Should Lootscaling be removed after the new Rtm policy?

Please tell me how I can avoid Loot Scaling.

Actually we can ignore it because of the lengthy list of critical flaws this poll has. You admit some of them openly and then multiple folks tacked on a bunch more. It's completely invalid.

Saying things like "oh well this poll might be useless but we (and Anet) have to use it anyway" is an extraordinarily bad logic problem.

True, true.......

I think that based on the results of this poll, there is no way we can reasonably predict how it would look if we were asking the entire player base (say through the "Xunlai Polling Agent" or a login screen announcement pointing to the official website). The average forum-goer is part of a very small subset of the entire GW population, and often has very different views about the game compared to the average player.

I think that the following factors would decrease the value of such a poll anyway:

1) Many players, even here on the forums, don't know very much about loot scaling. We've seen more then enough uninformed posts over the last 70 pages (more near the beginning). I think the majority of the player base wouldn't even have the vaguest notion of what it is, let alone how removing it might affect the economy. Many will vote anyway.

2) I think this is especially true among those who benefit more from LS: the low end / "casual" players. LS allows them to afford things they want on the low-end market, like runes, weapon mods, cheap max weapons, and crafting materials. However, many probably picked up the game after LS was implemented, and have no basis for comparing its effects, if they've even heard of it. Very few would likely vote, even though the represent a significant portion of the player base.

Because of these issues, using polls to determine the course of action on specific, somewhat complex issues like this is a bad idea. Investing the time to understand LS and its effects is something most of the voters will not do. A better way is to have a small group who does understand the issue (ANet design team in this case) make an informed decision in a way that involves informed community members in a debate over the issue (forum threads like this one). People who do care about the issue get their say, and the decision is based on the merits of going one way or the other.

No, not my point. Thanks for playing.

My point is that it isn't a statistically valid poll and shouldn't be treated as such. I'm making fun of some peoples lack of knowledge on statistical reasoning, who are obviously lacking, and those several claiming to be experts. To a lesser extent I'm also making fun of those that don't know, admit they don't know, yet still form a strong opinion based on the poll as evidence to back it up. I do so by claiming to be an expert with years of schooling at a major university under a world famous mathematician and then go through and pretty much quote the textbook reasons why this type of poll has no meaning. (Opinions are fine - I have one on LS too and I'm not a big fan of it).

The poll is meaningless, it's not even done in such a way as to be accurate for GWG users let alone the GW population as a whole. It can not be used to say *anything* for or against LS. Since the outcome has no real relation on the population you could ask any question or just have a random number generator and have the same chances of getting an accurate number.

You will pretty much never convince a certain group of people of this (after all the *question* itself is relevant) and some will still claim "expert" status, though I do hope some took the hint that a first semester statistics student is reading their posts going "huh? That's stupid." - they aren't fooling anyone that knows much at all about it.

I'll leave the Schrodinger's Cat thing up to the reader to figure out.

[QUOTE=Loviatar]Well now that is just silly isn't it?

How on earth do they log how a player feels about a feature or update? If me saying that they have no other way than to listen to fan feedback such as this poll/thread is so wrong that it makes you cringe then please do tell me how else they do it. Please tell us how players can use loot scaling or how they can avoid it.

[QUOTE]i will give you the benefit of doubt that you are making a jest and not idiotic.

they log if players are using something
if flock to something new and stay
if flock to something new and than avoid it like the plague.

that is direct entire playerbase feedback not a tiny fraction of a select special interest elite site whose members have mostly a vested interest in one side.

you are getting direct player feedback by their ingame reaction not filtered in any way as this site which is only one of many all with different viewpoints that may be completely oppossed.

[QUOTE=Loviatar]No no no, not so fast. That in no way explains how they guage how players feel about loot scaling. How do players flock to loot scaling? Sure they will observe a lot less farming going on in the regularl farming spots, simply because the loot nerf killed it. That doesn't tell them how players feel about it, it doesn't tell them if players preferred it.

[QUOTE]LS is a feature put in for a specific developer design goal not for player approval.

best example from very long ago the very same group so opposed to LS was and posted/polled here oppossed to guaranteed salvage/rune trader as it would slash their income.

according to guru the players hated guaranteed salvage.

note

LS is a special targeted design feature with specific goals that the devs think were hit. hardcore solo farmers

they will not reverse it to benefit a tiny very exclusive minority of players

Sorry but I don't belive it, sure there may have been one or two that had that opinion, but please shos thesignificant support you are claiming. Perhaps a nice poll with 600+ voters indicating over two thirds majority would be nice

Sorry to be picky, there is a slight typo there. I think you meant to say:

(as proved conclusively here of course)

I didnt say anything about posting on forums. Again you need to go back and read. I said chatting in game while AFK. They are still playing the game to there playstyle.

You really need to go back and read. Plain and simple. People said that it was unfair that there playstyle wasnt making as much as a hardcore farmer and that it wasnt fair. I then stated what about those that just afk in town chatting, there income is far less than even those peoples playstyle. Then that shouldnt be fair either that a persons playstyle such as yours is making more than there playstyle. Thank you for clearly showing its ok if your playstyle makes more than someone elses but its not ok if someone elses playstyle makes more than yours.

Care for more rope.

Were I Anet what I would be looking at is retain rate of new players, retain rate of old players, and amount of items purchased (both in terms of sheer number and gold spent) before and after loot scaling. That will tell if it is popular or not - in fact it would directly say that people *are* flocking to the game because of loot scale if the rate significantly increased.

They stated they had two goals - one was to hurt gold sellers and the other was to reduce the price of items for the casual player to be able to afford base stuff (armor, runes, etc). Unstated was that they wished to retain players and have them purchase new chapters, expansions, and GW2 (the two stated goals are the means they thought this would occur).

As of now the gold seller thing is becoming mostly moot due to other changes. However prices most assuredly have deflated by a LARGE margin so that part of the goal was very much met. Somewhat unstated was that they wanted solo farmers to make, at best, roughly two times what a person in an 8-man group makes (the reduction of the gold gap between the haves and have nots causing the higher prices). Again, they pretty much succeeded here. So complaining that you don't make a whole lot more than a person playing in a group is only confirming that what they did works - the lounderthat is chanted the more they know they have done what they wanted with respect to this.

As to retain rates - dunno and we can't know unless Anet tells us. We all have our anecdotal evidence of our friends in game and the experiences are all over the place. Like Loviator I give them the benefit of doubt, in the past when things have negatively impacted those rates they changed them. Plus given the amount of complaining in general my other bet is that the amount of people who are now purchasing full sets of equipment and casual to mid level retain rates are higher (those two groups making up most of the *game* population, though forums tend to be mid to high).

I can't say I like loot scale very much, it pretty much made my favorite farming spots worthless (and they were anything close to high end either) and I still prefer those spots over what I do now. Since I normally only have short periods of time to play I also prefer to do short runs for merchant fodder and that no longer really works well (of those that do I hate - say Raptor Farming - so I never get around to doing it). I could also afford stuff better back then. But then, I was part of the group they wanted to reduce so I very much know complaining that they did what they wanted to do isn't going to get things to change.

Best statement in the entire thread. Because the economy doesn't matter in the least except to those that have a need or want to be richer than the next person. Vanity items are nothing more than cosmetic and not required, just another want that is obtainable by just playing. There really is no need for profits other than merchanting items to NPC vendors just like you do in every single offline rpg you play. You go out kill things and sell what you pickup. If you want more to pickup you play hard mode. Personally I'm finding I get more stuff in normal mode than I do in hard mode in half the time because I can kill mobs faster. But you all can keep beating that dead horse over the socalled economy all you want to. It's quite the laugh to read since it just doesn't matter.

PS: They ain't changing Loot Scale because guess what? It's WAD. <grin>

So they wont change it, no biggie, just rinse the exemption list, worked for me.

and.... if anet cared not a a jot about what we (the selective forum community) thought why have a dedicated community relations manager posting here?

you harp on about people not knowing what LS is then go on about rune prices for low end market!!!

Removing LS would lower all the minor rune prices and material prices. Tell me you can see this

[QUOTE=Loviatar]Please pass on how you managed to avoid LS. The logs of players avoiding LS would be interesting reading.

Sorry but you like most are condusing LS with HM supply increase.

Let me explain. Before the Loot nerf can you name any common items that were expensive?? There were not many if any at all.

Then LS and HM came. Common minor runes actually increased in value slightly due to LS( hurting casual playerbase).

HM increased the supply of rare items reducing their prices.
HM had the biggest impact on rare price items than LS by a large margin.

It is a common misconception and easily made because the two were implemented at the same time.

Frankly, yes loot scaling sucks.... lower quality drops in normal mode sucks....

Hard Mode farming makes up for it a little and to be honest, smaller parties in hard mode seem to give better loot around.....

If need to farm, farm Hard Mode....

What I hated was the sheer drop in the rune prices... I was so happy to get a Superior Absorbtion drop one day and then check at trader and worth like a 1/100th of what it did before... that sucked...

I dont like loot scaling, but been there for such a long time I learnt to live with it... so I accepted it as part of the game now.... don't think it can or will be reversed.

Rune prices have very little if anything to do with LS. The major drop happened with a change in the salvaging mechanism. The death of Superior Absorption came when it became known that the reduction is vs. physical only and non-stacking and non-universal (it may have been that way from the beginning - don't remember - but at some point it was explicitly stated). Considering that runes don't break in use there was a lot of demand when the game was new but as the game matured less and less runes were needed and thus prices went down. The introduction of heroes caused a minor spike to some popular runes but that has levelled since then.

The fact that many minor runes are more expensive than their major or superior counterparts is an indication that the malus (health loss) is not properly balanced. This can be proven by asking any PvPer which kind of runes should be used (since PvP is where every point counts). If it was perfectly balanced, the potency of the rune would depend on the needs of the build. Now it is minor runes all the way, no exceptions.

Minor runes and insignias would certainly drop more in farm runs. Whether or not the increased availability would offset the inflation is speculation. I'll grant that it's probable, and give you one of the "valuable to casuals" categories that would become cheaper without LS.

Superior rune drop rates would be essentially unchanged (gold armor drops are LS exempt), meaning that Sup Vigors and those caster runes that are usually superior in PvE (just look through and spot the 1k+ superiors, things like monk runes, fire, death) would increase in price.

Rare crafting materials are also LS-exempt. Same drop rate, more money to buy them with = increased price.

I was thinking more so of rare crafting materials when I said that, as the prices of the common crafting materials have been more affected recently by demand for consumables in PuGing than by the actual drop rate of the materials. Maybe the removal of LS would have more of an effect than it's introduction did, I think not personally. Call it a tie here?

The other category I mentioned, particularly weapon mods, are also primarily from LS-Exempt sources (gold weapon drops). I can remember shortly after HM and LS's introduction (when the prices still hadn't caught up to the changes) when I could sell my bag full of Strength and Honor mods for 5-6k each and be done in half an hour. While I'd like to be able to do that again, I'd hate to pinch pennies trying to afford Forget Me Not for new focuses in that kind of economy.

Take away:
Yes, minor runes and regular crafting materials might drop in price a little. These are, on average, the cheapest player economy expenses of the low end player. Other things that have been traditionally more expensive, weapon mods, superior runes, and rare crafting materials, would probably increase in price.

Loot scaling is at least as much responsible for this as Hard Mode.

Anti-Farm (pre-loot scaling): Repetitive farming yields mostly whites and blues. When you repetitively enter a zone, high end drops like golds and rare materials decrease in frequency.
Loot Scaling: Rapid killing and smaller party sizes (read: repetitive farming) decreases the frequency of low end drops like whites and blues. High end drops like golds and rare materials are exempt from this.

We are getting round to where we were many pages ago. The pro LS believe inflation would occur if LS was removed. The anti LS believe there would be not much impact on the rare item prices due to the increased supply from HM.

How about we take it from this perspective. This poll has been accused of being biases due to the fact that only a minority of players read forums/farm. The vast majority being casual players who always have full parties, play thorugh missions etc.

How much impact are these players likely to have on the economy. I am a farmer but my gold usually goes on gold sinks, afk on nine rings, lockpicks etc. I would like to hear where other farmers money goes. I don't think i have ever bought a high end item/mini pet so I have not impacted on demand there.

You are ofcourse wrong again. Super Absorption does have a universal effect, Knight's insignias used to be universal but have been changed to local. Super Absorption does stack with Knight's insignia, it just doesn't stack with minor or major runes of Absorption which it has never done.
The reason the price dropped was mainly because they increased the droprate for both Superior Absorbtion and Superior Vigor, and the fact they nerfed absorption as a whole.

Lots of interesting comments and two very opposed points of view.

My own opinion is that I think the game has lost some appeal now that hardly anything has any value. There used to be that thrill of getting a weapon drop with a perfect mod and knowing that you could sell it for for a reasonable amount.

Now there are very few things that are worth spending the time selling.

For the first time in ages I actually did some serious farming yesterday. I collected about 15 gold drops that I IDd for my title, but I could just not be bothered to salvage and try and sell the mods that included a couple of 15^50 inscriptions, a +30hp bow grip, and a 20/20 sundering bow string.

Just have a look on Guru auctions for these items - you will find loads not selling at 2K. Sure I could probably have sold them for 1K each, but to be honest I just didn't think it was worth the effort. In the time I took to sell them I could do another two or three HM raptor runs, so that is what I did and the merchant got the weapons.

In my opinion if you are merchanting weapons with perfect mods instead of salvaging and selling the mods, or even selling the weapons whole, because you can farm almost the same amount of money in the same amount of time and have the chance of getting something better drop, then the prices have fallen too far.

I can't say I really want things to be back to mods selling for 100K, but I do think that there should be some rebalancing of the economy.

I see some people are still persisting with the inflation myth. In the two years prior to the loot nerf, prices went down, thats deflation. So there is zero evidence to suggest that inflation would occur.

It's only logical that the inflation bs keeps getting repeated - it's the only possible reason as to why someone would be AGAINST Loot Scaling.

I still think that the pro-LS people here are rich elitists who want to keep their farmspots and don't want others to become wealthy. Really, the only good point that the pro-LS people are making is the inflation, the rest is just based on their personal experiences in the game ("I can make 100K per hour so everyone can"), selfishness ("omg I can maek 100K per minute with MY farm run! If LS gets remoevd people can gfet money wai 2 quikc!") and personal attacks on anti-LS people (I can make cash easily, you whine, you lie etc").

No actually it's the opposite. The anti-LS people want their play style to be richly rewarded while non solo-farmers get poorer and poorer, relatively speaking. In fact, they think they deserve EIGHT TIMES the reward of normal players. See how that works?

Solo farmers do the work of 8 people but only get 1/8 of what they deserve, while normal players have 8 times more assistence and still get the same amount of loot, how exactly is this fair???

I think it's still fair to point out how much the economy has changed since the implementation of LS - and to suggest that the price of higher-end items would inflate.

they do it 8 time slower.

That is incorrect.

Solo farmers do the job of 1 person. 1 solo farming build bearer.

Solo builds are usually meant to use the numbers of the monsters against them or just completely ignore the number of the enemies.
Best farming builds work like that, getting more health and/or energy the more enemies attack you.

This is a fairly typical quote from the pro LS contingent. Make a broad sweeping statement with no meat at all. No theories, no facts.

Prices mainly went down due to major changes in drops, basically when new chapters were released. Inbetween those updates, there were quite a few times when prices went up.

Again, casual farming (Trolls, vermin etc) does NOT make one rich. The reward is poor and nothing compared to the hardcore farm runs of these days. Solo-farming might get 8x more drops than someone who farms in a party of 8, but most farms that require 8 people get MUCH better drops that are worth more than 8 times the reward of solo-farming.


Fine then, can you name 1 item that had it's price drastically decreased as the result of the Loot Scaling? Remember, stuff like Runes, Materials etc dropped cause of the Exemption List, and stuff like Colossal Scimitar and Ele Sword dropped BECAUSE of solo-farming.

It all depends on your perspective. Enemy mobs were designed for full teams so it's 1 player going against a mob designed for 8 players. Regardlessly of how you percieve it, solo farmers have to do more work than a full team for roughly the same amount of loot hence it is not fair and his statement made no sense.

Solo farmers still get 8 times as many 'special', lootscaling-exempted drops. That is the reward of solo farming.

In reality that doesn't make much of a difference unless you're farming rare materials or green weapons. Neither was it the point.

These drops, however, are of NO use for casual farmers. I couldn't care less about a Glob of Ectoplasm dropping for me, and I'd just merch it for the money. Besides, the chance that these Exempted items rarely drop, and if they drop they are most of the time worth nothing anymore these days. No profit is to be made here except for the really rare items.

Let's not forget that casual farming isn't done with the goal of becoming rich.

...which will fall on deaf ears. There is no amount of common sense that will affect their perception of being kept down by the man.

Solo farm and you get 8 times the amount of anything you might reasonably want at the point you can solo farm effectively. Plus, because the scaling isn't linear, you'll also walk away with about double the gold money and other normal drops. When you're done with selling and merching everything you'll have at least triple what any player who simply played through that same area would have gotten.

Never mind just just how silly claims about doing more work are in the first place. Solo farm builds are quite limited in where they work, but where they work, they generally kill faster than any normal team of even 8 players will manage because they're specifically designed to exploit the contents of a given area, which was, surprise, surprise, implemented assuming a (near) full party possessing a set of team based skills. Anyone that can claim, for example, that a good raptor farm build, which will manage to aggro and kill 30+ enemies in 2 minutes or less while standing still, is more work than trying to hit the same area in a party where they divide aggro and disrupt team functionality is, at best, using troll logic. *If* it were possible, for example, for a normal team of eight to clear the raptor nestling area in even 30 seconds, which is still only half as efficient as a solo farmer relative to reward vs time spent, I'd have more patience for arguments claiming there's a discrepancy in effort versus reward for solo farmers, but that's flat out not the case.

People should be glad they don't do something as simple as move that group of Agorodons *almost* in front of the raptor nest to right in front of it. One change that wouldn't alter normal PvE playing in the slightest would destroy raptor farming in an instant. Heck, after enduring this thread, that's what I'd do if I were Anet:

"In response to overwhelming player dissatisfaction with loot scaling, we are removing it. However, we are also re-evaluating and re-balancing mob placement and skills in areas our player logs demonstrate are easily exploitable by a single character. After this change you can have your 8X of everything IF you can find a single place left you can solo "

It makes a crapload of difference with regard to rares alone. For example, solo farming a certain number of enemies in 1/3 of the time it takes a party of 8? That's 24 times as many rares/hour as each individual in the party would get. The merchant value of those alone makes farming still worth it. And then there's tomes, dyes, keys/lockpicks.

Also, the exemption list is exactly the point. Items on that list are the intended reward for solo farming. You can't brush aside the rewards you do get and go on to complain you're not rewarded.

Casual farmers don't want rares, dyes, keys/lockpicks, etc.? Weirdoes! No wonder they're so poor.

They do drop quite frequently for me when I farm.

You really need to define that 'casual farming' of yours.