I would like my Weekly Nerfing please :D

People keep saying the game isn't about items and the game isn't about farming. However, the problem is what do I do? I don't know if you have realized, but the game has become sooo easy and fast to beat. I mean it was fun the first time I played it, it was hard to get even some basic armor pieces so doing all the non-required quests was essential to get some items and have time to gather the required materials to craft a piece of armor. Right now it is so easy to buy everything you need. If you encounter a black dye in pre-searing, you might as well skip right to ascension cause you got enough money to do so. Also, people know the quests so well that half the PUGs I join will just rush through to the end. So basically I got all the skills I want and stuff and there is nothing left to do and when I want to kill an hour or two because I am bored I turn on the game and I just farm for money to get something that looks cool (15K armor, Fellblades, maybe eventually Fissure). They need to make it so there are other things to do other than farming because this game is a very short game.

Come ON

Can't you live without a superior rune???!!! Geez, the stats aren't UBER different from major runes.

Y'know, I honestly do not understand how the term 'nerf' got put together with making monsters harder, putting more monsters in areas and such like that. Nerf to me is soft, squishy and safe, easy and such. How did the term 'nerf' get associated with this anyway? Could someone explain this, spare me the sarcasm and rudeness please, I'm simply curious about how these conditions ended up associated with the term 'nerf'.

Whether or not I can live without a superior rune is irrelevant. If there's no uber item then why not make them more common?

Deja vu.

The problem is that they destroyed farming - a fairly entertaining part of the game, to some (I admit finding a good farming build is fun, but actually doing it isn't). So... without farming, how do they suppose we get our items and money when we need them? Oh! Of course. Casual play. Well, after completing the game with 3 characters, and never seeing a superior rune, and scrounging for gold to get my Droknar's Armour, I can assure you that this concept is bullshit.
Alright... So what if they do it? Fine for new players. What about the ones who have already completed the game? Do they just not get money without redoing the entire story? Without a stable source of money and supposedly "rare" items, the economy goes out of whack. Admit it, you've seen mediocre items going for upwards of 20k.

Also, appearantly, whenever anyone has a complaint, they are labeled as whiney. "whiney farmers"?

What part about "farming is the only way to reach anything in this game" dont you understand? ANET is not against farming, they are profarming.

For pvp you need UAU (unlock everything). You dont care about the look of the weapon, but you sure as hell need most weapon upgrades, every single rune, and every single skill for every porfession. Since time is finite, and PVP is not the best thing one can do with life, scrubs like me will ignore major runes, most necro stuff, beast mastery and lots of useless elites to safe time. There are also a couple useless skills for other professions out there... Of course i wont be able to use them when people discover uses for them, but this is another story...

If you say you dont need EVERYTHING unlocked, your either joking (you dont need major absorbtion )) ) or are a scrub.


So if you want to be successfull in this game, you need to unlock stuff. How? Playing the game for 100h with your main to see the story, then playing it again with 3 other characters? Or play with a wa/mo once, and farm the living hell out of everything? Sad thing is, both options are stupid, but the second one is much more efficient. Only dumb people chose the inefficient one. (note that playing 3 times is not really dumb, playing 3 times when you consider it boring IS dumb if you could farm instead)

People will say faction. Sure, you can farm faction. PANK rules, but can YOU do it? Playing GvG to unlock skills is not an option, you need em to win in the first place. And ganking newbs with your superior skillZ while using poor skills / runes to stand a chance against players of same talent but more unlocks later on is ... grind in the worst sense. Its WoW honor farming pvp.


I played 150h of regular gameplay and 2h of farming, and i can tell you that i unlocked a couple runes and earned lots of gold farming a very poor farming spot... farming >>> repeating the boring missions all over again in terms of reward / h. I bet they designed them using "MobClusterPlacer"TM - design a mob of different enemies (Healer, melee, ranged, nuker etc...) - and the mob placer will just adjust the monster type to fit the map and then just fill it with lots of mobs in a predictable pattern...

Oh and name one high end area that you cant farm solo. Just one that is worth farming, that is... and no, farming mursaat eles is not a good idea for most people ...

Farming is the only way to earn ANYTHING in this game, since playing with 8 players not only slows you down (organise 8 elite pve players ... ), but also cut everyones income by 1/8.

Oh and hey weezer
the shadows of the grind wars ... hahaha "whiney pve grinders" ... this community rules ...

Note: this thread moves fast. 16 Air > 15 Air. if you dont understand this, how about this: pvp players can unlock 16-23 swords for their pve characters. No big deal, right?

You're obviously not trying to make it irrelevant by stating that you still haven't found one.
It's the 'best' of it's range, and that's why it should be less common, even though it might not be that big a difference stats-wise.

I never had to strounge/trade for money in order to get Droknar armor. I had collected pretty much everything I could up to when I got to Droknar (except plain white weapons/shields) and had more than enough to buy it. I collect all the crafting material I can find/salvage, and when it piles up to 250, I sell it giving me between 750g-1p. Now that most of my piles are reaching the 250 mark, I'm selling them and getting a lot of return from doing it.

This is a result of the nerfing and will decrease over time when the amount of money in circulation reaches the levels it is supposed to (= the whole point of the nerfs in the first place). It's just a tough time for new players in general.

OT: one of my friends just started playing GW and sold a black dye to a merchant for 10 gold

Mm, less whining, more whinging! XD

Er, so anyways. That's the thing. An item with barely any advantage over it's inferior is so much harder to find!

By the time I got to Droknar I was able to buy my armour and I had 1k left.

So, again, I'm not going to be finding what I'm looking for by playing the game through. Half of the areas have no chance of dropping of whatever I'm after if I'm looking for something useful.

I suppose no one will answer my question, too busy squabbling over this farming issue, yet again...

The game lacks any goals besdies PvP after endgame.

That was a huge mistake or oversight, people will either play PvP or they dont, ArenaNet cannot force people to do it.

75k armor needs farming or someone being very lucky with drops, the 75k sets were designed as gold and time sinks for people that would farm, be it missions or areas.

With the "anti-farming" policy leading to nerf drops things get worst, this game have a horrible drop balance since players can go in missions were they get nothing because monsters only drop ONE item and we have a 8 people team in the end maps.

But farming is pointless, a player can get all 75k sets by extensive farming and it still does not change the fact nothing is changed, he farmed for the goal of having a diferent looking set.

Customization in this game is almost non-existent, we can dye armor and weapons and thats about it ... we use the stronger weapons we can find even if we wanted a diferent looking weapon we will still use it because there is no way to buy the weapons we want outside the trade channal but then its a waiting game and since most people only want max damage weapons ...

This game have no goals after endgame and very few customization options.

Watersong you're the one whining about the farming, we're just trying to explain why it has been done but it's sad you can't see that...

Adaria, I'm not sure whether they made monsters harder, the term 'nerf' is being used in conjunction with the decrease in drops. Don't think there's really another word to describe it as these things are usually called nerfs.

Sorry, double post.

Eh, as for the nerf thing... It's not so much soft and easy in the case of farming.

By "nerfing" farming they've made it ineffective.

Because the areas did not get harder. Just more annoying. You can still farm most of them ... its the rewards that got dumbed down... Patch after patch after patch, anet increased the time it takes to click the UAU button.


***

I challenge the people in this thread to tell me one area that cannot be farmed and that earns you more rewards then farming a good area...
and yes, GvG can be farmed.

I meant the whole whining post as a joke.

I'm whinging, not so much whining anyhow.

Well, the thing is that taking an anti-farming stance DOESN'T HAVE to be done. Please refer to my earlier posts about the whole common item thing. I'd probably copy and paste it but I'm having trouble with the site.

I love how people can spew whatever bullshit they want on forums without anything to back it up. From personal experience, before the series of farming nerfs, the economy was relatively stable - ie: no selling worthless crap for ludicrous amounts. After the farming nerfs, I saw rune prices and everything else skyrocket. Great job. Nerf farming AND require it. What a great game plan.

Just look in the for sale section of these forums if people think farming hasn't been or should further be nerfed, I don't even bother to look in it anymore because of the insanely overinflated prices people are asking.

Example.
WTS GOLD MAX DMG FELLBLADE
Starting bid 100k!!!!

If the games meant for items to NOT be important then why should anyone have to shell out this kind of gold for a friggin weapon. Go look in there right now, I'm sure the whole front page is flooded with buttheads asking for 50k or 100k or more for almost everything in there. The only way to kill that forum is to make rares more common and or add an auction house.

The way I see it is this: Anet nerfs coin drops and item drops simultaneously. The result is that players stay poor compared to pre-nerf conditions, but item prices skyrocket because they are now more rare when compared similarly. Whether you're pro or anti farming is irrelevent as this affects everyone from the casual to the hardcore. The people that have already made their fortunes will continue to trade the good stuff amongst themselves and those that didn't have a chance to make a decent living will continue to live without. Nothing changes except the ever-widening disparity between the haves and the have-nots.

My crystal ball told me so.

Well, when the monsters got made "harder", really the only thing that Anet did was add massive enchantment hate to the mobs to stop the prevailent, enchantment dependent, farming builds / bots.

Ofcourse, the downside to that was that they made enchantments basically useless to waste a slot on from the point you reach Kryta, since almost every mob will have some way of getting rid of your enchantments.

So while they made the monsters "harder" (I would say they just made them more annoying), they NERFED enchantments. And there are a LOT of enchantments in the game.

Btw, I don't mind A monster ripping enchantments (such as the Charr Chaot), because then it becomes tactical to take that monster out as soon as possible, so you can run the rest of your enchantments again. But when a mob of six critters all strip your enchantments, they become useless, and not worth sacrificing a slot on.

In my opinion, that's a nerf, albeit an indirect one.

A direct nerf on the monsters, for example, was when they took the Beastmaster boss in the dwarven mines (only shows up for a Ranger quest), and turned him from a self healing lvl 28 juggernaut that required you to plan ahead and bring interrupts, to a lvl 14 wimp that dies in approximately ten seconds of you attacking him. All because there were a few people who complained that he was too hard.

That's a nerf too, because a lot of people actually enjoyed the challenge of fighting him at his lvl 28 badness.

Creston

It seems that the only people that are directly effected by a lack of item drops are PvE players, as PvP character have instant access to perfect items. Now, this seems odd to me because PvE players have a good and pretty darned easily attainable option in collectors items.

The only way that a PvP character would be effected by the item drops is due to unlocks, which in my mind still shouldn't induce farming. Playing through a character normally you will unlock almost all of at least the basic upgrade componants. At which point you can use faction unlocks to pick out the perfect mods that are relevent to you.

I enjoyed fighting that beastmaster too, a good group shoudln't have had a problem beating him, the group I was with beat him on the first try.

Actually, when the drop rates went down, so did the amount of "collectable" items that you need for the collectors.

Try gathering up Losaru manes in the desert for the two pieces of armor you can collect with it. It took me two nights, about 7 or 8 hours, of constantly killing the same losarus over and over again. (took about 20-30 mins or so to walk to the spot with losaru and kill around 20 of them).

Sure, I could have just been unlucky, but I had the same effect when later I tried to kill some scarabs for their mandibles. Took FOREVER. :|

Now, if you TRULY would get the same items "while playing the game normally", it'd be fine, but I've yet to see Anet actually doing anything to make that statement true. It's still "in the future".

Oh well.

Creston

Not instant but they can start with max damage items.

Do they really?

Collectors require items, so intead of farming for gold you are farming for collectors items that even if they are max damage they dont offer diversity, you cannot get a dragon sword from a collector with leads again to the problem of lack of customization.

PvP players complain about the fraction grind and no, playing a character normaly will NOT unlock all of the basic upgrades.

How many times this have to be said?

DROPS ARE RANDOM.

I was up to my neck in axe upgrades first time I played as the only sword upgrade I had was a +4 (elemental) armor, I never seen a vampiric upgrade until I played a second character.

Dont make such claims on system thats is RANDOM, just because player x finds a superior vigor rune in a area does not mean playery will.

Just curious..... Since some are opposed to farming and think all is accessable by simply playing the game through, who has honestly gotten fissure armor just by having the money and resources when they got to where you buy it?

Of course if you wanted it, and didn't have the money, and the game is finished... you ....would.....need....to....farm......!!! Oh no!

Seriously, I like to farm. I'm not complaining since my W/Mo can go and get the gold and supplies I need for my characters and to help my guildmates out. I simply am stating that there is nothing wrong with farming is one wants to do so. If you paid for the game then go for it if you want, if not, then don't. But please don't dog people for wanting to farm. Also, not all who farm do it to spam WTS on the trade channel. I have never done it. I take what I need, give my guildies what they need and sell the rest to the merchants.

Don't get me wrong, I hate the botting problem, and do think they should shut these guys down. However, I don't want us regular folks to be penalized as well.

Darkest Dawn: you immediately failed to make a point when you mentioned Fissure Armor.

I was previously anti-farming....but as i've started to near the end of the game I have found some fun in putting together a farming build with my ranger for different areas of the map.....but mentioning fissure armor is a moot point...it's a gold sink for players with 14 hours a day to play...it's not an element of the game that has ANY need.

Yes, the really do. All 3 of my PvE characters have maxxed out weapons/focus items. My E/Mo has 3 sets of wand/focus. My N/R has 3 bows and a wand/focus. My W/Me has a sword, axe, hammer, shield and 3 helmets. All max damage/armor/stats. All with great mods. ALL FROM COLLECTORS. And it didn't really take much effort, to be honest. I saved all of my collector items. If I needed more I'd party up with the 2 monk and 2 warrior henchmen and go hunting. And if you don't want to do that, you can buy most of the collector items from other players, for ~100g each.

I didn't realize I was talking to you..... (j/k)

My point is moot, I agree. That IS the point! If farming was wrong, then there would not be gold sinks.

I didn't start farming until I was pretty much finished with the game either. Then I started to do it to help my other builds and help my guildies to get ready to do some PvP.

BTW, I saw you the other day in Kryta. I think it was the Bergen Hot Springs. It was cool to see a player who's name you see from the forums!

lol. i've seen a couple of people from the forum. it's definately cool, it's rare that you happen upon someone in town so it's alway a shock.

shoulda said something we coulda partied up

Did you get all of those fabulous collector weapons in the past week? Most likely not. Therefore your point is nullified as you acquired the items necessary to get those collector's weapons before Nerfgate of July 13, 2005.

I would bet that if you tried to reaquire all of those collector weapons in the same manner as before starting today it would take quite a bit more time than it did the first time.

People, please keep in mind that any argument that's based on experiences from before July 13 are not really relevant to this issue. The conditions then are not the same as they are now.

Sorry collectors armor is usually a placeholder until we can craft a subset and I like you to get that helm in the desert that needs you to collect wurm drops witout "too much effort", even paying 100 gp for it requires spending 500 gp and waste the time finding someone who IS farming for such items so he can sell then to you.

In the end you depend on farmers so you dont farm ... for collectors items.

And still does not change the fact people try to customize their looks, just because you dont mind seeing clones of your character running around, I do.

/off topic

Yeah, I actually though to go up and say hello, but didn't want to disturb you. If I see ya again, I will say hello!

/back on topic

/remains off topic

I can't get a PUG capable of beating thunderhead keep....so I'm really not doing much of anything but running people places so they don't have to pay for it. It'd never be a disturbance to say hello

/NOW go back on topic

I'm really not opposed to farming, it is just that from my in game experience I think that it is optional. I play with one of my friends consistantly, we both are on our third characters, each time we go through we use collector items rather than try and find a perfect dropped item. It generally takes about 30-60min to get the additional items needed from a collector for an item for both of us. In the crystal desert for example, you have to kill an ungodly amount of Minotaurs, Scarabs, Rockshots, Hydras, etc. just going to each area and doing the missions and skill quests. Now, even in a team of six your bound to get a couple of the items that the collectors want. (The notable exception is bleached shells, which I've only seen drop twice from the wurms there)

And yes, we have done this recently. We got a max Ascalon (long bow) for one of our ranger friends two days ago.

It just seems to me that most people feel that Fissure Armor or even Citadel/Grotto armors are some sort of necessity, or that having a Fellblade or a Crystal Sword are required when their just different looking versions of something that they could get themselves without much additional work is just as good. If you want rare items just for looks, thats cool, but I think its important to realize that it is optional. I want to have every single cool thing in the game, but am willing to awknowledge that its my personal choice to do so, and that I'm going to have to work to get it all. In my opinion if its not a question of game balance so I won't complain about it... What I MIGHT do is go over to the Sanitarium and post some ideas for improvement though.

I wasn't ignoring you, I just don't know. Sorry.

Quoted out of agreement.

Nerf=Ineffective is a much better way of thinking of it, makes a bit more sense then, and thank you for answering that. It's rather odd to see the term coupled with the situation like this but now makes a bit more sense.

Nerf bats are rather ineffective as far as hurting people, unless you take off the foam part and leave the metal. XD

But anyway...

Actually, I've gotten 2 of the bows, one smiting wand, one protective icon and the necro focus this week. So yes, it is still pretty easy to do. I just got the 5 avicara scalps and the 10 mountain troll tusks last night for a few of the items. Collector's items are still pretty common, even with a few henchies in the party, in my experience.

The swordsman's helm in the desert was the hardest to come by simply due to the rarity of the sand wurms. That doesn't mean the rest of my gear was that hard to come by. Not in the slightest. (Not to mention the fun I had creating a W/Me build that could solo those wurms.) You know how long it takes to gather the stuff for most of these items? An hour, at most.

I don't rely on farmers, I did all of the collecting myself. I just mentioned that for those who can't or don't collect these items for themselves. You think 500 gold is too much for a perfect long sword? And guess what - it doesn't even look like most other long swords. Not that bleached carapaces are that difficult to come by.

It appears your entire agument is subjective. You don't want your character to look like any others? Well then, you're gonna have to work for it. I'm happy with my characters' appearance. Are you unhappy that you can't have a unique looking character for free? Even when you have your fissure armor and your perfect fellblade, there's still gonna be a bunch of people with exactly the same gear. Then what?

You know I really wish people would think before posting... allrighty, time to 'teach' some people some facts, after all facts own all.

1. First and foremost, you are not me, you are not him, you are you. What you may think the game is about is not necessarily what I or anyone else thinks the game is about. Point being please don't assume that i only play the game to farm, or play the game to level, or play the game to even roleplay. Everyone has thier own way of having fun in the game. Like it or not, some people farm to have fun. (OMG what a shocker!) Stop being so close-minded.

2. Nerfing farming areas does hurt the economy if you believe it to or not. The most misunderstood notion is that nerfing helps the community (it matters how its done). Let me show you that they way they did it does not. First, it takes away some of the fun of people getting items when they need it or if they are just supplying thier guild of casual gamers. Or heck, even if they are just doing it to see 'a rare such and such' dropped. Secondly, it hurts people that are currently poor(a good portion of casual gamers, i will not assume most..) and need money or even the items. It widens the gap between the casual player that was already having an issue getting money to buy stuff or even farm it, and makes things more expensive. Its common sense to see this... people will sell it for more now that its even harder to get. True, most people may not buy it but the people that have money will still buy that item, changing absolutely nothing, and bringing us back to square one.

3. Nerfing material vendors and the chance of geting rare materials from using an expert salavge kit makes the problem worse (which i have seen start to happen). I have seen some of the venders buy materials at 1/15th of the price they are selling it for. Again, the casual gamers have to work even harder to get any money becuase some material sellers are constantly buying your materials at 30g a stack. I could give you a nice print out of the costs of the expert salavge kit vs actually getting rare crafting materials out of them, but i really don't think you want to get that bored do you?

Thats mostly it, if i think of more ill be happy to post it. just my two cents.

I think there is a bug with traders if you sell stuff from a bag. Cant confirm atm, but i hear it causes items to be sold for min value (30 for 10x common material like bones). The lowest buying price should be 150buy from - 30 sell to trader (meaning he got flooded with the item - i never have seen it fall lower than that prepatch). If you see 1000 buy , 30 sell - try out putting the items in your main inventory and request another price. If its still below 500, its nerfed beyond reason imho.