Guild Wars 2

I have 100% map completion, full magic find gear, and karma boosters. What do I do? I head to Cursed Shore to farm DEs. 30 minutes in, and I get and nothing but porous bones.

Last week, I did this with no magic find gear and no karma boosters, and it took me an hour to hit DR. I also got better karma and more drops.

It’s ridiculous that the Magic find buffs and Karma boosters I have are hurting me more than helping me when I try to farm. Not the mention the fact that it’s almost impossible to farm at this rate, with the DR system.

First they nerf farming mobs/item drops. Now, they nerf Karma farming. Why can’t we just farm? All of these nerfs hurt legitimate players more than bots. I should be able to play the game the way I want to, and not be punished for it.

Let’s look at the goals of GW2’s “endgame”:

• Exotic Karma armor/cultural weapons.
• Dungeon sets.
• L400 crafting.
• WvW badges.
• PvP glory.
• Collectibles, commodities, any other form of currency (Mystic Coins, minis, dyes, etc)
• Commander’s tome.
• Legendary weapons.
• (probably a few other things I’ve forgotten to list)

Almost all of these “endgame goals” require me to grind if I want to be efficient in working towards them. And, honestly, I enjoy grinding. After a long day of school or work, I don’t mind farming for a few hours – I find it very relaxing. It’s what I did with other MMOs, and I would like to be able do the same in GW2. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.

The argument I’ve read is that ArenaNet is nerfing farming/grinding so that casual and hardcore gamers will be on the same footing. What is the point of this? Let’s assume I grind for 8 hours a day. I should be ahead of a “casual” player who only spends 2-4 hours a day. I shouldn’t feel as if I’m being forced to play less often than I’d like to.

Look, for a Legendary, you need:

• 1,000,000 Karma
• 350 Skill points
• 500 Badges of Honor
• 500 Globs of Ectoplasm
• 250 Mystic Coins
• 250 Vicious Fangs, Vicious Claws, Vials of Powerful Blood, Elaborate Totems, Armored Scales, Ancient Bones, Piles of Crystalline Dust, and Powerful Venom Sacs.

This will allow you to create the Gift of Fortune and Gift of Mastery… and doesn’t include the precursor weapon and the Legendary’s gift. The precursor weapon costs at the minimum 50 gold, while the Legendary’s gift costs 500 dungeon tokens along with 250x of an item specific to the Legendary.

Also, it would cost me 252,000 karma for a full set of exotic Karma armor, or 1,380 tokens for a dungeon set, or 1,889 badges for a WvW set, or 30 ectos+various other materials for a crafted set.

I don’t mind ANet nerfing our ability to farm or speedrun, and making content harder, if and only if they reduced the costs. Removing the ability to farm/grind means I have no efficient ways to obtain the currencies I need.

From 1-79, I felt as if the philosophy of the game was ‘no grind’, but once I hit 80 and looked at the endgame goals, I ran into a heavy grind. And with the DR system, ArenaNet is discouraging me from doing that heavy grind… So how am I expected to achieve my goals? My complaint isn’t “I can’t grind”, it’s “I feel penalized for trying to achieve my goals”.

There’s a reason you see so many people around Orr/FGS. The only relevant drops and mats are from these zones. Since the areas are so limited and have little creature diversity, we get hit by DR. If level 80 players would get level 80 rewards everywhere in the world, or there was a “hard mode” where you could go through level 80 versions of the lower-leveled zones, people would be complaining a lot less.

Penalizing farmers wouldn’t be a problem if there were other, more efficient things to do at level 80, but right now, there aren’t.

I don’t even buy Karma/Magic Find boosters anymore because I always hit the cap long before they expire, so it’s a waste of money. Since these are two of the most popular out of a handful of gem store items that people actually buy on a regular basis, it seems Anet’s only hurting themselves on the micro-transaction front.

Omg you need all that kitten for a legendary.. well ty I know now what I will not be working towards.. lol SCREW THAT! with the way stuff is dropping it will be next year before I even 1/2 way to that goal..

DR is here because most people decided that exotics were going to be their personal end game(legendaries are only cosmetically better) they are as and exotics have been surprisingly easy to obtain this last couple of weeks.

I second your concerns and I’m quite confused by the endgame right now. The requirements for legendary seem to be opposite of both the philosophy of the game, and the implementation xD.

Half the forum thinks DR doesn’t really affect anything, the other, more vocal half, claim that DR kicks in after 10 minutes and kills their weekend.

You can’t both be right.

Phy.2913:

You can’t both be right.

Why not? Maybe they are both right. Maybe some characters are affected and others are not. I have seen some interesting things with my own characters. I am not going to complain much because it isn’t a big deal to me, but I do wonder what is going on sometimes.

Phy.2913:

Half the forum thinks DR doesn’t really affect anything, the other, more vocal half, claim that DR kicks in after 10 minutes and kills their weekend.

You can’t both be right.

Actually, they can. The more efficient at farming you are, the faster you hit the DR. If you’re just wandering around the zone hitting up orichalcium/ancient wood nodes and hitting the occasional event you run into, you’ll never hit the DR. If you’re actively trying to get karma by doing events, you’ll hit the loot DR in no time flat. The karma DR has been hit and miss for me. I’ve never actually hit the karma DR by doing events back to back in the Orr zones, but I HAVE hit the DR while trying to finish map completion in the non 80 zones. I can only hope this is a bug.

My problem with the DR complaints is that we have no information about it from Anet. Who’s actually hitting DR? Who’s just unlucky with drops? How much of this is just a placebo effect caused by your belief that DR is the reason for whatever ails you?

They really need to make an in depth post about how DR works, regardless of how useful it would be to bot developers.

They just don’t want you to run out of stuff to do in the first 5-7 weeks of the game so they seem to be artificially gating the content by using diminishing returns.

It’s also technically meant to slow down or reduce botting (and therefore not wrecking up the economy), but we all know the outcome of that.

Given that just about everything is account bound, try levelling an alt or two. You can use their karma, skillpoints and money to buy the stuff you’re after for your main. That includes karma gear, dungeon badge gear, materials, etc.

Given that just about everything is account bound, try levelling an alt or two. You can use their karma, skillpoints and money to buy the stuff you’re after for your main. That includes karma gear, dungeon badge gear, materials, etc.

I am under the impression that, unfortunately, karma DR is also account bound, meaning switching to a low level alt will just mean less XP, less money and less karma for basic Dynamic Events while leveling.

Can anyone confirm this? It’s just something I’ve heard.

Eleplant in the room made me think this was a topic about Trahearne for a second.

My opinion on the matter is this was obviously intentional, so the nightmarish grind is probably not going to change. We aren’t getting GW1’s wonderfully easy and satisfying gearing system back, so it’s best to accept it and play, or play another game. I want to like this game, but it’s obvious that the people in charge of making GW1 a game without MMO conventions either don’t work with ANet anymore, or have stepped back and let worse people take the reins. Personally, I decided I just wasn’t having fun, and am now playing other games.

Yup, legendary weapons take a ridiculous amount of time to achieve, but that’s ok, imo.

Also, bear this in mind: attaining the quota of any of the requirements for a legendary will most likely also get you significant progress on the other requirements.

For example, by the time you get 350 skill points, chances are that you also have gotten ALOT of Karma. And by the time you have 500 globs of ectoplasm (that’s unreal…), you’ll most likely have significant progress on the stacks of other rare materials.

Yea, it’s still ridiculous, but it is a long term goal. I was just happy to ding 400 on my armorsmithing yesterday, lol.

Oh hai, another DR thread.

Personal experience shows, that DR seems to only kick in if you cheese the events by killing enough mobs to get gold and run off for another without seeing the prior to completion. I’ve yet to see it kick in for me even if I do chain after chain in Orr areas, just can’t do the longer escort/defense/attack etc. chains fast enough.

Can’t say anything about mobs, never ever seen it happen. By what I could seen by others explaining when it supposedly hit them, it might be related to only killing event masses. If you kill “regular” map mobs in between events and don’t camp the mass-spawning ones around the clock, you should be safe. Or at least such has been the case for me in my runs.

In either case, this is not “penalizing” anything imho. Going fast and easy should net appropriate rewards, rewards should be a function of time spent on something and effort/challenge coming from it. There are probably instances where it can use tweaking, I’m sure, not to mention the bugged DE’s that bring the rewards for roaming down. But as a general rule it seems to be affecting only the easy, fast attempts at getting loot.

Oh hai, another misconception post.

Your personal experience doesn’t make it true for the rest of the players. The karma DR can kick in if you do like two chain events in a completely regular, play all the way through fashion. Please explain why you think your gaming experience makes it true for the game?

Plague.5329:

Eleplant in the room made me think this was a topic about Trahearne for a second.

My opinion on the matter is this was obviously intentional, so the nightmarish grind is probably not going to change. We aren’t getting GW1’s wonderfully easy and satisfying gearing system back, so it’s best to accept it and play, or play another game. I want to like this game, but it’s obvious that the people in charge of making GW1 a game without MMO conventions either don’t work with ANet anymore, or have stepped back and let worse people take the reins. Personally, I decided I just wasn’t having fun, and am now playing other games.

Nightmarish? The constant complaints about DR and bots is annoying, the extreme exaggeration that comes with it is worse.

Edenknight.9284:

Oh hai, another misconception post.

Your personal experience doesn’t make it true for the rest of the players. The karma DR can kick in if you do like two chain events in a completely regular, play all the way through fashion. Please explain why you think your gaming experience makes it true for the game?

I’ve done an entire Dynamic Event chain from start to finish, and didn’t hit the DR barrier…. only doing the events. No kills between.

Edenknight

Oh hai, another misconception post.

Your personal experience doesn’t make it true for the rest of the players. The karma DR can kick in if you do like two chain events in a completely regular, play all the way through fashion. Please explain why you think your gaming experience makes it true for the game?

Cause its the only experience I can trust. Why would my playthrougs be special and not trigger the DR even in back to back DE’s done? Or event chains? Done on numerous (cruising somewhere above 20) runs all around Orr?

Why would I not assume that my experience in regular gameplay are any different form any other players, providing they do the same things I do? The only instances where I’ve heard off the DR kick in for events is the one I provided and redoing an event that you just failed. And outside of any bugs, they are deserved imho.

If you are indeed kicking the DR by doing different events of a chain you haven’t done recently after just 2 quests, then my experience suggests its a bug. One that I’ve yet to see for myself, but considering my limited verification and reproduction ability as a player, its not for me to do. Bugs are a completely different animal then the DR system by itself that seems to either kick you for speed running and not actually contributing or failure.

Silencer.5028 … DR only hits if you cheese the events…

Silencer, whatever you may think, not all of us go around cheesing events. I could just as easily claim that you’ve actually never done any events that is why you aren’t seeing DR. It’s not the least bit helpful either way.

I’m not sure if you looked at my screenshots in my previous replies, but those do not require cheesing whatsoever. You can complete most of those events start to finish, or jump in somewhere half way. I included the map with circled event areas to show how close and how abundant those events are. Cheesing isn’t required.

In Cursed Shore, you can start at the top of the map

(risen giant champion event) head down to first town on path
(defend town) then you head back up because that defence triggers
(escort event from the first town back down) at the other end of the tunnel
(town defence) then, frequently
(escort NPC filia to look for Gorillas) It’s a 2 event chain that can also lead to, but not related…
(another town defence – or capture – of the outpost)
If it is a outpost capture, it is a 2 event chain that leads to the next town where there are about 3 events (a short escort, a champion slime and the NPC norn wave kill)
Then there is yet one more npc escort/kill event between that town and the final town at foot of arah steps.
Along the way you get another (escort)
once you get to the town, (you retake the town)
After that it spawns 3 events sequentially before leading up to the steps of Arah.

There is no cheese necessary. You may skip a couple events due to it not timing well with the escorts but by in large, it’s possible to do all of that in one go without cheesing it.

There’s more event in this chain than what it took for me to hit DR in my screenshots.

Maybe it’s not happening to you, but I can assure you, it’s happening to other people. The screenshots are there. They designed the map and events that way.

The DR kicks in when you do events to fast, it’s based on how many events you do in a set time.
Switching zones or logging out does not reset it or effect it.

You switch zones, the DR does not care.
You do to many events in a set time the DR kicks in and has to wear off.

So you are being punished for doing the end-game.

DR goes against the very core of GW2’s design and mechanics for end-game and also makes buying karma boosters stupid.

Very disappointed in Anet over this and won’t play their game or use the cash shop anymore till they fix this.

Diminishing Returns systems on everything is perhaps the worst design element I’ve seen in an MMO.

Especially in an MMO where everything there is to do at 80 is a grind.

I want to define “grind” as repeating content beyond the point that it’s still fun – where the only reason you are doing it is for the reward.

You can do everything available to you in game (beyond WvW and sPvP because those vary based on your opponents) exactly once and not have enough of anything (karma, gold, mats for crafting, etc) to get a complete anything.

By that I mean complete every jumping puzzle once, 100% each zone, do each dynamic event once, do every story mode dungeon one time, and each explorable path one time, etc.

At the end of all that – you can’t get a complete set of karma exotic gear, or a complete dungeon set (of any one dungeon), or likely even have collected enough crafting mats to craft up to 400 and then craft a set of exotics.

So if getting any of those things are a goal of yours (and to most people it is one of the only goals at 80), you simply must repeat content.

A lot.

Every person has a point where something that was fun the first time (and the 2nd, and 3rd, and maybe even up to the 10th time) is no longer fun. This point will be different for everyone, but at some, the vast majority of people get tired of the vast majority of content.

But Guild Wars 2 level 80 exotic gear is all pretty much obtained by repeating content beyond the point of enjoyability.

IE, by grinding.

But in ArenaNet’s infinite wisdom, they’ve decided to punish people (and Diminishing Returns IS punishment to any legitimate player who hits it without exploiting) who pursue these things.

If DR for karma is kicking in before a karma boost wears off – that’s bad design.

If DR for karma is kicking in before a single dynamic chain is complete – that’s bad design.

If DR for dungeon tokens is kicking in if I, as a player, decide to spend my Saturday chain running 100% completely different paths of explorables all day – without ever repeating one – that’s bad design.

If DR EVER kicks in in WvW – that’s bad design.

If DR for drops kicks in as I’m just 100% completing a zone – that’s bad design.

DR kicks in in ALL of these instances on players that aren’t exploiting (though some posts by ArenaNet employees imply that being good at the game IS exploiting) or cheating in any way, and that is, quite simply, punishing players for playing the game.

I don’t, honestly, have any idea how ArenaNet thinks these DR systems will help them keep people playing (and therefore buying gems) unless the idea is to simply prolong the completion of a goal by a player by, pretty much, forcing them to stop progressing towards that goal after 30 or 40 minutes of playing.

I’m playing an alt (I have an 80 and a 51 as well as a 17), and 100% zones is less fun the 2nd time around. Running AC story is less fun the 2nd time around.

If I ever run AC story again, it won’t be for fun – but for either an achievement or for the drop (that’s pretty useless by level 35 anyway – but perhaps for the skin). I’ve entered it twice and cleared it twice (once with a pug and once with a guild group).

The solution is not DR, which leads to punishing players – but more and varied content (and content that actually works would be nice, too).

My 80 has 100% completion of all 3 Orr zones – but I have NEVER seen any of the statue meta-events in anything but a bugged state (Yak’s Bend server – but I haven’t played that 80 in about 2 weeks). If you want people to stop farming the same events over and over – have more working events – and also reward lower level zone events the same for level 80’s – people may spread out then.

Oh, and maybe design all paths in a given dungeon to be roughly equally challenging and time consuming so there’s not “farm paths” that develop.

I know – all that is tricky – but you guys at ArenaNet ARE the game developers and all that.

Overall – I’m incredibly impressed with the 1 to 80 experience in Guild Wars 2 – the best I’ve ever played in an MMO (and an amazingly little amount of server down time). But the level 80 experience is woefully bugged, and DR compounds the amount of grind to attain any goal in this game.

If your not hitting the DR Karma Cap you aren’t doing it right. in Cursed shore how hard is it to run back and forth from penitent path and then the southern DE over and over u hit DR cap in no time then think ok time to load up a FPS game since this is worthless now.

I bet people wish they didn’t QQ about botters now since the game DR locks on everything u do within the hour then its time to log out lol what a waste this game is.

ouneko

(risen giant champion event) head down to first town on path
(defend town) then you head back up because that defence triggers
(escort event from the first town back down) at the other end of the tunnel
(town defence) then, frequently
(escort NPC filia to look for Gorillas) It’s a 2 event chain that can also lead to, but not related…
(another town defence – or capture – of the outpost)
If it is a outpost capture, it is a 2 event chain that leads to the next town where there are about 3 events (a short escort, a champion slime and the NPC norn wave kill)
Then there is yet one more npc escort/kill event between that town and the final town at foot of arah steps.
Along the way you get another (escort)
once you get to the town, (you retake the town)

I am familiar with the CS event train and yeah, doing the defense/escort quests from beginning to end will not trigger any DR. been there done that.

Escort and defense events take a good 5-10 minutes if done form beginning to start. They require you to stay with the tour group and participate.

Otherwise, I just don’t see how you can do several timed or slider dependent DE’s from beginning to end, kill several champs and do escort quests on top of all that in a short enough time span to hit the DR.

Yeah, if you are running in and pew pewing champs that are at 1/4 health, join escort missions half way through and catch defense events halfway or 3/4 of the way through, thats gaming the system and I fully support DR in that case. This is not punishment. You still get more or at least the same amount of karma than the players who don’t speedrun/catch events from beginning to end and don’t rush for the next one.

But if you don’t contribute as much as players who do the event form beginning to end, why should you be entitled to more rewards because you move like crazy from event to event?

If you get DR for event/event chains that you happen to do form beginning to end, I fully support DR getting tweaked in those cases. I have not ever seen this to be the case in examples presented to me, which I further confirmed by my own experiences and testing.

Bregah,

I would quote you, but forum is broken right now. Very well written and thought out. No fanboy will be able to find fault in your logic….so they will just not reply to you.

This takes me back to when i played Swtor for a bit. I tried fighting the hard battle in the forums….but you just cannot win against the fanboys.

The saddest thing is….you probably care much more about the game than those “fans”.

Yeah, too bad the post assumes everything about the DR is true without actually doing anythign to confirm or deny it. No idea if/how it works in WvW, havne’t done that much off it in a single sitting to be able to tell.

Those would be good points if what in Breagh’s post was true.

Too bad it isn’t, I’ve posted enough about the matter today in this and other topics to repeat myself again. But well, we have exhausted the topic I think. Feel free to believe what you want to believe about being punished and poor fanboys flaming you

EDIT:

Actually, let’s see:

Bregah

If DR for karma is kicking in before a karma boost wears off – that’s bad design.

It does not, as long as you complete all events you are part off and don’t run off before they are done.

Bregah

If DR for karma is kicking in before a single dynamic chain is complete – that’s bad design.

It does not, unless you are repeating a chain you just failed and/or are bunyhopping incomplete events, see above.

Bregah

If DR for dungeon tokens is kicking in if I, as a player, decide to spend my Saturday chain running 100% completely different paths of explorables all day – without ever repeating one – that’s bad design.

Confirmed bug, should be fixed this patch.

Beragh

But Guild Wars 2 level 80 exotic gear is all pretty much obtained by repeating content beyond the point of enjoyability.

I had my exotic set done after around 5-6 Orr runs, starting from Fort Trinity and finishing at the gates of Arah. Done in 2-3 days. By all MMO standards thats crazy fast. And I was pretty inefficient about it too.

Breagh

By that I mean complete every jumping puzzle once, 100% each zone, do each dynamic event once, do every story mode dungeon one time, and each explorable path one time, etc.

400/400 Weaponsmith Blacksmith, soely through area completions. Was at around 70% ish without even doing Orr yet when I got to 400. Leveling crafting is crazy easy if you gather mats while you explore and sell them on the market.

You are either doing something very, very wrong, or basing your statements on false information.

STOP PUNISHING ME BECAUSE I PLAY HC! what are you doing? we need to sit and wait 5 minutes after every boss in dungeons just not to pop speed clear debuff, we are punished because we understand our classes and roles and manage to do blaze thrue dungeons!!!! i cant farm anything couze of DR!!!! i buy 1hours xp/mf/karma buffs so i can get DR after 30min? why are you so against us? what is the reason you suppress me/and me alike so badly? WHY ARE YOU FORCING ME TO PLAY AS YOU WANT ME TO PLAY THIS GAME!?!? I never saw a game before where my playstyle was not allowed to execute and where i was told how will i play it and what i am going to do in game. Your manifesto is total BS! while you did bring some very nice things in to mmorpg world you are not listening us! answear me: WHY AM I PUNISHED FOR A PLAYSTYLE I LIKE?

its ridiculous system… as a crafter leveling up i cant stop every 5-10 levels and grind materials for my next set, or grind materials to level crafting because guess what? DR system kicks in and screws me. Seriously a kitten system and untill its fixed/removed i wont be playing GW2…

Look, for a Legendary, you need:
1,000,000 Karma
350 Skill points
500 Badges of Honor
500 Globs of Ectoplasm
250 Mystic Coins
250 Vicious Fangs, Vicious Claws, Vials of Powerful Blood, Elaborate Totems, Armored Scales, Ancient Bones, Piles of Crystalline Dust, and Powerful Venom Sacs.
This will allow you to create the Gift of Fortune and Gift of Mastery… and doesn’t include the precursor weapon and the Legendary’s gift. The precursor weapon costs at the minimum 50 gold, while the Legendary’s gift costs 500 dungeon tokens along with 250x of an item specific to the Legendary.
Also, it would cost me 252,000 karma for a full set of exotic Karma armor, or 1,380 tokens for a dungeon set, or 1,889 badges for a WvW set, or 30 ectos+various other materials for a crafted set.

O M G.
That seems like a really absurd of stuff to make ONE legendary!!! And with how the DR system is…. ya thats dumb!

The DR system is pretty much the only thing I really hate about Guild Wars 2. I hope they get rid of the system or not make it so darn strict!!

Silencer,

Of course i will keep believing what i want to believe….you will also keep believing what you want to believe. At this point, its pretty clear that you will not change your mind on this issue….nor will the “haters”.

Fact is, you say what Breagh has posted is wrong….but i should believe that what you post is correct? Now, no one knows WHO is correct. The only thing i can go by is my own experiences (like what you are doing) and what everyone else is saying in the forums….and there are a lot of complains about DR by the way, not just this one.

I would also like to point out, that with my own experiences with the game, that there is no way in hell you can level a crafting profession to 400 by not farming at all IF that is what you are suggesting. Though of course you DO mention that you are gathering crafting mats WHILE you level. So basically you ARE farming for mats. I fail to see your point. I think everyone here WOULD be farming mats WHILE they level. At least, thats the most efficient way to do it….it does not mean however that you dont have to grind to get the amount of mats needed. So i find your last point a bit like trying to mislead players….

Anet would do us all a big favor if they would actually tell us HOW their DR system works.

Now, im not calling you a liar, you could very much be telling the truth based on your experiences. Most of my playtime is played with my fiancee. I swear that she keeps getting better and more drops than me all the time. Example: for every 5 dyes she gets….i get 1. Its ridiculous….and i often tell her to hook me up with some. It could very well be that the drop system is completely bugged out.

I think a fundamental piece of this puzzle that’s missing is “middle ground” or incremental rewards.

You think the list of stuff to get a legendary is absurd. I would agree, and precisely because I’ve played games like EQ and gotten epic weapons there. To get a “legendary” here is child’s play by comparison. Sure it will take a MOUNTAIN of time. But other than the badges of honor (which I honestly didn’t know were required until just now) every piece of the puzzle can be done solo, if you’ll put in the time.

Having said that, if you had ten OTHER steps in between that weren’t just grinding/farming, by the time you got to that last piece, it wouldn’t just be a relief, it would feel truly legendary.

So… what are the current steps?

1) level to 80.
2) grind 4 bajillion items.
3) profit.

I think this is what’s causing terms like “nightmare” to be used. And I agree because while getting epics in other games was truly an epic adventure requiring hundreds of hours, travel, groups, raids and luck, at least you had fun doing some or most of the steps.

“Legendary” in this game is just flat. It’s not legendary at all.

A game should have some long term goals for people to look at. A legendary weapon is exactly that.

The idea is that people can play this game for months or years and can collect such a weapon over time. The real problem is that some people just must have this weapon now.

So, they are willing to grind themselves silly to get it and Anet said: No, that’s not what the idea is here.

This game isn’t about grind like other MMO’s. Just cause it looks like something doesn’t mean it is. In other MMO’s grind is needed to get the gear so you can do high level content.

You can do every bit of content in this game without legendary stuff. There’s the difference.

The OP put a list of endgame goals. And this is typically the traditional MMO view. He looks at the options he recognises and categorises them according to the traditional MMO view.
GW2 has collectibles that require some grind but they aren’t needed for your gaming. They are things you can collect over a period of time. As you do stuff and just enjoy going around the world doing events, completing maps, gather mats for crafting, doing crafting, guild activities, helping players you run into etc. That is GW2 endgame and as you collect stuff and gain cash you can look into getting karma gear or run dungeons for dungeon gear.

But you don’t need it now. People are crying over wants as if they are needs. Sure, if karma gear and legendary weapons were a must have or you couldn’t do Arah or something like that, it would be a different story. But that’s not the case. Exotic gear is plenty fine and easy enough to get. The TP has exotic gear for2-3g a piece and when you get to 80 you should be too far off for at least 1 piece of karma gear and run a dungeon a few times and you can get an exotic piece there.

Want the whole set? That’s want again and not need. That can take longer. It’s just a matter of having a little patience.

When you are not this patient and want it all now and need more content cause there’s no gear progression etc….this is just not the right game for you. It’s just how it is.

Some players are pulling out extreme exaggerations, misconceptions, speculations, down to outright tinfoil hat conspiracies about DR.

My guild has been testing this out, even with full MF they get to loot 50 mobs before DR kicking in.
With only food MF they down 70-80 before DR.
The system is fine, you are not meant to farm like a bot.

On the other hand though, it should be explained what a player is supposed to do once he hits DR.
Some guild members got rid of it by doing some other stuff for a dozen of minutes, some still have DR after hours.
I feel Anet should look into making a better system that doesn’t impair players or make them paranoid, as it is detracting more fun than a land full of bot would.

On the bottom line tho, you are not meant to get things faster by farming in GW2.
I.E. if a legendary weapon requires 3 months to be done, you’re not supposed to farm it in a couple weeks by playing 25 hours a day.
I still believe though that if DR is to remain this way then we need to get Waypoint costs reduced – at least we are not forced to farm (and thus get DR) just to port around.

Personally I have little enthusiasm to login any more, Anet wants to put these restrictions in place then I really don’t see the point of trying to carry on. From where I’m sitting they are telling me how long I can play for. They implement a system that requires you to farm, then say NO you are not going to play the way you want to play, you shall play how we dictate. Yes Anet you may have got my money this time, but you won’t be getting any more.