Should Lootscaling be removed after the new Rtm policy?

Nice: I insult you and then bow out. Have a good night gentleman (no capital sir!)

(can you see the intention behind my words in your crystal ball of rationality? /end of sarcasm/ )

Either way she meant it, look at it logically.

The rich players are already rich. They can maintain this wealth by trading with each other for items far beyond the price range of most players.

The poor players now have no way to make money. They will remain poor, unless they buy gold from an asian gold selling website.

Therefore, there is not merely a gap between rich and poor, there is now a gaping chasm thanks to Loot Scaling. And because the only way for a poor player to gain a notable amount of money is by buying online gold, it simply helps the gold selling bots.

Oh yeah, that was kinda the whole excuse for that.

They'd kinda HAVE to remove it now or inplicitly admit their entire design philosophy is completely inept and that all stated reasons for unpopular design decisions are total baloney.

I bet they choose the latter.

Hey, guys, let's not forget who keeps the game alive. Hardcore players buy all of the expacs and campaigns, hardcore players farm and keep the game alive. etc...

While, on the other hand, most casual gamers just buy one of the campaigns, play till they are bored and quit.

Well I guess it depends on your drops, what you do during the storyline and which campaign you start in. I still have problems buying armor without getting cash from my storage, though. I still need to farm in order to fully equip my character with the things he absolutely needs.

Well HM was made around the Loot Scaling, and in my opinion, removing the loot scaling in HM will be a bit too much. I mean, HM already has better quality drops, too. In my opinion they should still decrease drops a bit when farming in HM.

Well, I play all the time, bought all campaigns and expansion and BMP, and loot scaling hurts me. So I guess loot scaling should go, by your own thoughts of who we should care about

/not signed

Loot scaling should have been in the game since the very beginning, it's the proper way of game design. It's just the nerf itself that hurt a lot of players, it was taking away from them something they enjoyed.

Of course I abused the fact it didn't exist for the first 2 years and made some good money from it. I enjoyed getting full inventory of drops in 5 minutes of farming, but I've always felt it's just wrong.

The game was basically Farm Wars, people who didn't solofarm were always very poor and the farmers were competing in the market over the best items and drove the prices completely out of reach of people who didn't solofarm.

Now just imagine hm raptor farm without loot scaling = nuke ~30 raptors every 2 minutes, each of them drops something of average worth 40g = 35k+ hard cash from just merchanting junk drops and cash drops themselves! (it's around 6-8k on average now with lootscaling, still far better than playing with a full group will get)

It wouldn't help the economy at all, what's unsellable would remain unsellable, only the prices of stuff in demand would skyrocket. However it would help the chestrunners to get their lockpicks worth of selling perfect mods and occassional rare skins to people.

Simply removing LS is totally wrong. But changes could be made for it to work better:
*reduce LS effect by half in Normal Mode - change that wouldn't hurt, some more money in the economy would be actually good, this would make some old farms viable, for those who enjoy solofarm;
*remove Gold Items from the exempt from LS list in Hard Mode - ability to farm 10-15 golds per hour is just ridiculous, the main factor that made them worthless.

Please remember that the reason given by Anet for the implementation of Loot Scaling was not primarily because of RMT Gold Farmers. Anet stated they found it economically unbalancing that a farmer could earn upwards of 10+ times more gold than a player playing the game normally. It is currently true that a farmer can out earn a normal player - as it should be - but loot scaling has reduced that income gap. If Anet wants to stick to their strategy of constraining the output of farming versus normal play, they will have to replace loot scaling with some other method of reducing drops. Be careful what you wish for.

Remember that Loot scaling was implemented simultaneously with the elimination of the Anti-Farming Code (AFC). AFC controlled the rate of earning between farming and normal play style by eliminating high-value (e.g., gold, green, etc.) drops items upon repeated entry into a zone. Since the elimination of AFC / implementation of loot scaling was also made simultaneously with the introduction of Hard Mode, a return to AFC would mean lockpicks and Tomes would be added to the list of items subject to AFC.

Previously, the AFC kept me from doing any farming. By the time I got a handle on a farming run (say 5-6 attempts), all drops were reduced to low value white items. Worse, this farming tag followed me around and prevented that character from getting good drops anywhere until I had played “normally” for some period of time. Now, I can take my time perfecting a run. Sometimes I get into farming Norn points or Asura points by repeating a zone. A return to AFC would mean all people farming Norn, Asura, SS or LB repeatedly would see their drops dry up to nothing whether they were in a full group or not.

Also, not everything about the economy in the AFC/pre-Loot Scaling days was wonderful. Because it was far easier for farmers to earn gold, but more difficult to get good drops, there was a high degree of price inflation. The average green or gold item cost a lot more back then than it does today, and we would return directionally to this. Runes, insignias, ectos, cores, etc, - all of these items will increase in price and become harder to acquire. The player playing “normally,” however will have the same amount of money while non-fixed price items will become more expensive. Arguments that a removal of loot scaling will help “casual players” are generally unsupported by what has happened since the implementation of loot scaling and AFC removal.

I see there is a lot of nostalgia for the old system, but it is a serious mistake to go back.

Allow me to mention that it didn't help hardcore farmers.
They were making money but not as fast as they used to before LS... they are hardcore remember?

It's impossible to earn the same gold with a hardcore farmer no matter if there is LS or not. Period So the gap between hardcore and casual will always increase. LS was a solution to slow down the gap increase.

If the casual player farms "10" times/day and gets "10k" the hardcore player farms "100" times/day and gets "100k". Multiply this random number x24/7 and tell us what you get and if the gap is increasing or not... so LS was definitely towards the right direction.

What makes you think that price of ecto won't increase if LS is removed?
drop rate will be the same but market will be inflated with more cash, so "WTB ectos 12k/ea" messages will appear again

Finally i believe anet will think logically and won't give an HUGE incentive to RMTs to break latest measures against em...

hmm. I composed my original thoughts a few hours ago, and I see now that Gaile's original quote has been put on the site, and is a little different than I remember.

She did not say the gap was 10+. Rather, she said 8 times. She did not say the gap "economically unbalanced" the game. Nor, however, did she say anything about RMT or botting.

What she mentioned was that there was a gap and that Loot scaling would have the effect of closing that gap.

I still stand by the main arguments in my post above, my memory of Anet's reasons was not precise.

Did you know that someone who has played GW for 2.5 years with every campaign and 7+ characters and extreme devotion to the game CAN NOT MAKE MONEY, even if he plays 5+ hours a day, because...

1) Ursan has taken away all his farming opportunities, and he's too low a rank to join them?

2) He doesn't have a 55/SS?

3) All the good farming spots suck nowadays (griffons, trolls, ettins)?

So there. All your "you gotta be hardcore to make money too bad you casual players don't need money" thing is all a bunch of lies because even hardcore players can not make money that easily.

Spanning all 7 chars of mine I probably have 75k total right now.

A lot of the posts here aren't saying to drop it though. Regardless of the gap between comfortable and insane, loot scaling is a HUGE blow to the botters. The amount of sold gold they inject into the economy is DRAMATICALLY reduced with loot scaling, and that's a good thing. IP banning is a feeble wrist-slap in comparison.

Keep it.

/notsigned

Not really. A bot, which can farm 24/7, can still make a hefty amount of money, by farming 24/7. A human, which can farm a few hours per day, now can make only a very small amount of money. You'd have to be mentally retarded not to see this.

Learn to read?

I'm sure at least 75% of the posts want loot scaling removed.

I would love a poll, but Anet doesnt care about polls anyway.

Fixed the stat

The same bot has to work 4 (I think officially a solo farmer gets twice the drops he would get in an 8-man party) times longer than before to make the same amount of money. Effectively this reduces the sold gold flow to a quarter of its former volume - and that's before counting the effect of certain companies switching their resources to more bot-friendly games. Losses of 75% count as a huge blow in my book.

I think all the SMART ANet employees left in early 2006.

Anyone care to set up a poll for this? So we can get some quick reference tally on the standings?

I GOT IT!!!!!! We make everything in the game worth 1g...that way the ppl that are too lazy to farm for there gold can get the same as the ppl that play the for hours to get there high end stuff.

Plus would help kill the gold sellers....im the smartedest ^^

I already signed this a few pages back but
Either Remove LS OR add Gold Buying to the ingame store simple solution if you ask me.
Would give aanet some profit as well and before you say it will come down
to the haves and have-nots WELL we already have that now.

I'm sure at least 75% of the posters wouldn't mind having req 7 unconditional crystallines rain from the sky. Is that an argument for anything other than the general mentality of posters?