Guild Wars 2

Hey All,

I might get a lot of heat for this, but I believe it should be addressed.
Ever since they added the Guaranteed Chest (per account) for main events, I feel as if that may be overdoing it with the rares. Rares to me are supposed to be rare, hard to come by.
With these “Dragon Event Farming” you are able to gain a minimum of 22 rares due to these chests. If you are extremely lucky, you will also get rares or better from the boss chest.
I understand how they are trying to encourage players to experience all these great events, but the rewards for it seems very unbalanced and plays a large role on the market.
Since the Guaranteed Chest was added prices on rares and ecto itself have decreased dramatically, and in order to fix the market you got to fix the source.

This is my solution on how to balance it out:
Make only the main dragons, Jorm, Shatt, Teq, give you the guaranteed chest + the temple events. These events take time and have large spawn times, hence why you should be rewarded with the rare or better.
Make every other event not give you a guaranteed rare, but instead only get the boss chest and slightly increase its drop rate just a tad.

To me this should fix the market on rares along with ecto prices, and at the same time you feel more rewarded on completing the bigger events and still not feel short handed on doing the smaller ones.

I appreciate any input or opinions you may have on this topic.

Thanks

Honestly, that’s merely a necessary counter to the fact that most other loot is like 90% blue and 5% green. I’d argue that the Bonus Chests aren’t unbalancing a thing, due to that loot-drop ratio. Now, if we had a slightly less “Diablo-esque” droprate, then those Bonus Chests could be comfortably removed. As it is, ANet speaks of not wanting the
game to be “grindy” but the existence of such a droprate + plus the Diminishing Returns system bloody well promote grinding. As for ectos, those have fluctuated
throughout the game’s uptime, and will undoubtably continue to do so.

I disagree with your problem statement. You are able to gain a maximum of 22 rares in this way, which requires you to participate in each and every one of these events. That still makes rares much less common than masterwork.

I agree with you that some of the events are over too quickly. I think that’s a bad thing because it both makes it too easy to get the bonus chest and, more importantly to me, it turns previously epic events into “blink and you miss it” snoozefests. During BETA, zergs of L15 players routinely wiped against the Shadow Behemoth; in today’s meta, Queensdale is often in overflow as soon kitten’s window opens and the fight never lasts more than 1-2 minutes.

I’d like to see ANet make the events more challenging through whatever tools they have available (change the mechanics, increase the health/power of “adds,” require more coordination, nerf L80 toons in full exotics more, …). If the Fire Elemental in Metrica took as long to defeat as Jormag’s Claw, people would have to earn their rare rather than just showing up.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I disagree with your problem statement. You are able to gain a maximum of 22 rares in this way, which requires you to participate in each and every one of these events. That still makes rares much less common than masterwork.

I agree with you that some of the events are over too quickly. I think that’s a bad thing because it both makes it too easy to get the bonus chest and, more importantly to me, it turns previously epic events into “blink and you miss it” snoozefests. During BETA, zergs of L15 players routinely wiped against the Shadow Behemoth; in today’s meta, Queensdale is often in overflow as soon kitten’s window opens and the fight never lasts more than 1-2 minutes.

I’d like to see ANet make the events more challenging through whatever tools they have available (change the mechanics, increase the health/power of “adds,” require more coordination, nerf L80 toons in full exotics more, …). If the Fire Elemental in Metrica took as long to defeat as Jormag’s Claw, people would have to earn their rare rather than just showing up.

Maybe u got something there, I state u can get minimum 22 rares, yes if u farm all of them, but at the same time you have a good chance at finding rares in the boss chest as well.

Example: Killed maw, got 1 rare from body, 2 from boss chest, 1 from guaranteed.
I know its not always like that, they sell for less then 20s each, salvage and get 6-7 ecto if I’m lucky, made decent money that way.

I just feel that with the guaranteed chest you do encourage grinding, I would love to not grind these bosses but the rares are too easy to get to just not do them.
I do agree, if they did increase the difficulty and so on based on the amount of players, that would make you feel as if you earned it.

I know a lot of players may not get so lucky, but how i see it, doing dredge, maw, wurm, and any other easy bosses, u get rewarded for 2 minutes of work.

I do appreciate your input which actually had a good solution in it.

I probably should have said that I support your sentiment, just not the way you have identified the problem. In other words, I agree with you that ANet should look closely at challenge-vs-reward. The question is: what should they do about it?

I agree with you that people are tending to grind these chests, which is why I’d like to see all the events become equally challenging. Two minutes is too little effort for a guaranteed rare — plus, if your load screen takes too long to spawn for SB or Maw, you end up in overflow and get nothing; that seems unfair, too.

Re: minimum vs maximum. Yeah, we aren’t really using the term the same way. I tend not to see any rares in the main chests. This past weekend, I think I hit a total of 30 events and didn’t get a single rare or exotic from the boss chest — only from bonus chests or trash mobs.

Thanks for your comments to my response

I don’t see any problem with the current state of affairs. Trash rares has a floored value set by their expected ecto production, and actual useful rares can be as much as twice that value. The market, as is, is stable and reasonable. If anything, the drop rate of rares from vets and champions should be higher, and given the fact that ANet has announced guaranteed boxes for champions in the future which may or may not include rares, I think they have that handled.

Weirwynn.2390:

I don’t see any problem with the current state of affairs. Trash rares has a floored value set by their expected ecto production, and actual useful rares can be as much as twice that value. The market, as is, is stable and reasonable. If anything, the drop rate of rares from vets and champions should be higher, and given the fact that ANet has announced guaranteed boxes for champions in the future which may or may not include rares, I think they have that handled.

But in my perspective, a rare should be rare, getting it often defeats its rarity. Some rares do value much and I think its due to the Mystic Forge, but soon you’ll be able to craft your own precursor and I bet those same rares will drop in price.

By Anet adding Champ Boxes, its only gonna add to the grinding. Unless the Champ box is 1 per account and not 1 per champ.

I feel when you find a rare or earn it, you should feel like you accomplished something or worked hard for it. Now its more like gather rares, salvage, make money. Im not saying to nerf rare drops in general but more of give the main events (the 3 dragons) give you the guaranteed, while the 1 minute men give just boss chest.

You have to agree on some degree that rares are easily obtained, mostly from the dragon events. Ecto is supposed to be an exotic material, but I bet a lot of players has stacks of them sitting in the bank.

A solution mentioned above, make the bosses actually scale in difficulty and in health/dmg. Make us work for it and make it less of a daily grind for easy cash.

Rooster.3261:

But in my perspective, a rare should be rare, getting it often defeats its rarity. Some rares do value much and I think its due to the Mystic Forge, but soon you’ll be able to craft your own precursor and I bet those same rares will drop in price.

By Anet adding Champ Boxes, its only gonna add to the grinding. Unless the Champ box is 1 per account and not 1 per champ.

I feel when you find a rare or earn it, you should feel like you accomplished something or worked hard for it. Now its more like gather rares, salvage, make money. Im not saying to nerf rare drops in general but more of give the main events (the 3 dragons) give you the guaranteed, while the 1 minute men give just boss chest.

You have to agree on some degree that rares are easily obtained, mostly from the dragon events. Ecto is supposed to be an exotic material, but I bet a lot of players has stacks of them sitting in the bank.

A solution mentioned above, make the bosses actually scale in difficulty and in health/dmg. Make us work for it and make it less of a daily grind for easy cash.

I have no problem with making the world boss fights more engaging, but you seem to be mistaken about the position and market of rares. The name “rare” means little, and given that each rare is still a significant gain, the name is applicable enough. As it is, Lv. 80 rares are a speedbump at best on the way to exotic equipment—mainly they get tossed into the forge, as you say, or turned into ecto.

Now, the lowest value of a rare is the 0.9 to 1.25 ecto it can produce depending on the kit you use to salvage it. Ectos are 18-19 silver each, right now, so the stacks you seem to think many people have would be worth 45 to 50 gold each. That is not a small amount—and yet, there are many uses for ecto that require exactly that amount.

Put plainly, ectos (and by extension rares) are used for a lot of things, and thus, the demand is in balance with the supply and they retain their value. Cutting off the supply of rares would see ectos, and by extension a lot of other things skyrocket in price, widening the gap between casual and hardcore players and resulting in more grind all around; grind for farmers to get them, and grind for everyone else to buy them.

You say you think rares are too common, but the market does not support your conclusion.

This game rarity scale is not on par with its intended loot drops. Everything is given to you easily, because gw2 is cater to the casual gamers. But when you are a hardcore player and you do constant dragon farming, those guaranteed rares you get from the dragon event’s chest are not a challenge to obtain, so you can get many rares from those dragon events all in one night. The “hard to come” across items in guildwars 2 should of started with masterwork (green rarity) items and above, hence why whenever you would use a salvage kit on it, the game would advise you if you are sure about doing so.
But in guildwars 2, rarity items , white, blue, green, seems to be of a common thing so it usually ends up as salvage scraps or merch for coins.

Gold, Orange items that you can also get from doing dragon events should be measured from “rare” to “very rare” to obtain. But it comes too easily from everyone doing Champion – Dragon events, then gets sold on the marketplace or salvaged as its been obtained. Which in turns- driving the ecto’s and gold (rare) items prices down in blt. Since guildwars 2 inception, rares and ecto’s were very hard to come by, which was when ecto used to be on average 34 silver to as high as 46 silvers, because dragons never dropped guaranteed chests, and the boss chest had a chance of rare and exotic, but not the best of chances.

In my opinion I agree with what rooster stated. The main dragons and temple bosses should be the one that greatly rewards players with the guaranteed chest and champ chest, because of the duration and difficulty to complete them. Rare items just do not have what it takes to even be consider rare in my honest opinion. It takes the fun out of treasure hunting, which guildwars 2 really lacks. Therefore it gets dull and boring really fast. With the upcoming champion giving rare chests patch coming up, wouldnt this just unbalance the game? there would even be more rares and more ecto’s on the marketplace.