Guild Wars 2

3 – Solutions?

3a) World drops normalized for 80s

Why do I have to farm Orr if I want level 80 blue green and yellow drops?
For a level 80 the Orr drop should be the whole world drop.

This would spread people arround, make the whole world relevant to everybody.

And I don’t mean “give a high chance to as-good-as-orr-drops in the world”. I mean the same, otherwise people will logically gather in Orr to maximize effectiviness still.

This would also spread the income to less farm-minded people, making the economy a bit more socialized.

Use your own beautiful world ArenaNet. Make us use it efficiently.

3b) Cosmetic Threadmill

GW2 HAS a gear threadmill, and it’s quite short. you take some time to go full exotic, (I’m not still, and not with the best exotics, still, quite power-relevant) and it’s quite nice, it’s not too long, yet not so irrelevant, you have to work for it.
I have no problem how it is.

But the tokens grind, and karma and legendary is just outright insane. Either you can obtain cosmetic items easily or they are a inhuman task.

Making people ignore the cosmetic run of the game or simply go all-in.

The idea would be to make some Cosmetic Threadmill,
How about something between Exotic and Legendary?

Hor about Legendary Tiers?
Make it all cosmetic and nobody will complain it makes the game unfair, it will only let some less time-privileged people join that aspect of the game. Making it more vivid.

Think about it, if the Tier 5 Legendary used a huge quantity of material also used for T1 Legendary it could make some fun market dynamic wouldn’t it?

I think ANet is already with this mindset tho, making dungeon tokens a bit more accessible. So, that’s a good sign. Dungeons Sets are becoming a mid-tier cosmetic goal. Good.

TL;DR

World Drop needs to mach Orr efficiency
Cosmetic Items are either easy or irrelevant. Need more steps in that threadmill.

Well, that’s it, I hope I was concise enough to grab some attention.
And I’m sorry but english is not my first language, so… sorry about any miss steak.

Cheers.

I agree with most of what you are saying, but a cosmetic treadmill will see a lot of complaints, b/c some ppl want only a certain look, and if you transmute over a high tier cosmetic armor peice, its like all that work was for nothing.

What I would suggest is that there’s a cosmetic treadmill, but you aren’t stuck with that armor, you can transmute over it, but each tier of cosmetic armor will glow a certain color/amount/with certain decals/etc. regardless of what you transmute it with.

Also, yeah I’m like why did they bother with downleveling if you’re forced to play the game in one direction?

The rewards for doing down-leveled content should be higher, and downleveling much more harsher, imo as a tradeoff.

Resilience.8501:

TL;DR

World Drop needs to mach Orr efficiency
Cosmetic Items are either easy or irrelevant. Need more steps in that threadmill.

Well, that’s it, I hope I was concise enough to grab some attention.
And I’m sorry but english is not my first language, so… sorry about any miss steak.

Cheers.

Totally agreed. Doesnt even make sense to do it any other way! Would like to hear ANet official word on this!

I think that a lot of the criticism I see around these forums would fade away if drops were equal (to level 80 of course) in every single part of the world. Actually, I think that would encourage explorers!

Yup agreed. I am currently trying to get a full set of Melandru armor.

I hate doing Orr over and over. I would like to do other zones, but it doesn’t offer the money/karma perma camping Orr does. It works slightly because I have gotten a rare 76+ weapon from a level 25 event, but it is so rare compared to Orr you might as well not do it.

Another pet peeve is that people only run certain events. Grenth is usually killed, while Melandru is usually contested during the week and maybe killed during the weekend. It makes it irritating getting my set solo since that fight is nearly impossible without numbers. I wouldn’t say nerf it, but it would be nice if it was more useful to do a meta event than perma camp defense fights in Orr.

I think the game has room for some great ideas on drops normalization. I just don’t think they should drop from the same nodes/mobs you get low level stuff… Maybe DEs could give them and definitely meta events should normalize drops to promote downleveling.

Maybe introduce new mechanics for this… I thought about hunting quests, all over the world. Like a wandering npc that would trade a drop you could get from champion mobs for items related to your original level. So, a 80 downleveling to Queensdale could get from this npc the items he would only find in Orr.

I think there should be ways to achieve the same goal, but I do believe that we should care about proportionality as well. The low level content is definitely easier to high level players. If things were given with the same chance as Orr, there would be noone there and low level areas would be flooded by high level players 2 shotting things.

deriver.5381:

The low level content is definitely easier to high level players. If things were given with the same chance as Orr, there would be noone there and low level areas would be flooded by high level players 2 shotting things.

I think that is one of the issues holding them back. For all the posts of “no progression” it is easy to see when your 80 with full traits the amount of DPS you can put out is just imbalanced for the area’s.

How about this: Any level 80 zone would be excluded from this (so basically Orr/Frostgorge).

If you are 80 downscaled and you go to farm a lower level zone you have a DR on all events across the zone. So basically for a while you get drops your level similar to the rate of Orr. Then it will start to drop gear based on the level range of the zone. It won’t impact Karma etc, but loot wise it will hurt. That allows people who want to salvage gear from those area’s the ability too, and those that want something not filled with undead mobs that pull you or blank white snow a place to kill and progress.

You can then either: Go back to Orr, or go to another zone and hunt there.

Dead.7385:

deriver.5381:

The low level content is definitely easier to high level players. If things were given with the same chance as Orr, there would be noone there and low level areas would be flooded by high level players 2 shotting things.

I think that is one of the issues holding them back. For all the posts of “no progression” it is easy to see when your 80 with full traits the amount of DPS you can put out is just imbalanced for the area’s.

How about this: Any level 80 zone would be excluded from this (so basically Orr/Frostgorge).

If you are 80 downscaled and you go to farm a lower level zone you have a DR on all events across the zone. So basically for a while you get drops your level similar to the rate of Orr. Then it will start to drop gear based on the level range of the zone. It won’t impact Karma etc, but loot wise it will hurt. That allows people who want to salvage gear from those area’s the ability too, and those that want something not filled with undead mobs that pull you or blank white snow a place to kill and progress.

You can then either: Go back to Orr, or go to another zone and hunt there.

Why does there have to be limits and anti-loot code everywhere? Why can’t I just play the game how I want to?

I don’t understand the mentality in this game that everyone has to be having fun a certain way or they are doing fun wrong…

I just got my first glimpse of Orr. I agree that it’s small and kind of unattractive and depressing.

One idea to boost existing content for level 80s: what if champion mobs (or champion and veteran mobs) dropped loot keyed to your actual level rather than theirs or your downleveled number? That would be a simple change that would really open up the world again for max-level players.

Not 80 yet but I’d +1 your post if I could

EDIt: Ah replied and the +1 appeared

The problem is downscaling. Leveled-down you’re still significantly more powerful than you would be at-level, meaning that—if all loot was equal—people would farm the newbie zones instead of Orr.

My feeling, as someone who tends to avoid Orr and spend much more time in the (more interesting and dynamic) 1-40 zones, is that both the loot and difficulty curves are too extreme: Down-leveled content becomes too easy; at-level loot for down-leveled players is too scarce.

I’d also like to see better loot balance between evens that spawn tons of weak mobs (which—often but not always—drop tons of loot) and other events with fewer or more difficult spawns. The easy fix would be to remove all loot from mobs spawned by a DE script and adjust completion rewards, but that would be unpopular. The better fix would be to keep loot as-is, but instead of scaling DEs by volume (more players participating=more mobs spawned), they should be scaled by difficulty (more players participating=higher difficulty mobs spawned).

Tying endgame crafting to Ectos—and tying ectos to high-level salvage—has only served to concentrate the playerbase in the 68+ areas where those items are obtainable. To help spread people out, I’d suggest the possibility of a rare salvage item matching the participant’s level being added as loot upon completion of a DE.

I too agree on making loot more attractive for 80’s, though I personally would prefer an overhaul for every level:

• Currently mobs gain abilities / AI as they grow in level (low level mobs are super easy while higher levels have access to more skills).
• Let loot be an inverse of the mob’s AI compared with your actual level.
• Thus any mob with its full set of AI (at whatever level that may be at) should always drop loot as if you were not down-leveled at all while the easier mobs will drop off in loot frequency as your actual level goes beyond their AI level.
• Minimum drop frequency should not be too low (perhaps 75% or even higher; should be set in a way that fastest farming of easy mobs is slightly less efficient than fastest farming of harder mobs) so higher level players do not feel punished for grouping with lower level friends / guildies.

This accomplishes:

• Low level players still get their appropriate drop rates while leveling.
• The higher level you are, the more places you can farm at max efficiency, peaking at level 80.
• Starter zones will remain “less” efficient to discourage exploiting the easier farming.

It would also make sense to scale up dynamic events according to level as well as number of players – if a couple of fully geared level 80s join in the lowbie DE, an extra veteran mob or three could be generated along with the other enemies to balance out the benefit of the down-leveled characters’ unchanged traits and gear.

One comment, maybe not make other zones drops -equal- to Orr, as they truly are not as difficult, but make them very close. It would be sad to see Orr completely deserted because farming centaurs and Moa Birds gives equal loot for less challenge.

Other than that caveat, I completely agree, and hope Devs read both this and the X-post to Reddit.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Dead.7385:

deriver.5381:

The low level content is definitely easier to high level players. If things were given with the same chance as Orr, there would be noone there and low level areas would be flooded by high level players 2 shotting things.

I think that is one of the issues holding them back. For all the posts of “no progression” it is easy to see when your 80 with full traits the amount of DPS you can put out is just imbalanced for the area’s.

How about this: Any level 80 zone would be excluded from this (so basically Orr/Frostgorge).

If you are 80 downscaled and you go to farm a lower level zone you have a DR on all events across the zone. So basically for a while you get drops your level similar to the rate of Orr. Then it will start to drop gear based on the level range of the zone. It won’t impact Karma etc, but loot wise it will hurt. That allows people who want to salvage gear from those area’s the ability too, and those that want something not filled with undead mobs that pull you or blank white snow a place to kill and progress.

You can then either: Go back to Orr, or go to another zone and hunt there.

Why does there have to be limits and anti-loot code everywhere? Why can’t I just play the game how I want to?

I don’t understand the mentality in this game that everyone has to be having fun a certain way or they are doing fun wrong…

A game is all about limits, my friend. Everything you do is based on the rules they created for the world you are virtually experiencing. So, this question by itself is pointless.

“Why can’t I fly? That’s all I want… I loved flying on other games and not being able to do it here is limiting my game experience. I can’t understand this mentality” – You see? I can use this same argument for just about anything. So, it’s really not a valid point.

I never found WoW’s raids any fun. I hated them, but I forced myself to play them because I loved playing with my friends, and to keep playing with them through the new content, I had to have all the top gear. I hate gear grind, but their raid system only allowed me to run a raid once a week. Why? All I care was the possibility to play with my friends, limiting my badges and loots per week was only keeping me away from what was fun to me.

You can’t really create a game without rules, and every rule will be a limiting factor of some type.

dybryd.1358:

It would also make sense to scale up dynamic events according to level as well as number of players - if a couple of fully geared level 80s join in the lowbie DE, an extra veteran mob or three could be generated along with the other enemies to balance out the benefit of the down-leveled characters’ unchanged traits and gear.

Or do what has been suggested by others and me:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/events/We-need-Outward-Scaling-not-just-Upward

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Scale-Dynamic-Event-Difficulty-on-Success/first#post101866

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/events/The-Shatterer-In-my-opinion/first#post180429

Summary: Scale dynamic events based on server performance. If you’re doing really well at them as a server, the next time they run they should be harder. This should also be indicated in the text somehow. You should know you’re fighting a 10-star Shatterer, for example. Award server* achievements or something to give gloating rights for servers that accomplish some of the more difficult events (e.g., Fort Aspenwood downed the level 25-star Claw of Jormag, world first). Also, revisit some of the world bosses and give them more involved mechanics. At higher difficulties make use and protection of environmental weapons necessary.

* - Emphasis on server, not guild. These should be seen as community activities and not the sole accomplishment of a guild.

@ Sir Moogie – I would love to see that implemented. Would this be linked with only Meta-Events so that newbies in the game wouldn’t get their face punched in by a level 2+++ centaur?

“Emphasis on server, not guild”. This is something ANet should strive for. The DE system is just waiting for it.

all very good Ideas!I specially agree with Some of the things SirMoogie pointed out. You always win in this game!!!! there is no Loose none of the DE’s are failed, they just get steamed rolled. It would be nice to one day log in and see that i have to recaptured one of the zones because it was completely overrun by mobs while I was away.

I like this idea.

I’m not the biggest fan of Orr either, and I didn’t know what diminishing returns even was until last night when my friend told me about it :/

@Dead

Part of me wants to say no as the system would correct itself if newbies are being stomped, but it is probably a good idea for every zone to have content for the less skilled so they don’t feel put off.

And honestly, didn’t everyone think endgame would be this way based on the sidekicking and manifesto?

Want to have people playing this game for a long time? Make the whole world equal to level 80 to a level-capped person. This will literally FILL up the world with people in all corners and give people reason to check out other areas.

Otherwise, what’s the point of sidekicking? I have friends that are higher level than me and they don’t really want to sidekick because they have their own goals that they’re trying to accomplish. If they could do that while I’m getting leveling gear and they’re getting lots of gold, karma, etc., they would absolutely play with me instead of the random people they don’t know in the highest level zones.

+1 many times on the downleveling being horrible for lvl 80’s. not only do you 2-shot mobs when youre downleveled to a lower zone from 80, but the rewards are terrible. if ANet wants Tyria to be a world that is revisited many times, they need to 1) fix DE scaling, and 2) improve rewards and nerf downleveling. these are fairly simple fixed and would make a world of difference.

Adding my +1 here! I love the content in the game, but I feel forced to stay in Orr to earn anything appropriate to my level I would love the option to receive level-appropriate drops (gear only) and rewards (xp and money).

Things like normal loot/grey drops from mobs and harvesting should stay area level appropriate.

I have been disappointed with the down-leveling, both in terms of challenge and drops. Mobs are boringly easy for the most part and a large majority of the drops are the zone’s level. Rewards need to scale better and the down-leveling needs a minor tweak.

Why isn’t there a dev responding? This needs to be implemented ASAP and shouldn’t even be too hard.

I agree with the “get people out of orr” part

but i disagree with the “i don’t have time, but i want the nice stuff” thing. seriously, the legendaries and prestige gear should remain to the people that spend time doing that stuff. back in the original game it was like that, i rocked the normal gear for a loooooooooong time (months, not weeks after launch) before i had the chance to purchase my first 15k gear and i never moaned that “omg i want that but i would be forced to grind and i’ve a job”

hell, i’m rocking my rares right now, but i see people moaning on both sides

one side “omg i’ve a life and i can’t do the grindy stuff, yet i want to get those items”

the other side “omg these guys with jobs and stuff, flailing their CCs and becoming instantly rich, it’s not fair”

seriously, get over that and enjoy the “perks” of your side, the people with jobs, we’ve access to gems/gold, boosters and an assortment of other things

the people with free time will have access to speed runs-farming-legendaries

somewhere something happened that turned mmos into “everyone should have access to everything, or welfare equivalents” (and we all know the culprit)

seriously, the game is only one month old, if you are seriously casual, do you expect you would have the same kind of gear than the people that log 6+ hours a day? i’ve my rares and i’m clear i’ll match the exotic geared people in a couple months, i’ve no rush nor need to get that stuff asap

In regards to making farming easier or more difficult, I don’t think it would change anything. The most important limiting factor in the GW2 economy is player time, so if you can’t play much, you will always be at a disadvantage to those that can play much more (despite the anti-farming code). I think it’s more important that casual players always have multiple methods of gaining entry into the economy.

However, I totally agree that rewards need to be improved globally so that the end-game emphasis is not placed on Orr. The rewards in all other zones should be scaled up enough as you level so that they are worth visiting and exploring without feeling cheated or inefficient. Although end game raw material nodes can’t be placed in low level zones, experience and karma rewards should be scaled up to the player’s real level in addition to weapon and armor drops.

I would love to go to other zones and explore them entirely because the world is huge and beautiful. There’s so many things to see. However, with the expense of travelling around, a limited play time schedule and such daunting resource requirements for some of the exotic gear, I feel like I need to optimize my time in high level zones so that I can continue to make progress towards these goals.

I WANT to make progress towards these goals anywhere. Orr is the most difficult zone, so I think it should offer the best rewards. However, other lower level zones should offer rewards competitive to a level 80 character so they can achieve progression via exploring the massive world.

Additionally, dungeons are the closest thing in this game to requiring any sort of group coordination and alternative strategizing. I think with the increased token drops in the latest patch, they’ve reached a pretty good compromise between gaining dungeon gear at a reasonable pace versus ensuring it has some value and requires effort to obtain. In this case effort equates to time, the ability to play and the ability to coordinate a party. If anything, I think they should add more diverse dungeon loot and make dungeons more mechanically difficult.

Hidon.4680:

In regards to making farming easier or more difficult, I don’t think it would change anything.

I don’t think that was the important idea in the thread – what was important, and what should be changed, is that a max-level character’s experience of Tyria is more and more confined to a small area and repetitive routine, and that there could be many ways to give them meaningful things to do in more parts of the world.

@dybryd

I did actually address that in the rest of my post and I agree that it’s a problem. I’d love to get competitive experience, karma and gear in down-leveled zones.

I reread the original posting and point 2a makes a case for easing the difficulty of farming stating that it renders casual gamers irrelevant economically. I disagree with this point. No matter how easy or difficult farming is, your relevance will always be in proportion to your time expenditure.

I’d still love to be able to explore the other zones and be competitively rewarded for participating in the events and heart quests occurring there. It would be hugely helpful in spreading the population throughout the game world.

i totally agree with you but you have to put in your considerations that they should low your weapon stats too so you will not kill low Mob so fast otherwise its so easy fighting against low lvl mobs even veteran one

Good post. I might make it to Orr for a few rounds when I hit 80 but I have zero interest in grinding things for tokens. That’s one of the few reasons I left WoW >.>

GW2 is too streamlined and linear at the moment. I agree with your suggestion. ANet needs to put a lot of work into this game still.

Hidon.4680:

In regards to making farming easier or more difficult, I don’t think it would change anything. The most important limiting factor in the GW2 economy is player time, so if you can’t play much, you will always be at a disadvantage to those that can play much more (despite the anti-farming code). I think it’s more important that casual players always have multiple methods of gaining entry into the economy.

You are aware that this is exactly what killed WoW, right?

If you invest more time into something, then it’s absolutely normal that you will earn more and that you should earn more.

I won’t be jealous of someone with a legendary, he earned it, it might take me 4-5++ months to get my hands on one, but that doesn’t mean that we both deserved it at the same time.

In the other hand, hey, I was busy getting my university degree, so what’s the fuss about? I chose to focus on that and I get rewarded for that instead.

Equal rewards for unequal investment destroys MMORPGs and it should stop.

I don’t know why I can’t seem to get the quote functionality working.

@Apos

I didn’t state anywhere that people shouldn’t be compensated proportionately for their time investment in farming. As a matter of fact, both of my posts are in agreement with you….

My point was that it doesn’t matter whether farming is made easier or more difficult because those with more time to farm will always have a leg up on those with less time to farm, as it is with nearly every activity.

Hidon.4680:

I don’t know why I can’t seem to get the quote functionality working.

@Apos

I didn’t state anywhere that people shouldn’t be compensated proportionately for their time investment in farming. As a matter of fact, both of my posts are in agreement with you….

My point was that it doesn’t matter whether farming is made easier or more difficult because those with more time to farm will always have a leg up on those with less time to farm, as it is with nearly every activity.

That I agree with and sorry if I misunderstood your point.

I can understand the reasoning behind the diminishing returns they instituded, but it hurts the player more than what it hurts the bots…I just hope they find another way to get rid of them.

This game is incredibly fun (IMO) leveling up to 80 and doing the hearts around the zones.

Very innovative and I think the best leveling experience I’ve had in an MMO.

But once you hit 80 (and I did Frostgorge Sound before ever entering an Orr zone) and head off to “end-game” stuff the game simply falls flat on it’s face.

I 100% completed all 3 Orr zones around a week ago, and in all three zones I saw the meta-events start, but every single one of them bugged.

I never saw one go to completion.

The zone chat in all 3 zones was always about trying to figure out what actually worked in the zones (dynamic events and skill points).

So farming the few events that work repeatedly is now subject to DR.

Running dungeons (the other major level 80 activity) is now subject to DR.

Waypoints at level 80 are way too expensive for the income of most players.

All 3 Orr zones are nearly identical dreary wastelands of undead mobs (can’t even complete daily if you don’t leave Orr).

The draconian diminishing returns systems being implemented are only making the end-game worse.

Load of lagg during bigger events.
Nice idea but unless that is better done I dont wanna do them.
A game is hard to make, GW2 is suppose to be a next generation MMO.
Its working well to a point and then it just falls down.
Everything is easy to get to 80, then suddenly you need farming and lot sof it to get for example legendary weapons which is style basically.

One game that did everything right was Everquest, dead hard but also made the achivement of reaching 50 that likely took a year for most made you proud of it, you made friends doing that and the community was the best ever in a MMO.
You could design gw2 more around pvp, which it seem it is then make better tools for the individual to use, however filled with dull and bad communication, hard to make groups, and make sure the tactical element was there from the start to use which is lacking fully. Designing content for level 80 and endgame should be priority one, but that is basically non existent. rewarding behaviour that makes me puke due to why should I play a game that cost me money but give little to no return?
WwW with nightcapping, oh man why should I pay anything when a zerg can take and upgrade everything during the night?
That is a huge turn off and bad design choice. and for gods sake, I play with eyefinity and dude I wanna move my UI! its 2012, and multiscreengaming is here and simply make it moveable.

For a next gen MMO, its a huge failure since what behaviour do they want me to have in the game and as far I am NOT impressed with it. Anoyed with the mobs in Orr and anoyed of nightcapping, the alck of UI choice, laggy in events its just to many anoying events as far.

I’m astounded by your idea to essentially turn every zone into a level 80 zone drop-wise. That would broaden the level 80 gameplay exponentially. You’re absolutely right that the current content for level 80 drops is far too narrow a design for such a vast world. +1 billion.

I don’t understand either why the downleveling system is so skewed. I think you should just be scaled down to a point where you’re no more powerful than you would be if you played the area on-level. Then the rewards could also be made fully equal to your level no matter where you are and we could do away with this stupid song and dance of having to balance out difficulty + time vs. rewards because of the highly imperfect scaling system they went for.

The only problem that would be left then would the issue of loot drops – if you make those fully equal to the players’ level it would make it difficult to acquire certain crafting materials from lower tiers.

I think the best solution to this might be something similar to the normal mode / hard mode toggle in GW1… in GW1 the world wasn’t equally difficult everywhere either, even between the max level areas themselves, but the entire world was raised to the highest difficulty in Hardmode. Perhaps in GW2 upon reaching max level we could have something similar, like a “max level mode” that we can toggle on to make the downleveling more balanced so that the entire world is of an equivalent difficulty to playing in a natural lvl 80 zone and we get full level 80 rewards. If players wanted to farm a specific tier of crafting materials they could turn the max level mode off and they’d just get the same difficulty and rewards scaling they currently do.

I don’t know how feasible it is to implement something like the above, but I do think we need at least something better than the current system. Due to the imperfect scaling of rewards in the lower level areas, I really feel pigeonholed into the lvl 75+ parts of the map, since when I go anywhere else I make substantially less money and karma, not to mention that I have a significantly reduced chance of getting lvl 70+ rare / exotic items to dismantle for the ecto’s I still need to finish crafting my lvl 80 exotic set.

Who cares if the endgame model is fine, when the endgame zones suck donkey kitten.

ulukaiulukai.2584:

Why isn’t there a dev responding? This needs to be implemented ASAP and shouldn’t even be too hard.

Probably because it takes them more than 4 hours to read, digest and discuss the proposals – which btw i support wholeheartedly.

Ansultares.1567:

Who cares if the endgame model is fine, when the endgame zones suck donkey kitten.

Actually Anet intends the whole GW2 world to be endgame zones, and most of the lower level zones are fine. It’s just that currently the downscaling and loot drops don’t fit that intention.

Uzl.1987:

but i disagree with the "i don’t have time, but i want the nice stuff" thing. seriously, the legendaries and prestige gear should remain to the people that spend time doing that stuff. back in the original game it was like that, i rocked the normal gear for a loooooooooong time (months, not weeks after launch) before i had the chance to purchase my first 15k gear and i never moaned that "omg i want that but i would be forced to grind and i’ve a job"

It was already touched on, but to me the biggest issue is the disparity in the game between "reward levels". You have either "done right away" or "ridiculous grind".
I’m not particularly opposed to the latter, and I’m fine with the idea of legendaries and such being long-term goals*, but I do feel the game should provide much more in the way of short-term and mid-term goals you can pursue while on that road. Though a "cosmetic treadmill" was mentioned, I don’t even think it needs to be that. Pretty much any system that allows you to feel like you can continue to get something interesting, fun, or worthwhile would work, be it collectible Polymock pieces (whenever that gets added in), a large variety of non-Dungeon, non-legendary (non-grind-heavy) skins you can readily pursue**, unlockable upgrades for your home instance, or whatever.

Basically just things that makes you feel like you can jump in and always look forward to something worthwhile.

And I would like to see rewards normalized across the areas as well. If I didn’t feel that stepping outside of Frostgorge or Orr was a waste, I could probably enjoy myself at least slightly more, honestly.

*That said, as I mentioned elsewhere I would prefer if the game dropped dungeon tokens, Badges of Honor, etc. and just put everything on a karma standard. Even if it takes a long time to get something, it’d be lovely if that time could be spent performing various activities (or just whichever one you prefer) and ’playing how you want’
**These types of skins actually are in the game already to some extent (Zho’s gear, Devona’s gear, etc.), but the rarity of getting an exotic in general combined with the random nature and the current inability of the TP make the pursuit of such skins much less approachable as it stands.

i am basicallly in the same situation of the OP , i loved the cosmetics but either they are easy to get or grindy as hell to get .

the cultural armors per say , specially the low /mid levels ones that no one buys because even for a lvl 80 it’s expensive to buy.

the way the game is right now to me is :
want some cosmetic gear that looks great? ok farm the hell out of karma or this dungeon or take this common looking gear that you use since lvl 10.

where is the mid-term guys?

Resilience.8501:

3a) World drops normalized for 80s

Why do I have to farm Orr if I want level 80 blue green and yellow drops?
For a level 80 the Orr drop should be the whole world drop.

This would spread people arround, make the whole world relevant to everybody.

And I don’t mean “give a high chance to as-good-as-orr-drops in the world”. I mean the same, otherwise people will logically gather in Orr to maximize effectiviness still.

This would also spread the income to less farm-minded people, making the economy a bit more socialized.

Use your own beautiful world ArenaNet. Make us use it efficiently.

My issue is that if you have to lure players into a particular zone using any particular reward (gear, mats, currency, or any other “carrot”), then it says a lot about the quality of content in that zone.

If all of the items, mats, etc were completely removed (or equally distributed) across the game, where would players play and where wouldn’t they? THIS should be the basis on what zones get the most development attention.

It certainly says a lot, though when the rewards are still not enough to convince players to visit certain game content (I personally am having a real tough time finding players to play with in Orr).

Just buy gold from Anet and spend it on stuff you don’t have time to farm. Problem solved.

Holy crap your opening paragraph sounds just like me!

I agree and approach endgame in a somewhat similar fashion.

Orr already has reasons for 80s to go there, namely the Karma vendors and gathering nodes. The reason 80s congregate there is the ability to make gold in a somewhat stifled economy. If there was a way to boost up rewards in other zones then it would spread the population out more and encourage more varied gameplay. Event zerging works for money making, but I agree that its very boring. (Though I think that may be an issue with their scaling as well.)

I love the idea of having more zones scale for lvl 80s! It’s already starting to feel pretty empty when I go back and clear zones and Orr is getting more and more packed.

Sure, keep the exotic karma vendors in the Orr temples, but scale up events and drops in other zones for us 80s to incentivize us to mingle in the other zones instead of just moshing in Orr. This way, we could still get the karma and xp we need while playing and helping lower levels through these rapidly emptying zones.

There’s no incentive to go back to other zones right now, beyond chasing the 100% world complete status. Give me a reason to go back and I’d do it in a heartbeat! So many pretty zones and no reason to visit. :(

yah I agreed. Most of my friends (early 20s now) quit MMOs simply because it takes too long to get to max level and be able to start customizing their characters without having to deal with out-leveling the awesome items that they’ve just bought. A typical problem in all these MMO is that for some players it’s just like “spend x amount of time first until you can get your hands on ALL the cool-stuffs”, when honestly – they just want to play with the cool-stuff; that’s the whole reason why they even play MMO… to build your own unique character, period.

I’m on a server marked as “Full” and I run into 2-3 people every hour on the level 15-75 zones. The only zones where I ever run into enough people to actually do group events are Cursed Shore and Malchor’s Leap(for temples only prety much) Frostgorge sound has content up to level 80, but the only event where I ever see any people is the Claw of Jormage. Once he dies and I start running around to do other events, all the people went poof and I’m back to doing events on my own again.

I’m very happy to have zones like Cursed Shore where I can do events with other people without having to spam map chat for so long the event already finished and restarted from the beginning by the time someone replies to it. Although Cursed Shore is completely on the opposite side of the spectrum, there are so many people every single event related monster except champions/veterans dies before it can even do a single attack animation.

It would be nice if there were places to go with a middle ground between these extremes. Doing events in Iron Marches doesn’t magically become more fun just because it drops level 80 loot now, there need to actually be people there to make the events more interesting.

If every zone becomes a level 80 zone then it would just spread people too thin to regularly run into other people.

If this solution could be merged in with a system that congregates servers for maps, like reverse-overflow servers, it could make the game a LOT more interesting.