Guild Wars 2

The target of this post will be about focusing on each one of the new diminishing return systems that have been put in place. Also, I will talk about how the economy is being changed by little tweaks that ArenaNet has made. Now, I’m hoping this thread doesn’t get swept under the door and closed; only to be piled and directed by moderators to the other 8 page DR thread.

In each category, I will discuss how ArenaNet has proposed these DR systems affect bots, gold sellers, and players. Then, I will list how it is affecting players; Ranging from casual gamers to 10-14 hours-a-day gamers. From there, I would like to add my own opinion on how things might be able to change for the better.

Lets start with the new Karma DR system. Many players, from casual to hardcore, have hit this new DR system within 1 hour of farming events. At this time, bots do not gain any benefit from farming karma, for there is no way to make gold off of it. Although, ArenaNet has stated that none of these DR systems are supposed to affect the every day casual to hardcore gamer. Quoting, “We do have these thresholds in place, but it’s not our intention that normal players should ever run into them.” So, here is the issue with the Karma DR. If it doesn’t affect the economy, and it doesn’t affect bots, that only leaves the “normal players”. Meaning, this DR system was implemented to either slow down or stop the process of farming karma. That booster you bought will get it’s full use, but the “+15% Karma for 24 hrs” banner that you invested all of your guild influence in will only be useful for about 1/12 of that duration (2 hours). My opinion on the matter? Throw the karma DR system away. Get rid of it completely. If you want to limit the Karma per hour, add hearts to the 75-80 zones and increase the respawn timer on dynamic events. Once you clear a 75-80 map, there is no other reason to “explore” the map unless you are doing the dynamic event chains.

On to the next topic, the dungeon DR system. There are 2 main focuses of this system. One, was to eliminate anybody using exploits to clear a dungeon faster than a normal run would take (around 30 minutes.) The other, was to prevent people from farming “the easiest” chain over and over again. A completely understandable and respectable system, until they made it account wide. Meaning, all that time I spent leveling my second character to 80 doesn’t mean anything because now that character is linked to my first character. Here is how that system works. If I clear the 3 paths on my first character, the second character will be hit with the DR system, preventing it to receive the full reward. This is a new system, implemented last patch (October 2nd). This system seems to do nothing but punish the more hardcore gamers. It doesn’t effect bots at all. One of the main themes of Guild Wars is to enjoy the world, and level up new character with new story lines. Yes, the story line is interesting and fun to follow, but when all of these DR systems are linked to your first character, it makes you chose which character you want to play per day instead of playing them both together. Just roll-back this system to make it not affect other characters. I didn’t go through the entire process of hitting 80 twice to be forced to play only one of the characters a day.

The in-world Loot DR system was implemented and focused towards botters. It prevents them from making large amounts of money over a long time. It’s doing very well at lowering drop rates against botters, but it is hitting “normal” players just as hard. With 235% magic find, I can do about 4-5 events or about 1 hour of farming for fine crafting materials, before I start to see a huge difference. As a “normal” player I am getting smacked just as hard by this system as any bot would. Yet, of the 3 weeks that I have been in Cursed Shore I have yet to see a single bot banned or removed from the game. Everyone of them (I even remember a few of them by name) are still there farming day in and day out. This means 1 thing, this system doesn’t put a hurt on bots as much as it does on players. The bots will always be there to farm even if you give them 1 cotton scrap an hour. The problem is they are not getting removed from the game and the longer they sit there, the more the economy will become unstabilized. A system to fix that? Put a report counter on each account. If a player reaches 50-100 reports for botting or gold spamming they are put on a 3 day ban until their account is further reviewed. This is a near instant, less “office labor” system and helps players greatly in 2 ways. It clears the bots, making events easier to complete and mobs easier to “tag”. It also puts a little more fear into eyes into any player looking to bot. This should have been implemented long ago since it is such an easy and simple system.

Next topic. The tier 6 gathering nodes, Ancient Wood Logs, Omnomberries, and Orichalcum Ore have all been hit with either a bug or a longer respawn timer. Some players have stated they haven’t seen any changes and their nodes are still spawning every 5 hours. Others, including myself, are seeing a 24 hours spawn time that resets with the dailies. To me, the problem isn’t that it might be a bug or a change to raise the price of higher end crafting materials, it the issue that ArenaNet has yet to made a comment on what is going on (was not included in the patch notes). We are left in the wind, not knowing if it’s a bug, or a permanent change.

The lack of a proper beta (GW2 beta events only added up to about 10 days) has really made it feel like I am currently playing a beta now. Updates to game breaking issues are only being touched once a week. New systems are being implemented without being tested. The boundaries of these systems are just guesses, incredibly bad ones at that (Karma 1hr DR). There isn’t even a simple bot removal system. Add all that to the incredible lack of communication and the “shove into one pile” mindset that these ArenaNet forum moderators have, it makes an incredibly rough and frustrating beginning to this beautiful MMO. With hundreds of new ones being release monthly, people are always coming and going, but with no communication between players and ArenaNet, it is even making it hard for dedicated Guild Wars fans to stick around. As I said at the beginning of this post, I hope we can get some answers and most importantly I hope this isn’t just thrown into the pile of the 8 page discussion. Thank you for your time.

-Sphynx

I will read the rest of what you wrote, but unless the Karma gear from temples is an exception, can’t you salvage Karma armor for cloth, Ecto, and particular Runes? That right there could sink the market for those items.

One thing you mentioned was the lack of desire to explore a zone once you’ve got 100% map completion. Something I would appreciate would be other PvE activities to do at 80 besides “exploring” Orr. Orr is a harsh place and is ugly as sin to boot. I don’t enjoy the zone, yet it’s the only level 80 playground we have available to us.

If we had a huge zone (or several large zones) with a great variety of things to do, places to go, monsters to fight, events to complete, and what have you, and I would be happy to keep exploring it all. Instead we’re stuck with Orr, which is like a Dr. Seuss’ nightmare of a barren wasteland.

What is probably ArenaNet’s intention, going back to earlier zones is generally not financially worthwhile (unless you’re pursuing a specific goal) because you will rarely find any tier 6/level 80 stuff that is relevant to your character’s needs.

Dungeon loot isn’t an issue that affects me so I can’t much comment on it; I’m not a huge fan of dungeons in this game for reasons I won’t get into here.

What really gets my goat is the inconsistency of and lack of communication about these changes that are designed to reduce player reward for effort.

Lucubration.8361:

I will read the rest of what you wrote, but unless the Karma gear from temples is an exception, can’t you salvage Karma armor for cloth, Ecto, and particular Runes? That right there could sink the market for those items.

On launch you were able to, but it was disabled about a week into the game. You can’t do anything with karma rewards that could earn you money. You can’t sell or salvage.