Guild Wars 2

What do people think about it?

http://toughlovecritic.wordpress.com/2015/01/05/the-gold-standard-why-loot-sucks-in-gw2-and-ways-to-fix-it/

Its a bit much to read in one sitting but over all i think the “loot being bad” seems a bit odd for a game like GW2. In games like WoW you NEED loot to be good because every one is working on the next level of gear that how gear treadmills work gw2 just not that type of game. To play you should get most of the gold / armor that you need beyond that there not much else to get so there no real need to keep getting mounties of loot.

So loot beyond what the game puts out is kind of pointless.

The author of the article has eloquently expressed what the veteran players all know.

I really like the idea of account bound craftable precursors. Not only would the playbase finally have a means to get a legendary without having to grind gold until their fingers bleed, but in a LOT of ways, it would deal with the horrendous inflation attached to precursors. (John Smith’s regular dismissal of any financial complaint aside, the economy is broken where precursors and ascended crafting materials is concerned.)

stale.9785:

The author of the article has eloquently expressed what the veteran players all know.

I really like the idea of account bound craftable precursors. Not only would the playbase finally have a means to get a legendary without having to grind gold until their fingers bleed, but in a LOT of ways, it would deal with the horrendous inflation attached to precursors. (John Smith’s regular dismissal of any financial complaint aside, the economy is broken where precursors and ascended crafting materials is concerned.)

if you understand supply and demand, you would get why its not broken

Btw, for those that don’t want to read the whole article, the author put a TLDR at the end:

“Conclusion (a.k.a., TL;DR)

The loot system of Guild Wars 2 is so abysmal because of the decision to attach nearly everything to the Gold Standard. Everything can be turned into gold, and acquiring what you want is just a matter of getting the needed gold and going to the Trading Post. This is a direct consequence of the maxim “Play How You Want.”

The knock-on effect of this decision is that the most efficient gold making in the game drives the market’s prices, especially for extremely rare items. People who want those items feel compelled to be efficient, and stop doing what they want because it won’t get them what they want. Or they don’t, and never get what they want.

There already exist in the game places where the Gold Standard doesn’t hold true (chiefly by using Account Bound on Acquire), and there’s a high emphasis on the exclusive aspects of the area.

Taking those ideas and implementing them as a “second system” for extremely rare, Gold Standard-based items would reduce the complaints about the unrewarding loot system, as well as increase satisfaction about what does drop.

The main difficulty of such suggestions is that it would require a philosophy change on ArenaNet’s part, as well as create some unavoidable economic upheaval as the new systems re-balanced around the player base’s desire to do things the old vs. new way.

I think these negatives will be more than outweighed by the positive press and reaction of players who have quit the game on account of never feeling rewarded."

I kind of just browse over it.

I used to think the same way the author does. But after a while I reailize I can do anything in pve to make 10 gold per hour.

The only catch is you do need to spend sometime to study guild war economic. Take for example a while ago I realize I can make 6 gold per skill point simply by promoting tier 1 wood. That being said the price crashed now. Basically you have to understand how to convert all those currency.

If you dont’ think 10 gold per hour by doing what ever you want is good enough, I have nothing more to say.

Obviously you can do boring stuff like spend all your time killing candy corn or opening a ballizion number of wintersday gift.

But if you found that fun, go ahead. I’m already making really good money by playing anyway I want.

laokoko.7403:

I kind of just browse over it.

I used to think the same way the author does. But after a while I reailize I can do anything in pve to make 10 gold per hour.

If you dont’ think 10 gold per hour by doing what ever you want is good enough, I have nothing more to say.

Obviously you can do boring stuff like spend all your time killing candy corn or opening a ballizion number of wintersday gift.

But if you found that fun, go ahead. I’m already making really good money by playing anyway I want.

Well, but you AREN’T playing how you want…you’re just farming…and nobody really WANTS to farm…that was kind of the author’s point.

SonOfJacob.7396:

laokoko.7403:

I kind of just browse over it.

I used to think the same way the author does. But after a while I reailize I can do anything in pve to make 10 gold per hour.

If you dont’ think 10 gold per hour by doing what ever you want is good enough, I have nothing more to say.

Obviously you can do boring stuff like spend all your time killing candy corn or opening a ballizion number of wintersday gift.

But if you found that fun, go ahead. I’m already making really good money by playing anyway I want.

Well, but you AREN’T playing how you want…you’re just farming…and nobody really WANTS to farm…that was kind of the author’s point.

No you don’t understand. I mean I can do anything pve. Like dungeon, EOTM, map completion, silverwaste, drytop, fractal, tequalt, even key farming, harvesting. And make 10 gold per hour.

If you want to call every pve activities in this game farming, I have nothing more to say. Like what else are you going to do when you logon?

Only thing that dont’ reward good gold is spvp and wvw. And even if spvp dont ’reward anything many people do it. And I actually do spvp just to finish my dungeon collection. So that is rewarding in another sense.

So the author argues that the gold standard is the problem because of the grind for gold but then praises other systems which likely require even more grind? The author was wrong in regards to their example about Dusk.

Got it – I understand what you meant now. But the article was the point I was referring to – that the systems could be adjusted and it would definitely be more engaging. Anyone else have thoughts on the article?

TL:DR should be the name of that article.

The loot is horrible most of the time because of the RNG but occasionally it will surprise you with something nice.

If you take away the grind and add a goal to earn elitist items instead of farming or relying on RNG you lessen the value and desirability of them.

Muusic.2967:

TL:DR should be the name of that article.

The loot is horrible most of the time because of the RNG but occasionally it will surprise you with something nice.

If you take away the grind and add a goal to earn elitist items instead of farming or relying on RNG you lessen the value and desirability of them.

A lot of people equate goals as grind.

I obviously understand the article. Like I remember last halloween I found out I can make 30 gold per hour by just killing candy corn.

So if I want to be rewarded, I should spend all my time killing candy corn.

But in the end, I just give up. There are many ways to make really good money, but it just mind boggling boring. I already spend enough of my life farming in this game. I just arn’t going to do it any more.

I can get rewarded by having fun, and that is good enough for me.

The loot system in GW2 is superior to other MMO loot systems specifically BECAUSE it is tied to the Gold Standard.

This means that you CAN play the type of content you want and convert your time into nearly any item in the game, as opposed to games where you must grind away at specific tasks until RNG decides to reward you with a specific item that you want.

I understand that this concept is foreign to people who emigrate here from the inferior products that we’ve all played in the decades before, but the system really is pretty wonderful.

I also noticed that his conclusion regarding how precursor crafting would impact TP prices was wrong.

This is also the user who wrote the article if anyone was curious to see their other posts:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/TaCktiX-6729

I think the problem is that almost anything in this game can be achieved/aquired by grinding gold and not do fun/challenging content.
Diablo 3 had the same problem of abyssmal and unrewarding loot drops as a result of a TP philosophy where you have to grind gold in order to buy what you wanted from the AH instead of providing satisfying drops.
Blizzard ultimately wisened up and completely revamped the loot system prior to Reaper of Souls which made the game awesome and to this day I like to dip in and play a few hours here and there simply because it feels rewarding and it’s fun.

I think John Smith did a good job in salvaging this aweful design decision as best as he could. Inflation is almost non existent and item prices seem pretty fair for the most part, same with the TP tax.
But even the best economist can’t turn a bad system into a good one.

I didn’t read the entire article, just the summary, and I think that the summary is accurate enough but I somewhat disagree. In GW1 everything was attached to gold too (ok nearly everything) yet the economy wasn’t so bad.

I think the economic system of GW2 has 2 far more important issues than the “gold standard” as the writer says.

A) The same (almost) loot drops everywhere. Although this is good for their philosophy of “Play how you want”, they made it so brainless farming has the same chances of getting anything good as doing the harder content. And in most cases, the “easy” parts award way more gold than the harder parts (given the same time) which doesn’t make any sense at all.

For example, although everything was bound to gold in GW1 too, you could get the rare items yourself by doing the specific content that dropped them. Also, activating “Hard Mode” made the game both more challenging AND more rewarding at the same time. Something that doesn’t exist in GW2.

Also, aside from easy content giving more rewards than hard content, there is also the idea of zerging. Have you ever tried doing the Fire Elemental with just 5 people? It’s considerably harder than doing it with 20+ people, yet it offers the same rewards. Even very “simple” fights like taking a guard point EoTM has its own challenges if you go and solo it (trolls and their push/knowback for example), a zone that has some great mob mechanics/design yet the mobs never actually show off their abilities because of the huge zergs that are attacking them.

And those huge zergs get the exact same rewards, with minimal effort. Same goes on in the Silverwastes too. People gather up, because it allows them to spam 1, go afk, and get rewarded. Effort isn’t rewarded, that’s far more important than having everything obtainable with gold, in my opinion.

B) No competition for Loot. Although the idea of no competition works great in general PVE, zerging content etc, it does hurt the game in more organised fights. In GW2 everyone rolls on the same table, every time a mob is killed. In order to keep things interesting the mobs MUST have a much lower chance than in other games. This hurts organised groups and people playing together, I made a post back when Fractals was first introduced on the fact that GW2 is one of the few MMORPGs that really punish friends playing together.

Everyone rolling on the same loot tables (no mob tagging) is a double edged sword. No “need/greed” rolls is another double edged sword, those two, tagging and need/greed make any loot system feel LESS Random.

I will give an example. Imagine a fight that takes 20 people to finish, like a Raid, using a “traditional” loot system and the GW2 system.

In the traditional system, the boss has a 100% chance to drop some good loot, let’s say a miniature version of itself. When it drops, the 20 players roll to get it and the one with the more luck will get it. However, if the same group kills the boss again, that one player won’t roll the miniature again, in a sense, even if you don’t get what you want, but someone else does, you are still making progress. In other words, although it’s still RNG, it’s not completely RNG, but as you do the content more and more, you WILL (there is no IF here) get it.

In the GW2 system, everyone will have to roll to get that mini on the same table. This means instead of a 100% chance (to keep it similarly rare) the boss will have a 5% chance (1/20) to drop a miniature for any given player. So, in some runs a couple of players will get it, in other runs none will get it. This makes it completely based on Random Chance with no way ever of making your chances better in the long run.

My solutions to both problems:

A) Make harder content more rewarding. Period. Someone posted on these forums a nice idea of variable rewards based on how the community is performing on certain dungeon paths. Those done quickly and more often will start offering less rewards, while those who are rarely done, and take considerable amount of time, will offer far more rewards. By making the rewards variable, Anet devs won’t have to balance them every few months by hand, let the system do it on its own.

Limiting zerg loot is considerably harder. Making it so 20+ players don’t get loot if they attack a champion, or anything above 5 people attacking the same mob getting less and less rewards isn’t exactly a good option, although it will solve the problem, it will create new ones. The content itself needs to better adapt to the number of players, mobs/bosses need to be designed for 20 players, just increasing their hit points isn’t enough.

B) The best way to solve the problem of RNG, is to start (slowly) making gear bound to the party. This will make parties more important than soloing around on your own. This setting should only affect ACCOUNT BOUND ON ACQUIRE items that have no use other to be vendored or trashed if you don’t want them.

Examples are Fractal skins, Ascended Rings and Ascended Armor/Weapon boxes and any Account bound minis. Allow players in the same group to pass them among them freely without consequences. This way, grouping is better, and those, otherwise useless, items have a new meaning

The time you start thinking about gold-per-hour is the time when GW2 (or any game) stopped being a game and becomes a job — then everything you do feels as grind.

I would be willing to agree with the author if the author can equate skill to gold since GW2 is a skill based game. If you fail at dodging, for example, no amount gold can save you.

I think I agree, the system is kind of awful.

For a long while, I don’t bother with many of GW2’s content because I think they are unrewarding. Like I don’t even do sPvP before because they dont’ generate gold.

I recently started doing sPvP and realize how much fun I miss out.

I think Anet did a good job to add some rewards for their content and that helps people try different things. The dungeon track and the new dungeon collection “assasin’s accessory” is what get me to try pvp.

i rather play the game then read about it

laokoko.7403:

The dungeon track and the new dungeon collection “assasin’s accessory” is what get me to try pvp.

I think getting rid of the pvp booster and adding the dungeon track are probably the two best things done in PvP. I’d like to see a similar thing done for WvW.

Back on topic,

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The time you start thinking about gold-per-hour is the time when GW2 (or any game) stopped being a game and becomes a job — then everything you do feels as grind.

That’s what I think is the most interesting parts of what the author is suggesting – flipping the process upside down to create more FUN in the acquiring of the rarer items.

it’s probably a necessary evil though. Anet need to make the game rewarding for people who actually pay them money.

So making things buy-able with gold, enables the credit card players easy access to buy the things they want. Those players are after all the one who keeps the game running.

There are some mistakes like right after the line “What is equivalence?” when it stated incorrectly that “Economically, equivalence is expressing a given sum of money as it would be in the past, future, or over time.”

The word by itself isn’t Economic specific and only when paired with another can it become Economic. IE, Ricardian Equivalence.

As for the defining statement they gave, the key word is “Real”. As in the “Real Value”. See the following;

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/real-value.asp

They then move on to assigning every asset a gold value which is automatically done through various ways.

NPC value depending on if it’s bought from or sold to a vendor. Often creating a buy/sell order ceiling/floor. Bringing me to the next way it’s done via supply/demand on TP. The final way (which also has a floor/ceiling effect) is by the average value of the materials used to craft and received when salvaged.

Other than that, it makes some really good points.

Serophous.9085:

stale.9785:

The author of the article has eloquently expressed what the veteran players all know.

I really like the idea of account bound craftable precursors. Not only would the playbase finally have a means to get a legendary without having to grind gold until their fingers bleed, but in a LOT of ways, it would deal with the horrendous inflation attached to precursors. (John Smith’s regular dismissal of any financial complaint aside, the economy is broken where precursors and ascended crafting materials is concerned.)

if you understand supply and demand, you would get why its not broken

And if you understand aching wrists and fingers from grinding gold and that the purpose of a game is fun and entertainment, then you would understand why it is.

I have to admit, I didn’t read past the statement that TP users are exploiters. That kind of squashed any desire to read more.

The problem with economists is that they foster economies only another economist finds stimulating or interesting.

I’m John Q. Player, and I don’t give a rat’s tail about ROI metrics, velocities or variable exchange rates.

I want a cool sword to hit the giant dragon with while my buddies shoot fancy spell effects out their bums, and a rousing battle tune to go with it.

Only kitten way to function in this game anymore is o turn into a wallstreet maverick spending more time paying Spreadsheet Wars and aggregating data than anything else.

Economists should never be involved in making anything fun for anyone but economists. The commonality of this tendency for MMOs to all be turning into Investment Simulator Online makes me want to know exactly how hitting dragons with swords and fireballs came to this.

Bugger it all. People can turn anything into drudge work, and apparently will if allowed one minute alone with anything.

naiasonod.9265:

The problem with economists is that they foster economies only another economist finds stimulating or interesting.

I’m John Q. Player, and I don’t give a rat’s tail about ROI metrics, velocities or variable exchange rates.

I want a cool sword to hit the giant dragon with while my buddies shoot fancy spell effects out their bums, and a rousing battle tune to go with it.

Only kitten way to function in this game anymore is o turn into a wallstreet maverick spending more time paying Spreadsheet Wars and aggregating data than anything else.

Economists should never be involved in making anything fun for anyone but economists. The commonality of this tendency for MMOs to all be turning into Investment Simulator Online makes me want to know exactly how hitting dragons with swords and fireballs came to this.

Bugger it all. People can turn anything into drudge work, and apparently will if allowed one minute alone with anything.

I don’t believe you understand exactly what it is that the game economists do. Imagine what this game would be like without the trading post.

Ayrilana.1396:

naiasonod.9265:

The problem with economists is that they foster economies only another economist finds stimulating or interesting.

I’m John Q. Player, and I don’t give a rat’s tail about ROI metrics, velocities or variable exchange rates.

I want a cool sword to hit the giant dragon with while my buddies shoot fancy spell effects out their bums, and a rousing battle tune to go with it.

Only kitten way to function in this game anymore is o turn into a wallstreet maverick spending more time paying Spreadsheet Wars and aggregating data than anything else.

Economists should never be involved in making anything fun for anyone but economists. The commonality of this tendency for MMOs to all be turning into Investment Simulator Online makes me want to know exactly how hitting dragons with swords and fireballs came to this.

Bugger it all. People can turn anything into drudge work, and apparently will if allowed one minute alone with anything.

I don’t believe you understand exactly what it is that the game economists do. Imagine what this game would be like without the trading post.

Oh god, ESO in the early days. HORRIBLE. (No, I’m not exaggerating, it was horrible)

I don’t find a lot of merit in the argument that exchange makes loot unrewarding. Exchange does increase the utility of any given drop, since it can be traded if unwanted, which forces the raw drop rates to be lower – but the amount of reward remains the same.

I also find the argument that account bound rewards are superior to be weak from my own experience – if the item is not something you will personally use, as its exchange value is 0, its real value to you is 0. As much as we might complain about 2 blues and a green, it’s still a better reward than those random ascended Nomad’s trinkets that I have no intention of ever using.

The issue has little to do with exchange. The issue is that shortly after hitting 80 drops cease to have any value beyond their salvage value.

This isn’t a game where you get an exotic drop and get excited because it might represent an upgrade for your gear. It’s not going to be a valuable, rare new skin. An exotic drop to many players is a small chance at a Strength or Hoelbrak rune, otherwise it’s getting salvaged for ectos or thrown into the forge to find a precursor.

Essentially everything you find in the game after a point is essentially a bag of crafting materials, with hundreds of thousands of those materials turning into a legendary.

You don’t have to dig for fancy economic answers. The loot isn’t interesting because none of it is directly useful – outside of precursors, which are so rare that many, many players never see one, players just salvage everything they get or sell it to someone else to salvage. Interesting loot is useful loot.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I have to admit, I didn’t read past the statement that TP users are exploiters. That kind of squashed any desire to read more.

Let me clarify what you’ve misinterpreted.

NOTE: I do not mention people who play the Trading Post in the following post. They do have an effect, but in comparison to the entire player base are less important for the points I am making. Besides, the player base has to create the resources that TP users exploit.

Exploit in this context is defined as a verb meaning to make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource). Synonyms to this usage are "use, utilize, leverage, capitalize from, etc….

It’s spot on appropriate usage.

Ultimately the thing that is the biggest fault of this is a game wide trading post that isn’t based on any game economy.

Game wide trading post was the biggest fault of Diablo 3 and was why loot had abysmal drop rates. Getting rid of it there was a major step forward in the average players entertainment value.

For a game like this that focuses on play how you want, and with gear like even legionaries being marginally better then cheap alternatives it’s surprising that things like precursors are so expensive.

The game needs to remove the trading post or completely re-evaluate the intention behind it and loot systems in general. In order to made drops more rewarding.

Such as:

Increased reward chance in the lottery well if you throw in 4 self crafted items.

Give bosses the ability to scale to the number of surrounding players so you can’t zerg them and give them substantial reward increase.

Give kharma vendors items that actually make you want to use kharma, and let you pick the stats on kharma gear, because face it the 80 sets have absolutely craptastic stats.

Need for gold = Gem purchases = money for ANet

And that is why the market, precursor drop rate etc… will not change unless GW2 switches to subscriptions.

And sure, they could add craftable precursors, but I’m guessing it will still cost 1500 gold’s worth of materials to craft it, so what difference does it make?

SonOfJacob.7396:

Back on topic,

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The time you start thinking about gold-per-hour is the time when GW2 (or any game) stopped being a game and becomes a job — then everything you do feels as grind.

That’s what I think is the most interesting parts of what the author is suggesting – flipping the process upside down to create more FUN in the acquiring of the rarer items.

I don’t completely disagree, however, rare item is but one of many other rewards.

For each content added, players are rewarded differently. For instance, I find reward from experiencing a good boss fight, puzzles, environment, and story.

I stopped looking into my loot bag and start looking around to see what I’m missing.

I do understand that other players leans toward materialism, thus I’m simply pointing out that there are many things that cannot be equate to gold.

Ayrilana.1396:

naiasonod.9265:

The problem with economists is that they foster economies only another economist finds stimulating or interesting.

I’m John Q. Player, and I don’t give a rat’s tail about ROI metrics, velocities or variable exchange rates.

I want a cool sword to hit the giant dragon with while my buddies shoot fancy spell effects out their bums, and a rousing battle tune to go with it.

Only kitten way to function in this game anymore is o turn into a wallstreet maverick spending more time paying Spreadsheet Wars and aggregating data than anything else.

Economists should never be involved in making anything fun for anyone but economists. The commonality of this tendency for MMOs to all be turning into Investment Simulator Online makes me want to know exactly how hitting dragons with swords and fireballs came to this.

Bugger it all. People can turn anything into drudge work, and apparently will if allowed one minute alone with anything.

I don’t believe you understand exactly what it is that the game economists do. Imagine what this game would be like without the trading post.

I very well do understand what they do. I am getting rather tired of it being done, however, and since these are absolutely artificial environments, very little happens within them that is not the intended or incidental product of design.

Games continue to be designed with increasingly thin veneers of exploration, adventure and rising activity when, all the more commonly, they should be being packed with an undergraduates crash course in economic theory and a licensed copy of Excel.

Anyone that just wanted to kick around and do cool things perhaps involving the smashing of many digital foes had better buy a neck brace these days, lest they suffer a fatal case of whiplash for how fast you wind up being obligated to invest deeply into Spreadsheet Wars if you want to be anything other than terminally broke.

Imagine a game which the real point was to play the game, not the metagames of strategic grinding strategies and/or auction house investment career.

Some clearly find those fun.

I find them, as a player, to be every bit as distracting as most would find their game of Call of Duty pausing itself every five minutes and refused to unpause until the player solved ten random physics equations.

So yes, I know that the economists ‘try to regulate and streamline the economy to prevent game breaking imbalances and disruptive means of player manipulation’, yadda blah blah blah.

The fact remains that it wouldn’t be necessary if these games weren’t increasingly designed to be less and less game, more and more financial strategy and investment planning simulators.

naiasonod.9265:

Economists should never be involved in making anything fun for anyone but economists.

LOL – agreed, but only in the same way that lawyers can’t be trusted to get the truth out of every case.

heartless.6803:

Give kharma vendors items that actually make you want to use kharma, and let you pick the stats on kharma gear, because face it the 80 sets have absolutely craptastic stats.

Agree with this fully.

naiasonod.9265:

Ayrilana.1396:

naiasonod.9265:

The problem with economists is that they foster economies only another economist finds stimulating or interesting.

I’m John Q. Player, and I don’t give a rat’s tail about ROI metrics, velocities or variable exchange rates.

I want a cool sword to hit the giant dragon with while my buddies shoot fancy spell effects out their bums, and a rousing battle tune to go with it.

Only kitten way to function in this game anymore is o turn into a wallstreet maverick spending more time paying Spreadsheet Wars and aggregating data than anything else.

Economists should never be involved in making anything fun for anyone but economists. The commonality of this tendency for MMOs to all be turning into Investment Simulator Online makes me want to know exactly how hitting dragons with swords and fireballs came to this.

Bugger it all. People can turn anything into drudge work, and apparently will if allowed one minute alone with anything.

I don’t believe you understand exactly what it is that the game economists do. Imagine what this game would be like without the trading post.

I very well do understand what they do. I am getting rather tired of it being done, however, and since these are absolutely artificial environments, very little happens within them that is not the intended or incidental product of design.

Games continue to be designed with increasingly thin veneers of exploration, adventure and rising activity when, all the more commonly, they should be being packed with an undergraduates crash course in economic theory and a licensed copy of Excel.

Anyone that just wanted to kick around and do cool things perhaps involving the smashing of many digital foes had better buy a neck brace these days, lest they suffer a fatal case of whiplash for how fast you wind up being obligated to invest deeply into Spreadsheet Wars if you want to be anything other than terminally broke.

Imagine a game which the real point was to play the game, not the metagames of strategic grinding strategies and/or auction house investment career.

Some clearly find those fun.

I find them, as a player, to be every bit as distracting as most would find their game of Call of Duty pausing itself every five minutes and refused to unpause until the player solved ten random physics equations.

So yes, I know that the economists ‘try to regulate and streamline the economy to prevent game breaking imbalances and disruptive means of player manipulation’, yadda blah blah blah.

The fact remains that it wouldn’t be necessary if these games weren’t increasingly designed to be less and less game, more and more financial strategy and investment planning simulators.

You don’t need to flip on the TP to be successful in this game. The TP is not the end all, be all source of gold.

naiasonod.9265:

So yes, I know that the economists ‘try to regulate and streamline the economy to prevent game breaking imbalances and disruptive means of player manipulation’, yadda blah blah blah.

The fact remains that it wouldn’t be necessary if these games weren’t increasingly designed to be less and less game, more and more financial strategy and investment planning simulators.

I thought the point was that it IS increasingly becoming this way though (I re-read your post a multitude of times, but perhaps I didn’t track with it right).

naiasonod.9265:

The fact remains that it wouldn’t be necessary if these games weren’t increasingly designed to be less and less game, more and more financial strategy and investment planning simulators.

What are you even talking about? Somehow it sounds to me like the problem you’re having is not with the games…

naiasonod.9265:

Anyone that just wanted to kick around and do cool things perhaps involving the smashing of many digital foes had better buy a neck brace these days, lest they suffer a fatal case of whiplash for how fast you wind up being obligated to invest deeply into Spreadsheet Wars if you want to be anything other than terminally broke.

That’s hardly the case. I am a casual player and sometimes even miss a 1-2 months of playing but never in my GW2 experience ever been “terminally broke” nor I ever play with TP to maximize my gold cache nor I ever play “Spreadsheet Wars”.

My point is, it’s impossible to be broke in this game — it’s literally impossible. A couple of T9 Fractals will generate enough loot that you can vendor for gold.

Andred.1087:

naiasonod.9265:

The fact remains that it wouldn’t be necessary if these games weren’t increasingly designed to be less and less game, more and more financial strategy and investment planning simulators.

What are you even talking about? Somehow it sounds to me like the problem you’re having is not with the games…

It would to most, it seems.

Carry on. I have no interest in explaining myself further.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

naiasonod.9265:

Anyone that just wanted to kick around and do cool things perhaps involving the smashing of many digital foes had better buy a neck brace these days, lest they suffer a fatal case of whiplash for how fast you wind up being obligated to invest deeply into Spreadsheet Wars if you want to be anything other than terminally broke.

That’s hardly the case. I am a casual player and sometimes even miss a 1-2 months of playing but never in my GW2 experience ever been “terminally broke” nor I ever play with TP to maximize my gold cache nor I ever play “Spreadsheet Wars”.

My point is, it’s impossible to be broke in this game — it’s literally impossible. A couple of T9 Fractals will generate enough loot that you can vendor for gold.

You’re adorable if you think you’ll make as much money farming fractals for even a month as a halfwit flipper can make in a lazy week.

Prices keep rising on a great many things. I’d hazard a guess that the average player’s overall income isn’t rising at an equivalent pace.

But hey, I’m just a guy that likes to hit dragons in games about hitting dragons. Me personally being terribly tired of discussions about MMO’s these days frequently being discussions about macroeconomic theory will never interject upon you doing whatever you like to do with your days.

I, personally, think its a bunch of garbage that many MMO’s seem desperately eager to make finance simulators out of themselves. Wallstreet Online would presumably do amazingly well, provided its developers simply had a robust enough achievement system.

Andred.1087:

What are you even talking about? Somehow it sounds to me like the problem you’re having is not with the games…

As I understand it, the power of trade is way more visible now, and once people are aware of it they can’t help themselves.

I mean, it’s not like the merchants weren’t utterly dominating the economies of earlier MMOs using nothing but a trade window and WTB/WTS spam in town. The barriers of trade were just high enough that it wasn’t a big part of most player’s experience.

When you make it easy to buy and sell everything on a worldwide trading post window, more players get involved and its impact is directly felt – prices that were being floated mostly by transaction costs plummet, perceived value from price ambiguity goes away, etc.

naiasonod.9265:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

naiasonod.9265:

Anyone that just wanted to kick around and do cool things perhaps involving the smashing of many digital foes had better buy a neck brace these days, lest they suffer a fatal case of whiplash for how fast you wind up being obligated to invest deeply into Spreadsheet Wars if you want to be anything other than terminally broke.

That’s hardly the case. I am a casual player and sometimes even miss a 1-2 months of playing but never in my GW2 experience ever been “terminally broke” nor I ever play with TP to maximize my gold cache nor I ever play “Spreadsheet Wars”.

My point is, it’s impossible to be broke in this game — it’s literally impossible. A couple of T9 Fractals will generate enough loot that you can vendor for gold.

You’re adorable if you think you’ll make as much money farming fractals for even a month as a halfwit flipper can make in a lazy week.

Prices keep rising on a great many things. I’d hazard a guess that the average player’s overall income isn’t rising at an equivalent pace.

But hey, I’m just a guy that likes to hit dragons in games about hitting dragons. Me personally being terribly tired of discussions about MMO’s these days frequently being discussions about macroeconomic theory will never interject upon you doing whatever you like to do with your days.

I, personally, think its a bunch of garbage that many MMO’s seem desperately eager to make finance simulators out of themselves. Wallstreet Online would presumably do amazingly well, provided its developers simply had a robust enough achievement system.

He wasn’t arguing which one give you more gold. Prices are also not rising because players supposedly can make more gold off TP flipping.

Would you rather be playing WoW and have a gear system like theirs?

Serophous.9085:

stale.9785:

The author of the article has eloquently expressed what the veteran players all know.

I really like the idea of account bound craftable precursors. Not only would the playbase finally have a means to get a legendary without having to grind gold until their fingers bleed, but in a LOT of ways, it would deal with the horrendous inflation attached to precursors. (John Smith’s regular dismissal of any financial complaint aside, the economy is broken where precursors and ascended crafting materials is concerned.)

if you understand supply and demand, you would get why its not broken

*It’s (It is, abbreviated – it’s. You’re welcome.)

I fully understand supply and demand. I also understand artificial shortages. The economic clusterkitten that is the precursor market is a direct result the RNG system coupled with what the article writer calls the “gold standard”.

Something the article author leaves out is that everything being tied to gold gives Anet a vested interest in keeping rare items extremely rare. Those who want to avoid the grind or time gating (precursor and ascended mats, respectively) can open their wallets to get around it.

All of it can be summed up as; “The in-game rewards are strictly limited to encourage customers to spend cash on gems to attain items that are otherwise beyond the reach of those who have less time to spend in-game than others.” Nothing more, nothing less.

It is attempting to garner gem sales at the expense of fun.

naiasonod.9265:

You’re adorable if you think you’ll make as much money farming fractals for even a month as a halfwit flipper can make in a lazy week.

I never said that my goal is to farm that much gold. I am simply pointing the fallacy in your statement about being broke.

Prices keep rising on a great many things. I’d hazard a guess that the average player’s overall income isn’t rising at an equivalent pace.

You’d be wrong. High prices means players are making money. As the prices of materials rises, so does the player’s “income”. This is the reason why things gets too expensive — players are having too much money.

If player’s “income” is low, then nobody will ever afford to buy things from the TP and items would not be sold. But as long as players are buying at the current price, the price will only go up since players can afford them.

But hey, I’m just a guy that likes to hit dragons in games about hitting dragons. Me personally being terribly tired of discussions about MMO’s these days frequently being discussions about macroeconomic theory will never interject upon you doing whatever you like to do with your days.

Noted.

I, personally, think its a bunch of garbage that many MMO’s seem desperately eager to make finance simulators out of themselves. Wallstreet Online would presumably do amazingly well, provided its developers simply had a robust enough achievement system.

You try to paint GW2 as “finance simulator” to only fail at every attempt.

Ayrilana.1396:

naiasonod.9265:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

naiasonod.9265:

Anyone that just wanted to kick around and do cool things perhaps involving the smashing of many digital foes had better buy a neck brace these days, lest they suffer a fatal case of whiplash for how fast you wind up being obligated to invest deeply into Spreadsheet Wars if you want to be anything other than terminally broke.

That’s hardly the case. I am a casual player and sometimes even miss a 1-2 months of playing but never in my GW2 experience ever been “terminally broke” nor I ever play with TP to maximize my gold cache nor I ever play “Spreadsheet Wars”.

My point is, it’s impossible to be broke in this game — it’s literally impossible. A couple of T9 Fractals will generate enough loot that you can vendor for gold.

You’re adorable if you think you’ll make as much money farming fractals for even a month as a halfwit flipper can make in a lazy week.

Prices keep rising on a great many things. I’d hazard a guess that the average player’s overall income isn’t rising at an equivalent pace.

But hey, I’m just a guy that likes to hit dragons in games about hitting dragons. Me personally being terribly tired of discussions about MMO’s these days frequently being discussions about macroeconomic theory will never interject upon you doing whatever you like to do with your days.

I, personally, think its a bunch of garbage that many MMO’s seem desperately eager to make finance simulators out of themselves. Wallstreet Online would presumably do amazingly well, provided its developers simply had a robust enough achievement system.

He wasn’t arguing which one give you more gold. Prices are also not rising because players supposedly can make more gold off TP flipping.

Would you rather be playing WoW and have a gear system like theirs?

An irrelevant question, to which the tacit answer is no. And I have no interest in speculating with neither data nor motive of concern as to why prices are rising on many things – they are.

Why does not matter – how it needs to be addressed matters. Farming has become increasingly less lucrative, which has the incidental effect of making casual gameplay less valuable as well.

The purchasing power generated per activity has been increasingly rendered lopsided, leaning ever the more in favor of activities strictly involving marketing on the TP.

Everything else becomes less and less worthwhile to do if your interest is, for any reason, to make gold.

Why? Because the people that designed this game made it that way. All other reasons are moot.

Why do game devs keeping making their games about hitting digital beasties (at least ostensibly) less and less about hitting digital beasties while, at the same time, leaning ever the more heavily in favor of creating economies more elaborate and robust than most of the rest of everything going on in their game combined?

In no event does my personal opinion need to be taken like a deep, personal attack on anyone’s sacred cows.

I had quit playing for a few months and came back to find you could create Mawdry. I instantly fell in love with the game again. An achievable item that can be earned through a reasonable amount of work, if you choose. It was awesome for a couple weeks farming foxfire and doing all the world spread things to get get all the items.

And then I had everything. I just needed to wait 7 more days to craft all the food. And I got bored again. Tonight I make Mawdry and have little motivation to play again.

One reason I quit before was that everything was either impossible RNG or it was gold. No real ability to EARN anything new. I want to earn new stuff. I want to be motivated to play for more than increasing my gold. The new armor is a step in the right direction but it’s all ugly. But we need more things like that, things that you can earn in a reasonable amount of time.

Jski.6180:

Its a bit much to read in one sitting but over all i think the “loot being bad” seems a bit odd for a game like GW2. In games like WoW you NEED loot to be good because every one is working on the next level of gear that how gear treadmills work gw2 just not that type of game. To play you should get most of the gold / armor that you need beyond that there not much else to get so there no real need to keep getting mounties of loot.

So loot beyond what the game puts out is kind of pointless.

Did you even read the article at all? Because you miss the point completely.

While in GW2 getting a legendary or rare backpiece item is certainly not a requirement to be successful at the game, that doesn’t mean it isn’t desirable to get. Guild Wars 2 is all about skins and looks, it’s basically Dressup Wars 2.

Think about it, Guild Wars 2 is essentially exactly like WoW, with the only difference that in WoW you grind for pieces of gear because they have better stats and unlock higher-tier content, while in GW2 you grind for pieces of gear because they look cool.

One game rewards with stats, the other game rewards with looks, but aside from that WoW and GW2 are more similar than they are different.

I agree that there is no real need of getting mountains of loot in GW2, but that is exactly the problem, because in GW2 you do get mountains of loot, mountains of trash loot to be exact. This is an issue that the article doesn’t even really mention but I think a lot of people will agree with me when I say that in GW2 you literally get thrown mountains of junk at you all the time. Emptying your inventory bags requires a whole lot of clicking because most loot in GW2 is delivered in bags which came from a chests which came out of another chest which came out of a bouncy chest on the side of the screen etc. etc. etc. Lots of clicking and opening bags/chests and salvaging items for a whole lot of nothing. This is really my biggest gripe with GW2’s loot system. I’d love to see less quantity but more quality loot.

Really Anet, give us 10 less blues and greens and in return give us an extra rare or exotic. If you balance it out then you can do this without causing heavy inflation or other undesirable effects. If you’d do this, rares and exotics might drop in price on the TP, but blues and greens will go up. The total amount of gold in the market will roughly be unaffected if this proposed change is implemented correctly.

stale.9785:

Something the article author leaves out is that everything being tied to gold gives Anet a vested interest in keeping rare items extremely rare. Those who want to avoid the grind or time gating (precursor and ascended mats, respectively) can open their wallets to get around it.

All of it can be summed up as; “The in-game rewards are strictly limited to encourage customers to spend cash on gems to attain items that are otherwise beyond the reach of those who have less time to spend in-game than others.” Nothing more, nothing less.

It is attempting to garner gem sales at the expense of fun.

Thank you. I had this suspicion exactly, but lacked the ability to articulate it…I’m glad someone else could, which is actually what I was looking for with my first post.