Curse

Xunlai Guru Agent · Mar 24, 2008, 01:18 PM // 13:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Witchblade

I wish those whiners had the idea of how it was before Factions^^

No rune/material traders
No Insignas
Sup Vigor/Sup Abs/30HP Pommels were at 100K
Any nice 15^50 decent weapon such as Long Sword were 80-90K+ each

Those were the good ol'days, I wish I could go back!

OT: /sighed ^^

cebalrai · Mar 24, 2008, 01:58 PM // 13:58

I understand that people want a reliable source of income. How about coming up with ideas for Anet to chew on that will give you better income? Why is the only idea solo farming? Why does the only idea have to do with exploiting loopholes?

It's not the only way.

Fay Vert · Mar 24, 2008, 04:05 PM // 16:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arv X

clearly you dont understnad what inflation and deflation actually are...

Prices just before the loot nerf were lower than they had ever been. Explain that one away in terms of inflation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arv X

you complain because you think you are poor

Actually no, I am loaded, so don't try and tar me with the greed brush. For me this was a fun nerf. I have all the obs armour, torment weapons, rare skins and titles I want. I don't need wealth, what I need is a sense of fun, a point to inventing new builds, a point to playing the game. Post nerf there is no point, may as well ursan it like the crowd, oh what a fun game ANet has turned GW into. All there is now is title grind.

That is why I am now a casual player again, and i certainly won't go anywhere near GW2 if scaling is in place.

Angelic Upstart · Mar 24, 2008, 04:16 PM // 16:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fay Vert

Prices just before the loot nerf were lower than they had ever been. Explain that one away in terms of inflation.

Actually no, I am loaded, so don't try and tar me with the greed brush. For me this was a fun nerf. I have all the obs armour, torment weapons, rare skins and titles I want. I don't need wealth, what I need is a sense of fun, a point to inventing new builds, a point to playing the game. Post nerf there is no point, may as well ursan it like the crowd, oh what a fun game ANet has turned GW into. All there is now is title grind.

That is why I am now a casual player again, and i certainly won't go anywhere near GW2 if scaling is in place.

Very well put i agree totally.

Gli · Mar 24, 2008, 04:42 PM // 16:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fay Vert

Actually no, I am loaded, so don't try and tar me with the greed brush. For me this was a fun nerf. I have all the obs armour, torment weapons, rare skins and titles I want. I don't need wealth, what I need is a sense of fun, a point to inventing new builds, a point to playing the game. Post nerf there is no point, may as well ursan it like the crowd, oh what a fun game ANet has turned GW into. All there is now is title grind.

That is why I am now a casual player again, and i certainly won't go anywhere near GW2 if scaling is in place.

And you're really going to have so much more fun if you get a few more raven staff drops? Sounds to me like you're done with the game, lootscaling or no lootscaling.

Fay Vert · Mar 24, 2008, 05:00 PM // 17:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gli

And you're really going to have so much more fun if you get a few more raven staff drops? Sounds to me like you're done with the game, lootscaling or no lootscaling.

I may well be nearly done with GW. The loot nerf did that, like it did for a lot of my friends who no longer play. The nerf sucked 90% of the replay value of GW out of the game for many (not all I admit) people. Without farmers, where is the innovation for builds? Look at the state of play now, what is it? Just Ursan runs in elite areas? What a sorry sad little game the nerf created.

Loviatar · Mar 24, 2008, 05:02 PM // 17:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zahr Dalsk

So? Our armour still costs the same as it used to. So it's considerably harder to get. IMO that's not a good economy.

no. last i checked it was 1k not 1.5k and runes/insig are dirt cheep compared to your glory farming days

before runners how long and how much of the game did you have to play to get DROKS?

DROK armor was a long term goal for a casual player.

jeff strain in a pre GW release interview stated that this is why they have the 3 tier equal armor protection policy.

DROK as a long term goal for the casual player

15K for the more dedicated player who has moretime to play but still it will be their next step up long term goal

FOW for the hardcore player who spends insane time on the game this will be their LONG TERM GOAL

they never meant 15k to be bought in a few days farming.

Gli · Mar 24, 2008, 05:13 PM // 17:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fay Vert

Without farmers, where is the innovation for builds? Look at the state of play now, what is it? Just Ursan runs in elite areas? What a sorry sad little game the nerf created.

You're being irrational. There are still plenty of farmers out there; have you checked the farming sub-forum? It's a busy place. People still farm for all the lovely trinkets that are on the lootscale exclusion list. I know I do, and in addition to the special drops, contrary to what some people believe, I get enough lootscaling-affected drops to pay for ID and salvage kits. Imagine that!

Fril Estelin · Mar 24, 2008, 06:43 PM // 18:43

I'm amazed by the number of nostalgic replies which basically say "remove LS to bring back the old economy". There's NO WAY the former is going to bring back the latter. Given the years, the three campaigns, numerous special events/weapons/minis/etc. etc. etc. since these "good old days", it's absolutely impossible that removing LS (even if gold-sellers/RMT are out of the game) will "fix the economy" or bring GW veterans to what they were doing before. They'll farm the same way, get the same output, but the market will be so different that very soon they'll find themselves unable to sell/buy what they want.

There's an overwhelming support for removing LS, yet I'm convinced that very few people see the consequences of this decision. This is whishful thinking and the desire to go back to a certain version of the game, which is lost forever.

Removing LS may have a positive impact, but it's not clear at all. Stop the simplistic comparisons on this or that particular point, it's about an economy with thousands of players and hundreds of different things to sell and buy.

Shuuda · Mar 24, 2008, 06:49 PM // 18:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

There's an overwhelming support for removing LS, yet I'm convinced that very few people see the consequences of this decision.

The Masses never do, that's why they are not incharge. (thank god)

Stolen Souls · Mar 24, 2008, 07:04 PM // 19:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fay Vert

GW has never had inflation.

So where did you get the idea of this mythical inflation? GW maybe a fantasy game, but inflation certainly did not exist.

You must be newer to the game. Otherwise you wouldn't have said something so wrong, lol.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anet

This huge influx of new gold caused inflation and made it harder for casual players to afford the items they wanted.

Quote:

There's an overwhelming support for removing LS, yet I'm convinced that very few people see the consequences of this decision.

They don't. All they see is that for a while, it would get HIM more gold per run (aka...greed). They don't understand the effects it would have AS A WHOLE. That the hardcore farmers would be right back at it, exploiting their trolls and vermin, flooding the economy with new gold all over again. In fact, it's making me begin to wonder, how many of these anti-loot scaling people, are actually ex-hardcore vermin/troll farmers that just want their old source of income back, and are using the "I'm casual blah blah" stuff as a means to try to get what they want.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gaile...Feb-April_2007 ....many people it seems, still need to read the loot scaling article

As unlikely as them removing loot scaling is. If they DO decide to...we can only hope they re-impliment the scattering, kiting, anti-farm AI, to prevent the exploitable mobs from being overly exploited. Of course, then we'll surely see a QQ thread just like this one pop up..."plz plz plz remove the anti-farm ai i need to kill the mobs faster cuz i am casual i only play 15 mins a week but need FoW armorz PLZZ"

IlikeGW · Mar 24, 2008, 07:12 PM // 19:12

LoL... all this thread needs is Gaile to start breaking out Nixon quotes again and saying there's a "silent majority" that loves lootscaling...

DivineEnvoy · Mar 24, 2008, 07:13 PM // 19:13

"They need to remove loot-scaling, because I want "insert item name"."
"They need to remove loot-scaling, because I want to see many items dropping at the same time during "insert farm name", which is no longer profitable after loot-scaling."

Alright, I can see that no one on the anti-loot scaling side has an argument that isn't based on greed, so I'll lower my standards. Does anyone on the anti-loot scaling side has an argument that's a lot more logical that the two examples I showed above?

Savio · Mar 24, 2008, 07:16 PM // 19:16

They have the "many people are posting in this thread supporting me, so the people have spoken!" argument too. Don't know if that meets your logic requirements though.

Fril Estelin · Mar 24, 2008, 07:28 PM // 19:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stolen Souls

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gaile...Feb-April_2007 ....many people it seems, still need to read the loot scaling article

It's so good, I thought people might want to read it inline with the thread:

Quote:

[Dev Update] Farming and Loot Scaling -- 20 April 2007

Some players have been concerned about the loot scaling aspect of this week's update. They wonder whether the fact that drops are scaled according to party size will substantially affect their gameplay experience and whether it will impact upon their ability to acquire wealth in the game. We asked the design team for some insight into the design of and the intent behind loot scaling, and found out a lot of interesting reasons for its implementation, including how the changes that have been a point of concern are readily addressed within the very system itself.

The bottom line is that ArenaNet's goal is to make it easier for normal players to make money while redirecting the efforts of the expert farmers to a way to continue to reap rich rewards without having a harmful effect on the overall game economy. The loot has not been scaled across the board. Instead, the loot scaling is selective, and it preserves a means for the high-end farmer to make money.

But let's hear it from the design team itself, with this latest Dev Update:

Why would ArenaNet make changes that impact solo farming?

ArenaNet understands that people enjoy playing Guild Wars in many different ways, and our goal is to make each of those ways fun and rewarding. Solo farming sometimes becomes a controversial issue because it can damage the game for other people. In those cases, ArenaNet tries to keep the game fun for everyone while still providing fun and rewarding play for solo farmers.

A major theme of our most recent update is that the game should be friendlier and more rewarding for casual players, including casual solo farmers, and that the most advanced farmers should differentiate themselves from the crowd not through the amount of gold and common loot that they farm directly from monsters, but instead through the amount of gold that they can get from selling rare items to other players (directly or through traders).

That's a very important distinction. Advanced farmers are always going to earn more money than their more casual counterparts. There's nothing wrong with that. When farmers earn their money by finding valuable items and selling them to other players, they're making the game more enjoyable for everyone. They're facilitating trade, and the gold they acquire from doing so is gold that was already in the game. It's only when solo farming introduces a huge influx of new gold into the economy that it becomes a problem.

Because of the way that Guild Wars loot system worked, solo farming traditionally generated at least eight times as much new gold per participant as playing in a party did. And because solo farmers were motivated to farm only certain specific groups of easily exploitable monsters, they could often generate not just eight times as much, but 10, 20, or 30 times as much loot per hour as everyone else. Even more problematic was that the activity that they were performing was easy for professional gold farmers to automate, so if a single solo farmer could generate 20 times as much loot as the average player, then a network of ten computers running bots could generate 200 times as much loot. This huge influx of new gold caused inflation and made it harder for casual players to afford the items they wanted. In order to contain this problem, ArenaNet periodically added code to prevent monsters from being exploited, for example by adding complexity to the monster AI. But these types of changes made the game less fun for other players.

With the introduction of Hard Mode, we took a look a fresh look at normal mode to see how we could make the game friendlier for normal players. One thing we really wanted to do was to remove some of the advanced AI from normal mode -- things like monsters scattering from AoE, refusing to gather around individual characters, and fleeing or kiting players -- that we had originally introduced to contain botting. But in removing them, we needed to be sure that we weren't reintroducing exploits that would allow professional farmers to destroy the game's economy.

The answer to these problems was to somewhat scale loot according to party size, to bring the direct gold rewards from solo farming more into line with the rewards from other ways of playing the game. But we still wanted solo farmers to have an edge, since solo farming can be a fun way to play and a major reason why people engage in solo farming is to make more money. So we kept the direct gold rewards somewhat better for solo farmer than for people in parties, and then we added new loot which is very valuable to other players and which is exempt from loot scaling, so that solo farmers can farm this loot more effectively than other players and earn money by selling or trading it. Thus, our goal is that solo farmers can still earn as much money as they did before, but they'll have to earn it in different ways. Instead of looking for things to sell to merchants, solo farmers should now be looking for things to sell to traders or other players.

How does loot scaling work?

Without loot scaling, solo farmers received every loot drop, whereas people who played in a party received only a fraction of loot drops. Thus, solo farmers received up to eight times as much loot for killing the same group of monsters. With loot scaling in place, solo farmers still get more loot than people who play in parties, but the gap is less severe than it was before. It is impossible to quantify precisely how much less because it depends on the type of loot farmed and involves some randomness, but here are some rough guidelines:

People who play in normal size parties, including parties of heroes and henchman, will see no difference at all from loot scaling. At the same time, they will notice that normal mode is now much easier to farm, and that the introduction of Hard Mode provides a place they can play where the loot is better than ever before. Thus, people who play the game primarily in parties will simply make more money than they previously did.
People who periodically enjoy farming solo (with no heroes or henchmen) but are casual about it are also likely to see an improvement. They'll find that solo farming is much easier than it was before, because monsters don't have the anti-farming AI that they used to have, and because the game no longer prevents players from repeatedly farming the same monsters over and over. Many types of builds that didn't work in the past, or that haven't been effective since the earliest days of Guild Wars, can now be used for solo farming. Thus, casual farmers will find the game much easier to farm than it was before, and that they can earn more money than before even with loot scaling in place.
People who were advanced solo farmers and who were earning vastly more money through solo farming than through playing the game normally will see the full effect of loot scaling. They will earn less gold and common loot from solo farming than they did in the past. The loot scaling for gold and common loot is not linear with the number of players in the party, and it includes an element of randomness, so while the difference is not easy to quantify, it is by no means a factor of eight. Advanced solo farmers may now earn about twice as much gold and common loot from farming solo as they would if they farmed in a party. While gold and common loot are thus reduced for these players by loot scaling, certain other types of loot are completely unaffected. For example, Skill Tomes are completely unaffected by loot scaling, so they still drop eight times as frequently for solo farmers than they do for people who play in parties. Thus, advanced solo farmers will find that certain types of farming are still extremely productive for them, but they may have to change what and where they farm if they want to earn as much money as they did before.

If ArenaNet makes it harder for players to farm, doesn't that drive players to purchase gold for cash from the professional farmers?

ArenaNet's goal is to make it easier for normal players to make money, so that they can buy the things they need without having to purchase gold for cash, and then to redirect the farming activities of the most advanced players so that the way they make money is by selling things to other players rather than by introducing a flood of new gold into the economy.

Here's how we've made it easier for normal players to make money: we removed the advanced AI behaviors from normal mode that slowed down the rate at which people could kill monsters there, we removed artificial barriers to casual farming such as certain farming builds not working or the game penalizing repeated farming of the same groups, we provided somewhat more gold and triple the number of uncommons and rares in Hard Mode, and we introduced entirely new types of loot.

Here's how we've protected the economy from a flood of new gold: advanced farmers and professionals who choose to farm for new gold (as opposed to things they can sell to other players) will only make perhaps two or three times as much gold per hour as normal players, whereas in the past they made at least eight times as much, and by finding specific exploits they sometimes made 10, 20, or 30 times as much gold per hour as normal players.

Here's how we've provided a new way for advanced players to make as much money as they did before: by introducing new items which will have a high demand from other players and thus high trade value, and then by making those items completely unaffected by loot scaling, so that solo farmers still have very effective ways to make a lot of money, but so that they make their money without hurting the game's economy.

Will ArenaNet make additional changes to the loot scaling system?

We constantly monitor the game to ensure that people are able to make good rewards for playing. Originally the list of items that were exempt from loot scaling was limited to newly introduced Hard Mode items. However, after reviewing player feedback and analyzing play logs from the past 12 hours, we've decided to make a broader range of items exempt. We want players who enjoy solo farming to have a wide variety of things that they can enjoy farming. Thus, with today's build, all of the following types of items will now be exempt from loot scaling:

Skill Tomes
Scrolls
Dye
Rare materials
All rare (gold colored) items
All unique (green) items
Special event items

Lest121 · Mar 24, 2008, 07:33 PM // 19:33

IMHO LS was balanced with HM............if all you people want LS removed, then all the Gold that drops in HM should be removed and returned to being truly rare, and Superior Vigors and all the other runes should go back up in Price, you want LS removed then game should go back to the way it was.....IMO LS balanced the Economy, there are items out there that cost a lot but those are vanity items, if you can't do with out a vanity item then oh well, I like the game the way it is, It's a fare trade Anet removes Loot scaling and all the Drops in HM disappear and it drops like Normal mode.

Yawgmoth · Mar 24, 2008, 07:36 PM // 19:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Witchblade

I wish those whiners had the idea of how it was before Factions^^

No rune/material traders
No Insignas
Sup Vigor/Sup Abs/30HP Pommels were at 100K
Any nice 15^50 decent weapon such as Long Sword were 80-90K+ each
Weird, though, people were farming and there were no QQ threads, even when AF Code was implemented.

Exactly!!
100% true!
Prices were high but nobody complained!
Good old 2005.
People who couldn't afford were simply using imperfect weapons, like +14% instead of +15%, +28 instead of +30 (which makes completely no difference in PvE anyway) and were just having fun!
No QQ until when the AoE scatter update was done - that was first big whine outrage.
It's all the further updates that brought the QQ, masses of people started to be jealous or greedy, they started to demand more and more, easier and easier. And Anet served that...

GW will never be the same, good old times won't return, removing LS completely isn't the solution. It won't bring back high prices, as everything is very easy to come by anyway. Except for the very limited or truly rare goods (for example some minis, req7-8s, things that don't drop anymore, event items) which would obviously skyrocket.

Gun Pierson · Mar 24, 2008, 08:40 PM // 20:40

Tx 'Fril' for the quote, I think I understand LS better now.

So if I understand it correct, a good way to get the most loot would be duo playing with a friend (+ 1 hero max) and steamroll through complete chunks of unrepeating areas in nm instead of for example solo farming raptor cave (except for event items)?

Loviatar · Mar 24, 2008, 08:52 PM // 20:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yawgmoth

Exactly!!
100% true!
Prices were high but nobody complained!
Good old 2005.
People who couldn't afford were simply using imperfect weapons, like +14% instead of +15%, +28 instead of +30 (which makes completely no difference in PvE anyway) and were just having fun!
No QQ until when the AoE scatter update was done - that was first big whine outrage.
It's all the further updates that brought the QQ, masses of people started to be jealous or greedy, they started to demand more and more, easier and easier. And Anet served that...

GW will never be the same, good old times won't return, removing LS completely isn't the solution. It won't bring back high prices, as everything is very easy to come by anyway. Except for the very limited or truly rare goods (for example some minis, req7-8s, things that don't drop anymore, event items) which would obviously skyrocket.

the only peoply screaming bloody murder here were greedy epeen (most not all) farmers bitching every time Anet cut their farm subsity.

best examples were (which you did not mention) the outrage at guaranteed salvage which gutted rune prices and the rune trader which made it easy to buy/sell those now abundent runes.

second was the 3X drop rate update to crash the hoarders who kept superior absorb/vigor at 100k/75k.

soon as that was announced right here on guru hoarders were offering them in lots of 30 at a time.

keep LS

Hiero · Mar 24, 2008, 08:56 PM // 20:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stolen Souls

You must be newer to the game. Otherwise you wouldn't have said something so wrong, lol.

You do realize that quoting the statement made by Anet doesn't prove anything when it is the validity of that statement that is being questioned?

At the moment LS was introduced prices had been dropping steadily for months... most items cost less than half of what they once did. What is that term for a decrease in the level of prices again? A hint... it is the opposite of inflation.