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.

Technically you can run 2 copies at once (there is a guide on the technical forums of this very site). Don't ask me how, I'm no programer.


And @ the guy who said the supply of anything hasn't gone up... you clearly haven't been playing the game for that long. A 15^50 anything (as long as it wasn't a crafter skin) used to sell for 100k easily. The Yakslapper used to sell for over 120k. Stuff used to be WAY rarer and more valuable. NF has killed the rarity of items. If you don't believe me, talk to anybody who remembers the "good old days."

Sold a 15>50 Req. 9 Fellblade for 4k the other day. I've seen the guy trying to sell it for 100k +10 ectos 4 days in a row now.

*Sigh*...I miss them days.

How exactly is this a bad thing? Players can get things they never could afford before. Much better for the community as a whole.

I was saying that after the update the supply of things has gone down.

You fail at basic economics.

Quotes aren't verbatim, just the general arguements

"Loot scaling doesn't hurt bots, since they just make more bots"

If it was possible to create infinite bots, it would have already been done to drive down operating costs. Bots require human overseers, stolen accounts, computer processing time, etc. etc.

"I can't make as much on trading, based on guru prices"

Supply of all items has increased, thanks to everyone playing the game normally and keeping their items for selling. However, the flood of new players who need such things has dropped. When supply increases and demand decreases, prices go down. Also, guru prices haven't been updated in a LONG time. I sell almost everything in the 1-10k range now, with rarer items going up to 20kish.

"Botting companies don't care about the nerf, they have plenty of money saved up anyway."

If this was true, they don't even need bots anymore. Since I still see bots ingame, I'm pretty sure this is false.

"There's no reason to play the game without farming"

You can still farm, but you have to rely more on selling drops and materials. Have you gotten every title in the game? Beat the game on hard mode? Won first place in the GWWC? I'm pretty sure there's other stuff in the game than just the main missions and farming.

"Chest running makes money too, nerf that"

Yes, but chest running makes money by selling good stuff to other players. Since rare drops are exempt from loot scaling, you can still make money this way.

"New players are screwed since they can't make money"

On the contrary, gold sinks do exist in this game. If you haven't noticed, prices have been dropping (you whined about this when you said you couldn't sell things at the old prices). As a result, players are less likely to even have to farm at all, and are able to buy basic equipment with whatever cash they have laying around.

"More people will bot now"

No, the deterrent to botting was not how much money you wanted. The deterrent to botting is that you must first have the technological know-how to make a bot army, and second, that you be willing to risk your account being banned. Most people aren't. If you asked any player whether they wanted instant money, I'm pretty sure everyone would say yes.

"The companies haven't gone out of business, so the change has failed"

No, but they have had to increase prices. As prices increase, less people are willing to buy money, for the same reason that more people are willing to buy honda civics than are willing to buy lamborginis.

I might be wrong but since the Loot scale nerf, Ive had NO I repeat NO problems buying anything in the game including SUP Runes of any kind.

SO it seems to me my money is worth more now than it what it was before.

For example I can go to Kamadan find a nice weapon skin and buy it cheap. Add mods on it cheap.. buy lessor vigors for all of my HERO's cheap.

Whats the issue here?

Because all the useless rubbish like weapons skins went down in price, but the things that people actually need like skills are suddenly a whole lot more expensive.

if youre playing gw to collect "rare" items, youre probably playing the wrong game.

with the introduction of inscribable weapons, the only real "rare" items that collectors covet now are the asian minis. unfortunately, those minis cant be farmed. the days of 100k+1750ectos items are long gone. my clientele list of high-end buyers has gone by the way side as well.

anet wants to keep the majority happy [ie. casual gamers] and i think that theyve succeeded in that. you can now buy almost any skin with decent stats in the game for under 50k.

if loot scaling has caused major deflation of the economy, i dont understand why items with fixed prices [ie. armor, weaponsmith items, skill prices, etc.] have stayed the same. shouldnt the prices on those items be dropped as well?

Put a rare and random Mursaat monk boss outside Altrumm and Bergan.

Give monsters in known "botspots" better skills (can i choose some?).

Place monster spawn close to the door so that bots get spiked before they have chance to throw up a protective spirit.

Put a nice fat Oakheart in the area with a Natures Renewal. Those trees do like them don't they?

Investigate everyone with 800k+ on their account.

Remove the 55 icon.

Reduce the health deduction on superior and major runes.

Delete all gold and items from the account of anyone doing 100 solo runs in a day.

Ban anyone who hasn't logged off for 48 hours.

Investigate people exchanging massive sums of gold on a regular basis.

Change the currency in Guild Wars and do a gold sweep.

Ban player to player trading and dropping of items/gold.

Taxes! The more money you have, the more you pay. Make it undesireable to be wealthy!

Pay a fee for traveling alone.

Pay a fee of gold when you travel alone and make it climb with each new instance.

As previously mentioned, remove the signposts in towns/outposts and replace with signs created from the rocks etc that can't be clicked on. Adds realism too.

Randomise spawns. A program can't follow something that can't be followed.

Place new creatures in botspots - Fallen Heroes with Echo+Debilitating shot.

Dummy spirits that take no damage but still attack. Using /kneel will call down the gods to remove the incarnation. A bot would carry on attacking it and die.

Some of those above sound extreme and probably very likely improbable that they might probably not be doable maybe.
There are so many things that CAN be done but it makes me sad that Anet chose a method that harms genuine players who do like killing stuff alone but who must now forfeit that sense of adventure and accomplishment.

Also, don't buy Unidentified golds from people with gibberish names. 99% of them are gold farmers who will recycle that gold into Yen and further hurt this game.
Find yourself a trade partner who you can trust and do regular deals with.

My vote - get rid of loot scaling because i've never seen this many bots before.
Make it harder for the genuine players and they may seek other ways to get wealth.

I have played this game for 19 months and the only time I ever farmed was the Urgoz spirit farm build, just to see if it was as easy as I had heard (and it was!). I've made plenty of money just playing through the game. Granted, I don't have 15k armor, but I do have lucky 2 (which costs what, 160k?), and 2 skill hunter titles, so I'm not starving for cash. I'm still not farming and I could care less to engage in such a boring activity.

On the other side of the coin, since selling golds and greens for 3k-5k is hardly worth the effort, people would rather just farm and merch more golds than try and sell loot to other players, which is a bit counter-intuitive to the idea of using loot scaling to force players to rely on trading with other players to make money.

yes they could do all that or 1 very simple thing. remove loot scalling.

demands for golds increased everytime anet nerf farming stuff
i remember the " old days " when gw golds are cheap and no one wanna buy them
thanks anet for making game golds companies rich
* if you all think only idiots will buy game golds , theres bunch of them outside

So you are suggesting everyone that gives stuff away for free should get banned?

wow that's gonna make the game so much better /SARCASM


The market on eu servers is a fluke..
Prices are frickin low, but that's not even my main concern, My main concern is the current state of the sellers and buyers.
Most buyers will try to lower price for anything you sell (even if it's already very low) just to see if they can get it cheap
and Sellers will drive above the regular price, how are you supposed to trade like that?

I've had some people that just respond to your pricerange and haggle or just keep the price as it is, nothing wrong with that.
But dropping a 80k price down to 40k is not haggling and now it seems almost 75% of anyone who is intrested does that trick.

And i've actually seen buyers saying "no no the prices went up theyre worth 7k now" instead of the 5k i have been buying em for over a month.

One consideration that should be made is that Bot's don't care about time. So what if Drops happen 1/8th less than they used to? That just means they have to farm 8 times longer. When you're a normal person, you get frustrated after 15 minutes (3 minutes if you suffer from ADD ) of farming. When it's a bot, a computer will play for weeks, heck, they can play for years without getting bored, stopping periodically for the master to get his gold. As a way to stop bots and E-bay sales of gold, it's only made it so that E-bay gold is more valuable, so they can charge more for the same amount of gold than before; I.E. it was actually a good thing for botters...

I was approached by a fellow in Kamadan int. 1 this evening while helping a friend start out. I complimented him saying that I was impressed by his mini roller bettle and that he has used an everlasting roller beetle tonic. So he harrased me 3 times with a trade window, and finally I accepted becuase he said he wanted to give me something. Okay, I thought, perhaps he wanted to give me something for complimenting him, perhaps a bettle tonic becuase I had complimented him on that. He filled it from left to right a with a collection of mini pets, all of them rare, including a Mini Rollerbettle, A Panda, a Mini Ataxe, and several others, all of them in the 100K+xx range. Oh, and a roller bettle tonic (and no, I didn't get any sort of gift from him, nor did i buy or recieve anything)

Perhaps people with these kinds of items should be investigated as well for botting, I would love to see the farming build this guy had if he had amassed all of those itesm out of just playing the game himself, no bots or E-bay buying, especially after loot scaling. Here's an idea, track the ultra rare items, see where they end up... After Loot scaling, that kind of money doesn't just float around.

Originally Posted by HawkofStorms
And @ the guy who said the supply of anything hasn't gone up... you clearly haven't been playing the game for that long. A 15^50 anything (as long as it wasn't a crafter skin) used to sell for 100k easily. The Yakslapper used to sell for over 120k. Stuff used to be WAY rarer and more valuable. NF has killed the rarity of items. If you don't believe me, talk to anybody who remembers the "good old days."

QFT the loot scaling sucks badly, for example back in the day if needed materials for whatever, you could for example farm the trolls for half an hour and have a reasonable cache of material drops nothing outrageous, the odd black dye and maybe a couple of golds, but for me this was a good source of basic material wealth to be used for crafting or selling, now however you can clear the cave and out of twenty or so you will get maybe three or four white raven staffs.
Luckily i have had time to perfect all my characters and they dont need anything , but the newer players cannot benefit from the loot scaling as i and many other players did, and that is a shame, and yeah i remember the good old days Brohns Staff 80k.
The pre-nerf Rockmolder 100k+
happy days, i enjoyed the game more back then because if you wanted something 'elite' or super rare you had to go and work for it, now it seems that, everyone must be able to access everything for little or no effort, well ok but for me that takes all achievement out of the game ,after beating all campaigns several times there is not much of a story line to follow , so the only challenge i get now is to solo farm HM and that is rapidly getting boring to be honest.
But i guess that is what happens after playing this game intensely for over nineteen months or so.

I can't even sell a popular green for 80% of what it's worth on Guru

That is because demand is down of these items and supply is up while simultaneously the demand is up and supply down for gold. Hence, the same item trades for less gold now. That's at the core of a free market economy.

And I think that was the goal of the loot-scaling update. It worked.

i remember the " old days " when gw golds are cheap and no one wanna buy them

Back in these old days a Superior Vigor went for >60K and black dye for >15k. No prices have been reduced and that is a good thing, at least for the casual player who's just playing the game.

Wouldn't it be easier to catch and ban the bots by looking into eBay more. Maybe ANet can hire e-detectives (lol) to buy gold on eBay and then when those peeps go to hand the gold over, they get nabbed...

Only an idea. Introducing loot scaling though is one of Anet's unlogical updates. They hurt most of the community because of a few people who go around breaking the rules...

You are BAD at economics.

Kamadan dis 1.


Being a casual player, I can't buy sh!t in this game. Prices might've dropped an ecto or 2, but they're still 100K and more. This update messed up the game for casual players wanting to play the game normal, and not on 'poor mode'.

The only thing the loot scaling did, was make the poor people more poor, the rich people more rich, and make the game VERY bot-friendly.

They should just remove the loot scaling, or give us fitting rewards. (Come on, a quest taking 2 hours (which is about all the time I can invest in gaming per day) gives 300 gold as reward?

But no, Arenanet will keep ignoring the players who aren't blindly loyal, and will keep nerfing any way of making cash quick into the ground. Why? I think A-Net is VERY afraid of losing people because they are bored. I think it is believed that when one becomes 'rich', he won't be playing the game anymore.

Well know what? Playing the game WITHOUT cash is WAYYYY more boring. Cause what's to do in the game without cash? Nothing.

I don't think there is a monthly reset. My monk has not opened a single treasure in well over 2 months now but she still can't open any of them. My ranger and warrior have successfully opened treasures for their 3rd time. Go figure.