Guild Wars 2

There always used to be a bunch of groups looking for people, and finding a team never took much time unless you played during night time or were looking for something specific. But now there’s hardly grouping anymore in the LFP window. Is everyone busy playing the expansion, or what happened?

Dungeon rewards were nerfed, since most players were only doing them for the rewards you won’t find any groups. You can still of course make your own listing and they will still fill, just takes longer.

They nerfed the rewards. You don’t get nearly the experience nor the gold anymore.

Was there a reason they nerfed the rewards?

Did yesterday a dungeon tour with my Guild, and my conclusion why they nerfed the reward is that with the new elite specs, you even rush faster through the dungeons than before. So they need to balance the difficulty <→ reward part.

Milennin.4825:

Was there a reason they nerfed the rewards?

Their economist literally said it was to disincentive people from doing dungeons. In other words, they don’t want people doing dungeons as much.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Milennin.4825:

Was there a reason they nerfed the rewards?

Their economist literally said it was to disincentive people from doing dungeons. In other words, they don’t want people doing dungeons as much.

More that they didn’t want people earning coin as easily and that they wanted to encourage people towards raids and fractals.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Milennin.4825:

Was there a reason they nerfed the rewards?

Their economist literally said it was to disincentive people from doing dungeons. In other words, they don’t want people doing dungeons as much.

More that they didn’t want people earning coin as easily and that they wanted to encourage people towards raids and fractals.

Also seems like dungeons were the biggest source of liquid gold in the economy. Raids and fractals now also have their own built in gold sinks between ascended salvaging and gearing for raids.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Milennin.4825:

Was there a reason they nerfed the rewards?

Their economist literally said it was to disincentive people from doing dungeons. In other words, they don’t want people doing dungeons as much.

More that they didn’t want people earning coin as easily and that they wanted to encourage people towards raids and fractals.

Nope. He literally said they wanted to disincentivise dungeons.

Someone was asking the same question in map chat and someone else answered that they fired or reassigned the dungeon team right after GW2’s release.

Would certainly explain why the changes have been only the chest rewards. It’s really sad because Dungeons were really the best content of the game.

Probably the same with the people doing jumping puzzles, since we haven’t got any new ones in 2 years, even after an expansion release.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Milennin.4825:

Was there a reason they nerfed the rewards?

Their economist literally said it was to disincentive people from doing dungeons. In other words, they don’t want people doing dungeons as much.

More that they didn’t want people earning coin as easily and that they wanted to encourage people towards raids and fractals.

Nope, it was really primarily to make people not run dungeons. With the original dungeon team gone, it seems there was noone willing to go through the code to fix the errors in it (some of which were there since launch). Additionally, the failure of Twilight Assault made devs think that noone is really interested in dungeons anymore (instead of realizing that a lot of people simply didn’t like the gimmicks they packed that path full of). Add to that the glamour of working on new things, as compared to relative obscurity of fixing old and broken stuff.
They literally wanted to kill dungeons. Any other considerations were a far second.

I still wonder what their goals was. I like fractals, but let’s face it: they didn’t add any new fractal, nor any dungeon… I just wonder, what the incentive here is? The fractal rewards are really nice now though. But with only 2 options for ‘group content’ while other MMOs shed out 4-5 dungeons every two years I wonder what the idea behind it is.

Fractals didn’t get any new ones since more than a year I think. I hope we will still see more instanced content. The original Aetherblade retreat and Molten dungeon were a lot of fun and they just removed it, cut it into pieces and put it into fractals. Imo a bad decision, they gave a lot of new options for groups to party up.

imo the goal obviously was to keep f2p players from decent gold source and move it to places they cant access

Sublimatio.6981:

imo the goal obviously was to keep f2p players from decent gold source and move it to places they cant access

If this is true, and it could well be, then it’s really a sabotage of their own game.
However you don’t make a lot of gold in HoT either.

This was because of people speedrunning dungeons and farming tons of gold, which were translated directly to a high influx of currency into the economy. Just like a country typing too many bills(Zimbabwe), where an 100000000000 $ bill is worth nothing. So they nerfed that. There’s still a lot of other ways to get gold, but not directly, which is good.
Mat farm ~20g to 30g an hour depending on how good you are
SW chest farm ~ anywhere from 25 to 50g an hour depening on group
Doing fractals ~anywhere from 15 to 30g an hour depending on group, fractal farmed(usually 40) and luck
Playing the Trading post~ anywhere from 10 to 70g an hour depending on how smart you are
There’s a lot of ways to get gold, yet none of them involve getting DIRECT gold ~ you get stuff that you transform into gold. Dungeons were nerfed bad, but that’s what happens when people abuse them.

So what’s the most efficient source of liquid gold nowadays?

Yenn.9185:

So what’s the most efficient source of liquid gold nowadays?

Fractals, at least 10g from all of the dailies.

Raizen.7981:

There’s still a lot of other ways to get gold, but not directly, which is good.

Doing fractals ~anywhere from 15 to 30g an hour depending on group, fractal farmed(usually 40) and luck

There’s a lot of ways to get gold, yet none of them involve getting DIRECT gold ~ you get stuff that you transform into gold.

That’s wrong for fractals. Doing all dailies will give around DIRECT LIQUID 10-25 gold. Rares/exotics and some blue/green stuff are additional to that and non-direct gold.

Vinceman.4572:

Raizen.7981:

There’s still a lot of other ways to get gold, but not directly, which is good.

Doing fractals ~anywhere from 15 to 30g an hour depending on group, fractal farmed(usually 40) and luck

There’s a lot of ways to get gold, yet none of them involve getting DIRECT gold ~ you get stuff that you transform into gold.

That’s wrong for fractals. Doing all dailies will give around DIRECT LIQUID 10-25 gold. Rares/exotics and some blue/green stuff are additional to that and non-direct gold.

Did you also add the 10-20 liquid gold from buying the 60 daily keys(and buying the boxes on TP ofc)? Cuz I did

Xillllix.3485:

Probably the same with the people doing jumping puzzles, since we haven’t got any new ones in 2 years, even after an expansion release.

Yes we did, Dry Top, Silverwastes, and Auric Basin all have jumping puzzles (Auric Basin has two), plus pseudo-jps like the suspended airship in Verdant Brink and the giant tree in Tangled Depths. Also Troll’s Revenge in New LA.

Raizen.7981:

Did you also add the 10-20 liquid gold from buying the 60 daily keys(and buying the boxes on TP ofc)? Cuz I did

Nope, you are getting enough boxes and keys (via daily chests and stabilizing matrices that drop during the runs) solely out of the 9 daily fractals. Depending on (double) RNG and getting rings which are salvaged and then again the stabilizing matrices turned into more keys you achieve the difference of 10 to 25 direct gold. Till this moment you have neither bought anything from the TP nor sold stuff on the TP, it’s just the pure junk you are selling to the vendor. And selling to the vendor is always self-made direct liquid gold out of nothing.
If you buy additional daily keys (20 s + relics) from the vendor (not TP!) while having boxes you still stay in direct liquid gold range, so in my case (at the moment I have enough boxes on the bank due to running all 100 fractals) I can increase this direct liquid gold reward even more. But that is not the usual state of a daily fractal runner.
After all these calculations you are able to start to buy stabilizing matrices and boxes via TP but here you are leaving the area of direct liquid gold due to taxes and the fact that others were collecting the stuff for you but yeah, you are making more money yourself and this can go up to over 30 gold per day.

Vinceman.4572:

Raizen.7981:

Did you also add the 10-20 liquid gold from buying the 60 daily keys(and buying the boxes on TP ofc)? Cuz I did

Nope, you are getting enough boxes and keys (via daily chests and stabilizing matrices that drop during the runs) solely out of the 9 daily fractals. Depending on (double) RNG and getting rings which are salvaged and then again the stabilizing matrices turned into more keys you achieve the difference of 10 to 25 direct gold. Till this moment you have neither bought anything from the TP nor sold stuff on the TP, it’s just the pure junk you are selling to the vendor. And selling to the vendor is always self-made direct liquid gold out of nothing.
If you buy additional daily keys (20 s + relics) from the vendor (not TP!) while having boxes you still stay in direct liquid gold range, so in my case (at the moment I have enough boxes on the bank due to running all 100 fractals) I can increase this direct liquid gold reward even more. But that is not the usual state of a daily fractal runner.
After all these calculations you are able to start to buy stabilizing matrices and boxes via TP but here you are leaving the area of direct liquid gold due to taxes and the fact that others were collecting the stuff for you but yeah, you are making more money yourself and this can go up to over 30 gold per day.

Let’s do the math.
You buy 30 keys(6 gold) and another 30 keys(9 gold) a day. That’s an obvious gold sink. A gold sink of 15 gold
You buy 70 boxes(I say 70 because opening 60 boxes will probably give you 10 extra keys anyway) at 20s each. Even though you “lose” 14 gold, that 14 gold remains in the circulation(buying from players isn’t a gold sink, it’s a gold transfer. The gold doesn’t get deleted)
So up to now you’re down 15+14=29 gold.
Now, we will open 60 boxes, get ~10 extra keys, open the remaining 10 boxes aswell. So, we can say we opened 70 boxes.
Average per box is ~47 silver. That being around 44 silver direct gold(selling stuff to NPC) and 3 extra silver from agony resistances/t5 materials/mew mew/whatevers.
So. You made a total of 47s*70=32.9 gold. 32,9 gold, where, after my close-enough numbers, we would have: 2,1 indirect gold from things you sell on the TP, and 30g 80s from vendor trash. That’s liquid gold. Now mate, let’s retrace our steps:
-Sync 15 gold by buying keys
-Circulate 14 gold by buying boxes
-Circulate 2.1 gold by selling mats/mewmews/agony craps
-CREATE 30 gold 80s by selling vendor trash

Even though our personal gold balance barely increased(3g 90s profit), we actually added 15 gold 80 silver to the economy. Even if my numbers are way off(lets say a delta error of 0.15% at most) that 0.15% out of the 15 gold 80s is still, in other words, a buttload of daily direct gold from fractals

Raizen.7981:

Let’s do the math.
You buy 30 keys(6 gold) and another 30 keys(9 gold) a day. That’s an obvious gold sink. A gold sink of 15 gold
You buy 70 boxes(I say 70 because opening 60 boxes will probably give you 10 extra keys anyway) at 20s each. Even though you “lose” 14 gold, that 14 gold remains in the circulation(buying from players isn’t a gold sink, it’s a gold transfer. The gold doesn’t get deleted)
So up to now you’re down 15+14=29 gold.
Now, we will open 60 boxes, get ~10 extra keys, open the remaining 10 boxes aswell. So, we can say we opened 70 boxes.
Average per box is ~47 silver. That being around 44 silver direct gold(selling stuff to NPC) and 3 extra silver from agony resistances/t5 materials/mew mew/whatevers.
So. You made a total of 47s*70=32.9 gold. 32,9 gold, where, after my close-enough numbers, we would have: 2,1 indirect gold from things you sell on the TP, and 30g 80s from vendor trash. That’s liquid gold. Now mate, let’s retrace our steps:
-Sync 15 gold by buying keys
-Circulate 14 gold by buying boxes
-Circulate 2.1 gold by selling mats/mewmews/agony craps
-CREATE 30 gold 80s by selling vendor trash

Even though our personal gold balance barely increased(3g 90s profit), we actually added 15 gold 80 silver to the economy. Even if my numbers are way off(lets say a delta error of 0.15% at most) that 0.15% out of the 15 gold 80s is still, in other words, a buttload of daily direct gold from fractals

Have you even read my post and understood what I was referring to?

10 – 25 direct liquid gold without any gold sink while playing the daily game (9 fractals). None of these coins are influenced by any other economy stuff.
I repeat myself, at first I don’t care what comes after. I am producing 10 – 25 gold out of nothing, just in running 9 fractals per day.
And again, if I don’t buy stuff from the tradepost, I am still in the direct liquid gold range and producing gold that has never existed before. Of course I subtract vendor prizes but as long as I don’t buy encryptions from the TP, my profit is always direct liquid gold.

So, playing fractals can be compared to starting a dungeon tour and stopping after you got the 10 – 15 direct liquid gold reward from the dungeons.

The purchase of further keys via stabilizing matrices and encryptions from the TP comes after my daily 10 – 25 gold. And with buying from the TP, yes I don’t disagree, you can make some additional money.

Thread about dungeons becomes thread about gold gains…

This tells everything.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Thread about dungeons becomes thread about gold gains…

because the game is lacking content.

I recently tried to help some noobs in AC2, the end event with detha bugged out, people left, I left – long story short: they are in a horribly bad state, obsolete and with bad/boring mechanics which weren’t though out and/or tested. That’s why they fired Hrouda and that’s why they never really tried again. Now they lie and rot in their state until some new dungeons may happen…

The game is chock full of content, while gold and rewards in general are scarce.

We tend to overlook anything that doesn’t offer a meaningful sense of progression but the content is there.

ArenaNet is just another corporate company… Much like a TV channel. They can’t spend money on making/fixing content if their spreadsheets say it is not popular enough or that it would cost too much to actually fix it. It is much easier for them to just create miniature fractal maps and create false content by allowing scalling up of the instance and adding some annoying debuffs.
I’m not happy about it. Actually, I’m quite furious everytime I remember them saying dungeons were not popular, but this is how it is. From my experience with MMOs, it is quite possible dungeons will be completely removed over time, or just ignored…but no…no more cash will go into them.

Mortifer.2946:

ArenaNet is just another corporate company… Much like a TV channel. They can’t spend money on making/fixing content if their spreadsheets say it is not popular enough or that it would cost too much to actually fix it. It is much easier for them to just create miniature fractal maps and create false content by allowing scalling up of the instance and adding some annoying debuffs.
I’m not happy about it. Actually, I’m quite furious everytime I remember them saying dungeons were not popular, but this is how it is. From my experience with MMOs, it is quite possible dungeons will be completely removed over time, or just ignored…but no…no more cash will go into them.

In theory could it also be possible to manipulate their own metrics and data to say what is or is not popular? I mean with dungeons not supporting them and of course the loss of rewards contributed a lot to their decline and downfall, even beforehand.

In their eyes, dungeons weren’t popular enough and people played them just because they knew how to faceroll them and get fast money. That’s why they needed the gold reward. It was the easiest solution for them as it would take too many resources to actually fix them. And the thing is, people played them less and less before the nerf. Some dungeons and paths were always empty. But ArenaNet doesn’t get that dungeons are artistically beautiful and deserve to be preserved. (And I would loved to finally get aetherpath achievements0

Yeah, metrics and statistics alone aren’t telling everything. Remember, that they removed the forward up TA path and replaced it with Aetherpath, because, as they claimed, the path just wasn’t being run. Which was completely true… due to them breaking that path a year before in a way that made it impossible to finish for 90% of the people attempting it (the infinite spider spawn bug).

Aether path, with its insistence on changing every encounter into a separate minigame with only passable ties to the normal combat engine (and the terrible rewards at the end) should also not have been used as a basis for gauging people’s interest. But the real culprit was always Anet’s preference of doing new things instead of fixing old ones. Which, by the way, has not changed. I wonder what this will mean in the future for Fractals (and eventually Raids – and i sincerely doubt that Raids will ever be as popular as dungeons).