Confirmation that the Live Team is going after SF this year

What else is there to do?

1) PvP. This doesn't work for a lot of people. Don't understand it myself, but it's definitely true.
2) Farm.
3) Title grind.

Looks comprehensive to me. The assertion that a lot of people do #2 is unarguably correct. Some people hate #1 and #3. Some people hate #1 and are done with #3.

Compared to what? This proves nothing. If 50 people are in district throughout the game, and 49 of them are in ToA, we would properly state that a large number of players are doing UWSC. If there used to be 200 people in ToA regularly, that is not germane to whether a "large" number of players are doing UWSC now.

Here, I'll provide a simple logical argument as to why UWSC (and other imba farms) should be nerfed:

1) There will always be a "most efficient" farm.
2) Money-motivated players will always flock to the "most efficient" farm initially.
3) Doing the same thing over and over eventually gets boring.
4) Players do not get bored at the same time.
5) It is therefore very difficult for individual players to move the focal teamplay farm from one location to another.

It follows that changing up the "most efficient" farm regularly is healthy for the game. Failure to do so leads to unnecessary exodus.

EDIT:

The farming behavior of you and others like you creates a large negative externality. If I have 1000 ectos, and farming drives the price of ectos down 1k each, then I just lost a full storage box worth of platinum. Your farming affects others and makes them worse off. So they want your farm gone. Simple.

The other negative externality is the effect on the player base at the margin. No, you and others like you won't balanceway UW. But not all UWSC players are as money-motivated as you. You can't infer what the entire UWSC player base will do post-nerf from what you would do. Attempting to generalize from an instance is fail logic, and you're implicitly doing that in your reasoning without realizing it.

i listed the reasons why i still play this game in a prior post. but hey, you can still try to dodge with your utter ignorance. seriously, you accuse others of being selfish, when you still cannot see past the fact that there's more to this game than storyline and farming.

but hey, be bitter and sit in your little world. you can yell, you can scream, but if anet decides SF and UWSC will die, then they will die. UWSC is a very TINY part of GW. it is very popular in a very small circle of players. outside of that, people don't give a rat's ass about it. instead of trying to argue why it should stay, you should start planning how you're gonna play this game after it's gone. 'cause believe me, if anet wants it gone, it will be. what will you do then? count your useless stacks of gold and ectos? quit?

and martin: you've forgotten 4) play for fun. but thanks for proving my point, you've come up with three ways to play the game, while traversc claims there's only two.

Assertion without proof.

I just listed two good reasons why people care.
1) inflation externality
2) immovable (and eventually undesirable) focal point for players

You and your prejudices. Some people are a lot more goal-oriented than you are, and you just can't seem to accept it. You stated that you leave after every match in RA regardless of team quality. This makes you a HUGE outlier on the preference spectrum. Surely you realize this. If the popularity of the title system doesn't prove it to you, I don't know what would.

i'll pursue a goal if there's actual tangible rewards in doing so. titles and money in GW do not offer tangible rewards. they won't ever give me a stronger character (outside of pve skills, but those are usually very powerful even without a high corresponding title), and i generally do not enjoy grinding on a treadmill to nowhere. if i happen to gain a title, it's not because i played specifically to get that title. that title happened on its own as i play the way i like to play.

am i wrong for playing this way? no. are you wrong for playing the way you do? no. however, anet IS looking into nerfing SF, and NOT looking into nerfing my playstyle. we can argue around in circles all we want ('cause you know that's how it's gonna go), but it still won't change a damned thing. SF, unless anet decides to change its mind, is gonna go. be prepared for it.

I've been yelling for SF to go die in a fire as vociferously as anyone. We just have very different reasons for our feelings on the issue.

The cycle used to be: you'd find a broken farm, abuse it, and not tell anyone. Eventually someone else would find your farm, be an idiot, and tell everyone about it. Then ANet would nerf it and you'd go find another farm.

That didn't happen this time. We found UWSC, Fooster was an idiot and screamed it out to the world as payback for getting booted from the group for drama, and ANet let it go on for over a year.

I think the results speak for themselves. Broken stuff that is commonly known in a massively multiplayer game must be nerfed. Otherwise, you might as well just let people dupe. That has the same long-run effects but is more efficient for everyone, since people don't have to spend time farming.

I thought you'd already seen this argument before, because I used it in that other thread to sway upier's mind. But since you haven't, let me spell it out for you again.

You cannot ignore the fact that Shadow Form exists. Because it exists, some things are way way way faster than others, and that means most people will simply use Shadow Form as a shortcut instead of doing things balance-way, as you put it.

The best example is VSF. Say it's a Thommis-ZQ day. Do you think you'll have difficulties getting a PuG as a Warrior? What if it's a Borguus Blisterbark-ZQ day? Why the big difference in ease of getting a team?

Can you say that even though VSF exists, you can easily PuG a full team and go do Thommis HM balance-way?
How can you say "play the game how you like to play" when Shadow Form is clearly draining the player pool who normally do the ZQs everyday?

If your entire argument revolves around the UW, acknowledging that Shadow Form is balanced in the UW proper but overpowered everywhere else, then you'll just have given a great argument to nerf Shadow Form.

If that is not your argument, then provide reasons why Shadow Form should exist outside of the UW.

Classify me then.

I PvP, but not very often; recently for example all I've been doing in GW is doing the Zaishen Quests.
I don't really farm. Maybe every now and then when I've got a few spare minutes but not enough to do something significant, then I might go do a Raptor run.
I don't title grind. I've long stopped working on my KoaBD title track, which has been stuck at 15 for maybe two years.

So tell me, why do I play Guild Wars?

This argument is so obvious that I really wonder why traversc wound up arguing that all that's left for people playing GW is to farm.

Hehe.

They've nerfed so many other things, I'm surprised this hasn't gotten the axe before now actually.

Well it's about time they finally LOOK into it. When/if they finally DO something about it, then I'll laugh at the QQ to ensue.

this only applies for some people. There are many who hates paying for runs and the trolls will be out to qq. Heck even getting people to pay 1k is hard for some. I shld know cos i am a runner and when i ask the people i ran, they told me the same thing: wipe on bosses 15 times, stuck on boss for 2 months. Its hard to find a full party yes, but its always easy to get 2/3 people if u try then add heroes to your party. Just got to be pro-active, advertise hard in lfg and on local chat. I never had a prob finding groups this way.


just because sf is op cos slavers can be done in 1 hr doesnt change the fact 600 is op as well. no hm dungeons is designed for only 3 people to run: qz, smiter, 600. This is a broken mechanic, and as for speed clearing, a 600 can clear say, city of torc'qua faster then a perma due to the fact that sliver only works on multiple mobs aggroing u. So 600 is broken as well and shld be fixed.

if i worked at Anet and read this i would buff SF to do double damage and nerf 600 and watch all the QQ people burst lmao

If you want we can add a 4th category: Zcoin farming. The method is different, as you need to run around chasing a variety of objectives instead of grinding the same build/area day in and out, but the motivation (grind for shinies) is similar.

I think you've only scratched the surface as to what Guild Wars offers. But then again, a lot of people share this view...which is very disappointing, IMO.

Please enlighten me. Your blanket statement that "there are other things to do" is unconvincing. What are these other things to do, and why should I do them?

If you could explain it, wouldn't you? Why are you asking me?

My point was simple: the three activities I listed are the only endgame activities that are ends in and of themselves. Anything else PvE is aimless drift that uses time inefficiently. You may not see it this way, but you should recognize that there's a significant chunk of the player base that does.

Naturally, this group of players gets upset when they are told by the developer that they will have to invest additional time to achieve the same goals. But nerfs are a necessary evil; as noted, if you aren't going to bother nerfing OP stuff you might as well just let people dupe and be done with it. More efficient for everyone.

Zaishen coin farming is strictly dominated by farming more efficiently and purchasing desired products from other players. The rewards aren't large enough to make farming the Zaishen quests worth the time investment unless you were going to do the task anyway. The PvP side is similar; if you enjoy HA, you should definitely play on the HA quest day because activity (and fame) increase. But you were going to play it anyway, just not necessarily right then.

The Zaishen quests are a clever organizing principle for a multiplayer game with diffuse options for what you could be doing at any given time. But that's all they are.

i don't see a problem with SF being used in a tank n' spank fashion. Every other class pretty much has something to do this with. (obby flesh, defy pain, 600, 55, yadda yadda yadda...) the difference with all these other builds is that they have very little or no damage output unless there is another person in the group.

this is the problem with shadowform. You are alone. In a team based game this is unacceptable to me.

I say just make it so you can't do damage with SF up. Solves all your issues, you still have a good pretty survivable tank, but now you are in league with the rest of the tanks.

Different area's will require different tank set ups as well. some will need a bonder, some will need regen, some will need this... that... don't care, just make it so you can't solofarmthegame with 1 build but then make it so every other class in the game can't.

It's either nerf the damage output, or buff every other class so people can have fun with whatever character.

not like it matters.. this game is dead to me... *helloooooo aion*

Sweet SF is going to get nerfed into Oblivion and then the QQing and crying and gnawing and gnashing of teeth and threatening to quits and all that good stuff will begin. I can hardly wait.

The answer to question two is very easy - for the challenge. To play the game. Unless you (like many other players) believe that the only reason you should ever do something in the game is if you receive a tangible reward...which kind of puts the "handcuffs" on your playing experience, IMO.

Answers to question one:

1. Have you ever tried to complete a mission solo without heroes or henchmen? For starters, try doing the Dragon's Lair in this way...it will scratch the surface on a whole other way to play the game for you.

2. Have you ever created a character, not accessed storage once or traded with another player, to see how you would fare? This will give you the feeling of the game when you first started playing it...it's a very refreshing experience.

3. Have you ever tried to come up with an original build using rarely used skills, and actually succeed with that build? Talk about satisfaction to know that you're not just using a build that you read about on the internet...you've created something.

Those are just examples on how I've made the game still fun to this day (after 4+ years of playing) long after the "end of the storyline" was reached. If you feel that PvP, farming and title grinding are all that's left to do in the game, then I believe you've severely handcuffed yourself.

I agree, but recognize that it would still be possible to stack a target to -10 and kill it through degen. You'd have to rework SF such that you can't cast anything on enemies and can't deal damage, AND you'd have to rework skills like Burning Speed. (eg: you are set on fire for X seconds, you run faster for Y seconds, and everything nearby takes Z damage when Burning Speed ends.)

The path of least resistance for the programmers is clearly to make SF impossible to maintain. I think that solution is much more likely, despite the fact that it is inferior.

I posted this in another thread, but I think that it needs repeating...

"You just have to come to terms that GW is a game of limited content. Though you can't "beat the game" so to speak, there exists a point where all your goals have been achieved. That could be wealth, titles, whatever, but that point does come. When that realization hits, players have a choice to make: 1) make new goals, 2) quit the game, or 3) appreciate the game for the social network it has allowed you to build. I myself am in the third camp. I've gotten my titles, my shiny objects, so I've moved on to helping people, to having fun with my friends. If you're always playing by yourself, or not building relationships with your groups/guilds, this game is going to get boring very quickly after you've achieved your personal goals. The game isn't fun for me because of the content, it's fun because of the people who play it."

If you're looking for a way to use your time efficiently, don't play a game. To get continued use out of GW you need to make goals that are bigger than yourself, your personal ambitions. Make your guildies better, make your pugs better, help them achieve their goals. Wanting certain items to look great is fine, but coming back to GW for the sake of just farming defeats the purpose of a game. You're here to waste time. You're here to have fun. Don't take it so seriously. Martin's list of "things you can do" is completely out of whack, a self centered approach that treats individuals as isolated entities.

As for SF, about time Anet.

Your language is ironic, because you are arguing that I should handcuff myself to increase the difficulty level of the game and alter the play experience. I never enjoyed that in other games, and so I'm not going to do it in GW.

It's not that I don't like problem solving. It's that I prefer to derive a future benefit from the application of those skills. If I find a better farm, find a better team build, or find a better tactic, the time that I invested finding it gets returned to me because whatever goal I set is accomplished sooner.

What you propose is not for everyone. The vast majority of any gaming community never engages in that sort of behavior; only a small niche community ever springs up around such activity.

EDIT:

Time wasted enjoying yourself is not time wasted. It's the efficient use of time.

Our preferences differ. It makes sense to invest time in others if and only if doing so provides future returns - true for both of us. We define future returns differently. You want camaraderie. I want to accomplish goals.

I accept that not all players are like me. I just choose not to spend time around the players that don't share my objectives. I don't criticize you for playing the way you do (unless you whine about not having things you want, in which case I have no sympathy). But you criticize me for being different. I'm not going to tell you that your priorities are "out of whack". I think you're nuts for trying to have fun by helping bad players, but that's just my opinion.

The point I'm making is that there is a substantial share of the player base that shares my point of view, and that they have a viewpoint that's valid from that point of view. The players that are complaining are missing the bigger picture that ridiculously OP stuff destroys the integrity of the system that they enjoy playing in, and only seeing the immediate impact on self. That's the real issue here.

[sarcasm]Great! I don't powertrade, let's nerf that by making ectos untradeable![/sarcasm]

Seriously, powertrading is more of a reason for inflation than any farm has ever been. Your ectos will not go up in price, because no one sells ectos to the trader! During the time I've been playing, ecto prices dropped from 8k to 5k before there was a pug-friendly UWSC (37.5%), and from 5k to 4.3k after (14%).

The nerf is going to happen, I agree.

If the aim is to provide ANet with some relief from QQ's and eliminate the current UWSC, then hopefully the end result will be something like this:

Elite Enchantment Spell For 5...18...21 seconds, all hostile spells that target you fail and all attacks against you miss. When Shadow Form ends, lose all but 5...41...50 Health.This skill ends prematurely when you hit with an attack or deal damage.

This way, SF tanking will remain intact for other areas, and the boring as hell UWSC will be eliminated.

No, you cannot join my balanced group just because there is no speed clear. You are still a PuG.


this post is now open for flaming

I've said it before, I'll say it again.

Shadow Form does not have a problem. Not one. Perma does. Remove Perma from the equation and things will be fine. I remember when Shadow Form didn't have access to consumables, Glyph of Swiftness, or Deadly Paradox. It was still used to farm, it was just slower. Not sure HOW to do it, but removing the ability to keep SF up all the time will make me happy, and should remove all the complaints from the people who want it nerfed.

Power trading cannot cause inflation. There must be more ectos/cash in the system for players to have the capacity to pay ever-escalating prices for limited items. Easy ectos do cause power traders to get rich, because players' time becomes more valuable and because more suckers enter the trading system.

The richest players in the game were holding limited miniatures (and other rarities like q7s and unconditionals) at the correct two times - while the armbrace/ecto dupe was going on and during the recent price boom driven by easy UWSC ecto and easy XTH keys. You cannot compete with income that does not require time investment. Holders of minis took a risk and won big. (After all, ANet could have released more at any time and hosed them.)

Farming is guaranteed to make you wealthy but unlikely to make you rich. The only way you can begin to compete with the power traders by farming is to find OP farms and exploit them for as long as you can without sharing them. You CAN outearn a power trader that way, per unit of time invested. HawkofStorms is mostly correct: Farming known farms IS for chumps.

The most efficient money-making method that I have data on was buying gems cheap and selling the armbraces during the Ursan era. I know a guy that made 5000 ectos in a month that way. I suspect that the champ point farmers made more, but I don't have proof.

Dungeon running is FAR more efficient than farming if you can find customers fast enough.

so why are there so many fanatic qq'ers out there?

if its so small, leave it alone. let them play the way they want to play. the only way they're affecting you is by giving you a shot at cheaper obsidian armor and allowing you to get taxi'd to areas youve already beaten on 5 previous characters.

yes the skill is silly; theoretically good on paper but it doesnt translate well in game. could have been fixed with more oversight upon implementation (changing monster skillset/makeup, etc). but to change it so late is also in itself silly.

and for those arguing about endgame...a full hall is the game's endgame. and the only way you're ever going to get close to that is by grinding and farming for titles and very, very expensive minis.

During the time ive played. Ecto Rised to High as 18k. and got down to 13-15k. and then to 9-10k in nf release.. And when Speedclear scene and ursan etc came. it dropped to 5-6k.. and been low since..

And no. Trading aint the thing ruining economy. with trading there aint coming any new ectos ingame. just rolling old ones around..

There's one important element you left out. Fun is SUBJECTIVE and thus what you listed as your fun is stupid and retarded to me. Fun to me is getting increases in power and objects that aren't the same 15^50 or +5^50 crapola this game delivers. Gaining experience used to be fun until you reached level 20. Until the ability to trade in skill points for things Experience gain was worthless once you had all the skills you wanted. When they added PVE only skills I was elated as they give me more power except they went and destroyed one of the best ones they made "ursans blessing". This is where the game goes screwy. They let SF live the high life and the one skill the majority of people who grouped enjoyed they nerfed to smithereens.
The Devs are stupid and have no clue how to make the game FUN for everyone.

Some of us find fun in playing without having the sentence "there's no point in your build; XXX is superior" constantly nagging you at the back of your skull.

Hence, why I care so much about profession balance in PvE. Unfortunately, SF completely kills any hope of that ever existing.

Agreed, "fun" depends on each person and what they like to do with the game.

To the bolded, I need to agree. It seems kind of two-faced to nerf one, while not the other.

And someone else posted an interesting solution - letting SF not be permable. That is pretty much the "problem" anyway. So that would be a reasonable alteration perhaps.

Since the quest for those limited items is a competitive process, easy ectos just make your job that much harder. Your competition is doing the same thing, driving the prices up faster than you can farm the ectos. If all you want is the armor, weapons and cheaper minis, you're better off in an easy ecto world. But if you want the rarer minis...not so.

You must have started after the Great Inflation when ectos hit 33k because the original trader code was bad. This was during the 55 craze; Monk sup runes ran 70k a pop and up. And we were all a lot poorer back then; 70k meant something.

This thread should be sufficient to convince you that the problem is that the devs cannot please all of the people all of the time, and not that the devs are stupid. People play this game for radically different reasons, and those preferences clash at times.

That said, the devs did make some design decisions that made their job a lot harder. Some of those errors were obviously avoidable. (Ex: it should have been immediately obvious that PvE skills were a terrible idea, and that tying them to grind was even more foolish.)

Most of the rancor that is deservedly aimed at the devs derives from the power creep in NF and EotN. This was blatantly aimed at making sales rather than deepening the game while maintaining its core integrity.

But we wouldn't be having this discussion if the devs hadn't gotten it so right in Prophecies. And Factions did provide a blessedly diverse PvP experience for a while despite its obvious PvE shortcomings.

idc if ANet nerfs SF. I'd have liked to get ectos for Obby armor and Chaos Gloves the easy way but if not then I'll find another way. Whenever a potent skill gets nerfed people are forced to think in a different way and thinking is good. I have no doubt that SF will ever be unusable, no matter how many times it gets nerfed. People are just too clever for that to happen. I hope ANet doesn't go the same route they took when they nerfed solo trapping. >.< EW is so fail now.

yes, for armor, weapons, titles, cheap minis, there is no way you'll fill a hall with "casual gameplay". you need a lot of money even for the easy items/titles to fill. for the rare minis, i agree with you, but instead of taking the attitude the damage has been done i can't catch up, i'll get what i can and hope i can find one cheap. because, in all reality, if sf becomes unusable, then the people that i'm competing against will just move to the next best farm (as will i most likely) and the competition will continue, just at a slower rate until we give up or there are no more undedicateds to purchase.

In other words, both of you (like a large portion of the playerbase) require something tangible beyond playing the game in order to derive fun from the game. I completely understand that, but, in your own words, that means that you have placed restrictions on your playstyle/objectives that you are holding others accountable for.

Solo trapping is not nerfed; you don't need Energizing Wind to kill with traps, not even in hard mode. Power creep from stronger skills and faster builds (like perma SF, for example) makes trapping less time efficient, and loot scaling drastically reduces drops from multiple simultaneous kills. Loot scaling hurt trapping as a means of solo farming far more than the duration reduction of EW.

'Yes it's broken, but only a small part of the community uses it, so don't nerf it' is a pretty bad logic. The skill is obviously broken, it needs to be fixed, regardless of how many people use it. And no, it affects people more than what you stated, but I'm not going to go into that seeing as I've discussed it at least 100 times in the past year or so.

Right, but if the overall rate of production is slowed, and you find a superior farm to the one that everyone is grinding, your advantage relative to the competition is magnified. You should want all the suckers to be grinding money out at 10k per hour while you're socking away 50-100k an hour. Fewer new ectos in the system slows the price spiral.

What I'm holding others accountable for is the undesirable externality that SF farming creates. Even a laissez faire neoclassical economist will grant that one of the purposes of the state is to correct such problems. In veiled terms, what you're really saying is, "If you play the way I do everything would be fine for you." But we're not you, and all that players are asking for is the perpetuation of what they enjoy doing.

Games in this genre have been using rare shinies as endgame content for what, a dozen years? It's not unreasonable for players to demand that this endgame objective be supported properly.

However, in the case of SF the skill is completely, hopelessly imba. It has to go. The problem, as with Ursan, is that ANet tolerated the existence of the build for as long as they did. This permitted a large community to spring up, and it's not surprising that members of that community don't want to see the nerf. Doesn't it seem a little coincidental to you that using Ursan required an EotN purchase, and that the SF bar requires all expansions?

Just saying.

I am not worried about SF. but don't touch all the other farming builds as there won't be much to do.

As always with the nerf of SF a new gimmick will come up, pugs can't seem to be able to run a good balanced team. Para, rit, warriors (in the way they are MEANT to be played), eles, necros, monk....you get the picture.

GW1 is a lost case.

PS: tank and spank is the problem.

That's... basically what I said. In conclusion,you are saying doing things efficiently (i.e., farming) is more important to you than doing things that are "fun"?

Yup, agreed. Rational self-interest is a very simple concept. But I have the feeling most people in this thread arguing down SF don't have 1000 ecto. At the very least, this isn't the rhetoric other people have used.

I never argued from purely my own motivations. If I gave that impression, I'm sorry. I base my assertion on doing quite a number of UWSC's myself, what I observe from people's attitudes and their conversations.

Secondly, what you are saying (that there is no evidence most UWSC players won't do UW balanced) directly contradicts what you said earlier; you previously concluded that many people are goal-oriented and enjoy farming. You also attributed this mindset to people who do UWSC. If both those statements are true, then following your logic, most people who do UWSC won't do UW balanced, since UW balanced will NEVER be an efficient farm.

At any rate, you have misrepresented my argument. It was never my contention that UWSC is an efficient farm. As you already noted, for example, UWSC is strictly dominated by dungeon running. There are also countless other non-SF based farms that are around the same order as UWSC.

My argument is that UWSC is a "fun" farm with decent efficiency. There is ever-present risk in every area, which makes it "fun", compared to other farms with no risk. It is not, as some people believe, keep up SF and no danger lalalala- far from it. Also, UWSC has a built in high degree of variety. There are 7 different areas, e.g., "subfarms" and you can just switch to a different "subfarm" if you find yourself getting bored.

Regardless of whether you agree with my reasons for enjoying UWSC, I already acknowledged it is entirely preference; there are people who are too close minded to enjoy it, and there are people who have tried it and legitimately do not enjoy it. However, there are a very, very large number that enjoy doing UWSC. At this point, more people than any other single activity. This point is undeniable, and I will not bother to argue with anyone who can be so irrational as to as to deny this.

You say that failing to change up the meta will create a "mass exodus." Au contraire, killing UWSC will create a mass exodus. Unless A.net is willing to add new content, either by actual new content or significantly changing up an old area (DoA), there will be literally nothing left for many "goal oriented" players to do.

People threatened a mass exodus when Ursan was nerfed... and nothing changed. After the qq fest, things got back to normal.

Honestly traversc, since most people aren't even bothering to listen to the other sides arguments, I'm just going to stop posting on this thread. I feel like a member of Congress.

What's great is that A.net has already said that SF is going up on the chopping block (which was the original point of this thread). So really, all your arguing is pointless. No matter how much you complain, the change is inevitably going to happen. Get used to it.

You're the one not listening.

I already stated why that nerfing SF is different than the Ursan nerf. That is, no new content to keep people attached to the game. Here, let me quote myself.

"killing UWSC will create a mass exodus. Unless A.net is willing to add new content, either by actual new content or significantly changing up an old area (DoA), there will be literally nothing left for many "goal oriented" players to do. "

I hardly see SF being put on A.net's "big list of things to do" definitive of anything. I think you're reading way too much into it and seeing whatever you want to see. It doesn't actually say "oh ya, were gonna nerf SF for sure." That they're going to "do" SF is entirely ambiguous.

Furthermore, I mean, it's a tweet, lol. C'mon.

PuGGing is fun, yet so long as VSF exists ... good luck PuGGing Thommis HM. Or UW balance-way, for that matter. I would've thought that's obvious to you.

Now give me arguments outside the UW.

Sure I can explain it, I'm just pointing out how narrow-minded your thinking is.

Lots of people play the game simply because it's fun. You can say that's inefficient use of time maybe, but who cares: it's fun, that's what really matters. Why do I H/H Forgewight HM instead of getting a PuG? Because Forgewight HM is one of the hardest areas H/H'able in the game and I do it just because I can. Why do I PuG in Thunderhead Keep HM? Because the mission is easy (for someone of my skill at least) and I might as well help some less-skillful players pass the mission. Why do I do the Last Heirophant so much, I must've done it like 20 times already? Because there aren't many people who can do Duncan HM at will with a non-farming build, but I can.

The idea that you've got nothing to do after you finish the game except farm is ridiculous. The idea that you've got nothing to do after you finish the game except PvP, farm and title grind is ridiculous, too. The idea that you've got nothing to do after you finish the game except PvP, farm, title grind and Zaishen coin farm is still missing the point. Sure I do the ZQs everyday, but not primarily for the rewards. I already have a Heavy Equipment Pack, I've sold three more and given one away, I don't need any more when I don't use gold for anything other than Lockpicks / Identification Kits / Salvage Kits.

I really don't understand why this argument was even brought up in the first place, it's so obviously wrong.

I'm sorry, but what you just said is one of the stupidest things I've heard in my entire life. That mindset is one of the biggest problems with the game.

And would people stop with this stupid "mass exodus" crap. I don't really care if there is a mass exodus (which there won't be)...because if there is THE GAME IS BETTER OFF BALANCED AND WITHOUT THOSE PEOPLE. I know far more people who have left the game due to inbalanced crap not being fixed for ages rather than people who have left due to nerfs.