Guild Wars 2

OP, you’re not doing too badly! By the time I reached 80 with my first char I only had 4g to my name.

You are right in that there isn’t a huge amount you can buy with 40g right now, but what do you WANT to buy with it? If Scarlett’s Kiss/Rainbow is your goal, then that’s a good place to start – decide that you don’t want anything else, then keep an eye out for other good investments.

What I did, as a very casual player, who didn’t run dungeons, fractals etc on anything like a regular basis, was invest some money in gems, then converted to gold. I’m not talking a lot, literally just enough to get 24 gold (which really costs about £5 in real money), and I started from there. During the LS, there were various great items I invested in – for example the wind catcher backpieces from the Zephyr Sanctum LS. I literally farmed those fortune scraps to death to buy 2, and then bought another couple off the TP during the event for around 4g each. Now, they’re about 100g.

Yes, I had to sit on them for months for them to go up to that price (the highest I’ve seen them sell for is 117g), but I wasn’t in any hurry to buy things – you have to accept that as a casual player, nice items are a long-term goal, not an immediate purchase. Other LS also afforded chances at other items that are worth a lot of gold now, and eventually, without much effort, I actually now have ended up with about 700g.

My problem now is that even though there’s a lot of stuff I’d LIKE, there’s not a lot I’m willing to spend the money on, haha! But it does take some time to get started in this game, but when your money comes in, it comes in quickly. These past three LS patches have netted me about 100g total, playing extremely casually.

Leveling the armor crafting skills from 400-500 does not cost any money. It takes some time, but you can make money while leveling to 500.

Cinnamon Goddess.3869:

Can’t say I agree with this. You can play just the meta events and get more in WEEKS of play than that, not even getting lucky drops just breaking down the rares and selling the mats.

You are misguided. You are not supposed to sell all your salvage. You are supposed to collect it to craft with. If Anet is balancing the game with that assumption they are also confused. OP is correct in that the game doesn’t offer enough rewards especially gold. The problem is that they create rarity by horrendous drop rates. Stuff in this game either drops too much or way too little, there seems to be no in-between. If the OP wants just 1 item and they put all there efforts towards that it isn’t unreasonable that they should get it because they are sacrificing everything else. Hardcore players, or “Pro players” as many mistakenly call themselves, will acquire almost everything. These players can’t rationalize the OP’s wish. The situations are very different. The real problem is people are greedy and this is half responsible for destroying the game experience. Anet place in this is not understanding that and setting limits as to how much selfish players can ruin it for others. Anet allows virtually unlimited pricing on the TP, they set unrealistically low merchant values, and they set horrible drop rates. I one day hope Anet wakes up to this and implements the simple solutions I have mentioned.

I could very well be misguided. When Ascended came out I had 50 gold and 2000 gems from how I play the game. I now have 500 in all the crafts, 3 ascended back pieces (1 through tailor), 1 ascended weapon, 2 more lvl 80 characters a couple of gem store purchases and 90 gold in the bank and 2000 gems. I got one lucky drop of a skin worth 100ish gold. I did not buy gems, I have never changed gems to gold. I don’t dungeon run and I don’t do champ trains. But I do have fun and when it is not fun I shut down the game and do other things.

Heh. These new players complaining how hard it is to get gold these days. They should’ve played when the game first came out, where there were no gold at end of every dungeon and champs being committed because they didn’t drop crap.

Romo.3709:

Heh. These new players complaining how hard it is to get gold these days. They should’ve played when the game first came out, where there were no gold at end of every dungeon and champs being committed because they didn’t drop crap.

Those days… Wondering how I was ever going to get that legendary worth 3 gold when I had 10 silver to my name haha

Lishtenbird.2814:

There is no endgame content where “you can’t really do anything” with a 1g exotic rifle instead of Scarlet’s Kiss, apart from 20+ fractals where you need agony resistance.

If you insist on being “casual”, get the “casual” stuff.

If you are willing to become a “pro”, you’ll get “pro” stuff.

If you insist on being “casual”, but want to get the “pro” stuff, then invest your money instead of time and buy gems to convert to gold. Simple as that.

^^^ This guy gets it.

Long story short, be patient and play the game. AFK won’t make you any income.
Selling unneeded materials, salvaging every possible rare you can get helps too. Running dungeons and recent living story events can net you a nice amount of gold.
Any detail about your gold gaining habbits?

I’m always tempted to share my secrets on how to make 12 g/h or 400-600 g per week, but I feel like some people are not worthy of having that kind of information.

Always funny when you see post about someone complaining about the price of stuff on the TP. I want the that Toy mama. But this toy is too expensive for us baby. Take this one instead, you will have as much fun with this one and its in our budget. NO NO NO MAMA I WANT THAT TOY.

After crying and all the little boy end up with the cheaper toy. And since he’s still crying, he will never enjoy the toy he got, still wanting the expensive toy.

True story bro.

To be fair, I can see this from both sides. Clearly the OP doesn’t have enough play time or is missing out the more lucrative activities in game. It’s pretty easy to make 40g in a week, usually less.

However he does have a good point about being unable to afford nice things. There are too many cosmetic options that are priced out of the reach of most players, and essentially stay that way. Every few updates a new set of weapon skins is introduced, locked behind RNG, and you almost never see anyone using them. While I understand that here needs to be some incentives for players to spend cash, and also maintain a level of ‘exclusivity’ for some items, they’re overdoing it IMO.

Jahroots.6791:

While I understand that here needs to be some incentives for players to spend cash, and also maintain a level of ‘exclusivity’ for some items, they’re overdoing it IMO.

I really don’t agree with that. If more people want this item, the price will go up, if less people want it, then the price go down.

There is A LOT of cool option at low price. I know, i build a lot of my character like that. I didn’t put more than 20 Gold on my first character to get her look. You have dungeon armor that are cheap, you can buy several other skins for a couple of gold, not talking about lower level gear that you can get for less than a gold if you want the skin. While doing the map completion you usually have 2-3 pieces of an really cool looking exotic gear. Several good looking weapons skin don’t cost that much.

I’m an hardcore player. I have 8 toons, 3 legendarys, working on several ascendede armor, etc.

But yet, i was using the AC greatsword for almost a year on my main character.

Fox Reeveheart.1890:

Well, part of the deal is that I can afford scarlet’s kiss now when it was first released. It was around 30-40 gold. But it just kept climbing after that. So if you don’t have enough money at the beginning you will never have enough.

And to quote esmee about the laurels for crafting bags. I did one of those and got like… an armored scale, a crystalline dust and a vicious claw, I was expecting something more along the lines of some orichalcum ore and gossamer scraps. If I spend all my 50-something laurels on those bags then I’m just going to end up with a bunch of those things.

Also, I been playing since beta weekends and 3-day early headstart. in roughly over a year and a half we already reached the point I was talking about.

See I been using the exact same armor and the exact same weapons for the past 8 months at the very least, since summer 2013. I got a new longbow but thats because I FINALLY turned in my endgame pact token.

I too have been playing since beta, and I honestly don’t know why you are having a funds issue. I’m also a fairly casual player, but I’ve made enough gold to out fit almost if not all of my level 80s in at least one full set of exotic armor, some have 2 sets and for my mains they are running exotic weapons, all with superior sigils and runes. A lot of these were bought with a few drops here and there helping round it all out. Basically i’m saying I’ve dropped A LOT of gold in this game that I’ve gotten from straight playing the content. (Not even going to get into how much gold i’ve spent playing WvW.)

Best tip I can give you is sell your excess mats that you get from collecting them in the world. You’d be surprised how much money you can make off of those materials when sold at the right time. If you still have character slots open, then make some alts. Even if you just set them to farm in lower level areas for an hour every few days or leave one at the end of the jumping puzzle to grab some quick loots, its just another way to make some cash in game.

Thaddeus.4891:

Jahroots.6791:

While I understand that here needs to be some incentives for players to spend cash, and also maintain a level of ‘exclusivity’ for some items, they’re overdoing it IMO.

I really don’t agree with that. If more people want this item, the price will go up, if less people want it, then the price go down.

Price is adjusted on both ends. Not only through demand, but also through supply. And supply options are controlled by Anet, not by players.

Vol.7601:

I’m always tempted to share my secrets on how to make 12 g/h or 400-600 g per week, but I feel like some people are not worthy of having that kind of information.

If it does not involve TP flipping (I already do that) then I would like to submit my application to learn what your method is. Also, your figures are based on how much time played per day?

Draknar.5748:

Vol.7601:

I’m always tempted to share my secrets on how to make 12 g/h or 400-600 g per week, but I feel like some people are not worthy of having that kind of information.

If it does not involve TP flipping (I already do that) then I would like to submit my application to learn what your method is. Also, your figures are based on how much time played per day?

Either TP or selling Arah if i can bet.

Draknar.5748:

Vol.7601:

I’m always tempted to share my secrets on how to make 12 g/h or 400-600 g per week, but I feel like some people are not worthy of having that kind of information.

If it does not involve TP flipping (I already do that) then I would like to submit my application to learn what your method is. Also, your figures are based on how much time played per day?

Be careful it involves playing a Guadian. Don’t go to the dark side.

Dalanor.5387:

Draknar.5748:

Vol.7601:

I’m always tempted to share my secrets on how to make 12 g/h or 400-600 g per week, but I feel like some people are not worthy of having that kind of information.

If it does not involve TP flipping (I already do that) then I would like to submit my application to learn what your method is. Also, your figures are based on how much time played per day?

Either TP or selling Arah if i can bet.

Not TP selling, nor Arah selling (I hate dungeons).

I’m purely a mob/event farmer. Legit stuff, non exploits, non-champ trains

At least 45 hours a week playing GW2 nets me 400g, which is on the conservative side on a bad week. I get about +500g.

Unfortunately, if everyone did what I did (and I know of 3-4 regulars that do this), our income would be cut in half. So our secret shall remain a secret, for now.

Yargesh.4965:

Draknar.5748:

Vol.7601:

I’m always tempted to share my secrets on how to make 12 g/h or 400-600 g per week, but I feel like some people are not worthy of having that kind of information.

If it does not involve TP flipping (I already do that) then I would like to submit my application to learn what your method is. Also, your figures are based on how much time played per day?

Be careful it involves playing a Guadian. Don’t go to the dark side.

This is true. There is a reason why I have four guardians!

Vol.7601:

Dalanor.5387:

Draknar.5748:

Vol.7601:

I’m always tempted to share my secrets on how to make 12 g/h or 400-600 g per week, but I feel like some people are not worthy of having that kind of information.

If it does not involve TP flipping (I already do that) then I would like to submit my application to learn what your method is. Also, your figures are based on how much time played per day?

Either TP or selling Arah if i can bet.

Not TP selling, nor Arah selling (I hate dungeons).

I’m purely a mob/event farmer. Legit stuff, non exploits, non-champ trains

At least 45 hours a week playing GW2 nets me 400g, which is on the conservative side on a bad week. I get about +500g.

Unfortunately, if everyone did what I did (and I know of 3-4 regulars that do this), our income would be cut in half. So our secret shall remain a secret, for now.

Your post sounds more like trolling than anything else. Why do you post that you can make lots of gold and what not only to tell people after that you won’t say how… In any case, making money in this game is not hard, do a couple of dungeons farm a couple of champs and that’s all you need.

I blame the tp flippers.

Daxxter.8920:

Vol.7601:

Dalanor.5387:

Draknar.5748:

Vol.7601:

I’m always tempted to share my secrets on how to make 12 g/h or 400-600 g per week, but I feel like some people are not worthy of having that kind of information.

If it does not involve TP flipping (I already do that) then I would like to submit my application to learn what your method is. Also, your figures are based on how much time played per day?

Either TP or selling Arah if i can bet.

Not TP selling, nor Arah selling (I hate dungeons).

I’m purely a mob/event farmer. Legit stuff, non exploits, non-champ trains

At least 45 hours a week playing GW2 nets me 400g, which is on the conservative side on a bad week. I get about +500g.

Unfortunately, if everyone did what I did (and I know of 3-4 regulars that do this), our income would be cut in half. So our secret shall remain a secret, for now.

Your post sounds more like trolling than anything else. Why do you post that you can make lots of gold and what not only to tell people after that you won’t say how… In any case, making money in this game is not hard, do a couple of dungeons farm a couple of champs and that’s all you need.

Because it’s possible to make gold if people utilized the systems in place in GW2. I can make this much gold as a hardcore farmer – a casual can make a fraction of that even 100G a week spending no more than 2-3 hours per day playing the game.

Why do people neglect to do this? Can be a combination of reasons, ranging from lack of playing time to laziness to not playing smart.

Vol.7601:

Dalanor.5387:

Draknar.5748:

Vol.7601:

I’m always tempted to share my secrets on how to make 12 g/h or 400-600 g per week, but I feel like some people are not worthy of having that kind of information.

If it does not involve TP flipping (I already do that) then I would like to submit my application to learn what your method is. Also, your figures are based on how much time played per day?

Either TP or selling Arah if i can bet.

Not TP selling, nor Arah selling (I hate dungeons).

I’m purely a mob/event farmer. Legit stuff, non exploits, non-champ trains

At least 45 hours a week playing GW2 nets me 400g, which is on the conservative side on a bad week. I get about +500g.

Unfortunately, if everyone did what I did (and I know of 3-4 regulars that do this), our income would be cut in half. So our secret shall remain a secret, for now.

45/week is tough for me. Heck even half of that is tough for me. But I am still intrigued. Feel free to private message me your rotation. I will keep it a secret, my main is a Guardian, after all. And if Guardians can’t trust other Guardians, who CAN we trust….

There is a longterm casual way of earning quite abit of gold, but if you expect instant returns, you’re going to be in for a bad time.

In my experience, you don’t have to shell out a ton of gold to get what you want in this game. I wanted amorsmithing to 500 from 0, and it only cost me 47g because I was too lazy to go out and get the rest of the things I needed.

I’m currently making ascended armor for my guardian. It has cost me a grand total of 3g and some silver so far, and that’s just because I needed a soldier’s insignia.

Because I do my dailies and monthlies religiously, I had enough to buy amulets and some accessories for two characters. My ascended rings came from fractals.

All the mats and things I’ve gathered for Bifrost? I went out into the world and nabbed them myself (or some very generous people gifted me with their unwanted left overs here and there). (Granted, you still need 100g to finish this one, but over the course of collecting your mats you’re bound to make the money.)

All in all, you don’t have to spend gold to get what you want. ANet has made it very possible for those of us who can’t farm gold to still be able to get the things we want. We just have to put a little sweat into it, and there’s nothing wrong with working hard for what you want.

But, maybe I’m just patient. Maybe I know the game isn’t going anywhere, so I don’t need to rush like there’s a finish line to get to. I try to take it all one step at a time.

Is it still possible to solo arah as a warrior ??

Gandrogh.1530:

Is it still possible to solo arah as a warrior ??

I do it every day.

Here’s a video of me soloing last boss of Arah P3 with no armor on warrior: http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/3913179

If you want to watch the clip of the whole path, here it is: http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/3912988

Wow, thanks dude for answer quickly. I heard some people who said arah soloing was nerfed or something like that

They probably are referring to the fact that with the soon upcoming changes to damage along with the implementation of the new ferocity attribute, it’ll drastically reduce the speed at which things can be killed.

It doesn’t mean that Arah won’t be able to be solod at all. The change does nothing except make things take longer… doesn’t actually make anything more difficult to do.

FANY.6524:

All the mats and things I’ve gathered for Bifrost? I went out into the world and nabbed them myself

And then comes crafting the Legend And considering I just dumped another large batch down the toilet just 3 days ago, I can tell you it’s not very kind to everyone. A session like that reinforces the belief in a hidden account modifier to drop and crafting rates.

Let’s cut the bull patties and define what a casual or hardcore/pro really is. Because a couple of post are using casual as a slur. For the most part, those terms are only describing the duration of play, not the play style or skill of the player.

The RNG of the game does not recognize player skill but, it does discriminate game modes. As instances having a guaranteed gold reward at the end, they are immune to RNG. The only thing RNG can do is make them more lucrative, not less. I’m going back to what I said earlier, we all know instances are where the greatest gold creation is coming from. The present inflation in game is more than likely being driven from instances.

For the person saying he earned 16g in 3 hrs of WvW, I’d just like to point out that that is an abnormally high amount.

An hour a day farming a lucrative zone will turn into at least 45 gold a week. It’s funny to me but I see people node farming, avoiding mobs or even single NPCs and don’t understand that you actually have to fight to get drops….seriously, fight EVERYTHING from the southern most point of Cursed all the way to Malchors. It will take any hour, 90 minutes tops, and your inventory will be full.

Fox Reeveheart.1890:

Everything is too expensive, EVERYTHING. To me this game is already reaching an equivalent point in GW1 where platinum wasn’t viable anymore and people had to start using globs and z-keys as currency.

want to get that craft from 400 to 500? Pfft you don’t even have half of what it takes in buying stuff of TP to get what you need (because you’ll never actually have everything you need to start out with)

When scarlet’s kiss/rainbow came out, I had 10 gold and I couldn’t afford it, people said “Oh more people will get them and the price will go down” Well I was farming regardless and got about more gold over the course of the event. Those skins instead have jumped up to several HUNDRED gold in price, even before the event ended. Basically because I couldn’t afford it then, I’ll never afford it now.

I can’t believe how unfriendly this game is to the casual player in concern to endgame content. I never really thought about it until I realized that with 40 gold there really wasn’t anything I could do anyways with it.

Now some of you may have hundreds of gold I’m sure, but for someone that has plays now and then (and plays in bursts especially with decent new content) getting that gold took me a few weeks of play. I am frankly exhausted and yet I can’t really get anything nice with the money I had earned. I spent 30 gold on mats for getting to 500 armorcrafting WITH the crafting booster active and got roughly 40 points.

Sorry I had to rant.

Are you a troll? Ask your doctor today.

hehehehehe

Get to the cash shop, son! It’s the most rewarding thing in the game.

Quaygal.5327:

Are you a troll? Ask your doctor today.

wow, so original….

I agree with the OP. Playing about 15-20 hours a week, I usually do not come close to getting enough gold for anything fancy or really max out many of the crafting disciplines.

my gf plays a little less than me and usually doesn’t get any good drops and struggles to make gold. Obviously I understand why it happens, but I do agree its hard to keep up with the rising prices on many things if you don’t save every penny and focus on trying to make money.

I really think that those who are willing to spend some time actually farming have no problem making gold. If I have “x” number of hours to play and do only the “fun” stuff, I would probably be broke too (or at least feel like it). You have to be willing to farm something pretty hard to get rewarded in this game. Seems like that is the way of MMOs in general, though I have only played this one.

My son refuses to farm. He played the game; he did the events and hearts and personal story. He had no toons at level 80. He had no appreciable in-game cash. He gave up on the game because he never had anything good or “cool”. See the connection?

ozmaniandevil.6805:

I really think that those who are willing to spend some time actually farming have no problem making gold. If I have “x” number of hours to play and do only the “fun” stuff, I would probably be broke too (or at least feel like it). You have to be willing to farm something pretty hard to get rewarded in this game. Seems like that is the way of MMOs in general, though I have only played this one.

My son refuses to farm. He played the game; he did the events and hearts and personal story. He had no toons at level 80. He had no appreciable in-game cash. He gave up on the game because he never had anything good or “cool”. See the connection?

Which is why I agree with the OP. This is very similar to how my gf feels. She loves the game though and still wants to play, but she loses enthusiasm when she sees how much time and effort the game wants her to put in it to do some of the things she wants to do.

Even at 4 hours a day, thats 25% of your waking life every day. I personally have a hard time believing any game is worth that much of my time every single day. Obviously there are good ways to farm in the game, but I think there should also be more money sinks for very wealthy players so that the prices on materials and certain in game items don’t continue to sky rocket. Just look at screenshots of the TP from the earlier months of GW2. most items have had 300-500% increases in price, yet its still not necessarily 3-5 times easier to make gold.

Having said that, I realize things like legendary items shouldn’t be easy to get, so thats not my real issue. Mine is just how inflated prices have gotten on nearly any item that is even somewhat unique outside of a few exotic weaponskins that are between 1-10 gold on the tp.

What happened to being good at a game, having some hand eye coordination + tactics and being rewarded for it?

“Grind Moar or Buy It”? Is this serious? Spending time and money isn’t a kittening talent. Sorry. MMORPGs have a sub culture of talentless hacks who get to make pretend they’re good at something because they have tons of time or liquid cash to spend on short cuts. These same people are the ones turn around and call themselves “pro”. What a joke.

MrDmajor.7084:

What happened to being good at a game, having some hand eye coordination + tactics and being rewarded for it?

“Grind Moar or Buy It”? Is this serious? Spending time and money isn’t a kittening talent. Sorry. MMORPGs have a sub culture of talentless hacks who get to make pretend they’re good at something because they have tons of time or liquid cash to spend on short cuts. These same people are the ones turn around and call themselves “pro”. What a joke.

Yup I agree, they should add skins for high end difficult content that can’t be bought. Of course, there is no such content.

Seriously can’t believe what I’m reading. This is the least grind-oriented MMO I’ve ever played aside from pay-to-win ones that were rubbish as hell, which I didn’t even pay real life money at all for other than essential things like a mount or whatever.

Once again, I repeat:

If you can’t earn up to 30-50g in a day with only a few hours of time invested, then quit whining. You obviously haven’t figured out any of the best methods for money-making so if you aren’t willing to seek answers and ways to better yourself, then your complaints and pleas for Arenanet to trivialize everything even more are seriously destructive for the integrity of the game.

Astralporing.1957:

Price is adjusted on both ends. Not only through demand, but also through supply. And supply options are controlled by Anet, not by players.

Yeah, this is what I was getting at when I mentioned RNG.

I just think there should be more options for interesting gear. There’s a massive gap in the availability and price of the nicer stuff. Lots of bland looking kit in the 1-10g range, then 15-50g, after that it’s 200g+. Grind, grind, grind → Buy is ‘okay’. I do like having definite and attainable goals, but I also really miss the ‘Wow, look what I got!’ kind of loot. Very, very rarely is any of it worth keeping.

We need more stuff like the Jotun greatsword, a really well designed weapon that you get by completing a low level heart. The skins don’t need to be easy to get, but they should be interesting looking, and obtainable as rewards rather than bought. I’ve been holding out hope that Anet add some of the older stuff (Sclerite, Aetherblade skins) as drops from appropriate mobs/events in the open world.

cranos.5913:

MrDmajor.7084:

What happened to being good at a game, having some hand eye coordination + tactics and being rewarded for it?

“Grind Moar or Buy It”? Is this serious? Spending time and money isn’t a kittening talent. Sorry. MMORPGs have a sub culture of talentless hacks who get to make pretend they’re good at something because they have tons of time or liquid cash to spend on short cuts. These same people are the ones turn around and call themselves “pro”. What a joke.

Yup I agree, they should add skins for high end difficult content that can’t be bought. Of course, there is no such content.

These days if you see somebody in stuff like Legendary Gear and Ascended it’s negative. People look at it and say “kitten you have no life”, or “kitten you must have a kitten load of gold” or “kitten you’re irresponsible with your personal finances”.

When people see you in high end gear they should be asking questions like “how did you guys defeat x?”, “What do you do to get passed phase 2”.

Nobody should have to endure some no-lifer telling them to “grind more or buy it”. Enough is enough. That’s one of the worst parts of todays mmorpgs including GW2.

There’s Fractal skins and Arah gear. Of course, you can kind of buy your way into Arah too though, lol.

MrDmajor.7084:

These days if you see somebody in stuff like Legendary Gear and Ascended it’s negative.

Is it? In the circles I am in it’s more a requirement (at least ascended). I don’t really care about ppl calling me a no-lifer. I’ve been playing since day 1 so it’s pretty normal I have the gold for a leggy and ascended gear.

I understand what you’re saying though. It’d be cool to have some of those rewards for the hardcore player, sadly since you can’t buy it it’s not profitable for Anet due to the gem store.

Purple Miku.7032:

If you can’t earn up to 30-50g in a day with only a few hours of time invested.

Video or it doesn’t exists. By doesn’t exists, I mean it doesn’t involve instances or flipping. Also, what is a “few” hours??? I just spent 3 hours in WvW and made a tenth the amounts you’re saying. The whole time was spent zerging and I have a few hundred kills in said time.

Thus, again, back to the fact that gold is gated in a few very specific tasks. The games rewards should be more balanced.

DeWolfe.2174:

Purple Miku.7032:

If you can’t earn up to 30-50g in a day with only a few hours of time invested.

Video or it doesn’t exists. By doesn’t exists, I mean it doesn’t involve instances or flipping. Also, what is a “few” hours??? I just spent 3 hours in WvW and made a tenth the amounts you’re saying. The whole time was spent zerging and I have a few hundred kills in said time.

Thus, again, back to the fact that gold is gated in a few very specific tasks. The games rewards should be more balanced.

Well this is going to branch off into a different topic, but you just explained a huge reason as to why I don’t bother with WvW; it’s lack of reward. There’s a plethora of reasons that I have problems with it but I’m going to leave it at that for the sake of being relevant.

While this isn’t the only source of income that I have, it’s certainly the very best. I also might add that I do not cheat at all and livestream it fairly often. Not only that, but willing to teach it for free. I’m guessing you’re already aware of this, but selling Arah is legal provided you do not exploit. I only bother with soloing and selling path 1 and duoing path 4. Path 4 cannot be done solo without exploiting, period. There is absolutely no way that Simin (2nd last boss) can be killed alone without bugging her on terrain— however, she is very easy to duo. I’ll have a video upload of a full duo run of path 4 soon.

If you’d like to, I have a full run of an Arah solo here. It’s raw footage so it’ll include small breaks in between stuff along with the wait for buyers at the end, etc. I sell it for 7 gold each slot at the end (placeholders are needed to protect me from being kicked by trolls) and pay for help on Shoggroth (the tar boss, as it can’t be spawned without the help of 3 others) 1g per person. Since you receive 3g at the end of the path, this offsets the cost of paying for tar help. Therefore, the total earnings at the end: 28g (7g * 4 people).

Video: http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/3840580

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P.S. I agree with you about the last statement of yours and that there is an imbalance with rewards in the game. This is inevitable and problems with rewards will always surface. If you are to fully balance out all rewards then what ultimately will result is everything beginning to feel purposeless and you’d be able to get the same outcome no matter what. This leads to people sticking with the most concrete options and/or doing whatever takes less time and effort.

While rewards in the game definitely need to be tweaked, we definitely want to be very careful with what we wish for…

By the way if I wasn’t to sell Arah ever I’d probably still be able to make ~10-15g a day if I really wanted to, and no I wouldn’t be doing too many daily dungeon runs. Some, not many.

Jahroots.6791:

Astralporing.1957:

Price is adjusted on both ends. Not only through demand, but also through supply. And supply options are controlled by Anet, not by players.

Yeah, this is what I was getting at when I mentioned RNG.

I just think there should be more options for interesting gear. There’s a massive gap in the availability and price of the nicer stuff. Lots of bland looking kit in the 1-10g range, then 15-50g, after that it’s 200g+. Grind, grind, grind -> Buy is ‘okay’. I do like having definite and attainable goals, but I also really miss the ‘Wow, look what I got!’ kind of loot. Very, very rarely is any of it worth keeping.

We need more stuff like the Jotun greatsword, a really well designed weapon that you get by completing a low level heart. The skins don’t need to be easy to get, but they should be interesting looking, and obtainable as rewards rather than bought. I’ve been holding out hope that Anet add some of the older stuff (Sclerite, Aetherblade skins) as drops from appropriate mobs/events in the open world.

I agree with you on your points. I also feel that drops are just boring. I never expect to get anything I’d actually USE from a drop. I merely hope I get something valuable so I can sell it and get what I really want. To me, that is a real flaw in the game.

One of my guildmates bought a Precursor for 60g last year…
They are over 500g+ now.

I’d really like to see some stats on gold distribution among players. I think the disparity is completely crazy, a few people hoard thousands of gold while most players are below 100g in total. It feels like a gold equalization should probably happen at some point.

Sekhmet.6153:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

I really think that those who are willing to spend some time actually farming have no problem making gold. If I have “x” number of hours to play and do only the “fun” stuff, I would probably be broke too (or at least feel like it). You have to be willing to farm something pretty hard to get rewarded in this game. Seems like that is the way of MMOs in general, though I have only played this one.

My son refuses to farm. He played the game; he did the events and hearts and personal story. He had no toons at level 80. He had no appreciable in-game cash. He gave up on the game because he never had anything good or “cool”. See the connection?

Which is why I agree with the OP. This is very similar to how my gf feels. She loves the game though and still wants to play, but she loses enthusiasm when she sees how much time and effort the game wants her to put in it to do some of the things she wants to do.

Even at 4 hours a day, thats 25% of your waking life every day. I personally have a hard time believing any game is worth that much of my time every single day. Obviously there are good ways to farm in the game, but I think there should also be more money sinks for very wealthy players so that the prices on materials and certain in game items don’t continue to sky rocket. Just look at screenshots of the TP from the earlier months of GW2. most items have had 300-500% increases in price, yet its still not necessarily 3-5 times easier to make gold.

Having said that, I realize things like legendary items shouldn’t be easy to get, so thats not my real issue. Mine is just how inflated prices have gotten on nearly any item that is even somewhat unique outside of a few exotic weaponskins that are between 1-10 gold on the tp.

I can see where you’re coming from and I’m all in favor of making game economies more stable and less grind-based, but you also need to consider something you mentioned here: You’re stating that the game is not worth a fair amount of your time. The issue is that if it’s not really worth your time like any other hobby, sport, job, you name it, why should it be so rewarding for no real investment? How do you keep people playing without making all of the “hardcore” items just total and utter grindfests which take hundreds if not thousands of hours rather than ones which just take a few weeks/months of moderate/low time investment?

Money has gotten easier to get, too. Dungeons used to not give gold on completion, LS has seen reward increases, and repeated runs of dungeons didn’t yield any tokens at all, so people were less capable of salvaging free exotic armors every so often. 1G used to be a substantial amount because a massive portion of the playerbase wasn’t acquiring around 4-10g per day every day. Almost all economies inflate in time. It’s a sad truth, but it’s true. Maintaining a 1:1 economy is extremely difficult, especially in games where there are so many ways to generate money from nothing (killing mobs that respawn, selling to merchants, etc.). Future systems will always be implemented to try and offset this, and the gold -> gems thing is a great sink and usually sees spikes around major sales, but unfortunately inflation is just inevitable.

Awbee.8405:

I’d really like to see some stats on gold distribution among players. I think the disparity is completely crazy, a few people hoard thousands of gold while most players are below 100g in total. It feels like a gold equalization should probably happen at some point.

I don’t know. Yea, there are rich players, but a lot of them flip markets and are usually the types who are the really rich ones in any game. Kind of like stock market players, frankly.

Getting money has become substantially easier, though. I personally had 4g when I joined back around december. Since then, probably averaging like 2-3 hours per day since, I’m at over 400 now and have maxed two crafting disciplines and crafted ascended gear. It’s really not that bad.

Erick Alastor.3917:

The following is just my opinion:
Do you remember when the new top items and cool skins where introduced for a set amount of time spent running dungeons or doing dinamic events?
Ok, now forget about it and bow to your new RNG God and his flipping trading post prophets.

The rules are simple now: are you a casual player and not a pro (grinder)?
Work in real, buy gems with money and buy gold with gems.
Gold is your new meta across the game, your money is and has always been the meta for anet.

They could have followed the expansions route, but they preferred to focus on microtransaction, so this is what you get right now.
Sadly you can just accept it and due your lack of free time and money play with old skins and mediocre stats or leave.

What ^he^ said

The bullkitten RNG in this game is bullkitten. Don’t ever expect to loot anything yourself. If you want something you either grind gold or buy gems and convert to gold. There is some guides to help with grinding gold but its mostly a very boring unfulfilling job.