Guild Wars 2

Since Colin left, MO has been working hard to make players happy. He sacrificed new Legendary weapons for more content. He buffed rewards so players felt love. Gave PvP a new map. And revamped WvW to make it more alive. We love Mike for all these things.

But now, months later, I need to bring up a serious question. When will the lucrative rewards end? There’s just too many ways to get loot these days. Auric Basin multi-map groups guarantee at least 20 rare drops per run. Silver Wastes runs still exist. Meta events in HoT happen all the time. Rewards are raining from the heavens. A little is good. A lot is bad.

A lot of people will not understand why I’m so against the current reward structure. On an individual level, lots of loot makes one feel really good. On a macro level, lots of loot reduces values in the economy. I personally think that in the long term, maintaining the current loot drops will be do more bad than good. Over time, the feelings of individual rewards that MO wanted players to experience will disappear. In Marketing, we call this saturation. There’s an excessive supply being generated, and the economy can’t keep up with the mats they provide when salvaged. The only way to reverse this is to increase the active player population to soak up the excess loot, or to scale back rewards.

We’ve all heard the term “Too much of a good thing”. For example, a bowl of ice cream is nice. A gallon of ice cream will send you to the hospital. Going further, water is essential for life. Drink too little, and you die. The opposite is true, where if you drink too much, you die. Rewards are water, my friends. A small trickle is all we need. A steady flow keeps us happy. A torrential flood will kill the game.

This is one of the reasons why I was against stopping Legendary crafting. This is an economy that runs on crafting. Almost everything you sell is a crafting mat or can be turned into a crafting mat. By halting the crafting of new Legendaries to soak up stacks of mats for each one, that is another large sink that has been plugged and now accumulates in the trading post as lower prices for these mats.

Too much loot pouring in and not enough sinks,

Most of the loot you mentioned is materials. These will self balance with supply/demand altering price. As prices drop, people will move to farming different areas. Also we’re seeing alternative currencies such as unbound magic that will pull people away from farming for materials/gold. Given the current value of materials I suspect anet is actually trying to reduce the price of materials to make asc gear more accessible.

This is true. Silk is worthless again. Ecto prices dropped 40% at one point. Everything is declining rapidly, and John is no where to be found.

On the topic of Legendaries – I heard somewhere that it takes months to even a year to develop a single legendary item. If that’s true, and with MO disbanding the team in charge of the production, we won’t see anything new for a minimum of a year. By then, the Cantha expansion will hit.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

<snip> By then, the Cantha expansion will hit.

Source pls.

Smooth Penguin says he would like all rewards to be nerfed for a while so he can recover his losses from all the ecto he bought recently. Thanks.
See other thread – tee hee.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

<snip> By then, the Cantha expansion will hit.

Source pls.

Isn’t it just the same as saying “by then the hell will have frozen over”?

Indeed, lol.

But, remember, you heard it here first. Cantha released within a year…confirmed!

anninke.7469:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

<snip> By then, the Cantha expansion will hit.

Source pls.

Isn’t it just the same as saying “by then the hell will have frozen over”?

I didn’t think about it from that perspective.

I took it as saying " cantha will be here in a year".

The expansion was on life support, they had introduced so many hurdles that slowed down the players or forced them to expend long periods of time each session before they started earning rewards that it put people off playing. I know I had stopped playing. It simply wasn’t fun.

Personally, I don’t care that much about the economy. As a thing it’s there to serve the game, the game should not be there to serve it (they should stop making such drastic changes to try and correct it). What I care about is being able to get what I need to achieve the goals I want to achieve with an appropriate amount of effort.

They didn’t increase the drop rate of loot that drastically, they changed the way that drops for events were awarded to reduce the need to play an entire 2 hour cycle to get rewards and added daily chests to the meta’s but what they really increased was the drop rate of currencies. That turned the near impossible grind-a-thon that HoT was at launch into an expansion that was worthwhile playing.

Finally, don’t be too quick to credit these changes to Mike O’Brien, Colin left in March these changes were well underway by then but the majority of the credit here goes to the game designers and developers.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

anninke.7469:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

<snip> By then, the Cantha expansion will hit.

Source pls.

Isn’t it just the same as saying “by then the hell will have frozen over”?

I didn’t think about it from that perspective.

I took it as saying " cantha will be here in a year".

Might have been meant that way. I just couldn’t resist…

I’m sorry, 20 rares every two hours is a lousy reward.
Also, the market has already adapted to the current reward system.

I completely disagree with this thread. There is no logic to this request. If you don’t like rewards, then simply delete them, and move on. No one is forcing you to salvage them or vendor them. The economy has gotten ALOT better, and the reward system feels PERFECT right now.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Since Colin left, MO has been working hard to make players happy. He sacrificed new Legendary weapons for more content. He buffed rewards so players felt love. Gave PvP a new map. And revamped WvW to make it more alive. We love Mike for all these things.

But now, months later, I need to bring up a serious question. When will the lucrative rewards end? There’s just too many ways to get loot these days. Auric Basin multi-map groups guarantee at least 20 rare drops per run. Silver Wastes runs still exist. Meta events in HoT happen all the time. Rewards are raining from the heavens. A little is good. A lot is bad.

A lot of people will not understand why I’m so against the current reward structure. On an individual level, lots of loot makes one feel really good. On a macro level, lots of loot reduces values in the economy. I personally think that in the long term, maintaining the current loot drops will be do more bad than good. Over time, the feelings of individual rewards that MO wanted players to experience will disappear. In Marketing, we call this saturation. There’s an excessive supply being generated, and the economy can’t keep up with the mats they provide when salvaged. The only way to reverse this is to increase the active player population to soak up the excess loot, or to scale back rewards.

We’ve all heard the term “Too much of a good thing”. For example, a bowl of ice cream is nice. A gallon of ice cream will send you to the hospital. Going further, water is essential for life. Drink too little, and you die. The opposite is true, where if you drink too much, you die. Rewards are water, my friends. A small trickle is all we need. A steady flow keeps us happy. A torrential flood will kill the game.

How much money have you spent on the game to date?

The game has finally returned to people who play the game not the TP. Most could not be happier, at least everyone I play with is, considering the loot was terrible for so long and the price of everything worthwhile was pushed out of the reach of the majority of the player base.
I say great job giving us the game back and making playing the content actually rewarding!

Ecto price go up and down every patch. Just be patient.

I’m sure one day you’ll be able to recover your lost in ecto investment.

Well said, Vlad, the game belongs to people who play the game not the TP again.

Now they just need to fix the leather price (that they broke) so it doesn’t cost 12g to craft an Exotic insignia and stop “twirling all the knobs” when they’re trying to fix the market.

This topic again…….

Market manipulation attempt, move on.

100% disagree with the thread OP (as usual)

GW2 is not a real world economy.

Things getting cheaper does not adversely affect anything but your “investment portfolio”.

Your personal wealth < enjoyment of the player base as a whole.

Only people who are in the group of “have’s” would complain about loot. These are folks that likely play the market and watch the market on a daily basis. It’s like they’re the rich people of real world complaining about others getting good things, or complaining about rent prices dropping because they’re the ones owning apt complexes.

As for the majority of the rest of the playerbase who don’t have, most people don’t have excess materials and items to sell, most people are dirt poor. Sorry but most people are enjoying the loot. Don’t let it stop for the “have’s”.

If the loot system returned to what it originally was, I’d be sitting at 50 silver instead of hundreds of gold. No thanks.

CMM.6712:

100% disagree with the thread OP (as usual)

This^^^^^

I like where the rewards are at. It is close to how it was at launch, where you could do what you wanted and still feel like you are getting rewarded. It is nice being able to make some gold by doing some thing other than Silverwaste.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

This is true. Silk is worthless again. Ecto prices dropped 40% at one point. Everything is declining rapidly, and John is no where to be found.
.

Good, this game is called guild wars 2 not trading post wars. The game should not be balanced around the trading post. The Trading Post should just be a way for players to trade items. 99% of the items on the TP still go for more than what they would cost to vendor the item, so not sure what the problem is. Maybe stop speculating in the trading post game and just play the game like 90% of the playerbase does.

Contrary to the claims above, I’m not one of those rich TP fat cats. I’m just a business educated player that’s concerned about the economy as a whole. People don’t realize that Evon’s Black Lion Trading Company is an integral part of this game. It allows us to have business interaction with other players on a global scale. Sure making money on the individual level feels good, but when you take a step back, the bigger picture shows bad economic signs. Falling prices is a double edged sword.

Aside from the fact that lots of loot drops affect prices on goods across the board, it also cheapens the draw of luxury goods. Too many players making a lot of money can now afford to buy luxury goods as an impulse buy, rather than a thought out purchase. When more people enter this market, the luxury good is no longer prestigious.

Anet has admitted that they have internal price points on a lot of the items that can be sold on the TP. When Precursor crafting was introduced, the value of the required mats were roughly on par with what Anet wanted Precursors to cost if sold outright. Crafting Dawn is a lot more expensive that crafting Venom.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

This is true. Silk is worthless again. Ecto prices dropped 40% at one point. Everything is declining rapidly, and John is no where to be found.

On the topic of Legendaries – I heard somewhere that it takes months to even a year to develop a single legendary item. If that’s true, and with MO disbanding the team in charge of the production, we won’t see anything new for a minimum of a year. By then, the Cantha expansion will hit.

silk is the same price its always been, mate. i buy that kitten twice a day and other than once, last month, its never fluctuated.

Felahr.9830:

silk is the same price its always been, mate. i buy that kitten twice a day and other than once, last month, its never fluctuated.

Are you talking about the prices from the last month only? Silk prices were 3 time as much previously. Demand went down, Supply increased, and now the market is saturated in that blue thread.

Everything has dropped in some fashion. Even leather values have taken a major beating. That just shows how much the increased reward drops have affected the market.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Contrary to the claims above, I’m not one of those rich TP fat cats. I’m just a business educated player that’s concerned about the economy as a whole. People don’t realize that Evon’s Black Lion Trading Company is an integral part of this game. It allows us to have business interaction with other players on a global scale. Sure making money on the individual level feels good, but when you take a step back, the bigger picture shows bad economic signs. Falling prices is a double edged sword.

Aside from the fact that lots of loot drops affect prices on goods across the board, it also cheapens the draw of luxury goods. Too many players making a lot of money can now afford to buy luxury goods as an impulse buy, rather than a thought out purchase. When more people enter this market, the luxury good is no longer prestigious.

Anet has admitted that they have internal price points on a lot of the items that can be sold on the TP. When Precursor crafting was introduced, the value of the required mats were roughly on par with what Anet wanted Precursors to cost if sold outright. Crafting Dawn is a lot more expensive that crafting Venom.

In artificial economies you want as much trading as possible so that differentiation is through gem related products. The less legendary that Legendaries are the greater gem differential becomes a force.

At least in the cosmetic sense.

Flooding a market with money makes things that can’t be bought much more valuable.

If the loot was too good and we were all swimming in wealth don’t you think we would ALL be swimming in legendary’s by now? That’s not the case.

If prices on things such as silk, ectos etc are a bit on the low side don’t stress about it. Save them or use them. You don’t have to worry about not making as much cash off them as you usually do. Why do I say this? Well because if what you say is true and drops are far too good now, we are all swimming in cash now right? So why even bother about the prices of things, get out there and bash things!

i knew gw2 would suffer like this from the beginning, you cant build an mmo on purely cosmetic rewards

thats why runescape and wow are still going strong after 10+ years and gw2 is struggling after 2, there is nothing to reward us with,

we will need something to LEVEL UP, if not main level then atleast something to work towards that ISNT COSMETIC

Duke Nukem.6783:

i knew gw2 would suffer like this from the beginning, you cant build an mmo on purely cosmetic rewards

Ya, I mean, you say that, but…

https://www.guildwars.com/en/

Duke Nukem.6783:

i knew gw2 would suffer like this from the beginning, you cant build an mmo on purely cosmetic rewards

thats why runescape and wow are still going strong after 10+ years and gw2 is struggling after 2, there is nothing to reward us with,

we will need something to LEVEL UP, if not main level then atleast something to work towards that ISNT COSMETIC

15 year Vet here from Runescape and from what I hear it is doing very badly right now. I mean come on they have a subscription AND microtransactions talk about getting greedy….

What keeps people playing that game is a numerous amout of things such as:

1 – The massive grind (I have most skills at 99 and a lot of them were done way back in classic which was a lot harder). Even tho the current RS is a lot easier than it used to be, the grind is still real due to how many skills there are and the share amount of exp/time you need to level them. People are addicted to that grind and delude themselves that its fun, believe me I used to be one of them. I mean hey it’s the game you play while doing other stuff to take the boredom away right? Such as watch TV or movies while sitting there for 2-10 hours smithing for no where near close to just 1 level.

2 – Variety in things to do. It’s not just combat, sure most of the other things are in the skills and levelling those skills such as fishing, mining, crafting etc. But they also have a lot more mini games than here. Not only that but a lot of them are pretty fun to play and can be regarded as their own games in their own right. Castle wars being one (well it was back in the day) there was also that army one which I forget the name of now. I was addicted to that for a while and it’s probably the only thing I miss about that game tbh.

3 – Loot. That game has a pretty good loot system. I would not say better or worse than here because it’s just too different. But in a lot of ways it is better. Not purely because you get more as such but more in the fact in the variety. It’s not linier like here as in all mobs drop weps/armours. There are also nice rare drops that particular mobs drop that keep you killing those or give you the incentive to.

4 – No Diminished Returns. You can park your char in a spot for hours and keep on killing. You are not punished for it, in fact this is how you level in that game. The quests are bad for exp and rewards, they are more for the “fun” or to tell the story that previously did not exist in that game.

There are probably more reasons that keep people playing that game such as it’s free and had low comp spec requirements for a long time. Heck it was a Java game after all and totally playable just in a browser for the longest time but that has only just changed now.

You can’t compare this game to that and seriously we do NOT want this game to turn in to that believe me lol. Well besides the fact that this game could do with more gameplay modes besides combat/story all the time….oh and I would like a similar loot system but that is not to say the loot system here is bad or too good. It’s just…….boring.

Substance E.4852:

GW2 is not a real world economy.

Things getting cheaper does not adversely affect anything but your “investment portfolio”.

Your personal wealth < enjoyment of the player base as a whole.

bingo!

Then again, it’s impossible to take the OP seriously considering his post history.

For real, what is this topic. If someone wants shinies quick they don’t go farm PvE, they go buy gems.

Last time I checked, precursors are still at 900g and up….that isn’t cheap.

The silk thing is hilarious, silk used to be like 5 copper each prior to ascended nonsense. That ascended / infusion crap along with making it quite difficult to stat swap is the reason the game is ‘dying’.

I happen to really like the cosmetic nature of the GW series. Leave the ‘hardcore’ to other games like WoW and EVE. If anything, I wish they’d devote more resources to game balance and build variety rather than scavenger hunts.

Or they can just create new sinks for it as they’ve been doing for quite a while…

Vlad Morbius.1759:

The game has finally returned to people who play the game not the TP. Most could not be happier, at least everyone I play with is, considering the loot was terrible for so long and the price of everything worthwhile was pushed out of the reach of the majority of the player base.
I say great job giving us the game back and making playing the content actually rewarding!

I have to agree with this. Playing VB and getting a bladed armor set in a reasonable amount of time was awesome. And making it possible for people to get the new Ranger pets without jumping through the hoops I had too is great as well. When the expansion first hit, it was a tedious grind. Now I feel like it is worth hopping in for a bit of fun and being able to pick up a new item I like at the end, for gold from the TP or for some other currency from a vendor.

Rotating BL skins back in and bringing the price down to something people could reasonably earn was a great idea. Hopefully some of the newer dyes will get the same treatment soon.

Silk Scrap is at ~70 copper, which is not worthless — that’s just not worth nearly as much as it used to. There’s no set price that is “too high” or “too low” — just because we got used to high prices in silk, leather, ecto, whatever, doesn’t mean those values are the “right” prices.

The economy is a complex organism; it doesn’t live or die because one or more of us finds the old prices too high or the new ones too low.

While I have a sneaking suspicion that AB multi-map will eventually get patched to a daily chest reward system. I’m not too sure what your going on about. Right now the economy is sustaining itself very well. Charged lodestones, Powerful Blood, and Silver Doubloon are still verily expensive to get. True they have gone down a bit, but they are not cheap to get. Plus there are now so many types of new materials flooding the market. Not only that but Mystic Coins in the last year or so has quadrupled in price. Due to people supposedly hoarding them like they are going out of style. Finally let’s talk about the elephant in the room that takes down your entire notation of “everything is falling in price and needs a fix” mantra. Harden Leather (tier six leather) was fixed via it’s drop/salvage rate, and increased it’s crafting cost significantly just before HoT went live. Now look at it. It’s one of the most obnoxious high end material to get.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Silk Scrap is at ~70 copper, which is not worthless — that’s just not worth nearly as much as it used to. There’s no set price that is “too high” or “too low” — just because we got used to high prices in silk, leather, ecto, whatever, doesn’t mean those values are the “right” prices.

The economy is a complex organism; it doesn’t live or die because one or more of us finds the old prices too high or the new ones too low.

I agree with Illconceived Was Na. Well said.

Paulytnz.7619:

If the loot was too good and we were all swimming in wealth don’t you think we would ALL be swimming in legendary’s by now? That’s not the case.

If prices on things such as silk, ectos etc are a bit on the low side don’t stress about it. Save them or use them. You don’t have to worry about not making as much cash off them as you usually do. Why do I say this? Well because if what you say is true and drops are far too good now, we are all swimming in cash now right? So why even bother about the prices of things, get out there and bash things!

this if you have excess gold buy some silk/ectos and sit on them. as time goes by the cost will go up and you can make a good profit.its called playing the market long term.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Silk Scrap is at ~70 copper, which is not worthless — that’s just not worth nearly as much as it used to. There’s no set price that is “too high” or “too low” — just because we got used to high prices in silk, leather, ecto, whatever, doesn’t mean those values are the “right” prices.

The economy is a complex organism; it doesn’t live or die because one or more of us finds the old prices too high or the new ones too low.

While the economy may be a complex orgasm, people need to look beyond just a few things. It’s not about Precursors still being expensive. It’s the massive influx of loot. The loot that players are getting are then either being sold, or salvaged and selling the mats.

Either the loot faucet needs to be turned down, or Anet needs to put in more sinks. Now regarding sinks, the bad thing about this is that once items balance out, the sink usually remains. Then there’s the problem of the sink being too effective, thus leading to too much of an increase in values. So of the two options, adjusting the faucet (AB multi-map meta) would be the safe pick.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Silk Scrap is at ~70 copper, which is not worthless — that’s just not worth nearly as much as it used to. There’s no set price that is “too high” or “too low” — just because we got used to high prices in silk, leather, ecto, whatever, doesn’t mean those values are the “right” prices.

The economy is a complex organism; it doesn’t live or die because one or more of us finds the old prices too high or the new ones too low.

While the economy may be a complex orgasm, people need to look beyond just a few things. It’s not about Precursors still being expensive. It’s the massive influx of loot. The loot that players are getting are then either being sold, or salvaged and selling the mats.

The problem is that you need to look beyond the market.

Either the loot faucet needs to be turned down, or Anet needs to put in more sinks. Now regarding sinks, the bad thing about this is that once items balance out, the sink usually remains. Then there’s the problem of the sink being too effective, thus leading to too much of an increase in values. So of the two options, adjusting the faucet (AB multi-map meta) would be the safe pick.

I’m all for gold sinks if that means players can buy cool “stuff” with game currency and gold, but all you want is higher market prices which nickles and dimes the average player.

MO and the team made a conscious change to value player time and reward those time efforts. The highly desirable items in game are expensive enough when you put all those materials together.

Funny how you say you’re “business educated” and tie that into the virtual economy and reward structure, but are completely oblivious to the fact that hot sales didn’t meet expectations, conversions from “play for free” to box purchasers wasn’t great and that Anet was pulling not so great quarterly financial numbers…. MO and those devs implemented ways to increase player retention, friend referrals and general box sales, all of which helps to boost bottom line sales and gives the devs more money to develop the game… but your “business educated” mind seems to miss the big pictures.

You fail to see what everyone’s favorite radio station is.

Bolded

Smooth Penguin.5294:

While the economy may be a complex orgasm…

What?

niea.7504:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

While the economy may be a complex orgasm…

What?

Only for the TP barons…. =P

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Ecto prices dropped 40% at one point.

That’s because people were expecting a nerf to AB multi map, and so hoarded them to make an easy buck with the inevitable spike in price. This didn’t happen so the prices dropped when people started to sell again.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Since Colin left, MO has been working hard to make players happy. He sacrificed new Legendary weapons for more content. He buffed rewards so players felt love. Gave PvP a new map. And revamped WvW to make it more alive. We love Mike for all these things.

But now, months later, I need to bring up a serious question. When will the lucrative rewards end? There’s just too many ways to get loot these days. Auric Basin multi-map groups guarantee at least 20 rare drops per run. Silver Wastes runs still exist. Meta events in HoT happen all the time. Rewards are raining from the heavens. A little is good. A lot is bad.

A lot of people will not understand why I’m so against the current reward structure. On an individual level, lots of loot makes one feel really good. On a macro level, lots of loot reduces values in the economy. I personally think that in the long term, maintaining the current loot drops will be do more bad than good. Over time, the feelings of individual rewards that MO wanted players to experience will disappear. In Marketing, we call this saturation. There’s an excessive supply being generated, and the economy can’t keep up with the mats they provide when salvaged. The only way to reverse this is to increase the active player population to soak up the excess loot, or to scale back rewards.

We’ve all heard the term “Too much of a good thing”. For example, a bowl of ice cream is nice. A gallon of ice cream will send you to the hospital. Going further, water is essential for life. Drink too little, and you die. The opposite is true, where if you drink too much, you die. Rewards are water, my friends. A small trickle is all we need. A steady flow keeps us happy. A torrential flood will kill the game.

WAIT WHAT, GW2 in game rewards finally increased? WvW is more alive and level 80 mobs no longer dropping 15 copper? If yes, I can finally return to game after years.

Because game was all about playing with insane TP prices and grinding crafting mats. If that changed, and if game actually rewarding its own players, I can certainly return to game.

By the way, I’m certainly do not agree with the OP. He basically wants heavy material grinding back, dead WvW with no players and a game that makes us spend months to get a “shiny” legendary weapons. This is not fun.

I’m starting to re download GW2 client to see those beautiful rewards you mentioned in your post. And hopefully, they stay permanent this time.