Guild Wars 2

I was able to find a route with skelks in southsun that gave me just about as many kills per 30 minutes as the old spot used to. I got ONE t6 mat, one yellow, and not a single green. A bunch of t5 and some blues. Everyone else that has tried to farm skelks is saying the same thing. There is no way that this was a “density” fix only, their loot tables must have been changed as well.

Well I am done playing GW2 until they really balance stuffs anyway my toon is all set up and no new ascended gears or weapons so… I don’t have any incentive to play atm, have fun all ^^

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The latest case of “farming nerfs” was actually a bug fix. I’m aware of this because I was asked to help identify the issue. The area in question contained a spawn that was defined to have more creatures than spots for those creatures to spawn. So for example, 25 skelks spawning on 10 points. This is not intended. Not only does it just look absurd, it’s also leads to some extremely bizarre play conditions. This is one of those bugs that’s so buggy, the fact that our toolset even allowed this to happen is a bug. Another bug caused this bug. Bugception.

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove. We wouldn’t drop loot from the giant mobs of creatures that appear in upscaled events. We certainly wouldn’t have put in chests that appear after events which cycle every 8 to 10 minutes. How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

On farming in general, there’s a sweet spot that combines good loot with fun, engaging content. I think Southsun had that going for it, especially before certain aspects of the content were isolated as optimal. As someone who’s actively working on upcoming Living World releases, I’m aiming to find that sweet spot and hit it in a big way.

Thanks for this great response. The Skelk nerf makes a ton of sense.

That said, there still has been NOTHING from an official source about the Pentitent/Shelter timer changes. It was NOT EVEN IN THE PATCH NOTES. This is the only thing that upsets me – I haven’t seen any official response on a thread about these events which have clearly been nerfed to discourage farming (after months and months of being farmed).

I enjoy the spots that I have in Southsun, and I think the area is great. Karka Queen bugs aside (which I am more than willing to be patient and wait for a fix on – thank you dev who responded to our bug thread), the area has been a nice change of pace in farming with some different drops. I hope living story content continues to keep me interested in the new areas like this.

Players, however, are just upset that T6 prices – which were already high enough to discourage players from Legendary farming (which is actually a positive because it allows Legendaries to maintain legendary status) – are continuing to rise because of stealth changes in Orr that have literally not even been mentioned in an official source, yet are very obvious to the players who have been farming there for months.

Please, if a dev reads this, just give us some sort of response. Any sort of an acknowledgment – “Yes, Orr event timers have changed. Loot has been reduced, and the reason is ________” would at least give us something to think about. The way it is now, it seems like the ArenaNet expected players to simply not notice the nerf – like a parent taking a child’s toy out of their room and hoping they don’t miss it and simply go play with other toys.

Well, the other toys are great, guys, but we miss it. At least tell us that it’s happening.

I realize he was referring to the instigator chests. That are now gone. And events that encouraged such large zergs that a lot of people experienced horrible lag is not really something to be proud of, yet alone brag about. I guess this IS the way you are supposed to farm.

And I have noticed the drop rate of the T6 materials has diminished quite a bit also. It is NOT just a reduction in skelk quantity. The loot drops are just NOT the same.

On a side note, when did the icebrood in Frostgorge get nerfed so bad? I tried again there over the weekend and I was barely getting any T5 or T6 materials. I used to be able to get a decent amount for the time invested. Now they barely even drop ANYTHING.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove. We wouldn’t drop loot from the giant mobs of creatures that appear in upscaled events. We certainly wouldn’t have put in chests that appear after events which cycle every 8 to 10 minutes. How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

The thing is this isn’t the first time something has been “modified” which, as a result, prevents people from farming: Cursed Shore (Plinx, Penitent, Shelter), World Boss chests, diminishing returns… Even if you say there’s always a reason for doing it, you can see how people could consider all of this a tactic to prevent them from farming.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The latest case of “farming nerfs” was actually a bug fix. I’m aware of this because I was asked to help identify the issue. The area in question contained a spawn that was defined to have more creatures than spots for those creatures to spawn. So for example, 25 skelks spawning on 10 points. This is not intended. Not only does it just look absurd, it’s also leads to some extremely bizarre play conditions. This is one of those bugs that’s so buggy, the fact that our toolset even allowed this to happen is a bug. Another bug caused this bug. Bugception.

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove. We wouldn’t drop loot from the giant mobs of creatures that appear in upscaled events. We certainly wouldn’t have put in chests that appear after events which cycle every 8 to 10 minutes. How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

On farming in general, there’s a sweet spot that combines good loot with fun, engaging content. I think Southsun had that going for it, especially before certain aspects of the content were isolated as optimal. As someone who’s actively working on upcoming Living World releases, I’m aiming to find that sweet spot and hit it in a big way.

The number of skelk before the southsun content began were not too bad, when the new content started I noticed a massive increase in the number of skelk spawning, now after this “fix” there is roughly half the skelk spawning as before the new content began.

Quick edit, the respawn time on the skelk seems alot slower now also.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The latest case of “farming nerfs” was actually a bug fix. I’m aware of this because I was asked to help identify the issue. The area in question contained a spawn that was defined to have more creatures than spots for those creatures to spawn. So for example, 25 skelks spawning on 10 points. This is not intended. Not only does it just look absurd, it’s also leads to some extremely bizarre play conditions. This is one of those bugs that’s so buggy, the fact that our toolset even allowed this to happen is a bug. Another bug caused this bug. Bugception.

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove. We wouldn’t drop loot from the giant mobs of creatures that appear in upscaled events. We certainly wouldn’t have put in chests that appear after events which cycle every 8 to 10 minutes. How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

On farming in general, there’s a sweet spot that combines good loot with fun, engaging content. I think Southsun had that going for it, especially before certain aspects of the content were isolated as optimal. As someone who’s actively working on upcoming Living World releases, I’m aiming to find that sweet spot and hit it in a big way.

Whatever your current job is: quit doing it and become the company front man. I haven’t seen a reply this acceptable from a red poster in quite a while. I don’t necessarily agree with the points made in it, but I am happy to see the overall post, for sure.

Erasculio.2914:

cesmode.4257:

To Arenanet: I WANT to farm. Why can’t I do this? This is how I want to play the game. Isn’t that what you have been preaching? “Play how you want to play”?

Actually, if you watch the Manifesto to see what ArenaNet was preaching, you would have heard they saying “We don’t want players to grind”. Not “we don’t want to force players to grind”, but rather “We don’t want players to grind”. They have stated with all letters that they don’t want you to grind, and still you claim you want to?

The issue isn’t that ArenaNet nerfs farming. It’s that they don’t nerf farming enough. Farmers and grinders are the ones responsible for how mediocre MMORPGs are – they tell developers that they don’t want fun and deep content, rather they want to be Skinner rats mindlessly pressing their tiny levers for shiny rewards. ArenaNet has made many bad design decisions, but the original idea was that this game was going to be something for human beings, not for rats. Each nerf on farming pushes some of the mice away, but doing things like the entire Southsun event (horrible storytelling, but 200% magic find and quick spawning events with unlimited reward chests) is like adding a big piece of rotten cheese in the game: the rats love it, but it’s still putrid.

ArenaNet should cull all the farmers, grinders, addicts and exploiters. This not only would improve significantly improve the community, but also allow the studio to focus on building good content, instead of Farming 101.

Addicts? What? I find that offensive honestly, and crude.

I ll tell you I have no incentive to play as there is no new ascended gear or weapons and my toon is full equip, as the unbalance of drops the TP uncontrolled and without any re-sellable buying/selling design to avoid the marketters well, I am done until further changes. ty and have fun with rng and the obvious market abuse

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The latest case of “farming nerfs” was actually a bug fix. I’m aware of this because I was asked to help identify the issue. The area in question contained a spawn that was defined to have more creatures than spots for those creatures to spawn. So for example, 25 skelks spawning on 10 points. This is not intended. Not only does it just look absurd, it’s also leads to some extremely bizarre play conditions. This is one of those bugs that’s so buggy, the fact that our toolset even allowed this to happen is a bug. Another bug caused this bug. Bugception.

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove. We wouldn’t drop loot from the giant mobs of creatures that appear in upscaled events. We certainly wouldn’t have put in chests that appear after events which cycle every 8 to 10 minutes. How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

On farming in general, there’s a sweet spot that combines good loot with fun, engaging content. I think Southsun had that going for it, especially before certain aspects of the content were isolated as optimal. As someone who’s actively working on upcoming Living World releases, I’m aiming to find that sweet spot and hit it in a big way.

The events in cursed shore has been reduced in frequency from 1 in 10-15 mins to 1 in 30 mins (yes, I took note of this). So is the respawn rate of the risen mobs in the whole map.

Are you telling me that this is a bug too? As far as I’m concerned, this has been going on since all the way back to about 7 months ago and we were even complaining that respawn rate in orr is so frustratingly fast, and your team never did anything about it.

And now that people found a way to exploit it by farming the risen and the events, the team decides to reduce the intensity. It would have been much welcome 8 months ago when the game just started. But you’re doing it now when people have already farmed there for months and prices on TP are what they are now.

I appreciate your team’s hard work in most cases, but mercurial changes like these that happens too often are just kinda frustrating, man. Why don’t you leave these kind of things for a while and stop punishing your players?

Titan.3472:

I ll tell you I have no incentive to play as there is no new ascended gear or weapons and my toon is full equip, as the unbalance of drops the TP uncontrolled and without any re-sellable buying/selling design to avoid the marketters well, I am done until further changes. ty and have fun with rng and the obvious market abuse

If new gear is the only thing keeping you in this game, you definitely chose the wrong game. There are so many ladder climbing gear grind raid games out there… why did you choose the one that is specifically designed to NOT be like that?

Vol.5241:

Dangerkips.6035:

It’s all been said but yes, Anet is pretty actively interested in nerfing farming areas almost as soon as they are discovered. Which is very paradoxical because this game is probably the grindiest MMO I’ve ever played.

The only conclusion is: they want the game to remain ‘the casuals paradise’, catering to the vast majority of the playerbase that plays less than 8 hours a week and spends RL money on the cash shop to buy gems. (Which they can then exchange for gold at a ridiculous exchange rate)

^ This

The hardcore players aren’t exactly the profitable ones for Arenanet. They knew how to make money and made a lot of it, lessening the need/desire to buy gems.

But the casuals are the people who more than likely have a job/family commitments, and are more than likely to buy gems to get what they want in a timely manner.

And (casuals) more likely to quit for another casual game, i mean who makes MMO for someone who can play max 10-15h a month?!?!??!?!?!?!?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove. We wouldn’t drop loot from the giant mobs of creatures that appear in upscaled events. We certainly wouldn’t have put in chests that appear after events which cycle every 8 to 10 minutes. How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

To be completely fair, you’re nerfing the areas that drop crystaline dust, ancient bones, venoms, and bags that contain t6. The area where you’ve given a temporary buff gives karka shells. Sure bloods and venom MAY drop once in the bluest of blue moons but it’s nothing like how they drop from risen. Also you aren’t just nerfing exploits and bugs. RIP Plinx.

I didn’t care about the skelk fix, because I don’t like Southsun. I do like Orr, and my reaction to the tunnel fix was GOOD! I bug reported that event at least 5 times! It was obviously broken, and almost impossible to complete as it was. The fact that we exploited this broken event for material gain doesn’t matter.

I’m glad the skelk spot got fixed. Broken content is broken.

Just because a fix doesn’t help you make gold faster doesn’t mean it’s a “Nerf.”

we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove

And free….there is little that is free in GW2. ’
I was actually surprised by the instigator and southsun farm because it didn’t involve having to buy a consortium magic booster from the TP for 2000 gems(24 hours only!).

randomfightfan.4091:

RIP Plinx.

I miss Plinx farms

Erasculio.2914:

cesmode.4257:

To Arenanet: I WANT to farm. Why can’t I do this? This is how I want to play the game. Isn’t that what you have been preaching? “Play how you want to play”?

Actually, if you watch the Manifesto to see what ArenaNet was preaching, you would have heard they saying “We don’t want players to grind”. Not “we don’t want to force players to grind”, but rather “We don’t want players to grind”. They have stated with all letters that they don’t want you to grind, and still you claim you want to?

The issue isn’t that ArenaNet nerfs farming. It’s that they don’t nerf farming enough. Farmers and grinders are the ones responsible for how mediocre MMORPGs are – they tell developers that they don’t want fun and deep content, rather they want to be Skinner rats mindlessly pressing their tiny levers for shiny rewards. ArenaNet has made many bad design decisions, but the original idea was that this game was going to be something for human beings, not for rats. Each nerf on farming pushes some of the mice away, but doing things like the entire Southsun event (horrible storytelling, but 200% magic find and quick spawning events with unlimited reward chests) is like adding a big piece of rotten cheese in the game: the rats love it, but it’s still putrid.

ArenaNet should cull all the farmers, grinders, addicts and exploiters. This not only would improve significantly improve the community, but also allow the studio to focus on building good content, instead of Farming 101.

Intriguing, how would you go about categorizing a player as a farmer, and how would you remove them, and farming itself from the game? (not just dungeon farmers, all farmers)

It seems to me that what ANet is going for is farming in the context of playing the game. For example, running the Grenth chain, getting drops from mobs during the events, silver + karma + xp from events + chest reward at the end (pretend the event ends successfully, okay? ;P). They should be encouraging this sort of “farming” more.

What they’re trying to reduce is basically mindless farming a la Union Waypoint: i.e., group up + guardian staff 1 + collect loot + repeat (I’m speaking hypothetically, of course, I would never engage in such a thing myself). This kind of farming is fun (to a point) and lucrative, but it’s also a bot magnet and guaranteed to collapse the economy in the long run due to a greater than intended proliferation of materials.

The thing is, the kind of fun places like Union provide is very short term. It’s “hee hee, I’m getting stuff for little effort!” I suspect ANet will try to discourage this given that a) people tend to enjoy things more when they have to put a little effort in, and b) they make more money when there is a minor scarcity of materials rather than a super-abundance.

Having said that, when they nerf farming spots things usually swing too far in the scarcity direction (the current situation with T-6 dust is a case in point), and players have a legitimate gripe when that happens.

So in general, when players cry over nerfed farming spots… I sympathize. I (hypothetically) miss the old Union Waypoint. But what you’re crying over is super-easy mats and money. Get over it. In the long run, if getting mats and money is that easy it’s not going to be as fun a game.

I think I see what ANet is saying about finding a sweet spot between effort and reward, and I agree. But they ain’t there yet. Nerfing farming, while I see the reasons for it, is not the whole solution. Maybe if there was also a modest upgrade to rewards for doing big events there would be less grumbling…

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The latest case of “farming nerfs” was actually a bug fix. I’m aware of this because I was asked to help identify the issue. The area in question contained a spawn that was defined to have more creatures than spots for those creatures to spawn. So for example, 25 skelks spawning on 10 points. This is not intended. Not only does it just look absurd, it’s also leads to some extremely bizarre play conditions. This is one of those bugs that’s so buggy, the fact that our toolset even allowed this to happen is a bug. Another bug caused this bug. Bugception.

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove. We wouldn’t drop loot from the giant mobs of creatures that appear in upscaled events. We certainly wouldn’t have put in chests that appear after events which cycle every 8 to 10 minutes. How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

On farming in general, there’s a sweet spot that combines good loot with fun, engaging content. I think Southsun had that going for it, especially before certain aspects of the content were isolated as optimal. As someone who’s actively working on upcoming Living World releases, I’m aiming to find that sweet spot and hit it in a big way.

Nice to see a response from a red name to an issue like this, thanks for taking the time it is appreciated.

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge….

It is also nice to see the above part,

I’d like to touch on the following though -

How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

People haven’t forgotten about that content, it is merely a case that said content is either new and/or temporary. Stuff like the instigator run is great and if you are going to be doing more things like that (and the buff) then people will lap it up in droves. But after what has perceived to be round after round of nerfs and zero communication, you cannot be surprised that not everyone is suddenly thinking “it’s all cool” after one set of temporary events.

Moreover, people aren’t really angered over the change to the bugged content specifically at all, they are angered over what is seen (rightly or wrongly) as constant open world farm/loot nerfs whilst CoF1 sits there completely untouched.

You are right about the farming sweet spot and if you are indeed working on more stuff like we have seen in Southsun then that is a really, really good thing. If you can make farming an actually engaging gameplay element (other then a chill out thing which some actually enjoy), then hats off to you! More importantly though (for me) is the fact that you have taken the time to communicate this intention.

If someone had come along and tried to explain why Orr has had the kitten nerfed out of it whilst CoF1 sits there as is, then maybe the issue wouldn’t have been blown out of proportion in quite the same way.

Perhaps someone official would like to explain that to us now?

I do wish Anet wouldn’t be so selective in what they nerf, though. It seems like all the open world farming spots are getting hit, but CoF is still going strong…

Could be wrong, though. Just seems that way from here.

PinCushion.7390:

I didn’t care about the skelk fix, because I don’t like Southsun. I do like Orr, and my reaction to the tunnel fix was GOOD! I bug reported that event at least 5 times! It was obviously broken, and almost impossible to complete as it was. The fact that we exploited this broken event for material gain doesn’t matter.

I’m glad the skelk spot got fixed. Broken content is broken.

Just because a fix doesn’t help you make gold faster doesn’t mean it’s a “Nerf.”

The only problem with this is the timing.

When did we start complaining that event and respawn rates in Orr is ridiculously fast? 8 MONTHS AGO, man! But noooo, its supposed to be that challenging, “end-game” content.

And now supposedly the “fix” came 8 months later when the market is so hyper-inflated and most of us has done pretty much everything except legendary (karka shells for what??)?

If it was REALLY about the novelty of going against farming, they should have seen it at the first outcry.

Thucydides.8510:

It seems to me that what ANet is going for is farming in the context of playing the game. For example, running the Grenth chain, getting drops from mobs during the events, silver + karma + xp from events + chest reward at the end (pretend the event ends successfully, okay? ;P). They should be encouraging this sort of “farming” more.

What they’re trying to reduce is basically mindless farming a la Union Waypoint: i.e., group up + guardian staff 1 + collect loot + repeat (I’m speaking hypothetically, of course, I would never engage in such a thing myself). This kind of farming is fun (to a point) and lucrative, but it’s also a bot magnet and guaranteed to collapse the economy in the long run due to a greater than intended proliferation of materials.

The thing is, the kind of fun places like Union provide is very short term. It’s “hee hee, I’m getting stuff for little effort!” I suspect ANet will try to discourage this given that a) people tend to enjoy things more when they have to put a little effort in, and b) they make more money when there is a minor scarcity of materials rather than a super-abundance.

Having said that, when they nerf farming spots things usually swing too far in the scarcity direction (the current situation with T-6 dust is a case in point), and players have a legitimate gripe when that happens.

So in general, when players cry over nerfed farming spots… I sympathize. I (hypothetically) miss the old Union Waypoint. But what you’re crying over is super-easy mats and money. Get over it. In the long run, if getting mats and money is that easy it’s not going to be as fun a game.

I think I see what ANet is saying about finding a sweet spot between effort and reward, and I agree. But they ain’t there yet. Nerfing farming, while I see the reasons for it, is not the whole solution. Maybe if there was also a modest upgrade to rewards for doing big events there would be less grumbling…

As someone who has made over 800g from the union waypoint farming, it was bound to be nerfed. I agree with it being nerfed (though I’d love it to still be there). But you must ask, which is more destructive for the economy?

25s dust or 40s dust? and rising? I think the latter.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, arenanet can nerf bugged or immensely rewarding events all they want.

But they just keep nerfing the events that players find as the next best thing ( and just aren’t bugged)

i.e. Collonade, plinx, shelt/pen

Vol.5241:

As someone who has made over 800g from the union waypoint farming, it was bound to be nerfed. I agree with it being nerfed (though I’d love it to still be there). But you must ask, which is more destructive for the economy?

25s dust or 40s dust? and rising? I think the latter.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, arenanet can nerf bugged or immensely rewarding events all they want.

But they just keep nerfing the events that players find as the next best thing ( and just aren’t bugged)

i.e. Collonade, plinx, shelt/pen

40+ silver for dust would be awesome. Finally running events in Orr won’t have to feel like such a huge waste of time that I do anyway because “Zombies are cool.”

Guild Wars 2 is above all a business. And that is fine. They have and need to make money.
Good for them.
The way they are doing it is wrong tho, by nerfing almost all “farming” spots.

I spent 30 minutes killing things in Orr several days ago. Just logged in so no DR involved. I hope.
Killed about 90 undead creatures.
Loot? 4-5 gray items.
Now tell me this is RNG.

Greed can only take you so far.

PinCushion.7390:

Vol.5241:

As someone who has made over 800g from the union waypoint farming, it was bound to be nerfed. I agree with it being nerfed (though I’d love it to still be there). But you must ask, which is more destructive for the economy?

25s dust or 40s dust? and rising? I think the latter.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, arenanet can nerf bugged or immensely rewarding events all they want.

But they just keep nerfing the events that players find as the next best thing ( and just aren’t bugged)

i.e. Collonade, plinx, shelt/pen

40+ silver for dust would be awesome. Finally running events in Orr won’t have to feel like such a huge waste of time that I do anyway because “Zombies are cool.”

Not so awesome if they are not dropping much dust mind you.

PinCushion.7390:

40+ silver for dust would be awesome. Finally running events in Orr won’t have to feel like such a huge waste of time that I do anyway because “Zombies are cool.”

Issue is, even if dust is worth 1g, it do is a waste of time.

Because the amout of dust you get is so low right now.

(event time increased, mob loot killed, share drop rates with other t6 mats both form mobs and form bags, and, overall, it’s all down RGN)

Erasculio.2914:

Vol.5241:

Farming =/ grinding

That is the kind of petty, meaningless semantic argument I expect when someone has no real counter to an argument. Farming is the same as grinding, with the exact same negative connotation as in someone wasting time doing a mindless and easy activity (that a bot could do better than a human being) for the sake of a shiny reward in the end. Much like a donkey chasing a carrot in front of its face, and definitely not any smarter.

Farming is not the same as grinding. While there are various levels of each, generally grinding is called such because it is imposed. Not by the player but by design. One could state I’m grinding for X reasons, but in the historical sense of the term they are using it wrong. Or simply that they use the word to express that they have a self imposed grind. Guild wars 2 is the least grindy MMO I’ve ever played. Leaving out ascended which are need only for 1 very small aspect of the game, and legendarys which are a long term goal, we have little to no grind. I easily hit 80 in a little over a week, my second 80 was around 2-3 weeks. I had full exotic sets for both within a month, I do not ever remember being able to do that in past games. Ascended was meant fr those who do like grind, for those who wanted endgame. So they need to keep that in mind when they call this a grindy MMO.

With that being said, I’m a veteran who deals with several problems from my time in Iraq. I started my first MMO FFXI and found I enjoyed just killing mobs for fun. In GW2 I get rewarded for doing so like in no other game. When I feel bored, stressed, or my thoughts drift back to hunkering down beside humvees or watching the night sky fill with a rain of tracers, I find myself engaged in a self imposed grind which I actually enjoy. I kill random monsters, do events again and again, its a calming thing for me and I enjoy how GW2 has made it. Now I don’t exploit spots, stand still and spam 1 for hours in some bugged location, I do my own work to get my drops. I don’t depend on one style, one area to keep me happy for my entire time. Those who put all their dependence onto one event, one chain, one type of mob will be more disappointed and retaliatory towards the game when it changes. Those who find many many alternate routes of money/item farming will not be as distressed. It falls on us to not be addicted to an easy answer, it falls on Arenanet to create a game where all styles of player can feel at home for whatever your personal reason is.

If we want to farm give us more opportunity to do so enjoyably, but this doesn’t mean hand feed us items or money. I’d be much happier with more unique areas aside from Orr or Southsun to farm mobs, not grind because I have to. Because again, those are two very different things. Those of us who farm do so for a reason, there are many other ways to make money in game and get what you want. Most of us enjoy farming because it is profitable, at times can be fun, and simply because it is a self imposed farming rather than something we are forced to do to survive. Right now money isn’t the problem for me, it is finding locations that aren’t “dead” or dull to farm in. As long as the drops are decent, and the mobs interesting, and the scenery isn’t completely bland we will be happy with the result. Or maybe I’m the only one who sees it this way, who knows.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

As someone who’s actively working on upcoming Living World releases, I’m aiming to find that sweet spot and hit it in a big way.

As someone who is disgruntled how the living world things just poof after they complete let me just say to you….. STOP…. Talk to your boss or what ever… The fact it goes into the game then taken out later is just dumb as all hell and I’m guessing is like kitten ing money away on 1 time content… Honestly I know not only me but 1/2 the player base if not more would much prefer NEW armor and weapon skins that are obtainable in game not cash shop exclusive lotto tickets. The living world stuff is nice and all but seriously make events that can be added and KEPT in game.. Just think of potential players the’ll see they missed out on stuff what do you think they are thinking at this point… I’m guessing “this crap wasn’t worth my money since I wasn’t here at the start”

Just my rant that has been festering because of this crap going on… Holiday events once a year are fine but everything about the living story has been a extreme let down due to the fact they were so temporary.

Dont worry guys, Anet want us to farm! Thats why they never stealthnerf anything, such as the karka on the southsun lowlands. I am sure the massive reduction in numbers and respawn rate is a… “bugfix”…

Dakiaris.2798:

The fact it goes into the game then taken out later is just dumb as all hell

^THIS is the main issue. I hope they realize this more.

Of course nobody is gonna complain if devs change something that makes players lives easier, but no matter how much anyone can rationalize a change that was supposed to correct a long-running deviation from original intent, if it outright, overnight puts a heavy cross on the majority of the player-base, you can be sure that it’ll be normal that people feel demoralized.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The latest case of “farming nerfs” was actually a bug fix. I’m aware of this because I was asked to help identify the issue. The area in question contained a spawn that was defined to have more creatures than spots for those creatures to spawn. So for example, 25 skelks spawning on 10 points. This is not intended. Not only does it just look absurd, it’s also leads to some extremely bizarre play conditions. This is one of those bugs that’s so buggy, the fact that our toolset even allowed this to happen is a bug. Another bug caused this bug. Bugception.

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove. We wouldn’t drop loot from the giant mobs of creatures that appear in upscaled events. We certainly wouldn’t have put in chests that appear after events which cycle every 8 to 10 minutes. How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

On farming in general, there’s a sweet spot that combines good loot with fun, engaging content. I think Southsun had that going for it, especially before certain aspects of the content were isolated as optimal. As someone who’s actively working on upcoming Living World releases, I’m aiming to find that sweet spot and hit it in a big way.

The way I read this. this was an exploit and people need to get over themsleves and be glad they weren’t banned for using said exploit

OMG….an answer from a dev. Im impressed. Admittedly he did answer a completeley different question than the one that the thread posed, but hey its a start.

For clarity. Forget about Southsun…what happened everywhere else?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On farming in general, there’s a sweet spot that combines good loot with fun, engaging content. I think Southsun had that going for it, especially before certain aspects of the content were isolated as optimal. As someone who’s actively working on upcoming Living World releases, I’m aiming to find that sweet spot and hit it in a big way.

—Snipped for brevity.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to this thread. This topic has a lot of people up in arms, myself included, and a lot of ppl worried. People might see these nerfs as a way to slow the “free” acquisition of items and materials vs a cash grab spending gems, converting to gold and purchasing off of TP.

I completely and 100% agree about bugs being fixed. Thats great. People semi-exploited Lyssa to keep the event going(if you want to call it an exploit). Sure nerf it. The situation you detailed sounds like a reasonable justification to fix it.

Concerning creating engaging experiences, adding a lot of vets, champs, and increasing the kickoff timers to events like Shelt/Pent are nerfs to which were not needed in the eyes of the players. Were there bugs that needed to be fixed there? Those were prime locations to farm. I think even Plinx received a nerf not too long ago. My point is, if you bring these locations down to normal level, thus removing the “sweet spot” as you would call it, farming becomes a chore. To those of us who do not mind farming when we are being adequately rewarded, it is not a chore. It is how we choose to spend our time. (Note, I do not lump “farming” for a precursor drop since this is all but unattainable for many. Simply talking about items that anyone can acquire with reasonable ease).

Are you able to touch on the rumor that the instigator events were nerfed silently? First week of this event, I was getting many rares off of those fights. for the last week or so, maybe one or two rares per hour. Lots of useless blues and greens taking up inventory.

I guess the community could use some re-assurance from Arenanet that the pocket of players that enjoy farming for mats, for whatever purpose, is not being left out in the cold for whatever reason.

Reloading.3260:

You think we’re running back and forth between two areas, clicking a target and pressing 1 because we enjoyed it?

I think that they think you like it. Thats the worst part.

If it was a “bug fix” the escort doylak instance is still bugged. Same exact skelk there as before the patch. Hmm.

Ceazer.7429:

If it was a “bug fix” the escort doylak instance is still bugged. Same exact skelk there as before the patch. Hmm.

Hidden, private & personal farming ;D

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On farming in general, there’s a sweet spot that combines good loot with fun, engaging content. I think Southsun had that going for it, especially before certain aspects of the content were isolated as optimal. As someone who’s actively working on upcoming Living World releases, I’m aiming to find that sweet spot and hit it in a big way.

Yeah, uh, that sweet spot doesn’t really exist at all in this game. I mean, I guess it depends on your definition of “good loot”. If your scale goes from 0 silver earner per hour to 50 silver, then sure, anything that approaches fifty silver/hour looks great because it’s maxing out your scale. But if you’re aware of the maximum gold return farms that exist (just to take an example, 5-6G/HR from CoF/1) then you have to adjust your scale, and the 50 silver doesn’t look so great.

I mean, are you guys even aware of how much people are getting from CoF*? If so, do you find it acceptable? If so, why has every other farm (that didn’t even come close to start with) been closed up by “bug fixes”?

*Note: this might sound like sour grapes, but it’s really not. I farmed my kitten off in CoF to get the gold I needed for my legendary and I’m happy I was able to do it. I don’t run it much anymore because I’m fine with the cash I have on hand and don’t really need much anymore. It would though be nice to bring it in line with other dungeons, though I’d prefer that the others be brought up rather than CoF/1 be brought down. And it would also be nice to have some open world areas to farm for comparable rewards as well.

This may be a laughable suggestion and Im only half serious:

Farmville( or something similar) in GW2. Let us grow our own materials.

Spend 50 gems on a “watering bucket” water your “farm”. The bucket has X uses. Come back tomorrow and loot! Everyone wins. Arenanet gets their gems, we get our loot. We didnt spend a ton of money, we get our loot.

This may be borderline P2Win maybe? I dont know.

cesmode.4257:

This may be a laughable suggestion and Im only half serious:

Farmville( or something similar) in GW2. Let us grow our own materials.

Spend 50 gems on a “watering bucket” water your “farm”. The bucket has X uses. Come back tomorrow and loot! Everyone wins. Arenanet gets their gems, we get our loot. We didnt spend a ton of money, we get our loot.

This may be borderline P2Win maybe? I dont know.

That would cause farming those plants w/o cash shop to become a problem. Because if you can get them for a specific price, and even in bulk, you just made actually gathering them useless and pushed into forced gem purchase.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove. We wouldn’t drop loot from the giant mobs of creatures that appear in upscaled events. We certainly wouldn’t have put in chests that appear after events which cycle every 8 to 10 minutes. How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

On farming in general, there’s a sweet spot that combines good loot with fun, engaging content. I think Southsun had that going for it, especially before certain aspects of the content were isolated as optimal. As someone who’s actively working on upcoming Living World releases, I’m aiming to find that sweet spot and hit it in a big way.

I’m quoting this section for you Anthony because you’ve missed something vital. The nerf affected the rate at which t6 fine materials entered the game. The chests DID NOT drop any t6 materials, which everyone needs. It dropped items that could not be salvaged for dust/bone/claws/scales/blood/fangs/totems/poison sacs.

So no people aren’t forgetting the 200% magic buff, which was needed to get decent drops (that’s telling in and of itself) or that they got a nice chest loot every 10 min or so running the instigator event. They’re ticked off because the fine materials they needed and are only available via some form of farming mobs, was reduced with the fix. Have you seen the prices of dust lately? It’s shot up to stupidly high levels.

Perhaps weapons and armors should be able to be salvaged for the standard ore/cloth/leather and a smaller chance for an extra fine crafting material (not counting ectos, which should stay on their own table for salvage chances) to help the influx, or maybe the terrible drop rates need to be boosted a little bit all across the board.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove.

Even though the rng is still broken and some people continually receive less than others day in, day out.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We wouldn’t drop loot from the giant mobs of creatures that appear in upscaled events.

Yeah, half of those mobs don’t actually drop loot anymore. They just vanish on death even though they sure have one hell of an alpha strike. Maybe 3-5 out of every mob of 10 actually can drop loot in those events, and even with 450% MF, only maybe 1/5th of them drop anything, or greys.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We certainly wouldn’t have put in chests that appear after events which cycle every 8 to 10 minutes.

Yeah, y’all got rid of those too. Instigators are gone and none of the defend events have chests.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

Forgetting content that is now gone. Ok. I dunno, the forum has a definite right to be angry, especially now that it seems the development team isn’t quite sure as to what is in their own game. I’m not mad or critical at you specifically, but the situation we’re in as players is infuriating.

Question about the skelk bug, was the bugged spawn underwater, or was it throughout the entire region where skelk spawned? (On land and underwater)

I made a video of myself farming skelk on land before the southsun events started, and it didn’t seem that bad, this may be because I wasn’t gathering them and aoeing them down.

Geotherma.2395:

cesmode.4257:

This may be a laughable suggestion and Im only half serious:

Farmville( or something similar) in GW2. Let us grow our own materials.

Spend 50 gems on a “watering bucket” water your “farm”. The bucket has X uses. Come back tomorrow and loot! Everyone wins. Arenanet gets their gems, we get our loot. We didnt spend a ton of money, we get our loot.

This may be borderline P2Win maybe? I dont know.

That would cause farming those plants w/o cash shop to become a problem. Because if you can get them for a specific price, and even in bulk, you just made actually gathering them useless and pushed into forced gem purchase.

Im only entertaining my own thought and your response to see where it can take us.

Obviously the cost of the bucket, the amount of uses it has, and the amount or chance of materials is subject to change. For argument sake, I’ll call the lootable areas “boxes”. Id place these boxes in the same loot tables as regular mobs, or whatever the current logic is for mobs in the world.

The farm is only plantable and lootable once per day. It’ll just give us another small stream of materials, if we wanted it, to help offset the nerfs. And we would be lining arenanet’s pocket with some gems along the way. I say keep it a VERY small amount, maybe even maximum price would be 125, the cost of black lion keys if I recall.

Anthony, why not… instead of working on all this dreamy “sweet spot”, nerfing stuffs, you go and find out for us why I can get more rare equipment from a chicken than a champion that drops nothing after I spent a good 15 minutes killing it?

Even Diablo 2 has a less ridiculous drop system than that.

Erasculio.2914:

Vol.5241:

Well, who am I to argue against someone who thinks farmers (or grinders according to you) are on the same level as exploiters.

They are. In both cases, you have someone who is doing something not for the sake of the experience, but for the sake of the result. The farmer who doesn’t like CoF but is running it over and over to get gold for ectos is very similar to the guy who exploited the snowflake salvaging to get more ectos: both are not enjoying what they are doing, both want to get done with it as soon as possible, and both are in it only for the result. It’s even questionable if the impact from the extra ectos added to the game by those exploiters was that much worse than the elitism introduced in the game by the CoF farmers who, not enjoying the dungeon and thus wishing to clear it as fast as possible, only accept Berzeker warriors in their teams.

Everyone is after a result…even you. Just because people like myself seek a different result does not make either one wrong. Either result brings with it an experience and again, if that experience if different from yours does not make it wrong.

So please…do not belittle our experience or speak on our behalf. After all…you don’t see farmers belittling RP’ers or explorers or anyone else’s experiences/results.

And if you can’t see the difference between exploiters and farmers…well, that’s on you.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The latest case of “farming nerfs” was actually a bug fix. I’m aware of this because I was asked to help identify the issue. The area in question contained a spawn that was defined to have more creatures than spots for those creatures to spawn. So for example, 25 skelks spawning on 10 points. This is not intended. Not only does it just look absurd, it’s also leads to some extremely bizarre play conditions. This is one of those bugs that’s so buggy, the fact that our toolset even allowed this to happen is a bug. Another bug caused this bug. Bugception.

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove. We wouldn’t drop loot from the giant mobs of creatures that appear in upscaled events. We certainly wouldn’t have put in chests that appear after events which cycle every 8 to 10 minutes. How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

On farming in general, there’s a sweet spot that combines good loot with fun, engaging content. I think Southsun had that going for it, especially before certain aspects of the content were isolated as optimal. As someone who’s actively working on upcoming Living World releases, I’m aiming to find that sweet spot and hit it in a big way.

Thank you for the information, but why wasn’t this in the patch notes? If the notes had read:

""World: Southsun – Reduced density of reef skelk around Pearl Islet. Due to a bug 25 skelk were spawning in area only intended to spawn 10 skelk. This bug has been fixed"

Instead of:

“World: Southsun – Reduced density of reef skelk around Pearl Islet”

There would have been a MUCH smaller negative reaction. I know patch notes are written on the fly but if they can include a REASONING for the change in addition to a terse note on the exact nature of the change, it would cause a lot less confusion and anger in the community.

Errant Venture.9371:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The latest case of “farming nerfs” was actually a bug fix. I’m aware of this because I was asked to help identify the issue. The area in question contained a spawn that was defined to have more creatures than spots for those creatures to spawn. So for example, 25 skelks spawning on 10 points. This is not intended. Not only does it just look absurd, it’s also leads to some extremely bizarre play conditions. This is one of those bugs that’s so buggy, the fact that our toolset even allowed this to happen is a bug. Another bug caused this bug. Bugception.

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove. We wouldn’t drop loot from the giant mobs of creatures that appear in upscaled events. We certainly wouldn’t have put in chests that appear after events which cycle every 8 to 10 minutes. How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

On farming in general, there’s a sweet spot that combines good loot with fun, engaging content. I think Southsun had that going for it, especially before certain aspects of the content were isolated as optimal. As someone who’s actively working on upcoming Living World releases, I’m aiming to find that sweet spot and hit it in a big way.

Thank you for the information, but why wasn’t this in the patch notes? If the notes had read:

""World: Southsun – Reduced density of reef skelk around Pearl Islet. Due to a bug 25 skelk were spawning in area only intended to spawn 10 skelk. This bug has been fixed"

Instead of:

“World: Southsun – Reduced density of reef skelk around Pearl Islet”

There would have been a MUCH smaller negative reaction. I know patch notes are written on the fly but if they can include a REASONING for the change in addition to a terse note on the exact nature of the change, it would cause a lot less confusion and anger in the community.

I am going to guess that the people who write the patch notes are similar to the marketing folks. Theres always mishaps in what information is officially distributed to players. This has happened many times. Unfortunate, but w/e. At least one dev was kind enough to take time and explain to us here. I applaud him for that.

i remember seeing bots in the same area many months ago, and when i tried farming there w/o said bots i was prolly lucky to get 4-6 T6 in total per hour w/o any magic find gear, so i didn’t bother with it too much. it didn’t look like it had changed at all since then, mobs all seemed to be in same spots/patrols, several nests which spawned a skelk upon destruction, the major difference now being an extra 200% magic find buff which made the place alot more viable than before, yet this apparently is just a 7 month old bug.

that being said, instigators are now gone, and the new events which involve various karka veterans/champions mostly steamrolling people, but i won’t go into that here. the problem is simple, if the best way to get something is by buying it with gold, CoF p1 spam is always the answer and everything else including dungeons, fractals, meta events) come a far second.

try finding that “sweet spot” involving other parts of the game too for once.

Lambent.6375:

Question about the skelk bug, was the bugged spawn underwater, or was it throughout the entire region where skelk spawned? (On land and underwater)

I made a video of myself farming skelk on land before the southsun events started, and it didn’t seem that bad, this may be because I wasn’t gathering them and aoeing them down.

The bug was prevalent in the southeast, underwater.

You’d have 5-10 skelks spawn on the same spot over time. there were probably half a dozen spots around this area.

The thing though – I didnt’ actively farm those areas until later on. The skelks on the shoreline itself were pretty good. They weren’t spawning in large quantities but it seemed like they had a 80% drop rate of loot (more than usual).

Of course, after the patch, they not only nerfed the skelks in the water (deservedly so) but they also nerfed the drop rate of the skelks.