Guild Wars 2

Almost 4 gold a piece seems to indicate a severe shortage of a material needed in so many recipes including exotics which are NOT legendary and should NOT require months if not years worth of farming.

This game is NOT supposed to be about grind, but grinding out 400 gold seems to be the only way to get 100 charged lodestones, as sparks are rarely available for FARMING on my server (or anyone else’s apparently) and even if they are, killing them for about an hour yielded ZERO!

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Almost 4 gold a piece seems to indicate a severe shortage of a material needed in so many recipes including exotics which are NOT legendary and should NOT require months if not years worth of farming.

They’re required for vanity exotics and therefore it’s perfectly okay in ANet’s eyes.

As I am on the quest to farm sunrise I feel this the most frustrating part ( besides getting my precursor ), but still this just increases the value of sunrise – so I dont mind it that much.

But what I hate most is people demanding to be everything the way the want it be.
For example

and should NOT require months if not years worth of farming

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

This game is NOT supposed to be about grind

Who are you to decide what this is game about and what shall be or shall not be? Did you spent years developing this game?

If you come to the conlcusion that farming sparks is not a good way to get em then think about something else. Go farm fractals, go farm crucible, go farm skritts for bags, go farm money to buy it from the tp.
If you think the price is too high then you don’t value them as high as others do, that is all there is.
Maybe you should overthink your plan on getting a legendary if you can’t handle these kinds of problems.

I don’t have near the time to get a legendary. But there are people with 3 even 4 of them. So it doesn’t seem to be impossible just … Legendary???

Nozdrum.2894:

As I am on the quest to farm sunrise I feel this the most frustrating part ( besides getting my precursor ), but still this just increases the value of sunrise – so I dont mind it that much.

But what I hate most is people demanding to be everything the way the want it be.
For example

and should NOT require months if not years worth of farming

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

This game is NOT supposed to be about grind

Who are you to decide what this is game about and what shall be or shall not be? Did you spent years developing this game?

If you come to the conlcusion that farming sparks is not a good way to get em then think about something else. Go farm fractals, go farm crucible, go farm skritts for bags, go farm money to buy it from the tp.
If you think the price is too high then you don’t value them as high as others do, that is all there is.
Maybe you should overthink your plan on getting a legendary if you can’t handle these kinds of problems.

If Im not mistaken, I thought Arenanet made it clear that they were trying to get away from the whole annoyance of grinding. I’ve heard this multiple times.. if it is true, this really isn’t the way to do it.

They really dropped the ball on balancing out the Lodestones.

Compare the availability of Charged to Corrupted, for example.

Corrupted drop all over the entire zone of Frostgorge, while Charged only drop from Sparks in Orr which you have to do a friggin’ event just to have the chance to have a try at getting these. The issue with Charged ones are not a grind issue; you can’t even grind them!

It’s pretty ridiculous. Been trying to craft Infinite Light, but I find it impossible. The zones are always contested on my server. Even when they aren’t I’m lucky to find one or two. If I try to buy them from the tp it’s over +1000g. lol

:(

DeadlySynz.3471:

Nozdrum.2894:

As I am on the quest to farm sunrise I feel this the most frustrating part ( besides getting my precursor ), but still this just increases the value of sunrise – so I dont mind it that much.

But what I hate most is people demanding to be everything the way the want it be.
For example

and should NOT require months if not years worth of farming

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

This game is NOT supposed to be about grind

Who are you to decide what this is game about and what shall be or shall not be? Did you spent years developing this game?

If you come to the conlcusion that farming sparks is not a good way to get em then think about something else. Go farm fractals, go farm crucible, go farm skritts for bags, go farm money to buy it from the tp.
If you think the price is too high then you don’t value them as high as others do, that is all there is.
Maybe you should overthink your plan on getting a legendary if you can’t handle these kinds of problems.

If Im not mistaken, I thought Arenanet made it clear that they were trying to get away from the whole annoyance of grinding. I’ve heard this multiple times.. if it is true, this really isn’t the way to do it.

They don’t want the grind to get max level gear (ie full exotics). Getting the exact skins you want for your armour/weapons was not at all part of the original statement.

Nozdrum.2894:

Who are you to decide what this is game about and what shall be or shall not be? Did you spent years developing this game?

He didn’t.

But ArenaNet did.

And they have stated, very clearly: “We don’t want players to grind”. They didn’t say, “We don’t want required grind”. No, they simply said, “We don’t want players to grind”.

Charged Lodestones require a lot of grind.

Ergo, either ArenaNet changed their minds, or, based on the statement from the people who spent years developing this game, Charged Lodestoned need to be changed.

Rewarding grind is a weak system. Pay to play MMOs reward grind since they are not seeking players, they are actually seeking addicts willing to play through mindless content over and over for a very long time, happily paying their monthly fees. Rewarding people for repeating over and over actions so simple that bots can do them is not good game design. Grind isn’t something that deserves a reward.

Then there is the whole issue of diminishing returns when you do try to farm. So the idea of farming them is pretty much not gonna happen which leaves either bounce from spot to spot farming and pray you get a good drop or buy gems and convert to gold and then buy charged lodestones off TP. Regardless, getting charged lodestones is legendary in its own right.

ArenaNet says that bots are nearly dead, so why do we need diminishing returns? Why should paying customers be denied rewards for any farming they decide to do? The have stated many times they don’t want to force us to farm, but all the nice looking stuff requires exactly that, and not just a little bit, a RIDICULOUS amount.

Why are sparks ONLY available after an event, which by the way is impossible for even two people to do? It seems to me this ONE crafting material is severely unbalanced and ArenaNet is completely ignoring that fact. Since they nerfed so many things in Orr it’s usually fairly empty because everyone is in fractals, the only thing they have not nerfed.

Are they nerfing to BALANCE the economy? It seems Charged Lodestones are unbalanced so how about addressing that???

I agree. Only benefit i can see from keeping diminishing returns is it forces people to buy gems with real cash to convert to gold which makes ANet real cash. Don’t get me wrong, im all for them making cash since there is no monthly fee but they should do it by offering more costumes, consumables, etc via the cash shop instead of manipulating drop rates on mats(assuming they are doing it).

They drop at a good rate from CoE. You all keep complaining about high prices of charged cores/lodestones instead of cashing in by running a dungeon every once in a while.

I wouldn’t say they drop “at a good rate”. I just did COE path 1 and 2 today and didn’t see a single one drop. In the past 3 or 4 runs of path 1 and 2, i’ve seen prolly like 3 cores and not a single lodestone. Assuming you need 100 lodestones(200 cores) and run COE like 1 or 2 times a day everyday, it will take you anywhere from 2 to 4 months(if you get 1 lodestone per path). That’s not factoring in cash from dungeons and buying em but at 4g each, that’s like 6 dungeons a day for 1 lodestone. Compare that to the price of other mats/lodestones and it is rather high. And this is assuming you find a group everyday that does COE path 1 and 2 in a semi efficient manner so you actually do make money since everyone seems to want to do only fractals which drop all lodestones so that makes the chances of getting a charged one even less.

they are tough to get, and the fact that so many exotics, all highly sought after, require a ton of them, it’s easy to see why they’re priced so high right now. definitely no efficient way to acquire these afaik. apart form buying them on the TP.

looking at gw2spidy, there are only about 600+ supply and over 3000 in demands, all probably at way lower prices than them being listed now.

stop farming sparks, start farming CoE.
although the drop rate could use a small boost in CoE the difference in drop rate between Sparks and CoE is massive still.

Farming CoE 1 up to Bjarl takes about 20 minutes in a good group.

A part of me believes we will see this change in the upcoming “expansion worth of content.”

Kain Francois.4328:

A part of me believes we will see this change in the upcoming “expansion worth of content.”

A part of me dreads the thought it’ll be in form of “Random Lodestone bags” from the gem store.

You guys reallize that grinding is one core mechanic of any mmo?
There is a lot of content in the game that does not require you to grind, this does so deal with it.

I have done AC a number of times to earn a nice greatsword, but I was unaware of CoE dropping charged lodestones. Doesn’t it also require an event to be completed before it’s available? It took me forever to finish my personal story (the first time) because of the Arah event requirement. I will have to check out how often my server has groups doing CoE.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

I have done AC a number of times to earn a nice greatsword, but I was unaware of CoE dropping charged lodestones. Doesn’t it also require an event to be completed before it’s available? It took me forever to finish my personal story (the first time) because of the Arah event requirement. I will have to check out how often my server has groups doing CoE.

Use gw2lfg.com, so long as 1 party member has access to the dungeon all of you should be able to enter.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

I have done AC a number of times to earn a nice greatsword, but I was unaware of CoE dropping charged lodestones. Doesn’t it also require an event to be completed before it’s available? It took me forever to finish my personal story (the first time) because of the Arah event requirement. I will have to check out how often my server has groups doing CoE.

it does have an event to unlock the dungeon yes but it’s nowhere near as long as the Arah one.

My personal opinion : the problem with Charged Lodestones especially is that they are required in each and every vanity exotics/lengendaries most people want. Bolt, Sunrise, Twilight, Meteorlogicus and many named exotics that you can craft in the Mystic Forge requires them. In my opinion it’s not that they don’t drop much (they shouldn’t), it’s more that the demand for them is too high because of that.

As said, the demand is not very high for others (like corrupted), and so even if they don’t drop much more, they don’t sell as high.

and yet people are clamoring for the scavenger hunt for an easy precursor… I’d say the price would hit 10g a piece of they implemented the welfare legendary system.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

ArenaNet says that bots are nearly dead, so why do we need diminishing returns? Why should paying customers be denied rewards for any farming they decide to do? The have stated many times they don’t want to force us to farm, but all the nice looking stuff requires exactly that, and not just a little bit, a RIDICULOUS amount.

Why are sparks ONLY available after an event, which by the way is impossible for even two people to do? It seems to me this ONE crafting material is severely unbalanced and ArenaNet is completely ignoring that fact. Since they nerfed so many things in Orr it’s usually fairly empty because everyone is in fractals, the only thing they have not nerfed.

Are they nerfing to BALANCE the economy? It seems Charged Lodestones are unbalanced so how about addressing that???

First off, the bots are nowhere near dead. I’ve reported numerous bots for weeks on end with other friends of mine as well. They are still there, still farming, without a care in the world. Then you have the underground harvest bots that pop out for a split second, harvest, and disappear. I’ve seen hundreds of these in Orr farming sparks…which leads me to my second item.

Dwayna event is most certainly doable with 2 people. I’ve done it MULTIPLE times a day over the holiday break with 2 rangers. It’s, by far, the easiest temple event and really needs to be made harder.

Charged lodestone drop rate is fine – IF – they make the sparks uptime 100%, at least somewhere.

Having to deal with temples, downtime, and the lovely diminishing return garbage that flows in this game is NOT ok for the current drop rate.

rchu.8945:

and yet people are clamoring for the scavenger hunt for an easy precursor… I’d say the price would hit 10g a piece of they implemented the welfare legendary system.

Sorry but the welfare legendary system already took place when the Karka event happened. Free chest with huge chance for hitting a mob once…LOL