The Price of Failure...

And the only things that cost a lot at the merchants are 15k armour, crafted weapons and lots of skills.

And these are easily obtained. A 1000 gold for a skill is easy to come with regular 8 member party.

try reading what I have said earlier in the thread.. I am ONE title from I'm Very Important, I've DONE the grind, now what?.... farming was an endless area of fun which would have kept me playing for a few years yet,, as it is I struggle to make 1k per day playing normally (which is only when I help others as I've compelted everything multiple times)

what I am saying is that the game was great for everyone back then, noobs played through the game, people could grind for titles and people could farm..... now the one thing which was availible for me to do which was farm.. is gone... farming is terrible now.. not fun. most places are nerfed and the rewards do not justify the time spent doing it....

now I know you will not be beaten in anytype of argument and you will come back with something even more pointless than your last post so go head, I will refrain from replying as in my world, someones view is just that, THEIR view.. and you can't change it...

I think people are confusing the OP's "fun" for farming; for his zest for cash. Sorry buddy, if you were just farming for cash find other ways to make cash, for instance merchanting, which is 100 times more profitable.

[QUOTE]it was fun in early beta watching the game change every time you went somewhere.

IT....IS......STILL....FUN......for me
you could get up to 50 runes an hour before the Riverside nerf.......you would have loved it
if you are playing a game and not enjoying it but still keep playing it you need help.

do something else you enjoy and have some fun

Wow... That made me frown.

Advice for those who are bored with GW: Take a break. Do something else until GWEN comes out, and then come back to play with all the new skills and changes. Just because you may have been obsessed enough with GW to buy multiple accounts and spend all your time playing doesn't mean you need to continue to be... and boredom is a pretty good sign that you would rather be doing something else. For me, it's leveling my Warlock in WoW to 70, which is moderately bearable because I've never done it before.

I am new to GW - only about two months. I read about how it used to be and sigh. I only play right now two different toons but I don't think I will be able to afford to outfit them with the best of anything the way things are right now. I don't make that kind of money.

I wish the people who keep saying that there are easy ways to make money would let everyone else in on the secret then there wouldn't be so many of these type of posts. I play two to three times a week for around four hours each time. I'm simply going through the missions right now and the rewards for doing that barely are enough to keep my toons equipped. (As far as skills, armor, runes, etc go).

To the people who think that everything is fine now ask yourself this: If I started the game right now from scratch, would I be happy with the amount of drops and gold I was getting. Keeping in mind that you would like to be able to get that great looking armor, perfect weapon, or the skills of your choice. Could I do it?

The fact of the matter is, everything in life eventually becomes mechanical and programmed. I remember when I bought my first Guild Wars game (Factions) a year and some months ago, everything was new and if not exciting, at least very interesting. I enjoyed playing through and visiting the exotic locales, experimenting with new skills and ideas.

Well, eventually I deleted my very first character, and started an aggressive form of gameplay that wasn't the least bit slow paced. This is because I already knew what to expect at every turn.

I knew how the game worked, how the monsters worked, how the skills worked, and what was the most effective for me.

Now, sadly...the game is very much mechanical, no matter what I do. This happens in every single game, I think. You're playing a First Person Shooter and you get a really nice weapon and you're kicking ass and then some time later...it becomes gray. A droll, perhaps nice, event that's played over and over again.

Or, my newest example...I've taken a break from Guild Wars to play Fable on the PC. It's very enjoyable but this far into the game, I'm already legendary in status, fully evil, I have sweet armor, a sweet weapon, but despite this, everything is the same old same old.

And thus the programmed memory of what I did to make the game work for me was initiated once more. Routine is something we can't escape.

So don't call people who do something over again bots, because they're not a computer program. They're still flesh and blood, and they're doing what they feel to be most effective.

Bots are cheaters and a lazy shortcut. So don't compare fair players to such objects.

Thanks.

I completly agree!

Read what kradens said!

That doesn`t mean shit for 15k armor. Getting items and accumulating wealth is part of the fun for some people, like myself.

And Faction is probably THE GuildWars for those kind of feelings

An interesting quote, i wouldn't have dared using those words (fear of not being understood) but I can't disagree with anything about that. On- or off-topic.
Not being a fan of said Fable, i'd be tempted to say it's a game problem. My experience with it looks like that : as long as you're in the thrill of the game, best game ever (inexact words but you get my meaning)
As soon as the thrill passes : QUICKLY gets old and boring.


My tirck to not get tired AND not have problems with updates : have the imagination (or naivete) to set goals like " try to solo this area THAT way".
Jo<hny way for those that will get it.

Pre Loot Scaling:
While exploring deep into every single area of Guild Wars with my Heroes/Henchmen, I used to pick up about 3k worth of goodies/gold every time I went outside town/outpost limits. I had 4 hours everyday after work to simply do quests or kill every monster in an area(vanquishing, but normal mode, since there was no Hard Mode). The rewards from this style of play were nice. Enough for me to always be able to afford a key or 2 per run, and very slowly outfit all my heroes and make sure my Main Character was the most souped up character I could ever have.

It was beautiful. The game was rewarding in ways that made me feel like I could accomplish anything and most importantly, be able to participate in events that require me to spend money. Or save for many sets of Armor tailored to every single one of my PVP needs, which I thoroughly enjoy as well. My Elementalist was stylin.

Likewise, it was not the only way I made money in game.

Buying 2 other accounts (Factions CE) helped me gain a quick 200k gold so I could have some of the sweetest looking Armors the game offered. Then I got addicted to playing "dress-up" on my hottie. I can't afford the $90 CAD on a new copy of Factions CE every payday. And it's not like the game store shelves are stocked up to the ceiling with this virtual Kuunavang Minipet Access Key.

Also, selling other people's items for commission gained me alot of money I would NEVER have had the time to make otherwise. But this cannot happen everyday. Not every player has a nice inventory that they would entrust me with for a week.

During them days, I've had the opportunity to play with people who's "luck" ingame was so far more spectacular than mine that it got me into envying them and being totally jealous of their ability to progress.

Everytime I achieved a new level of confidence (or title for that matter), they would reach that same title in half the time, and in some cases, outright blow me out of the water in mere days, compared to the year/months I spent on becoming "somewhat leet" in the majority of casual gamers' eyes.

But in essence, the game was still fun to play because of the 3k I made while killing every monster in Gate of Secrets, for example, and for being able to afford one or 2 keys each run to see what my luck could do for me.

Getting a decent gold item out of a chest that cost me 750 gold to open was quite rewarding. Although they were few and far between (the perfect ones, or very rare ones that sold for nice profits at the time), it was relatively easy to make money in GW. Easy enough that if you put your mind to it, you could achieve any financial goal in 200 hours of play time.

Post Loot Scaling:

I find now that vanquishing an area in Normal Mode nets me much less than it used to. Therefore making it kind of redundant. Because of this, I have to resort to becoming a "professional farmer" to make money, as opposed to being mindless gimmicky build self/hero/henchmen party just killing spiders on the internets.

But even after I freaked out at Anet, in a posting very similar to the OP's, I realized where they were going with Loot Scaling. Yes it took me a few weeks, because I wasn't looking deep enough into the very real problem the way I used to play negatively affected the game's economy.

Nice to be rich and have it all. But what then? What Anet did is fix the economy so that the people who choose to become "somewhat leet" in the present and future take much longer to get there. Reasoning for this is to slow down game advancement pace enough so that the people who still enjoy "what they have" or "what they are stuck with now" will remain active for as long as possible.

Those who rage quit GW are clearly the ones that saw what I saw at first.

less loot, less fun

But in reality, I think the devs meant well doing this. Keeping those who already reached that plateau by providing them with content and reward that could interest them into staying for as long as possible too. But seeing that those types of people get bored easily, the expansion pack is released for them.

With that first expansion pack being part of expanding Tyrian campain, I am willing to bet(100g, since I'm FREEKIN BROKE) that there will be 2 more expansions for GW1 before GW2 comes out. One for Cantha and one for Elona. Spread out evenly over the next 2 years while GW2 is being developed.

Retaining fanbase is what's on their minds. And the ones that took this type of update to heart, are going to miss out on a potential 3 expansions and the opportunity to try out a completely new, much more perfected and polished Guild Wars 2.

Now if you factor in the fact that a possible 200 more skills and perhaps 80 more armor sets will come out after GW:EN is out, how is it possible to get bored?

And yes, it is entirely possible to make a gimmick build with the right set of Heroes/Hench and still overcome monsters in Hard Mode just as easily as Normal Mode was before.

The only HUGE drawback in Hard Mode is that you gotta pay double the amount of gold to open a freekin chest. And sometimes JUST getting to that Locked Chest is either:

A) Deadly

or

B) Return to Outpost Deadly

Unless you use a specific player invented build that's been kindly posted to help you enjoy the game before you give up, because your mind was set on that particular build you used for so long that PWNed everything in the game while you talked on the phone with that hot chick from accross the street, or even while you played on your PS3.

Yes there's many, many ways to make money in GW.

Get creative.

Remember when you first started playing and were trying different builds to kill Charr for example.. at lvl 10, you had what? 10 skills total to play with and you had to deal with it. 2 years later, your main character possibly has every Elite skill in the game, and most second profession skill already bought.

Well in Hard Mode, there's even the chance that you might find a FREE skill Tome. Imagine that.. even more ways to get creative with your builds.. Now don't think that the monsters are THAT much different. I'd say that their skill sets have been very minorly altered if not at all in Hard Mode. They just attack faster and avoid getting PWNed.

So you have to work to kill them. BUT the reward, my friend, is BETTER than Normal Mode Pre-Loot Scaling.

Sure I might not fill my backpack and belt pouch and 2 large bags in one run, but I know that whatever I do get is worth more than the bag full of whites I used to get. (Hell sometimes I even had to throw out some of the least important whites, in order to fill up on Unid items(when salvaging was profitable)

So it's harder to make money. But eventually everything will be so cheap, that what you make now will buy more than what you used to make then would have bought you had Loot Scaling not been implemented.

Yeah Long Winded post.. Hopefully it's not deleted like my previous 7 posts on Guru. Yeah this is not a flame. Yeah this is NOT a "wrong topic" and yeah this is a OPINION, just like everyone elses. Please stop following me and deleting my posts. I have just as much right as every other person in this community.

I just want to comment on one thing:

There is a myth among players that "farming" is the only way to make gold. This is absolutely not true.

I have played the game for over two years, achieved great things, made lots of money and not ONCE did I go out with my warrior/monk/rit or whatever to solo monsters for cash and drops.

Here's the best kept secret in the game: If you go out in a group (pug or henchies or guildies or whatever) and get your 1/8 sahre of drops, you make money just fine. If you just play a lot of PvE stuff, questing, mapping, killing stuff.. You will make 5k a day if you play for 2-3 hours a day. this is the minimum, without any farmign what so ever.

Now, when I was doing just that, I was around 250k in terms of wealth (plus 2 15k sets). When I started farming elite areas (back then ectos and shards) I started going into the 700k bracket (plus one FoW set). When I farmed the elite missions in Factions (in groups) I made th 1 million club and got a second set. When I farmed DoA I joined the multi-millionaire club with ectos and multiple FoW sets and Tormented weapons.

This is not to brag, and I am sure there will be those who will psot to show they got 100 bazillion in the first week of prophecies. This is to comfort average players that even regular PvE play is rewarding and to also turn your everyone's attention to the fact that with increased challenge comes increased reward. If I was still doing FoW runs today, I would still be in the 700k club, it's as simple as that.

So now you have to work harder/longer for it, should make the fun even bigger, no?

Or are you saying that you are actually lazy and want to get rich quick? Yeah, then your fun is going to be ruined.

True True, but what ur talking about requires one of these core classes (necro,monk,elementalist,warrior) rest of the classes are pretty much left out when it comes 2 elite missions, ppl just have 2 take one look at the A/* after my ign, and then i won't be able 2 get a group for: Deep,Urgoz and the missions in Doa. So u can't say all it requires of u is to play normal pve, beacuse if the class u play, isen't one of the core classes includet in the wiki cookie cutter builds u are left out no matter what.

Your problem is with players being narrowminded and being unable to look beyond a build posted on the Internet, Anet didnt cause that, players do that.

I did Tombs (when that was new) with balanced teams when everyone always wanted gimmick builds "because it was faster"...I never cared about fast, I play for fun and playing this game with a group of people wiht their own builds and ideas (even when they plain suck) is much more enjoyable to me.

Yup thats what i'm talking about, ppl will call u noob for not using the god damn gimmick builds from wiki . The world is cruel.

Nah, people are stupid more like.

My opinion is that the Loot Scaling sucks for the player who wants to get a quick couple of platinum for skills, kits, and keys. Without investing a large amount of time repeatedly farming an area, or having to go to HM and Vanquishing an area that may take over an hour.

The game is still enjoyable, but it is definitely not as fun as before Loot Scaling was introduced. The time factor reducing the enjoyment doesn't hold merit as I've been playing for two years and with the introduction of Loot Scaling, my enjoyment has drastically diminished.

Even with breaks from the game, my main character see little use now that any of the titles I would like to acquire require huge investments of gold.

Not one to play the trading game, I merch most drops. White drops and gold drops from one or two farming runs usually netted me enough gold to satisfy whatever I wanted to purchase for that session.

people who say loot scaling hasnt decreased drops.

ask yourself this.

if loot scaling hasn't decreased drops, and drops still drop the same.

then WHAT has loot scale achieved?

ONLY by decreasing the drop rate can bot farmers be hurt.

if loot-scaling still dropped the same amount of loot, then that means bots are unaffected, and the only people being hurt are the players who now have less income, and probably will need to go to a gold selling website, which i've seen happen already sadly.

ok. one more thing.,

over the past months since loot scaling has been in affect, over several huge threads and hundreds of posts later, why havent we got an answer from anet. seriously, this many threads from the player forums on elite guild wars websites, and no answer.

can we at least have a definitive "no we are not CONSIDERING changing the way loot-scaling works etc" or a "yes we're looking into it" etc.

and no, im not talking about the answer they gave us via gaile about the reasons for loot scaling. im asking is anything being CONSIDERED by anet about the state of the game and it's gold problem.

Thats strange, I was out for 3 hours today doing a couple of missions with a hero/henchie grp and only made 850g. Thats counting everything I sold to the merchant, except for one crappy staff that i gave to one of the heros to replace an even crappier staff. Thats about normal for me lately. I wonder where the other 4k went to?

That amount would probablly have doubled Mac if you had ided all your white items.

You must not be doing something right, or playing in very low-level areas. I make about what you quoted while capping/questing/vanquishing/etc. Are you identifying everything, even whites/blues? Merching everything except golds you can sell to others? Selling Elite Tomes, lockpicks, or keys you pick up?

Honestly, in a matter of just playing the game in mid to high level areas and/or hard mode for 3 hours, you should have anywhere between 3-5k, on an unlucky day.

The people who claim this kind of nonsense are deluded fanboys who already have their 15k armors and havn't had to spend a signifigant amount in months. They are all saving up for GWEN items.

Since loot scaling my usual "comfort" level of 150k has decreased to 50k. No real change in my gameplay. Skills for new characters, armors. I have never bought, and never will, a weapon or mod off another player. My spending is all pure money sink and no way to make it back up. I buy skills all the time. How can you test a skill without using it? Skills represent 70% of my lost nest egg. In the past it was sort of self replicating. It's not anymore.

Edit: I was responding in part to what you were Mac, so it was awkward, but I agree with you.

I must say loot scale didn't affect the size of my bank account.

Before i Had 400k +360K (in ectos sold @6k each). Now I've 700k +300k (in gems mostly), and bought 3 vabbian armors plus 1 kurzick 15k armor, got 1k armors for my 2 new characters, a ele that its still @ lvl 5 and a paragon that got a nice collection of skills.

Oddly newer players or players that never farmed before the loot scaling, seem to have problems with basic items, skills and armor, mostly if they are trying to support more than 1 character at the same time.

What changed is that before i farmed with my warrior and dervish, and now my monk went from under 1 million xo to something like 5 million. And now I can make either 600g in 5 minutes or 20k in the same 5 minutes.

Trading is useless. The only market that really works is the rare materials, mostly because other than getting trade contracts, theres no controlled or planned way a player can grab rubies and sapphires.

Trying to sell is a joke. Your best bet is to find someone thats wants to buy something, and you having it in storage.

Hardmode is a joke too, unless you are after the titles that can only be obtained there.

Most of the time it makes a zone almost as hard as the ending missions in normal mode, meaning that discounting the places were party size is less than 8, they are still easy to do.

The zones that are somewhat hard in normal mode are so much more time consuming and prone to "bad aggro or monk said was afk idiot- type /resign plz", that you will get probably more and/or better loot by playing the same zone in normal mode multiple times for the time of a single hardmode run, vide the deep, where a normal mode takes pretty much half the time and in the end u are more likely to get 2 gold/greens from the end chest then in a hardmode run.

I have no sympathy whatsoever who all you ranting farmers. One of the reasons guild wars is so good is that theres no spawn campers and stuff stopping everyone else from getting everything. The games been purposely designed without campers/farmers/grinders in mind, but thats still what people try to do. No thanks, I'll play the game.

I find I make plenty enough money to live on playing through campaigns and vanquishing. I built up a stash of over 100k doing that, which might not seem much at all to alot of people, but that was plenty enough to survive on and didnt leave me bored enough to go UW famring with my W/Rt very often at all. And even then that was when ecto's were super expensive and i'd rather have got my own than bought them.

FoW and UW are pretty cool if you've finished everything and you have more of an imagination than bringing a 55hp and SS. Stop doing everything for money and you might even enjoy it. If not then bugger off, it's not like the vast majority of players will care that some snobby "hardcore" gamer that calls everyone who thinks ascended armour is a waste of money a noob leaves the game. If you want a game where you can repeatedly farm no problem then go play runescape. *shudders*

here's an idea.

tie loot-scaling into a title.

i was reading the forums and came across a suggestion for a title "adventurer's title" or something like that. it was a suggested title track linked to the amount of quests you do and stuff like that.

i was thinking that a bot cant possibly have the time to do ALL quests in the game etc. they just run up to the first place they can farm and farm it to hell.

now, what if loot scaling was tied to the adventurers title track, and at the max of that title track, loot would scale to exactly the same as it was before the nerf??/

this way, bots are crippled and players who play the game are rewarded.

hell, you could even cripple the loot scaling to a point where having a low adventurer title would net you next to nothing.

i've played the current starter islands over and over again, and you can literally pay for ur first set of armor and runes with monastery credit or battle commendation, with enough left over for a few skills. -- so the title track wouldn't really affect new players fresh into the game.

i think anet should consider some new systems for loot. loot-scaling itself is such a one way street.

and with so many people complaining about it and stopping guild wars all together they should get rid of it. biggest failure imo is anet wanting a self sustaining economy. LOL self sustaining they are always nerfing thing s that directly effect the economy

Get rid of all the post release garbage and let us get back to playing the GAME.

Fun: something that provides mirth or amusement
Game: an amusement or pastime
Fantasy: an imaginative or fanciful work, esp. one dealing with supernatural or unnatural events or characters
Real Life: existing or happening in reality

When we start to blur the lines on these things you get:

Addiction: The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something.

Time to take a break and come back refreshed or come back and decide the game has lost its appeal, then move on to something new.

Before you flame me, I consider myself a GW addict.

No worries.. I am also an addict!
I am not gonna take a break!!! I must save up LOTS of money for when GWEN comes out

take your character to the pvp isle of the nameless and use your heroes to simply run the training arenas giving 1K faction for a skill unlock in less than15 minutes.

make a pvp character same as your pve character and equip the new skill for trial.

go to isle of the nameless and test it against all those assorted training dumies to see how the skill seems to work.

if you like it go out and buy it.

if you dont like it dont buy it and the heroes can still use it.

hard to lose that way and you save gold......lots of it

Considering that the introduction of loot scaling has many differing results, it is somewhat hard to calculate its exact impact on any given player and players overall. Although many people have expressed that they are worse off they may not actually be.


This article by Gaile explains A-nets viewpoint and reasons for loot scaling. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gaile_News/20070420

Since I have read here that some people do not understand why gold is worth more now, and also for those people who directly compare the amount of gold obtained between now and before. I will share what I know about gold- or at least what I think is the case.

Gold is a fluctuating currency just like any currency in RL. Its value is based on how much of it there is compared to the amount of goods and services are needed. If there is too much gold and not enough of the goods and services then there is inflation and gold is worth less. Goods and services in the context of this game can refers to many things. Goods generally refers to items and services are things such as droks runs and missions runs. With a lot less gold coming from solo farming and ebay the same amount of gold can get you a lot further now. This is because when there is less gold the value of all the tradable items and services should drop so that it balances. But it not expected that people who start the game now would have the same value in possessions as somebody playing in another time.

NPCs have stable prices (excluding the npcs that offer prices based on supply and demand) and offer you armour options, skills, keys etc. at the same prices no matter what the economy is like. So somebody playing in this new era may find it a lot harder to get money for skills and armor compared to before, as the option of quickly farming to get some plat may not be possible.

But with the implementation of tomes new players can generally get skills for approx half price so that could easily be the solution for the grind for skills for casual players as long as they want skills for the majority of professions (excluding people who want primary rit and monk runes and maybe also para and dervish. 15k armour is only really here as a status symbol but it allows characters to look better. If we are to value it only as a status symbol, we can consider that it worth more as it is harder for everyone to get now. This does give people who bought it when it was easy to get an advantaged though.

Imo Hard mode failed for the most part in providing pve players with something to do, as was one of its goals from ArenaNet. Hardcore farming still exist as a major occupation that keeps people playing guilds wars for the pve side of this game. The majority of people who actually use the option of hard mode use it to farm now. So it does not really give something to do after finishing the game as people don’t have fun killing insanely buffed mobs…

For those people complaining about the effect of loot scaling on farming have probably never farmed hard mode. Solo farming is still viable through hard mode, which coincidentally bots can’t access. Farmers can’t farm much straight gold but there are many other items of worth such as golds, dyes, lockpicks and tomes that are unaffected by lot scaling. Also full team farming has never been more viable with loot scaling.

Overall what I intend to say that loot scaling does not have a large effect on the majority of players of this game as it balances out in the end. I believe A-net did what had to be done to fix their bot problem and deflate the economy.