Guild Wars 2

First the Nerfs:

I have a couple of issues with this regardless of how polite @JohnSmith was about the latest nerf.

1) This is the second time in recent months a HUGE change that effects economy was implemented and the excuse, “whoops we forgot to add it to the notes” was used. Why wasn’t this change alerted to the community well before the patch. You say you strive to keep the community informed yet in back to back months this has happened.

People have been storing Champ Bags, like Karma in their banks. While I personally didn’t do this and don’t understand those that have it was not right for a major nerf to effect previously gained rewards. No different than karma. The community deserves a head’s up when these sorts of changes come to allow those that have collected things before the patch for them to correct give the rewards.

2) A-Net you strive to say you want a friendly environment that doesn’t require grinding yet the continuous nerfs that narrow how rewards and gold are received is making it worse and worse.

Everything from Living Story, to building a legendary, dungeon skins, ascended crafting gem story purchases with gold vs real money, etc requires a high level of grinding for many days/weeks/months.

Before the champ train people used to farm dynamic events and dungeons. The community was split doing a mix of both along with hitting World Bosses when they spawned. The community was much more active and spread out. While only a few select dungeons were used this was because of broken mechanics (which you promised AGES ago to revamp ALL dungeons like AC to make them worth the effort).

DR changed everything. DR hit so hard that now all of the Orr area is a ghost town other than when temple God’s spawn. The ONLY unique level 80 zone is completely useless and the very thing A-Net created (dynamic events) for end game they squashed. These zones have no renown. Dynamic events are meant to be repeated and done all over running all over the zone fighting Orrian undead winning back contested areas. It’s SUPPOSED to be an endless war of back and forth just like WvWvW. You drove everyone away from this!

What was/is the purpose of Cursed Shores and SSC now? You have hit dynamic events with such hard DR you can only hit the same event once or twice before hitting nasty DR where no one wants to even bother, and on top of this the DR doesn’t go away until a 24 hour reset and it’s account bound?! Why not just delete the zone if you don’t want us there.

I understand you had bot issues, but THIS is your answer? Have you guys even looked at Orr? Do you see that every wp that could be contested is 99.9% of the time?

3) If you pigeon hole the community as soon as an exploit presents itself EVERYONE will jump on the bandwagon to try and make a buck. You at A-Net created the champ train issue by pushing people away from other end game thing like dungeons or dynamic events. This brings me to rewards…

Rewards:

1) If you take away all viable options to making reasonable ways to make money you force people to jump on bandwagon exploits. Regardless of what you do you will find some people looking to capitalize, however, you won’t find the entire community jumping at the chance to finally make some gold like you see now.

2) If I want to run around doing only dungeons or only one dungeon for the time I play I should be allowed. If the game is catered to the casual player why are you forcing the casual player to only do the thing they love once or twice before it cannot be done anymore without reward? I understand you don’t want areas to be like Queensdale champ train, however, if the rewards are opened up and more balanced you will find the community spread out vs only in the area that gives the best cash.

3) The amount of grind vs reward is broken. This is a very similar issue D3 had and I see GW2 falling into the same category. Currently the game that supposedly caters to the “casual” isn’t catering to the casual. It is catering to the elite who spends hours grinding daily and go ahead with where A-Net has pigeon holed them.

Does this sound familiar to you level 80’s? Sign in, do dailies while hitting any World Bosses that spawn, hit AC and CoF for some gold and tokens, finish with champ training the rest of the time I’m on also while hitting any world bosses I haven’t hit. Rinse and repeat daily. Get frustrated that even with hitting all the world bosses and champ train for 2 hours and 4 dungeon paths you didn’t even get an exotic weapon and maybe only pocketed 10-12g.

The only other way to make gold has become playing the TP (another issue D3 had which broke the game). People have to play the TP to really earn good gold and purchase gems or the coolest items.

There is so much effort needed to be put in for so little reward. The whole system needs to be completely revised very similarly to the balancing issues that are being addressed, but in my opinion balancing characters won’t fix a game when rewards, dungeons, bosses, areas are broken still. Why are new things being introduced when old things still sit broken? Things that are the bread and butter of the game like dungeons or world events? Things that were released over a year ago still sit broken where no once can use them meanwhile new “living story” content rolls out to placate us and stroke our interested for a week or two.

Also champ bags were introduced so that chests in dungeons would no longer drop gold but killing the champs inside the dungeon would make up for it. This would make people not simply skip minor bosses like champs but have incentives to play through the whole dungeon. I’m guessing the champ bag gold/dust nerf is generic not specific in-world vs dungeon, so now you’ve almost completely eliminated gaining gold from dungeons other than selling items that drop and the gold for completing the dungeon path the first time through.

4) True rewards. Where is our dungeon revamp? Where is our regularly released new paths of FotM that were promised? Where is our new level 80 zones for end game? These are true rewards vs a new backpiece, mini or personal node we can grind daily for months before we collect 10k worth of candy corn to make 1 item. Fixing content that we all want to play but can’t because it’s broken or not worth the time is a reward to the community. You want the community to spread out, to experience more of Tyria instead of focusing on 1 or 2 zones then open up the reward system don’t nerf it to death. Releasing new content to put people back in Kessex or where ever is only a temp fix until the event is done then that area is a ghost town again.

For some time Zboss I have felt the exact same way. I have an 16 month daughter and I find myself a casual player.

The limited ways to make gold and the limited things to do after reaching 80, I found myself playing very little these days, and find myself looking for new games to play. That are not having the gaming community constantly ripped clean of substantial rewards and having their player market base constantly manipulated.

I hope that Arena Net realizes that there are going to be exploits in every game, but to nerf everything be it areas, loot, gold etc and scale down rewards to combat bots/farmers/Zergs is ridiculous.

A-net: Who are you catering and conditioning the game towards? The community, hard core and casual gamers alike to have fun? Or the money and bot farmers to find exploits in a game like every other game? Or the Gem Store market to make even more profit for yourselves?

I find myself getting next to NO rewards as I play. I mean heck, I had better luck at finding more rares and interesting things at 20% magic find when I ate food compared to now with the account wide magic find sitting at 87% I am lucky to get anything decent. Or that I can actually use.

I love this game, and wish there was more, but as I’ve noticed so far after recent patches, it’s just one skin to a node after another and from one nerf to another. I find it literally impossible as a casual gamer to make the 150g or so that it is to get my weapon smith from 400 to 500. Sad really….

Also that, I will not be buying any more Gems from the store as you are not internationally friendly to Australia, on top of what we pay, we have to pay the exchange rate which after a while seems a lot more expensive for gems to get a skin than what it should be.

I only really play now to hang out with some awesome friends that I have made, other than that….

well Zboss said everything that I feel :/

(Just now reading through the extensiveness of the said nerfs and feedback thus far by other players of the community)
A lot of people are obviously and clearly aware of the mass market manipulation by you Arena Net. You should leave it alone. It’s not very professional. Nor is it honest.

EDIT:

“People have to play the TP to really earn good gold and purchase gems or the coolest items” – Zboss.

This. As I play even more, and as I watch, without fail a new skin is released to the gem store sometimes within days after other skins are released.

I see in all it’s reality. Arena Net seems like they are pushing the player base through the gem store. Pigeon holing their players where there is very little to no gold made, the end result? Gem Store. Purchasing gold for real cash. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind having to pay monthly to play this game if it meant that content was delivered into the game rather than into the in game store. I know people will rage at me saying this and completely misunderstand what I am saying, but I mean really, some of us have families, work and responsibilities, we can’t dungeon and fractal all day like some people and we don’t at all feel like throwing even more money at this game just to have something that looks amazing. Quite honestly, what is a game worth if half time spent is playing trade post for hours to flip a decent buck. It’s a game, How about leaving all the ridiculous mini games of economics out of the equation.

Yes people like the gem store appeal, they don’t mind at all forking over real dollars to get what they want out of it. I hear it was worse in GW1, where you had no exchange rate, and could ONLY get the in store items via credit card. I have seen many games fail due to micro transactions, now people misconstrue what I am saying about this. Yes it’s fantastic that you at Arena Net are thriving from our hard earned money, YES, fantastic that’s brilliant I truly am happy that you are a thriving game company, I realize that you are not forcing us to use our real money, but many games communities have suffered and players have dwindled away to find games that they can get ALL their content in one place, without having to pay more than they need to, to have said “cool item”.

I’m also playing very little these days, its just not rewarding enough to spend the time playing with the constant nerfs and kittened changes to events like teq. My dislike of todays version of gw2 is at a point where I don’t enjoy playing, but am required to because of the laurel system required to get bis equipment. I wouldn’t even be posting if I could figure out how to get battlefield 4 to install… -.-’

Return karma to dungeon runs. Having to poke round, doing minor events where you find them is not a fun way of achieving karma.

First off all the topic being discussed is:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Nerfed-Champ-Bags-Boxes

I’m going to put my thoughts in there. I think this is getting ridicilious

What people forget is: If you increase reward for brain afk easy activities you devalue everything else in the game. There is NOTHING challanging in this game except maybe fractals 50+. Even Tequatl is easy. My server keeps finishing him several times a day with upto 7 minutes to spare and it is not organized by guilds.

ANet is in this to make money, giving people good rewards is counter-intuitive to making money. They want people to use the gem store.

I just posted a suggestion about the champ bags dropping an alternative reward when that NEW terrible RNG effect produces 0 money on a EXO-level champ bags. I just want loot. Everyone has different goals and different ways of gaining them.

What I DO dislike is the stealth nerfing. Seriously, We are more mature then that, but we are human (most of us anyway). Just let us know ahead of time or be UP-FRONT about it and we will understand (most of us anyway).

This is a wonderful game, just try to keep it that way.

In the words of Bill Joel I must say this:

Honesty is hardly ever heard
And mostly what I need from you

Leamas.5803:

ANet is in this to make money, giving people good rewards is counter-intuitive to making money. They want people to use the gem store.

I agree, and I think it’s dishonest at the way they’re going about it. A game is supposed to be relaxing and fun, not taken for a money spending ride. There are enough of the same issues out there in the real world, but in a game?

I personally have stopped using the Gem Store period.

The problem is there is always a certain segment of any game population that know how to work the system to maximize their gold. It does not have to include turning gems into gold. However that segment usually amasses quite a bit of that jingly stuff but any gold sinks they put into place hurts the rest of the population more. Myself, between my 9 toons, I have yet to get over 50 gold at any one time. I suppose if I only played one toon it would be easier.

It would be a lot easier if they would alter their “Diminishing returns” so the more gold you have in your account the less gold that will drop.

Theftwind.8976:

It would be a lot easier if they would alter their “Diminishing returns” so the more gold you have in your account the less gold that will drop.

I’m not among those who is very good at manipulating the system, which usually involves untold amounts of grinding that I don’t have the patience for, but limiting your gold based on how much you have seems like punishment for hard work, which I consider a terrible idea. I think diminishing returns is generally bad and the guise in which they justify it is weak at best.

Rachlovesbenny.9312:

To be honest, I wouldn’t mind having to pay monthly to play this game if it meant that content was delivered into the game rather than into the in game store.

Exactly.

Right now they have very little incentive to do so though. As long as they can keep getting in new players to replace the one’s leaving, they don’t need to change.

Obsidian.1328:

Rachlovesbenny.9312:

To be honest, I wouldn’t mind having to pay monthly to play this game if it meant that content was delivered into the game rather than into the in game store.

Exactly.

Right now they have very little incentive to do so though. As long as they can keep getting in new players to replace the one’s leaving, they don’t need to change.

To do this now, they would have to completely gut the TP and gem store. Both Anet and players have WAY too much money invested to change how it works. The gem store is flawed to begin with and is slowly destroying the in game economy, but if they change it now, they will lose way more players than they will gain. GW2 no longer has the luster of a being a brand new game.

Rachlovesbenny.9312:

Leamas.5803:

ANet is in this to make money, giving people good rewards is counter-intuitive to making money. They want people to use the gem store.

I agree, and I think it’s dishonest at the way they’re going about it. A game is supposed to be relaxing and fun, not taken for a money spending ride. There are enough of the same issues out there in the real world, but in a game?

I personally have stopped using the Gem Store period.

Same here. The less I feel that my time is being appreciated and respected, the less likely I will be to support anything financially.

“Catch more flies with honey” and all that…

Leamas.5803:

Theftwind.8976:

It would be a lot easier if they would alter their “Diminishing returns” so the more gold you have in your account the less gold that will drop.

I’m not among those who is very good at manipulating the system, which usually involves untold amounts of grinding that I don’t have the patience for, but limiting your gold based on how much you have seems like punishment for hard work, which I consider a terrible idea. I think diminishing returns is generally bad and the guise in which they justify it is weak at best.

If only the BLTC taxes were based on how much your net worth between money and items was….

• Flipping would become less valuable on the larger scales, and players would be unable to become impossibly rich as currently possible
• Players with excessive gold would be encouraged to put money towards gems, lowering the cash>gem conversion ratio, taking the pressure off of the feel of being ‘forced’ to use gem>gold conversion to make any headway in the game.

Two birds, one stone.

The only portion missing would be non-rng items that players could buy to directly sell on the BLTC without risking losing everything. The tickets support this somewhat, but the droprate is so dismal, I can’t condone it in its current state.

The answer is not more taxes, since when have more taxes ever made anyone other than the government happier? Get rid of the gems to gold conversion, and reset the TP. It would be a mess for a while, but in the long run, this would fix the economy. The reason being that even the super rich would not be be able to maintain current prices since without the gem to gold conversion few, other than the ultra hardcore, would ever be able to pay 800g for a precursor let alone 2500g for a legendary. Within 6 months most things would balance down to what could feasibly be made in game. Within a year, the economy would be completely stable again, with reasonable prices in the TP. Drop rates may or may not have to be adjusted, time would have to tell.

I agree with you all on most of everything that you have shared.

(I’m tired so I miss bits)

I think it would be better if this gaming economy was PURELY 100% PLAYER BASE DRIVEN.

No Gem store.
No conversion bs.
No Rigmarole on new content (putting it firstly in gem store whilst living world content lacks any reward) .
No DR.
No ridiculous RNG that is way off balance.
No Ncsoft vs Arena Net vs Player base and vice verse and all of the above.

Just keep it Player based.

Alas though, that is easier said than done.

People will always purchase items from an in game store, there is no denying that factor, although, within the gaming community, such people are the minority that actually do so, (Unless pigeon holed to do so – people generally leave the game altogether as I’ve noticed) others are mostly the opposite and would rather everything in one place, without the bs of grind and without the absolute and excessive time of grinding, without exorbitant prices to get a skin that quite frankly should be as reward via in game story for being in relation to said story.

All in all, people will say this “Oh but conversion is good, we can convert our gold to gems” Yes, well lately people are not exactly inclined to convert 6g to what? 95 gems? Might be worth it to some, but not for the majority.

Time will tell indeed.

Leamas.5803:

The answer is not more taxes, since when have more taxes ever made anyone other than the government happier? Get rid of the gems to gold conversion, and reset the TP. It would be a mess for a while, but in the long run, this would fix the economy. The reason being that even the super rich would not be be able to maintain current prices since without the gem to gold conversion few, other than the ultra hardcore, would ever be able to pay 800g for a precursor let alone 2500g for a legendary. Within 6 months most things would balance down to what could feasibly be made in game. Within a year, the economy would be completely stable again, with reasonable prices in the TP. Drop rates may or may not have to be adjusted, time would have to tell.

I would be ever so pleased if Arena Net/Ncsoft did this. I really would. I doubt it though, the current direction this game is taking does not (for the time being) look very promising. Sigh, I really like this game lol.

Leamas.5803:

The answer is not more taxes, since when have more taxes ever made anyone other than the government happier?

Seen how the government isn’t actually a being capable of feeling happiness, I find this statement flawed on several levels. It’s not like any government would tax you just for the joy of taxing. No taxes = no government = anarchy = not so happy people. Except for the anarchist and those waiting for the doomsday.

Get rid of the gems to gold conversion, and reset the TP. It would be a mess for a while, but in the long run, this would fix the economy. The reason being that even the super rich would not be be able to maintain current prices since without the gem to gold conversion few, other than the ultra hardcore, would ever be able to pay 800g for a precursor let alone 2500g for a legendary. Within 6 months most things would balance down to what could feasibly be made in game. Within a year, the economy would be completely stable again, with reasonable prices in the TP. Drop rates may or may not have to be adjusted, time would have to tell.

You do not convert gems to gold. You trade gems to gold. When you buy gems to get some gold, it doesn’t generate any new gold. It actually destroys some gold as a tax.
And no, in the long run, it would not fix the economy. It would just shift the focus from players with little time and lot of pocket money to players with a lot of time. Don’t really see how that would be any better.
The bottom line is, there is always a group of players who find the means to unite the loose silver pieces flowing around the economy into vast piles of gold. Either through superb business sense, huge time investments or just hard real life cash. And while you might frown upon some players getting easy gold by paying for it, I for one would wish there were more such players. To increase the gem supply. Since I happen to be one of those players supplying gold to the other side.
(Note: if there is no gem to gold conversion, there isn’t going to be gold to gem conversion either.)

Leamas.5803:

ANet is in this to make money, giving people good rewards is counter-intuitive to making money. They want people to use the gem store.

There it is! And that, IMHO, is why many of the bugs in this game hav’nt been fixed and why things like particle effect scaling hav’nt been done. Anet’s more concerned about creating junk for gems in the gemstore instead of fixing what needs fixing and improving gameplay.

And… IMHO, they’ll continue to nerf in game ways to make gold so that we’ll be forced to buy gold with gems. By the time that happens I’ll be long gone.