Guild Wars 2

So all lodestones drop from either a dungeon in about 4-5 clears you will get 1 or a 00000.1% from a certain elemental mob in the wild. Making farming these for crafting impossible. A-net NC soft failed with Aion in north america because they made the mistake in thinking we like to grind farm like the asian market. We dont mind the farming to a reasonable extent your current Drop% on most end game items is way way to high. Legendary precursors, Lodestones, BLChest. These issues need to be addressed.

Your system is pushing people to Gold buying sites because o these low drop %

Actually the team behind aion is an entirely different one than the one behind gw2, that said, I don’t like the lodestone idea as well but as you can see, ‘endgame’ is farming and grinding.

If it was last least you could get one lodestone for each dungeon clear, seems most recipes require at least 100 lodestones. If you could dungeon “farm” them that is 100 clears which is enough tokens gear to gear up 3 characters…

I’ve actually gotten a Destroyer Lodestone from a Heavy Miner’s Bag or something like that.

Sold it on TP for 1.8 G

I really don’t like the lodestone rate aswell, for something that is needed in so many recipes (even the halloween permanent weapons!) and surely at this rate more recipes using them will come out during next holiday events and so on, the difficulty to get them is virtually unfarmable unless you are a mindless bot ~_~ and even then i doubt they get alot of them per 24 hour farm!

I have also gotten 1 crystal lodestone from a forge recipe at random in the quest for mystic clovers, otherwise I have tried farming earth elementals and only have 1 drop to show for it…but for my entire 2 months playing my character to barely have found over 5 lodestones(I don’t do dungeons yet) is quite disappointing

While I dislike them as well, I can understand the need for them. Imo, this effectively becomes the biggest barrier to entry to getting top-tier weapons (by that i mean really cool-looking ones) and something to slow down the community to achieving its maturity before anet feels it is ok to do so.

There is only one flawed point I can think of.The reason for the difficulty of the weapons is obvious – they’re really kitten.And you should feel like a boss when you go pawning mobs/players in Wv3 or whatever.
However, having grinded for the infinity+1 afternoon, all the joy of having the weapon may be compromised.You’ll have grinded so much to the point of sickening.

I would love to a slightly higher drop rate of lodestones but at the current rates you CAN farm them. I personally farmed 2 charged lodestones in 1.5hrs. That was some of the most boring farming I have ever done mind you and i had only about 130% MF gear on. 1 per run would be nice and can pretty much guarentee the vast majority would never attempt to run a single dungeon 250+ times for 1 weapon skin. However, that would make dungeons a farm spot more than they already are. What stops a group of 5 running the dungeon explorable (CoF/CM) in 15-20mins and in 50 runs they can make weapons that could sell for 150-400g.

If lodestones will be guaranteed from dungeons the weapon will no more cost 150-400g.
to me they should increase the drop rate from other players in wvw.

Me and a friend have managed to farm up 6 charged lodestone between the two of us in the past 3 days. We farmed sparks after completing the Zephrys Temple. The are hard to come by, but not impossible. From what i have read and our experience 1 per hour is possible (over time…you won’t get 1 ever hour, on the hour). I also made over a gold each time we farmed it just from the huge number of greens, few golds, and Opal Shards/Crystals.

Get out there and get farming.

And if you don’t like farming….maybe a legendary isn’t for you.

Yeah, I thought a legendary was bad at first…so I was gunning for Mjolnir—350 charged lodestones….gg

Can you combine a type of lesser, more common lodestones into the expensive ones (no idea really, havent looked into those recipes too much)? If not mybe that would be the idea, make a common lodestone fragment that drops more often but you need to combine up 100 to make a full lodestone. That way at least you feel some progress from farming.

Mastruq.2463:

Can you combine a type of lesser, more common lodestones into the expensive ones (no idea really, havent looked into those recipes too much)? If not mybe that would be the idea, make a common lodestone fragment that drops more often but you need to combine up 100 to make a full lodestone. That way at least you feel some progress from farming.

They are called cores usually, and there is a recipe. But they drop rarely too.

best way to get profit right now, did you see the Glacila lodestone post in black lion trading ?

There are a couple weapons I would like to make but due to the insane lodestone requirements I wont even bother. This is a great example of the unrealistic lodestone recipe.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mjolnir

This recipe takes 350 lodestones. 100 for the gift of lightning and 250 for the recipe. Thats just nuts. I mean its a cool looking hammer but kitten thats a bit excessive, the 250 ori bars and the bolts of gossamer will take quite a while to get by itself. Something needs to be changed about this.

Hahahaha, Mjolnir costs about the same as a legendary weapon! Nice!
But anyway, most people would agree that they like it more than Juggernaut(was that the name?).

Some lodestones are getting ridiculous. It’s exactly what ArcTheFallen is experiencing. We’re not even talking about legendaries here, a casual player or even an average player is going to have a difficult time looking cool with certain lodestones inbalanced.

It’s even more funny when you see that (last I checked anyway) glacial cores to glacial loNestone conversion costs more than what it is on the TP.

There’s a severe lack of recipes for some and too many recipes for others (e.g. charged lodestones), especially with the drop rate.

There are no lodestones required to get the best gear in the game though. It’s all personal preference.

Torvarren.6295:

There are no lodestones required to get the best gear in the game though. It’s all personal preference.

True, getting Mjolnir for me is a personal preference, but when an exotic costs more than a legendary O_o. Something isn’t right there.

Torvarren.6295:

There are no lodestones required to get the best gear in the game though. It’s all personal preference.

I keep seeing this ‘personal preference, aesthetic, not necessary for BiS’ argument. Why should something as important as ‘personal preference’, as the very image a person wants their character to be, be something that is hidden behind weeks of frustrating/unfun grind and RNG?

To many, many players looks are just as important as utility/effectiveness. While I am not one of them, I can see how looks can be rather important to a FANTASY MMO experience. So why is it that something so basic is given such frustrating (not even hard, or skill-based, or brag-worthy) barriers that need to be overcome? Yes, I’m talking about the 100+ lodestone recipes and the legendaries specifically.

The worst part is that the rarest lodestone is used in the most recipes. Charged lodestones are nearly 3g each, and used in Mjolnir, Foefire’s Power, Foefire’s Essence, Azureflame, Aether, the Guardian shield, Sunrise, and probably some others that I’m missing.

Compare that to glacial lodestones which are used in 1 dagger recipe and 1 legendary.

Kalagon.3120:

So all lodestones drop from either a dungeon in about 4-5 clears you will get 1 or a 00000.1% from a certain elemental mob in the wild. Making farming these for crafting impossible. A-net NC soft failed with Aion in north america because they made the mistake in thinking we like to grind farm like the asian market. We dont mind the farming to a reasonable extent your current Drop% on most end game items is way way to high. Legendary precursors, Lodestones, BLChest. These issues need to be addressed.

Your system is pushing people to Gold buying sites because o these low drop %

Arenanet made a point of making GW2 anti-grind. A higher drop rate of lodestones would encourage people to “grind farm” them as drops. How can you say that the problem is that they assume people like to farm, and the solution is to make people farm more?

If you want to farm for them but don’t want to kill the enemies that drop them, then farm for gold and buy them on TP.

TheRabbit.9478:

The worst part is that the rarest lodestone is used in the most recipes.

That’s basic supply and demand. They aren’t the rarest (in fact its the only lodestone I’ve had drop) but they are in much higher demand with only a similar supply as the others.

I have been farming corrupted lodestones in frostgorge usually about a couple hours a day for about a week now and have only gotten 16 of them, and I have bought a few too. Its really unacceptable. The amount needed for the corrupted weapons is doable at 20-30 a weapon but the amount needed for a mjolnir and many of the other weapons is just ridiculous and I just wont even bother.

I am at the point now where I have a few armor sets and weapons from dungeon running and am not willing to grind for months to get named weapons so I think I might be close to being done for a while unfortunately.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Kalagon.3120:

So all lodestones drop from either a dungeon in about 4-5 clears you will get 1 or a 00000.1% from a certain elemental mob in the wild. Making farming these for crafting impossible. A-net NC soft failed with Aion in north america because they made the mistake in thinking we like to grind farm like the asian market. We dont mind the farming to a reasonable extent your current Drop% on most end game items is way way to high. Legendary precursors, Lodestones, BLChest. These issues need to be addressed.

Your system is pushing people to Gold buying sites because o these low drop %

Arenanet made a point of making GW2 anti-grind. A higher drop rate of lodestones would encourage people to “grind farm” them as drops. How can you say that the problem is that they assume people like to farm, and the solution is to make people farm more?

If you want to farm for them but don’t want to kill the enemies that drop them, then farm for gold and buy them on TP.

TheRabbit.9478:

The worst part is that the rarest lodestone is used in the most recipes.

That’s basic supply and demand. They aren’t the rarest (in fact its the only lodestone I’ve had drop) but they are in much higher demand with only a similar supply as the others.

There are times, when the global trading post just has about 100~200 charged lodestones. Currently it is at 377.

One Mjolnir takes 350 of them.
Besides the 1000g it requires to buy them, if a global trading post can barely offer enough of a single material to make a single weapon, then there is something horribly horribly wrong.

It’s a problem…
Get a unique weapon now and pay the price of tons of hours sacrifice.

Or wait until an update will drop the req. , while at the same time everyone will start obtaining it. Making it less unique and more available.

This is just the current market value. All the very expensive lodestone have their relative dragon counterpart. Once new content gets added to add more zones, mobs, and dungeons for the respective turfs of these remaining dragons, then we’ll start seeing more supply and lower prices.

If you want the item now, you’ll be spending a lot more time and gold. It’s the trade-off for being the very few to craft these weapons due to their expensive nature. Your other option is to accumulate gold so that when these items due drop in price you get more lodestone for your gold later on but that also comes at the trade-off of obtaining the item when it’s more readily available to the playerbase.

I don’t see anything wrong design wise with how lodestones are at the moment. The trade-offs seem fair.

I agree, this is a problem that needs to be addressed. 3 days ago I wrote a suggestion in order to improve the way lodestones are obtained but seems it wasnt attractive enough haha → https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Rare-crafting-materials-core-lodestone-transform/first#post659937

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Arenanet made a point of making GW2 anti-grind. A higher drop rate of lodestones would encourage people to “grind farm” them as drops. How can you say that the problem is that they assume people like to farm, and the solution is to make people farm more?

If you want to farm for them but don’t want to kill the enemies that drop them, then farm for gold and buy them on TP.

Arenanet wanted to discouraged grinding, so they created a system by which more grinding is required to acquire the highest tier of equipment?

Please tell me i what universe this makes any sense.

Skar Hand.5037:

Me and a friend have managed to farm up 6 charged lodestone between the two of us in the past 3 days. We farmed sparks after completing the Zephrys Temple. The are hard to come by, but not impossible. From what i have read and our experience 1 per hour is possible (over time…you won’t get 1 ever hour, on the hour). I also made over a gold each time we farmed it just from the huge number of greens, few golds, and Opal Shards/Crystals.

Get out there and get farming.

And if you don’t like farming….maybe a legendary isn’t for you.

Agreed but not just legendary weapons need them several Exotics take up to 350- 400 lodestones. Farming is on if they have area’s that we can farm in the wild and the drops arnt isane. Im sure some people remember mote/elemental farming in wow burning crusade it was hard work and time consuming but you could see yourself getting closer.

seventhson.6932:

There are a couple weapons I would like to make but due to the insane lodestone requirements I wont even bother. This is a great example of the unrealistic lodestone recipe.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mjolnir

This recipe takes 350 lodestones. 100 for the gift of lightning and 250 for the recipe. Thats just nuts. I mean its a cool looking hammer but kitten thats a bit excessive, the 250 ori bars and the bolts of gossamer will take quite a while to get by itself. Something needs to be changed about this.

100% correct and this is just 1 example there are dozens of recipies like this with this dumb design, and they wonder why people go to gold sites to just buy gold, ITS TO AFFORD LODESTONES.

Been farming CoE for charge lodestones recently. I’d say i get a charged core on average 1 out 3 runs (so 1 per 9 chests or so) Pretty kitten slow, wish the dungeon had some variety and less health on subject alpha ;o.

why do you think without the work you deserve a fantastic looking weapon? The more I read about these things I find some are justified, however most are people wanting Anet to put a legendary or equivalent of their choice in the path of said player so the player can do the least necessary and still have the “best” weapons in the game…seems a little silly to me.

The idea behind lodestones is that even though you need 100 lodestone for whatever reason, there are 99 other people doing the same dungeons killing the same monsters who DON’T need the lodestones AT ALL. But they’re getting lodestones at the same speed you are.

You’re not supposed to farm for lodestones, you’re supposed to get lodestones from the 99 other people who are getting them but don’t need them.

The “bad design” aspect of this is that they are so rare that people don’t really get a whole lot of them at all and it’s too easy for speculators to drive the prices up because the market moves too slow for supply and demand to stabilize it.

Varonth.5830:

There are times, when the global trading post just has about 100~200 charged lodestones. Currently it is at 377.

One Mjolnir takes 350 of them.
Besides the 1000g it requires to buy them, if a global trading post can barely offer enough of a single material to make a single weapon, then there is something horribly horribly wrong.

This guy summed it up. 350 Charged Lodestones to craft one non-legendary weapon. About that many on the global Trading Post. For the entire game. There are enough to craft ONE. And this is going to add up to between 800 and 1000g – an amount no one can realistically farm so they will either buy it from Anet or buy it from the botters. To make a non-legendary.

Let’s say our prospective Mjolnir-crafter decides to take the nobler (and more expensive) path, and buys 800g worth of gems from Arenanet. Well, at current prices it costs $10 for 800 gems. Gem->Gold conversion rates vary wildly, but let’s be generous and say you can get 1g for your 100 gems. At this generous rate, you will spend $10 on 8g. I’m sure you all can do the math – that’s about 1000 bucks worth of gems to buy enough lodestones to craft a Mjolnir.

I don’t think they should change anything about the drop rate, when they add new areas they will probably add these drops to the loot tables aswell. Also, they shouldn’t be easy to farm and rather be gotten as random drops by people who then put them on the market. I do think that they should maybe scale down the amount of lodestones needed for some recipes, the rarity of the stones isn’t the issue tbh, it’s the amount needed.

Only problem with whole legendary weapons matter is that kids today want it all and now. Legendary weapon is meant to be crafted for months, slowly gathering and meeting requirements. What is legendary about one week of grinding and coming out with most valued item in game?
That said, idea was not to grind your brains out getting lodestones but to do events, dungeons and other profitable stuff, gathering wealth and getting them by trade aswell as drops from adventuring.
Another thing that is stoping most players to enjoy game is korean grindfest mentality: “If i grind hard and long i will make it faster, I also deserve it more because i grinded 10 straight hours!” False.
Anet said they want to discourage grinding. If you are not discouraged to grind those lodestones by horrific drop rates, but instead think you need to grind even more, then you have some issues to resolve.
Also, its not drop rates that forces players to buy gold from sites, its lazyines and impatience, paired with fact that they probably didnt lift a finger to earn that money.

How is buying items from other players to craft something legendary? Its stupid and promotes capitalism.

Malediktus.9250:

How is buying items from other players to craft something legendary? Its stupid and promotes capitalism.

Trading rare finds with fellow adventurers to complete you weapon project that you are working on for ages? You know, weapon is legendary because it requires rare and hard to obtain materials not because you have to be legendary trader…
Also, dont equalize trade with capitalism. Its shallow.

kRiza krimos.1637:

Only problem with whole legendary weapons matter is that kids today want it all and now. Legendary weapon is meant to be crafted for months, slowly gathering and meeting requirements. What is legendary about one week of grinding and coming out with most valued item in game?
That said, idea was not to grind your brains out getting lodestones but to do events, dungeons and other profitable stuff, gathering wealth and getting them by trade aswell as drops from adventuring.
Another thing that is stoping most players to enjoy game is korean grindfest mentality: “If i grind hard and long i will make it faster, I also deserve it more because i grinded 10 straight hours!” False.
Anet said they want to discourage grinding. If you are not discouraged to grind those lodestones by horrific drop rates, but instead think you need to grind even more, then you have some issues to resolve.
Also, its not drop rates that forces players to buy gold from sites, its lazyines and impatience, paired with fact that they probably didnt lift a finger to earn that money.

I am guessing you didnt really read this thread and just posted based on your own assumptions? You say most people dont want to grind, but should grind dynamic events for gold to buy them. How is this different? How much gold do you think 350 charged lodestones costs in the TP? How long just grinding DE’s for the gold would that take? For just 1 non-legendary weapon. You think people being upset by this are impatient kids, really? Your poorly thought out post lacking any critical thinking makes you sound like a kid.

See most people aren’t really that pissed about the lodestone requirement for legendaries thats expected, the real problem lies with a great many of the other unique weapons like the mjolnir that I linked to. You went on to say that its not the drop rates that drives people to buy gold from gold sellers its laziness? So for a non-legendary you think its ok farming and getting maybe 1 lodestone per hour for a non-legendary that requires 350 of them is ok, or is it just people being lazy? 350+ hours of farming mobs, DE’s or whatever for just 1 non-legendary weapon? People who are farming this much are going for a legendary not a non-legendary so yeah no, no one could be ok with that, because that is just an exercise in masochism.

Have you played Lineage, Aion, etc?

You had to farm 1000000 mobs to drop rare recipe, you had to farm 1000 hours so you can craft something that didnt even crit and you had to start again. That made those things rare when somene achived them.

I know these are one of those most grindy mmorpgs. But if you ask me If I want something like world of warcraft, casual and simple mmorpg, where everyone is entitled to everything or someting like Aion, lineage. I would never pick up World of Warcraft again.

Legendary and rare weapons should take months, years to obtain. But when you obtain you never take them off. Its something you cherish, someting you are kitten proud off and when you have them, the whole server remebers your nickname.
But if players wants Legendaries, or really rare weapons like Mjolnir to take about few weeks, month to obtain. I am okey with that, I will just play Elder scrolls online.

I agree with more spots where to farm lodestones, etc. But grind is huge part of mmopgs.

kRiza krimos.1637:

Malediktus.9250:

How is buying items from other players to craft something legendary? Its stupid and promotes capitalism.

Trading rare finds with fellow adventurers to complete you weapon project that you are working on for ages? You know, weapon is legendary because it requires rare and hard to obtain materials not because you have to be legendary trader…
Also, dont equalize trade with capitalism. Its shallow.

What could be more capitalistic than this trading post with almost zero restrictions and a mere 15% tax? Tax should be at least 50%

What’s good about a 50% tax, exactly?

There doesn’t seem to be any need for that much of a gold sink; the main effect that would have is to cause a lot of people to conduct their business through mail rather than the TP.

1. It will stop people buying items on the trading post to instantly put it back in for a higher price, because the price margins are not enough if tax is 50%.
2. If they do that they can easily be scammed and Anet wont help them (I know from experience, got scammed before).

1. A 50% tax would reduce flipping, but it wouldn’t stop it, because the gaps between buy and sell orders on many items would also widen as a result of such a high tax. Besides, I don’t see why that’s even a good reason to justify hitting everyone in the game with a big tax.

2. People will easily be trustworthy significantly more than 50% of the time, hence the risk is easily justifiable. There’s also relatively easy ways for players to minimize this through out-of-game strategies – e.g. keeping public “name and shame” blacklists of scammers so that no one will trade with them anymore.

Dogblaster.6713:

Have you played Lineage, Arion, etc?

You had to farm 1000000 mobs to drop rare recipe, you had to farm 1000 hours so you can craft something that didnt even crit and you had to start again. That made those things rare when somene achived them.

I know these are one of those most grindy mmorpgs. But if you ask me If I want something like world of warcraft, casual and simple mmorpg, where everyone is entitled to everything or someting like Aion, lineage. I would never pick up World of Warcraft again.

Legendary and rare weapons should take months, years to obtain. But when you obtain you never take them off. Its something you cherish, someting you are kitten proud off and when you have them, the whole server remebers your nickname.
But if players wants Legendaries, or really rare weapons like Mjolnir to take about few weeks, month to obtain. I am okey with that, I will just play Elder scrolls online.

I agree with more spots where to farm lodestones, etc. But grind is huge part of mmopgs.

Yes I have played those games and also FFXI, Arion did you mean Aion? I am thrilled for your desire to grind in MMO’s, but a great many players dont share your desire of insane grind festing. Also for the sake of argument how is having to raid for months to get a full set of Tier gear or even a legendary in wow entitlement? See a-net themselves said this MMO wouldn’t be a grindfest hence this discussion. I dont think people are totally against grinding its just that its really excessive, for a non-legendary item.

I doubt this, it would make prices on everything drop if demand from traders is gone.
Also as the game ages you can easily buy cheap new accounts to scam valuable items. I wouldnt be suprised if the base game will be avaible for 10$/€ as soon as the first paid expansions arrived. 10$ to scam expensive items isnt much and definatly cheaper than buying gems or from goldsellers.

Your claim about prices on everything dropping without traders seems mostly unfounded, because traders naturally supply the same quantity of items that they demand.

The purpose of a “name and shame” strategy would be to discourage relatively normal players from the temptation of scamming others; by comparison, people who buy accounts specifically for scamming would be a small minority. A 50% tax is very easily beaten by a 0% tax with, say, a 10% chance of getting scammed.

But you will also have to spend effort finding buyers and sellers like in GW1 then if you want to avoid tax. Sounds better either way.

For one thing, it would severely increase the amount of spam (especially in Lion’s Arch).

Also, the problem of having to find buyers and sellers would be trivially solved in many ways – for example, a website (this could easily be the same site that ends up being used to blacklist scammers).

I don’t really see how this would be a positive change to the game compared to the TP as it is now.

You would trade convenience for saving taxes. Seems fair.