Guild Wars 2

For a long time now something in GW2 has been bugging me, though I think at first I couldn’t even put my finger on it. All along, it seemed like something about the way I progressed through the world just wasn’t exactly satisfying like I wanted it to be. Eventually I figured it out.

While I haven’t exactly felt unrewarded in this game, I do feel like practically every drop might as well just be coppers and silvers. Nothing that ever drops, anywhere, is ever useable and nothing from 0-80 was ever an upgrade.

In a lot of past RPGs both single player and MMO, the prospect of new, different, and cool loot is a major factor in moving forward and killing the next monster. The original Diablo games turned this into an obsession but even in more reasonable games, it was fun, and even made some sense.

When the modest but up-and-coming hero goes out into the world, it’s reasonable to assume he might come across some cool treasure along the way. In practically every fantasy story ever told, the heroic weapons and gear that actually makes it into the story does so as ‘found’ items or through conquest and discovery. I don’t ever recall reading a good story about an adventurer finding a bunch of substandard stuff that he gathers up and takes back to town so that he can sell it all and then go BUY himself a cool sword.

But this is how everything is done in this game. 0-80 and I never once found an item that made me say “awesome! that’s better than what I have”. When I finally started seeing blue weapons drop, I had bought a green already. When greens started dropping, I had bought a yellow. When yellows started dropping, I had better yellows or even exotics. When exotics started to be rewarded (only I have ever seen so far were for map completion) they were underleveled compared to me.

Don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not complaining about rewards or inadequate loot. Almost the opposite actually since the TP has practically EVERYTHING in it and if you just run around hitting enough stuff, you can put all the claws and scales and bones that pop out into your bags, sell them, and buy the thing you want.

But this is not exactly fun or epic. It would have been nice if just occasionally something interesting had happened as far as drops were concerned. As things are now arenanet may as well just rename all the drops to ‘vendor trash’ or ‘barter item’

I get it – those items do have a meaning in the TP for crafting or whatever but much of it IS just vendor trash. And none of it — ABSOLUTELY NONE of it — is ever an upgrade.

Well I will say, without buying armor off the TP, the personal story rewards are normally crappy compared to what im wearing. But then I normally keep mobs about 5 levels higher than that of my toon, seem to get better drops that way too.

I feel the same.

To sum it up: There’s too much stuff dropping, but not enough stuff that is actually usefull. A lot of it goes straight to the TP for dumping prices, which in turn becomes the #1 source for everything you need, making regular drops even more obsolete than they already are…

I find interesting drops often enough (I’m around 30-40, can’t speak for higher levels). My friends and I often trade drops because I find armour of the wrong type for my current character, but between us we find things which are upgrades from our current stuff.

If every drop you got boosted ‘you’ wouldn’t that remove the rarity of items and the “Yay!” factor when you got a good one?

Maybe you should try Torchlight 2, the only thing I find annoying in that game is the sheer volume of drops. It’s almost like a minigame managing your drops.

That’s really weird, I got tons of upgrade drops on my trip to 80.

Not true I do sometimes get better gear, maybe your just having bad luck or searching in wrong place?

Perhaps I am the lucky one for a change, in the last 5 days I have actually found pieces of armor for every slot on my main character that was better than I was wearing.