Nerfs not mentioned in updates?

From my perspective on farming, nerfs, and the GW economy...

There are a few absolutes that need to be established first.

1: There are no Godly items in GW
2: The GW economy is completely imbalanced, due to rampant inflation over items that are selling for far more than they are worth.
3: Everyone's definition of "poor" is a widely disparate opinion.
4: The vast majority seem to forget how long this game is going to be around until the next expansion pack.
5: Everyone's idea of what is "fun" is different.

IMO...

Things need to slow way down. WAAAAYYYY down. Is this the product of the "me" generation, where instant gratification is the only way anyone is happy? If you can't buy the most expensive armor or item in the game within one week of installing the game, are you going to complain loudly until you can?

How many Pindleskin or Throne runs did people make until they managed to get that uber rare item to drop, that was actually worth something in D2? Hundreds? Thousands? How much time did you spend crafting and gathering materials to make your MF 500+?

I constantly compare GW to D2, simply because the comparisons are too numerous to ignore. People still play D2, even after all of the duping, the exploits, the cheating, the cookie cutter builds, the twinking a character to the Throne Room in a couple of hours...why? Because of the rare chance to get that Godly item in D2 that is actually worth something.

But GW doesn't have those "Godly" items to quest after. No Runed Cruel Colossus Blades. No 1400HP armor. No SOJs, No Burizas with 100% piercing damage.

When people can sell an item that gives you 30 more HPs, something is terribly wrong - especially when a similar item that gives you 20-25HPs is regarded as worthless. You can buy a superior rune of vigor that gives you more HPs than that axe haft of Fortitude for half the price.

So...who is to blame for all of this? The people with more money than common sense.

I know of two people that have guild halls they BOUGHT, and they are the only people in their guilds. That, my friends, is the purest indication, at least to me, that the economy is run by fools.

And that brings me to farming. Again, this is just from my perspective.

I farm on occasion, but not to make money. I've never sold an item to another player. I've got a few Obsidian Shards sitting in my storage, but I'm not making run after run to collect them. If I get one while doing a run in the UW/FoW, then cool, if not, I don't stress out over it.

I didn't blow what cash I had on 15K armor. I bought the 1.5K armor and put on some yellow dye to make it look a bit better, but that's the extent of it. Total cost, less than 10-12K. The 15K armor doesn't make me a better player, so why should I care?

I've never bought anything from another player. I've never had a burning desire to upgrade my hammer's modifiers from +4 to armor to +5 - especially at the prices people ask for. I have a chaos axe, but it just sits there gathering dust in my storage for a rainy day, the hammer I have is better anyway. I don't buy black dyes. If I want to make my monk's tatoos look different, I'll use red, or purple, or whatever. The color of the dye doesn't affect my armor rating, or give me any bonuses, so it's just a waste of money.

The most money I've ever had in my accounts was 37K, I think. With the cash I've had I've used it to purchase runes from the rune trader to switch out builds for PVP when I haven't unlocked a rune, equipping my 4 different characters with droknar's forge armor, or other expenses. Just what else do I need to successully play this game, in either PVE or PVP? Nothing, from my POV.

Meanwhile, guildmates of mine dye their armor all black, buy 15K armor willy nilly, and worry when their cash supplies drop below 50K. They spend 100K for a stupid staff wrapping for fortitude, and don't care if they get ripped off.

Both are fine, if the way you play makes you happy - but understand that there are many different avenues to persue, and with a game like this, you shouldn't be getting the UW armor a month into the game, especially when you'll be waiting for a year for the expansion pack. In other words, recognize the fact that in order for this game to have longevity, anet needs to slow things down. It may be painful in the short term - after all, there is a huge gulf between the uber rich and the normal folk like me, but it's a long term adjustment to make the game more satisfying.

Does Anet intend people NOT to wear 15k armor? how the hell is anyone ever suppose to get that amount of money without farming? i played thru the game, without farming at all, done every quest and i only have around 15k in total. thats only enough for one piece of the armor excluding the cost of the rare materials that cost alot more than the armor and are hard to drop.

Yah, slow things down. U gotta force players to track for hours just to get from one town to the next like in other Online RPGS. And have those quests where a NPC send to to see another NPC that's an hour's track away, then that NPC will send you to meet another NPC that's another hour's track away, then be send back to the original NPC. Oh, and u gotta include that killing mobs for at least 3 days straight to earn enough Exp to achieve a level up. Oh, don't forget those quests where you must collect between 1000-3000 quest item drops and bring it back to the NPC for a reward of 500 Exp and 100G.

This nerfing is seriously putting me off the game. There doesnt seem much point in playing PvE if you gotta play for ages just to get a little bit of money. I could handle a few nerf's but seriously, they have taken it WAY to far now.

Yet millions of people do it in other games. I'm not saying GW needs to turn into that, but otoh, it shouldn't give you everything you want in a week. It's called long term enjoyment, and helps a game maintain a following, not just giving you everything with no effort or time investment at all.

Thats godly. The 5hp extra you get from a perfect fortitude is equivielnt to a perfect ehteral skulders, haha, except on a extremly smaller scale. But it really doesn't matter. If anyone thinks they need that 1 extra magic point upgrade for their staff or that 1-2% for their weapon, you're just wasting your time.

NERF: a squishy wannabe piece of sports equipment


oh and anyway farming could be considered an exploit, think of it this way now rare things are RARE not just everyone gets them for sitting there killing things over and over and over. The point is for those to be hard to find. thats why they are RARE anyway quit crying and deal with it u all whine way to much its just a game. and if it is more than just a game for you then get a life because you need one

Please compare the following agruments:

The Amount of faction it takes to unlock a skill/rune/upgrade takes too long and is a grind. I don't want to grind. Anet Fix the grind

The amount of time it takes to get the gold for the Armor/Weapon I want takes too long and is a grind. I don't want to grind. Anet fix the grind.

What people are looking for is a way to "finish" the game using their arbitary completion criteria. That critria is typically something like fissure armor, 1000K in storage, opening all runes and skills.

The reason I keep playing the game is the enjoyment I get from playing the game with guildmates and seeing us become better players, in regards to skill selction, implentaion of stragey, and teamwork.

i have to agree. as a PvE player only (and a poor one at that) getting gold and weapons is hard. I never really farm but i have a couple places where I'll do a pass or two to get sum quick exp, gold or wepons. I never get anything decent these days. What thjey have to understand is as a PvE player I need to be rewarded for my efforts. I mean there really isn't much to do in the game that I haven't already done. How am i to get enough cash for my 75k armor?? its gonna take me forever to save it up.

they should un nerf or stop nerfing the areas. if its bots there after then find another way to defeat them.

Who really cares? For a 10th of the cost you can get armor with identical stats, so if you want to create a Diabloian economy just so you can look pretty... well, apologies if I find it difficult to develop any sympathy to your plight. Farming may be "fun" to some, but it screws things over for others. It's great that ANet is taking steps to combat it.

That's a pretty dumb question and argument in general isn't it? Obviously a lot of people care or there wouldn't be so much discussion regarding the economy, nerfs, drops, etc.

Point dodged.

Why should those of us that don't like what farming does to the economy really care that someone wants to farm so they can look pretty? Better to keep things controlled than to succumb to the egos and vanities of the vocal.

I, too, enjoy just playing the game, but if people keep hearing about spiffy boutique armor and plats spilling out of storage boxes and players who dump black dye on their Vicious Raccoon Shields of Ni, they're eventually going to want some of that. It's part of the game. If they have to work ten times harder to get it than some guy who sits around yawning and complaining about how the game is a bore because he doesn't have anything interesting to buy with his boxcar of plats, then they're going to wonder what's going on. Human nature and all that.

True, true. It would almost be worth it for ANet to wipe everything clean and start fresh at the nerfed levels things are now. Would put one helluva dent in eBay sales to!

well for one, I care. thats all the matters to me. I'm not a farmer. I do drake runs, (I think I have maybe done the run 3 times this past month.) if thats farming then im guilty. I don't need that 75k armor, but i don't really have anything to look forward to now and thats like the last big thing for me to do.
Wasn't looking for YOUR sympathy anyways. was just contributing to the thread.

ive done my contributing...and yeah nothing is nerfed

I hope something comes around to make the game more fun to you.

I suppose there could be rewards for completely clearing explorable areas, that would add a lot of play time. Next thing is they could add puzzles that have like pieces randomly scattered through the whole of Tyria and you pice them together for some uber LOOKING weapon. Collector versions of the fissure armor but require like a huge amount of Rotscale eyelashes or something that you have to get from majesty's rest. That might be fun.

To the people that say they need farming to BUY materials for fissure armor. Well, I thought the whole point of PvE is role playing and collecting stuff and earning things. If you had a good group of players, you could pay your 125 gp, go in to UW and clear it out trying to get some ectos. Maybe the nerfing has made this too difficult, I dunno. I would think that buying the materials would be the least efficient way.

I just did a little test, to determine to what extent, if any, GW had been nerfed.

IIRC, before this wednesday's updates, every monster would drop something, not neccessarily good, but something, regardless.

I warp from thunderhead keep to serenity temple, to prevent whatever code it is that disadvantages farmers from coming into place.

I go out and agro a group of stone elementals. 8 of them. Got 3 drops.

It is not good to have a game with a less than 50% drop rate.
How will the casual gamers get anything?

I admit that this is a small sample, but it is still bad that anything could drop nothing. I killed all these things on my own, without henches, so that did not come into it.

I will therefore conclude that the drop rate EVERYWHERE has been nerfed substantially (honestly, who could farm there? You would get what, 100g an hour?) to the point where faction is the only way that anyone stands a chance of getting anything good for pvp chars, and it will become nigh on impossible for any new players to get anything.

I'm currently training my warrior to do Droknar's Runs, as there is no other way I'm going to make any money here.

EDIT: after more exhaustive testing, the average is about 10% of the monsters I kill not dropping anything. This is much better, but it should really be 0, IMO.

you people are dumb nothing was nerfed you are all paranoid and jumping on the omg they nerfed my farming spot bandwagon i bet 10 plat all of you get 1 stupid gold drop when u go back to farming and tomorrow will forget about this post NOTHING WAS NERFED

All righty. Thanks for clearing that up, Van.

Yep, just one drop of one pile of gold. You see, that's kinda the problem...

hmmm i rechecked the farming spots atleast mine and i found a nice discovery yust go with 2 ppl you dont get less drops you get drops from almost every monsters i even got 3 purples on our first run 1 minor rune and much salvage items

let the money flow hehe

*I stil cant believe im a councillor*

I fully agree.

The only place I've found that wasn't nerfed was that one place where everyone is now farming... the griffon's. Show us some picks of some gold items you find outside of the griffon's.

Some of us enjoys farming, no question, and A-net knows that. There's no reason why A-net would want to alienate the farmers. But think abt it, why do we farm? Becos we want the neatest and coolest items that no one else has! If A-net making farming so easy that even the most casual farmer can have the neatest and coolest items, then farming lost its meaning. So farming cannot be too easy... but where that "balance" is is subjective. Someone will always complain abt the way things are, simply becos it is not to their liking. Too easy or too hard... there is no right or wrong.

But what I would say to people who are not getting any good farming result is... go find another new farming location My old farming spot at Bettleturn was nerfed so I looked for new areas and tried different skills and professions to farm. The higher level areas tend to be much better in terms of drops. Survival of the fitest (farmer)!

Back to topic, I believe there is probably no nerfing of farming in the latest update, since my farming drops stayed about the same (and I'm not running the griffons ).

I notice since 2 or 3 updates ago that the first few monsters tend not to drop things. Monsters after the first few will drop one loot each. Nerf to prevent bots from running out, kill a bunch of monsters right outside town, rinse and repeat, perhaps?

*Reads first few posts*

*Goes back to making a 2k every 5 minutes*

look at pages 1,2,3,3 it shows run 1,2,3,4,5,6 all ina row of the griffon runs today

I seriously hope you just didn't read my post right. You just further proved my point. Thank you.

.. feeling like this is one of those times when too much attention is spoiling the product.

Lately, im been getting good drops (not from farming but when I'm doing quests or missions with either henchies or other players) so far i got two gold items, one purples and multiple blues items. I not sure why a-net want to nerf out all the area if they want players to get the best equipment or upgrades that only the rich people can buy (15k armors, that damn expensive ifi you can't farm and get golds)

You left out the part where you only have 15k if you didn't bother buying any armor on the way either, if you did [like me] then you end up with 4k or so at Droknar's and going WTF because all you can afford is one piece of "regular" armor. [Note: I didn't do any "farming runs" on the char, i just played regularly through the missions and did 90% of the quests on the way there, bought a full set of armor at Ascalon [+30 Armor] and gained about 2 +51 Armor items via collectors. [The other items i know where the collectors are, but i need to >>FARM<< to get the items they want].

Did you do the quest called "Blood and Smoke" ? Guess what, it's identical to what you described above, add to that the fact that it's across 2 zones with each NPC on the far ends of these zones [forcing a respawn everytime]. So sadly, GW is very guilty of that sort of silly quests already.

Ah hell sorry people, had to get some sleep for a change.

Anyways...Van the Warrior, lets get something straight.

So your precious griffons weren't nerfed. How many professions do you think can successfully get money from griffons right now? W/Mo and Mo/W and that's about it. Basically if you're not a monk you're ****ed in that regard. So quit saying "nothing has been nerfed" because ONE spot in the game has yet to be nerfed.

Gates of Kryta I get 4 drops from killing 20 mobs, scarabs I used to farm in 3 places have all been given anti-enchantment spells and don't drop shit anymore when I do manage to kill them, riverside has been nerfed all to hell multiple times.

Maybe if you're get head in gear and think OUTSIDE the griffons you'd understand what the hell we're talking about. Not many people can farm those successfully, if you could there wouldn't be so many people creating new characters just to do that, people wouldn't have to be asking "hey what build did you use for that" because there's hardly another way to do it. All you've shown us is griffons.

Try showing us something decent with scarabs, or flesh golems. How about something from the gates of kryta? Until you actually try something out your comments will be ignored by the vast majority of people here. So you still have the griffons, the rest of us who can't farm griffons shouldn't have to create a new character, have to grind in order to get the money just to get ready to kill the griffons, and then have the griffons get nerfed just so we can compete with the amount of money monks are getting from it. It's the fact that so FEW people can actually farm in that ONE spot that's left in the game that's making places go up, lucky people like you can go and get rich quick, while everyone else in the game has to put up with the prices that constantly get raised because of shit like that.

Go try to farm somewhere else besides your beloved griffons and tell us there's been no nerf.

Anyway, time to go check up on the petition, and then go find some chest/wreckage runs 'cause there's nothing else available. Cheers.

Going to agree here. The way the nerfs are going, there's pretty much no point in exploring/going around. You have to actively farm if you want any cash/items.

For a casual example, just recently, I did a skill cap / exploration run into Snake Dance. Took me close to over an hour or so to make it from Camp Rankor all the way up, with about 3 to 4 complete party wipes (how there can be 2 dozen trolls, 4 griffins and giants patrolling in one chokepoint I'll never understand). Net result? 2 blue caster staffs (non-max I might add), and miscellanous loot which totalled to 1.5K.

1.5K for an hour in some of the more challenging areas in the game with no decent loot as well? I don't know about the rest, but to me, that's not exactly an incentive to go exploring. I might as well farm one of the known spots. Sure, its mind-numbing, but its heck of a lot more time-effective, and I might actually run into the chance of getting what I want..

For those saying that excess gold is pretty much a luxury, and that max damage items are easily obtained from collectors, I'd like to see them find warrior 15%>50 collectors. Or for that matter, try actually collecting some collector items through normal gameplay. I slaughtered my way through countless giants and only had what? 3 jawbones to show for it. Bleached shells to assemble the Crimson Carapace shield in the desert? Good luck finding them unless you run Dunes of Despair countless times.

those who don't farm don't care what farmers are crying about like a baby that lost their favorite pacifier... We gave people lots of ways to get items without farming now... so it is very satisfying personally to see people complaining about something they don't need to do anymore anyway.

If you enjoy it so much, nothing is stopping you from continuing doing it. You just will not be getting 10 gold items and 2000 gold per run anymore...

Gee. ain't that a bloody shame...

Welcome to mmo gaming, enjoy your stay. Basically, virtually every mmo ive played started out relativly rewarding and slowly became nerfed as a predeterimined number of items, wealth, or people at max level occured, then things got trimmed back as the developers had time to data mine what people did over time. This leads to a feeling that the player is perpetually beta testing the game instead of playing a finished product and gives rise to wonder what actually occured durring the alpha and beta stages of the game. Of course mmo games are never completely "finished", until they pull the plug, but i digress. Later you begin to start seeing trends like average amount of time spent to completion becomming standardised and the number of things to complete times that time would roughly translate into how long before the next expansion would be released. Sure people would get creative occasionally and find ways around the obstacles placed before them and at the time would assume that it was creative play, opposed to a bug or exploit, that would later be closed or adjusted. Most of the time the changes arent all that bad or have a huge impact individually, but they do add up over time. Then later on in the game's life, assuming its been sucessful, people will start up nostalga threads in local forums remebering how different it was early on, compared to what they became used to over time. At the same time of course, you also encounter a similar number of frustrated new person threads, where they cant seem to accomplish anything meaningful or that there is nothing left or available to explore and do. GW wont have some of those issues due to the unique world instancing, but i think you are starting to feel other unique differences that GW has that will in turn become new "problems" found within the genre over time.

Just because you are a masochist, you don't need to force everyone else in this habit, do you? I guess i know why you are pro nerfing. You're one of those that got rich early and really don't want anyone else to close up on you.
It is clearly visible, that things have been nerfed a lot. Everyone saying something else is either an incredbily lucky guy or just a liar who tries to get things nerfed so his money increases in worth. The effect of the nerfing is visible!? How can anyone say it has not been nerfed with his senses up and running?
Just go out an area and kill something, most of the mobs don't drop anything. You don't believe it? Go and test and you will see. There is no way you can't see this if you're honest.

See, i don't want uber farming spots with thousands of gold items. I don't care for gold items, collector items are just superior to any gold item out there. But i do care about style. And a game where you can get almost (thats an important point) everything that easy as just playing... having to farm for MONTHS to get something is just something totally out of order. It doesn't suit the game and the way it is meant to be played. So they put in that fissure and the 15 k armor. Why did they do that if they don't want people to have it? They put an awesome amount of time into those, just look at how detailed those are... I'm pretty sure the creators want them in use. But currently, that is just plain impossible to do.

ONE Ectoplasm skyrocketed up to an average of 12k on european servers. That is brutal joke isn't it? Seeing the fact you need at least 105 of those to craft a whole set of fissure armor. You also need 105 Obsidian Shards which are at an average of 5 k right now. I'll just neglect the other crafting materials like cloth or the special material you'll need 45 pieces of.

12.000 x 105 = 1.260.000 Gold
5.000 x 105 = 525.000 Gold
15.000 x 4 = 60.000 Gold

1.845.000 Gold in cost plus some minor costs for the materials.
Now this is allready an absurdly high amount of money. Top it with rampant inflation which occurs with every nerfing done by Arena.net. Well another thing is, even if it is not nerfed... if it appears so, prices will skyrocket even more. I'm pretty sure we will see Ectos at 20k anytime soon.

Now let us just translate this into normal means of playing, will we?

Let's say we are doing Hell's Precipice. Why? Because it is the last mission and should give a nice average of money. That mission will take you about 45 Minutes, less with a decent team. During those 45 Minutes you get around 1.500 Gold. I'm doing some crude mathematics based on average and will say: Make that 2.000 an hour. 2.000 Gold for one hour of playing.

I furthermore guess the person has been doing some Underworld Runs now and then, as well as the typical Fissure Runs. Which are highly based on something that is rarely seen in Europe. Favor. But let us just assume he got 50 Ectoplasms and 50 Obsidian Shards which took him another 200 hours to get.


So, based on the total amount of gold you need... the amount of gold you get from "normal" playing. You'll have to spent 922 hours in the last mission. I'll just substract the 200 hours from that and say he got some lucky drops now and then and was an evil scammer. I substract another 200 hours for this + good trades. Doing this, we still have 522 hours of playing (translating in 522 Hells Precipice Runs).

Now you people want to tell me this is GOOD and NEEDED? Are you fricking freaky and lost contact to the world? Oo
A game which is said to be based upon skill and fun... in this game you'll have to waste 522 hours to just get another look on an armor? OH geez... that can't be it, can it?

This whole thing is not about crying. That is typical internet slang and just a try to nullify someone elses arguments. Why? because those people got no real arguments on their own.
But this is about logic and a totally gone mad economy which gets worse with each nerf.

all i can say is get back on the wahmbulance you fell off of as i said before people are just whining its happened with all of the stupid updates for 3-4 days straight people bitched and complaing about how this got the nerf bat or how that got the nerf bat etc whine whine whine then when they get the results they wanted they act as nothing ever happened

Grats on totally ignoring any argument and trying to make fun of me. All you achieved is marking yourself as a Troll. Pity, you've been demasked.

I have 4 RP characters. That's what I enjoy, not PVP. I enjoyed getting drops fairly often. It is fun to get a purple item and identify it hoping for something good. I have only found about 5 gold items in my entire playtime, and never farm, always go with henchies as I live longer. But it seems they are making this game less enjoyable for the player who has been through the PVE experience completely and wishes to continue to have fun with PVE.

At least with it free, I don't feel bad when I stop playing.

Someone explain to me how do you get through the entire game without farming and get only 4 gold. I never ever ever farmed once in my life, and have two sets of droknar's armor, an aeromancer and a pyromancer. Aeromancer costed me about 7k more because of linen. Then I went and made a guild... 2k. I still have 3k.

I mean... maybe I'm lucky. But I did get lotsa stuff. Before droknar, gold has been constantly increasing and once reached 10k, never went under it till droknar.