Curse

Yggdrasil · Apr 21, 2007, 07:42 PM // 19:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nomen Mendax

... I'm a casual farmer and I also like playing parts of the game solo (I had a lot of fun finding a functional build to solo The Gates of Kryta), and I'm not in any way a "professional farmer".

The update means that my vermin farming now gets me less loot to save up for goodies, and is easier. From my point of view both these things are bad. ANet's reasoning is now that its easier I can do again and again and again, and then spend more time selling the gold items I find.

But now that it is easier to farm it is less fun. So I get a fun quick activity replaced with repeatedly doing a less fun (slightly quicker) activity followed by more time spent trying to sell the gold items (another unenjoyable activity).

It seems like ANet's idea of a "casual player" is someone who doesn't like any sort of challenge, and enjoys doing the same boring activity over and over again. If this really is part of their design philosophy it doesn't bode well for the future.

One thing that would help, and has been asked for numerous times, is to create item traders, I do hope this is something that is being considered.

The bottom line for me is that I enjoyed the solo farming, which I will now do a lot less if at all. It's not a big deal, but it does mean the game is less fun.

Quoted for truth.

Also, I just came back from a 2-ish year hiatus, after realizing that it was extremely repetitive (and I never even farmed). Coming back I was pleased by the aoe-nerf, because I now had to account for them doing something other than blindly swinging at a meat-shield. Now that's gone, and if I ever want to be able to afford ascended armor I need to farm golds and spend an afternoon trying to get some attention amid the constant spam from a 12-year old kid on a sugar-high?

What we need are smarter monsters that require more tactics than would be workable for a bot; and the oft mentioned trade system. However, judging from the word about Hard Mode, the a.i. is not an area of focus for the devs, and they've had about 2 years to get some trade system up so... Not going to hold my breath. I will be watching the next week or two with interest, as it may well determine my future here.

Kaleban · Apr 21, 2007, 07:55 PM // 19:55

I think the true problem is that ANet, in many and varied updates, have had a choice.

And the choice is this:

Do we reward players for doing what we encourage, or punish them for it and make it more difficult?

Now, if ANet's stance on farming wasn't an official encouragemnt, and Gaile came on saying "how dare thee plebian heathens for violating the non-farming pact?" then farmers wouldn't have much of an argument.

Problem is, ANet says one thing, and does another. Confuses the playerbase, and makes them angry for being lied to (on purpose or by omission).

So if ANet wanted to encourage party play by altering the loot system, why not just double the amount of drops for those in full groups of 8? That way, the solo and various size team farmers would still be happy, AND players who don't want to or can't figure out how to farm can instead play in groups without falling vastly behind the curve.

This "solution" merely serves to artificially level the field by making an entire activity pointless.

And by trying to socialize the loot system, expensive items will quickly spiral upwards in price, and even basic commodities like Identification kits which are static priced will cost more! Why you ask?

Because prior to the update, if you wanted something nice, you could farm for it, generating increased cashflow in a shorter span of time.

So if you look at time spent vs. monet earned, now there is no difference between anybody, so gold value goes up, static priced items like armors and such value goes up, and no one can afford anything.

Controlled markets don't work, just ask the Soviets... er Russians.

Skyi · Apr 21, 2007, 08:36 PM // 20:36

here is casual farmer speaking

dear Anet

these changes bring prices to the hell and stop: just look at "bot web sites", now they are selling golds (illegally) at double price, ecto are straight to the sky.

if u want to stop "botting" this is not the right way. You know where bots there are and how they work: just implement this tricks of 1/8 the stuff dropped only for they, and not for all the community.

i'm seriously thinking to leave guildwars game for ever, and i think i'm not the only. After beating the game is just fun to make some money to buy or chestrunning some nice rare items. I'm not interested in pvp play.

thanks if u do something.

bye

VitisVinifera · Apr 21, 2007, 09:12 PM // 21:12

I've followed with a great degree of amusement Gaile's posts re: loot scaling. I've never seen so many contradictions, convoluted arguments and reasoning, and contrived 'solutions' to a problem that only exists regarding botters.
The problem is bot farmers, gold sellers, whatever. So they try to institute a code that obviously backfired and created a lot of ill-will. Now they back largely off that, and the result is this contrived code that seeks to rule out the possibility of bot farming (which will only drive up their prices and keep them a step ahead by altering how they bo).
There's no coding alternative for what it really takes to exclude botters: having staff observe the botters, and ban them one at a time. I consider this laziness on Anet's behalf. Then having the dev's trot Gaile out to try to spin this with glossy terms like the grand vision of the devs and the altruististic benevolence of the gaming gods, with her added insults to the community at large, and we've got the present situation.

fun. well, not really.

Rusty Deth · Apr 21, 2007, 09:20 PM // 21:20

Well I was one of those farmers who wanted all the crap drops.

I was salvaging for materials needed to craft the Rolls needed for the "8k" monk armor. In the end I saved myself over 53k doing it the crafting way. So casual farming yes, but actually needed the white drops for something other than money.

On the other hand I did UW this morning just before we lost favor. It was me, my bro and 6 heroes. And I've done both UW and FOW so many times like that, that I can ussually say off the top of my head what the average loot we'd get for both areas would be if we do all the quests and clear them all.

And today I made alot of money in the UW. Course it will never beat that time I got 4 ectos in one run ( in a party of 8 too ) but it was more then what use to get after selling all the crap to the merchant.

In fact for the first time in a long time I actually had to salvage stuff in my inventory halfway through the UW. And also I noticed alot more gold dropping. And this was in normal mode.

So IMHO I can see why Anet did this. If you wanna make money. Play Hard Mode in High End areas in parties of 8. In fact, it kind of sounds like how they want people to play the game.

btw I still plan to solo farm. The 130 dervish is way too fun.

Mr_Cynical · Apr 21, 2007, 09:24 PM // 21:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

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.

So, in short, you are admitting that Arenanet has been screwing over ordinary players of Guild Wars for the past year and a half just because of your own inability to deal with the botting problem? Gee, thanks!

Sol Faithman · Apr 21, 2007, 09:26 PM // 21:26

Contrary to what the dev's think, as many people have pointed out, this nerf does absolutely nothing for the casual farmer - fair enough, the mobs no longer run from AoE etc, but you get no drops, so now have to do tonnes more farming to make the same money. This is called GRIND and something Anet has always said is not part of GW. I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that the Dev's actually do not understand how people play their game, and cannot comprehend the effect these changes have on the casual (1-2 hours a day, 5-10 hours a week) player. How on earth is a casual player, starting today supposed to even get anywhere near 1.5k armour with all the runes necessary for a char with any kind of survivability or creativity in builds (don't forget we need money to buy skills in factions and nighfall - there goes any diversity in build let alone the Elite skill hunter titles)?

I totally, totally agree that professional farmers ie 55 monk bots and e-bay gold are wrong and should be stopped, but ligitimate "professional" farmers ie people who farm to get money to get FoW armour, or farm the Deep etc for good drops to sell on are not creating a problem in the economy as the Dev's seem to think - crashing the merchant prices then not rolling it back did that 18 months ago!!!

FoW armour might as well be taken out of the game now coz their is no way anyone will ever get close to buying it unless they already have the money - even though they say things like ecto will drop as normal all the discussions I've read say the total opposite, plus how can you get the 75k gold when a smite run doesn't even generate enough gold to cover your entry into UW??!! I think most people agree - after this nerf, the rich will simply get richer and the rest of us will be stuck with 1.5k armour at best.

I'm just glad that I declared genocide on the Margonites last weekend so I could get my Primevil armour for my ranger otherwise I'd be screwed now. Just a shame I spent 20k plus on new armour and runes for a 130hp dervish build on Thursday

Tbh, I think this has taken a fair bit of the shine off the game for me - I enjoyed solo farming, just for the satisfaction of being able to do it. I may have used cookie cutter builds but I wasn't bothered - the challenge for me was pulling it off. I think in my almost 2 years on GW I only ever sold 1 gold item to another player (for 50k iirc), all the rest has gone to the merchant or is used on my chars or heroes. I just can't undertand where the dev's are coming from with this idea, and nothing I've read anywhere has answered my questions including Gailes comments.

I've played through the AoE nerf, and through all the other "tweaks" that Anet has undertaken, seen some of my builds buffed and some totally destroyed through pressure from the pvp mob, but I've always come back for more, adapted and moved on. But this is just down right silly, to the point of verging on stupidity - how can this adjustment meet the criteria and have the result that Anet are saying it will? In a nut shell.....it won't. The casual player is now buggered good and proper. No more money, no more new armour, no more new skills coz they simply will not be able to afford it, no matter whether they farm solo 24/7 or do every quest and every mission with 8 real people.

Oh yeah.................there is alway e-bay, but I thought Anet didn't want us to go there??!!

Sorry for the longish rant - been mulling this over the last couple of days, and I guess this is me kinda barfing it all out............I feel much better now!!

Rich

Gosu · Apr 21, 2007, 09:40 PM // 21:40

This is not a rant about the soloing farm nerf in fact this topic is just a branch off from today’s events.

I have read some of the other threads and people have made comments that A-nets actions will serve to hurt the GW economy while others have ridden in for A-nets defence stating that it will help the economy.

This is an enquiry as to what will happen to the Guild Wars economy in conjunction with the implementation of A-nets actions today into the game.

All I ask is this does anyone think that if solo farmers are to be shunned out of the game.

What will happen to the economy in Guild Wars?

Will soloers having a “hard” time help to improve the economy?

Or will it serve to hurt the economy

Please I don’t want to have this turn into troll, flame and spam bait or to be even locked.

I would like a decisive answer with credible evidence and coherent text put forth from both parties from those for the “change” and those against the “change”.

Meikleham of Tyr · Apr 21, 2007, 09:45 PM // 21:45

I know you don't want to be flamed, but nothing is happening to solo farming, other than they'll be getting slightly less gold (money) drops from enemies. Your question can't be answered, because you are basing your question on something that didn't happen.

I don't know why so many people are confused by this, the update notes are incredibly clear.

Raaaaa · Apr 21, 2007, 10:05 PM // 22:05

It'll pretty much do both probably.

Prices will go mad for a while, while they adjust to the new amounts and new items. Also it'll be hard to tell how the new gold drop rates will affect things, mods and such might drop quite alot in price and depending on how many rare skin weapons are found they might drop in price too.
But on the benefit, all the bot farmers will be quite heavily crippled, and there will be alot less ebay and real money gold going around

Eventually it'll even itself out over time and as long as Anet keeps an eye on things it should be benefitial in the long run, but for now some players will be screwed, some will be well off

Alas Poor Yorick · Apr 21, 2007, 10:19 PM // 22:19

Well, if you question can't be answered then I am going to try the impossible.

I thought I was going to be happy with the compromise of keeping certain high end items from being affected by the loot-scaling. I was wrong.

After playing a great deal today, I realized that the immediate rewards, though small, are what made the game fun for me.

True, certain high end items will still be plentiful for those dedicated gamers who like to solo or play in hard mode (in fact, drops in hard mode seemed to be pretty good). But by loot scaling the low end stuff, the immediate reward for the casual gamer is gone.

I had not realized how much I was getting off of cash drops and white and blue items. It turns out that the rare gold item drop wasn't having as much impact on my playing as I thought.

Rather, there was a small sense of immediate satisfaction at the end of fighting a group to look around and see 6 or 7 drops - even if they were only white or blue. Secondly, it turns out those were adding up. I don't solo, but I will often go out with only a partial party of heroes (sometimes just a healer) to increase my share of the drops. Even with anti-farming code, the small drops eventually added up. (kinda like taxes - you could tax the rich at 90% and still not come anywhere near equaling the money the government gets from the middle class. A lot of small amounts can add up faster than a very few large ones)

So, in the end, I was getting small immediate rewards with the reasonable expectation that, even though I would never be able to buy a mini-yeti, I could anticipate eventually being able to afford 15k armor or most nice weapons I might want. (it was a nice balance of small immediate rewards with a reasonable goal of large long term rewards)

Today that is all different. After fighting large groups in normal, I look around and there are only 1 or 2 drops - often just cash. Once I pick up the 100 gold pieces or so and it is shared between myself and 3 heroes, I get a grand total of 25gp. The sense of immediate satisfaction is gone and my hope of affording moderate high end stuff is so far into the distance that it makes it hard to want to work toward. Frankly, even if they had left anti-farming code in I doubt I would have noticed it because there were so few drops that it would not have mattered one bit. Had this happened once or twice, that would have been fine. But it was consistent all day long.

So, now i have a choice, always play in hard mode or learn to farm very high end areas. (but neither one of those fits the definition of "casual player") Frankly, I don't know if I really want to put that much effort in.

So in the end, what will be the effects on the economy? Overall, I don't know. There will still be rare items available. People will still farm for ectos. But I suspect we will see the casual players begin to leave in droves. I predict 2 groups of people. There will be those who buy the game and are in the middle of playing through the storyline. They will stay long enough to finish the story but then there will be no real reason to hang around. Also, there will be no sense of loyalty or anticipation that will make them want to buy GW2. They will move on to other games. The other group will be the very wealthy who will find and exchange high-end items. But the causal gamer who has finished the game and stuck around for other things, those who form the bulk of guild wars society, will gradually fade away.

I've enjoyed playing for the last year. And I will not quit out of anger. But unless something else happens I certainly see myself moving on our of boredom.

Improvavel · Apr 21, 2007, 10:22 PM // 22:22

In my opinion, farming as it were, was perfect.

You could get greens by flagging henchies/heroes away.

You could do some money.

Easy areas like vermins granted 10k per hour.

Harder areas like UW/Fow were farmed for the ectos and shards, mostly for completion of obsidian armors, but they still payed for their fee and you showed proffit (well if u sold the ectos/shards it showed lots of profit).

Solo farming was like any other title. You did it if you wanted it. And you wouldnt gain a competitive advantage over anyone else, speciall because all could do it.

Apparently, the farmers were destroying the game cause rare items would go very high.

Others were professional farmers running bots to farm money, and selling gw money in ebay type auctions for real money.

So Anet decided that if playersa couldnt make money, items would drop price. They chose to ignore the fact that some people already have hoarded incredible amouts of money, and since the lower level players cant get money, they can easly grab all the good stuff, and the other players need to content themselves with the rest.

Also, they think that reducing the money profits bots could do would affect them, cause BOTS WOULD GET BORING AND QUIT, maybe to see their girlfriends BOTS and whatnot. They decided that since money would decrease, farming industries would make less money. They chose to ignore that since players cant get money themselves, gw money will increase their value.

They also chose to prevent new players from get high end items, like obsidian armor, cause players should play PvE and their new hard mode, and not thinking of getting luxury items THAT HAVE NO EFFECT IN THE GAME OTHER THAN STYLES ONES.

Apparently someone stoped smoking, whatever they were smoking in ANET, and said something like this "Hey if players take more time to get stuff like ectos, wouldnt that increase the value of the ecto, either in game currency or in real currency?".

So they patched something.

Dont ask me if ectos drop as before in normal mode or in hard mode, cause they didnt said and euro servers are down and i cant test it.

About greens, I cant get a coherent answer if flagging the henchies/heroes away, so their names get grey increase the green drops for you or not. Or if it increases in HM only and not in NM. Again euro servers are down and I cant test it.

As you can see I m in favour of farming.

Why?

Because I could get the stuff I wanted by myself, not needing to trade to anyone.

I want a dwaynas grace! I go and farm for her. It can take 10 minutes or 2 hours, but I will get her in reasonable time span. Or would. Dunno anymore.

I wanted an Obsidian Armor, cause I m vain, or I m bored. I would go there spend something like 50-100 hours farming and I would get it. My time, my effort, my reward. !00 is too few? Well Prophecies take like what 40 hours if that? I cant even remember.

Some will say, farmers are a disgrace, they kill the game cause stuff gets too expensive, or all missions areas are empty and I cant get a pug, cause those stupid farmers should be helping me getting my protector title instead of going after their vanity objectives.

You see, I help my guildies getting their protector titles. I wont waste 1 hour doing a mission+bonus to help some random dude get its vanity title.

I can easly give my guild mates good modes, good greens, some money for their major vigour. I wont spend 100 farming to give something to a dude I dont know.

I also wont be doing more general PvE, like going after the vanquisher title cause they KILLED FARM. I ll stop doing pve at all. And just keep doing my PvP.

And maybe get myself a copy of a MMORPG where I can go after my objectives, prolly WoW.

aaje vhanli · Apr 21, 2007, 10:45 PM // 22:45

Traders are happy because they can still farm rare items and weapons. Bots are only slowed down, which will only raise the price of cash to gold exchanges. The casual gamer now has the option of paying cash for gold or to become a farmer himself in order to make profit in the game and build a valuable gold nest for armour and the like.

Has it occurred to anyone that this update will most likely just widen the gap between the rich and the poor?

reetkever · Apr 21, 2007, 11:11 PM // 23:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by aaje vhanli

Traders are happy because they can still farm rare items and weapons. Bots are only slowed down, which will only raise the price of cash to gold exchanges. The casual gamer now has the option of paying cash for gold or to become a farmer himself in order to make profit in the game and build a valuable gold nest for armour and the like.

Has it occurred to anyone that this update will most likely just widen the gap between the rich and the poor?

`

Well isn't that what every single farm nerf did?

Farming isn't for the rich. It's for the poor. Rich players just buy items for 100K + 20 ecto's, and sell it for double that amount a while later.

And rich people who bought their ecto's for 5K each back in the good days, got their little fortune doubled, with ectos being ~10K now.

Ishtar Serket · Apr 22, 2007, 12:16 AM // 00:16

Can't say I like the update...

I've been a casual farmer (I made lots of gold but I never considered myself a pro farmer) since soon after I bought Prophecies. With this update, the main sources of my gold are gone. Greens don't drop every time and golds are frequently difficult at best to sell with the archaic trade system Anet thinks actually constitutes as usable. Everyone has better or more interesting things to do than what they'd have to do now. Farm several more times a day just to get how much you had before and then spend an hour + tryng to sell anything of discernable value in trade chat.

I don't think this just affects casual farmers either. Buying ascended armour sets can be considered just window dressing so thats not as vital (though I love my multiple ascended sets), its the fact that players now have to grind for a while just to be able to afford basic items like salvage kits and more importantly to buy skills. At 1 plat a pop, those skills look to add up to even more farming needed.

What this does for the community is mean that many players will have no choice but to limit the skills they buy. This may not seem like a big deal to most but I see it as possible that people will just copy builds they've seen used effectively so they only buy 7-8 skills for their character. If this were to happen, we'd have fewer and fewer original builds being thought up.

If they want to eliminate bots, there's better ways to go about it. If they want to promote teamwork, they could always just increase drops in parties and leave solo farming alone. Till then, the market will get ridiculous. The rich will end up having everything of value and charge a fortune for anyone wanting the items and the new players just entering GW will find a world where its pretty much impossible for them to even out the divide between them and players that have played for more than a year and have great builds, equipment, etc.

bouvrie · Apr 22, 2007, 12:22 AM // 00:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaleban

I'm still wondering what Gaile meant by "traders?" As it is now, we can spam trade messages for several hours, in a random district and hope someone bites.

Traders would probably refer to Rare Material/Dye trader-kind NPC's.

Quote:

Originally Posted by grottoftl

with updates like this, release the update notes a few days or weeks beforehand and see what the players think about it.

I'd disagree, as this would lead to mere speculation about hypothetical situations (that possibly could be), rather than reflection on the observed 'real' situation (that was). Having first-hand experience with the changes helps get a better overview of the issue.

Ontopic:
As someone playing casual, I prefer the Pre-Searing part of Prophecies as my main base of operations. I prefer the atmosphere there, so I conduct most of my gameplay from there. I enjoyed leveling there, as well as farming; I love to kill an enemy and be excited about the possible item it might drop, especially around the special events.

However, it has come to my attention that (even in a FULL Pre party, 2/2), enemies sometimes do not drop anything at all (no gold/whites/blues/etc). When that happens, I get no satisfaction of playing the game. Since the items exempt from the scaling procedure do not drop in Pre-Searing, this modification has some heavy influences on the Pre-Searing economy.

Bottom line: Pre-Searing depends solely on the items being scaled and as such is heavily affected. Giving feedback on Gaile Gray's initial comment, I quote:

Quote:

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

Typically, in terms of Pre-Searing, the exempt only affects Dyes and Special event items, the latter of which are only around within limited timeframes. So, while referring to 'have a wide variety of things that they can enjoy farming', Pre just isn't as enjoyable anymore...

Counter Botting
Perhaps a hint, bots are usually automated programs, right? To discriminate bots from the game, you should be looking at ways to tell a human and computer apart. Perhaps thinking along the lines of CAPTCHA's (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) might help in resolving the issue better. I.e. confront the player with a problem that's easily solvable as a human, but impossible for an automated bot.

rohlfinator · Apr 22, 2007, 12:34 AM // 00:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by aaje vhanli

The casual gamer now has the option of paying cash for gold or to become a farmer himself in order to make profit in the game and build a valuable gold nest for armour and the like.

Casual players can still make quite a bit of money just by playing the game. You can get 27 Trade Contracts by doing all the Vabbi quests on a single character. That'll earn you about 32 plat. Getting all the Treasures in Nightfall is worth about 20 plat per character. The average quest nets about 200 or so gold, with plenty more obtainable from typical drops. With Hard Mode, you can easily make lots of money by doing Vanquisher with somebody and collecting the drops. Going to UW or FoW with a group (and splitting the entry fee) is still fairly profitable.

You won't make as much money as you would by farming, but if you're reduced to eBaying gold, you must be doing something wrong.

Quote:

Has it occurred to anyone that this update will most likely just widen the gap between the rich and the poor?

I don't understand the reasoning behind this statement. The "poor" are most likely the ones who don't farm, and usually play in 8-person groups. They will be completely unaffected by this, unless they do Hard Mode, in which case they'll earn more money than normal. The "rich" are people who farm, and if the nerf is as bad as people are suggesting, they won't be able to get as rich from farming.

The only gap I can see widening is the one between people who try to buy every cool thing they can get their hands on, and everyone else.

KANE OG · Apr 22, 2007, 12:41 AM // 00:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by rohlfinator

The only gap I can see widening is the one between people who try to buy every cool thing they can get their hands on, and everyone else.

Well, yeah. Isn't that the whole premise about GW? Everyone is equal, stat-wise? The only thing we have is vanity, and some of us like it. That's why we farm.

KANE

TJ72 · Apr 22, 2007, 12:43 AM // 00:43

Simply put..

Anet made farming boring to make it uprofitable.

However bots dont get bored so they will still be around.
Money will be harder to get so more people will use gold merchants.

Looks like the online gold merchants are on to a winner with this one.

Still think a simple mission entry test like the crystal desert teleporters would solve the problem. Only those making money from them would dislike the implementation of this idea.

Kaleban · Apr 22, 2007, 01:15 AM // 01:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

I happen to agree that it was a good adjustment, myself. I'm nowhere near an expert farmer, but I believe that the changes and the expansion of the exempt list will achieve the necessary anti-inflation goals while preserving the challenge and rewards for those who are the high-level farmers.

As has been shown in various threads, many more people disagree than agree with those sentiments.

And I have to ask, what problem caused someone to come up with "anti-inflation" goals, when the previous system before nerf 1 had a relatively stable economy?

And I've been solo-farming since the update to test out your beliefs. The challenge is there still, at least in Hard Mode, but the rewards CERTAINLY aren't.

So please, instead of only quoting and answering those who agree with you, try explaining to those of us who are discontented why any change was necessary in the first place?

If its botting you're trying to get rid of, this nerf was asinine, as it only ends up making their services more valued and desired.

If its to maintain interest in titles while decreasing interest in items, to entice players to purchase EN and 2, then this move is beautiful in its subtlety.

But a STRAIGHT answer as to why the nerf to human players was enacted in the first place, rather than "belief doublespeak" would be nice for a change. I don't want to know what you think is good or not, I want to know WHY the developers felt it was necessary.