DEBATE: Solo-Farming

It occurs to me that Solo-Farming is a Hot Topic and both sides (for and Against). I would like to start a thread that talks about Solo-Farming ALONE.

Heres the Rules:

1. State what side your on on before you post to aviod confusion if your not on either say Neutral

2. No Flaming others about what they think. You can argue against I don't want this thread turning into:
"I think Solo-Farming is Good"
"STFU your a Noob"
"No I PWN you"
...

3. Stay on topic: Don't go on about Nukers and stuff thats has nothing to do this.

4. Remember were talking about solo-farming this has nothing to do with Team farming.

5. Finally Remember to Follow Forum Rules

Ok I will start:

I am for Solo-farming

Solo-Farming has been around so long its inbeded itself into the game itself. It affects the ecomomy for good because it increases Supply and demand creating a High-Comsumtion Ecomomy.

Farming is avaible to ALL professions and I have seen threads about every Profession so being a certain class doesn't really affect your farming ability that much.

The only Build I would like to see nerfed is the Invinsimonk. Monks can easily switch around their builds if the Invinsimonk would fall.

The only place I have a problem with solo farming is the underworld. It's ridiculous that the underworld was ever solo farmable. The rest of the areas, if you can make a build that allows you to solo farm, good for you.

I agree.

well i myself am a farmer and i enjoy altering builds and making my own but they have been cut down to only 4 spots where before i used to farm everywhere (except underworld after i deleted my monk/mes 55 monk *sigh* it was a accident) so then i went on to farm with my w/mo e/mo besides i didn't farm constantly i just farmed when i wasn't doing pvp with the guild and i just gave most of the plats to guildies so i was only helping the guild.
ok what i think ," solo farming in UW is still possible but wrong,trapping the underworld is teamwork so it's good,2 man groups in the UW is still not soloing so good on them, and just solo'ing the underworld is wrong.
Anywhere else and i think keep it up guys even though areanet is nerfing everything there will still be spots to farm and new builds to discover.

I agree with solo farming, but I dont agree with the current state of the game concerning farming.

I dont like to farm becuase, to me..its unrewarding and boring.
But I dont think anything is wrong with it.

I do think its a problem that 1 level 20 player can solo multibule higher level mobs.
I think is a problem in AI and mob design/placement.
But if a level 20 player were to solo farm a group of level 18 or under...that seems logical.

I think the biggest flaw is in the design of the game economy which in were if you are a casual adventure, farmers spike prices through NPCs out of your reach by bringing masses of gold into the game and purchasing from NPCs.
Then say you want to by pass the NPCs and find the item you want.
What are the chances it will drop for you if you dont farm?

The current way the NPC merchants work, it encourages farming.
The current drop rate of anything of intrest, it encourages farming.

Not only is farming going to happen, it should be expected and probably embraced.
Therefore, game designers should work to create a ecomony that rewards farmers and non farmers alike.
Like an auction house for farmers to dump thier crap into the player base, better quest/mission rewards (like 1plat or more in cash) and more drops of better value to increase their commoness and decrease their value.

A few remarks on this topic:
- Its a flaw of the game that soloing is more rewarding then playing with groups. I do not believe 'it takes more skill' arguments to justify this. Anyone can solo with a preposted build and a bit of practice.
- Some players see a challenge in finding a way to solo an area, such as UW. There is nothing wrong with players attempting to 'break' the game as a challenge. Its part of their fun they have in the game.
- I see nothing wrong with soloing, unless it wrecks the game in any way. Invinci monk became so popular that a lot of monks didn't feel like grouping anymore, and it wasn't exactly great for the economy long term also.

Thank you! The invincimonk was a stroke of genius. But hey, from day one, we were told "here are your skills, be creative." But I prefectly understand why it had to be adjusted. I also remember the frustration of not being able to find a healer for my groups when questing.

I think if someone studies the skills and practices and finds a way to beat the odds, it's creative thinking and should be rewarded. And as long as it's not detrimental to the game community, it should not be changed. With the glut of Warrior/Monks in the game right now, I'm more than happy to post any builds I can find to keep those poor guys busy doing something besides hopelessly trying to get a group formed when their supply grossly outweighs their demand.

Guild Wars' economy is driven by vanity. "Perfect" items that really aren't much better than "not quite perfect" items. Armor that costs a fortune but isn't any better whatsoever than the "cheap" stuff. And what's with that anyway? If you have to be a millionaire to get this armor, how exactly does A-net expect you to get the funds? It's either soloing or ebay. The most I usually ever see a monster drop in gold is ~140 coins, and splitting that 8 ways in a mission ain't much. Even soloing, you'd have to get that kind of drop several thousand times to save up enough for that Fissure armor. If somebody wants it bad enough, they will go to whatever means the feel necessary to get it. At least the people who have the patience to solo farm and earn their money for what they want are honorable enough not to just buy it off ebay to save time and grind.

My gripe is that the answers to problems have always seemed to be hasty and impractical knee-jerk reactions. Don't want UW soloing? Establish a minimum party size to enter. Want larger farming groups? Increase the amount / size of drops depending upon the number of persons in the group. So far none of the changes have really done anything to promote playing the game more. They've ticked off people, caused much more PVP vs PVE discontent than is necessary, and created a cat-and-mouse attitude towards the developers. "You nerfed my skill / area, huh? Fine, I'll find another way / place to do it!" Every nerf that happens, people do just that. They don't "adjust" by playing the game 'as it was intended,' they adjust by finding a new farming spot or using different skills to do the exact same thing.

Farmers will be farmers, plain and simple. For some people, it's to get money. For people like me, it's less about wealth and more about how we enjoy playing the game (and yes, there are plenty of people who ENJOY the mindless repetition). You beat all the missions multiple times, you don't care for PVP, just what is left if you want to still play the game?

Agreed.

I dont farm much myself, but I'm totally against removing it as an option. The main reason being it gives level 20 players something to do in PvE. If you remove solo farming then all we have to do is the same missions over and over again. Even the high level areas in the game like SF, UW and FoW are mostly about loot, since most people dont care much about xp.

I dont want to solo farm all day, but I do want some choices with what I can do when I'm on. Farming and loot has always been an end game for many people, and I see no reason to take that away from them.

I think solo farming should be allowed, it should reward the player for doing so but it should also remain challenging and non-repetitive.

Goonter gave a good point in his post when he mentioned monster placement.

In my opinion, things would be so much better if monsters were less in number, but individually much tougher. I wouldn't mind if all monsters hp's were doubled and they used more skills (increase their level), so long as that monsters could be pulled INDIVIDUALLY.
This would increase strategy requirements from both teams and soloers and make playing as a team more rewardable than soloing (a team can kill individual monsters faster than one person).

However, i also think the drops should be made better in such circumstances. If you are going to solo a level 40 hydra for ten minutes, you would want something more than a claw.

Why monsters only drop 1 item is a really poor idea. Why can't they drop a claw and a little gold, or a good weapon and some salvage materials?
If the monsters were much tougher and each one was made into a proper duel, maybe this could happen.

Another idea maybe, make monsters have random skills for it's class.

Exactly right. The distribution of drops is so far spread, people solo farm simply because they get more. For a team game, solo farming should be discouraged, but so far, with decent weapons dropping so infrequently, taking a group of 8 people means you simply have very little chance to get a good weapon drop.

For. I solo farm myself now and then. Not for the money, I've got plenty, but I find it relaxing.

The real problem isn't that hobbyists farm - noone, and I mean noone, cares about that. A hobbyist can at most farm for 8 hours per day, he'll make lots of dough but wont affect the economy. Seriously, ANet doesn't give a sh!t about hobbyist farmers.

The problem is the Farming Army. They're most conspicuous at Augury Rock - perhaps 200 monks, 1/2 of which are constantly running out the west exit, 1/2 of which are mules and just stand around, occasionally spamming WTS. These are professional farmers. Each human operator operates several mostly automated avatars. Their business is generating gold and, to a lesser degree, items, for sale on ebay.

These are the guys that ANet doesn't like. They screw the economy, they lag the servers (Augury Rock intl district is the only place in intl you'll get lag), and _they're not actually players_. They cost ANet money, because ANet needs to supply more servers to avoid lag (Augury Rock intl district is also the only place in intl which has more than one district).

ANet would love to find a way to stop these guys.

That said, the recent AI update wasn't a solo-farming nerf. It was an AI update.
If you search the fora here, you'll find that lots of people have repeatedly asked for an update to the AI so that the monsters wouldn't simply stand around in AoE spells. ANet complied, like they have with so many other requests we players have made.

I only farm areas I know I can take on my own, with my regular build.

If you cant farm with the build that you use on a normal basis inside a group, then I see that as being wrong. At your best, with your best and favorite build and you cant get the job done? You havent earned the ability to farm by yourself.

So, pretty much, my position is an opinionated neutral.

I am for solo farming because it comes most closely to the kind of game I like to play most: action rpg.

For me the farming aspect is not very important though. I would prefer the abillity of going solo on more regions without good droppings rather than soloing the same place again and again to find goodies. In fact, a large country with a wider variation of monsters, less groups, but some suprising single encounters would make my game much more fun if it was possible to solo there, even without decent droppings.

I doubt the current solo farming has much effect on the games economy. Simply because after so many months all good items are available allready for reasonable prices. I now sell allmost everything to the vendor and when I feel I need something I simply buy it from another player with the gold I earned. I never have the feeling to pay more than something is worth.

Just slightly off topic, i think augery has been the quitest this weekend than i have ever seen it, i didnt see more than 2 districts there this weekend (when i was there anyway)

Back on topic

I am for Solo farming.

I solo farm when none of my guildees are online, i dont play pugs much if i can avoid it.

If no guildees are on i solo farm, if i couldnt do that id just play something else instead rather than play pugs, im fed up of the "your a noob / give me that drop / what weapon you got / will you sell it / i want to do bonus (after we said were not doing it before we left / leavers / rushers ect ect ect. Yes there are good pugs, but 1 in every 3 has a bad applle that makes me go

Right im off to solo farm, i also enjoy it.
This is why i dont go to UW /FOW.

The drops in teams absoloutly suck (and i want something more than just knowing i can kill stuff there), but i dont like solo-ing the area as i find it too boring (my monk/necro can solo it but its so dulllllllllll).

In an ideal game world you would have places where you can team farm and other places where you can solo farm and be happy with the drops from both.

To me the game allows for up to several different playing styles and farming is one of them.

I am for Solo Farming.

Some goals of the game cant be reached trough normal gaming. One prestige armor ist possible to fund with normal gaming, but for all 4 chars? Not in a time frame that i like. FoW armor? One way ist doing endless trips to FoW and UW to get all your Ectos and Shards, another way is buying them with money you farmed.

I farmed till i got a prestige for all my chars. That was boring and repetitive but it brought in the gold.

I am for solo farming.

-Drops ratio in this game is obviously broken, and solo farming is way more rewarding than teamplay

-Experimenting new area/builds is the only thing left to do for ultimate PvE players until chapter 2

-Solo farming doesnt ruin the economy. In fact, solo farmers guarantee a constant huge flow of near-perfect weapons, that usually are sold very cheap (or perfect weapons with ugly skins). Solo farmers buy expensive things like ectos, black dyes, runes from merchants and prevent the prices to skyrocket (example: ectos price before update=13k, after=17k).

-They do not ruin the game balance in any way. The only objective for farmers is to buy expensive nice looking things, but things like fow armor or stormbows dont affect the game balance.

-Is relaxing to kick a bunch of stupid high level monsters.

I think that every single area in the game (except uw maybe) should be solo-farmable with the right build.
If anyone find a build to farm Hell's Precipe alone, congrats to him.

And I don't really care about in game money sold for real money.

I was actually quite enjoying farming the UW before the update. It was rather exciting trying to stay alive. Alas, it is rather boring now. Oh well.

I'm definately for solo farming, as stated before, drops should be changed to promote team play, not skills or areas changed to make farming harder and force team play.

I don't see anything wrong with solo, dual, whatever form of farming. As to the bots farming, there should be other ways to deal with them - nerfing drops hurts the real players much MORE than it can hurt the botters/ebayers (they'll farm their gold anyway, they've got plenty of time on their hands).

I used to farm quite a bit myself, mainly because I enjoyed the adrenaline and thrill of seeing a gold item drop, and waiting to ID it and see if it's anything nice ... it's like playing lottery. Then the drops got nerfed so badly it became unfun to farm - one can make some income with a gazillion griffon wings, white weapons and a mountain of glittering dust, but there's no fun in it.

If grouping with other people was rewarded with better drops, hell, YES, I'd have preferred to run around together with some friends killing stuff instead of doing it alone.



If I understand you correctly, you're saying that people should (or should be able to) play through the whole game, regardless of the area, regardless of the type of monsters in it, regardless of conditions/hexes/skills those monsters are using on you, regardless of what OTHER classes you have in your team, with the exact same build?

That sounds like a completely wrong approach to me. Somehow I always thought all these things mattered, and adjusted not only my build, but even my secondary class and armor/weapon type accordingly (talking about normal PvE stuff in a group, not solo-farming).

What's wrong with adapting to be maximally effective in a given situation/area?

If this game works like I think it does it goes like this:

-x number of y items in an area.
-Farmer consumes large numbers of y items in area for himself.
-Area that has been farmed now has increasing less to offer.

So when a person farms, they nerf the area for others.


-x number of y items to NPC merchants.
-Farmer buys large numbers of y items for himself at merchants.
-NPC raises prices of y item to balance the demand.

So when a person thats farmed money for 60 ecto and purchases it from the NPC, he raises its value for the next guy.

In the end, farmers only garuntee that once they got what they want, the next guy has to farm harder to get it too.
Its a ruthless cycle.

The system might have worked if where not for the "farming army" as Numa Pompilius puts it.
Im somewhat sure the hugh popularity in the invinsable monk helped tip some scales too.


But I wouldnt say the ecomony of the game is ruined.
I just feel that the current mechanics are a bit unfair under the assumption that casual or newer players are supposed to have equal chance and oppertunity to be rewarded in the likeness of farmers for there efforts.

I dont think increasing drops will promote team play. Increasing drops for teams would, but that would make the game into a serious farm festival. (If thats what the intention of the PvE experance should be, then so be it. But I dont think that was the design in mind)

Yes increase drops. But assume people are going to farm it. Then force the farmers to sell to the players for profit buy removing the NPCs and adding an auction.
If you increase the quest/mission rewards, casual adventures will have the money to purchase the now commonly aquired items from farmers, that are competing against each other.
And farmers arent going to get thier profits anywhere else.

I am for solo farming-

As is alot of things in the game, farming is optional. If you don't enjoy farming, it is not essential your success. In most games I usually farm (I sorta think it's fun), but GW I get enough stuff just playing.

Some folks enjoy it, and if it keeps people in the game...go for it.

As everyone else here, I am FOR solo farming.

What I really like about RPG's is that there's ALOT of stuff to get and that's what keeps a game going for me. The hunt for items is great for me. I've completed the game and I don't feel like doing anymore missions and PvP isn't really me (atleast not now) so I hunt for items to make my character cooler to look at. I already have gear that can take down most enemies, so power isn't what I'm looking for. I'm looking for items and gold to BUY items that make me look cool. That's why I like solo farming. It's time consuming and keeps me going for a long time.

I understand that the 11/10 patch was an A.I increase but I'd rather have it as it was. Now I can't solo farm as well as I could before. Of course there're different places, but that's not the point. The point is that Anet wants to fix the economy; that's a very nice idea. Do that. However, I feel this update ruined the economy completely. Why? I'll tell you. Before the update, Fissure armor was hard to get, yes, but possible. Now, casual players like myself have absolutely no hope of ever getting that much money now that farming has been ruined. The prices of ecto's are sky-high and everything is going berserk. I'm in a sorta newbie-ish guild, they're nice, but not very experienced. They used to look in awe at my 15k armor and asked me how I got that much money. "Farming", I told them. Now, fast-paced farming is gone and we only have slow farming. It works, but it's very time consuming and many people don't have time for that.

Instead of fixing the economy by removing the money-vulture bots ability to get tons of cash, they made it virtually impossible for casual players to get anything close to 100k, unless they spend most of their time farming the new places.

I just think they made people go to the last resort; buying money online. That's even worse.

I am for solo farming.

1. People should be able to play the game they way they feel like it. Nobody needs to farm in this game, so leave the people alone who still WANT to do it. Gold and items don't make you superior in any way in GW.

2. Solo farming is a welcome change, especially when no guild mates are there.

3. It's the only way to ever get Fissure Armor or even 15k sets. Yes, you still don't NEED those, but some people want them.

4. It's the only way to get nice weapon mods (which you of course don't really need) when you don't want to pay a trader.

5. It's fun. Yes, you might hate it, but I don't.

6. It doesn't hurt anyone. No other players, not Anet, not the economy. Why should it be forbidden, only because there are some people who can't understand why GW should cater for other playstyles than their own?

At the same time I am also for measures directed against bots and ebayers as they are hurting the game while solo farmers are not. Some measures by Anet directed against the bot farmers weren't exactly helpful, particulary the constant nerfing of drop rates in certain areas. It hurt group and honest farmers a lot more then bots. I wish and hope that they are more careful with these things in the future. Kill botting, not farming!

I am for solo farming.

I like finding an item - blue purple or gold and iding it and checking if its "perfect". I solo farm because the chances for me to get this is higher.

The thing is, if Anet wanted to nerf solo farming, the simplest way would be to make it such that more items drop when you are in a bigger group than opposed to a solo. Or at least, even the odds a bit. Like if there were 8 players in a group, 8 items drop from a mob, instead of just one. That way, if a person solos, he only gets 1 item instead of 8.

Method to stop botters and proffessional farmers? Make an incentive for the regular players to report these guys. If say a player is compensated for taking the effort to actually report these botters/farmers, then perhaps these farmers would be eliminated easily. Is it ripe for abuse? yes it is. But that's where Anet needs to investigate this claims and check the accounts and the statistics with them. I.e. Is there large frequent currency movements to random accounts for no apparent reason?

i am for solo farming up to a reasonable level.

solo the highest most difficult areas planned for a group of 8 players or a group of 5-6 very good players not just no but ...............double no

For solo farming, with caveats...

For areas like UW and FoW, no, solo farming shouldn't be possible. Anything else is fair game, IMO.

My biggest complaint is that if you play in a normal 6-8 person party, chances of you getting a gold drop is poor during a high level run. For 4 months, I played PVE almost exclusively, running different characters though the game. Before the 105/55 monk became widespread, I had only seen a superior vigor drop ONCE, and it wasn't for me. Same with the Superior Absorption. Those two runes were almost impossible to get, and reflected in the insane amounts of gold the trader wants for them - and even then, it's not unlocked for PVP players.

Once I started farming, I started to unlock runes much faster - not just the vigor's, but other superior runes as well. I wasn't so much into the money aspect, I was more concerned with being able to apply the better runes in both PVE and PVP. Solo farming allowed me to do that quicker.

PVP players can unlock a sup vigor within an hour of tombs play. PVE players in a 8 player group may NEVER unlock one. Want to make that perfect sword for PVP? Takes only an hour or two of faction "farming" to unlock the mods you want. Want that perfect weapon for PVE? EBay, buying in game for insane prices, or spending all your time in groups farming - and you'll still never find it unless you're extremely lucky.

Even bosses drop crap. Bosses should be the end all be all cool item drop in the game. Some might argue that elite skills are the "drop" - but after you've run the same mission or farmed the same area once, and capped the skill, the area is worthless for a party.

For example, I was partying in the frozen forest, in a skill capping group. In the hour or so we were wandering around, I saw two gold drops. One was a major rune of beast mastery, the other a gold raven staff requiring 9 curses with 10% fast cast for earth magic.

As I said, in normal PVE (non farming) I've seen one superior vigor drop. Solo farming allows players to unlock runes faster, but it's still a crap shoot what you get. You might need a superior domination rune, and get nothing but an earth magic rune. PVP players can unlock the exact rune or mod they want within the same amount of time a group does a mission in PVE. It's not really "fair" and nerfing solo monks just makes it worse.

I am for solo farming.

Not that I can myself... I've never bothered to come up with the build to do it. But I can't really think of any reasons why it is a bad thing. Plus, it's nice to be able to afford things.

Solo farming isn't a problem. The problem is the army of people using the "1337 'sploitz" found on the net. Sure, if you found something ingenious, you deserve all the spoils you get. But does every single person who finds the build on the net deserve the rewards?

I'm having hard time finding Gaile's post in Nov 10/11 patch but she mentioned about hardest levels of the game are not meant to be be soloed.

Also from head developer interview they have nothing against farming, it becomes an issue when someone able to farm more then anyone else.

Talks in length about farming here: http://www.guildwars.com/community/f...-friday61.html

Mike O'Brien, head of the Design Team
I wanted to point out what Anet's current state of mind is on this topic.

That being said, over farminhg doesn't affect me for the most part. The reason is I have no problem with the collector items, and and can get drarknor's armor with money earned in game just fine. The high prices deter me away from some runes (depends on profession), and Fow is not even a goal for me anymore.

Again I wanted to point out what Anet official feels.

For farming ...as I said.

I think alot of people confuse farming with somehow exploiting the game. Of course if people figure out ways to exploit the game mechanics in a way that is unfair it should be changed. But the irony is that there is exploiting (or what I would consider exploiting) that is deemed 'ok' by anet so the line is blurred.

I think the fact you can have special farm build for the character just adds another dimension to the game. If someone wants to just be a solo farmer that's almost like a character class. Seems to me the debate should not be about solo farming but what they farm and why the need for people to hoarde gold.

Farming, from my experience, is done in most MMOs mostly for crafting components. But since there is not really any crafting and people can equip anything, the high level farmers can take advantage of not as high level players (and charge whatever they want).... that is the problem IMO

I am for farming since after you beat the game you have nothing else to do if you dont like pvping constantly.....also how do they expect us to buy 15k or fissure armor or get that max weapon everyone always wants.....or to buy those skills that now cost 1 plat each?

For the most of it I'm for it

UW farming doesn't really do anything to the economy - the drops are just spread between 1 person rather than 8, that said.... I don't think Underworld should be soloable, the fact it is is bad design on their behalf.... making things whack for more damage just cries out for skills like protective spirit.

I farm myself - but if they make griffin farming harder, or even not possible to do I wouldnt really oppose it, I'm not going to deny that it's pretty much exploiting a dumb AI - changing it so you can't seems sort of reasonable to me, though I think it's also reasonable to take advantage of while it is... dumb - the fact that there are bots in augery which are scripted to farm griffs shows how silly it is (I oppose augery international districts)

As I prevoisly stated I am for Solo-Farming.

I would like to point out that the reason that bots can Solo-Farm so well is because Monester Postions are so predictable. If Anet Could change this so monester could be in different spots so a Human Farmer could just look to where the griffons are but a Bot would just go to the same area but relilize there is no griffons and just stand there then Bot Farmers would die.

Woot I'm on the High Council

<scratches head>
Not much of a debate here, is it?

I grew up on rpgs like FF series, Suikoden, and many others where all the characters can level up to 60-99 if you grinded at certain monster spots for hours. These grindy rpgs are what I've gotten used to, so naturally I would turn to farming as a duck to water. But eventually I learned to like the PvP aspect as well, thanks to that no-good Diablo 2 game that got me hooked on it.

hehe...not really.

before i explain completely i think i would like to give some of my background in this game. i have played since release and beta of june 04. beta and release were totally different of course.

first day in the game i created my own guild and grabbed my brother, freind, and random people we met in game. about 2 weeks into the game one of our members had beaten the game and started farming. i decided to make some kind of build that would be able to farm with him. my first character was a monk so i decided to go with that class. the monk provided me with the best chance of survival with less party members. i discoveredpro spirit and its implications for myself and thought of ways of how i could use it. my pro spirit was finished with in a week. i loved the build b/c it was a challenge and was not always full proof. in june i joined this forum and found the "less is more" post. it was using the same method as me except with pro bond. after i got pro bond and started soloing everywhere including UW and FOW (yes it can be done and still can be). i got so bored out of my mind b/c it was no longer any challenge.

i accumilated so much gold during those first few months of GW that i had nothing to do with it. my guild mates and i even had races to 1 million gold. i thought to myself that i guess gold really isn't that important as seeing how its so easy to get. then BOOM pro bond was nefed. i fell back to my pro spirit build and kept farming as usual. nothing changed just not 100% like pro bond was.

after seeing the mo/w in riverside and elona out number every other class in the town, in every dist, i felt something was deffently wrong. i did not like the pro bond nerf at first. i had the same reaction as everyone else when a nerf happens. i hated it that they killed my build just b/c i got alot of gold. i may not have liked it but i knew deep down it had to happen for longevity of the game.

the devs never planned for soloing. it was not suppose to be apart of this game. the game was suppose to be about teamwork. instead everyone went to soloing and barely played with other players. the orginal econemy was not built for soloing and eventually crashed twice. soloing cause inflation to accelorate so fast that they devs now have to tweak prices at merchants so it doesn't get out of hand. the econemy was suppose to be completely player controlled but now the devs to have to step in every now and then.

we have seen skill nerfs, price inflation, skill price increase, and econemy crashes caused by soloing in some way, shape, or form. many gold sinks have been put into the game to suck up some of the gold players have from soloing. for these reasons i no longer solo. my monk is only used for helping guildies through missions.

i have since taken all the money i had and reinvested it in players. i helped some new guilds i've met get their sigils for hall. gave most of my gold to new players just starting out for their armor (recommend collectors for weapons still). i could't do anything with it so why not help other's

my stance on solo farming is i'm against it. it hurt this game in many ways and warped the original vision the devs had for the game. it went from team game to a single player game. i do not condem group farming. that's how the econemy was designed for in the first place. i think this should be improved to encourage people to party instead of soloing. adjusting drops for the number of people in the party would help to improve team play. more people in party more drops (henches would not count for this). less people less drops. this would keep the current low drops we have now enforced on solo farming while giving some benifit to being in a party.

While it's reasonable to nerf solo-farming "exploits" (though the very definition of "exploit" is debatable) - it's not worth the time or effort to discourage it altogether. No matter what you do there will always be people who will spend a ton of time researching into builds that will allow them to solo-farm some area of the game - if just for the bragging rights and the ability to post their achievement for others to comment in awe. Isn't that part of the enjoyment of the game?
Some people can boast about winning a collection of celestial sigils because they've spent their time refining builds and strategies for winning HoH. I, for one, can't - but I can solo farm and that's not much different. I wouldn't complain that the champions of HoH unbalance the game by having all the sigils and best drops.

If I couldn't farm effectively I would never have been able to afford a guild hall. I had to pay over 80k to buy one at a time when HoH winners were hoarding sigils.

Then by that token they should get rid of henchmen as well.

I am confused about one thing, is it really solo farming that is bad, or what people getting in the drops? Seems to me adjusting the drops will only make solo farmers need to farm more to get what they want. Some people don't wanna hastle with going to get a party everytime they want to farm. Also what if a player just wants to farm some char hides, do they really need a party?

I just feel discouraging a solo player is just one more thing to take away rather than allowing people to be more creative in the game.... which is usually sorta part of the rp experience. I'm sure Anet wants to attract players. Yes they need to get rid of botting, but that's thier problem.

I agree with him

lol your right all we're getting is.
For,For,For,For, For,For,For,For,For,Against,For, For,For,For,For,For

I don't mind it. But I do think it's stupid that supposedly hard places, such as Grenths, Sorrows, UW and FoW are solo-able. These are supposed to be tough, level 20 challenging areas. If you can solo that, its not tough. Considering this is supposed to be a 'team' game then there is clearly something wrong with the difficulty.

Methinks they need to make it so *most* areas are soloable. But that in a team of 1, only 1 item drops from a monster. In a team of 4, 3 items drop and in a team of 8, 5 items drop from each monster. Even if thats just 5 lots of gold. So the bigger your team, the faster you kill AND the more items you get. And if, as a team, you suck, you get nothing But if you don't want to team, you can still go out and hunt for items (but not in the 'tough' places)