Guild Wars 2

While balancing and bugs and other issues in GW2 are cause for many forum threads complaining, rightfully, to Arenanet about needing solutions, it is my personal opinion that one of the largest problems in GW2 is loot.

The loot, or lack of, in GW2 is directly responsible, in my opinion, for several other issues that people have complained about openly on the forums.

Champ trains, PUG kicking, TP prices, content being “to easy”, content being “to hard”, shady RNG, and the toxicity of the community, can, as I see it, all be traced back to the problem of loot.

After playing GW2 for over a year, it is clear that Arenanet operates their game on the principle of scarcity.

Wikipedia defines Scarcity as follows:
“Scarcity, in the area of social psychology, works much like scarcity in the area of economics. Simply put, humans place a higher value on an object that is scarce, and a lower value on those that are abundant.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity_%28social_psychology%29

Another site, Investopedia, explains it from an economic standpoint, and even touches on the negative effects of the issue:
“An economic principle in which a limited supply of a good, coupled with a high demand for that good, results in a mismatch between the desired supply and demand equilibrium. In pricing theory, the scarcity principle suggests that the price for a scarce good should rise until an equilibrium is reached between supply and demand. However, this would result in the restricted exclusion of the good only to those who can afford it. If the scarce resource happens to be grain, for example, individuals will not be able to attain their basic needs.”
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/scarcity-principle.asp

This latter quote shows a key part of how Arenanet apears to have chosen to run their buisiness. “Individuals will not be able to attain their basic needs.”

It is true that in a game like GW2, you do not need a Legendary. It has been claimed in the past that you do not need armor at all, though I’ve yet to find proof on this one. You do not need ascended weapons, even if many of the threads on the forum appear to claim otherwise.

With a lot of focus on “horizontal progression”, wherein people put their effort and time into the game in order to achieve different skins, it brings to the front the issue of why many people play in the first place. Why do you need karma gear? Why do you need cultural armor? It’s not the stats, it’s the looks. Looks are a huge part of how horizontal progression works, and it’s a serious issue. Many people are upset by the appearance of the Ascended armor, because while it is best for stats, many people do not find it attractive.
…(continued)…

…All in all, horizontal progression and vanity together create the atmosphere of need in GW2 (along with the initial goal of obtaining exotic gear, which is now surpassed by Ascended gear, but I’m not going to go into the vertical progression problems, even though it too is affected by scarcity.)

Once the atmosphere of need is created, everything else starts to churn. People want to grind gold or drops to obtain a certain look. Others want to gather material to craft the items they want. Popularity of certain attributes comes into play, and suddenly vials of blood are going for a higher rate on the trading post, and so on.

Then you introduce scarcity. Setting and adjusting drop rates. People begin to adjust their gaming habits to maximize efficiency.

When I started GW2, it was November of 2012. Back then I didn’t know about Diminishing Returns, nor was I high enough of a level to really see just how bad T6 drop rates were. Perhaps they were much better back then, I don’t know, but I eventually hit the zones where T6 mats started to drop. By that time I knew about Diminishing Returns. At the time my crafting was still in the T5 stages, so I spent time farming stuff here and there for T5 mats. In that time period I noticed what appeared to be changes in the drop rates of those materials.

All along, I was watching prices of things on the TP going up. I had dreamed of owning Celestial White for my main character, and when I first could afford it, it was a mere 6gold in value. I chose not to buy it because I didn’t want to spend every copper I had for one dye. Later on, not exactly swimming in gold, I finally purchased it for around 18gold. Like so many other things, scarcity had started to drive the prices up and up and up.

In fact, prices were climbing so high, that suddenly many of the things people desired, were out of their price range when placed along side their time dedication to the game. There have been claims made that GW2 is for casuals, yet for the truly casual player, much of the content is out of reach.

Except for one crucial factor that magically appears. GW2 is a virtual world. It has a virtual economy. Scarcity itself is virtual, but has the same psychological effects. Most people desire to have their character look great. They want certain skins, and many want certain stats. Yet through scarcity, a huge portion of the game is out of their reach….unless they grab their wallet.

Arenanet has, essentially, created a world with an incredible amount of scarcity, all with the intention of, in my own opinion, playing on the psychology of the player base in order to turn a profit.

Sadly, there are other ways to make money that don’t involve scarcity, but they aren’t quite as profitable in the short term.

It would be nice if Arenanet could break away from this scarcity principle, but it seems to be their business model, and I don’t think that is going to change, ever.

Final note, as I forgot to add: Much of the scarcity issue results in the problems I touched on early in the first post, because people are desperate to find ways to obtain items without paying real cash.

This also results in tension and misbheavior, due to a sort of cultivated attitude of greed. I think perhaps a lot of people are acting in ways that they would not normally act in a game, simply because they desire certain items so much, that the inability to obtain them in a reasonable amount of time causes them to operate more on emotion than patience.

Welcome to Affluenza…..watch out, it’s contagious.

Of course it’s not going to change. You think a business model based on abundancy is going to work?

What goal would I have in this game where everything and anything can be easily acquired? Sure you have people who do things in this game simply cause it’s fun, but many people find dressing up fun, farming fun, collecting and even TP trading fun.

What’s the purpose of going after legendaries if they can be easily achieved as blues and greens?

The moment you remove scarcity from an MMO, you begin to lose any purpose in the game.

The real problem is that everything is PURE RNG. Exotics get dropped by random mobs instead of being dropped by a certain challange+RNG. This makes sure there’s no choice between getting the item or buying the item. Resulting in a demand only system. But not only that, you are playing a game we’re you cannot get the item by doing a certain challange… YOU CANT PLAY THE GAME WITH A CERTAIN GOAL, the only goal you can have, is earning gold. But everything gives you gold.. But the real sad thing is, the harder the content doesn’t mean you earn more gold. On top of that, the easyer & faster you can do something, the more gold you get. = GRIND. = NO FUN. That’s how bad it’s designed. Totally the opposite of GW1. So sad Throw a bunch of gold sinks on top of that all and you can guesse how kittened up the system is. Worste game design ever (economics wise).

What amazes me are the sheer number of people with legendary weapons I see doing the Queens champ train. I do the Queens train occasionally as a means to collect karma, work on the event monthly, and do a bit of leveling, though slow going now at 60+, but I never do the trains with my 80 anymore due to sheer boredom and the rewards aren’t that good since they nerfed the trains.

CoRtex.2157:

The real problem is that everything is PURE RNG. Exotics get dropped by random mobs instead of being dropped by a certain challange+RNG. This makes sure there’s no choice between getting the item or buying the item. Resulting in a demand only system. But not only that, you are playing a game we’re you cannot get the item by doing a certain challange… YOU CANT PLAY THE GAME WITH A CERTAIN GOAL, the only goal you can have, is earning gold. But everything gives you gold.. But the real sad thing is, the harder the content doesn’t mean you earn more gold. On top of that, the easyer & faster you can do something, the more gold you get. = GRIND. = NO FUN. That’s how bad it’s designed. Totally the opposite of GW1. So sad Throw a bunch of gold sinks on top of that all and you can guesse how kittened up the system is. Worste game design ever (economics wise).

This is pretty much how i feel the system fails me. I want x item but with so much choice to achieve it and little method or guidelines to actually follow… i get bored wondering aimlessly and give up my goals or get distracted. Gold focus’ too much on attainment and while the system relies on other players gaining RNG drops and selling it, prices will always be uncontrollably higher than they should be as (in a vicious circle) the item was so hard to attain in the first place. If the high end materials where slightly easier to reach prices would drop, demand would drop but we would reach a balance were players wouldn’t actually need to purchase items and would enjoy playing knowing there’s some progress being made instead, allowing those impatient and wealthy to purchase from those who want to make money.

Loot needs to be:

• Rewarding
• Non time consuming
• Plentiful to avoid high TP prices
• Minimal RNG involvement (see Ascended ring drop rates for a good example?)

Why are Pristine Fractal relics not used in the creation of materials for Ascended armor and weapons? Why can’t i earn these Ascended and fractal required items… In fractals… without the requirement for RNG factor (i know it drops high end but AFAIK the Drop rate is abysmal. If im missing something please do tell me… but at present im fed up crafting and running around the world with no goals but to entertain myself for half an hour before i log off bored.

Another big problem with GW2 is that there are too many currencies and too many soul/account bound items. Why should sesame seeds, or any cooking supply for that matter, be account bound…it makes no sense. Same goes for ascended crafting supplies like dragonite ore, there’s no reason for raw materials to be account bound, and imposes terrible grind when the game was advertised as anti-grind. :/

CoRtex.2157:

The real problem is that everything is PURE RNG. Exotics get dropped by random mobs instead of being dropped by a certain challange+RNG. This makes sure there’s no choice between getting the item or buying the item. Resulting in a demand only system. But not only that, you are playing a game we’re you cannot get the item by doing a certain challange… YOU CANT PLAY THE GAME WITH A CERTAIN GOAL, the only goal you can have, is earning gold. But everything gives you gold.. But the real sad thing is, the harder the content doesn’t mean you earn more gold. On top of that, the easyer & faster you can do something, the more gold you get. = GRIND. = NO FUN. That’s how bad it’s designed. Totally the opposite of GW1. So sad Throw a bunch of gold sinks on top of that all and you can guesse how kittened up the system is. Worste game design ever (economics wise).

Not sure about the “worst game design ever” part, but I agree with what you’ve said.

Everything is RNG, even the best rewards are purely RNG. Very little in this game can be achieved in a remotely realistic amount of time without buying items at the TP.
Is it possible to grind mats until you have enough charged lodestones to build Mjolnir? Sure, but most people would be fit to be institutionalized by the time they completed the grind.

Aside from the scarcity being way way over the top, it simply takes any enjoyment out of the game when it comes to setting goals. Because you can’t set goals that don’t hinge on the same base of making gold and buying stuff off the TP.

In the long run, the only goal in the game is to make gold. You pretty much can’t achieve anything else in the horizontal progression without it, and the people it hurts the most are the casual players who are lucky to see some of the rarer items grace their inventory at all. I’m not a casual player, and I’m one to grind a little if I’m bored, but even then, I’ve only seen 3 charged lodestones since I started in 2012.

Arenanet needs to stop trying to cater to everyone. You can’t cater to the horizontal progression of casuals and hardcores. Cater to the casuals, and the hardcores claim the game is to easy. Cater to the hardcores and the casuals claim the game is too hard.
Right now they are catering to both, and no-one is happy.