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

[QUOTE=Loviatar]There may be some truth to this, but to say HM had no effect is simply staggering.
ALL rares have dropped in price not just sup vig and other expensive runes.

But anyway my main point in this thread was only to point out that the loot scaling nerf was not the driving factor in falling prices.

I don't know how many times it really needs to be stated but loot scaling has brought the value of gold up which means it takes less to buy something. So to answer your question simply, yes it is helping casual players.

which means the items that the merchants sell should go down in price to compensate, yet the prices still stay the same. the only things that have dropped in price are high-end keys. max armor prices are still the same price + common crafting material + rare crafting material. i wouldn't have minded the loot nerfing so much if they'd made max collector armor inscribable, but they didn't. if anet was really serious about helping the casual player, they would have made that specific change to max collector armor. why? i've found that, especially in the crystal desert, after finishing all the quests and missions i have enough of all of the collector items to trade for armor. and instead of using the money to buy armor + crafting material, it can be used to buy inscriptions and runes.

No. The economy has been messed the hell up since day one. Now it is how Anet intended it to be from day one or at least closer to what they wanted. So really nothing like armor and crafting material needs to be changed.

This is only true if the same amount of items as before hits the market,which is not the case. Gold is worth more now, but items, too, since they are alot more rare.

Just look at what happened when Loot Scaling just came in effect. Prices for everything at traders rose rapidly. Until the exemption list came, and dropped the prices again. Why? If you go around cancelling the drops of something, that drop will be of more value. Just basic economy, really:

1: Item is wanted, and alot of that item are going in the market: Sellers have to lower prices in order to sell more than the other guy/girl.

2: Suddenly, no more, or very few of that item still drops. Traders are out of stock, and players desperately want to buy, while nobody sells, cause nobody gets them as drops anymore. (The players who DO have alot of this item, don't sell yet, and most of the time wait for the price to go up, even more.)

3: Because nobody sells, no more of that items are going to the trader either --> Price at trader goes up.


If you are talking about items players sell... Things are still being sold for 100K + ecto's.

So the loot scaling didn't really help anyone, it almost destroyed the economy, if it wasn't for the quick-to-follow exemption list, which saved most of the trader's prices.

Before the scaling, the economy was good. No matter how much you played, with only a little farming, you could get anything you wanted. Now, it's the other way around, and one doesn't even have a way to make quick, much cash, even though prices are still sky-high.

I think the loot scaling was a good idea with good intentions, but after seeing the out come I think it is time to tweak the system.

All of the above issues are happening.

Yes Hard Mode helped drop the cost of Runes, some Greens, and Gold items.

The AI scattering was removed from Normal Mode which I liked, and is the reason the price dropped on ectos.

Hard Mode does provide Gold items, increased gold drops, lock picks, Tomes, Passage scrolls, and Runes galore.

The loot scaling works, unfortunately not on what it was supposed to. Gold farmers and BOTS are even more present in game.

The problem is that it has not positively affected the economy. What has effected the price drop of Runes, Greens, and Gold weapons was not loot scaling but the increase of these types of drops via Hard Mode.

Loot scaling increased the drop rate of gold weapons, and gold which made it better when in groups making it more profitable to group up with real players instead of Henchmen and Heroes.

What loot scaling has also done is kill the profitability of farming for real players. The boters quickly figured out that even though it took 8 bots to get the drop rate they were getting before it didn't mater because Hard Mode was a gold mine and when those 8 BOTs gathered the equivalent of one bot pre loot scale and hard mode they made exponentially more gold than before.

Farming, running and chest running are the main money makers in this game. Yes there is trading but how do you get the items to sell and how did you build up the bank role to start you material trading.

Runners have had all sorts of obstacles placed in their way. From added monster to gates.

Chest runners had their drops nerfed every high end chest should drop a max stat gold weapon or at least enough gold to cover the cost of the key used to open it.

Farmers have had numerous nerfs to creature drops, the anti farming code, new monsters to prevent certain builds from farming areas, AI scatter, and last the farming Nuke the loot scale.

Why not work on it to make things better. The change in the starter areas was nice lets expand from that.

In starter areas the loot scale has been removed.

Why not change normal mode back to the system we had before where gold drops were rare and drops were not scaled according to party size. What we have now in normal mode is depressing.

Then leave the loot scale system in hard mode, but have no white item drops. It is hard mode and it is scaled so why are white items dropping?

A compromise.

I agree that a redo of the loot scale system would be much desired. For all the previously mentioned reasons, as well as because the casual player has never had problems.

The second he/she declared, however, that "I want a Ragos fire staff and a Obby armor!" and asked for the means to get it, he was becoming less casual. One's he has aquired the proper farmign routes and such he was basically "hardcore."

And it is the person in the second paragraph that is hurt by HM/loot scaling.


As for the lockpick bashers, the secret is this: bye them cheap and only use them on the places with the most expensive keys. FOW, Elite missions, DOA.

Oh, so that's why black dye and ecto have dropped in price...
/sarcasm

Ecto's dropped in price because they were:

1: Exempted from loot scaling. This means they are UNAFFECTED by the loot scaling.

2: Normal Mode became easier to farm in, so UW runs became more popular

3: Alot of the old farm runs got nerfed, so more people switched to UW runs

Market just got flooded with ecto's. It has nothing to do with the loot scaling, which caused the price of ecto's to shoot up from 6K to 14K when Loot Scaling was just introduced.

Black Dye price has always been low-ish. The rise in price was because Nightfall was new, and people bought new armors to dye black. Besides, the Black Dye has lost popularity because of the introduction of the White Dye.
Other than that, the dye system has been altered, so people went to experiment and re-dye armors. Black Dye price would go down, no matter what.

(Well, unless dyes were NOT included with the exemption list, which would make Black Dyes so unbelievably rare, the price would go to above the 10K)

One day people will learn that farming is not a good way to make money, pre-loot scale or post.

I'm still making about 30-40 a day without farming. I don't play but a few hours each day if even that.

Prices are much better since the loot scale though. I bought my tormented axe and shield for 750k. That would have cost me 2-3 mil a few months ago.

One day, people will learn that not everyone makes the exact same cash, and realize that farming IS a better way of making cash, cause the flow of money doing that is steady, instead of based on luck.

Sorry, but it's once again NOT the loot scaling. Gemstone prices have ALWAYS been dropping, and were exempt from loot scaling, so the scaling has NOTHING to do with it. Even if you ignored that fact:

-A few months back, the Necklaces costed 25 of each gem instead of 15.
-After Hard Mode came, it was possible to farm titan gems in hard mode, where more of them drop.
-And then there is the DoA improvements, which made it easier for more people, also causing the prices to lower.

Paying 750K for a titan weapon was a bad move, cause prices will probably go down way lower. It has nothing to do with loot scaling, though.

No, it's because of all the people who finally realized FoW Armor looks like crap.

KANE

That goes for black dye, too.

If you are consistently making 30-40K of gold per day without farming in only a few hours, it only proves that loot-scaling did little to "balance" the game. Hackers will hack, exploiters will exploit, and botters will bot. Unfortunately, the rest of us seem to take it on the chin whenever Anet implements something to fix the unfixable.

The only people that complain about loot scaling are the ones that were poor to begin with.

If you don't have cash, you're doing something wrong. Go do a DoA run, which will take you an hour, or something, and get your titan gem, sell it for 25k. Voila! You have cash.

I can sympathize with those wanting multiple sets of 15k dyed black. But if you can't scrounge up 1k for ID kits and salvage kits....wow.

Please stop complaining about loot scaling. This is like the 1000th complaint thread yet.

There is one reason for ecto price drops that's not covered in earlier postings.
There was no real alternative for stacking huge amounts of cash.
With the introduction of Lockpicks, there is an alternative that is not dominated by the market, but has fixed value.

Drops became too common and gold too scarce. That's the problem.

Ehm no. Before the scaling, nothing was out of reach. Everything could be bought fairly easy. Besides, I was rather rich before the loot scaling.

How am I doing something wrong? I'm doing missions and quests. The rewards of that SHOULD give me enough cash, but it doesn't.

About DoA: Titan Gems are worth less every day, no point investing cash in a dying farm run. Besides, selling the titan gem would take WAY too much time.

There's a reason there are so many complaints about the loot scaling.

First of all, it only has downsides, since lootscaling makes prices go up, and the amount of money made go down. (Don't reply with how prices have gone down, cause that was the exemption list, NOT the loot scaling.)

Second of all, the reasons why loot scaling was implented, are all invalid, and the loot scaling only makes things worse.

(Bots? They make cash more quick now, and buying cash online is WAY more popular than before. Casual players? We still can't buy vanity stuff, like you told us we could. Market? Used to be good, now it's broken. You just had to make it worse with a trade sytem that doesn't work.)

And then there is the rich players, who stay rich. Or became even richer, if they sold their stuff when the exemption list was not there yet, and prices were sky-high.

This is true, but really, how many people use Lockpicks instead of ecto? I have yet to encounter someone who sells a high-priced item for 100K + lockpicks instead of ecto's.

Logic Train

If you were poor and the easiest way to procure wealth was removed then you remain poor.

Oh I see instead of having wide spread farming spots to get out of poverty we are now left with this and how long will it be before these are worth less than wooden planks if everyone has to do this to make money.

It seems to me the only ones not complaining about the loot scaling are the ones who were rich before loot scaling was activated and the BOTers.

If people are still complaining about it doesn't it tell you that something needs to be corrected.

Loot scaling was something that was supposed to help the community not hurt it. Its main goal was to hinder BOTs, FAILED. The BOTers are 10 times worse. The second goal was to help casual players because gold drops were increased and the chance to get gold items was increased, FAILED. Now casual players must farm 8 times longer to acquire the same amount of loot, which is mostly junk, as before. It was also implemented to force other to use PUGs instead of H&H, FAILED. People who use H&H still use them and have not changed their play style.

So in conclusion Loot scaling has FAILED the only ones who haven't noticed or don't care are A-net and rich players. Just like in real life the rich don't want anyone but them selves to be rich, so as long as the system works that way they are happy with it.

Enough cash for standard armor, standard weapons. If you want that vanity weapon, grow a pair and save some plat. I'm sorry, but what are you spending your cash on?????

ID/Salvage kits? - that's just pathetic
Lockpicks/keys - They've always been known to be goldsinks
Crap greens/golds - Why are you buying them?
Skills - see "ID/Savage kits"

Well? Where else is your gold going? It takes 3 farming runs, and a couple of quests and there you have 10-15k. It's not that hard.

orly?

Get some numbers. Oh, right, you don't provide any. I'll give you some then. My brother wanted to buy gold maybe 5 months back. 1000k costed $45, US.
I persuaded him away from it, but recently he wanted to do it again. Same website, 1000k costs $89. How's that for you? GG.

Spout me some more political garbage. How do the rich stay richer? They SAVE. And when they have cash, they're intelligent with it, and they power-trade around, and make good buys, and go on gold sinks when they have excess.

With all the time you have spent complaining, you could have been amassing gold.