Guild Wars 2

(Please forgive the wall of text—there’s a TLDR at the end.)

One of my favorite things to do in MMOs is gathering/crafting. Thus when I found out that I would actually get XP for crafting in GW2, I was over the moon. Self, I thought, we finally have a game where we’ll be rewarded for what we love best! Imagine my thrill the first time my little Asura stopped to gather a copper node, and 8 XP floated up.

I may have even done a little happy dance in my chair.

I started day one of head start, and by Launch time I had quite a few mats saved up. Awesome! Lets crank out some tailoring and artificing. I was rocking and rolling along, grinning from ear to ear as my XP bar climbed, when I reached a point where in order finish out tier 1 recipes I needed a few more vials of weak blood. Hmmmm… let’s go find out who drops those vials… Brackish Skales in Queensdale? And the bandits drop jute? Awesome! So I left my beloved Metrica Provinces and ventured forth to strange human lands to get my farming on.

Things were going really well for awhile, and then I started noticing that my drop rate had plummeted. I mentioned this on Vent and my guildies tell me about the Diminishing Returns system.

(Cue foreboding music.)

It was a little irritating, but I understood the reasoning,. I started hopping between various starting areas and soon enough I had all the fine mats I needed. In addition, I managed to finish three more maps towards Map Completion. This made my inner completionist very, very happy.

As I leveled through the game I followed the same practice, bouncing around between various maps to collect current tier of mats. Sometime last week I hit 80 (the first time I have EVER hit the level cap in any MMO) and I was still bouncing around Sparkfly Fen and Timberline Falls. Once I broke into the 300 range of tailoring, I finally gave in and followed Trahearne to Fort Trinity and the horrors of Orr.

I wish I was talking about the Risen.

It took me a week to grind out the three maps of Orr, and I do not use the word grind lightly. The number of mobs I had to kill from one waypoint to the next easily doubled, maybe tripled, earlier zones. It was tough, and frustrating (especially when ping ponging between 3 Preservers), but I did eventually get the satisfaction of completing those maps. And in the end I also managed to max out my two crafts. Awesome, right?

Save that Tier 6 crafting is bloody awful. Despite all that grind to complete the maps (and leaving gathering nodes out of the tally), I ended up with a high of 10 Ancient Bones and a low of 0 Elaborate Totems, and only 8 Gossamer scraps.. That’s with spending ~15 hours spread over about 5 days in Malchor’s Leap and the Cursed Shore.

I’d purchased all the exotic recipes from the craft vendors expecting to be able to make some high level gear to sell on the trading post. My reasoning being that some items I can craft currently sells for 2-3 gold, and even with needing to buy ectos I can make a profit. Provided I could go out, put in the time, and collect my own mats, that is.

However, due to Diminishing Returns, I cannot collect my own mats. Within 15-20 minutes, I start getting nothing back but white items to salvage and grey porous skulls. In the past, I’d just cycle through a bunch of zones to continue looking for materials, but outside of Frostgorge Sound, that isn’t really an option now, is it?

I realize that Tier 6 crafting materials are supposed to have a low drop rate. But when you add Diminishing Returns on top of an already rare drop, it becomes that much more punishing and a grind to try and obtain materials. Materials for a part of the game actively promoted—Crafting!

I’m not trying to grind out for the best gear in the game (though the aforementioned completionist in me would LOVE to craft a Legendary). Nor is crafting/gathering the only thing I do. Earlier this week my guildies and I did WvW. Last night we did Caudecus Manor. Tonight we decided to go World Boss hunting. But I really enjoy and look forward to making high end crafted items that I have personally gathered the materials for. I like the idea of playing that role both within my guild and within the game economy. But because of the Diminishing Returns system, I feel as though I’m being actively punished for pursuing a legitimate part of the game.

I’m not asking that the system be completely removed—as mentioned earlier, I understand the reasoning behind it. But 15-20 minutes is incredibly harsh when the areas for collecting Tier 6 mats are limited. Either extend the time out to 30 minutes to an hour, or give me some sort of warning that I’ve hit my limit so I know I’m not just a victim of low drop rates. Or, if the crafting system is really only intended to be viable 1-79, then tell me that so I stop becoming frustrated in Orr.

TLDR; When added on top of the already low drop rate for Tier 6 crafting materials, Diminishing Returns kicking in after 15-20 minutes makes it incredibly frustrating for gathering & crafting-focused players to actually craft high-end items. Please either extend the time for farming, or let us know when the limits have kicked in so we know to move on to something else.

It’s worse when the T6 armor designs are not particularly fancy compared to what you can find with karma vendors inside a zone or the cultural/dungeon armors. The reason most people make them is for the easy exotics stats for a (relatively) low price tag.

Tier 6 drops can be extremely rare. Fortunately, there’s a more efficient way to obtain them. With my experience that I have learned that it’s better to farm the T5 materials and use the Mystic Forge to convert them to T6 materials. It requires:

• 50 T5 materials (eg. Intricate Totems)
• 1 T6 material (eg. Elaborate Totems)
• 5 Piles of Crystalline Dust currently ~90 copper from the Trading Post
• 5 Philosopher’s Stones costs 1 Skill point for 10 Stones from Miyavi

In your example for Totems, I would recommend the Grawl mobs in the southeast parts of Frostgorge Sound, as well as those in Desmond Precipice tunnel in that same zone. The ones in the tunnel are level 80, so there might be a chance of the T6 totems to drop as well.

I’m not sure about other crafting disciplines, but I do know that unlike the Rare sets, which require 90 of a fine crafting material, you only need 30 (5 for each insignia) for T6 gear. Of course the offset would be that T6 gear also requires Globs of Ectoplasm, which could easily be obtained if you using a high-quality salvage kit on level 68+ Rare quality items. You may need some Magic Find to improve your chances of getting Rare drops, however.

Although I feel for you you AngelCole, this system ensures there’s actually an economy, especially at T6.

If you, and everyone else, could farm your needs, the economy would disappear (like it has for lower level stuff where supply>demand).

Luculus.9860:

Although I feel for you you AngelCole, this system ensures there’s actually an economy, especially at T6.

If you, and everyone else, could farm your needs, the economy would disappear (like it has for lower level stuff where supply>demand).

Having an economy (trading) in the game is good. But beeing able to play the game to get what you need is better.

I mean, if we could have both, great. But killing the fun in getting stuff, for beeing able to trade….

Except that kills personal achievment and working towards it. when 90% of the level 80 areas outside of dungeons, are completly useless after 30 mins and no point doing the rest for material, there is a issue. I get making stuff rare, but punnishing people for hunting isn’t the way.

I’m kinda sick of games requiring 500 hours to get something, then punish you for doing more then 1 hour every day towards that goal.

The system they have put in for anti botting and to stop farmers is actually hurting the players and not really stopping the botters or farmers, its a terrible system.

Sorry it’s taking me so long to respond! Silly needing to sleep.

@Painking
While it’s true that the crafted armor and weapons aren’t necessarily the prettiest or fanciest, they do serve a needed purpose for those who either don’t want to grind for karma/tokens, or want Exotics in the meanwhile. Still, it does sting a little to put that much time and effort in and not even be able to craft anything.

@Ari Kagura
Thanks so much for the tip about the Mystic Forge! I had seen several of the recipes for crafting weapons/armor, but hadn’t come across this one. That is certainly encouraging. Is it a straight conversion, or is it something were 50 T5 mats result in 5 T6 mats? Ah, no worries. I’ll go get my Google-fu on later today. :-)

@Luculus
Does it really though? In other games I’ve played there were always those people who hated going out to gather mats and yet either enjoyed crafting items or wanted specific items. Indeed, there often seemed to be more people who wanted to/were willing to just pay for someone else’s work collecting mats rather than get out and do it themselves. And while there is an overabundance of some low level mats (I still shudder when thinking about butter), you can still make a profit selling them on the TP as opposed to just vendoring it.

ANET did take into account in the initial design the need to make T6 items more rare, hence the low drop rate and limited areas to farm them. It’s the additional barrier of DR that’s the kick in the pants.

@Kal
Totally agreed.

@Wolfwing
The best I analogy I can think of is that it reminds me very much of the frustration I felt when I briefly dabbled in Zynga Facebook games. Oh, you’ve had your one click and the fun of making something? Sorry, you can’t do anything else for 5 min/15 min/1 hour/1 day…. unless, that is, you’re willing to pay us a little cash so you can do it right this instant. It’s not that I’m against doing something difficult to make a weapon—I still have nightmares about dodging lightning bolts in FFX!—but this feels less like doing-something-incredibly-difficult-for-something-awesome and more like… well, Facebook.

@TRON
I honestly can’t say one way or the other what effect the code is having on botters. Those are numbers I don’t have access to, and aside from the occasional naked character in Orr/WvW, I haven’t really noticed THAT many bots. But it is definitely aggravating to this actual player.

AngelCole, I have to say. Your amazing grammar and detailed writing is a joy to read. Sorry, that’s off topic.

Yes, I believe something can definitely be improved there without hurting the economy.

Necro’d a 6 month old thread

With reason since there is a very easy way to obtain T6 blue mats with the laurel system. You get 3 out of each bag, each time for each laurel. I don’t care a copper for ascended gear and get quite good money from selling them.

kal.4350:

Having an economy (trading) in the game is good. But beeing able to play the game to get what you need is better.

What you “need”? Or what you want?

As this discussion has run its course, it is now locked.