one possible solution to farming and inbalance

The reason to farm is to get gold and good items right.. why not make high end quests for these uber items...say u save the dwarf prince in mineral springs from a really nasty party of mursaat or avicara.The reward is one choice on a list of items ,..gold / superior whatever.Make it so u have to do several difficult quests to earn that perfect axe. Maybe make a few reclusive weapon crafters through out the map . They dont have to be totally new quests, just increase the difficulty of some existing ones that most ppl dont do anyway.Some back tracking could be fun. Early quests that stretch throughout the game is one of the things that made Dragon Warrior and FF fun . That way skill , not ebay gold and massive economy trashing farming, will reward players . Plus more ppl will want to party with pugs and play the game the way it was intended..by teamwork. yes u can always find a way to farm solo , but why when it would be easier together. Yeh alot of quests currently give rewards but most items arent powerful enough to make ppl wanna do them. AND we get to keep our characters the way we all like to play them. You guys worked alot of long hours to make this game . This could be one way to get everyone to experience alot more that it has to offer. sure miss my firestorm and meteor showers ..

I agree that quest rewards suck. 1000 exp is good in the beginning but afterwards, they are just worthless.

If they make quest rewards much better, people may find less reason to solo. I don't solo much. The only time I solo a bit is to gather some trader items.


If the quest reward is GREAT, I won't need to worry about soloing to get gold and certain items.

I like this idea quite a lot actually... Part of the idea behind the AoE nerf was, we believe, to attempt to inhibit farming, particularly solo farming, and in doing so, try to put more control on the economic rediculousness of recent months. But it seems to me that the AoE nerf won't help the economy much in that respect.

By making it more difficult to farm, you are decreasing the influx of supply without decreasing demand, and thus prices for high-end items goes UP and it becomes even more difficult for new players to compete. Now with the likewise reduced influx of gold, the prices of items may settle a bit after some time, but the effect of this will be less noticeable than the effect of the decreased supply of high-end items.

But dan's idea here of making high-end items rewards for completing lengthy, and/or multi-part, and/or difficult quests means that anyone, even new players with no money, can acquire the high-end items which will help them to compete with the more established, wealthier players, thus making competition more a question of your skills and abilities than of the amount of time played. Wasn't that of major concern and priority to the developers initally anyway... making the game fun for all and making it so new players can compete just as well as players who've been around a while I mean?

So if you make it so that high-end drops either no longer drop, or drop at a MUCH less frequent drop percentage, so that farming is no longer a viable means of monetary acquisition, and then you make it so that anyone can get the high-end items if they do the work for them (run the quests that is), then the AoE's could go back to the way they were, or close to it. You could also make it so that these high-end items that you get from quests rather than farming for them or farming for collector items are automatically customized to the character when they are recieved, thus making their sale to lowbies and creating twinks an issue of the past, though I'm not sure how that would work out with the already existant items. The idea would need some tweaking I suppose

Another possible means of making it so that new players can compete with the more established players is to put level limits on equipment... something maybe along the lines of... in order to use the armor crafted in Lion's Arch, you have to be a minimum of the same level as the henchmen that can be hired there, and likewise with places like Droknar's Forge. Do similar level restrictions on weapons. Then make it so that if you are below the level restriction, then the effectiveness of the item is reduced proprtionally to the extent to which you are below the requirement (thus a weapon where you don't meet the restriction would still work, but not as well). I'm sure this is what the original idea was behind the attribute restrictions on weapons, but those restrictions it seems are not heafty enough... it's rather easy these days to find high-end max damage weapons with bonuses and upgrades and a requirement of 8 or 9... maybe make it so that the minimum requirement is always higher if the item has bonuses, and even higher still with upgrade items.

Again, such changes could make it so new players could compete reasonably well with established players because of skill, not equipment they can or can't afford. It would also reduce the number of people willing to pay for runs to places like Droknar's Forge and they might play through the game as it was intended. Plus, high-end items will have much more limited usability and would therfore become less expensive (because of decreased demand), and having massive ammounts of gold will no longer make you a more powerful player, so farming for high-end items and gold will no longer be as useful and will occurr less frequently.

Now as I've said in other posts I believe that the AoE update isn't ALL bad, and there are some aspects to it which I do like. However, I think it still needs some rather substantial tweaking, and if it's original intent was to inhibit farming, then the above suggestions, especially dan's suggestion, could go a lot further in successfully inhibiting farming while giving the dev team more flexibility with what they can change in the AoE issues.

My 2cp,
Drake

As good as an idea as it is theoretically, it will only have negative outcomes. You may be able to use any weapon you want, but this will destroy the trade market. This means that every single trader will quite the game. Also, this takes enourmous amounts of money away from people who control the hall of heroes.

Dont forget something HUGE: you can get PERFECT weapons etremely easily via PvP characters and collectors items. Ever notice the only thing these "uber" items give is looks? If you dont want to work to get nice looking items, then dont. You can very very easily still get perfect items.

I can't agree with you on this point DerttyBoy69. Consider some of the more significant concerns which have been voiced in these message boards over time...

1) Lack of PvE replayability.
2) Lack of suficient rewards for missions and quests to make them worth doing with second and later characters on the same account.
3) Economic instability and runaway-train inflation.

Then also consider some of the issues which ArenaNet has already attempted to correct...

1) Droknar's Forge Runners and the resultant "twinks" (the primary reason why travel through Lornar's Pass has become so very difficult).
2) Farmers and their contirbution to the further degredation of the economic system.

And then lastly consider the fact that ArenaNet has ALWAYS claimed to try and make their game worhtwhile to all players, new and established alike (that is, they want to make it so that players with more time spent in the game and more money acquired do not have an undue advantage over new players who don't have money and possibly don't yet have friends who have money).

Now then, if you make the quests, and especially the missions, give out better rewards, you've just improved the first two issues. If you reduce the demand for high-end items by restricting their low-level usability (level restrictions), you improve upon the next three issues. If the "Traders" which you refer to (a.k.a. farmers who are profiting from the current flaws in the system) decide they aren't happy with the changes and quit the game rather than adapt and actually PLAY, well that will further improve and stabilize the economic problems because less people will be contributing to the inflation. And those players have already paid for the game, so ArenaNet doesn't loose money over it. Then, take into account the fact that a more stable game economy and a game system designed to allow NEW players to have a good time without feeling like they are always behind and trying to catch up means that the game becomes more appealing to new players. More appealing to new players means it is more likely to GET new players... that means more software sales, and thus more revenue, and thus more profit for ArenaNet.

So where exactly is the downside here? It seems to me that you're arguing FOR rather than against the above suggestions.

Sure, you can get "perfect" items through the collectors if you want to work for it, but this is slower than buying them. This means that new players can't get them as soon as established players with money, which means new players can't compete as well, which defeats one of the primary ideas behind Guild Wars to begin with. And as for getting such items in PvP, well that does nothing to help out RPG characters or people like myself who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in PvP play.

And as for the Hall of Heros... new rewards could be established for achieving that accomplishment.

Drake

I do see a use in the game for farmers..im not suggesting that fixes should totally shut down farming. I just think that there should be more reward for questing . It would slow down farming which would gradually ease the inflation and even the field alittle bit. Im not an economic math guru by any means and you may be right about causing more problems than helping. Farming for 5k-10k gold at a time isnt the problem....its selling the rare items to others for 100k+ (ppl see this in trade channels and lightbulbs flash)thus creating mobs of ppl using a certain build to farm constantly. The excessive buying of particular runes and particular materials simply makes them soar in cost. That puts them out of reach for ppl that dont wanna farm or run to droknars and such for pay. The drop rate of superior monk runes for example isnt very good at all. So people that dont have big money or hours a day to hope for a random drop just dont get one. Im not incapable of getting anything in this game that i want and I dont think everyone under the sun is entitled to run around with the elite of everything. There's absolutely no way everyone is gonna be happy at once. but having more incentive to role play may tilt the economy to a more healthy balance. I didnt quite get what you meant about the holders of hohs.....what does their wealth do for me?

/signed



Signed IF drop rates are decreased. Increase XP a bit on monsters. What swamp monster is going to be carrying gold and a magic hammer?

Reward the quests with less XP but massively increase(because most quests don't have gold rewards up to where i'm at anyways) gold and good items.


That would eliminate farming for Ebay money. People could quest for money, but it would take an extremely larger amount of time to do so.

If they want realism, this could be a good start.

/signed

You've definitely got something going here... I like the idea of backtracking to the charr homeland. WTF happened back there??? nobody knows.

I'm sure almost all of us have farmed before at one point in time or another, it's not very much fun, and it has no plot. If they were to make some uber hard quests with uber cool rewards at the end I'd be all over them. For example: WHY THE HELL DO QUESTS AFTER ASCENTION OFFER EXP AS A REWARD!!!!! it's not like you can level up again!!!! ("although it wouldn't be a bad idea to increase the lvl cap" he thinks to himself). Instead of offering exp (which you NEVER use) offer something usefull, like GOLD. I don't remember how but there was someone who posted something in here and A-net picked it up, I hope your thread ends up like that one.

Sincerely
~Yellow_lid

/signed
I like the idea of not having to farm to get a money for a good weapon and then sit in LA for an hour or so spamming WTB... for a 15% above axe or whatever, and it would also cut down on the ebay gold sellers.

It's a good idea until ArenaNet make the rewards blue...then it's back to square one again.

Yeah, yeah, blue is just the same but GW is a RPG and looks is more important than the critics realise.

Gold rewards please.

While I agree with you, the short answer is: skill points. Simply ascending is nowhere near enough to buy the 150 skills necessary for your character (not to mention any you might want for additional secondaries). I'm working towards UAS, so I spend some amount of time in high XP areas with scrolls farming XP, or doing repeatable quests in Fissure, etc. Skills are, in my mind, more valuable than additional levels or the supposedly "godly" gear that gains you a fraction of a percentage advantage over collector items anyway. And more skills are supposedly coming in chapter 2, which means even MORE skill points.

That said, quest and mission rewards after ascension are, generally, laughably small. Sorrows Furnace was clearly a stopgap to this, with the addition of quests that would give you more than 1000 xp and the possibility of green "godly" drops while you were at it. I'm sure this is what the model of future expansions will be.

So I agree with the OP, but I think it's somewhat redundant because all this was going to happen anyway, it just falls under the category of "new content" and is therefore coming in Chapter 2.

I assume that in fact Anet doesn't really like extreme farming:

Fansite friday #61: ... a group of players can find ways to earn gold ten times as fast as the average player. In this case, prices can rise to a level where normal players can’t afford to trade for items anymore. Then we have a problem, and we need to adjust the game to bring wealth distribution back into normal ranges ...)

(Solo) farming makes more than 10 times as much money as "average playing" (e.g. missions, quests) does, isn't it?

I think they missed a chance with the Sf update. Why not make the Titan and Sf quests reward gold in addition to skillpoints? The Titans (can only be done once) could get you 5k each, the end mission perhaps 10k.

The same for Sf. Repeatable quest for say an average of 1k each?
Would be VERY nice for all NON-monk smiting (primary/secondary) classes as a challenging alternative for solo farming.
Same for UW and FoW quests. Since UW doesnt drop much anyway, 500 gold wouldn't be unreasonable for a tough quest.

Too bad ....

15k and FoW sets are there to be bought, and if farming isn't ANet's prefered way to get it, they should at least offer some alternatives to get the gold. To make that million and a half for FoW by playing would require over 1,000 hours of non-stop "casual" play (at the current price rate even close to 2,000 hours). Assuming that you make 1k an hour doing end-game missions all the time.

to tell you the truth I havn't read all the responses but from what I think is that this would be a great idea, if people want soem gold let them get soem gold as a reward if people need a better weapon let them have a choice because I personally don't need a bow when im a warrior .

but what about people like me who've finished ALL the quests? and have my perfect items? :/? I want my EXP for more skill points :/

And here I thought the reason for holding halls was to earn fame, since it is PvP and not PvE. Silly me

Finaly, someone who sees atleast closer to my viewpoint than the "FoW is for t3h uber farmers you noob". If ANet does not like solo farming, then they should not have items in the game that require solo farming to obtain within anything even close to a reasonable time period.

I have grown a bit tired of doing quests that give me nothing except more experience. I get many of my skills through quests, more experience gives me. . .another skill point? Yay.

/signed

A while ago, a suggestion was circulating about ecto rewards for a quest in UW (and shards for one in FoW). It was, of course, shot down, (see my above comment about FoW armor). Still, I liked the idea, and this effects the larger problem of no decent quest rewards.

/not signed

this would drive away more people, what's going to happen when the expansion comes out, people want what's new to look good, if add this in, derrtyboy is 100% correct there would be not trade mark it watsoever and people would just farm the bosses for the items they want, and it would be same repeat as farming for items people want, the reason why people farm is to get the items they want, killing the bosses over and over would just be another farming craze, the green items are fine as is they have perfect attributes, and perfect upgrades with low req, trading is what allows people to be different then others no one wants to be the same as everyone else, if they did do this it would be completely useless to have random upgrades, and stats on weapons because you could just kill a boss and get what ever the hell you want, people don't understand getting more skill points is actually useful, but since all they do is pvp they have no idea of the aspects of pvp in tombs, or arenas in which having more skills for different builds is very useful.

Yeah it is a good idea, but if your gonna do this you might as well hand feed these people, because that's essentually what's happening there getting whatever the hell they want from a boss, i mean maybe if hey did something like in diablo where there was a really strong boss(uber diablo) that only popped up randomely at a certain time, in random places then it that would actually be different because then you couldnt farm it, it would just happen at certain time.

I'm with you, I want to unlock all secondaries for my favourite PvE character .. that's about 3 - 4m xp??

I'm only at 1.7m xp now .. hard to get xp for mesmers. Another reason for wanting to see more ways to get lots of xp (and gold) for other characters than smiting farm builds (my W/Mo farming build has more xp in spite of not even doing all quests, missions, she has not even been to Sf/UW/FoW yet).
That's imho another very, very great imbalance of the game - smiter builds vs. non-smiter builds.

I suggested gold reward for FoW/UW/SF quest in addition to xp rewards. So you would get the xp anyway.

Next to that, it wouldn't be unreasonable if you can add the skills that already are unlocked by your account to any character that has done all missions - thus finished the game.
Perhaps even as a reward for completing the Titan quests by that specific character.

I... DISAGREE!
People dont join parties, because
1. Party wont let them in (Ex. Warriors bad class, Monk good class)
2. Time consuming

Thats why people go solo.
Now for that quests deal, it sucks. If you get certain gold item doing a quest, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WHEN ITS DONE? Are you going to go solo again? You cant do the same quest over and over again. If you could, it would get boring.I say keep it where its at now, since this game is from the creators of DIABLO2, where set items and rare items on DIABLO2 dont drop easily, why should it not do same in this game? So as long as the creators of this game are the creators of DIABLO2, they will think like DIABLO2.
In matter of fact, I bet sooner or later THEY WILL COME OUT WITH SET ITEMS FOR CERTAIN CLASSES.

The exp for missions and quests should increase further into the game. Its kinda crazy that Fort Ranik and Hell's Precipice give you the same amount of exp.


There should also be more replayable quests outside of FoW, UW, and SF.

Maybe make missions replayable if they make the exp reward match the level you should be at, so that people arent running Fort Ranik for 1000 exp 100 times a day.

if this happens, there will be no economy in this game, no trading, no worth in items... stupid idea, no actuall thought watsoever...

yeh well opinions are like a holes and everyone has one..doesnt mean u have to show urs. Of course its fine for you do disagree with my idea but dont call me stupid because you dont understand my intent. I never said bosses drop items did I? I said for example ..clear a large mob of avicara or mursaat in exhange for a good item. I never said replace Xp earned from quests... I never said every quest gives items or gold. Only the opportunity for someone to get a good item from a couple different quests scattered around the game. Theres plenty, even with that, to trade...theres buttloads of materials..runes..upgrades..dropped weapons. im just talking about a few sparse chances earned after a very difficult quest to get something worth questing for. The reason posts resort to flaming is ppl like you slinging the "stupid" bat ever time you don't like someones views. As a matter of fact this would have no effect on trading and if u wanna be an uber farmer and gloat about how much gold u have go ahead.. nobody really cares what you have.

After my last post I thought about my rant and realized you're right after all. Nothing in the game that you really need is out of reach . Thats what the collectors are for. Ill take the crappier looking stuff that does basically the same and begone. For those really more interested in the economy and less about what it will do to your gluttony , the fact is that the more gold farmed...the more gold there is in the game. Every monster killed introduces new gold and items . It doesnt recycle (loop)...its created. Soon everything worth having in the game will be so expensive that new ppl just cant have it unless it drops for them. Thank you anet for the collectors. If it weren't for them it would be disaster for sure. End thread.

I thought the idea was to increase XP for kills while dropping the gold rate.

Mission rewards are increased gold. As someone noted, sure, keep PvP unlockable drops on monsters, even increase the drop rate, or only do ones applicable to the char I'm playing? Or use the best runes for mission rewards near the end, for each class, take them from vendors all together. eh something


_____________
Over all I think people lost the point and began defending farming, stirring up smoke and a few sparks. Let me explain the problem a little bit.

People buy coin off ebay. Where does that coin come from? FARMING
What does that coin do? Ruin the economy for honest players.
Once that million coin some spoiled person buys from ebay begins to circulate there's more money in everyones pockets. That makes prices rise.
Makes people feel that they need to farm themselves just to keep up.
Which adds MORE gold to the ecomomy, and prices go up further.
Which in turn, makes MORE PEOPLE APT TO BUY MONEY FROM EBAY!!!!!


It's a self perpetuating cycle. GW is trying to add fixes here and there to eliminate farming. They need to replace farming.

If you knock out the need to farm, what's the problem? Do you people actually find it entertaining? If someone comes up with an idea(even a rough one) so that you as a player don't need to farm(and eliminates the viability of ebay farming), you still step up and defend farming as if it's a favorite past time.

Some peoples kids.