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

Hey Reet, still fighting the fight, eh?

I know from personal experience vanquishing in Elona (full party) that golds and purps do indeed drop better in HM than normal. The thing is, even if they're crap, that armor with a Superior Illusion rune will sell to the merch for often 200+ gold, and purps in hard mode tend to be at least 150+. Also watch your purps... you can get some great hero weapons from them which you can in turn sell as hero weapons in town for 1K or something.

As for chests, my mesmer is on his fourth go around with them. The gold drops don't seem to be falling off, but this is the first run I've seen more than one grape fall out of em. Still, over a plat of gold at least, plus a couple hundred for the item... nothing to cry over.

Nice thing about HM too... you get lots of whites, and most are indeed max. This seems to hold truer the deeper you are into the game... I've gotten some real shmeg in HM in the noob areas. In the Desolation, nice stuff.

I'd like to add my voice here - whatever anyone says, I have seen the amount of white drops (vendor trash, hehe) decrease about the time that loot scaling went into effect.

The rest I cannot speak for, but the lessening of white drops has had an effect on my income - since clearing Sanctum Cay before loot scaling would pretty much fill up my main bag. Now, I find that I have maybe 5 or 6 items.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Edit - I am referring to NM.

I stand corrected regarding the treasure.

However.

Just because a player farms in hardmode doesn't make them hardcore. Trolls and Vermin were nerfed before the update. They've been pretty mediocre farms since inception, it's only that they were so easy to do that they actually were farmed.

If you've done any vanquishing, in the slightest, you'd know what I'm talking about with reference to drops.
I vanquished Pongmei Valley yesterday; I got 2 Greens, 4 golds, 1 purple, and roughly 3k in drops prior to the vanquishing reward. - - - - This is average for me. Come on mate, are you farming trolls on normal mode?

And guess what? With loot scaling, you don't get diminishing returns from farming!!!! GFG.

By the way, vermin farming is alive and kicking for me, on HM. One round trip from Senji's to the bazaar, 80 kills in perhaps 30 minutes, always good for around 5k, a few golds and a couple of white assassin tomes. Salvaging koi scepters and vermin hides is big business.

I know, but usually, the people farming ecto's, specific gold items, titan gems etc, made a special char for that, bought special skills, took the time to learn it etc. But for alot of people, this is simply too much trouble to do. Besides, the ppl farming specific items, also have to sell that item to a player in order to get the cash, so it takes alot of time. If one takes, and spends alot of time farming (more time farming than doing other stuff in the game) that player is hardcore imo.

And easyness and quickness is what it's all about. Farming isn't fun, but it has to be done, so it's best if it's fast and easy.

(On a side note, if possible, I would be farming trolls on Normal Mode, cause in HM, they use heal Sig, and it would probably take too long.)

I don't get greens at all. The last time I remember I got a green, was with a 'Double Fun: Triple Green Drops!' weekend. I;ve been doing skill capturing sometimes, and only a friend of mine got a green Spear (dropped from a Djinn paragon boss). I only see a gold drop once in few days. Purples a bit more, but not guaranteed.

But then again, I play in Normal Mode more often, so that might be the case. When I played in Hard Mode, however, I couldn't see the 'it's raining golds and purples and good drops are everywhere' some people have been talking about. You most likely had luck, or I have bad luck.

See it like this:

-Before update: You might get 7/8th of the drops, if you farm alot, and that is decreasing depending on how much you farm.
-After scaling: You get 1/8th of the drops always.

The Loot Scaling actually is one giant farm-lock.

But the farm lock never was a problem to me, since I never did more than 1 or 2 runs a day, it never kicked in.

You are missing the gold from 1-2 troll farm runs a day? Wow....

ive been farming in normal since i started playing just over a year ago.
i am a casual, i'll admit ive only just got into the desert with my oldest char.

the only real time ive noticed loot scaling has been when i was farming (solo) the mirror of lyss for lightbringer points. i did about 5 trips, i went from around 800g-1p of junk from a trip to less than 500g.

it seems to have increced my luck in dropping golds (4 in one area on one trip)

i ahve enough problems getting money as a casual, as i dont put the hours in, but honestly, the only time i noticed was during repeat farming runs.

Vanquished Mineral and Ice Floe tonight with guild.
I was lucky, had several gold drops. Including chests, I had 10 golds and numerous purples. Since I cannot be ***** to sell the mods to players, I merched all but 2 or 3 golds. Because of the lock-picks, I have less gold now, but that's my choice, since chests are gold sinks.
White max weapons for casters were plenty, had one or two bows, trying to remember if I got any max warrior weapons. Probably not that many.
Almost all people in my team did get one or two gold drops and several purples.

However, these areas take a long time to clear, longer than the 2 hours Reetkever has.
A Bergen dual-600 (with hero smiter) nets me between 1 and 2 gold items on average for a run. This is a 10 minute run, because I have to control my hero.
With a human smiter, this can be a lot faster.

However, my regular HM gameplay gives me plenty of hero equipment.
I don't need to farm them.

And it's exactly what A-net intended to nerf. You know the statement from Gaile, it's on Wiki. They want people to participate on the player market or with the trader to get a buck. White item farming died with loot scaling.

On green items: I have vanquished a lot of areas on various characters and the number of green drops I saw can be counted on one hand.
Sure, playing with one other human player and the rest NPC does not help, but green drops are uncommon when not soloed.

Now a question for Reetkever: What besides skills (most people seem to agree that those are too expensive) are game needs that you have to 'farm' for?
Things that, when someone doesn't have them, affect general PvE gameplay.
Remember, 15K armor and req 7 crystallines do not affect the general gameplay I'm looking for, only ego is affected.

Yes, but alot of people don't have the time and patience to sell and buy stuff. Besides, if A-Net TRULY wants to us to trade stuff, they'd make trading easier instead of doing stuff like limiting usable characters from 120 to 30.

It's not about NEED. It's about WANT.

A-Net said they'd improve things for everyone, but in fact they improved nothing at all. If A-Net really wanted to improve things, they'd make quest rewards bigger, increased the number of drops in 8-man teams, instead of decreasing the number of drops in 7 to 1 man teams, and make stuff with fixed prices cheaper. This WOULD help the casual player, and not cripple him.

Also, some things I do have to farm for: Equipment for heroes, skills, armor, weapons for myself.

You can do the storyline with crappy equipment and no looks, but you can also do it the way you want your character to look like, with the build you want to use, and the weapon you want. In the past this was possible, now it is not. That, is the problem the loot scaling gives.

Ohh, and I see alot of players here who say they're 'unaffected' by the loot scaling. This also means that the loot scaling doesn't work at all. A-net clearly said they wanted to improve the situation for casual players, yet casual players who farmed are screwed, and casual players who didn't farm don't see the difference. So how is the loot scaling helping?


And you're trying to say...? Troll Runs gave me all the cash I needed per day: about 2-3K. Now, I gotta grind for hours to get that amount.
Trolls, Vermins, whatever what was easy and quick, was my income. It kept me playing the game, doing everything that it had to offer. Now, the game has nothing to offer except the storyline and endless, rather rewardless grind.

You just invalidated your whole argument regarding casual players here with regards to the second statements following.



Great. Then you're not a RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing casual player anymore that wants to play the game to pass time, you're a hardcore player that wants to RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing have his cake and eat it.

It's helping because there's no farm code. So I can farm the hell out of minister cho's estate for 45 minutes, get me my perfect gold Broadsword drop, and sell the thing for 200k. GFG


And you're trying to say...? Troll Runs gave me all the cash I needed per day: about 2-3K. Now, I gotta grind for hours to get that amount.
Trolls, Vermins, whatever what was easy and quick, was my income. It kept me playing the game, doing everything that it had to offer. Now, the game has nothing to offer except the storyline and endless, rather rewardless grind.[/QUOTE]

And what else did the game offer you before this?????????????
And for pvp you don't need gold, so....

Any argument that relies on telling casual players who have to solofarm in order to afford the staticly priced items in they don't solofarm and that they can afford the staticly priced items has a flawed basis.

Why would a casual player need these mods for general play any less than a hardcore player? If anything we need them more because we don't have as much play experience under our belts. I'd agree that defensive mods are better for some parts of the game, +hp mods are better for others which is why you need both. There is still no mod traders in the game though, so they both cost as much as the keys you used to get them. And +29 Health mods don't drop any more often than +30 mods.

Can I point out again that a 30 minute run is not appropriate for causal players who only have a very limited time. If a run can't be done in 10 minutes, then it involves sacrificing a days gameplay to farm. I'd classify that as hurting casual players, not helping them.

Are you beginining to understand now? We're not talking about masses of gold after hours of farming. We're talking about the 1-2k per day that you could use to buy skills to actually enjoy your normal pve experience.

Here here!

I'm not reetkever, but I do like the sound of my own voice so...
Skills are the biggest expense - I documented just ludicrously expensive it was to get a usable library a few pages back.
Weaponsmiths - For the equivelent collector items are hard to farm
Armour - Multiple sets are required to support builds. For example my Nec needs 4 different sets (all 1k!) for different builds (MM for MM'ing, Sentries for close range /w and /r builds, Blessed for Dark Aura builds and /d builds and Radiant for general purpose builds). Warrior, Derv and Assassin armour requirements are even more over the top.
Keys - Required for getting appropriate mods for my weapons and offhands.

I just vanquished Boreas Seabed. This run took me 2 hours 40 minutes. I had a quick dinner, talked on phone briefly, and watched 30 minutes of tv. It all adds up in my overall playtime

No lockpicks bought, no lockpick dropped, no dye dropped, no green dropped, no locked chests opened. Once again no expenses.

14 pieces of Cloth
Vanquish reward: 705g
Gold coin dropped after full party split: 263g
1 Gold: Sup. axe rune unsalvaged piece. 224g
2 Purples: Not worth mentioning even mods. 296g
4 Blues: Attunement rune, no improved sale or highly salvageable. 220g + 172g
3 Whites: 15g regurgitated mass 125g
8 Collector items: 230g


After putting away the Cloth, IDing the 2 IDable Whites, breaking item while salvaging attunement, and selling the whole lot I get a grand total of 2,235 gold. Only the axe was max damage. Typical vanquishing run for me. I haven't seen anything glorious at all doing vanquishing so if you're a lucky player you're freaking lucky. Not everyone has great drops though I'm getting the feeling sucking up to anet seems to give you great drops now. After today, I'm sick of the pve once again.

Edit:
keys-> lockpicks

Sure, then I'll point out that nothing is forcing you to kill all the vermin twice like in my example. Just zone out when you've spent all the time you want, say at 10 minutes into the run, and earn just 1.5k and maybe even a nice rare and/or tome?

Having not done vermin HM, I'll have to take your word for it, however I will retain my skepticism because I've not seen any HM run that can do more than 6-700g in 10 minutes. I'm comparing this to the old vermin run (which was extremely casual freindly) which would take 10 minutes, including the time to come up with a build for your bar, put any enchants on, run to the vermin and kill them, would give you 1.5-2.5k run, and could be done with literally hundreds of different builds.

I've been in academics for quite a number of years and they tend to ignore things like that, I always find that terribly frustrating. Nothing like getting all excited because someone has a new "fast" way of doing something only to find out they have to sort 10,000 random numbers before and after they do the "fast" part. I've lost bids because someone had an algorithm than ran in 1/3 the time I reported mine did, however mine was total cost and their was just that one little section - their total cost was nearly 10 times what mine was. However, it did make me feel better when the client in question got angry when they figured it out - we got to charge more

I, also, normally have somewhere around an hour a day to play. What I do is dedicate the last 10-15 minutes of playtime as farming time and put the money in the bank - it adds up *real* fast if you do not spend it and you will make the 8-10k/hour. It wasn't hard to accumulate 200k, if you average 15 minutes a day then that comes to 4 days per hour. You need roughly 25 hours so 200k in around four months assuming that is as little one does. That is well within "casual", the occasional "non-casual" amount of time spent on a weekend really speeds that time up, simply spending one hour farming will reduce the time by *four days*. If you are needing over 200k for anything then you are moving *well* outside of calling yourself a casual player.

Add in the spikes you get once a month from the unlocked Elonan treasure (assuming you have Nightfall) and you can easily shave a month and a half off the above time from just a single character - it's worth it just to fill out your unused character slots and get them to the Elonan mainland - that makes it about 5-10k per month per character, with ten slots that is 50-100k a month. If they are in Vabbi add another 5k, in the desolation another 5k, and in RoT then another 5k *per* character. Getting just to the Elonan mainland is pretty fast, the others - you probably aren't going to get them all the the RoT (I only have two in the RoT and 4 of mine only at the command post, the rest somewhere in Vabbi).

Because of that I no longer bother farming unless I'm bored, I have enough for pretty much anything I want. The little bit I farm when I have nothing better to do still does enough to keep me stocked with cap sigs and lockpicks. However, if GWEN gets some new armors I want then I will go back to the 10-15 minutes of an hour gaming session, I now try and keep at least a 100k buffer. Heck, I do not even bother with the chests unless I need the spike of gold.

Just a very simple shift in play style can make a huge difference in the gold you make and it is still very much in the "casual" realm.

Suggestion: Since lootscale appears to be here to stay, add common materials and collectable drops to the exemption list. This benefits the casual players by either A) Giving them a bit of extra gold per run or B) Allowing them to trade these items for both armor and weapons.

10k per hour.
WOW.WOW.WOW.WOW
You solved all of our problem.
Yipeeeee
Now we can earn incredible amound of golds in a hour
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WhAt ThE hEcK?
Good old troll farm was 30k per hour or little less.

I do agree on that one. Trading is not rewarding for items below a certain value. I did make a comment and seperate post on that topic a couple of weeks ago.

Well, this is not entirely true.
When I say I am unaffected by lootscaling, it's more a 'meh' statement.
It's my experience that after you have gotten your basic equipment and skill sets, you don't need to invest that much anymore.
The price of initial setup of a character did go down, depending on profession.


Seems cellardweller and reetkever have about the same wishes.

Skills: I already agreed on those, I think there should be less expensive ways to get them. One solution could be trading in X skillpoints for a skill. This would give solo-farmers advantage, since they can gather skillpoints faster than group players.

Weapons + upgrades: I have mixed feelings on those.
It's possible to get a decent weapon for less than 5K for each profession.
Off-hands depend on profession. That's a one time investment.

On hero casters, I tend to use staffs. Their energy is not linked to attribute, like with offhands. Meaning I can switch build without losing energy.
Furtermore, I try to get items in profession specific attribute, meaning they will work in 90% of the builds I use.
Melee get the leftovers that drop in HM and stuff I had in inventory since I deleted my warrior. Unlocked chests in Elona combined with HM drops are slowly replacing the default weapons.
My rangers get dead bows from Bergen

I'm not sure on the number of people using the crafters, but lowering the prices might drain more gold from the economy if more people are going to use them. And that's why they are around.

Armor: Solution would be to make armors salvage the same way hero armor does. Someone (could well be be cellardweller) already mentioned that.
For me, this also is no real problem.
I have 2 characters with multiple armors.
Monk with +e, +armor and 3 pieces for 600HP (so no 55 set here). And a truckload of scalps.
Necro with Tormentors for general play and a 55 armor for playing Orders monk in Tombs.
The rest of my characters have one set of armor and switch headsets.
For PvP, I have a PvP slot

Im a bit dissapointed myself... im not a heavy player anymore...luck yto get 30mins here and there during the week...few hours over the weekend at the moment... ive never 'farmed' i do go down to the UW for kicks with my trapper, but ive never farmed above ground....

Last night i thought id give this a try, i went to factions starter island and selected 3 henchies as loot scaling means we would all get the same proportion anyway. Clicked HM and cleared saqunna vale (sp) not one gold...zilch..nada..nothing...jack **** , all whites and a few blues for myself...i know its not the most extreme area but all monsters are level 22+ .. i was dissapointed....

The same goes for you as I said for Loviatar: Not all casual players want to do just the storyline. Alot of players also want to open chests, explore GW, make more builds, make nice armor + weapons, dye his stuff etc.

So in your opinion, anyone who has a wish in the game, and wants to do something is a hardcore player? And don't come with 'storyline is enough' cause that's bs. Storyline is like what... 10% of the game? Working on 1 title usually takes longer than to do the whole storyline.

I think also your view of casual players is wrong. Do you think A-Net made the game for 'people who are bored and have nothing else to do'? Wow, great audience, 'let's make a game for people who don't really care what they play, and probably quit the game again after 3 weeks.'

I think A-Net made the game for people who try and do everything the game has to offer them. Stuff like exploring, making your own builds, giving your characters a unique look, Challenge Missions, all the bonusses/masters, titles etc.


'Loot Scaling' and 'Farm code' are the same thing, except with Loot Scaling, it's always on, and you can't reverse it.

If you mean the rare drops, that has NOTHING to do with loot scaling, but with the exemption list. If this was going the way A-Net planned from the start, you would be getting 1/8th instead of 8/8th of your gold drops too. (And seeing how drop rate is already VERY low...)


Before this, I also HAD to farm (For Jungle, Desert and Shiverpeak Armor, skillbars, weapons).

The game always involved making cash, and always will. Before the loot scaling, the game had everything to offer: making your own characters, trying out dye combinations, chest runs... I wrote down this list of stuff like 20 times now.

All this stuff costs cash, and had to be farmed for. Now, it still costs cash, and has to be farmed for, but this time it's impossible.

And by the way, if you are indeed farming for golds in Hard Mode, you ARE a Hardcore farmer, and you just did admit that it's the hardcore farmers that are unaffected, and keep being filthy rich, while the casual players got screwed.

In case you didn't notice, this discussion isn't about being unable to make huge amounts of money per hour at little effort, but a few people claiming it's impossible to make money at all in a reasonable timeframe. I realize 10k per hour isn't oldschool top income, but it sure isn't 'nothing', which is why I posted my vermin example.

I wouldn't say I'm hard core, but I'm more than just casual. I never solo farm, yet never have a problem getting enough gold for the armor I want(considering how crappy most 15k armor looks) and the weapons I need. Elites? Just wait till I hit the area where I can get them. Till then I just make do. The game isn't THAT hard, after all.

I think you need to redefine "casual" player in some of your arguments. If you are worrying about how much "1337 1007" you are getting from chests/drops, and your gold drop per hour, you aren't a casual player. If you are using solo builds, you spent time researching for them and grinding to get the elites for them. Not casual.

It doesn't mean you are necessarily hardcore. But putting that kind of effort(it does take SOME effort to do those things) isn't casual. So let's kinda get straight what casual is before using the loot scale argument of casual vs hardcore. or maybe routine would be a better word?

If you are trying to actually pin down a definition of "casual" and "hardcore" gamers, then I'm here to say that a lot of research money from gaming companies has generated a lot of material written by a lot of smart people, and they cannot seem to find a common frame of reference to make a definition.

I mean, it is easy to quantify behaviors that are obviously "casual" or "hardcore" - but there is such a large grey area that players generally fall into, as opposed to some nice categories.

A casual gamer will complete a game once and do some quests....?
A hardcore gamer will complete a game 5 times, doing every possible quest....?

Sure.

People are not so clear cut. A player may play through a game only once, but do every quest. Still more casual?

I think a previous poster indicated that a casual gamer will simply play the game and enjoy it for what it is, while a hardcore gamer will "invest" him- or herself more thoroughly. A casual gamer will "meh" and sell fantastic loot. A hardcore gamer will whoop, dance, and carry on for joy. More specific behaviors, nice to describe the terms, but insufficient to define.

So, instead of trying to rigidly categorize and define (any aspect of) human behavior, why not approach it on a sliding scale. I see that tendency in here, with people saying variants of "I am mostly a casual player".

I'd like for this not to stop the discussion, since Lootscaling is becoming of increasing interest to me. I was originally in the "whatever - its more ANet tinkering that does not impact me", but as I play more I am finding that it has impacted me negatively.

Right now, I am trying to Hero/Hench Gate of Madness in NM, and you'd think that I would get some good loot there. That is not the case. I get 3 or 4 vendor trash, maybe 5-600 in gold drops, and maybe a purple. That is consistent for 5 tries now. I only get one shot at it a day - since it takes me somewhere near 30 or 40 minutes to clear up to the lich and shiro.

Normal play - what everyone seems to agree is a realm of the casual player - is not as profitable as before.

I hate farming, but I may be forced to do it to get more skills.

I understand that those of you who favor the change, feel that gold farmers are wrecking the economy. What I think your side fails to realize is that players like me do not participate in the player-to-player 100 plat + 20 ectos sector of the economy. Any cash I get goes right back out of circulation on skills, runes, and armors.

The other point that I have not seen anyone mention (apologies if I missed anything) is that making regular play more profitable will arguably not cause inflation since 1) farming is more profitable in units per time, so hardcore players will not benefit much from increased reward for regular play, and 2) casual players are at best opportunistic buyers from the player-to-player economy, and the bulk of the money they get goes right back out of circulation as I said before.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Tabasco, most people will probably agree that normal playing could use a slight buff to income.

I am quite for loot-scaling, but I say that normal playing, and farming could use atleast a 50-100% boost in profit.

Am very against solo-farming getting the 800% boost that people are pushing for though.

Assuming that you are playing with 8 characters, not farming, then loot scaling hasn't changed anything for you. The drops only affect you as your party gets smaller and smaller until you are by yourself.

I don't recall ever getting much more than that either, except when I beat the mission and got the fixed rewards. Going through missions/quest where I didn't hit some strange snag (such as GoM) I averaged around 3-4k per hour - which if you hadn't of stalled out you would be going right along towards that average.

Loot scaling isn't the problem, the problem is that the highest end areas have the rewards that are at most 5-10% better than the lowest level 20 areas. The only thing that significantly increases in price are trade items yet the difficulty is MUCH greater. In a group of eight, you will make pretty much the same in Kourna as you do in the Gate of Pain. Loot scaling hurts the solo or small team farmer.

I too wish that they would up the quest/mission rewards some or lower the price of skills. I do not think that even doubling rewards (especially in places like the RoT) would cause much inflation if any at all - it doesn't make any high end player market items/materials more affordable but does the fixed costs items. Especially skills, when you hit the very last areas of the three games it is not uncommon to need to purchase a new build or two, if you have not been saving up (for instance, if it is your first time through there is no reason to know this is coming up) this can be hard to do.

reetkever:
I understand your view. I used to farm trolls as well, and I guess it was the only solo-farming I have ever done. The old days were good, a small amount of time invested, and there will be enough money to invest on items we want.

I can understand how your income has reduced. The problem is, troll farm was nerfed long ago. Not by loot scaling, but by an A.I change. The trolls would have scattered away after 20 seconds or even 10 seconds as you approach them. It would've taken 2 times, 3 times, or even 5 times amount of time to actually farm them. In that situation, our income has reduced while the cost of our items remain the same.

A while after, loot scaling has been introduced along with Hard Mode. This allows the old timers to enjoy their farmings again. However, the drops have been reduced, and thus our income has remained reduced. Relevantly, the cost of our items have decreased as well. Perhaps not all the items, but there are significant reductions to be observed.

I can understand how you want to invest your money on the items you were capable of invest before. However, you need to know that there are things that will remain in the past. Also, the new system of Guild Wars does not only apply to you; it applies to all of us. Have you ever questioned, how come no one else has the same affection as you? Is it all because of "luck"?

P.S: Don't use "Casual Player" as a reason to your arguement.
"Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange." -Full Metal Alchemist

Cost of what items? Did 15k armor go down to 2k armor to match us going to 1/8th the loot we were getting? Did cap sigs go down to 125 gold? Did skills go to 125 gold? How about materials? OK they went down...ecto went from 11k to 6k but that is far from the 1/8th that my loot went down. please revert loot scale a-net.

Loot scalling was put inplace as an economic check against farming.

It is working and people are still getting rare drops and building up vast sums of money.

The time it takes to farm money has increased, but the cost of almost everything has also decreased.

As far as I know there is no set limit on the number of rare drops in GW as a whole, that means that since the very first Crystaline Sword drop some 30+ months ago the number of Crystaline Swords has steadily increased, with a very very very small number being lost to salvage or sold to merchants by those not familiar with what they had. That has caused the price of these items to fall, though the number of 'Perfect' Crystalines is still rather small the skin in general has moved from the rare catagory into the uncomon.

The same can be said for almost every item in GW, ecto and crafting materials included.

Aside from a very short list of exceptions, solo UW/Droks Forge runs/ect, time has always been a factor in making money. It does not come quickly and you have to keep your spending to an absolute minamum.

36k approximately (cos i forgot how much i had to begin with) 18 hours give or take in normal mode (i could be wrong but its an approximately), in party of 8 (4 henchs 3 heros) I was remembering the time it says you have been playing 6 hours when i log out, in the last 2 sorry 3 days,during those 6 hours half the time I was afk. I don't buy keys of picks and there were around 5 gold weapon drops , unfortunately one of them is a composite short gold bow non-max mod that drop from the murakai chest O.o come on lady murakai chest...

this bow to be exact, I ID the thing, has a +29 hp

I think it's a complete failure if it was added to deter bots. Bergen Bot Springs is loaded with bots who must be earning well otherwise their controller wouldn't bother using them. We all know that gold-selling sites still operate and that people do use them so has loot-scaling actually changed anything? The only thing affected is the casual player's income whilst playing normally through missions and questing.

There's no point in casting up another tread about bots because Anet's decision to apply loot-scaling must mean that they can no longer be bothered seeking out bots and banning them or they do not want to use time and resources doing so.

I've seen the same spambots in Kamadan selling 7 unidentified rares for 4.5k for months. They're selling the Dead Bows from Bergen to feed people's excessive grind-titles [another poor decision] and are not being dealt with.

Is it now acceptable to use bots?

Except for the most important thing - skills.

Just so that we don't the the wrong impression:

(the boy is lvl 16 - at the desert)
Everything that can be borrowed - runes, insignias, weapons is from my older chars. He is using salvage/id kits of my older characters (that are bought with the help of the monastery thingies you get for completing quests - they are passed on by my older character).
Armour was bought (with the help of) my storage money and storage materials. He only bought Ascalon armour - then waited till Kaineng to get himself some new clothes.
Running around with a full party team.
No skills were bought.
Merch everything - unless it can be salvaged into materials which are then merched.
No free chest visits yet.

where were you at upier? i want to avoid that place. but for your info, Hard mode wasn't kind to me when I solo farm using the very nice ele build. I can't find that thread. but ewe!

normal mode questing and collecting loot is good, and that's what i have been doing except saturday and sunday I was skill capping with my survivor character - bleh, luckily still not dead yet.

People can say the prices of items have dropped, but the prices of the elite armors are still at the same lvl as they ever were. I created a new char in pre-sear, and even there was Lootscaling WTF? (I wasn't there to farm, but crouding a party and taking it down with firestorm, only to find out none of them drop anything is a bit dissapointing).

The nerfbat is reigning much to hard @ Anet. Lootscaling, 40 armor lvl cap, aoe not dropping anything. They say you can play the game how you want to, but in reality they just want you to grind for titles and that's it.

That's Prophecies.
Seriously - that's my new character going from Pre to the Desert. Doing missions, quests along the way. Playing the game normally.
It best shows through this:

Fighting my way from ToA to Fishermans - I ended up with 4 white drops and some gold.
The only good thing is that I have a bunch of characters from my hardcore playing times and that they can visit the free chests to make some money.

I'm unclear on how lootscaling is preventing you from effectively soloing...

You shouldn't isolate the contents with a fixed cost as part of the issue of loot scaling. We all know, no matter what happens to the economy, they will remain the same cost. As for the record, ectos are not the only thing that has met a decrease in price. There are runes, dyes, and weapons that have also met a decrease in price. For example, superior vigor was once 60k a piece, now it's only 14k. Black dye was once 14k, now 6k. There were weapons that are over 100k+ectos, and now they are only 10k.

lol 17 hours ! i can lvl up to 20 in 6 hours max armour and weapons :P

In saying ' preventing soloing ' it doesnt, but if you said ' prevented you from get as good rewards as before ' then that would be correct.
If your outside a town killing stuff on your own you still not see as many non-cash/quest item drops, so if your on your own or if your with a party of 8 your meant to get the same amount of reward-> Good theory but doesnt work.

Basically its highley unlikely it will be changed, buy a time machine and play the game 2 years ago when gold was soooo easy to get but noone thought about getting it . If not suck it up and realise you dont need 15k armor or fow armor and just play the game to do what you enjoy, if you enjoy solo farming fine they havent stopped you from doing that.

I personnaly would like it to get changed back but it wont affect me too much, it will affect the 99% player population that are all bots (ok exageratted but you get the idea).

WOW, thats not the point hes making. Read the post first (PS it can be done in 3 hours or less probably so dont try to brag about stuff that doesnt matter).

get a grip on reality son.

unless you think there is a great big conspiracy the lead programmers/devs have posted the facts.

1. it is a sliding scale so that ON AVERAGE a single person will still get 2 X the full 1/8 party share by yourself.

that is 1/4 of the gold/common stuff not your whiney wrong 1/8 you keep tossing out.

EXEMPTIONS OF ALL THE HIGH VALUE DROPS SO YOU GET 8/8 OF THE BEST STUFF

2. COST OF ITEMS

you were not here early enough to have the cost of runes equal or exceed the cost of that armor.

superior absorb .........100 K
superior vigor............75 K
minor runes 5 K to 15 K depending

now they are 100 G to at most a few k except for the sup vigor which was a budget busting 12 k when i checked last

BALANCE YOUR RUNE SAVINGS INTO THAT COST AND SUDDENLY THAT 15K IS A GENUINE BARGAIN

sigils for your hall at least 70 K and up depending on demand

the skills are not i have to pokemon have them all and i mean now as they can be gotten as you actually need one