Curse

sindex · Apr 21, 2007, 06:02 AM // 06:02

I’ve got it; this is it in a nutshell:

A-net: We killed the gold drops, but we made sure that the rare-items were not affected according to scale; thus fixes boting, gold to money sales, and broadens the GW economy better.

Unfortunately the problem now lies with the double edge sword. I really can’t tell you how this might effect the GW economy, since it’s pretty much a wait and see. I agree with you A-net there was a need in getting rid of all those bots and Gold-Farmers. Also true is that something’s were way overpriced in GW, like a 1,000,000 gold price tag; come on.

Edit: I will also like to add that A-net was right about something else; there were portions of the game where loot dropped gold about tripled times it worth. I would see gold drops like 556g per kill, and no these were not verily hard places to find.

shada817 · Apr 21, 2007, 06:10 AM // 06:10

Guys , i am confused
if it say ecto is exempted from loot scaling is this apply in HM only?
so can i still solo in uw in normal with my w/rt and get ecto or i need to get HM to get? cos w/rt in HM cant solo anymore. thanks guys and nice update
cheers

The Great Al · Apr 21, 2007, 06:17 AM // 06:17

First of all, I am a CS Major, and this isn't a flame or anything, but most of you could not possibly begin to understand how hard it would be to just implement an auction house, at your whim. Yes, after two years it should have been done, considering it's basically been asked for for two years, but it's certainly not something that would be easy, and maybe for whatever reason, they can't do it.

Also, parts of the dev's response really is worthy of being laughed at. They basically danced around the main issue here. The loot scaling more or less was either temporary insanity, or a way to discourage farming. How Anet could scale drops to (more or less) 1/8th of what they were before for soloers, and STILL claim to not be discouraging farming, is something that I don't understand.

Also, it's not fair that because of inscriptions, and lack of rare skins in the first two chapters, that farming now is basically pointless in Tyria or Cantha. I can't remember the last time I farmed (or got as a drop in a group) something worth selling from Tyria. Anet needs to realize that for most of us, chapters 2 and 3 were expansions - meaning that if inscriptions drop for people in NF, there's no reason that they shouldn't drop in Tyria or Cantha (a similar situation is with henchmen - we have all 3 chapters, give us access to sins, rits, dervs, and paragons in ch1!)

ValaOfTheFens · Apr 21, 2007, 06:25 AM // 06:25

An ok compromise. Though I've seen that even in full parties you still get less gold than before, though in slightly bigger piles than before. *sigh* I just want enough gold to guy skills and armor when I need to. Early on in a campaign I usually go out alone to generate some gold, crafting materials, and maybe a weapon or two. Now that option is gone. The gold rewards from quests in GW aren't very big. Why do I need 3,000 exp when I'm already at 20 with more than 60 unspent skill points? I'd rather get 3k. *lol* I suggest that gold rewards earlier on in the game be a bit bigger.

How much will collector items be affected? I love getting collector weapons whenever I can for myself and guildies and getting the items is already hard enough. I spent 2 1/2 hours farming Bleached Carapaces! And this was before the update. I'm not really that rich in-game(I'm comfortable right now but I need to do Tomb a few times to get back above 10k in storage) and stuff thats supposed to be cheap becomes expensive. I got Scar Pattern Armor for my Necro from Droks, which is 800g a piece, and ended up spending 10k(excluding Sup Runes of Curses and Soul Reaping and Rune of Major Vigor) and I still need a decent Curses staff. But I'm getting off topic(we can discuss the overwhelming void between the rich and the poor in another topic), today I did a sweep of Arjok Ward to see if my treasure had been reset(it wasn't

) and only got 2 collector items out of all the monsters I killed. 2 out of like 15 drops(excluding gold)!!

gaiaplay · Apr 21, 2007, 06:26 AM // 06:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by lunksunkunk

LMAO. I love it, "We constantly monitor the game to ensure that people are able to make good rewards for playing".

Lol. THis is BS as we all know. Those bots in Granite Citadel are running for months without stopping. They might be ANET bots since they dont get banned.

Smoke Nightvogue · Apr 21, 2007, 06:29 AM // 06:29

Oh yes, the gold rewards in the quests, those should be definitely increased. Who wants to receive 500-1000 gold anyway? I'd say that all of the bonuses in the missions should have 2000 gold rewards.

lyra_song · Apr 21, 2007, 06:35 AM // 06:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Great Al

Also, parts of the dev's response really is worthy of being laughed at. They basically danced around the main issue here. The loot scaling more or less was either temporary insanity, or a way to discourage farming. How Anet could scale drops to (more or less) 1/8th of what they were before for soloers, and STILL claim to not be discouraging farming, is something that I don't understand.

I dont know how much clearer their stance can be than that.

Theyve made it clear what type of farming is ok and acceptable to them.

And what is not.

Anet never was against farming to begin with...watch Loviatar will bring up the quote.

Things are acceptable when they are not in extremes. I think this is what Anet's stance is.

There was this time i said to my guildmates: "I'm making so much money, this is gonna get nerfed very soon, you better hurry up and get in on this." The farming build was incredibly effective and downright ridiculous. The problem with some players is that they feel that such things are ok for the game.

When the scales keeps tipping to the extreme, its not ok. Anet will continue to keep trying to level the playing field.

-----------
On a side note: Anet needs to implement easier way to get collector drops now that party scaling affects it. Maybe non-merchant-able collector drops with a high drop rate? Easy armor + weapons, ne?

Smoke Nightvogue · Apr 21, 2007, 06:36 AM // 06:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by gaiaplay

Lol. THis is BS as we all know. Those bots in Granite Citadel are running for months without stopping. They might be ANET bots since they dont get banned.

What you are saying is not true. The problem is that the Support needs to have a 100% evidence the player is a bot in the first place, otherwise they'll just get flamed by the customers saying they've been banned erroneously. And the second fact is that for every suspended bot, there's another one that takes its place. You can't stop the farming bots from abusing the drops system, but instead you can eliminate the source of the issue, and this is what's been done in the last update.

lyra_song · Apr 21, 2007, 06:40 AM // 06:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyber Smoke

You can't stop the farming bots from abusing the drops system, but instead you can eliminate the source of the issue, and this is what's been done in the last update.

Gotta disagree with you there. Theres one source for bots.

Human. Players.

who lack:
imagination
patience
time

but have:
desires
wants
greed

you cant take the human factor out without severely crippling the game, since its what fuels gold-selling to begin with.

Darksun · Apr 21, 2007, 06:42 AM // 06:42

I can't belive how much of this is going over people's heads... STILL moaning.. wow.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song

I dont know how much clearer their stance can be than that.

Theyve made it clear what type of farming is ok and acceptable to them.

And what is not.

Anet never was against farming to begin with...watch Loviatar will bring up the quote.

Things are acceptable when they are not in extremes. I think this is what Anet's stance is.

There was this time i said to my guildmates: "I'm making so much money, this is gonna get nerfed very soon, you better hurry up and get in on this." The farming build was incredibly effective and downright ridiculous. The problem with some players is that they feel that such things are ok for the game.

When the scales keeps tipping to the extreme, its not ok. Anet will continue to keep trying to level the playing field.

-----------
On a side note: Anet needs to implement easier way to get collector drops now that party scaling affects it. Maybe non-merchant-able collector drops with a high drop rate? Easy armor + weapons, ne?

QFT, lost of good stuff in this post.

dead man ivan · Apr 21, 2007, 06:44 AM // 06:44

For people who are asking what exactly is scaled, its obvious, the actual gold dropped from monsters.
Take Vermin Farming for instance, I used to get about 1.5k - 800 g a run,I have done 8 runs as of now and max i have go is 400g. The drops which are worthless and will be sold to merchant are also very less in numbers, so the bot farmers are ver nicely controlled and being a causal gold farmer I seriously dont see that much of a problem. IMO, I am f*#$ cause I used to farm the crap out of those poor vermin but now I don't.
However, all said and done I understand Anets problems with bots and am with them on this change.

lyra_song · Apr 21, 2007, 06:52 AM // 06:52

Heres something id like to share from the farming forum:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Witte Was

"Loot now scales according to party size"

-GuildWars.com

Farming will never be dead. We get less loot? We have to farm more efficient finding faster and better ways to make money. I take the challenge.

Now.....if you consider yourself a farmer. You probably ARE/HAVE/WILL BE using one of Witte's many solo builds, or variations based on his original ideas.

Listen to those words from a domination player archetype.

Smoke Nightvogue · Apr 21, 2007, 06:53 AM // 06:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song

Gotta disagree with you there. Theres one source for bots: human players, who lack imagination, patience, time. But have: desires, wants and greed. You cant take the human factor out without severely crippling the game, since its what fuels gold-selling to begin with.

It's easily addressed by slightly adjusting the prices of high-end items such as FoW armor. I've been playing this game for about three and a half years, with a total amount of hours going past 15,000 and still, I didn't get myself a single set of FoW armor. Could it be that I'm simply unskilled and silly at the game, or it might be a personal stance that I will not grind anything which goes beyond a price of 1 million?

ArenaNet isn't that crazy to simply ruin the game with one update, it's only that the things need to be tested out in a live environment in order to understand what to fix.

TideSwayer · Apr 21, 2007, 07:00 AM // 07:00

Thank you ANet. The compromise of having loot scaling in general but not allowing certain rare items to not be affected by loot scaling is perfectly fine with me, if that's what it takes to once again allow AoE spells in all their glory and keep farm code out of the game code. Keep in mind I'm someone who liked to 'garbage sell' farm in the past, and I'm loving these batches of updates.

I'm happy as hell that the AoE scatter in normal mode is all but gone at this point. I can rain firestorm down like I mean it. I can use the ol' Wammo Cyclone Axe-Glad's Defense vermin farming build once again! Yeah, I'm not going to get a bunch of white drops to make money from the vermin anymore, but I just like to kill them anyways. II can now use those builds to farm XP again, which was a big draw for me in the past (in addition to the 'garbage drops').

I'm happy that the 'farm code' is no longer in place. Now there should be a better chance of getting good drops overall. BTW, hard mode is fun as hell, and oh my god do the purples and golds rain down like they're whites there.

In conclusion: love the way things currently are. Don't change a thing.

unmatchedfury · Apr 21, 2007, 07:15 AM // 07:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by //RogueNine

haha now that they EXPLAINED it its actually clever (with what they are changing today) gold farm bots are gonna merch everything including rares and stuff, where as real people will hold onto them.

Still, if this had of been explained before the update, or in the update I think we could have been spared a 50+ page thread.

Diablo 2 bots had a solution to this. certian crafting items and item colors c an easily be taught to a bot. so that bots will deposit all golds in a buffed inventory and the players can log on and sell those items cheaply enough now that the average player has more money. STill i really couldn't care less. COnsidering PvE in GW is always held back by PvP i can say i play it much.

GodofAcid · Apr 21, 2007, 07:34 AM // 07:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song

On a side note: Anet needs to implement easier way to get collector drops now that party scaling affects it. Maybe non-merchant-able collector drops with a high drop rate? Easy armor + weapons, ne?

Wow, I love this idea. I hadn't thought of that nor had I heard it suggested. The only thing I don't agree on is the high drop rate, but this would be a great solution for the people who say "I can't afford max armor, I can't afford a good max weapon". Having monsters drop, on rare occasions, armor pieces that are customized and suitable for the area that they were dropped in is a good idea. I was just thinking if they made FoW armor drops deep within UW/FoW and made the drop rate extremely rare, it would still draw people to do the quests they don't bother with now. That's an incentive that doesn't exist right now. Maybe that's a bit extreme, but I certainly like the idea of customized, nicer than normal drops.

Amy Awien · Apr 21, 2007, 07:34 AM // 07:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chop it Off

maybe if you introduced easier means of getting gold

Which is exactly what the scaling-loot system does, players receive more gold (4x) while just playing the game then they did before.

It could also mean that with more gold in the economy, people are more willing (and capable) to buy green and gold items.

While solo-farming you get exactly the same drops as before (but AI is easier). But the 'game economy' sees more money agaisnt the same amount of rare items. That would mean those rare items will become more expensive.

reetkever · Apr 21, 2007, 07:36 AM // 07:36

Thanks Gaile for giving the info and the improvement... at least you tried.

I myself still can't see a difference though.

Went to the troll cave a few times to kill the trolls with my 55 SoJ monk (and god, I missed that).

What I got was 5 white items and that's it.

The problem is, the drop rate for rare (gold) items wasn't that spectacular to begin with. I only got about 1 gold per 5 runs (if I remember correctly), and most of the time, this gold was an often not-max damage Raven Staff that boosted the stats for 5 different professions.

As of today, I don't know a good PvE or PvP build that requires the skills of 5 professions, and I don't think it's possible either.

Greens...Well I never really farmed them. In fact, they were in the way when farming spiders, so I just gave the green longbows away. Oh well, more happy rangers now ^^
Dyes were never a part of my loot, since I bunched them up, so I can't really see improvement in gold per run here.
Hard mode items... Well I guess it can be good, but I don't farm Hard Mode atm, so...
Event items. Other than me collecting, enjoying them and giving them away, there's no making gold from this. (And no, I'm not going to sell these items for gold, as they are event items that anyone should enjoy without paying for it)

Then there is the inscription-problem. With the release of Nightfall, less people actually buy perfect gold weapons. Now, they can just get a weak version of it and upgrade it themselves. This excludes the VERY hard to get skins like Elemental Swords, Colossal Scimitars, etc. But these hard to get weapons were never the target of farmers anyway.

As of the materials... Well America holds favor atm, so can't go there :P If, however ecto's drop like before, then Underworld has just become more pleasant for me, and for alot of others I know.

It seems that me and my guildies can have fun 5-manning FoW again, too, so good job for these

GodofAcid · Apr 21, 2007, 08:21 AM // 08:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by unmatchedfury

Diablo 2 bots had a solution to this. certian crafting items and item colors c an easily be taught to a bot. so that bots will deposit all golds in a buffed inventory and the players can log on and sell those items cheaply enough now that the average player has more money. STill i really couldn't care less. COnsidering PvE in GW is always held back by PvP i can say i play it much.

Granted this is a concern, but how many of these bot users are really going to want to sit around and try to sell items like a normal person, especially with what they were used to before? They'll probably ID and sell any golds, but I'm not sure there's a perfect solution to the problem of botting. The change to the gold drop rate most certainly impedes their efforts. It makes me smile thinking of a lazy cheater having to sit in town peddling their items like the rest of us have to.

Redvex · Apr 21, 2007, 08:40 AM // 08:40

This is good, but there's always the problem for how purchase 15k armor, obsidan ect ect even the ecto are now dropped normally.
My idea is another: leave the update for hard mode normally. In normal mode drop back normally but instead merchant bought items for example 50g him purchase for 25g. In this way the player see the drop are same as before but it earns half of before. What do you think? Excuse for my poor english