FF#61 - farming

I couldn't find a thread about this, so here goes:

http://www.guildwars.com/community/f...-friday61.html

Discuss, but keep it flame free.
Personally, I found this a very nice fansite friday. This new format of deepening out one topic is thumbs up from me.

I agree with most if not all the devs wrote in that letter. Bot users and people selling or buying in game items for real world money should get hit with the ban stick real quick and real hard.

Whether their stance regarding regular farming or not is something I can agree with largely depends on how the devs define "extreme farming". I have a lot more then 20 plat in my bank - but I don't really think I am extreme. For example, I used to farm Griffons until the devs nerfed them to hell. Personally I think the measure was too extreme for my taste. I haven't seen Griffons drop ANY nice item since ever then...

Nerfing of farming spots will always leave a bad taste in the mouth of players.
I have farmed UW with the invinci monk in the past. One could see it as 'honest farming', but I think that the sheer number of players doing it ruined it. The amount of money pumped in the economy was driving up prices and making things for new players harder. The same may have applied to the Griffon run.
Like said before: if you have a great farming spot, just keep your mouth shut. Else you may become victum of your own succes.

just my 2 cents,

Makkert

i am all for farming, heck i usually farm 90% of the time i am playing, i dont think i drive prices up though, since most of my gold is spent on new armor, or dyes for my armor and weapons,

i am well over the 20 plat mark though, ive got 200 plat in my stash and over 200 plat in bids in my latest auction on here, my newest goal is to get my stash full of gold, but i dont really see it happening any time soon, maybe before the expansion

Well, I suggest you don't buy from Mo/W koreans who dont even speak simple english. I think more than 70% of them are botters and they usually sell UN-ID Items

If they are so strict against bots, how come the same "GW gold" company keeps spamming their gold over and over and over even in presearing and Tombs since almost 2 weeks already, annoying everyone to hell? Of course, they keep changing the character names, but it shouldn't be hard to find the account(s) they belong to and ban them ... if they kept banning the accounts, how long would it be still financially profitable for the botters to buy new accounts?

Why has nothing been done about all the chinese farmers who used to camp Ember Light Camp, and have recently moved to Augury international districts? Of course it could be all real people working in sweatshops and playing those accounts, but it's more likely that there is also botting involved (the amount of gold items they are selling ... knowing how bad the drops are...).

So far it seems to me that ANet has been mainly nerfing the enjoyment of farming for the "normal" players like they call us. The bots will get their gold, at a slower pace, even if certain mobs just drop wings and nothing else ... it's the NORMAL players that are punished, because they they lose ways to acquire cash for their armor/dyes/etc.

That is so sad ...

This made me lol. Since when is playing video games out of the home
all day considered 'Sweatshop-like conditions?' Some people play around
the clock regardless if they're being paid to or not.

I conditionally support this. I fully agree with the crackdown on bot's
and botters. It exists in every MMO, and it's (IMO) a bigger problem in
itself than invincimonk farming ever could be. Because the invincimonk
can DIE. Most bot programs have a script that can enable the character
to heal nearly any amount of damage, which enables it to continue farming.

That's what I support. Now the counterpoints:

And if Anet is defending 'the common player' as they claim to be, why did
the cost of obtaining skills spike through the roof? Sure it's great early on,
when they only cost 40-60 gold, but your skill points are limited early on,
and you have to be quite choosy, and might be denied some of the skills
you wanted to have. Sure you can buy them later on. once you've gained
a level or a skill point or two, but it's usually at an increased cost. Which
means you have to go out and kill more monsters and loot more chests,
which may raise your level even higher. Raising the cost more yet again.
Anet may have created their own 'vicious cycle' for 'the common player'
without even knowing it.

The next item on my agenda: Items for cash/'Keeping the economy in
check.' Firstly, I support items for cash. And frankly, I don't see why
Anet is going after it like they are. A cursory glance of every other MMO
out there shows that the same situation exists. Items for Ragnarok, EQ,
hell, even Diablo (pun fully intended) are constantly for sale online. It
enables people to acquire the items/gold they want without paying far
more for it in game currency. 400k for 40 ecto or 5 bucks on Ebay?
Duh. And if they're going to prattle on about how they 'constantly monitor
the in-game economy,' they might want to have a little more to show for
it. All I've seen thus far is mop-up work. Like when Black Dye spiked to over
30k a vial. That went on for days before Anet finally reset it. I realize this
may have been intentional to allow 'the common player' to make some extra
money by selling the black dye he got by luck a couple days back, but
on the same token it encourages more of the same farming that they are
trying to discourage/prevent. Just another vicious cycle.

Some items will always be out of reach of 'the common player.'
But to offer another perspective; just how badly does 'the common player'
NEED that perfect sundering hilt or FoW armor? If they're just a casual
gamer (or 12), they might not have the same level of use for an item that
a dedicated gamer would. Rare items are, just that. Rare items. Players are
more than justified to charge the amounts they do for what they have. They
had to find the item, get lucky enough to have it ID as perfect, and get
DOUBLY lucky to get the item off of a salvage. *An increasingly difficult
feat as time goes on it seems* The high price reflects the quality of the
item and helps to cut down on people trying to lowball for a good item.

You wouldn't go into a Prada store and whip out the Food Stamp card
and expect to get anywhere. Don't just play casually for a few hours a
week and expect to be an u83r 1337 h4xx0r with g0d1y 5hi7.

It won't happen. And it shouldn't.

There. I got everything I wanted to say down and I didn't rant.

Regards,
Sister Rosette.

or 12? from my experience the people wandering around with black FoW armor and a sundering Crystalline sword of pruning act as if they are 12. the young children are MORE capable of over farming. adults have to work. 12 year olds bearly get homework. the people who think about what they are doing and have some idea of manners tend to use unimpressive items. they prefer to impress with skills.

and the sweatshop thing. i'm sure that farming the same place going the ame route witht the same skills the same way for hours a day, days a week and weeks a month. i'm sure you will get tired of it in under a week.

I haven't farmed much in a while. I only did it to unlock runes. Now that faction is good, I don't see the need for it.

Here's an article about game sweatshops from 1UP.

The common player plays the quests. The quests give almost all the non-elite skills for FREE. The only part of the skill cost increase I disagree with is the Signet of Capture. That should still be cheaper because it would provide the option to do some extra work to get even a non-elite skill for a lower price.

The reason buying things on Ebay sucks isn't because of the economy. It's because it kills the feeling of accomplishment from acquiring an item. It really sucks for players to finally get the fissure armor or perfect crystalline sword or whatever only to find $5 on Ebay would have gotten them it in ten minutes. Why bother playing the game then?

I don't think they ever mentioned that some items shouldn't be rare, nor that players shouldn't be able to charge whatever they want. But there's a difference between selling an item for 100k, which any dedicated player could conceivably acquire in a reasonable amount of time, and selling it for 10,000k that only an extreme farmer/exploiter could get if things were allowed to get out of hand. It isn't that the rare items shouldn't be rare, but they need to appear reachable to that average player, so he has motivation to continue.


Quote from the FF:
My guess is they think it will be more effective to close a huge number of accounts at once rather than nailing them one at a time. Or they might be taking advantage of them being there now to analyze their activity to figure out how to identify them quickly before they start cracking down.

Good points, and I offer this little rebuttal before I nod off:

Then they would cease to be 'the common player,' and take a step up
to being more committed.

When's the last time you ever heard of anyone managing to sell anything
at that price? The highest bids/prices I've ever seen have actually been
on this site. Not GW itself.

Precisely. The point is that it looks acheivable to them.

Exactly, and Arenanet is saying that the reason they step in and change things now and then is to keep it that way.

You average couple of hours an evening player doesn't:

A) Win the HoH for sigils
B) Farm areas over and over
C) Spend hours spamming in LA or Droknors selling drops
D) Buy and sell items as commodities from traders

Those four actions, on average, are the ways players become uber rich. Casual players don't engage in those activities. They go through the game and spend whatever cash they manage to aquire on armor upgrades, dyes, runes, etc.

GW has over 1 million players, and obviously the vast majority of them are the "average" player that doesn't worry about cash. Yesterday I was with a PUG going from Copperhammer Mines to Granite Citadel, and along the way I common Wingblade sword (not even blue, a straight white item, no mods) dropped. I picked it up intending to sell it at a trader for it's 20gp (waste not want not) and one of the players asked if they could have it. I said, "Why, it's basically worthless" but he still wanted it anyway. I shruged my shoulders, and dropped it on the ground. One of the other members of my party thought it was a hugely generous action on my part.

There are plenty of people that simply play the game without considerations of getting fissure armor, or 15K armor, or sundering fellblades of genocide. How is that sad? What is more sad - people that don't have a ton of cash, or the idiots paying 500K for a sword that is little different than one you can get from a collector, damage-wise? Or that people have that much cash in a game that doesn't require huge bank accounts to play? A collector's ascalon bow gotten from Mineral Springs is just as effective as any other bow in the game. Is it's worth tied simply to looks? Isn't that stupid? Honestly?

"Not fun" to be able to buy any item in the game from NPC traders rather than have to spam endlessly in order to acquire it?

Incorrect.

Putting every item in the game on NPC vendors would make Guild Wars be infinitely more fun.

Of course they don't really need "every" variant, just the non-crap variants, of which there are not that many.

Or, simply sell the "variants" themselves from NPC vendors and let the player stick them on what he wants.

And it would also help a lot at reducing the bot problem.

What really is not fun, is having to use the horrible trade system to try and buy or sell anything to other players. For this reason, participating in the "player-driven economy" is not fun. It's a headache.

I agree with everything said in this FF.

I know most of the farmers cant get over it when they tone down the areas, but that is their problem.

They seemed to have "un-nerfed" the underworld though.

lol that article makes me think 2 things....

if they are so against it (selling items etc) when i look on ebay and see 99 pages of matches for guildwars items i think either "liars" or "terrible job".

there are no rare items on guild wars becasue everyone has them or access to them.

While it's been improved somewhat, getting what you want has been an endless series of dice rolls. Bad news is, the dices are loaded against you so either require a lot of patience, a lot of luck, or deep pockets.

First problem is getting something of max quality to drop in the first place, then you need the attribute type to match up with what you run, then there's the mods being something you actually want.

This is further complicated by another random factor of salvaging upgrade components. It'd be one thing if it was only easier to get good components off of bad weapons, but that's not always the case. Because components are a pain to get, Collector's gear is good, but still needs work to make up to snuff.

This crap shoot factor when it comes to outfitting yourself in PvE does encourage a player based economy. But given the nature of player based economies, it's hard for players to get what they want for a stable price. So in a way, the random nature of obtaining gear also encourages players to buy Gold from eBay.

At least, that's my theory. If the game fails at delivering content to average players, then average players will turn to abnormal players. Making it harder to farm doesn't hurt the farms as much as give them more customers.

The problem is, exclusive items encourage the secondary market (IE: Gold Sellers/Buyers), but removing exclusive items will further piss off the people who thought Guild Wars was going to support their need for overpriced trinkets and baubles.

Anet is, unfortunately, in a pretty crappy situation right now.

In my experience farming is overrated, or maybe I just have terrible luck?

I have easily, EASILY, killed over a thousand Trolls outside Droks, with just 3 characters, Alesia, Lina, and my N/W. This includes the named ones and the occasional Avicara, reward?

3 Crappy golds....(I don't keep track of purples or anything else, if it's purple or less, and the mod isn't good, it's vendor fodder). Some keys and about 98679869869689 Raven staves and Troll tusks. Off of all this work (about a week of non stop farming) I made enough money to get 2 of my characters 1.5k armor, this was combined with selling a few things I had already that I did not attain by farming.

Also, I have farmed the ever loving hell out of Grenths footprint, 5 characters, just the henchies and I. I kept count of how many times I killed each one of the Bosses..here goes.....

Flint Fleshcleaver: 36 times = 0 Greens
Thorgall Bludgeon Hammer: 29 times = 0 Greens
Wroth Yakslapper: 32 times = 0 Greens
Gargash Thornbeard: 35 times = 0 Greens
Gorrel Rockmolder: 29 times = 0 Greens
MORGRIFF SHADESTONE: 50 times = ZERO GREENS! ( I went out of my way to look for him since I wanted his crap for my Necro.)

How many Greens have I gotten in the 6 PuG farm groups I've been in?
1
Selling all the crap I got from this netted me my 15k armor for my Ele (I made Geomancer armor so the materials aren't all that expensive), but that's only because I got lucky as hell with chests and got a + 30 bow grip and a + 20% longer staff grip.

That's another thing, chests, I think out of the around 50 or so chests I've opened between CD,SP,RoF I've gotten 1 good item and two items with good mods, the rest were crap or purple.

So over about 150 hours or more of farming in two very high level zones, killing mobs from 24-28 and thats all I've gotten? Including chests?
All I can say is WTF, I must be cursed, or am doing something wrong, or farming is not as bad as people think it is.

And I also hate people who sell something that is "perfect" for 200-500k, wtf is this? I have something that is 2% off from perfect but now it loses like 200k from the price tag? If I can even sell it at all? And collectors items are sometimes as good or better than golds/greens people sell, so why the hell buy these outrageously priced items? Because its gold/green? /laugh at the morons who do =/

This is just sheer greed and stupidity, because in real world economics, if the market is flooded with an item....its price drops. If there is too much money in the system, inflation kicks in and a loaf of bread costs 30 bucks. In GW we have both going on at the same time.

There have been several expose' articles written about MMORPG bot-shops, mostly based out of southeast Asia. These shops run multiple PC bot clients which farm endlessly, and the people watching/maintaining their full time operation are paid pennies a day. The conditions truely are sweat-shop, with the sewing machines being replaced by PC's. They sell their virtual goods on e-bay at roughly 100plat for $5.00 USD.

Make no mistake -- the bot workers are not kids at home being paid to play. They are desparate individuals trying to make a living in any way possible but are being exploited by their employers.

sounds you're whining because people have better items than you, which devalues the dime-a-dozen garbage that you would be trying to sell for 200k, if you could. at the same time, you're a hypocrite because people are "morons" for buying "outrageously overpriced" items that are no better than collectors items, while you're paying 10x more to buy 15k armor, which is no better than droknar's armor.

the difference is, they HAVE the money to buy "outrageously overpriced" items, and to them, it's not overpriced. they can afford it. a bentley isn't any better functionally at driving on roads than a ford focus, but if you have so much money that you don't even know what do with it anymore, why the hell would you buy a ford focus? it's not like this is the real world where you need to invest and manage your budget. you can blow it all in one place, on one thing if you want, that's part of the fun of it being a game.

you should have learned by now how this economy works. the PURCHASERS have the money. the purchasers have the buying power. their budget decides the "value" of items. sellers don't choose to sell their perfect items for 200-500k, other people OFFER that much.

there are countless thousands upon thousands of 12%/13%/14% swords/axes/hammers/bows. they aren't rare... they aren't desirable, they aren't worth anything. there are more in the game than there are people who want them. when you've got 500k, or 2 million, why would you buy some 13% weapon for 2k?