Curse

IxChel · Jun 07, 2005, 04:52 PM // 16:52

Farming could be nerfed across the board quite easily by recording on each toon how many gold and purple items someone received in a given area. Once the number of gold and purple for an area is met, all future gold/purple drops could be automatically converted to blue or none instead. The number of gold/purple can depend on the size of the area, number of bosses, or any other simple measure.

For those people who are doing the missions and playing the game, the rewards are drops. Each area has a cost/drop ratio, and people who farm look for areas where the cost is low and the drop is high. This gives those players who are "into the grind" an advantage from casual players who follow the quests, etc. Arena Net takes great care to balance out areas; a change like this would help since it dynamically changes the cost/drop ratio after the Nth visit to an area. In effect, it would make farming far less attractive. IMHO, this would help balance the game.

(more explanation added after some of the comments below)

I'm not saying that they shouldn't _increase_ the drop rate for major/superior runes. I'm suggesting a method for limiting farming. There is a difference. What I'm saying is that finding an "area" to exploit for a few hours, days or weeks, and then shutting the "area" down isn't fair to those that have not exploited the area (while it was still farmable).

I wouldn't care if other people farm if they didn't "nerf" the areas. I'm proposing a alternative, more fair, across-the-board nerf mechanism. In this proposal, if one area is "easy", and people get 3 gold items from it; then later players can get 3 gold. That's all.

I've played many many days (but not farmed) and I've yet to see a good weapon I'd use, and I've only unlocked minor runes. This is a problem, yes. And it should be addressed. However, this is not the problem I'm addressing with this proposal. What I'm addressing is the inherit unfairness that person X and Y who farm area A on Monday get 5 gold, but after a nerf on Tuesday, person X only gets 1 purple -- with the same time spent. That's not fair. It's not fair that person X who reads the web pages and talks to his guild members about best "farming" places gets an advantage over someone else who spends as much time playing (and thinking).

Farming isn't about skill, it's about knowing where and investing a ton of time. It's grind. Seeing people with all of those Runes on them makes people at Arena Net want to further _restrict_ drops, not increase them. If you arn't farming, this increases _your_ grind; if you are farming, you're already grinding. For those that want to see the drop rate go up, you should be for my proposal, not against it.

Farming doesn't lower prices, it creates wealth differences that bleed over into PvP combat. The best way to level prices is to have auctions. Removing farming won't necessarly cause prices to go up; you are assuming that the overall drop rate would go down across the entire marketplace. This assumption need not be true -- indeed, it might be false depending on how the change were implemented.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lasher Dragon

Make it so you really shouldn't HAVE to farm, and if you do farm it will autonerf that farm spot for you without globally nerfing that spot. Is that what you mean?

Yes, exactly.

Lasher Dragon · Jun 07, 2005, 04:55 PM // 16:55

And the point of this would be....?

mtxed · Jun 07, 2005, 04:56 PM // 16:56

Whats your point?

Mumblyfish · Jun 07, 2005, 04:59 PM // 16:59

Or, for an actual feasable solution, remove the need for farming altogether. Increase the Rune drop rate, get rid of the silly Skill Point system... better for all parties involved than tracking drops.

Talesin Darkbriar · Jun 07, 2005, 05:02 PM // 17:02

While I understand the OP's concern of farming in regards to market pricing and game economies, the zones are completely instanced...so why is this even an issue?

Think the economy prices are outrageous?
I've always found what works best is that I get off my butt and go get the desired item myself. Gear and runes just don't make or break your character in this game as they do in others - the anticipation is a carry over from the EQ/EQ2/Lineage2 mindset.

Play Accordingly,

Talesin

Chuck Wagon · Jun 07, 2005, 05:41 PM // 17:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by IxChel

This gives those players who are "into the grind" an advantage from casual players who follow the quests, etc.

Uhm... how does making runes harder to get help casual players?!
Are you being sarcastic? Is today opposite day? Help me out.

DarrenJasper · Jun 07, 2005, 05:50 PM // 17:50

Well, since there's no way to anticipate where a specific item will drop or from who, the best way to get the one you want is usually to farm for it...

I agree farming is a problem, but the solution is to make it unnecessary, not unviable.

Lasher Dragon · Jun 07, 2005, 05:58 PM // 17:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by IxChel

For those people who are doing the missions and playing the game, the rewards are drops. Each area has a cost/drop ratio, and people who farm look for areas where the cost is low and the drop is high. This gives those players who are "into the grind" an advantage from casual players who follow the quests, etc. Arena Net takes great care to balance out areas; a change like this would help since it dynamically changes the cost/drop ratio after the Nth visit to an area. In effect, it would make farming far less attractive. IMHO, this would help ballance the game.

I "casually" made my way up to the Ring of Fire area and have yet to unlock a single superior rune of any kind.

Boy I sure wish they would make it harder to unlock superior runes.

Pandora's box · Jun 07, 2005, 06:54 PM // 18:54

I'm really amazed. I'm level 20 now, but in all those weeks I found 2 gold and maybe 5 purple items. Droppings in the field are very low right now. So what are you talking about? Doing temple quests?

Burem · Jun 07, 2005, 06:56 PM // 18:56

Why do we need to limit farming? That will just raise the prices. Why the hell do you care if other people farm?

Lasher Dragon · Jun 07, 2005, 07:06 PM // 19:06

OK ok now I understand what you are saying IxChel - make it so you really shouldn't HAVE to farm, and if you do farm it will autonerf that farm spot for you without globally nerfing that spot. Is that what you mean?

Lazarus · Jun 07, 2005, 10:49 PM // 22:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burem

Yeah except what if I get unlucky and don't get any of the runes my character needs? I can't PVP competitively..... I can't play the class I want? Seems fair.

Burem, I have spent many hours farming for runes and upgrades. While I have never made 100k in a day, I did make enough to help my guild buy a sigil. I am now about to buy the last bit of my 15k armor set, and even after that I will still farm. I have been very unlucky when it comes to unlocking runes for my main class. Once we got a guild hall, I just gave everything I didn't need to my guild mates so they didn't have farm. Now that you can see the class and power of a rune before you ID it, this works out even better.

So yeah, you could be unlucky like me. No matter what, you could do a lot of good for your guild, your friends, or even just random people.

Lazarus

Ordas · Jun 07, 2005, 11:47 PM // 23:47

you guys are being kinda harsh to the OP. He's suggesting a way to help!

As of now, Anet is nerfing every farming spot they hear about right? Well this garuntees that only the top of the top will be able to farm the hell out of any spot before it gets nerfed. Only the people with the most connections/friends will know about a certain area in time before it goes down. I don't know how this helps casual players.

What the OP suggests is a personal nerfing. Anet will get the nerf that they want but that doesn't mean that all players except a certain few will get good items. This way, everyone has an equal chance to get items. If they decide to farm, it will autonerf and they will have to move on to the next zone.

He's not saying that farming is good or bad (from what I see) but he's offering an alternative to the current nerf-bat of doom that Anet is swinging.

IxChel · Jun 08, 2005, 03:18 PM // 15:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Myodato

5. Nerfing farming spots is [...] about balancing risk vs reward, whether it's being farmed or not. If I can get 5 gold items an hour in one place, and 1 an hour in another of similar difficulty, then something's wrong

Exactly. The problem with Arena Net's current "nerf bat" is that it is asymmetric - it gives advantages to the first movers (the ones who can afford to stay home from work or don't have a life out side of Guild Wars). I'm proposing that they can get rid of their "nerf bat" with a bit of adaptave program logic -- an auto-nerf. This way everyone can enjoy the fun of getting cool drops from a given area rather then just the first 20 that figure out how to exploit it.

FrogDevourer · Jun 08, 2005, 04:06 PM // 16:06

Moved to sardelac sanitarium as it is a suggestion to ANet.

The aim of this thread is to propose an alternate drop system to remove or to reduce repetitive item runs (aka: farming or item/rune grinding). Stay on topic, please. If you want to tell us how good a farmer you are, or if you want to convince that farming, grinding, is good/bad/necessary/boring or whatever, you'll find plenty of other threads for this.

nine6nine · Dec 03, 2005, 02:06 PM // 14:06

Ok then i see what you mean but what you sujested wont work because making sup vig/sup absoratoin more common will make em less valualbe meaning that it damages the econamy and also i dont wish to flame or anything and im not saying that u do do this but the people who do the missoins like every one else but expect sup vigor or absorotain are maybe to lazy to try to find an area that you can farm i mean for me farming is a skill to go out and kill monsters without dying is very hard although wot I dont like is the people who get rich by going online finding a bot that auot farms going out to work/school comes home and has 500k on his carachter

lyra_song · Dec 03, 2005, 02:30 PM // 14:30

I really like this idea of the self-nerf instead of screwing over the newbies.

This will actually PROMOTE farming for new players BUT limit it from being abused.

Its just like real farming. You cant keep tilling a field year after year. You have to let it lie fallow so it can regenerate.

edit:

How about once you nerf all the farming areas, you can activate a counter to un-nerf it.

So you have a character who finished all the missions and quests and have just nerfed all the farming areas for the character. Now what?!

Now you go and help the new guys out

Thats right! For every mission you help newbies with (discounting missions that can be ran) it will give you "un-nerf points" that is spread randomly through out all the farming zones.

Kai Nui · Dec 03, 2005, 05:01 PM // 17:01

How about every time you beat a mission and bonus you get 1k

Makkert · Dec 03, 2005, 05:12 PM // 17:12

This thread was over 4 months old....
Threadnecromancy....

Xue Yi Liang · Dec 03, 2005, 05:18 PM // 17:18

Don't forget that ANet is not against farming completely.

Making inherent caps would seriously kill a lot of the replay value of the game. When I finished it the first time - what's the point of re-exploring if I know I reached my "rare" quota in a given area? In other words, what you propose will just kill the game entirely for a veteran player.