Curse

KANE OG · May 10, 2007, 01:19 PM // 13:19

Merchants in Guild Halls are handy for people who have lag in town. No one wants to lose a nice weapon due to an accidental lag double-click.

KANE

Vincaro · May 11, 2007, 12:07 AM // 00:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Navaros

If Ectos and Shards are now exempt again then the problem is solved. Hoping I'm understanding it right that they are.

Not everyone just makes money off ecto's and shards, I've done UW and FOW runs, and I found I made more money off selling just regular drops in areas like the desert in less time than I ever did in UW. I would usually take smaller groups on missions and for questing for this reason so I could make the money I needed while getting through the game on my various characters.

Here is a copy of what I sent to support because this hurts me a lot, and I hate that after being with this game for so long, I feel I've been punished.

I have 30 characters in Guild Wars across 2 accounts, and I did not spend all that money and time so I could be punished but now I feel I have been. I wanted to get several sets of armor for my many characters, Many of which were the ascended versions, so obviously I need a lot of money in the game. Now I had found early on, that if you were good enough to fight through an area on your own, you could make far more money than if you took a group or henchmen, I saw it as a way for the truely skilled players to rise above the rest. A way for them to legitimately make the money needed to get the prestige armors.

Today however, I loaded one of my characters to make some money for one such armor set, and found that all that had changed. Loot now scales according to group size...

WHY ARE SKILLED PLAYERS BEING PUNISHED???

Because that is all this amounts too. This will not stop the farmers from selling money over the internet, they will just group farm and raise their prices, and in fact it may help them because now it's harder for players to make money on their own.

Why should someone who is a good enough player to take on the monsters in an area that usually would take a group, not be rewarded by receiving all the loot that a group would get. The only way this would make sence would be if the monsters in the area were scaled to be easier acording to group size as well.

Perhaps the loot scaling would be alright if say the normal amount of drops was tripled... but the way it is now, in order to make enough money for 1 set of armor will take hours and hours of play time; Time I for one, don't have.

I have been playing Guild Wars nearly from the beggining, but never have I seen a change made that amounts to nothing more than punishing your most skilled and loyal players as I feel I have been. I was looking forward to Eye of the North, but now I feel it will be a waste of my time because of how incredibly long it will take me to make the money for the new armor sets as well as the ones I want already for my many characters...

Loviatar · May 11, 2007, 12:26 AM // 00:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vincaro

I have been playing Guild Wars nearly from the beggining, but never have I seen a change made that amounts to nothing more than punishing your most skilled and loyal players as I feel I have been. I was looking forward to Eye of the North, but now I feel it will be a waste of my time because of how incredibly long it will take me to make the money for the new armor sets as well as the ones I want already for my many characters...

on the official GW site is your answer from the developers.

basically it says that if someone comes up with what amounts to an exploit (invincimonk my example) they will take action to stop a person from single handedly looting a high end area they intended to be a challenge for a full party of 8 players with loot FOR 8 players.

you are still getting a bit more than your fair share but not getting the full 8 peoples loot all for yourself.

makosi · May 11, 2007, 12:34 AM // 00:34

The loot scaling is having virtually no effect on me whatsoever. The only difference is that I don't get a load of useless white and blue trash to sell to the merchant. I still get plenty of gold coins..

@Buster, I garee about the 15k and FoW armour tempting people in to buying gold. It's a shame though because it was supposed to have the opposite effect of sinking gold from the economy.

Vincaro · May 11, 2007, 12:43 AM // 00:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

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.

This is another thing, If they want people to make money only by selling things to other players then they need to make it easier to sell to other players!!! I HATE STANDING AROUND IN TOWN FOR HOURS CALLING WTS WTS WTS!!! They need an in game auction house where players can put things up for sale and walk away. THAT is why I made all my money in the past by just farming regular items and selling them to vendors, I even often have sold greens and most golds to vendors for that reason, I could make 20 times as much farming in the time it would take me to sell it.

I refuse to waste my limited play time standing around!

Brianna · May 11, 2007, 12:58 AM // 00:58

Hard mode is to easy, probably said by 1000 other people, all you need to do is find a build that slays those particular enemys and that is the build that people run for the rest of its existance, like Tombs, B/p builds. Sure people try and think outside the box but, its not favored by most simplistic minds. All hardmode really was, was the buffing of monsters, increased lvl (hitpoints/dmg) More skills used, everything for them is faster at pace, that Isn't really hard to get around.

Now for the Finding items to ''sell'' to other people, and putting items into the game that have a high demand?, eventually, everything loses its ''demand'' someway or somehow, this system wont really last, another thing is, there is no REAL way to sell items, except spamming WTS and WTB for days, weeks, months on end, (wow i could have made hundreds of k in this time if I'd have been out soloing.) so i don't think thats really favored. And rewards? i mean, seriously. I was out farming and got myself a req.9 golden max dmg brute sword, so I'm like: "Ok neat, finnaly something that can supposedly be good and worth something, or even to use.'' But, when I'd, it only had Zealous and +5 armor on it, No inherent dmg mod, Wooow.. so i get this gold brute sword as a reward, but it has crap on it, any white max dmg is just as good, and Purples are even better, it had nothing i could have even used, except salvaging. i don't find this rewarding to me, now thats just a small thing but still.. it urks you after awhile. That's about all i have to say though, Not a rant, just a piece of mind and maybe insight.

viper11025 · May 11, 2007, 01:10 AM // 01:10

I have been with GW since the beta.
Yes,the beta.(It Rocked!)

I have noticed 3 things about this.
1. It was based on party size AND I think level in beta.
2. It was redone for better party play but equal farm potintal.
3. It was redone yet AGIAN but only on party size.

Solution-
Get a team of Henchies without rez.
(You fill in the rest or PM me IN GAME!)

There I told my secret to everyone!
Go copy it down and give A-net a week to fix it.

Kashrlyyk · May 11, 2007, 04:19 AM // 04:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loviatar

on the official GW site is your answer from the developers.

basically it says that if someone comes up with what amounts to an exploit (invincimonk my example) they will take action to stop a person from single handedly looting a high end area they intended to be a challenge for a full party of 8 players with loot FOR 8 players.

you are still getting a bit more than your fair share but not getting the full 8 peoples loot all for yourself.

ANet has complete controll over how skills function. So as long as you don´t use a bug, your not exploiting anything. They created skills that make it possible to get zero damage, so how is it an exploit using that.

What the developers said was, instead of changing overpowered skills, we change the loot tables. But by changing the loot tables they don´t stop anyone from looting a high end area alone. It is just not so provitable.

WasAGuest · May 11, 2007, 01:01 PM // 13:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vincaro

This is another thing, If they want people to make money only by selling things to other players then they need to make it easier to sell to other players!!! I HATE STANDING AROUND IN TOWN FOR HOURS CALLING WTS WTS WTS!!! They need an in game auction house where players can put things up for sale and walk away. THAT is why I made all my money in the past by just farming regular items and selling them to vendors, I even often have sold greens and most golds to vendors for that reason, I could make 20 times as much farming in the time it would take me to sell it.

I refuse to waste my limited play time standing around!

I 100% agree - as I am now playing several games right now, my GW time is even shorter than it used to be. Actually, as my time feels more or less wasted when I log into GW now, I may just finally break off from it. My drop luck has never been good, and solo farming was the only way I made enough money to buy the armor sets I wanted... I didn't and dont even really enjoy farming; but it was a means to an end.
Now I'm supposed to get good items (which I seem to never get -

) and stand around spamming? lol, I'll pass.

Skuld · May 11, 2007, 01:29 PM // 13:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vincaro

WHY ARE SKILLED PLAYERS BEING PUNISHED???

Abusing the AI is mad skillz

Vincaro · May 11, 2007, 04:47 PM // 16:47

They claim this is to help the economy of the game, but let's look at that. What do people need that many buy.

Crafting Materials: Near worthless, most have dropped to the minimum sale price or near to it at the traders.

Runes: With a few exceptions Most runes have also dropped to the minimum price.

Green Items: Because of over farming (Which will now be enhanced with the improved drop rates in Hard Mode) Most green items don't even sale for 10k now and take hours to sale anyway.

What else do people buy? oh, the overpriced Gold Items. oh yay, maybe they will come down in price... I never bothered with gold items anyway and I'm willing to bet the Casual players that they are supposedly trying to help afford these items never bothered with golds before either. I just get the green item that has the stats I need, and sometimes they have a unique skin such as my favorite shield, Tanzit's Defender.

Another thing, as I stated before, this game needs a way for players to put something up for sale and walk away, and if you want the economy to become a little more stable and for prices of some rediculously priced items to drop, that is how. Prices will drop if people have to list their items for sale with other peoples prices right beside theirs. Right now if somone is selling something for less people just jump to another town and start spamming there. and it will also help prevent people from ripping off new players.

B Ephekt · May 11, 2007, 06:07 PM // 18:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skuld

Abusing the AI is mad skillz

But farming requires months of practice and training. It took me 2 YEARS to get good enough to hit 1,2,3,4 over and over on my monk in order to make money.

Now they took it away from me!!!! It's not fair!!!!

Now all my skill will have to go to waste in pvp or something silly!!!! Can you imagine that??!

Vincaro · May 11, 2007, 06:45 PM // 18:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by B Ephekt

But farming requires months of practice and training. It took me 2 YEARS to get good enough to hit 1,2,3,4 over and over on my monk in order to make money.

Now they took it away from me!!!! It's not fair!!!!

Now all my skill will have to go to waste in pvp or something silly!!!! Can you imagine that??!

Um yea, uh, PVP is a complete waist of time to me. I would be fine if the game had none. And another thing, it's real anoying to me that everyone assumes people farm with the same old generic builds. I built all my characters myself and found my own builds to farm in different areas. None of my builds make farming as simple as 1,2,3,4, Mine require thought and strategy, they make farming fun.

But here's the simple fact, they made this game so that everything can be bought, if you have the money you really don't have to work for anything. So if they want to stop people from buying off the internet, they will have to make it so anyone can easily afford anything in the game.

manitoba1073 · May 12, 2007, 04:37 AM // 04:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by B Ephekt

But farming requires months of practice and training. It took me 2 YEARS to get good enough to hit 1,2,3,4 over and over on my monk in order to make money.

Now they took it away from me!!!! It's not fair!!!!

Now all my skill will have to go to waste in pvp or something silly!!!! Can you imagine that??!

well with 2 yrs of hitting 1,2,3,4 you should be an expert at PvP then cause thats what mostly is PvP. I quit PvP abut 19 months or so for that very reason. Hell i even considered buying a monkey to farm PvP for me.

lord_shar · May 12, 2007, 04:47 AM // 04:47

Last night I went on a solo UW smite run... grand total of 3 ecto during the last 9 full runs. That's several hundred smite kills, with only 3-ecto to show for it, and perhaps 5 blue/purple drops average per trip. I've also noticed a dramatic decrease in drops accross all locations.

The loot scaling code supposedly exempts the listed items now from Post#1, and there is supposed to be no more static-location diminishing returns code, yet this is exactly what I've been seeing during the last week.

Is the diminishing drops code really gone, or did it get re-introduced back into production?

Angelic Upstart · May 12, 2007, 08:15 AM // 08:15

I think that Anet are trying to please al the players who cannot be arsed to put in an extra effort to gain the nicer items, by making everything accesible to all, they are dumbing down the game so that the less experienced players can have all the elite and shiny items that used take a long time and a lot of effort to gain.
Once people have finished all three campaigns with several characters the replay value is diminished, and the story lines and missions become a grind, all that is / was left was the challenge of soloing areas, well it was for me anyway, and i feel that if you were good enough to put in the time and effort into devising a build to be able to do that you should be rewarded as such, but the whiners and whingers who cannot be bothered to finish a game ,or indeed work for them want all the nice and elite items for no effort .
Personally i think that sucks, i was brought up on the ethos that if you wanted something badly enough then you bloody well work for it, being basically handed everythng on a plate will in fact decrease the replay value even quicker for now once the campaigns are completed and the nicer gear is easily accesible then there really is nothing left to work for in my opinion, (discounting pvp )
For me the real skill in this game was being able to clear an area that was intended for party size, and im not talking about rinsing trolls or minos repeatedly.
Im lucky i guess in that after 18 months i have experienced the best of this game as it now seems to be sliding inexorably downhill.

May 12, 2007, 09:33 AM // 09:33

Occasionally I see people write thay they solo this and that.
I was wondering why would they, since the loot scaling. What is there to gain?

For various reasons (buying skills, armor, weapons, fun seeing those enemies drop one by one or all at once) I used to solo farm in UW and occassionally tried it there with henchies/heroes to test builds, before the loot scaling update. But I have stopped going there altogether. I felt that losing 7/8(when soloing) or 4/8(when i take 3 heroes) of drops (either they be gold money or white drops) kind of took the fun away from me. It's probably psychological. I liked getting immediate rewards.
I agree I see a bit more gold weapon/armor drops when I am going through missions or doing quests. Even though it was said that "Repeated map entry no longer reduces loot", my experiences are certainly not that.

There is although one reason I can think of, that is there are places where it is much easier or faster to kill enemies with solo builds than with a full party. Certainly you aren't getting better drops when soloing, are you?

I guess I want to know if people are still soloing to get better drops, or soloing for other reasons?

lord_shar · May 12, 2007, 10:50 AM // 10:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amulet of the Myst

Occasionally I see people write thay they solo this and that.
I was wondering why would they, since the loot scaling. What is there to gain?

...<SNIP>...

There is although one reason I can think of, that is there are places where it is much easier or faster to kill enemies with solo builds than with a full party. Certainly you aren't getting better drops when soloing, are you?

I guess I want to know if people are still soloing to get better drops, or soloing for other reasons?

The answer is in Gaile Gray's 1st post in this thread. Certain items (rare/gold items, dyes, special event drops, rare crafting materials like ecto, etc...) are no longer being scaled with party size -- they are exempt from the scaling code. This means that soloing is supposed to still reap full benefits with regards to the items listed.

However, here's the catch: based on personal experience, current drop rates (as of this post) are still ridiculously low. I'm getting about 1 ecto every 3 full smite runs, or 120+ smite kills. If ecto is really exempt from the scaling drop code, I cannot verify it based on current in-game observations. It's almost like the latest scaling-loot exemptions patch was backed out.

Gaile, can you please verify if the loot-scaling-exemptions code is still in place?

arcanemacabre · May 12, 2007, 10:57 AM // 10:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amulet of the Myst

I guess I want to know if people are still soloing to get better drops, or soloing for other reasons?

I can't speak for anyone else than myself, but I can give multiple reasons to solo:

1) I pick a handful of spots that I use as "test areas", in which I use to test new builds. These areas are relatively easy, not newb island or pre- easy, but more like Kryta, Pongmei Valley, and Marga Coast easy. The builds are generally self-sufficient (couple of self-heals), and are designed to be damage dealers, so they solo okay in these areas, but is challenging enough to give me a good idea how good the build will be in a team.

2) Chestruns, nuff said

3) Greens and Ectos are exempt from loot scaling, so people can solo those all day long

4) Pre-Searing dye farming is still quite viable, since dyes are also exempt

5) Pure challenge. Got an area you think would be impossible to solo, for the challenge junkie, that's the perfect spot to just try and do it - who cares about monetary rewards when you can get an adrenaline rush trying to "beat the system".

6) Hardmode rare-item farming. Since rares are also exempt, and you get them more often in hard mode, find a good, easy spot and farm away (like the Nebo Terrace undead).

That's all I can think of for now, but I'm sure there are more reasons.

reetkever · May 12, 2007, 11:35 AM // 11:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by B Ephekt

But farming requires months of practice and training. It took me 2 YEARS to get good enough to hit 1,2,3,4 over and over on my monk in order to make money.

Now they took it away from me!!!! It's not fair!!!!

Now all my skill will have to go to waste in pvp or something silly!!!! Can you imagine that??!

Try clearing Snake Dance without evading the Heretics or dying even once.

That's harder than PvP where you and all the other players use the exact same builds over and over and over and over again. And when they're nerfed, a new cookie-cutter build comes and that gets used over and over and over again.

Well, now there isn't any reason to clear snake dance (except for the vanquisher title, but why not do it with 8 people if you get the exact same rewards, anyway -.-)

Face it A-Net, you friggin ruined the game for the people that beat the game. And I thought you 'wanted to reward the people who've been playing from the beginning'. Well start with giving farming back, and give us a goal to work for.

People keep saying that farming is a waste of time, but I wonder... What is a bigger waste of time, killing monsters for a decent amount of money, or standing in an outpost hours long trying to sell 1 item.