DEBATE: Solo-Farming

We won't agree I think because:

Answer to 1) The balance supply by farmers/demand by farmers is completely flawed. So we have opposite thoughts about this.
A farmer supply less than he demands. As you said yourself as a farmer, you sell Sup vigor runes (for example) to the NPC merchant. You understand what happens then. You don't supply the player's market with this rune, but you still get the money for it ( and the NPC has INFINITE amount of gold - a bucks printing machine). So, your buying power increase, but the demand is still the same. Remember that prices are based on Players trades, not NPC's.
If you didn't drop ectos (as farmers mainly farm for FoW armors), you will be able to buy them from a player since you have so much gold. But you won't supply ectos to the market, as soon as you have one, you keep it for a FoW armor. So ectos prices = Booooom!!
I know myself closely a farmer. He does'nt AT ALL sell sup Vigor/Absorption runes to players. Each time he has one, hop, to the NPC merchant. Why? Because it's a lot of time gained (try to sell a Sup Absorption at its current price, eh, you will stand one hour until someone have the money to buy it to you), and it continues to skyrocket the prices higher and higher by not bringing new supply.


Answer to 2)
Farmers farm for FoW armors. More, Ectos are now a money. A run from Ascalon to Granite Citadel? 1 Ecto. This perfect Fellblade? 80k 3 ectos.
Prices dropped recently. Why? Oh let's see. Because aoe farming was completely tuned down. No more easy invicimonk. Let's see, Monk sup runes were 20k each, just after the patch, only 10k. What a strange thing. You still say that solo farming doesn't inflate the prices. Sorry, but for me, seeing that prices drop so low after a solo farming nerf makes me think the contrary.

I won't even answer your sarcasm.

Again, and I hope I will be clear and will not repeat it:
I AM NOT AGAINST FARMERS .
I farm myself, to earn ALSO some money to have decent equipment.

Besides, it is a debate for or against SOLO-FARMING, not against FARMING ITSELF.
Read me again, I propose solutions to make TEAM FARM more important than SOLO FARMING.
So please don't misunderstand me or make me say what I didn't say.

I don't care about wealthy players.
What I'm against is that farming is a matter of TIME more than a matter of SKILL. The wealthiest players should be the more skilled. That's all.
I have a few time to spend to GW. If i'm more skilled than one harcore player, I want my skill earn more money to me for the same amount of time spent than him.
Since GW seems to put emphasis on teamplay, a skilled team should earn more money/items than a solo noob.

Inflation is a problem for newbies, because with no money they cannot compete with wealthy (but maybe less skilled) player.
A I made several trips with noobs in Kryta with Elite skills/Droks armors, aggroing all monsters thinking they were invincible, dying miserably, and letting the entire team pay for their noobish behavior. Yes, in Kryta, not the worst difficult area of GW.
I even don't speak about twinkers with the same advantages in low levels arena, only because they are wealthy, but unskilled.
But this is antoher story already debated in other threads.

but I don't see the arguement of time over skill

I can see it taking a LOT more time for a solo player to take out a group of monsters than for a group of 8 going up against the same group of monsters and taking them out in less time.

anet dropped the ball on ALL drops, not just solo players but for everyone.

as for twinked players, i think most people agree there is no reason for them to be bring ing their elite skills into the low level arena's but that get's us off topic.

Balance?...HAHA

KILL THE EBAY SWEAT SHOPS!!!

Make the drops better, i mean i want a max dmg 15^50 chaos axe, but most people are asking 100k and like anywhere from 30 to 60 or more ectos.....more than the cost of fissure armor, nvm trying to farm ecto solo or other wise.

"Want" and "Need" go hand in hand as much as they are different.

SOLO FARMER = TREASURE HUNTER.
GROUP FARMING = SEVERAL TREASURE HUNTERS.

THE GODS GAVE US THE FAVOR AND THE DEVS TAKE IT AWAY!!!

does korea realy pay to play gw? does that effect us game wide? do the international districts have these problems? Japan is having a closed beta soon, i'm guessing, that might change the economy when it releases??

shrugs, why wern't the "things" that were not meant to happen in the first place, thought about before release? wtf did all thoses beta testers tell you?
were they all 12 year olds, or all adults? blab blab blab.......

Here timmy, here's 5$ for icecream, but you can only use 25 cents of it....
oh, im sorry honey, you just have to get used to it..blabblab...mind games?

Hey dude, here's a keg of beer, but it's now non-alcoholic....

In a player driven economy, why do i feel someone else is drivng my taxi?

I could go on and on, for both sides, but its just a rehash of all the other pages...blahhh

Xmas is comming soon, lots of new games comming out....hmmmm

:::End Transmission:::

glountz:

This is a debate about the pro's and cons of solo farming. This is not the place to bring ideas for nerfing.

About your arguments:

1. The point? Does it affect you in any way when people you dont even know don't play in a team?
2. An old one but completely irrelevant. You know the game of chess? If you have a board and pieces, should you only use it to play according the rules? No variations like Can-I?, 2-move chess, give-all-away? Owning a game does not mean you need to play it the way its meant to be. And computergames change more often during gameplay than board games. But again, how does it affect you if someone plays differendly, someone you never met and probably never will meet?
3. Spend some time in trading places. You will mostly be able to get what you want for prices between 5k-20k. And than I'm talking about green items. Is that so much? The only exeptions I see are the high level absorbtion runes, but they were expensive from scratch. I don't see how solo farming at this moment affects the game in a negative way. You state that poor players dont have the time to solo?? But than I wonder whats the problem you have with it. Because having time or not is a completely differend issue...

There really isn't a problem with soloing, in fact back during E34E there weren't "Explorable Areas", but "Solo Areas". Being able to run around by yourself was intended and encouraged.

I do think there are issues with current solo farming though. Specifically, that players can solo high level, 6 or 8 man instances quickly, and that this sort of gameplay is much more 'rewarding' in game, in terms of loot and XP, than teaming up with other players.

I'm a student of game design and am always trying to figure out what makes a good game tick (or fail to, as the case may be). The specific issues Guild Wars has that I've recognized:

Regarding ability to solo farm, the biggest problem is degenerate mob design. Every single area being seriously solo farmed has the exact same problem - masses of identical enemies employing the same tactics and skills. From Gypsy Ettins to Caromi Tengu Elites to Desert Minotaurs to Griffons to Hydras to Mountain Trolls to Tundra Giants to Flesh Golems, every single case has a player running a build designed specifically to hate out the tactics and skills of a certain enemy, then pushing that hate to the extreme to handle as many enemies of a specific type as possible.

The Underworld was (and perhaps still is, I haven't been there in a while) a gross extension of this problem - you have huge swaths of degenerate enemy types. It was begging to be hated out and solo farmed, and it was. Contrast the Underworld with the Fissure of Woe - at least in the entry area, every mob has multiple creature types with different skills and tactics, making it nigh-impossible to solo. Indeed every serious effort to solo in the Fissure of Woe that I know of involves *running past* these mobs to get to the degenerate mobs deeper in the instance.

Lazy mob design is the biggest issue for soloing, and the first thing they need to address if they want to attack the problem. Not that there aren't problematic skills, such as Protective Spirit or Kinetic Armor - but those are merely symptoms. Against mixed mobs, most of these solo characters get destroyed utterly.

AI abuse can also be a symptom, or a bigger issue. Specific abuses need to be looked at on a case by case basis.


The *desire* to solo farm is a bigger issue in my mind. Not that people wanting to run around solo is a bad thing, I think most people are in the mood for that on occasion. The problem is that soloing is the fastest and most profitable way to gain XP and wealth - and that needs to be addressed.

The biggest issue here is division, really. As you add more players to a group, the loot and XP keeps getting increasingly diluted as the pool never grows, things only get divided further. On the flip side, the killing power of a group does not grow proportionally. Not only does an 8 man group not kill mobs twice as fast as a 4 man group, but the time spent running between mobs is not scaled at all. When you take all of that into account you're in this situation where groups really want to run with as few players as possible to enter whatever area, because every additional player is just going to drag down the rewards for everyone else. This is a Bad Thing.

I think you have to address this problem from two different angles. First, while the per-player loot and XP are going to need to decrease with each additional player in the group (to avoid 'dummy player' exploits), it simply cannot decrease as quickly as it does. A simple model is to add 50% more XP and loot to each monster for each person in the group, then divide it evenly on the kill. In that case, running around in a group of 8 will give each player roughly 50% of the reward per kill that he'd get soloing it - but he should be gaining wealth much faster due to killing speed. Now that model is a bit too high, a stronger one is 50% more loot for the second player and 25% more loot for each additional player - and you can keep getting more complex from there - but the point remains. Loot needs to scale up to encourage grouping for farming.

The other is through quest rewards. Right now there's very little incentive to re-play a mission you've already completed - you don't get another skill point, and you don't even get the 1000 XP again, as little as that is. People want wealth from completing missions and quests, and the game should deliver. I think the Kilroy Stonekin Sorrow's Furnace mission is a good starting point for this - throughout the mission he'll hand out three chests full of purples. Not that purples are valuable, but the idea is the same - give people loot, and lots of it, for going on and completing missions. If missions gave out a gold every time you completed them, you'd see packed districts of people looking for groups to complete missions quickly and efficiently, which is exactly what you want.

Most of these things can still be addressed, though some would require pretty radical shifts to the way the game is designed. Still, if they want PvE to reward grouping and discourage, not *prohibit* solo farming, the above is a good outline of the steps they need to take.

Peace,
-CxE

Yeah, I'd be all for groups if I knew I could get as much reward regardless of the group size. Drops shouldn't "time out" so that after 5 minutes anybody can get it. That'll prevent drop-out exploits. And if the person drops out, his unclaimed loot disappears, and the loot algorithm adjusts to the new group size.

Group farming can really encourage teamwork and be good practice. But as Ensign said, there HAS to be an incentive for farming with large groups. I'm sorry but if I can make 5k in an hour by myself, why get in a 6-man group and make less than 1k for the same amount of work and time? A 6-man group doesn't kill 6 times faster. A lot of times a large group takes longer because when you solo all enemies attack just you and that makes them more accessible. But I consider the game broken as it is now. No incentive for grouping, but no love for soloing.

this is the absolute truth and a fix in itself. add a mes and monk to every group, instead of having 15 warrior types in one area, would destroy anything trying to solo that area. they did add the little guy to UW but gave him a 3 second cast spell. now we just use power drain to interrupt him. maybe they should give him glyph of renewal. interrupt the glyph or the rend either way you're screwed.

i also suggested the drops be increase for party sizes. didn't think of a scale to base it on as you did but i like what you said. soloing should be for challenge not profit (the only profit at that).

good to see another game designer here haven't quite figured out where i want to fit in the industry but AI has sparked my interest.

Gee, Gaile Gray is the OFFICIAL anet rep. what do you want, a halftime show?

your point is garbage. if you solo farm char how much loot are you going to get? you will get much less than if you play the game thru, so why would you solo farm to get less money than you would by playing thru? that makes no sense at all.

I am for solo-farming because it helps me make gold fast.
If solo farming was nerfed... umm there would be those rich people that started early with full fow armor, amazing rare items etc. etc. and then those that are fairly new with nothing. The new/fairly-new people would probably be poor compared to those that started the game early, and would stay poor for a very long time (poor forever, for casual gamers).

Umm, yeah, sounds fair? *Sarcasm* -_-'

um, what do you mean by fair? droks armor is as good as bling armor in stats and you dont need uber items to succeed in GW, you need skill. so if you buy the game with the intent to hoard money expect what comes with that (grind).

BUT I NEED THE BLING!!!!!1 OMFG IT LOOKS SO COOL 15k ARM
And, yeah that is what I do... grind!(Which I love doing)

I just wouldn't find it fair if other grinding farmers have FoW armor+bling-bling etc, and I don't because of a solo-nerf. So, that is why I am for solo-farming; so that I can get FoW armor+bling-bling etc.

By the way, you are off topic lol! Pwnt! -_- im joking. But yeah, you are off topic.

Since most of the folks here are not saying nerf solo farming per say, but rather increase party drops. . .what is your point?

I've seen a few good arguements here but a few are not exactly correct in relation to facts

"Farmers just sell materials to NPCs who have an infinite amount of gold"

Yes for merchants this is true. But for traders like the material and Dye trader this is NOT. Traders only will sell items that they get from players. If one farmer just wants to buy some steel igots and buys them clean from the trader then all the people will notice prices have increased when they buy or sell to the trader for stell igots. Almost instantly everyone whos smart will sell thir Steel igots till prices flatten again.

However Prices will decrease on items farmers can farm but not the ones they can't farm (such as runes). This is why Superior absorbtion is so expensive however it is not long before a farmer finds another Rune farming place and there are already some spots like nobo Tarrance.

"There are no team-farming spots so solo-farming is the only way."

Not true at all the great sorrow's furance is the famous spot filled with expensive items know as the greens. I'm probably going to go myself if they act on solo-farming. The Sorrow's Furance is the only area which is unsoloable and the greens are very valueable inside the furance.


1.Why does the game have to be ALL teamwork

2. Guild Wars purpose is like all purposes its to have fun. But Solo-farming reduces time send on getting gold and items providing anyone with the gold the items. This balance of Supply and Demand allows farmers to get the items they want without hurting the ecomony. True only farmers benifit from this but it doesn't hurt anyone in the process.

3. Like I said before NO IT DOESN'T

4. Not bad item however it doesn't work when you consider henchies in the equation. If you don't put henchies into the equation then certain maps would become WAY too easy. If you put henchies into the equation then farmer will lead henchies in, create a situation in which henchies will die but not the farmer, farm the mass amount of monesters they encounter.

This also would be a pain in the --- for programers.

The REAL problems with solo-farming!

Problem: The 55 monk is too cheap and it is a bit too cheap and should be weakened.

Solution: Create a Minumuim health limit when Dp and Runes are calculated.

Problem: There are any really good rune farming spots which make the prices for runes to go up.

Solution: Make Mintour Hides able to hold runes.

i've never cared muhc for farming. In fact its a skill I tired it and couldn't do it. Mainly because the runes cost 50000g. so I'd have to call it a skill. But then again I don't think anet shoudl take control of the game like this. Several atgmes turned dead because of things like that. Just get you gold the way you want. It don't matter

Before getting to the rest of what I have to say, I feel the need to point this out: While Gaile Gray might have official standing as an employee, she does not necessarily speak for Anet on every occasion.

Even White House press secretaries have been known to speak their minds and not ALWAYS represent the administration they serve.

I have said this before, but it is as true now as ever, Gaile Gray is the single worst CSR I have ever come in contact with. If she said it was raining outside, I'd go out and check for myself, and I live 12 miles away from Anet. I don't actualy think she intended to create the great PvP vs. PvE mess we had a few months ago, but it was her job to deal with it, and preferably work it out. She certainly did NOT do that.

Many companies, perhaps more than half, have either intentionaly or accidentaly kept their CSR's in the dark as to their real intentions. CSR's are not really staff, in most companies nobody even asks them for their opinion. They're sales people, and if you want to get right down to it, they're RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOs. If they get a job at a rap radio station, even if they're hated rap their entire lives, suddenly they love it. I wouldn't take Ms. Gray's word for much.

Does Anet hate farming? Instead of trying to read their words as though you were reading the Torah, how about looking at what they do? Do they continue to nerf the skills, areas and mechanics used in farming? Well then, you have your answer.

As long as they hate it, it really doesn't matter if 90% of the rest of you want it to stay. There will be future nerfs coming. I'd commiserate, but when it was the PvP community getting screwed you all kept telling us to shut up and go away. So frankly, if you don't like the farming nerfs, go find some other game.

Well I have sent a personal message to Galie dealing with this issue. If were luckey she hasn't been spammed by echo-nukers and we will get a direct opinion from her and she should clear things up for us.

I said that to make twicky_kid relieze what he was saying when he said Solo-farming should be nowhere including the extremely low lvl charr.

I also farmed Charr when it was halloween and got a lot of Charr carvings to trade for halloween stuff . That was just an example.

The 55 monk was innovative, not cheap. Heck, when you get down to it, the echo nuker was innovative. But guess what? The build got out into the open. Suddenly, everyone and his grandmother who had a monk was doing the solo monk. A few exceptions, yes, just as not all eles were echo nukers. Now, people call it a "newb build" because it is common. If a solo mesmer build came up tomorrow, one that could solo any area in the game, people would call it innovative. Two months from now it would be a newb build.

Underworld is a great place to farm ectoplasms. Now, go check the price of ectoplasms. Things in demand go up in price until the supply meets the demand. It is near-impossible to meet the demand for ectoplasms, and a similar situation would come about with runes.

The real problem is that so many people are calling for a nerf. Be it to underworld farming or just to solo farming in general. This is the completely wrong approach. We all play guild wars. We play it differently, and that is not a problem (people can have fun how they choose). As others have pointed out, and I have repeated many times, the problem lies in the wealth:time ratio that the two groups of players have to deal with.

i think Anet dun hate solo farming, but they hate if some solo farmer can farm very fast with cheap method.

thing to do to encourage teamplay is increase drop rate for team farming, and not nerf solo farming. then both side can be happy

I've had some of the most fun farming and exploring. I go out with my bear and (carefully) find new ground and new towns. Its different than being led there by the green arrow on a quest or in a mission. Walking into a newly discovered town is one of the best parts of the game.

Yea, there are alot of areas i went randomly farming and wandering and general "ohhh look at that" into that groups would never go to, as there isnt any towns there.

*rolls eyes* do you really know how supply and demand works?


Any noob who wants a echoplasm isn't consided demand. The ones that actaully have the money for echoplasms are consided demand but not the ones who don't. This means if demand goes up prices go up, if demand goes down prices go down, if supply goes up prices down, and if supply goes down prices go up.

Now if BOTH supply and demand are affected in the same way (down and up) and at a equal value then prices will STAY THE SAME. THIS is exactly the situation that farming has created.

It is ectoplasm, not echoplasm. And we have atleast 250,000 "noobs" who want an ectoplasms, who are willing to farm for an ectoplasm, selling all items to the merchant. Get one, and "hey, that wasn't to bad", so they want another one. And so on. That does not include the people who are actually buying them for something like armor, since the "demand" they create is much higher.

The point I was trying to make was, having good rune farming locations will likely not do much, since superior absorption is the only rune that has been stabilized because of the price cap, not because of supply vs demand.

Wrong. Farming creates some of both, yes. However, demand for something like ectoplasms, from griffon farmers, means what? Demand for ectoplasms goes up. Supply stays the same. UW farmers supply ectoplasms. But they also demand ectoplasms. Therefore, ectoplasms prices go up. Ever since black dye was at 26k, a price cap has been enforced on the traders. Since it was added, ectoplasms went from 20k+ to below 17k. Since then, I have never seen ectoplasms above 17k. If you mean to tell me that, during the past few weeks when ectoplasms were at that 17k price cap, they would never have gone above it. . .then please tell me were that logic is comming from. Since griffon farming took a hit with the Nov. 10th and 11th updates, demand has dropped from the griffon farmer, since it was harder to make the needed gold. Hence, ectoplasm prices have been reduced again (less demand from lack of gold). Yet they still fluctuate. Perhaps to you increases and decreases of a few platinum are nothing, but that is something to be looked at to me.

and she didnt INTEND to create it?

please tell us how she created this mess since as you yourself said

so someone kept in the dark is supposed to smooth everything out while having no idea of what the company will do next.

that is a piece of twisted logic even for a born complainer

Typical CSR, we're mushrooms. Kept in the dark and only fed billsh!t

unless you are a CSR yourself i wouldn't put any words in someone else's mouth. CSRs are the direct link between the CEO and its customers. CSRs create the feedback from customers to let the CEO and sales marketers figure out what to invest their time into. i feel sorry for gaile since there is only 1 PR for GW. at least the company i work for has a few thousand. still doesn't help much having 15 million customers

i have the power to pull the plug on you and tell you no if given certian situations. i can take that customer's complaint and turn it into feedback. this is wrong and the customer feels this way. adjust plans to conform to customer needs. if plan doesn't conform i lose customers for that monthly charge.

this is the typical feedback system for most "smart" companies. Anet on the other hand has a goal set with a way to reach it. players have created speed bumps for direction of the game. instead of people doing missions and playing with each other most turn to soloing or henches. yes most pugs are worse than henches but have you ever thought why? maybe its b/c they never play in a pug and communication is difficult for 8 people through a simple chat line. i've noticed most people in pugs play as though they are with henches. ele, necro, and mes arrgoing 2 groups instead of letting the war take arrgo then follow in behind him. most people don't know how to play in a pug together b/c frankly that is an option in the current game.

besides they don't have to conform to you what you want all the time. you bought the game they have your money it cost them money to let you play it for free. sure you can choose not to buy the next chapter but that's not a problem either. i think GW has enough people that play the game for the meta game than anything else. the only reason they even attempt to stem pve inflation is b/c of new players coming into the game. i'm a new player, bought the game, log in, look at econemy and say f it after a few days. i'll have to grind for months in the game's current environment to get anything you really need (runes, skills, armor).

most of the point of veiws come from players that are established in the game. think if you have a new account with nothing unlocked, no gold, armor, weapons, or runes. would you play this game and grind for months when the box says skill>time played? when the game released that statement was true. now on the other hand its the exact opposite. drops were fine till the soloers then they had to reduce the drop rate.

you still missed my point

Ecto prices went up AFTER the update because there was LESS ecto famers and some farmers who still had some money left.

If some griffon farmer farms and farms trying to get as many ectos as he can he still is limited in demand. He can only buy ectos once he has enough for one. This is slowed once ecto prices go up.

I should also say that as prices increase demand decrease because now getting ectos just from gold is slower once you need more gold to get it. So traders can ajust their prices so that supply meets demand. Supply can also be rate because it is how many ectos farmers are getting.

If you increase supply then the trader can decrease his prices because he will have enough of the item to meet the increased demand from the decrease in pricing.

Now I took this in school I know what I am talking about

you might want to check on that. ecto is at 14k right now. don't remember it being that low pre AI update.

the gold sinks are doing their jobs well. more gold is being removed from the game while the gold pumped into the market is slowing down. everyone has less gold and cannot afford those high prices. the prices will come down to meet what people can afford.

its only 2 weeks since update and prices are dropping across the board. dyes are the exception. seems the white dye craze has been making silver more expensive. yellow moved slightly. black went up and has stayed there but that's not a surprise.

EDIT: just check dye prices they are down as well. prices are dropping more and more each week.

You are right. they don't have to. But is that smart? When a commercial company notices there's a huge demand for their product but people use it a little bit differend than it was meant to be, what would be the next step to take? Teach people patiently, yet without compromise, that they should stop using their product this way? Or make some adjustments and win a lot of customers? Not such a difficult choice I would say! $$$ $$ Unless of course they allready are working on a new product for these customers

Why do you think I said WE.

Hmmm.....actually that was what we were doing.

We wanted to change our focus, so we had to get rid of our long time customers. We made a few incremental changes, found a new base that did not know any better, then WHAM!!!! slammed the hammer on the old timers.

Interesting concept for a game.

it was 15k yesterday and is still 14.xk at the moment.

superior vigor is 60k now down from 70k+ a bit ago

got a nice sup fire for only 6k now

Wow, I haven't visited this thread for some time and there sure are a lot of smart people visiting a (egad) gaming forum! Some are smarter than others, of course. The one referred to me as twisted, not very smart! :P

A few ideas I would like to address:

THERE IS NO IMBALANCE OF LOOT BETWEEN SOLO and TEAM FARMING.

The amount of drop is exactly the same. This should *NEVER* be changed. To change this would create imbalance and encourage one form of play style over another which in turn becomes a statement from Anet as to which they favor.

Since there are people that are really smart here, why do they persist that there is an imbalance and insist that the imbalance be address with a solution in reality is creating actual imbalance? Perception... It is as powerful as reality when you do not understand randomness of probability and statistics. You resort it to some mystical nebulous experience that simply offer opinions and resort to name calling. The division of labor (and its benefit and efficiency) isn't considered when contemplating the Solo vs. Team farming. Why, to do so is to take away from one's very own arguement! So a little bit of intellectual dishonesty aside, in the perfect world, 2,4,6,8 players should be able to kill same amount of mobs more effectively. Alas, the world isn't perfect and not everybody's skill level is at the same level. Hence those who prefer to team (and most of the time with less than optimal group) end up being less effective. The problem ins't with GW or the loot drop rate. The problem is with the people. This is precisely why communism and socialism fail since it regards everyone as being the same and remove any incentive to "move ahead", or, "solo-farm". (Okay, I'm stretching a little, sue me, ha, you cant if you're a true believer!)

The HAVES will have more than the HAVENOTS simply because the HAVES are willing to do the work/grind/solofarming/teamfarming/insert your favorite activity here to have what they set out to do. To some of you, why not be happy about your flist and guildlist full of friends online that you can play with while others toil alone, by themselves, mindlessly almost pulling the one arm bandit? Just because you like standing around stroking your ego rather than watch a slot machine hit jackpot does not mean you should have the ability to take it away from others why, that wouldn't be very capitalistic now, would it?

So you're saying that a person who spends the same amount solo-farming and team-farming will get an equal amount of loot from each? That's ridiculous.

There IS an imbalance that causes people to solofarm: a player can get MUCH more loot solo-farming in the same amount of time than he could have team-farming. This causes an imbalance between people who solo-farm (a tedious affair that most people would do only because they feel they HAVE to to keep up with everyone else) and people who play the game in groups, like the way the game was meant to be played.

ANet, fix the imbalance please.

ahmm... actually i don't think that's true at all.

i solo-farm once in a while in order to try out something new. for example, my elementalist recently just got to Droknar's. i haven't upgraded her armor in a while and had (accidentally) sold all the bolts of cloths. (Don't ask... )

so i quickly solo-farmed and managed to get 200+ bolts of cloth in ~40 minutes. then i bought my droknar.

to be honest, i fail to see how i've done something wrong...

personally, i am pro-farming. this is a game. people pay for it to be entertained. people play it for fun. to the largest degree possible, people should be able to play it the way they want.

Oh sure, but the current system has a large disincentive to play in groups (you get a hell of a lot less loot - around 1/8th to be exact) in this competitive/cooperative, online, multiplayer game. If solo-farming and team-farming were on more equal ground, then there would be no problem. If you got the same number of drops whether you were in a team of 8 or whether you were solo, a lot of people wouldn't feel the need to solo.

Then hopefully ANet can also work on making the game harder/more challenging for groups.

Then let there be a vote!

Solution to end the incentive to solo farm.
Select all that you agree with.

A) Give larger teams more drops than solo or smaller teams so they can farm collectively quicker than soloist can.

B) Give soloist or smaller teams less drops than larger groups so they can not farm anymore effectivly than a full team can.

C) A balanced combonation of A and B, however thats supposed to work out before someone finds yet another predictable solution to cash in.

D) Increase the rewards of challening endgame quest to match the efforts of farming so people are happly rewarded for the challenges that were designed for them to meet by the developers.

E) Make mobs random in most cases, varied in builds and always increasingly reactionary, thereby destroying their predictablity and causing full balanced teams to be more effective at clearing them than smaller teams or soloist.

If you cant tell by my tone I vote D and E

Care to explain how solo farming is not encouraged now? It is, after all, 8 times better loot-wise than groups ever currently can be.

The best 8 players in the game cannot kill mobs 8 times as fast as soloer. Therefore, they can never get the same amount of loot.

Favorite activity: Glint Quests. Reward? More experience! Oh yay!

Favorite activity has absolutely zero bearing on the gold you get. No, those who want money are ment to solo farm. . .but didn't you say that no imbalance exists?

The world is about opinions and perception. If I perceive someone as ugly, and you see them as beautiful, who is right? You? Why you and not me? Perception is reality, for those who do the perceiving. You can only change the way you see things, and to claim that an understanding of probability and statistics will make you view reality. . .is a perception. "reality is in the eye of the beholder" as the saying goes.

Which, to those of you who are fairly astute, will show just why this topic is highlty interisting, but can never amount to any "proof" about why things need to be changed, or why they do not.

the amount of drops in the game have not changed that is a correct statement. the problem is that the quality of those drops have become next to nothing with the diminishing returns method.

quality of drops across the entire game have been reduced. the more you visit one area the less quality drops you will get. meaning the more you play the less you get. you don't even have to kill anything to get the drop nerf. i have went in and out of a town really fast for a long period of time and i got the warning message.

its pretty simple to calculate. 8 man team will have all drops divided by 8. a soloer will have all drops divided by 1. now that the quality of drops has gone down the soloer is going to make more gold by the selling the crap drops to the merchant. then he can take that gold and trade for anything he really needs.


i like the new change personally because of what its doing to the econemy. prices have been falling more and more. everything is going down. death runes are going up (waiting on those curse to skyrocket).

so far i haven't seen any increases since the changes. it went up then started to nose dive.