A message from Gaile Gray

a suicide spell?

We need a Sundering Giant Axe of Trollslaying around here, though.

I don't want (nor am I expecting) a Windforce to drop from the Undead Lich, but I would like to see drop rates and quality return to a more normal state. When you're killing high-level monsters in the fire islands and in the UW/Fissure, they should not drop Plain White Fire Wand of Utter Crap. If they are gonna drop the plain white, it should at least be max/near-max dmg. Hell, even if they would drop more than 98 gold, I'd get a little happier.

If I could just get a Cruel Weeping Axe of Shizzle, I would never complain again.

Just curious.. is guild-hall the official GW forums?

It does worry me somewhat that opinions here might not be tended to...

i'm a bit unclear about the drops concern having just finished farming the Ring of Fire island and getting 6 whites (all max dmg), 2 blues, and about 700 in gold, using henchies. it took me about 45 mins to do. boring as hell but i needed the cash.

Actually, according to this there are four "Elite Fansites" and I don't see any mention that some are more overlooked than others.

I don't know if you've ever played Darkstone, but it had this system of scaling monster hp with your damage and it was the most annoying thing ever. You would gain a level, think "Yay! Now my Magic Bomb does 20% more damage," and then realize that the monsters had suddenly gained 20% more HP. The end result was that the game felt flat and stale, and the player never really felt like he was progressing in power.

lmao did you really think Mariah Carey posts on these forums?

Because in order to remain competitive against 3000hp mobs, you'll have to find an Uber Weapon of Trollslaying and an Uber Weapon of Dwarfslaying, just for the Shiverpeaks (not to mention Grawl, Avicara, Mursaat, and Pinesoul slaying). Then, when you get to the Ring of Fire, you'll have to find a few more Uber Weapons of ****Slaying.

If you're going to introduce uber weapons into the game, don't make them powerful, just make them have unique mechanics. For example, a shield that has a 10% chance to cast a lvl0 Armor of Earth every time you take damage, but has slightly lower stats than a regular shield. You can still have items in the game that give you a feeling that you just got something really cool, but they don't have to unbalance the game by being really powerful. Plus, the idea of getting an uber weapon that does X more damage, only to fight mobs with X*10 more health, is stupid. Why do I care how much damage it does, when it makes a mob's health go down at the same rate as when I was using a lesser weapon in an easier zone? What makes an uber weapon cool is an interesting mechanic.

The problem I have with that statement is that I don't want to find an uber bow of everythingslaying, I just want to be able to find decent drops from killing something and not nothing at all.

It seems like Anet doesn't understand that decreasing the flow of powerful weapons only makes the ones that do exist more valuable, making the economy screwed up even more

Who???

Edit: Yay for statement!

Agreed. I have never seen any posts on these forums stating that people want anything other than the drop rate increased. I too have played this game through with 3 characters and beat it. The only weapon I have ever found was with my warrior in Mineral Springs, it's a purple Fellblade with +12% >50% ( I mod'd it with sundering and fortitude). That saved me about 2 months worth of farming so I could avoid having to sit in LA trying to pay ridiculous prices for something I should be able to find myself. However, with my R/Me and N/Mo, I was forced to go to LA and pay those ridiculous prices because I have never found anything worth keeping.

I just want to find cool stuff occasionally. It's really sad, I got to the point with my N/Mo where I could farm a bit and I actually collected 100k! Then I went to LA to see if I could buy a max bow with mods for my ranger and found out... I wasn't even 1/4 of the way to being able to afford one at the prices these ()#@$* are selling them at.

i agree that what we need are better drops for everyone ...

if most people can get weapons they are satisfied with, in the normal course of playing the PvE game, that could possibly decrease the number of bots and chinese farmers in the game.

of course, we don't want everyone in the game to be running around with the same weapons/shields/foci etc. -- that's where theclam's idea of increasing the number of different mechanics would help a lot. the best items would be all essentially the same, but there would be more variety to fit the different tastes of different players.

by the way, those mods "of charrslaying", "of pruning", etc. are interesting ideas, but does anyone really use them?

We don't have an official forum. Don't worry, we do read many forums, every day. Including this one.

Taken in context, I stand by my answer. There are many different levels of this discussion. One is "drops" and one is "uber drops of godly stuff." We'll be addressing both, in good time.

Gaile,

Like others at these forums, I have several concerns in GW that I feel are really in great need of consideration and adjustment. However I'd like to take a second to say thanks to you and the rest of Arena.net for making a great, great game as well as your continuing efforts to make it even better.

woot! kill everything in a 5 mile radius!! how's that for nuking ??? lol

Dooh, the point is that YOU DON'T create a UBER weapon you use existing weapons.
You adjust the PvE creatures and the mods against PvE creatures to give the illusion of uberness.

I think it would help if Anet could actually identify the problem that they are trying to fix. Looking at the latest patches I can't really tell what it is.

The faction change obviously went some way towards fixing the problem of having to PvE in order to PvP but all of the drop rates and trader changes don't seem to have any real common goal.

Anet are obviously trying to eliminate farming but farming is an unavoidable outcome of the game mechanics and economy. Every time a player wanders out into the world they gain goods and gold, nothing (well, there is a tiny fee to enter certain area, but that makes no real difference) is ever lost.

Basically, the supply of goods and gold is proportional to the number of people playing and the demand (except for exceptional items) is proportional to the number of new players. The end result is that Guild Wars' economy is the equivalent of an inverted pyramid scheme.

There is massive gold- and rune-inflation because of excess supply and the only things that retain any value are exceptional objects. The net result is that to buy exceptional objects you have to farm, which increases excess supply of gold and drives prices even further up. There is nothing that can be done with drop rates to fix the fact that the economy is inherently broken.

Darkstone was stale not because of the leveling, but because it was a dull game, with a few nice ideas, but not enough variety in monster styles/tactics the leveling aspect is basically the same across the board.
The difference that GW has to this standard formular is it changes the skills the monsters uses. They have on average 3-4 skills and they change the skill sets to include elite skill past ascention, but the principle is exactly the same.
It is the basic core principle in ALL RPG games. High level = more damage = better weapon = harder monster with more hp.

OMFG! Gaile's everywhere! RUN!