Loot Scale: A Valid Arguement

I agree. The loot scaling havent stopped bots and I never was hurted by bots.(Yea I dont care if there are bots. Really how come bots hurted you. Bots only take fool peoples real money for gold) Bots dont need do be brought back cause there still alive. The normal loot system is. Cause there still alive

if you play with a full group you get the exact share you did before so no change.

if you solo according to the devs it is a sliding scale not a linear scale
and solo farmer gets 2 X normal instead of 8 X normal

PLUS ALL THE GOOD STUFF IS EXEMPT GIVING 8 X ALL THE GOOD DROPS JUST LIKE BEFORE.

Anet has the logs which will show that the hard core high end farmer is not a significant market share and is making things more easy for the casual player not mr hard core farmer

I dont damn care about good stuff. Cause 1 gold sword isnt worth 10k worth white items. And I still defend my idea that bots werent damaging other then fool people also dont care about eula so I think worst punishement for gold buyers are making them buy more money and let them just use real money. Oh btw have you ever, EVER heard about someone that tried to get money with full party. YOU CANT. Cause simply there is not any. No one earns gold now. Not everyone including casuals earn more gold. Everyone gets less gold. So how to get 75k for 15k armor. How to get 120 ecto/shard for fow. Its impossible to see a casual player to earn fow. All fow armored people got it by hard core farm before loot nerf or with ebay.

CAN YOU TELL ME HOW EXACTLY THIS WAS FOR BENEFIT OF CASUAL PLAYERS?

High end prices might be dropped. But how can a casual guy can earn 5-00k with casual playing? The only thing damaged a lot is farming. The only group damaged a lot are casual FARMERS. The only group plaily damaged are HARD FARMERS.

ANET SHOULD HAVE RAISED DROPS IN HM THEN NM. AND A FULL PARTY MIGHT GOT 8TIMES MORE THEN THEY GET. NOT NM IS TOTALLY NOTHING AND HM IS EVEN LESS THEN OLD MODE. SOLOERS GET 2/8 OF DROPS.

Why does everyone insist that the only possibility to get gold is by farming (solo) somehow? Especially those who complain how much grind farming is. I don't farm. (Tend to say: "If I wanted to do farming in a game, I'd play Harvest Moon." No offense to Harvest Moon.) I play with full groups (usually 2-4 players and filled up with heroes), I play quests, missions, at the moment hard mode, mostly (missions and vanquishing). Still, the money count on my storage rises and rises. Sure, not enough to get a set of 15k every month (well, maybe it even would, if I wouldn't buy lockpicks) but I can't see where those money shortages are supposed to be.

I'm not rich, but I can afford everything I need and want, and a bit more.
Okay, I'm careful with expenses. I use quest reward items (Kournan Coins, Luxon Totems, that kind of thing) to get Salvage and Identify (and Trade Contracts for Rubies and Sapphires). I play all my core characters from Prophecies, because there are soo many free skills as quest rewards. I use the Hero Skill Trainers to get every skill I possibly can for free.

I live in something I'd call abundance, by normal playing (opposed to (solo-)farming), by a bit of patience and by being informed of what ways there are to get some of the "necessities" cheaper.
But that's just me... and, yeah, well, like... all of my guildmates and friends who play GW. Except... yeah, except one or two, maybe.

All I got to say is lol

I'm just grateful that I purchased all my "luxuries" before loot-scaling messed things up. I have all I need and my only spending at the moment is cap signets..

About bots.. well take away the signposts, put foes with anti-55 skills in "bot hot spots" and get rid of loot-scaling.

Ya, its looks like this...

Well there is point of doing things. Vanquising is for title. Farming is for gold. As I said getting gold from full party things is like buying 6pack of beer for 50g nut present. As in same time yuou can get tons of nuts from nut tree. You get enought gold for 15k armor in a month with totally saving. I can get 4-5 in the time before scale

Same here and we regularly help out friends and guildies and, call it karma, we usually get the good drops then. One black dye is worth more then 2 hours of mindless farming usually. We helped a friend cap some elites on the weekend and between us we got 4 greens from 12 bosses.

Oh, I can farm, I've built up an impressive array of greens over time but I just find it boring as all hell. Loot scaling doesnt bother me just as the old anti-farm code never bothered me, I was never able to trigger it anyway.

I'm sure for some this is a disaster but I suspect the majority of players couldnt care less and judging from the amount of trade spam I see and the number displayed there (100+ tomes anyone?) farming is alive and well.

1) In general, prices are down, runes are cheaper, items are cheaper.
2) Income has remained the same.

=> Casual players find it easier to buy their equipment and skills.

ad 2. Casual players do not build invincimonks for the sole purpose of solo farming. Casual players rarely, if ever, solo farm at all, since casual players normally adventure in full sized parties and as has been stated, loot scaling does not affect those.

Never, the casual player never saw 5000k, doesn't need it either. A full armor set costs 5K, add 3k for runes and 2k for dyes, that's ... 10k. Add 5k for a weapon, 5k for mods and your setup for 20k total.


Yes, I believe solo-farming was hurt. I am sorry the honest and casual solo farmer like your self got hurt by this change. Personally I feel ANet should have tried other methods to counter the farming with bots.

Farming with bots was only part of the problem.
As I said before, the number of human casual farmers far exceeds the number of bots. The reason for this assumption: a long time the only 'valid' argument on various forums when people were complaining about high prices was: "STFU and go farm".
A large part of the gold generated by those players will remain in the game, while bot-farmers that e-bay their gold need to sell it first, before their account is closed.
This is also mentioned in the notes on the 20 April 2007 Dev Update, though a bit hidden.

Quick quote:
" Thus, our goal is that solo farmers can still earn as much money as they did before, but they'll have to earn it in different ways. Instead of looking for things to sell to merchants, solo farmers should now be looking for things to sell to traders or other players. ................
Here's how we've provided a new way for advanced players to make as much money as they did before: by introducing new items which will have a high demand from other players and thus high trade value, and then by making those items completely unaffected by loot scaling, so that solo farmers still have very effective ways to make a lot of money, but so that they make their money without hurting the game's economy. "

Seems most players have not found those new items yet, because they focus on their old way of farming....

is farming code still around? the one that decreases loot when u repeatedly zone in and out of an area (ie. like when you're farming).

because i swear, i was farming around gates of kryta with VwK and during my first run i got lots of purples and blues, and now i rarely get a blue.

i've gotten to the point where i can deal with loot scaling, instead of 10 hours of farming, i now do 100hrs. oh well.

but loot scaling + farming code is crippling man.

ps. a couple of guildies BOUGHT gold from the net.

this is ridiculous...loot scaling actually MADE them buy gold off of the net.

they're going after UAS across 10 character professions, for that u need like 2900 plat on elites alone.

with the runs i do, i usually make 2k an hour. and seriously, i dont blame em.

i just know gold-greed is gonna be at an all time high when the hall of monuments is gonna come out. im pretty sure there will be people tempted to unlock every monument at the max level, UAS, all ascended armors, all greens etc. and those monuments will be an enormous gold sink, people are gonna use up money faster than they can be bothered to make it, and eventually, they'll do what my guildies did.

i also did a quick google search on major guildwars gold sellers, and from what i can see, they dont seem to be hindered at all. hell, they probably have more business.

I don't really like the loot scaling either. I don't farm much, just when I need a quick boost of gold for skill capping or new armor for a new character. I used to try ettin farming to sell off runes but we know how that went. Then I went to vermin cuz its quick and easy and could get the Shreadder's Talons to make a quick 1-2k. Now that is pretty much useless as well.

To me, farming is a bore but you just don't make enough gold from regular questing and gameplay. At least not at a decent enough pace to notice it. I'm not shooting for titles or anything either. Someone that is going for every max title on 10 characters can spend 5,000 hours farming for all I care cuz that is an insane amount of gold that nobody really "needs". BUT, with the loot scaling casual farming is shot. This just makes things harder on us non-hardcore farmers that are just trying to buy things we need without spending tons of extra hours just farming. There has to be a better way to get rid of bots. This hasn't worked anyway because I see more bots now than ever.

I can see both points to the argument. My day-to-day income used to be roughly 30k, essentially from 2 hours of playing, which is around what I play a day. This meants a new suit of 15k every week, give or take. Things have changed, this is a given.

The market is very askew these days, which admitedlly is unfortunate, but we can't do anything about it. My personal largest complaint is 15k armor hasn't really lessened in price.

I do have a couple of tips for those in serious, legit need of money.

Start doing outside quests - H/H them and you will earn roughly 1-2k a quest in drops. Not great, but whatever.
Just do the campagins a bit - I just started a new warrior, have gotten her from Tyria to the end of NF - total value of drops accumulated exempting golds - 40k.
Finally, and maybe the worst option, Fast Faction Farming.
----> I know it's not an option for many, but, if you can do it, and don't mind the grind, it's basically 4k for 45 min, +10k Kurzick faction. I might get flamed for suggesting this, but...honestly...I am sitting on 500k right now. Where did I get that? I got 400k of it from Fast Faction Farming, it's just that easy. It's a bit of grind, but it's reliable. You should check guru/wiki for articles on it if you want to know more.

The anti-farming code is gone. But if you go and do something after farming and come back you do tend get some good drops on that first run, then back to the crap drops like usual. It's been so long since there wasn't something to hinder farming so I don't remember if that is how it used to be, but that seems to be the way it works now. So what you are saying is instead of running around killing the same groups over and over again you run around killing all the monsters in every area to make your money, along with doing all the missions over again. You say you find farming boring (and it is), that is every bit as boring unless you really want the titles that come with doing all that.

It's good to see more of the 'play normally and you get rich' posts getting debunked. I've always disagreed with those posters. Playing through normally gives you a 'x' amount of skills and gold. If you want more you have to do more than play normally. Farming, grinding, or exploiting an unintended issue is how you get wealthier. Playing quests and missions over and over isn't called farming? You're killing the same things in the same areas over and over and over and over...

Loot scaling didn't really change anything for the casual player who plays normally, except less drops/income. Since the changes there's less income from playing normally, buyer's market means less profits if any at all but that was more about luck of drop or persistance of farming. The list of expenses I concern myself with are:

a) Minor runes, the runes that really count, are kind of the same. Major runes, not much change. Superior runes are the only ones that have dropped in prices and you can debate on whether or not it's a necessity to have maxed out attributes or health.
b) The majority of crafting materials are also kind of the same. Exception being the gem/jewel types, which are used for vanity armors so it helps who?
c) Skill cost and capture signets remain the same.
d) Crafting non-15k max armor was cheapened, but it requires insignia purchases now to fill in the un-insignia'ed slot which used to be included when it was 500g more to craft. This could be a good change or bad depending on price of insignia wanted.
e) Crafting weapons and focuses remain the same.

I wasn't rich before loot scaling and I'm not dead broke after. I never farmed much before and got by fine, most I've had is 130k. Luckily for me I got into the pvp side before loot scale came in. I bought most of the interesting skills I wanted on my pve characters early on otherwise I'd be broke from buying skills. I have never thought of vanity as a necessity so my expenses were always low. Being stingy with your money does help but it really restricts your playstyle.

It's clear loot scaling did not stop bots. It may have slightly hindered some bots, but the strong, adaptable ones will go on and beget more and more like cockroaches. Anet, you're not squashing the pests, you're forcing them to evolve!

P.S. I normally don't do Fast Faction Farming, but on a recent event I decided to try it out. I'm in complete agreement with Snow Bunny, it is a great, reliable way to make money and gain faction. Like farming or grinding it is too monotonous so I'll probably do it again in 6 months.

There isn't an online game out there that "rewards" casual play. The GW devs were kind enough to design a game that "permits" casual play. You can quit at any time and come back. You can take one swing at a mission or the intervening quests whenever you feel like it, burn 30 minutes of your time, and move on to something else without penalty. It's not difficult to reach max level; it's not overly challenging to beat a campaign. In short, all of the negative aspects of playing an online game and not dedicating a significant chunk of your life of it have been removed. The devs deserve kudos for this.

However, as one previous poster prominently noted, a lot of us aren't wired like that. There are quite a few goal-oriented folks that chase those goals in their free time as hard as they chase goals in RL. For some it may even be harder. So the devs created a fair amount of fancy, expensive, ultra-rare stuff to appeal to that crowd and keep them playing (and buying new content).

Now, we all want that stuff, but few can have it. It follows that only the in-game "rich" will hold possession of those items. They may be wealthy in time (pure farmers), resources (botters), skill (those very few that hold HA for hours at a time; runners) or a combination thereof (eg: item resellers - resources in the form of prior in-game wealth to venture and skill at keeping track of the market).

The Guild Wars economy mirrors that of real life financial markets in quite a number of interesting ways. One of its closest similarities is that the market generally functions - it rewards the ability to produce desirable goods (or services, such as Drok's running when it was somewhat more difficult than it is now) with maximum efficiency. It will reward less than maximum efficiency only if sufficient time and energy is inputted to generate comparable rewards. Thus, there are very few get-rich-quick schemes, and most methods of wealth acquisition involve significant investment of personal resources.

If you know how to provide goods or services that most other people do not know how to provide, or if you can do so far more efficiently than others, you get rich. If you do not, you don't. End of story. It's how markets work. Markets don't reward ethical behavior or playing the game "as it was intended to be played". Markets don't care about ethics or principles. Governments (such as the devs at ANet) often do, but governments also frequently fail to fully anticipate the consequences of their attempts at intervention, which leads to the widely-held but still sharply disputed notion that laissez faire economics is the way to go.

However, market failures still DO occur. In GW they typically result from information costs. The poster that commented about the difficulty of trying to sell rare skin Nightfall weapons at their actual time value of production is correct in his complaints. It takes time and effort to spam all of the major trading hubs (over a number of minutes/hours) to find a buyer for high time-cost, lower-demand items. The problem is that the time invested to sell has value, and if it takes too long the would-be seller will merch/severely undercost the item and move on.

The GW marketplace as it stands simply fails to resolve these challenges, which is why we have the repeated requests for an in-game auction house. May happen, but probably won't. Great idea (as reducing information costs would enrich EVERYONE in the economy via a generalized reduction in item prices), but if ANet has been insisting that their time cost for implementation is too high for a couple of years now, we're unlikely to see it happen.

Loot scaling complaints:

There exist two types of tangible goods in the GW world - cash (gold/plat) and stuff that you can exchange gold/plat for. (Runes, items, rare crafting materials, etc.) Loot scaling decreased the supply of the former and increased the supply of the latter (via HM farmers). Thus the general effects of loot scaling have been that which one should have predicted when it came out (after the first patch):

1) THE key point: the decrease in ability to farm cash meant that botters (who represent a significant proportion of the supply in the economy) switched over to farming ectos or gold items and then selling those farmed goods for gold/plat. This led to a significant revaluation of cash itself (which became MUCH more valuable than before). Further, it led to the resultant devaluation of ectoplasms, those gold items which can still be farmed via PvE botting methods, and the other items exempt from loot scaling (greens, dye, and so forth).

I got burned on ectoplasm too (I had about 200 at the time). I wasn't playing due to a semester end in grad school. I choose to blame it on that, but you and I both know deep down that I got burned due to stupidity. After all, I DID read the update post, know what was coming, and fail to deal with it.

2) Hard Mode led to a massive collapse in the value "low level" items such as Colossal Scimitars which previously would rarely drop at max damage, as it caused the supply to explode.

3) The supply of Tomes was limited at first but increased rapidly; hence a large initial valuation which rapidly declined over time (and was assisted by the increase in the value of gold/plat cash).

5) The value of those items which COULD currently be farmed collapsed, though not with the sort of crash that the Colossal Scimitar market endured. The supply went up, demand remained constant.

5) A few items which cannot be farmed actually increased in value - old req 7 and 8 items that drop much more infrequently (if ever) since Nightfall came out, the HoH-only inscribable skins (a limited set since the devs chose to introduce the Factions elite mission inscribable chests, as well as adding a number of Prophecies rare skins to DoA), and the Asian minipets/beetle . Interestingly, the massive availability of the req 9s (as well as the gradual increase in supply of HoH goodies over time) tended to hold the prices of the req 7/8s and the HoH-onlies fairly constant in terms of their ecto value, where the prices of the minipets skyrocketed.

General resultant upshot of loot scaling:

a) The new paradigm rewards the best farmers that can successfully farm HM. It also closes a significant number of would-be traders out of the market, as the only items worth playing buy low/sell high with are those items which cannot presently be farmed (and thus cost a LOT).
b) Necessities that can only be purchased with gold (cap sigs) became much more expensive.
c) Many fewer buyers/sellers of low and mid-range items. Market collapses on the EXTREMELY high-end items worth pursuing, as generalized item devaluation results in information costs crowding numerous items out of being worth reselling. Also, those information costs result in significant undercosting of those low/midrange items sold on the open market.

Does this harm the "average" player? Probably. Does it hurt the "hardcore" player? Not really. Net result - generalized dissatisfaction which is not understood by "the elite" player.

Were the unintended consequences of the loot scaling drop mechanism healthy for Guild Wars? Probably not. The general signal that the whole situation sends me is that ANet has decided to attempt to carry its current dedicated player base over to the new game and generate a new broad player base for the new game through marketing. I'm of the opinion that this is a rather flawed business model, but that's just one man's opinion. GW2 could fly off the shelves and surprise me. I just don't see it given the sheer number of potential GW2 customers that ANet has managed to antagonize over the last two years.

Thoughts?

Think this is true.

Not true, they cost the same, only solo/small team-farmers have to work longer to buy them.
For example, I need about 100K for my Elonian Elites title and I managed to get that amount in about 1.5 months play. That is on my mesmer, who never farms and it's only his cash (I kept it on the character and not in storage).
And I played with other characters in that time.

I don't understand what you are trying to say here, special the 'information costs'.
Would you be so kind to explain what you are trying to say here?


I don't agree with the 'average player' harm.
I still consider the average player the player that plays in full-sized teams, and not those that solo-farm from time to time. Players in full-sized teams do not suffer from loot scaling.
People that know how to (HM) solo-farm, but don't do that for a living, also have advantages.
Not in cash, but in gold items.
I use those to equip my heroes and sometimes salvage the good upgrades of them to put them on other weapons.

The players that are hurt most are those that were used to burn cash fast (I've seen people that wanted to buy 15K armor each week), or were saving up for something very expensive, like the req 7-8 weapons mentioned before.
Those are not the average players.

That IS harm to the little guy/average player IMO; see below. If such players have to put more time in to afford the same necessities, they have become worse off. The equivalent in RL would be a wage cut or inflation which disproportionately increases the cost of basic necessities - those living at the edges of their means (who are disproportionately those with lower wages) feel it more.

Economics jargon. There is a time/opportunity cost in this game associated with making potential buyers aware that you have an item that they might wish to buy. If that cost becomes sufficiently high relative to the value of the item, the market fails and the item does not get transferred from seller to buyer. Both actors would be better off from the transaction (the seller prefers the cash to the item and the buyer prefers the item to the cash), but the transaction doesn't happen - the definition of market failure.

The information cost is highest when demand is low (fewer buyers = longer time spamming to unload item). An item that takes significant time to produce has intrinsic value, but the inefficient trading system results in many such low demand items being merched, since it isn't worth the seller's time to find a buyer at the market price.

I believe that most players of this game farm *something* periodically. I don't believe most PvE types spend their time farming the Deep or vanquishing Hard Mode, which are about the only ways to accumulate halfway decent drops in full groups. New characters are expensive; where does one come up with the money for one?

Skill acquisition costs money. If you want to put all of the possible elite skills from a primary class on a character, it's going to run 15k-35k depending on the class. Toss in another 40-60k depending on class for tomes (at, say, 500 a pop) to make all of the regular skills available. Then toss in another 5-10k for the various secondary skills one might want. All told you're looking at a good 60-100k to get a character fully ready. Arguably you could skimp here and run total costs of around 25-30k to just get the most viable skills for a class.

Minimum cost for armor's going to be a good 10k or so, including materials.

Weapons are another expensive proposition. Either you're investing time in collector items or you're buying rare inscribables. Either way, you're going to need weapon swaps. Depending on class, to get maximally functional gear you're looking at 20k or so. Making a warrior is vastly more expensive, and making a ranger somewhat more so since weapon req matters bigtime on a ranger.

We're looking at a minimum bill of 60k to set up a new character, and this assumes you don't mind not having a lot of skills, having ugly gear, limited available builds, no gear on heroes, no runes/insignias on your armor and only barebones necessities. This is a pretty significant setup cost just to be able to play to the endgame. It's realistic to suggest that playing through a couple of campaigns will provide that kind of cash...but how many players of this game are really that thrifty?

Honestly, I think you underestimate intractable character setup costs and overestimate the potential for cashflow resulting from playing the game "normally". The cost of doing a good job of equipping one's heroes with gear probably has gone down, true. However, the basic necessities (skills, armor) are comparatively FAR more expensive than they used to be, and the primary method with which to acquire the cash for them (basic farming) is now unavailable to the casual player that doesn't have the wherewithal for hard mode. The upshot is that it's more difficult for new players to get into the game and also more difficult for the majority of the community to accomplish basic objectives.

Ok, understand that one now.
Agree on that point

I'm really not going to agree on that one.
When I started playing GW, there was only Prophecies.
I was playing max-team size and it was hard to get a steady cashflow for my first character. He lived on collectors items and dropped weapons.
My second character did benefit from the collectable drops in storage that my first character did not use. I never farmed in my prophecies period.

Then there was Factions. In Factions, I made gold fast compared to Prophecies. Again with full party size and just playing storyline.
I already adapted to a playing style that each character should make enough gold for maintaining itself through the game.
In that time, I did a little VwK farming on Kephket for the green monk staff and one or two 15K Kurzik armor pieces for my monk.

Then NF came out.
I started a derv and a para there, and by just playing the storyline, questing and collecting every drop, they were both able to get 15K sunspear armor, funded themselfs, though I did use some rare crafting materials from my storage. Again played with full-size groups. They never got to Vabbi in the storyline. This is how 'fast' one made cash.
To give you an idea, when you play all the quests and missions (masters) on starter island, you have made more than enough cash for max armor at the crafter. This is excluding drops.

This way of making gold did NOT change with the introduction of loot scaling.

There is however a few things to mention that seperates me from a starting player.
I started in Prophecies and am very aware of the value of gold, which is rare there compared to Factions and NF.
I check every skill at the trainer before I buy it and if I would use it more than once. If not, I skip it and evaluate again later.
Whenever possible, I make sure to buy only the max 1.5K armor and collect the rest. I use collectors and dropped weapons as long as I cannot afford a better one (just save for it). I only buy what I need (except when I want something like 15K armor or my Elite title, but then it's just a goal and to achieve goals means work).
Older characters support newer ones.
I merch everything I don't need, ID the high-level ones (>50g at merch).
Those are things a starting player might not do and therefore he/she might be burning more gold than needed.

As you can see, there is enough gold in the game for the starting player to accomplish basic objectives (finish the game, get some decent weapons, max armor).
If not, it's the spending that needs attention, not the income

Nope, he didn't say that, you are picturing something in this specific manner to ridicule his argument, which you didn't because it only shows your lack of imagination.

If you do every thing once, every mission once, vanquish every area once, capture every elite once, etc, etc..., you'll have plenty of gold, way more then you actually need and without farming.

Woohoo, from the posters here that complain about their source of income being nerfed I got the impression that they were not living on the edge, or in anyway compare to those with 'lower wages'. In fact they would have to be considered as rich and with the highest wages. 500 plat/week is not average, it is waaaaay above average. So, don't pretend to be just some poor, hard worker.

The seller is simply asking more then the buyer would be willing to give for the item. If the product is too expensive to produce, he has chosen the wrong product to produce. The market changed, that is unfortunate for those caught in those changes, but they will adapt and find more lucrative products.

Half of the cost comes back from the spoils when capturing the elite. The other half - and more - can be earned while questing and accumulating xp for the next skill point.

Wait, in an RPG you gradually accumulate skills and abilities and equipment. In an RPG you don't spend X cash upfront to pop out the character of choice, ready to rock.

I don't really farm, I've made less then 20k with farming, it's so boring. But I still have 90% of the skills of my primary and original) secondary profession, as well as a wide selection of skills for my heroes.

Again, this is your problem, you want to setup a character, fully equipped and with a wide skill selection, before even starting the real game. A normal player builds a character and will accumulate the wealth to do so during normal gameplay.

When my character reached Droknar's Forge, she had enough resource to buy her own end-game armor plus runes and that of a friend. She had all the skills available to her for her primary and secondary profession, and weapons from loot and collectors. Without farming, ever.

This is not true, it is quite the opposite. With lower prices the new player can do more with the loot they get and will get more easily into the game, and reach the endgame with better equipment then I could two years ago. And without farming.

QFT.

The things dropped in price is only high end rares and runes. Oh btw probably my keyboard was stuck when I wrote 5-00k I mean 50-100k for rares which still unreachable with casual farmin. For runes they already were so cheap. Only sup vigor dropped. AND IT WASNT A NEED. TILL IT EVEN I HAD MAJOR CAUSE 9HP DOESNT WORTHED 20K.

The things dropped in price is only high end rares and runes. Oh btw probably my keyboard was stuck when I wrote 5-00k I mean 50-100k for rares which still unreachable with casual farmin. For runes they already were so cheap. Only sup vigor dropped. AND IT WASNT A NEED. TILL IT EVEN I HAD MAJOR CAUSE 9HP DOESNT WORTHED 20K.


AND PLEASE PLEASE CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHY ANET HATES BOTES(okay I dont like bots they dont hurt anyone other then gold buyers also terminate the eula)

The things dropped in price is only high end rares and runes. Oh btw probably my keyboard was stuck when I wrote 5-00k I mean 50-100k for rares which still unreachable with casual farmin. For runes they already were so cheap. Only sup vigor dropped. AND IT WASNT A NEED. TILL IT EVEN I HAD MAJOR CAUSE 9HP DOESNT WORTHED 20K.


AND PLEASE PLEASE CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHY ANET HATES BOTES(okay I dont like bots they dont hurt anyone other then gold buyers also terminate the eula) I NEVER EVER WAS HURTED BY THEM

[QUOTE]wrong.

runes were not always cheap

early in the game a fully runed warrior could have 150K+ in runes alone

superior absorbtion 100K
minor vigor 15-35k+
superior sword/axe/hammer 50K+
minor strength 5-8 K+
minor tactics 5-6 K +

i had a sup absorb turn ino the most wonderful pile of rare materials you have ever seen and i didnt play for the rest of the day

then came guaranteed rune salvage and the dye trader and the other things that have brought prices down slowly.

loot scaling is only the latest step in many steps and you can bet your farm tere will be more anti hardcore pro casual player changes to come.

i look forward to the changes to come

i dont spend much and it piles up slowly until i see something worth getting for my favorite character which is armor since i dont see weapons/shields much anyway

maybe GWEN will have something nice to get

i have bought set of 15K armor over more thn 2 years and 15 characters which all have only 1.5K armor and the heroes get hand me downs and are happy

my heroes have mny more elites unlocke than i do

Yes, but this only works when you have a completely new character which still needs to do all missions. The problem here is that it only goes for Nightfall, and alot of people already DID these missions. Sure, I didn't do all quests, but mosts quests are NOT fun to do, annoying, hard, time-consuming and NOT worth the reward of 300 gold and a bucket of EXP.

Why not just farm some Trolls? Easy, fun, fast and you can do FUN stuff afterwards (I miss doing fun stuff...) Ohh wait, we çan't do it cause A-Net destroyed it. -.-



Yes but starting players are not the problem. For starting players, doing the storyline is fun. They often don't care yet about out-of-reach stuff like keys, nice armor, nice weapons, good heroes, tickets for boardwalk, scrolls, experimenting with builds, FoW/UW etc yet.

Players that already beat the game an x-number of times, do. I think my problem is that I used to be a hardcore gamer, and already beat the game on most of my chars. Now that I am a casual gamer, only playing 2 hours a day and (used to) farm for only like 5 minutes, the storyline is boring, most missions are done, and quests are just worthless. What else to do? Lots of stuff can be done in the game. But only for rich people.

GUILD WARS ONLY SUPPORTS PLAYERS WITH CASH.

Sure, poor people can get collector's weapons, collector's armors and play the game, but that's all. After that, there is NOTHING.

You can call me casual or a hardcore farmer or whatever, but the game is just too bloody expensive. 15 gold for 1 ticket. 1,5K for a key, 100K + 20 ecto's for an average weapon (from player), skills that cost 1K each, etc. etc.

I, however WANT to do fun stuff in this game. It's there, and I can do it... If it wasn't for the stupid loot scaling that stops my income. Why does all fun stuff cost hands of cash, and the ways of getting that cash are being nullified? Face it, people want MORE than the basic stuff.

Why can't A-Net just give it to us? They keep nerfing everything. They keep making players more poor... What the hell do you want, A-Net? Do you want your players to have fun? Or do you want your players to work for a week long in order to buy a few Lockpicks? And the sickening part is that A-Net is saying they're IMPROVING the game for casual players. How has the game improved for casual players, exactly?

-trader things that went down in price were already very cheap and obtainable.
-trader things that are still expensive were expensive before.
-Weapons are still 100K + xx ecto
-Bots are alive and kicking. And suddenly, that 1000K for xx euro/dollar sounds very attractive.
-Casual Players STILL can't do anything except to do storyline and live like an underdog: With the cheapest of the cheapest equipment.

As you can see, the scaling didn't help us one bit, it just made fun stuff more out of reach.

Seems like loot scaling favor some scammer :
http://myworld.ebay.ca/rickhavekost/

He seems to sell a lot of his programs.
(please don't buy them)
Look how many he sold before march 07 and
after march 07. It's CRAZY!

New gold seller account :
http://myworld.ebay.ca/gwgoldsell1982/

Money seems to sell fast and at high price.

I remember that ebay was overflooded with
gold seller. Did they sold all their money or
they are gone? I think it seems to sell nicely
lately.

An account with 1 000 platinum could easily
make 60$ US.

Before that, the market was overflooded
with gold seller and was starting at 19.99$.
Gold was hard to sell before.

If the target was gold seller ...... ... ... ...

I laugh at the people who are complaining about been banned, lol

Yay.........

You've demonstrated quite clearly here in this response to another poster that you don't understand my basic argument. Most players do not play the game in the manner that you suggest here. They have multiple characters, many of which get halfway through a campaign and are abandoned for a while, then perhaps picked up later. They play a few hours per week in a haphazard fashion. They don't understand basic principles of proper play that you and I take for granted. There's no way that they'll acquire the cash for capping every elite skill; there's no way that they'll vanquish areas, as they don't know enough about builds and game mechanics in order to do so, and those of us who are more dedicated are generally uninterested in teaching their 10001st player how to play the game properly after two and a half years.

There's a lot more of them out there than us. Their purchases of campaigns and expansion packs pays for the servers that WE disproportionately use. So we'd better care about how ANet treats these folks, since we're the ones always screaming for server upgrades and the like.

Look, this ain't about me. I made something upwards of 3 million gold in the first few weeks of Hard Mode - its introduction was a phenomenal income boon for me and financed a significant proportion of the shiny loot over there in the avatar.

The point here is that immediately above - quite honestly, the noobs do pay for the game servers we use. ANet has been following the absolute worst possible policy for some time now: catering to the hardcore PvE-er and dumbing down PvP. With loot scaling the botters, serious farmers and serious traders win. Skill "balances" since Nightfall have created PvP environments dominated (at least in number of teams out there) by mindless cookie-cutter builds that take comparatively little skill to play.

The net result of all of this is that the botters get richer, the already rich get richer, the casual PvE-er that farms occasionally gets alienated, and the best PvP players are long gone from this game. How does this help ANet maintain interest in this game long enough to successfully get them to the release of GW2? The casual players are the core of the revenue stream; the best PvP players are necessary to compelling the continuous innovation that makes a PvP community grow and thrive.

The devs are engaging in bad business strategy. If you don't care, you should, since it's their income stream that pays for the servers, and that pays for the development of the sequel. If they run short on cash, they'll be forced to cut corners in development, and you'll get an inferior product.

You fail at economics. The point is that low demand, low supply items (your 3-10k low end req 9 gold, most greens) are unsaleable when you consider the opportunity cost of the time that must be invested to sell them. Coincidentally, these happen to be exactly the kind of drops that the casual player gets. The casual player gets an uncommon req 9 skin, goes off to sell it, cannot do so and gets frustrated. The reason the casual player cannot sell the item is not because there is no market for these drops, but rather because the inefficient trading system does not make it feasible for these players to communicate with would-be buyers.

Further proof that you're not paying attention. You don't get your 1 plat back when you cap a skill. You get XP, but that exists in abundance.

The practice of dropping powerful gear on a low-level character to speed up the early phases of the game was called "twinking" in Diablo 2. I hear that's an RPG as well. If you're running around with substandard gear at the time you start your character, you're wasting time.

Which gets back to my original point: most casual players have a bunch of characters. Further, you support my basic point. You play a lot, you don't farm, and all you can realistically support is one character.

Inefficient waste of time.

From merching whites? Bah.

If you want to argue that the inscription system aided the casual player by reducing prices on previously expensive gear, I'd agree. But loot scaling? No way. The only way to make money farming now is to be good at the game, and playing through the game "normally" isn't going to provide any more than a subsistence living in-game. Never has.

My guesses:

1) The extra gold inflates prices in the game, making the game more difficult for the honest, casual players
2) The bot-operators make real-life money by abusing resources (servers and bandwith) that ANet pays for (with the money we spend on the games). Reducing bots will free resources for use by real players (less lag and dropped connections) or reduce operating costs for ANet.

Casual Gamers play 2 hours a day on their peak and thus finishing the campaign(s) takes them a lot longer. You have basically done everything there is to do in the game and are left with chasing the more expensive titles and goals.

Collector gear is more convenient to get then shopping for equivalent greens and golds on the market. But that aside, after completing a campaign there are various things to do - besides PvP - that do not cost a whole lot of gold, elite skills, cartography, vanquishing etc .... Most casual gamers will have their hands full at those. You might have done all these things already, but, well, how many hours do yo uhave on your account?

Perhaps the costs of these more expensive hobbies/goals/titles can be brought down.

I've stated there that there's so much to do, that will earn the player some cash as well, that the casual player will not be doing something over and over again, for cash. How does that demonstrate my misunderstanding of your argument?


And they won't need more cash then their haphazrd playing style requires. They will not hunt for elite skills, nor open chests for a title. These characters that get halfway through campaigns receive enough cash from loot and bounties that they can afford the gear and skills they need at that point of the campaigns they are in.

Those haphazardly played characters travel and do missions in full groups, they get the same cash as before the loot scaling, but they will benefit from the increased value of the gold they receive.

It is not those casual players that are hurt, but only those who need to solo-farm to afford their titles, or whatever they want, that are hurt by loot-scaling.

They, imo, are not hurt because the loot has remained the same for them. They benefit because prices are reduced and prices are reduced because lootscaling (for solofarming) changed the ratio of drops between 'gold items' (and similar) and cash.


How so?


Actually, I don't fail at economics, it's the player who fails to recognize that the product they offer is unwanted who fails at it. And then they complain about people not wanting to buy their product for what they think it's worth.

Yes, it's inefficient, and I would prefer a better working system as well. A better trading system wouldn't mean that the unwanted item will get sold, for a high price though.

Well, well, try capping elite skills yourself and pay attention when you do. You see, you normally fight your way to the boss that has the skill you want to cap and that will result in drops, frequently enough for your next signet.

You can call it what you will, but it's a practice that's not 'In Character' and strictly speaking it can not be considered as Role-Playing and a Role Playing Game is not required to cater to this need.

Diablo is hardly a role-playing game. It never managed to capture my imagination.

Actually, you'd playing the game as it's supposed to be played, as a role playing game, with a character that lives through adventures and completes quests.


It doesn't matter how many characters I would make, there's only so much time to play anyway, and it doesn't matter if you get 1k in drops on one or the other. But I have more then one character, equipped them, and their heroes at least in part with cash my first character made.

It doesn't really matter, you can buy gear for one character with cash from another, and the income from that one can help the next. But if you setup characters and then abandon them, yes, you waste cash.

Right, you've just disqualified yourself and you arguments. All that matters to you is you, and your view, anything else is non-existant, or inefficient. You can play the game as you see fit, but you are hardly a reference.

ANet was wise enough to improve the gameplay for the casual players that do, as you pointed out yourself, make out the bulk of the playerbase, and their revenues. If they'd listen to you, they'd be out of business.

What a surprise. You've been trying to argue that one cannot play the game without solo-farming. You are wrong, no matter how you ignore the facts. It's your special type of pay

It's entirely what you make of it. Maxed gear - and even some vanity items - on multiple characters and their heroes is achievable without solo farming. If you can't make that, it's how you spend your cash.

Khem, if I may point out one interesting thing about the necessity of grind:

The Nightfall storyline alone (just primary quest reqards and full mission rewards, no side quests, no drops, nothing else) is worth 14500 gold. That's enough for a full set of max armor if you don't pick up even a single drop and don't do even a single secondary quest.

Add in the tresures (20-30k per character) and even a few drops per quest, and you're at enough for full gear, possibly even the 15k armor.

Looktscalling w/e that is /sarcasm

I very much agree on that one.
I have yet to merch a green, but with full inventories, this will happen sooner or later. Gold items go to merchant or salvage for mods, but not in player market. Argument below:

Don't agree on that one.
It's the 'cost' of selling the item compared to the supposed value.
It's just not worth trying to sell a 2K item for 1 hour when you can gain that 2K by playing for less than an hour.
I have had some items that would have been worth between 5K and 10K and went straight to merch because I am not willing to spend time on selling.
I'd rather play the game than stand in town trying to sell an item.

I think for this entry market, things got worse.
However, since it's a 'nice to have' and not a 'must have' market, it does not affect the starting player.

Working on my last elite title, I can tell you this is not true.
I have the skill-points from regular gameplay, so no need to accumulate those. Capping netted me about 1/4 of the cash spend and most of that was in Tyria (where you have to zone or walk for quite a while for caps).


With about 2 hours/day, which is about 2/3 of my game time, there are plenty of things to do. But when those involve large amounts of gold, or have to do with solo-playing (those seem to go hand in hand), I do understand the pain.
One of the more important reasons I still play is because of the fun I have in PuGs and guild. Without that, GW would probably have 'died' several months ago.

Yes, there is chest running, festival things like 9-rings, gambling, experimenting with builds, pimping characters, trying out farm builds, trying out dye colours, UW/FoW clearing, collecting stuff like weapons/mini-pets, working on titles. These, however all cost too much cash (at least, for me).

My question is, why can't A-Net just make it easier to do these things?



Well let's say I want a good sword. The green would be cheaper than to get the collector sword, +30 HP mod (for like 25K), and zealous/vamp/sundering.

Elite Skills I tried, I'm stuck at cash now cause I can't buy cap sigs anymore. cartography... not enough time to explore large areas like Snake Dance. Vanquishing I tried, but is too hard for me, cause my heroes don't have the proper equipment (again, not enough cash for this, and the white/blue drops don't seem to do it).



Exactly. Let monsters be farmed, make skill times and golds drop more often so the economy gets flooded with them. That way, alot of players can get it.


Actually, there's just missions and quests to do. The rest costs cash. After doing the missions and quests, or being bored by them, there's no other choice to grind.



There's a difference between needing and wanting. When just playing the game, I also wanted to open chests, I also wanted to dye armor. Why? It's not needed, but it's fun to do beside the storyline. Why is it that things such as these require so much cash?


This is again your view of a casual player. My view of the casual player is one that doesn't spend all his time farming, but STILL does a run or 2 to get some minor cash and then can do fun stuff, too.

If your view is correct, I was a hardcore farmer from day 1. (When I bought Guild Wars, me and my friend (who had the game longer) did a quest in pre-searing together. He found a black dye and told me the price. I wanted it so bad, that I killed stuff in pre-searing for hours, just to get the 4K (he only charged 4K instead of 8 :P)




-Botters still make the same amount of cash
-Stuff stays expensive and people still want to buy
=More people will now buy gold from bots, cause they can't make cash ingame anymore, and prices still stay sky-high. So bots can increase their prices.


There's always someone who wants to buy that weapon off you for the price it's worth. It's just hard to find between all the poor people that can't afford anything these days.

A-Net thought they could force players to drop their prices to like 500 gold, so that the poor players could buy, too. Instead, prices stay high, rich people keep buying, and poor players stay poor.

As I said before, there's always a buyer out there. The problem is, you'll never see him. Especially with the crappy trade system we have now,


I usually got 70 gold worth of drops (well usually only 1 drop, and 100 gold divided by 8 people) when capping elite skills. I never got a green in my life when wanting to cap a skill, either. Sometimes I hit the jackpot and got 500 gold, but this still isn't enough.

If the game is supposed to be played like that, why do monsters still drop loot other than collectibles? Why do more armor types exist? Why do stuff like ecto's exist?

Doesn't the same go for you? You seem to think that casual gamers have no free will, and are happy to live on collector's stuff. You also seem to think that the casual gamers get tons of cash from doing missions and quests. This is, however, all relative. In game, I hear nothing but 'darn I need cash', 'why is everything so expensive', 'How can I make cash?', 'Can I still farm Trolls?' etc etc. And no, these are NOT Warriors with black-dyed FoW armors.




Everyone can play the game without solo-farming, solo-farming just makes it FUN, though. And isn't a game about fun? In A-Net's eyes, it sure isn't. It appears to me that they want to keep us 'interested' by letting us grind more and more for the fun stuff, so that we play their game long enough for the new chapter to arrive, which we will then buy cause we're sick of being bored of grinding.


This would be true everyone got the exact same drops and exact same income. This isn't true. Maybe you're lucky and can buy lots of vanity items, I can't even buy a cap sig atm. I already did most missions in my life-less time, and have no ways of making quick and alot of cash now, which is needed alot in this game.

Yeah. And they blame the seller.

A-Net got a warning about 3rd party software on
the GW start screen.

Found another bot seller :
http://myworld.ebay.ca/burton31003

Look how many he sold after march.

Loot scaling seems to favor gold and
bot seller a lot!!!

Found this guide for gold seller :
http://myworld.ebay.ca/ggjfpg

Most of his sale are after March 07.

I know why some people are pro-loot scaling
now.

Mmm...you can get pretty much any weapon these days for cheap. And there are definetely buyers out there, you just have to have A LOT of patience.

I'm not talking about WTS spam.

Guru's auction system is a complete godsend. <3 Guru auctions.
Put your item up, maybe with a picture, let a week go by, check your email.
I can sit in Kamadan all day advertising my Fiery Blade Axe for 15k, or I can go on guru, wait 2 weeks, and sell it for 60k.

A better solution perhaps would be to eliminate the inscription system. That has truly devalued the market.

Let's see:
Gold sink, gold sink, gold sink, possible gold sink, market, possible gold sink, market, payable with full team, market and gold sink.
Market = depending on supply and demand.
Gold sink = designed to remove cash from game economy (those did not change with loot scaling).

When equipment = skills, I might agree. I think you mean items, which do not make the difference.

Agree on normal skill tomes. Don't care about gold items (will merch or salvage them anyway).

We play a different game. I never hear that in game, only on forums like guru.
And those 'complaints' are there as long as I play GW, only then people would just say 'STFU and go farm'.

The devaluation was not a problem for the average player.
I would prefer a better ingame trading system compared to removing inscriptions.