Curse

ducktape · Apr 24, 2007, 10:16 PM // 22:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by reetkeever

How would casual gamers be able to afford the 'coolest stuff', when they can't even afford to buy skills and basic armor/weapons? (unless collectors, but farming for certain collectibles isn't exactly easy anymore either. Especially if you need monsters that only excist in 1 part of the game, or in very small numbers.)

Most Casual Players only had Troll Farming/Vermin Farming if they wanted to buy skills/armor, and they only farmed for the whites/blues/pure cash drops.

Now that has been taken away. What's left is the tradeable stuff. I don't know any casual gamer that wants to spend his 2 hours gaming on trying to sell 1 item. That is, if he even obtains that 1 item.

QFTx10

Although I may not have done the Troll/Vermin farming, since I liked to figure out what I could farm on my own and maybe do that for an hour a week to get maybe 5k, (farming it more if holiday items were dropping) it really pisses me off that my farming income just got axed by 80% per trip when I need cash. I have no 15k armors, I have not burned money on lucky or sugar or liquor, I use money to buy skills and weapons and runes and a few keys here and there. I'll have to farm in hard mode in a party since I might get more gold drops there (screw keys/lockpicks) and hopefully those gold drops being like $300 each will make up for having much less money from regular farming. I didn't care that I couldn't buy any 100k+100ecto item, I didn't really want them and if I did want them I knew all I would have to do is play more often and farm more often. BIG DEAL, it's not unfair that people who play more often and farm more often had more money and cooler items than I did, and it's not like I couldn't afford to buy a nicer-looking item for like 10-15k if I wanted to.

While nerfing the drop rate to be at most double what you would get for being in a normal party might be effective in reducing income, it's more harmful to players than it is to bots, bots being where the problems really come from. The problem with this change is that by making it take 4x longer to farm the same amount of money, bots won't care but players will get fed up by how long it takes to accumulate the money they need. A better idea would have been to give better rewards (money, runes, dyes, materials, etc) for playing the game normally, or find ways that enable people to play and get stuff without having to farm, if farming invites botting so badly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

First off there's this misunderstanding of what 'high price' means...it really has little to do with raw gold or ecto numbers, and everything to do with price in comparison to individual income. Personally I find that prices are rather *low* for many of the most desirable items, considering just how much time has to be put into acquiring them and/or just how scarce those items really are. To a player with virtually no income, however, those prices seem ridiculous, and they are - given their income.

If you want a rare, desired weapon type, you basically have two choices. One, you can run chests. Those kick out a wide variety of weapons and something rare and desired will pop out sooner rather than later. Second, you can massacre a phenomenal number of enemies and hope that the item you want drops. The rarest drops are really bloody rare though, and that's only made up for by really strong drop scaling by both removing loot distribution and speeding up kills immensely.

Now, if you don't understand why all of the trade in extremely rare items is between people who are going out of their way to produce extremely rare items, through chests and farming, go take a basic economics course now.

Playing through the game normally leaves one unable to trade for desirable items. One notices that in playing through the game normally, one does not acquire desirable items in any quantity. Players with valuable items want to trade them for other valuable items. Hence it's obvious why playing through the game leaves one unable to buy anything valuable - because you don't have anything to trade!

One would (quite rightly) conclude that if you wanted players to have economic power through normal gameplay, you would reward players with desirable items and other economic tools for completing normal gameplay objectives.

.....ALL WORSHIP ENSIGN.....

Seriously though, he's so right. The problem is from the GW drop system itself, and giving people less drops when they solo isn't going to help anything, golds and greens and popular mods are still going to cost a lot because they still won't grow on trees, and casual players will still be poor because it will still be only hardcore players and farmers that stand a good chance at getting these items that do not drop frequently.

Dear ANet:
Please hire Ensign or clone Ensign and hire his clone. If you had him to help with developing skill balances and gameplay changes and helping you guys figure out what the players feel about certain aspects of using your products, GW would be even better than it already is.

Goast · Apr 24, 2007, 11:27 PM // 23:27

I went and farmed trolls just a few min ago.I got a one troll tusk and one raven staff,out of 20 trolls.Then I went and did the same thing in HM and got about the same,Both tries I killed all the gaints and birds.In regular mode I made a whooping 659g with the drops and everythin including useing two 750g keys.I did it in HM and got about the same,just testing what they did becuase I was in torment all weekend.

I have to say they really messed up things with this update.

PS... I didn't use any picks in HM at 1500g each who can buy em to just get a weapon thats worth 200-400g,thats a loss of 1,100-1,300 gold.... doesn't compute

Pro-Monk · Apr 25, 2007, 12:38 AM // 00:38

It is amazing that a large part of the reason behind loot scaling was based on bots, yet Anet has been unable (or unwilling) to deal with the plainly obvious bot activity occuring in Granite Citadel. While I'm not happy with the losing the basic functionality of my 55 Monk throughtout the life of this game, I'm wondering why Anet isn't dealing with this bot issue. In addition, this isn't new, it's been going on for MONTHS.

Given past history, seems like Anet is capable of nerfing such activities with the addition of enchantment stripping monsters, so why has this bot farming ground been allowed to continue unabated? It's also pretty apparent that the loot scaling, though admittedly new, isn't causing these gold farmers to cease.

Guess this post is just another rant among many that will be ignored, but at least I've said my piece.

Ensign · Apr 25, 2007, 12:47 AM // 00:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

I'm not entirely certain that non-farmers as as much of deadweight as they were. Keyless chests, and monetary quest/mission rewards actually give Casual Gamer Joe a reasonable amount of money.

The keyless chests were a good idea, too bad they're bugged to hell and aren't actually reopenable for a lot of people (wish I could give real percentages on that). As for monetary quest/mission rewards, I don't really care. They could give out 0 gold, or a million gold, it's largely irrelevant because the high end market doesn't really care about gold. It's dictated entirely by the rates of the really desirable items, the gold prices just adjust to match.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

Secondly, the inscription system has made the vendor trash a lot less likely.

As long as golds are dropping at all, yeah. The percentage of 'keeper' golds is way up. Of course the market adjusted and random gold weapons aren't worth much anymore, but they do have some value. That's just for Nightfall though, outside of a couple rare skins, all of the really valuable items are pre-Nightfall weapons.

The inscription system is a great example of an economic equalizing model that actually worked, creating more valuable drops on average and making the good stuff more accessable.

Quote:

4) ANet kicks farmer income in the balls, bringing them down a *little* closer to everyone else.

Really low end farming, vermin or whatever, sure. That's been kicked in the balls. The really profitable farming that drove prices up (ecto, greens, dead swords) hasn't been touched. You lose out on operating costs from vendor trash, but the real value is still coming in. Less vendor trash is going to up the value of gold slightly, to be sure, but it's not going to make the prices of the really valuable stuff plunge. I wouldn't be surprised if prices creeped up slightly, in fact, since the goods aren't being subsidized by vendor trash anymore.

You can't brute force the system on weak farming, but since that was really the only mechanism available for casual players to accumulate any amount of wealth in a reasonable timeframe, is that really a good thing?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Draikin

Why don't you have as many rares entering the economy now?

There are fewer rares entering from brute force farming, because, well, brute force farming got hammered. There are more entering from hard mode. I have no idea how those relative rates line up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Draikin

Just by playing the HM missions in Tyria with a full team I've been getting more rares in a few days than I've seen in months

Lots of desirable rare drops in hard mode will give some economic power to hard mode players. That will make the rarest items accessable, not the nerf to solo farm vendor trash rates.

Quote:

Originally Posted by blackbird71

The one thing that I would like to point out is that the quote you referenced from Burma_GW at the start of your post, while used in his post, are not his words.

I'm well aware, that was clear when I replied in the original thread but that implication was lost in the merge. I've since fixed the quote attribution.

Peace,
-cxE

blackbird71 · Apr 25, 2007, 01:32 AM // 01:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I'm well aware, that was clear when I replied in the original thread but that implication was lost in the merge. I've since fixed the quote attribution.

Peace,
-cxE

Cool, I figured you probably knew, I just wanted to make sure that any newcomers who didn't bother reading much of the thread didn't get lost.

Albert Algorn · Apr 25, 2007, 01:59 AM // 01:59

Well I am new to the forum but have been playing GW for about 9 months. The last big update really has made the game less interesting and a bit boring for me personally. I don't "solo farm" or hard core group farm but could alway just play and make enough gold to buy some of those things. Now the drops are almost nonexistent. Just seems like a waste to kill 2-3 groups of enemies and get one lousy white sword worth 50g? There's no way I could ever put in enough game time to buy 15k armor at that rate. So is ArenaNet going to sell game gold?

Dr Strangelove · Apr 25, 2007, 02:59 AM // 02:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

They could give out 0 gold, or a million gold, it's largely irrelevant because the high end market doesn't really care about gold. It's dictated entirely by the rates of the really desirable items, the gold prices just adjust to match.-cxE

You're working under the assumption that the only purpose of gold is to give to other players, with its value changing in accordance with the rarity of items. That's just not true in this game, at least not for the majority of players. Armor crafters, weapon crafters, skill trainers, merchants, and all that mojo requires significant amounts of cash. To that end, most casual players *do* spend a lot of time trying to acquire gold, and don't give a crap about rare items - they can barely afford to buy skills. The high end market is flashy, but it's not particulary the important part.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Really low end farming, vermin or whatever, sure. That's been kicked in the balls. The really profitable farming that drove prices up (ecto, greens, dead swords) hasn't been touched.

I strongly disagree with you here. High end farming of greens, ectos and golds doesn NOT drive prices up. Rather, it increases the supply and causes prices to go down. Low end brute force farming, such as minotaurs and vermin, dramatically decreases the value of gold in exactly the same way - as supply increases prices fall. As the value of gold falls, more gold is required to exchange for items with other players. Hence, inflation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ducktape

I didn't care that I couldn't buy any 100k+100ecto item, I didn't really want them and if I did want them I knew all I would have to do is play more often and farm more often. BIG DEAL, it's not unfair that people who play more often and farm more often had more money and cooler items than I did

I think that pretty much sums up the casual player point of view. It has nothing to do with exchanging super rares and everything to do with having enough to get by.

Gaile has a quote somewhere that I can't be arsed to find that says something about this update making the coolest items available to everyone.

That's totally retarded.

The goal should be to make baseline items available to Poorhouse Joe who never farms. No matter what you change, there's always going to be rarer items that some people will be better at obtaining than others. That's ok, it helps to add a draw to endgame PvE. I think this update, combined with all the other little things added in over the last few months, actually do a decent job of this. There's still rare stuff out there to grind away at, but baseline golds and mods are available to pretty much everyone.

Master Sword Keeper · Apr 25, 2007, 03:18 AM // 03:18

Sorry If I'm Solo'ing items drop 100% like they used to do in the old days why is it that we can't do it now?

Silly as. I don't have the hours anymore to play. I work full-time and need to concentrate on other things. If I'm unable to get in some fast farming I miles well hand in my game card and say goodbye. HM FTW alright. But item cycling and loot management needs to be re-adjusted to that of the old days.

arcanemacabre · Apr 25, 2007, 04:02 AM // 04:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

I strongly disagree with you here. High end farming of greens, ectos and golds doesn NOT drive prices up. Rather, it increases the supply and causes prices to go down. Low end brute force farming, such as minotaurs and vermin, dramatically decreases the value of gold in exactly the same way - as supply increases prices fall. As the value of gold falls, more gold is required to exchange for items with other players. Hence, inflation.

Exactly. That, is Inflation 101. The more "low-end" farming is done, the more cash is introduced into the economy. The more cash introduced into the economy, the less that cash is actually worth. The less the cash is worth, the more of it is needed to buy something - therefore, that something costs more. Inflation.

With that "middleman" of pure cash-generation out of the way, there will be less and less cash flowing around, and all the player-sold items will have to drop in price to keep up. Plus, there will be more farmers moving to farming things like greens, and chest-farming, thus more "expensive" items floating around - which means even lower prices since the supply will exceed demand.

Pkest · Apr 25, 2007, 04:08 AM // 04:08

You can't really apply real world economic theory to a system like Guild Wars where gold that is given to merchants disappears from the system instead of being recycled into the economy.

If I 'low end' solo farm just to get the cash to buy a set of armor and runes then no money has been added to the economy and the value of gold has not changed a bit.

arcanemacabre · Apr 25, 2007, 04:18 AM // 04:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pkest

You can't really apply real world economic theory to a system like Guild Wars where gold that is given to merchants disappears from the system instead of being recycled into the economy.

If I 'low end' solo farm just to get the cash to buy a set of armor and runes then no money has been added to the economy and the value of gold has not changed a bit.

Completely agree with you, as well. But what's stopping you from constantly "low-end" farming till you have 100's of plat, and buying some low-req rare-skinned item from another player? That kind of stuff is what drives up prices. That, and the bots that do the same, passing 1,000 plat at a time to high bidders outside of GW.

Since there is no way to determine your intention with the gold, be it gold-sink or staight into the player-driven economy that would cause inflation, would you rather just deal with the inflation anyway, saying it's a "necessary evil", just so that you can continue to supply your own fat wad?

Dougal Kronik · Apr 25, 2007, 04:32 AM // 04:32

The casual farmer spends his gold on the gold sinks. Skills, armor, items from merchants. He gets his gold from the merchants by selling white, blue, and collectible drops.

Therefore the casual farmer's effect on the economy averages out to Nil.

The hardcore farmer farms for ectos, greens, and high end rare items. Which end up having an ingame value in gold. These are traded amongst players.

Therefore the hardcore farmer's effect on the economy is the introduction/creation of wealth, which will devalue gold, and cause prices to increase.

Casual farmers want to be able to purchase skills, maybe a set of 15k for their character, and maybe a few keys just in case they hit the jackpot.

Not to mention the reduction of collectible drops, what kind of effect that will have at the next holiday event when players realize they can't farm for the drops to convert to Candy Canes, alcoholic beverages, or sweets.

arcanemacabre · Apr 25, 2007, 04:45 AM // 04:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dougal Kronik

The casual farmer spends his gold on the gold sinks. Skills, armor, items from merchants. He gets his gold from the merchants by selling white, blue, and collectible drops.

There is no way for you to know this, at all. If you do that, that's just you. If your friend Bob does that, that's just you and Bob. You have no proof that all casual/low-end farmers spend all their farmed gold on only gold sinks, period.

In fact, bots/gold-sellers are an example of a very large amount of characters that low-end farm for gold that is not spent on gold sinks, period.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dougal Kronik

The hardcore farmer farms for ectos, greens, and high end rare items. Which end up having an ingame value in gold. These are traded amongst players.

Therefore the hardcore farmer's effect on the economy is the introduction/creation of wealth, which will devalue gold, and cause prices to increase.

You just contradicted yourself. If they trade these items to other players, and I think we can agree they do most of the time, there is no "introduction/creation of wealth" at all - just exchange of wealth/gold. This is healthy. What isn't healthy is constant creation of wealth via monsters, and that wealth then being exchanged amongst players. Gold sinks are in the game to counter that, but they are also mostly voluntary. The only gold sinks that are really necessary are skills and ID/Salvage kits (since they are used to help make money, as well).

creelie · Apr 25, 2007, 04:57 AM // 04:57

I actually like this - less gold, more bling. The hydras were boring anyway.

Yggdrasil · Apr 25, 2007, 06:14 AM // 06:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by arcanemacabre

In fact, bots/gold-sellers are an example of a very large amount of characters that low-end farm for gold that is not spent on gold sinks, period.

These aren't a large amount, statistically speaking (at least in my experience I've only seen a few dozen [seeming] bots); they are however much more prolific due to their inhuman nature. Immune to boredom, and the tedious nature of grind, they have and will continue to farm for gold without end. That is, until action is directly and aggressively taken against them, anything else is insufficient in the long-run. As such it is unfair to lump them together with other "low-end" farmers, and generalize about said farmers motivations.

arcanemacabre · Apr 25, 2007, 06:34 AM // 06:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yggdrasil

These aren't a large amount, statistically speaking (at least in my experience I've only seen a few dozen [seeming] bots); they are however much more prolific due to their inhuman nature. Immune to boredom, and the tedious nature of grind, they have and will continue to farm for gold without end. That is, until action is directly and aggressively taken against them, anything else is insufficient in the long-run. As such it is unfair to lump them together with other "low-end" farmers, and generalize about said farmers motivations.

You may be able to guess a ball-park figure of how many botters you notice, but keep in mind, that's only what you can see - in International Districts. Consider how many more there are in the districts on servers you aren't on, and aren't aware of. I would venture a guess (a very uneducated guess, I would add), that most of the botters are on their home districts, wherever those might be. I think you can you can draw a conclusion to where I'm thinking, without me coming out and saying it.

No one is generalizing about the farmer's motivations - except Dougal Kronik when he said:

Quote:

The casual farmer spends his gold on the gold sinks. Skills, armor, items from merchants. He gets his gold from the merchants by selling white, blue, and collectible drops.

That places low-end farmers in a category that seemingly makes them innocent of affecting the economy what-so-ever. I plainly said that was simply unfounded. That is, in fact, a generalization that is not only unproveable, but more than likely completely wrong.

Besides, if anyone can make any ascertations on how people earn their gold, and what they do with it, it would be Anet. They have claimed to keep logs, and I wouldn't put it past any online game company to keep logs of their players. They should be able to tell if low-end farmers (which would be easy to spot with "bot-like" activity, and is closely monitored anyway) spend their gold on fixed-price items (like armor, skills, ID/Salvage kits, keys, etc), spend their gold on player-controlled items (like rares, holiday items, dyes, materials, etc), or just "give their money away" in conspicuous 100k + ecto chunks for free (obvious gold seller).

This means they, above everyone else, would have the numbers to form their reasons for a nerf like this. They can tell, with these logs, exactly what is inflating player-controlled items in the economy. I would think, based on this logic, that this would be one good way of at least slowing this down - since there really is no way to stop it without removing trade entirely. Just look at RL economy, inflation happens, constantly. It's a sign of a *better* economy if that inflation can be slowed down.

rohlfinator · Apr 25, 2007, 08:12 AM // 08:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaleban

And your last comment is a pretty slippery slope. At what point should players be satisfied/not satisifed with the game content available to them? Shouldn't all players have a reasonable chance of acquisition?

I agree that if taken to a larger extreme, content restriction would be a major problem. But at the minor level it occurs in Guild Wars, it's excusable. Most MMOs restrict casual players far more than Guild Wars does.

Quote:

And besides, the point is moot when it comes to accessing things like FoW armor, because as you have said yourself, these items provide no better stats than the cheaper versions, so how would it serve ANet and the community's best interest to keep these items OUT of the hands of the vast majority of players?

Because it keeps the players who are enjoy that type of gameplay (progressing toward a specific goal, which some might consider grinding) motivation to keep playing after level 20, and a sense of accomplishment when they reach it. For the players who don't like to grind, it's very simple for them to ignore FoW armor entirely and enjoy the game at their own pace while still remaining competitive.

Quote:

Originally Posted by blackbird71

Honestly, that's part of what bothers me. I believed I had been told that this game would cater to the casual gamer, and later it seems to have changed to encompass both. When a dev team changes their direction for a game, I get nervous, because it means the game is becoming something other than what I originally chose to pay for.

The interviews I was referring to happened before or during the game's beta stage. Appeal to both casual and hardcore players has been one of the design goals since the beginning.

If anything, the game has become more casual-friendly. Factions and Nightfall give players so much experience that obtaining skill points is no longer a problem. Inscriptions made the weapon system versatile enough so that what used to be considered junk could be salvaged and combined to make a decent weapon. Skill acquisition through PvP has been made easier several times. Unlocked chests and trade contracts provide a large chunk of easy income. And with this recent update, skill tomes make skill acquisition easier, and passage scrolls make the high-end areas more accessible.

Quote:

Because if the game is truly designed for the casual player, why have any part of it that is off limits to the casual player? Isn't that contradictory in it's nature, regardless of how much other content there is? You say it was never promised, but I almost feel as if it had been, because I was told it was a game for people with my playstyle, shouldn't all the benefits of that game be accessible to such?

Don't take this the wrong way, but I think you are completely misunderstanding some of the design goals of this game. To illustrate, if you read early interviews, the developers expected that many casual players would be unable to unlock all the skills for their own profession. That was one of the reasons for the eight-skill limit, so that even if you could only afford ten or twenty skills, you could purchase a few that worked well together and make a really solid build with very little time or money. UAS was expected to be a fairly "hardcore" activity for players with more time invested into the game. I'm not sure when UAS started being considered a "requirement" to staying competitive, but I am very certain that was not the original intention of the developers.

The jump from "casual players should be able to easily make a competitive build and contribute to their party" to "casual players should be able to afford the most expensive item in the game" is not something that was ever promised by ArenaNet. I honestly suggest that you do some searches for old pre-beta or beta interviews with the designers, because you seem to have very different expectations of the game than was ever mentioned.

Apologies if I sound harsh or anything, it's just that I have been really impressed with many of the design decisions in Guild Wars (that's basically the reason I started playing), and it kind of frustrates me when people don't understand why certain things were done the way that they were, especially when the team has done such a good job of laying out their intentions since the beginning.

Quote:

Originally Posted by arcanemacabre

This means they, above everyone else, would have the numbers to form their reasons for a nerf like this. They can tell, with these logs, exactly what is inflating player-controlled items in the economy. I would think, based on this logic, that this would be one good way of at least slowing this down - since there really is no way to stop it without removing trade entirely. Just look at RL economy, inflation happens, constantly. It's a sign of a *better* economy if that inflation can be slowed down.

Absolutely correct. In a post on another forum, Gaile mentioned that she has seen the data, and that ArenaNet can tell exactly how significant of an impact farming/botting has on the economy. Using basic statistics, it would be easy to make a good estimate of how the economy would look after this update. Anet would be able to easily see whether this update would have a negative effect on the economy, and not implement it if the impact would have been bad for players.

Ensign · Apr 25, 2007, 08:43 AM // 08:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

You're working under the assumption that the only purpose of gold is to give to other players, with its value changing in accordance with the rarity of items.

Remember the context of the original quote - that they were making this change to solo farming because the price tags of the 'coolest items' were unreasonably high. Sure, gold is relevant for really casual players who need to save up for armor, but to the players who actually acquire the games coolest items, gold is largely irrelevant. If you're worried about saving up for 15k armor, the high end player economy is not something that should even be on your radar.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

I strongly disagree with you here. High end farming of greens, ectos and golds doesn NOT drive prices up. Rather, it increases the supply and causes prices to go down.

The point, which I admittedly made poorly, is that the people bidding in the high end market are not farming vermin. They made fortunes power trading, or farming high end items like those mentioned. On the whole, prices are lower because of what those farmers kick out - producing supply, after all - but the bids you see being put on Colossal Scimitars and the like aren't coming from vermin farmers. Those are the high rollers getting into pocketbook fights.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

I think that pretty much sums up the casual player point of view. It has nothing to do with exchanging super rares and everything to do with having enough to get by.

That's what I thought too. Under that paradigm, solo farming is harmless, since you're mostly interacting with NPCs. Knocking down some insects just gives you a quick cash infusion to make the next purchase if need be. It only becomes relevant when you start looking at the high end player economy...which, as we all know, is weakly designed and *terribly* supported.

Peace,
-CxE

arcanemacabre · Apr 25, 2007, 08:58 AM // 08:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

The point, which I admittedly made poorly, is that the people bidding in the high end market are not farming vermin. They made fortunes power trading, or farming high end items like those mentioned. On the whole, prices are lower because of what those farmers kick out - producing supply, after all - but the bids you see being put on Colossal Scimitars and the like aren't coming from vermin farmers. Those are the high rollers getting into pocketbook fights.

You have to look at cause and effect, Ensign. Those high rollers exchange ridiculously high-priced items back and forth - to each other. They recieved their gold from likely other players, who got it from other players and so on all the way down to the original source, monsters. That gold didn't even exist at one point, and had to initially be earned, in most cases, by farmers.

The purpose of leaving high-end farming in-tact, is because the high-end farming all involves high-end things... things that carry variable price tags, things that can be traded amongst the player community. The gold itself is still gained the same old way - low-end farming, or gold that is spawned from basically nothing. Of course there are other ways to get gold, questing, transferring faction to materials, adventuring, but none of them were as big as old fashioned farming.

When you slow that way down, you slow down the overall influx of gold. With gold sinks still the way they are, the amount of gold overall will eventually drop, meaning less gold for everyone, including the high rollers. Cause and effect. The average joe adventurer, faction transferer, quester remains untouched as far as income, and thus, are unaffected.

EDIT: Forgot to add... the only thing that would really affect the average non-farmer is when they get lucky with a Black Dye, Ecto/Shard, or expensive rune - those items would drop in price and they just wouldn't make as much selling them. So they lose a little of that "OMG, I just found a XXXX!!!" feeling. Yay.

Angelic Upstart · Apr 25, 2007, 11:04 AM // 11:04

Well i dont know what to say really, after trying out the new modes of play after the update/nerf, i can only conclude that the game for me at least is now boring to the point of where i have nothing left to do in game, and more importantly i havent the drive to do it if there was a goal i felt i needed to complete.
I have played this game now for 18 months and approx 2800 hours, i have in that time completed Prophecies a dozen times with different characters, Factions three times and NF twice, i have one set of FoW armour and one set of Vabbian and the rest of my chars i clad in 15k armour, when i needed a few extra platinum i used to farm for it , beleiving in the ethic , the more you put into something the more you get out of it, and as a result of this i have been able to furnish ny characters with the best and 'coolest' (for want of a better word) armour and weapons.
I used to farm specifically if i wanted a particular item or armour (FoW), and contrary to popular belief this can become a grind beyond belief, i also used to farm for fun, my 55 used to farm all over the place, not just trolls and minos, the closer to the stars mission was always challenging and fun with a 55. What i am trying to say here is simply, by adjusting the drop allocations Anet have single handedly cut off any enthusiasm for whatever the game has left for me, i did a couple of troll farms before i casme on here to post and the results in both hard mode and normal mode were pretty much identical, from around twenty trolls i managed to accumulate two raven staffs , one wooden buckler and 100 gold. I can assume this is going to be the same right across the board.
Regarding hard mode, i really cannot be bothered to try to grind my way through Prophecies again especially when faced with DoA types of mobs, the same applies to Factions and doubly so for NF which was a grind to get two players through it let alone do it on hard mode.
For those that support the update , then good luck to you all, for me i think this is the end , of what was once the best game i have ever been involved with , nothing else has kept me this entertained for so long, or drove me to rant on forums about particular issues. For that i would like to say thank you to Anet, but recently the game has been changed beyond recognition for me, AoE nerf, SR nerf and now this poorly though through and implemented decision to scale loot drops... oh well i guess all good thing come to an end, and on that note i would like to say see ya, to all those who i have met ingame and on this forum.
Oh one last thing to those who say 'can i have your stuff '- no you f%^$in cant go farm for it