Loot Scale: A Valid Arguement

The team over at Anet may have thought that they solved a problem when they brought loot scale to the game. They thought by reducing all drops to 1/8th of what they normally are would reduce gold farming by bots and the like, however this is completely not true.

These bots still farm, and are doing it on a larger basis just to make up for their losses. The loot scale change has done nothing but destroy the economy. Imagine how the world would be if the government decided that from now on, everyone would be making 1/8th of what they normally do and most things would still cost the same. Not only has this hurt players, it has hurt the economy.

Trading is dead and we can face it. No one will buy an item for what it is worth nowadays. I've been playing GW since the day it came out and have never had problems selling my items, like I do today. I can't even sell a popular green for 80% of what it's worth on Guru. It may just be me. Maybe I'm a bad trader, but I don't think that is the case.

Who thought of the idea that 1/8th drops would hurt bots? It hurts people like you and me. If anything, the less drops could help the botting companies because of the gold they already have in storage. If they had 20,000,000 gold, and normally charged $20 for 100k and could now charge $50 for 100k, who's making out?

Of course, there is another argument. The lower drops urges people to play through the game and not farm. Well that could be a valid point, however I have already beat the campaigns and get quite sick of playing through the game again. I enjoy finding a nice spot to farm, trying to find a build that can solo something. But when the drops are as low as they are, I can't farm because I lack motivation.

There is still other ways to make money, but farming was one the most enjoyable ones for me. If you nerf farming, why not just nerf everything? I mean, people are making big profits chest running, will that ever be stopped? We might as well nerf everything that generates a profit.

Some people will tell you that nerfing farming makes the game more noob friendly. Oh really? By noob friendly you mean frustrate the new player population? If I just bought the game, I would be pretty upset to find out that I can only make 1/8th of what people used to make. This gives long-time players an advantage because of their already established wealth, which is now worth about 8 times more.

Loot scale prompts more people to bot. Don't believe me? Just run over to Bergen Hot Springs and take a look at the new bot population. Hell, I've even wished I could do it. Why? Because I can't stand the fact that I am making so much less money now then ever. If you decrease loot, that means that you will have to increase runs. So, Loot*Runs=Profit. Since we can't increase the amount of loot we receive, we increase the amount of runs. And some people are not content with doing more work to receive a profit, so they turn to bots.

Did loot scaling deter big time botting companies? Did you see any of the Websites close down bearing the phrase "Sorry guys, loot scale came into effect so we are just going to shut down". I didn't think so. If anything, they are botting more, as I've stated previously. Not only does this make the big guys bot more, it makes regular players bot because they want to get in on the money.

Want to stop inflation created by botting companies? Put in more gold sinks, I don't think it could be put simpler that that. Gold sinks are an effective way to get rid of a lot of the excess money generated by gold farming bots.

All in all, I just don't believe that the general GW community should be punished for what players who break the rules are doing. If Anet really wants to stop the botters then they should probably BAN THEM.

Thanks for reading.

I'm a total noob so if I'm off the mark, then sorry for being blunt.
but...

Guild Wars money isn't even real money; so why does it matter what something costs?

You fail at economics. The supply of items have gone up and to make sure one can sell their goods in a timely manner, the smart ones have started to lower prices. Also the buyers know the supply is up so they are less willing to fork over money.

To be honest, the whole drop system is getting to the point to be BS imo. People are getting rich either because they had a lucky drop or now how to farm XYZ.

I'm almost getting to the point where I think anet should indroduce playercrafting and greatly change the current system. Perhaps by making mats resources in the world that you have to harvest... rarer mats would be in harder to get to places or you have to make them yourself.

Gold sinks will make it worse... because people will buy more gold online to pay for the gold sinks and thus more bots will come.

Theres so many diffrent soultions to the problems of the bots.. and many people have had great ideas on how to stop it.. like "bot traps" or part of gw that looks for repeat zones of the same area 100 times a day.. but the best bet I've heard for now.. is just to remove outpost signs... and other clickible things in the outpost.

or add a npc that walks around the outpost that blocks bots.

Loot scale sucks, but I think its here to stay. Im used to it now.. its just funny that kanaxi's edge is 15k now.. thats what I laugh about most.

Is this good for the economy? By the way, I don't believe the supply of any item has gone up except for the items that were exempt from loot scaling.

There's no justification or validation for loot scaling except that Anet have the right, as stated in the EULA, to amend their services at their lesiure.

When you say that gold sinks are an effective way of removing gold from the game, that is correct, but at the same time it also gives people reason to purchase gold. Any gold sink has to be attractive, such as 15k or Obsidian armour sets, and we should want to buy them for the 'sinking' to work. This however only gives gold-sellers more custom by letting people have their shiny new armour set without doing the work for it.

The reason for loot scaling is that Anet were in a losing battle with bots so instead of trying to screw over bots, they screw over the entire farming community and be done with it.

If bots are still rampant, is it fair to assume that loot scaling has failed? Revert the system then please.

Before I explain why I bolded that one particular line above, let me just state that I also hate the loot scaling, and the falling prices of everything...

The problem with that particular statement above is that you assume Guru prices have any bearing on prices that people actually pay in-game. Guru doesnt set prices. In truth, sellers dont even set prices on items. They may set a price that they will sell an item for, but ultimately, the price that a buyer is willing to pay for an item is determined by the buyer.

kill everyone in rl with a ton of disposable income. botting problem solved.

This is true, and I probably should not have worded my statement as I did. However, if no one is willing to buy things then the economy truly is flawed.

Good post with great points made. I guess it all depends on how you look at it , I perfected all my characters months ago during the factions period and I only ever have to buy a new skill every now and then which isnt a problem. But on the other hand my friend who just bought a new account (he played before but got rid of his account nearly 2 years ago) well hes having a very hard time with the game. He bought all 3 campaigns and wants 8 perfected characters , decent set ups and armor ready for every situation but its hard for him. I personnaly made enough money from running on guru months ago , I tryed again a few weeks back just for kicks but got little custom which could be because people dont want to pay alot of stuff anymore , well back on point.

My friends is having a hard time with it , hes tryed farming with little succses , hes tryed forge running which makes him about 5k every 20-25 minutes depending on how many customers he cant get/ if he gets scammed. If im not perfecting my guys more I take my rit and go farm outside bergen on HM , I find it fun but if I did it as an income I wouldnt bother , I get roughly 2 golds a run which both suck bad all of the time and useless drops all round.

I would personnaly get anet to remove the farm code but they have to look at it two ways but right now all I see is alot of angry people annoyed that they have to work hard to buy skills and even the forge armor which a few months ago would take 5 minutes to get the gold for.

My temporary soulution to you all? Do the treasure chests In elona , Im planning on putting all my guys through nightfall and will do all the chests ,if you do all 12 you make about 25k solid gold and 12 rare drops , some will be merch food but you may get some perfect equipment. If you manage to get 8 guys through thats 200k plus 96 rares which should be profitable. Then I belive its a monthly reset and you can do them again.

`Good luck with it. =)

it did reduce how much gold the farmers can produce.

before loot scaleing, every solo run produced 8 times as much merch loot then a casual player playing the game normal in full groups could produce for himself. lets say the farmer has a computer that is capible of runing 8 bots on one computer...

before loot scaleing the normal player earns 100 gold from clearing an area and merching his drops - playing through with a group.... the farmer earned 800 gold for each of his bots, or 6,400 from all 8 of his bots -- efectively makeing that one computers capibilities 64 times more then what the normal player can do.

after loot scaleing, each bot can only pull out 100g from the same are... so the same farmer can only pull out 800 gold in total from all his bots - that's only 8 times as much loot as the normal player can make.

as shown, loot scaleing has brought down the bot farmers intake from 64 times more then the average player, down to 8 times the normal player.

the only true defense from gold farmers createing tons of in game gold and screwing up the economy , is for people to not pay real money for gold.. other then that, the next best thing is to reduce how much gold they can generate.

Your argument is flawed. You're saying that a bot earns more gold then a player does from doing the same exact run.

Honestly, loot scaling has made the game miserable to play. Unfortunately, ANet has reverted no changes to the game that I can think of.

The "economy" is only a by-product of Guild Wars, not the focus. I'll spare you my eleventh rendition of "why you don't NEED to pay for anything you NEED in Guild Wars," but suffice to say that the economy is as healthy as its ever been.

Supply and Demand still exists, so you will still see an economy. Supply has increased (as per the notes on drop rates related to Hard Mode and what not), demand has not (due to smaller pools of resources amongst the majority of players.) Prices will come down to match it, it's a law of human nature and economics, trust me Guild Wars isn't an exception.

You're seeing it with black dye, runes, insignias and Ectos.

Once the buyers and sellers reach an agreement, you will see trading back to where it's been. Does that mean everything "expensive" will be 100k + XX ecto? Well, first of all probably not, because by now most people will switch to lockpicks, hopefully. For all we know, 80k might be the new "100k + XX" (yeah, we can dream.)

Yes it is good for the economy and that's why prices are going down on those items. They were exempt so they still drop for soloers on a regular basis to keep the economy from completely stagnating.

[QUOTE]8 controlled characters/bots on one computer?

tell us how sherlock

The loot scale update was one of the better updates. Everything at the non-static traders has gone down and i can now afford a few more skills with the savings.

I find the game is more fun now then before because i can afford more skills while also outfitting my heroes.

[QUOTE=Loviatar]botters arn't actually running the game, they have a program that connects to the games data base and just sends the comands back and forth with A-nets servers... hence they have multiple copies of the program runnning, depending on their computers abilities. i figured 8 instinces of the game running to keep the comparison in scale.

One snag, though:

All gold in the game is only worth as much as the items int the game. You don't need to increase runs. The gold you have and earn will increase in value.

unless you use bot's to farm gold to sell to people on E-bay for real money -- which is what the people running all the bots are doing.