any money is because you do things like not pick up your drops or you quest in very low level area (IE Old Ascalon in NM). I mentioned it before, collectible drops from monsters is a excellent way of stocking up your heroes, most of them don't have max level items and even though I could afford to craft them all some from the merch, I much preferred to just kill some monsters and trade it in at a collector.

Also why do you need to spend so much dosh on ID/Salvage kits? A average blue normally sells for 50 gold (assuming it was dropped from a lvl 20+ area) so you've already covered 1/2 the cost of a normal ID kit (which is the only kit I buy. I never buy the ones that cost over 1k). If you are IDing like crazy then you can easily cover the cost of ID/Salvage kits. Heck with both NF and Factions quests, you get those reward items which you can swp for a sup ID/Salvage kit which you can either use or sell (for a tidy profit)

Anyone else find all of these loot scaling threads ironic? Before loot scaling, what did all the the leet rich farmers say when random casual joe said "I want 15k armor too"? They said, work hard for it, save up, and in a couple months you can get it. Now that the leet rich farmers are going poor, what do they do? "Boohoo, I can't afford all of my elite weapons and armor ". Guess what?

Work hard for it, save up, and in a couple months you can get it.

Me personally? I have more gold than I have ever had. I can afford Sup Vigors now for my characters. I can buy runes for my heroes.

LOL, superior vigors are at 11k when they used to be at 25-30k and in a remote past even 60k, monk runes less than 2k, ectos are at 5,5k when they used to be at 10-11k, even black dyes are at 6k when they used to be at 10-12k.

Marginal changes?!?

The loot nerf helped only people who play with 7 other real people, and the times I have done that it doesn't seem like it even helped that much. Before the nerf you caould easily make 10-30k every hour now you can easily make 1-3k an hour, yes dye and runes and stuff has gone down, but 15k armor still costs 15k and materials are still high so the loot nerf failed and a-net just hasn't admitted it yet

Yeah, me too but I also remember when Sup Vigor and Absorption runes would cost 60 - 75K+

I have a lot more money now then I did when the popular runes cost 10K+, I paid 10K for a Sup Vigor the other day, a sum thats definitely affordable for most players whereas the difference between Major and Superior was once so huge I wouldnt even consider buying one.
I remember that making a 55 monk would itself cost a fortune because of the price of superior monk runes, all superior monk runes were over 10K a piece, now you can do it for what, 2-3K?

I've played GW for 2 years today to the day, I've made countless toons (and deleted most) and have had several 15K armors, I've never really farmed although I do solo runs for greens but most of those I keep for myself anyway.

Sure, I have bad drop days when all chests I open give lousy purples and then there are days when I get quite a few golds and elite tomes *shrug*

TS needs to get over himself, I think, I make gold easier now then ever before and from what I see thats the same for everyone.

All this talk of loot scaling causing lower prices is nonsense. Falling prices on sup vigors etc is 99% due to introduction of Hard Mode, nothing to do with loot scaling at all.

If you take out the exempted items from loot scaling ( golds, dyes etc) can anyone give me an example of something that has fallen in price due to the introduction of loot scaling?

There may be plenty of items I just can't think of any.

The things that people buy are exempt from loot scaling, so your argument is kind of flawed.

Its basic economics. If there is less of something, it is more valuable. There is obviously less gold because people get less gold from farming. So therefore the value of gold goes up. The same amount of gold can buy you more.

Look at it like this, an item that is worth 200k. Now if ectos were worth 10k, then the price would be 100k+10e right? Now if there is a sudden influx of ectos, and the value of ectos goes down to 5k, then the price of the item would be 100k+20e. If ectos suddenly became extremely rare for whatever reason, and their price went up to 20k, the cost of the item would be 100k+5e.

That is the same item for 3 different prices because of the value of the currency, ectos.

Gold is in the same situation right now. It has become harder to get, so the value of gold is going up, and the cost of items is going down to compensate.

[QUOTE]you are new so i wont simply call you a moron on that.

loot scaling had nothing to do with the sup vigor drop

HM had absolutely nothing to do with price drop either.

way back long before you started runes did not get a guaranteed salvage and about 2 out of 3 went poof and the prices were 75 K for a superior vigor and the minors were at least 2.5 K-10 K

other sups were 25 K- 60K

Anet put in guaranteed salvage and the rune trader and suddenly the price started dropping like a stone.

except sup vig/sup absorb which held at 100 K for the sup absorb and at least 30-40k on the sup vig.

Anet increased the drop rate by about 3X in an update and the present prices are the result

HM had nothing to do with it

It's because in the past, it was POSSIBLE to work for cash. If you invested time in farming, you would get cash in return as reward. Now, there is no reward at all for farming, since even though you do 8 times more than a full party, you aren't getting more than a full party.

Before Hard Mode came out, it was just ridiculously easy to make cash. You could get 1000K in no time, even when only playing a few hours a day. Any average joe can farm Griffons or Trolls. I think about every profession can farm them. There also were Vermins, I think. Back then, the amount of time one spent farming, equalled the reward.

Now, however, it doesn't matter how much grinding someone does - results stay low, and no better than someone playing in an 8-man team. What used to be possible for everyone, became impossible for everyone. This wouldn't be a problem if prices fell to like 5K, but they didn't. Instead, we still see stuff being sold for 100K + 50 ecto's.

This, of course, varies with each player. It depends on luck, the time one playes the game per day, and the part of that time one wants to use farming.

The loot scaling is here now a couple of months, and even though I did vanquishing, helping people with missions/quests, I only lost cash. I don't remember a single good drop since Hard Mode came out.

As for the 'price decrease' for Superior Vigor. May I remind you that when the exemption list wasn't there, the price went UP?

The price is only lowered because:

1: Gold items were exempt from the scaling list, so people still find them just as often as before.
2: Hard Mode made more gold items drop. Obviously, more gold armors = more sup vigors in the market means lower price.
3: With Hard Mode came new farm spots. People get alot of gold runes doing the SS/LB point farms. Even more runes came in the market.
4: Tyrian and Canthan armors also have insignia's. This caused some old, and seemingly useless farm spots like Ettins, be worthwhile, and used again. Yet again, more runes in the market.
5: With Hard Mode, it was possible to choose to salvage runes off the armors. If you choose for the rune, you'd get it 100% of the time.

Also, let's not forget the price was already falling since A-net made un-Identified Gold Armors be superior runes 100% of the time, made Superior Vigor and Superior Absorption drop more often.

Loot Scaling has nothing to do with it. If it wasn't there, price would be even lower now, since more people would farm, completely overflooding the market with all sorts of runes and insignia's.

This is all true. However,



Before loot scaling it was the rare items that players struggled to afford. Hard Mode has brought an abundent supply of rare items so the price has fallen.

If there was no loot scaling at least players could make a decent amount of cash to afford the fixed price items in the game by selling the white merchant junk. Fixed price items are not affected by supply and demand so these prices would not rise.

reetkever, I don't know what to tell you m8. Be smarter with your gold. I've gained quite a bit of gold since loot scaling came into effect. If you can't then I think that is a personal issue. Other people have made gold since loot scaling, so it is still POSSIBLE. Just because you can't doesn't mean that its impossible. As I'm sure you probably told the poor people ages ago. You don't need all of the fancy looking armors. 1.5k armor and collector weapons work just fine. If you want more then you have to work for it and save up. If you are not smart enough to save gold and are steadily losing gold, then maybe you should cut back a little?

What Anet tried is to screw over the Gold farmers. Not you and me, those asian (mostly) bots who sell their stock to anyone who likes it.
For a moment ANet saw victory after they introduced the loot scaling.

1000k gold before loot scaling was about $50, after the loot scale it went up to $125. Yer victory but not for long...... you can get 1000k for +- $60 dollar now.

Oh well then we will threaten all our players that when they buy gw gold they get a perm ban... (refering to the message when you log in) anet thought while smacking themselves on their heads.

Its pretty obvious why they are doing this. They dont want any other source but themselves to make money out of their game. Its theirs so heck we cant complain.

They are trying to make their game more and more profitable. And by doing so screwing it up more and more. (No i dont fancy buying mission packs , leave me) So anet, when are you going to sell gold? whats the next step? In the meantime im not going to touch this game anymore...

nuff said

Cut back with what? I only buy Superior Salvage and ID Kits, and some tickets for on the 9-rings when the weekend allows me, and that's it.

1.5K and collector stuff DOES work just fine, but I want to be able to at least invest time into getting cash for 15K armor, nicer weapons, hero weapons etc.


Before Nightfall came out, I used to farm trolls and vermins, and everything was fine. I wasn't a hardcore farmer or whatever, just a few minutes per day. That was enough to get me at least 5K a day, which is MORE than enough for me.

Now, I'm lucky if I get even 500 gold per day.

Regardless of loot scaling, there's still repeatable quests. If you have factions, you can FFF. Each run takes about 1-3 minutes (Kurzick or Luxon) and nets 150g. If you're Kurzick and you're the doorman, you basically stand there and let others get the gold for you. Now if ANet decides to nerf those quests, I'd be pretty disappointed.

[QUOTE]you buy at a 25 per cent premium and spend gold on guaranteed gold sinks.

BINGO

SO YOU ARE USED TO GETTING 5 k IN A FEW MINUTES OF FARMING?

no wonder you have no idea on budgeting your gold.

want to bet Del steel goes into one of those GWEN snazzy armors?

i stocked up early just in case

also fur

i told you how to get 7-10 times that but obviously you want 1000 times that as a minimum so forget that i actually did try to help you.

good nite

Don't know what FFF is, but if you mean these quests that let you run a supply box to the other outpost, scout the area for luxons/kurzicks, or kill a group of luxons/kurzicks... I already tried these. With some of them, I died, so no cash from there :P

And the others made me do a big forest-trip, which was so boring I just let my character and hench fight in the background, while I was listening music.

150 gold isn't alot, either. I think a Vermin run nets one more gold in that 1 - 3 minutes. It's just that even that is barely enough to compensate for the ID/Salvage Kits I buy about once per week, and of course the occasional weekend event.

If there is a Weekend Event that boosts chest drops, I DO want to run chests. If there is a Weekend Event for standing at the rings, I DO want to buy tickets, and stand there. Same goes for Elite Capping, too. They're only in weekends, and only once in a few months, but they eat away money like crazy.

IMO A-net should AT LEAST make the weekend events way cheaper.

So? If it's fun, why can't I buy it? A-Net should remove the Boardwalk Prizes, and just make tickets free.

Well, yeah. In the time of Griffon farming, one could make at least double that amount in less time.

Hmmmm I doupt Fur is going to raise in price. We're able to get them cheaply from the Charr Hide collector in Ascalon, so don't get your hopes up for that.

Deldrimore Steel, I guess, has high chances of going into GW:EN armors, but what if they don't? If I risk to invest all my cash in Deldrimore Steel, I can get rich, or I can get absolutely poor. It's too big of a risk to take, I fear

Thanks for the tip, though ^^

Thanks for the farm run, but I tried, and it gave me nothing more than all the other farm runs: some raw gold, and only a few whities. That't it. How many times do you do that farm run until you get lucky with drops?

Darn I double clicked? Sorry, delete please :S

Superior Vigors used to be 100k at the trader at their peak. Same with Superior Absorption. I left for about 1.5 years and came back and the Superior Absorption in my inventory was worth about 210g. Sounds bad but I think its actually great since people can turn their role play characters into pvp ready characters much easier and with much less expense.

What with collector items, inscriptions and cheaper weapon mods and plentiful gold drops in HM, its never been quicker or cheaper in my opinion to get pvping on your roleplay account, just in terms of the outlay.

It changes periodically but for a while (before faction and rune/rare material traders) your only chance in hell of unlocking a Superior Vigor or Absorption was to farm the Nebo Terrace Ettins like a mofo. Even then your chance was minimal.

Stuff that was prohibitively expensive 2 years ago, is still prohibitively expensive now. You earn less, people have to sell for less, since more people are in a position where they won't be able to justify the cost versus the effort.

I remember early on I used to buy black dye - it cost 600g inside the first 2 weeks. At the time this was alot for dye but it was manageable. A month or two later and the price had stabilised at 3 or 4k. After that, black dye has never been affordable for me.

Ectos used to drop in Underworld in stacks of 2 and 4 and prior to the advent of the rare materials trader cost about 500g each. I remember more than a few people buying up ecto at that price. Obsidian Shards didn't ever drop until after the rare materials trader went online. So nobody really bothered to get Fissure Armour. When Shards came online with the trader and people confirmed drops in Fissure of Woe, then the price of ecto skyrocketed and peaked at 15k or so. Which was insane.

I honestly don't know what people are complaining about. I got back into the game and bought nighfall a month ago after a long absence. I'm pleasantly surprised that everything is cheaper. I can actually change my build around and buy all the runes and insigs I need and it wont bankrupt me. Elite tomes in HM are also a nice quick cash injection if you get one. They sell quick too.

Keys? I've rarely found chest running profitable, though I know its possible if you buy lockpicks in bulk for a cheaper than trader price, get your treasure hunter rank up a bit and thus get better key retention. Then target chests tied to spawns which have a chance of dropping an expensive rare skinned weapon. Either way, playing through Nightfall normally and trying to do all the quests got me fairly close to getting primeval armour (about 60kish) - more if I sold the rubies I got from trade contracts.

EDIT: I forgot Treasure Chests. Come on guys - you get like 10 to 12 gold items a month for free and about 15k.

What on earth are you talking about? You don't have to buy mission packs so whats the problem? Guild Wars has always been marketted as a free to play action RPG with full priced totally optional modular extras.

Whatever Anet has done in the 1.5 years I was out seems to have worked because you no longer see 8 districts in Droks full of 55 monks streaming out the gate to Talus Chute. You don't see the same robomonks streaming out of Riverside Province (the infamous Tengu Rune farm) anymore. Theres definitely either (1) less of them or (2) they are much less visible. I dont know about buying in game gold for real money but I can't ever see how it would be profitable unless you have several computers and several copies of the game all botting like crazy round the clock, not catch any attention and avoid getting perma banned.

That's only true the first time you open those chests with a character. With subsequent openings, the drops get worse and worse. The first time I opened all the treasure I got all gold items. One month later with the same character, the drops are now all purple. And the amount of money given was less. So treasure chests are not all that viable unless you continually make and destroy new characters.

Bots still abound. Go to Granite Citadel, Altrumm Ruins, or even Chahbek Village sometime. Nothing but bots. It's actually kind of neat looking at the radar and seeing all the streaming blue dots heading towards the exit, somewhat like flowing water...

I never thought of FFF as being actually a good source of gold... but now...

I did a Vermin run in NM today to see how bad lootscaling is. (I haven't been there since the AoE nerf)
I got a total of about 200g for doing the full run. In the past I'd be pushing 2k...

The way I see it, is that ANet has punished anyone who farms outside of select areas like UW for Ectos, or other places for rare skins. (ie. Bergen Bot Springs)

At least with the anti-farm code, it was about farming too much. Now, you're screwed before you even farm the place once.

Which is exactly the point I was making (and it flew right over a few peoples heads) - loot scaling (not hard mode, despite how many times someone wants to change my argument to something else so they can say that) caused this. My old comparatively crappy farming is now quite profitable and there is pretty much no change on my end. Suddenly that 4-6k an hour from just playing and the 6-8k an hour farming makes it such that I can afford MANY things I never could before (though amusingly enough they weren't really things I wanted but oh well). Hard Mode simply made it such that I can now - with the same effort - go to 10-15k an hour farming, which makes me even "richer" both in GPH *and* in purchasing power. There are significantly more people in my class and below and those that are in the lower category are helped even more.

I generally also find it amusing when I'm told I am wrong and it is hurting me. Well, I'll take some more hurting

Yep, WAY more of people that are that way now, even ones who never touch Hard Mode. Heck, you can now pretty much afford a set of 15k armor simply by playing through the game - it hasn't been that way since a month or two after release. You can even come VERY close to Vabbian with a Nightfall character. Which, once more, that was the intention and it worked. Isn't it nice to be screwed over in such a way?

Eh, I can try and help people try and change their arguments to one that may be effective, but it doesn't seem to work too much. I suppose they will eventually ragequit or get over it.

I wish people would stop mentioning all the useless stuff (most of the exception list) like dyes, superior runes, and those crappy rubies, sapphires, ectos, shards. Those aren't things casual players even consider and you can call all those gold sinks.
Most of the useable rare materials need regular materials to craft. Look at the prices of those rare materials and regular materials and you'll notice it's pretty much the same as before loot scaling.
Minor runes are the most used runes and some of those have risen and a couple dropped. Seriously, who cares about superior runes when there's only a few that are used.

I still stand by loot scaling not being helpful to casual players. How is lowering the chance of drops helpful for anyone? Rich farmers are still rich and likely still farming because what else are they going to do? Bots are still raking in the cash whether they're doing it for real money or funding another account. These are people/things not playing casually.

What I worry about on my pve characters are skill costs. I like being able to switch my secondary professions and having a multitude of options to play with. Since skill cost is a set price and my chance of drops is lowered or stays the same loot scaling sucks. It's now telling me 'hey, instead of normal only you'll have worse or normal.' In other words, not helpful. If you're a player who sticks with what's given and a couple of builds congratulations you'll likely be thrilled to be playing with yarn.