Guild Wars 2

I want to start by saying that GW2 is a casual MMO….that’s just a fact. There is no sort of hardcore PvE….barely any sort of Hardcore PvP…..and barely any long term goals to work for (I can only think of legendaries, which are purely cosmetic).

So, knowing that GW2 is a casual MMO…should Anet be putting all the fixes to these drops that they have been, such as diminishing returns, drop nerfs, etc….

Gold is very hard to come by in this game. Unless you endlessly grind dungeons, or are particularly good at economics, you won’t be getting much gold.

With all of these “fixes” to drops, you can no longer farm for gold efficiently. On top of this…the prices for everything skyrockets on the TP. Lowering peoples incomes and reducing prices is a truly terrible thing to do.

There needs to be NO diminishing returns….and there needs to be NO nerfs to drops. Low prices shouldn’t be a scary thing…I don’t see why Anet thinks they are. They’re simply forcing their playerbase (which is largely casual) to realise that they may never get anything that they want in this game because of the ridiculous prices that result from nerf after nerf to drops….

I doubt many of us are economists, so I wouldn’t wager a remark. All I know is I’ll try to make the optimal decisions in response to their moves.

Every time we turn around, prices are going up, and ways of making income are getting nerfed. I don’t see why Anet want’s a majority of people to be poor. One of several things needs to happen…

1) DR is removed
2) Drop rates are increased
3) Costs of living are reduced (no WP cost)
4) Gold drop rates need to be upped (5s from an event as opposed to 1.5 silver would GREATLY increase populations in lower level areas).

I understand your concerns, but….

Wouldn’t it be more money chasing the same number of goods. Which would allow them to offer more for the goods they wants. Which would raise the average price of items.

But I maybe wrong. I’m not an economist. This is a game, I don’t care to delve into it’s details so much as this.

EDIT:
Hm, well you also said there’d be an increase in drop rates. Idk, does it really matter?

Thing is, things aren’t that expensive. You can kit out a character in full rares after a few dungeon runs.

The difficulty is that people have decided that full exotics should be easily achievable, and that legendaries should be attainable to everyone. But given the definition of each of these labels this seems odd.

There isn’t much difference between exotics and rares in terms of performance. They should be a long term goal for most players. Legendaries are meant to be just that, legendary. I now see about one a day wandering around, and they’re now a bit underwhelming.

If everyone gets exotics, then they’ll have very little to do at end game, especially if skins are as easy to get as they are (and would be even easier without nerfs). This would force ANet to have to introduce a new tier of gear for players to work towards because they’re bored and have nothing to work towards. Let’s for the fun of it call it something like ‘Ascended’ gear.

Now, can you imagine how annoyed players would be if ANet were forced to create a new tier because everyone had already got the top-level stuff really easily?

Accessibility of gold doesn’t need to change at all. If you had more you’d just get taken for more at the TP.

What needs to change is IF ANet would like to shift the emphasis more towards getting out and being a hero as opposed to a day trader (its a spectrum, the game could gravitate towards many points along that range) is to increase the drop rates for desired goods – more value entering the system, less worthless coin inflating it constantly. If more people are able to see acceptible progress towards their goals by adventuring, we’ll have less people having their entire piggybank held hostage to market pricing.

I’m personally pretty content if I see 1% progress per day, playing 2-3 hours. In the case of trying to get Infinite Light, if I can dig up 15 orichalcum per day and get 2-3 (average 2.5) Charged lodestones in a day, I’d call that a good day. A day good enough I don’t even look at the market for those two items because I’m creeping forward on my own, thanks.

Orichalcum I have dialed into that level. The lodestone drop rate does not make that feasible. So against my better judgement (and frankly against my self-interest, because giving money to the market just arms it to cut you off further) I occasionally track the prices of lodestones. Haven’t bought any yet, but I look.

Fixes like diminishing returns are stopgap measures. They exist because their drop rates are not terribly well balanced, and they understand they won’t be able to fix them quickly, so DR is plugged in to help prevent things from getting out of hand until they’re able to properly tune drops.

I would not expect DR to be in the game long term, at least not if they put the effort into balancing their reward structure – it’s a really punishing and unpopular mechanic. In the short term, however, I can understand it from a management standpoint.

the end of it is,

ANet has clearly laid out a gear progression:

rare->exotic->ascended->legendary

They have also made clear in their PR and promotional posts that they want this game to allow you to progress by playing rather than working and being a wizard rather than being a day-trader.

The current severely nerfed rate of exotics and horrendous precursor rate are counter to the above.

Precursors will continue to skyrocket as long as their drop rates are so low that entire weeks can go by without a single account across all realms receiving one.

Exotics will continue to skyrocket as long as lodestones and other crafting mats continue to remain virtually unobtainable through one’s own play, and the looted ones continue to remain at their abysmal post-11/15 levels.

If they want to accomplish their goals, then they need to have NPC traders who will accept various less-rare goods, karma, tokens, or all of the above to get precursors, and they need to bring the exotic drop rate back to pre-11/15 levels, because atm I’ve stopped doing dragons.

Dragon chest exotic drops have tanked by at least a factor of 10 since the 11/15 patch.

The RNG either has to go, or be brought up to an acceptable level, not 0.0001% from bosses only.