Curse

Pandora's box · Jun 15, 2005, 10:34 PM // 22:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elythor

Have any of you tried jumping to random Arena, play one round, then go back out to mission/explorable area?

It is *rumoured* to improve the drop rate. Since its random arena...you don't really need to care about winning / losing.

I did not. But the game should not need such tricks. Droprate is finally getting back to normal now for me and I think ensign was right. But omg, this is the worst nerf I ever heard of. They should really turn this back!

Elythor · Jun 15, 2005, 10:48 PM // 22:48

Well...the origin intent of the nerf is not targeted towards farming as much as botting. If you keep running areas over and over....anti-bot mechanisms kick in and nerf the drops.

However, I wouldn't be too surprised it was a bug in their "counter" code instead.

Dreamsmith · Jun 15, 2005, 11:00 PM // 23:00

If it stops the bots, I'm all for it. The question is, will it actually stop the bots, or just make them more sophisticated? I suspect the latter.

Howling Wind · Jun 15, 2005, 11:19 PM // 23:19

The heavy nerf comes in just as soon as I was preparing my ranger to take on a serious farming role...

Ensign · Jun 15, 2005, 11:52 PM // 23:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elythor

When you say "solo", I'm assuming you brought a full henchie team then?

Of course not. Henchies steal drops and turn everything into ugly statistical analysis.

Quote:

Originally Posted by salja Wachi

there is no Area penalty.

Pick an easy explorable area that anyone can solo with a level 20. Say, the gargoyles right outside of Nolani Academy.

Run out there solo and wipe out a couple packs. Keep track of how many gargoyles don't drop, and *which* gargoyles don't drop.

Notice that one drop is missing after the fourth run. Then two drops. Then 3 drops.

Notice that after a dozen runs, the first pack doesn't drop *anything*. Not just whites, or just gold, *nothing*. Also notice that the second pack you kill will have *every* gargoyle drop an item.

Then come back here and tell me that nothing has changed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elythor

Well...the origin intent of the nerf is not targeted towards farming as much as botting.

Which, as stated, makes it a miserable failure. A bot does not care if 10 of the 30 enemies it kills do not drop anything, it merely cuts into its take. A player most certainly *does* care if he wipes out a couple packs of Flesh Golems and doesn't get a single drop. The need to farm has not been addressed. By making farming increasingly frustrating, all they're doing is making botting increasingly attractive to people who want to get competitive within a reasonable amount of time.

I'll state it again for emphesis - there are a few dozen monsters in the game with drops that are orders of magnitude better than anything else. I would *like* to just run missions with guildies or with a PUG, or explore out in the wilds, or otherwise just play the game. But just running to the Riverside giants, or whatever the current sexy farming spot is, unlocks runes around 100x faster. As a PvP focused player, how is that a choice?

Peace,
-CxE

Sausaletus Rex · Jun 16, 2005, 12:51 AM // 00:51

As Charles says while we might be unclear on the details something has certainly changed in the way that drops work (According to what I've heard and seen, something like what Charles describes is at play. It might not be completely accurate but it best fits the available evidence). Which is problematic enough in and of itself but what's more disturbing is that this was a "stealth nerf". Something has been changed and changed in a fairly drastic way but looking over the various patch notes and statements from ArenaNet, there's been no explaination. Sure, a few paragraphs saying that farming's a problem and they're looking into it but nothing beyond that and certainly not a detailed examination of the apparently new mechanics. Their documentation of things has been lacking, by and large, but for something like this it's fairly appauling. Just what else will they change without bothering to tell us about? Just as I agree that having to run through circles and hoops in order to farm is ridiculous, so is expecting players to be frequenting the various fansites (or even the official site, for that matter - instead of using that little blurb at the login screen to shill the PRIMA guide they could, I don't know, tell everyone about the latest update.) in the hopes of catching on to what amounts to critical information.

Really, we might be wrong about the specifics here but the results are what matter and those results are clear. In an effort to hamper botters the developers have made farming next to impossible without resorting to botting. So, whatever they were trying to do and whatever the actual machinery is working behind the scenes, it's been yet another horrific misstep. Farming is, for many of us, synonymous with grind and I, for one, would be happy to just play the game and have fun and to have any need for farming taken care of there but that's not the case at the moment. Farming remains a necessary evil at the moment because of a few factors at play:

1) Players need a way to acquire massive amounts of resources in order to reamin "competitive". Unlocking runes and skills takes a lot of money, experience, and time invested to gain them directly - by finding and unlocking them yourself - or indirectly - by paying others a premium for doing that for you. In other words, to play at the highest levels of PvP without putting yourself at a disadvantage from a start you need the skills, equipment, and money to compete. So there's a built-in need for the sorts of things that actively farming can deliver. Even those who don't play at the highest levels of PvP and, indeed, might never want to still require extremely high levels of resources to get the things they need and want. Fortunately, they don't operate in an environment where they need to keep pace with anyone else so they can take their sweet time. Say, for example, though that you wanted to unlock as many skills as you could. I estimate that unlocking every skill with a single character will take roughly 300 skill points (It takes about 80 for your first two chosen professions thanks to all the freebies around, then you can switch and pick up around 15~20 free skills for each new profession but after that you're paying cold, hard skill points) and unlocking them with a series of characters will take around 180~240 (You'll pick up more freebies but you'll be duplicating your work by repeating quests and missions you've already done). Putting aside the skills that you won't really want to pick up, that's still a lot, and each skill point gets progressively harder than the last to get. Once you finish with the rewards for completing missions then those skill points become a matter of finding a way to get 20, 30, 40,000 and even more XP (By way of comparison, about 500,000 total XP is where I'm at and that's around 60 skills points. I know several people around 1,000,000 and they've gotten perhaps 90 skill points).

2) Drop tables for monsters are horrendously imbalanced. Giants have been made mentioned of and, it's true, they're good to farm. For runes, anyway, because they drop a lot of armor and runes are found in that armor. If you're hunting for weapons with perfect stats and good modifiers, you'll be farming elsewhere (actually, you'll be looking at a collector list and finding the monsters that drop the necessary item). Different monsters are best to farm for certain things. Even if they "fixed" the issue with runes, there'd still be farming taking place because certain monsters would be comparitavely easy for their level and people would grind them out for the XP for the skill points to get new skills. Remember Flesh Golems?

3) ArenaNet believes it's #2 that's the problem and not #1.

What should be addressed here is the "grind". The need, the desire, and the demand for people to farm. It's the underlying, systemic cause for people who want to go out and whack away at Gargoyles then teleport back and do it again and again until they get tired for the night. Or Hill Giants, or Flesh Golems, or Jade Scarabs, or whatever else they might want to farm. They do so because that's the easiest and best way to get what they want in a hurry. Farming is best done alone and in bulk. Playing with henchmen or other players saps your resources away. There are areas that, with a full and proper team, lead to good results but at the same time there are areas where a single character properly prepared can take out the various imbalanced monsters to achieve as good if not better a result. Whether you're hunting for runes or for weapons or even just XP for skill points the more people you have with you the longer it takes, especially when to play with others you need to coordinate your activities and play times - not everyone has a guild or a set team to go run the WaW content or the later missions at the drop of a hat - so when you have nothing better to do when you're by yourself, you go out and farm. Now, that leads to behavior a lot like what a farming bot might engage in, of course and while there certainly should be measures in place to deal with them there also needs to be something for actual players to do to get the things they need.

What ANet has done with this change is to take away the supply without doing anything about the demand. Runes still need to be unlocked, collector items still need to be gathered, gold still needs to be piled up to pay for runes and sigils and anything else in our broken economy, and the more skills you want the more laborious your play experience becomes. But, now, going out and trying to find the most effiicient way possible of getting those things is apparently something the developers are eager to stamp out. Players farm not because it's enjoyable but because it's what they'll do to grit their teeth and get to the parts of the game they enjoy. Were there an alternative most of them would happily take advantage of it (There are some people who enjoy farming I'm sure. I'm also pretty sure that Guild Wars is not the game for them and nor was it intended it be.) but in the absence of that alternative then making it more difficult to farm is not easing the actual problem, it's only making it worse. As long as the developers are going to shy away from tackling the structural issues then farmin should be made *easier* not more difficult because by fixing the specific imbalances in the system but not addressing the desire that leads to people abusing them all they've done is to create frustration and disappointment in the way things are working.

Eugaet · Jun 16, 2005, 12:51 AM // 00:51

I think what Ensign has stated is most likely correct and makes the most sense. I'll leave it up to everyone else to test it out, though...I don't have the patience. I went through one run outside of Ascalon until my inventory was full. Came away with 38 whites, 8 blues, and 1 dye. Every single creature I killed dropped either an item or gold, as they have always done for me. However, I don't repeat the same runs over and over. I don't farm. So good job Ensign on the most probable and correct explanation of the farming 'problem', I'm off to do stuff that's much more fun, for me, anyway. I'm done with the topic for all eternity.

filter · Jun 16, 2005, 01:15 AM // 01:15

Wow. So by teleporting around to give away items to guildies, my drops afterwards will be diminished?

And the same if you were elite skill capping, and the boss you need doesn't spawn, hence the need to re-zone?

*sigh*