Guild Wars 2

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.

I just wish rest of the open world was as rewarding as the instigator was. That event series yeiled me more rares and exotics in a couple of days than I have found total since launch; it was HEAVEN.

Now that he is gone, there is no where else to go to get good loots no more for people like me who prefer open world rather than being forced to group with 4 others and do CoF pt 1. just to stock pile gold to maybe buy a legendary 5 years from now (probably more, darn uber inflation).

I really hope the team offers more events like this in the future where my play time was rewarding and fun….now it’s gone. Sigh.

Rainzar.6905:

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.

According to this, it can only lead to two things. Either

a.) CoF p1 will get nerfed as well (its still farming, right? And I thought the whole point is to reduce farming)

or

b.) The majority who’s looking for an efficient way to farm gold after already reaching 80 and enjoying most of the content will be funneled to CoF p1. In the extreme, it will become GW2 = CoF p1

So, ok.

Everybody doggie. Every- everybody doggie.

It was working perfectly before you updated southsun cove. The skelks didn’t appeared before a regular timer so you were forced to explore the whole beach before going back to start the rotation again(and sometimes it wasn’t even enough for them to pop back).

The first day of this update i saw unregular skelk spawns which were more than twice what it should have been. After you “bug fix”, there’s like half the skelks that were previously perfectly working in the area with all the skelks nest (i personally find it strange that the less populate area of the beach is what seems to be the central nest, guarded by 1-2 skelks instead of 5-6).

Vayne.8563:

Thanks for this. Reasonable explanations like this are sort of what’s missing from the dialogue between Anet and the fans. I don’t know too many people who could argue against this.

I haven’t read past this post, but I’m willing to bet they did argue against it.

Edit: I agree with you, it’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. But I’m willing to bet it will be lost on those who just want to complain.

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.

Talk about mindless, mindless is lumping together farmers with exploiters, that’s mindless. Now if you can actually have a statement that has facts and data in it on how farmers = exploiters be my guest. We’d love to hear it.

Secondly, the exploiters aren’t limited to farming they are also the ones that have worked since headstart day 1 to get as much gold as they can and to manipulate the TP these aren’t the farmers doing this these are the people standing around eternally at the TP all day. They are also the people who on the karka event stayed in the party and managed to get most of all of their 8 characters to the chest before it disappeared to get those precursors so they could sell them. That’s exploiting.

Logging in for an hour an evening to gather, kill enough mobs to make 5 gold a day is not exploiting.

Ever try to sell gems or ore outside of the mithril/orbs market? Everything is 1 copper each so you can’t sell anything, that’s from people standing around manipulating the market. Don’t see anything being done about those folks.

darkace.8925:

I haven’t read past this post, but I’m willing to bet they did argue against it.

Edit: I agree with you, it’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. But I’m willing to bet it will be lost on those who just want to complain.

Yeaah, its lost on me, man. I know you and Vayne are right though. I know people like me are just being whiney. I know that you got the right arguments. My brain knows it, but my heart feels differently.

Any of it doesn’t change the fact that I’d rather be here posting on these forums right now instead of being inside the game. You gotta acknowledge that.

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 the response. But let me reveal just what happens to us while we’re out there playing.

To get to these events requires we kill mobs. Often it’s normal because we have to build up our 25 stacks of luck in order to get anything useful.

Once we arrive at these events where these giant groups of creatures appear, immediately after the 6th – 8th kill we hit DR which means three things happen.

1. We start seeing nothing drop off the majority of the creatures in the event.
2. We start getting endless greys.
3. We start seeing mostly whites.

Because of these three things there is no sweet spot and this is why we are in the forums complaining because there basically are no rewards for those of us who experience this.

DR needs to be adjusted so that the loot from the creatures created temporarily from the event will not be affected by the DR that the rest of the mobs place us in when we’re on the way to an event. It’s the same in Orr. Go to Orr where almost everything is a Risen type creature, fight to the event location, kill 6 temporary mobs, can’t even stay for the event because DR set in and the only viable means of getting rid of it is to teleport to another zone, thus losing not only the karma from the event but also any chance of getting rewarded for our time. That’s the basic design I’m seeing on a daily basis.

cesmode.4257:

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.

They did have farming/gardening in AIon/FFXI, that was fun to do.

sad to see instigator go, but his story is explained in the Contractually Obliged mini story instance. so i am ok with it. The spawn rate for the new defend the camp event seems fast enough, and the density of the mobs is nice too, now if you can only tone down the damage of those kitten karka abit…

As much as i hate the skelks nerf , the dev does have a point though, i am actually surprise that Anet let the instigator farming to go on for so long…I personally made 230g just from casually doing the event.

For the past two weeks, we sometimes joke about it on the mapchat : Wow, they haven’t made the chest account bound and can be complete only once per day? that does not sound like Anet.

Remember the Mad king’s labyrinth? the chest was changed to account bound soon after people start farming it. So in general, i think anet is on the right track here with the event chain on Southsun(instigator). I really think the concept of giving 200% magic find boost is an excellent idea, it encourages players to hang around in the area. I really hope Anet can apply the same concept to the other zone.

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.

so why the hit to meta boss chests once per day per character?

If we go by what other games have done, there’s a large number of areas they could add items to and the acquisition of rewards, like the chests in the open world that are guarded by champions at the end of jump puzzles, the rewards for map completion, These hidden areas that have chests in them that require alot of puzzle openning to get to them (the underwater temple for one).

There’s also daily activities for professions that some game devs added to their titles that allowed people to find gear thru these normal activities, not too much but just enough to make a difference in income for the characters. Actual farming (like with the seeds and all), crafting these materials into the higher tier materials (no more mystic toilet or need for a dust that never drops), fishing up bloated fish got so many nice things from those when I played WoW it was fun (remember the gold fish and the vendorfish were my favorites because you could vendor them for larger amounts of gold), added to cooking were better foods for these activities then the standard food and sometimes the recipes were needed to be purchased with an in game currency which offset people having the recipes right at launch.

There’s a ton of things they could be doingthat they simply aren’t for whatever reason that would solve this problem and would give lower level players a chance to earn gold.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The latest case of “farming nerfs” was actually a bug fix. […] 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.

When it comes to spots that are popular farms, if you can try and remember to mark bug fixes of this nature as bug fixes, would probably help with the angst a lot.

Thanks for the reply though.

the penitent /shelter nerf was a bit extreme, i just wonder why….

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.

Okay, I am glad for a dev post. However, the post is only mentioning 1 farm that was nerfed; skelks in Southsun Cove. If the spawns were bugged that’s fine, they had to be fixed. However, several other farms were recently nerfed and it’s having a direct impact on our economy. Just take a look at the prices for T6 dust (there is another thread about it, but look at the 1 month history: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24277).

Off the top of my head: Union waypoint was nerfed. It was a controversial farm to begin with, but it still jacked up prices. Recently (I’m not sure which update) Penit/shelter event respawn rates were lowered to happen less often. This was a very popular farm that I used to do (you played with other people and it was not as boring).

Whatever farm is perhaps introduced in new living story content I sincerely hope it drops materials.

Took me about 10 min to notice they nerfed drops @ Southsun Cove after their last Queen update. Pathetic.

Volcane Crucio.4723:

Took me about 10 min to notice they nerfed drops @ Southsun Cove after their last Queen update. Pathetic.

I don’t know…might be just your RNG for the day. Farmed for like 25m the day of the update and pretty well.

Oh! You wanted to make farming find a sweet spot, yeah?

Okay.

Well I mean, it’s obvious that’s your intention since you nerfed Camp far- oh wait.
Oh! Well you didn’t put DR on mobs with the same “class-” oh, wait. Well at least you didn’t make 3 entire zones of nothing but mobs of that class- oh. Wait.

Hmm… Well you guys tuned the rewards for each dungeon path so that the shortest path of all dungeons ever wasn’t farmed to oblivion by a select group of people- oh wait.

Well you didn’t put time locked content at least, right? I mean world events and what- hmmm, no, did that too…

Oh surely you guys didn’t put a DR on doing fast paced events, instead of actually working to time the events properly so that the whole problem didn’t happen in the first place? I mean, defending Filias Thorpe every 5 minutes is totally inteded, despite rewards being crpa and a WP literally 5 feet from it, right?

OH, OH, I KNOW! You didn’t subtly nerf droprates for different monsters around the world! Right? Right? No, you did that too.

Oh, no, wait, I got it this time! You guys DIDN’T make the hardest (supposedly) to acquire weapons in the game basically a game of RNG where you can buy literally every part except skillpoints and karma, right? Where doing anything requires a ton of money? Or make it so any of the other near-legendary weapons require 250 of cashsink X to get, right? You surely didn’t do that, did you?

The issue here is there’s a difference between wanting to put the playerbase in a “you don’t have to farm” mindset and literally making farming so bad it’s not worth our time in any aspect. And if that’s the case you’re not even doing that right (see: cof).

Volcane Crucio.4723:

Took me about 10 min to notice they nerfed drops @ Southsun Cove after their last Queen update. Pathetic.

And here, devs, is where you experience problems with “stealth fixes”. Because the players KNOW that things like Pen/Shelter event rates were increased with NO NOTES EVER GIVEN describing that, people are free to start making guesses at other things that could have been changed without say. I have no clue if it’s true that Southsun drop rates were changed, but I have no reason to think it wouldn’t be true, either, because there is now a solid history of stealth adjustments to mat farming.

You are actually fostering a community of rumors. If you are not totally open with the changes you make the game, misinformation will spread. This is obviously NOT the kind of image you want to promote.

I’m not a fan of game forums because they are often a vocal minority of players, but I’m saying this because someone NEEDS to be told of this problem. There is either a lack of communication between developers and patch note writers, or someone apparently thinks that making obvious stealth changes will NOT negatively impact player view.

All we want is information!! TELL US WHAT YOU CHANGE!

I do miss the Cursed Shore and Blood Tide Coast (Tequatl) farming events. Sure, we were there to run the close events over and over for loot. But it was also hugely social events that brought tons of players out of the maps to talk, group and play together.

I can’t really see the need to nerf (and nerf they did…4 champion kraits in BTC???) those linked events? Look at the result..CS and BTC are all but deserted.

Vol.5241:

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.

Proof needed.

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.

Why’s there no room for Salvaging to be a bigger part of this “Sweet Spot”?
Salvaging was Viable in GW1. Most gear drops however aren’t worth salvaging here.
Why is it this way? Simplfication? ….well it’s borking up the Supply either way.

You guys really need to get a handle on this. FireFall’s coming out and even if it’s not any better, tons of your customers will swear it is b/c of the differences in Salvaging…. a salvaging mentality by the way that they practically stole from Gw1….

I find it rather telling that the dev that responded doesn’t know that 2/3 of the things he mentioned were nerfed/removed for giving too much loot…

Upscaled events do not drop loot. 99% of the mobs are now lootless and then other 1% are champs with more HP then the bosses themselves

The 7-8 minute chests were all removed

So no we didn’t forget it, YOU NERFED THAT TOO

bullettohead.9715:

Oh! You wanted to make farming find a sweet spot, yeah?

Okay.

Well I mean, it’s obvious that’s your intention since you nerfed Camp far- oh wait.
Oh! Well you didn’t put DR on mobs with the same “class-” oh, wait. Well at least you didn’t make 3 entire zones of nothing but mobs of that class- oh. Wait.

Hmm… Well you guys tuned the rewards for each dungeon path so that the shortest path of all dungeons ever wasn’t farmed to oblivion by a select group of people- oh wait.

Well you didn’t put time locked content at least, right? I mean world events and what- hmmm, no, did that too…

Oh surely you guys didn’t put a DR on doing fast paced events, instead of actually working to time the events properly so that the whole problem didn’t happen in the first place? I mean, defending Filias Thorpe every 5 minutes is totally inteded, despite rewards being crpa and a WP literally 5 feet from it, right?

OH, OH, I KNOW! You didn’t subtly nerf droprates for different monsters around the world! Right? Right? No, you did that too.

Oh, no, wait, I got it this time! You guys DIDN’T make the hardest (supposedly) to acquire weapons in the game basically a game of RNG where you can buy literally every part except skillpoints and karma, right? Where doing anything requires a ton of money? Or make it so any of the other near-legendary weapons require 250 of cashsink X to get, right? You surely didn’t do that, did you?

The issue here is there’s a difference between wanting to put the playerbase in a “you don’t have to farm” mindset and literally making farming so bad it’s not worth our time in any aspect. And if that’s the case you’re not even doing that right (see: cof).

This guy..this guy is onto something!

We heard you like grinding, so we halved the loot so you can grind twice as long!

@AnthonyOrdon. Out of curiosity, does anet have the tools to check how many ppl are on map “X” ? If yes, please (don’t even tell us because that would actually be a plubic statement on the disaster of pve), just look on them and compare with numbers from previous months of previous to your miraculous “fix patches”. Tell me how many ppl are still farming or as u want to call it “Explooooore” pve maps and how many just sit in front of dungeons begging for parties.

My opinion after loging in daily almost all the time from work and from home, is that u destroyed PvE maps by introducing absurd RNG conditions and champions everywhere. All that’s left is to make us fight champions just to talk to the Merchant NPC. As sarcastic as that sounds..that is LITERALLY the only thing left for u.

Look even at orr, the most hated map, even tho was the place we could farm T6 in big groups and have a bit of fun. What did u do? add freekin champions everywhere. Now that map is completely deserted. U CAN NOT FIX THINGS…..this has been clear so far. U only make modifications that are so OVER THE TOP that it makes your player base basically GIVE UP!

So as for now, u have a huge game filled with beautiful content honestly. One of the best and clearly love-implicated content i’ve seen (except orr, just f**** delete it)….and you with your miraculous patches have physically and psychologically have reduced us to 3 activities:
1. Fast daily (takes 30 min max)
2. Dungeon spamming
3. Dragon/world boss runs, where u just teleport, kill…and logoff fast before u are jumped on by one of those champions u put in…. or before the RNG system won’t let us move anymore.

That’s it…all your hard work..all your effort for what..10 years? That’s what it’s limited to. Want to test it out? Remove over night a few high lvl maps and let’s see if anyone notices it. Map exploration & farming is completely and utterly dead. Actually it’s the definition of dead and buried.

U think i am exagerating? Please go on and make a poll. U can make it even an ingame poll, send it as a letter to all players asking to choose between multiple radio-button options. This is what u all from anet don’t really get. It’s not ONLY about what u think it’s right, it’s also about what we actually feel while playing the game. Your maps have been dead for months now for a reason, and more and more maps are joining those ranks because of YOUR decisions are BRUTALLY enforced on us. All your events don’t do anything but make us play for 2-3 days on those maps to get an achievement after that what? 3+ more weeks of sitting in LA.

Here’s a TIP….make a testing server and test your godly patches there. Make it available to any player who wants to try it out. Make ppl actually test your ideas before u implement them. Yes it’s a complicated thing…but what do u choose losing customers slowly or satisfying them and also earn their respect implicating them in your plans..make them be part of the whole team, and make them feel like the game is made for them not for your RNG pockets.

Deepcuts.9740:

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.

That’s their ever magical mystical kitten DR machine at work.

If you log in in the same zone you logged out from, DR seems to continue, even if it’s a new day you can get shafted on Dragon Chests if you park a character at a specific event. Gotta pay that 3s teleport ‘GIEV ME MONEE’ tax to get your loots.

Rebound.3409:

@AnthonyOrdon. Out of curiosity, does anet have the tools to check how many ppl are on map “X” ?

https://twitter.com/mkerstein/status/170659741574496256

They have tools to display player movements and congregation of maps in real time(or close to real time), so yes.

ASB.4295:

Rebound.3409:

@AnthonyOrdon. Out of curiosity, does anet have the tools to check how many ppl are on map “X” ?

https://twitter.com/mkerstein/status/170659741574496256

They have tools to display player movements and congregation of maps in real time(or close to real time), so yes.

I refuse to be a blue dot, I want to be a red dot, sending an email in protest.

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.

OMG the gods have spoken. you know I totally don’t believe a word of this, and you know why? you guys have nerfed everyplace, and I mean everyplace, I mean the grawl in frostgorge don’t drop T6 totems, the trolls in frostgorge dont drop T6 blood and if they do then they dont like they were just before the last patch, I know cause that’s where I was farming my blood, not southsun.
And just look what you all did to orr, the state of orr has sent the price of T6 dust through the roof, what are you all thinking? Are you even thinking at all?
Sorry I get really irritated and really easy, and as I have stated before luike to give you guys at Anet a hard time.

Well, im neither a farmer nor a gem buyer so I take a pretty sideline stance on this. I tend to play the game for fun only, collecting materials and gold as I go. Yes it does mean im a poor player, however I try and be a extremely happy one at that.

HOWEVER, what I fail to grasp is why Anet nerfs every open world farming area into the ground yet CoF P1 hasn’t changed since release. They advocate farming gold while restrict farming specific materials.

Now thats kittening ridiculous.

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.

You just don’t get it do you? How does this explain the nerfing to oblivion of everything in cursed shore? That place is a dead zone now. Soooooo many stealth nerfs without any notice. The january update made cursed shore FUN. Then with each successive update, Anet made it worse and worse and worse and now no one goes there except for the temple events. First you added veterans/champions galore. We could live with that. Next you nerfed drop rates across the board, then you increased the time before the events could run again (pentient/shelter went from 15 minute respawn to 30 minute), killed plinx and then in April you gave champions super steroids. Now we got chickens one shotting multiple people with eggs that deal 10k+ damage. Spiders that poop out a billion veterans. Wraiths that just destroy anything near it. It’s not fun anymore.

I want to farm, but I can’t because you people won’t let me farm. Don’t bring southsun into this. Once the MF buff is gone, farming there will be a thing of the past.

This all started when you KILLED Cursed Shore. The latest outcry is a result of a NOTICEABLE pattern that we can see. The minute a good farm is found, it is nerfed. Don’t deny it Anet, you don’t want us to make money ingame. YOU WANT US TO BUY GEMS.

Good luck trying to keep us playing this game when we aren’t allowed to “play the way we want” like you lied to us about.

Also, thanks for significantly nerfing the drop rate of T6 mats. That outta make people happy…….. lol

shame on peni/shelter … 45 min for penitent ( 25 mins before) and 35 mins for shelter ( 15 mins before )
escort fia near shelter usualy bugged after 10 mins it be fixed

best farming place killed

population of bots increase for the happiness of gold sellers…

lets not forget the Fractals Nerf, and dont even try the RNG excuse

Rebound.3409:

Look even at orr, the most hated map, even tho was the place we could farm T6 in big groups and have a bit of fun.

with your miraculous patches have physically and psychologically have reduced us to 3 activities:
1. Fast daily (takes 30 min max)
2. Dungeon spamming
3. Dragon/world boss runs, where u just teleport, kill…and logoff fast before u are jumped on by one of those champions u put in…. or before the RNG system won’t let us move anymore.

This is just opinion. I hated that there were too many people in a few spots in Cursed Shore. I had to find a party to get any loot when I was there, and people would leave veterans to run and group tag the next set of spawns with full DPS/magic find because with all the rain of fury onto the risen they never had a chance to attack us. However, after those mega event farms died down a bit (no, they never went away), I could actually get very decent loot. Going around in a group of 3 allowed me to use my skills and get a steady, valuable stream of loot while doing dynamic events.

If all you do is farm dungeons, do dailies and hop between meta events, that is your choice and your problem. I can go into any number of zones and do major event chains and have a great time getting plenty of loot. I cannot just do a dungeon without speed running because usually folks will do nothing but speed run (resulting in far fewer drops).

All your complaints are options given that players do to themselves. I could come up with other complaints in a similar vein:
Oh, wvw, that is just run to maps we are doing well and leave all the other maps to our enemies because this is the only way to get badges and ranks… no, that is a choice the players are making.

Sythus.2396:

bullettohead.9715:

Oh! You wanted to make farming find a sweet spot, yeah?

Okay.

Well I mean, it’s obvious that’s your intention since you nerfed Camp far- oh wait.
Oh! Well you didn’t put DR on mobs with the same “class-” oh, wait. Well at least you didn’t make 3 entire zones of nothing but mobs of that class- oh. Wait.

Hmm… Well you guys tuned the rewards for each dungeon path so that the shortest path of all dungeons ever wasn’t farmed to oblivion by a select group of people- oh wait.

Well you didn’t put time locked content at least, right? I mean world events and what- hmmm, no, did that too…

Oh surely you guys didn’t put a DR on doing fast paced events, instead of actually working to time the events properly so that the whole problem didn’t happen in the first place? I mean, defending Filias Thorpe every 5 minutes is totally inteded, despite rewards being crpa and a WP literally 5 feet from it, right?

OH, OH, I KNOW! You didn’t subtly nerf droprates for different monsters around the world! Right? Right? No, you did that too.

Oh, no, wait, I got it this time! You guys DIDN’T make the hardest (supposedly) to acquire weapons in the game basically a game of RNG where you can buy literally every part except skillpoints and karma, right? Where doing anything requires a ton of money? Or make it so any of the other near-legendary weapons require 250 of cashsink X to get, right? You surely didn’t do that, did you?

The issue here is there’s a difference between wanting to put the playerbase in a “you don’t have to farm” mindset and literally making farming so bad it’s not worth our time in any aspect. And if that’s the case you’re not even doing that right (see: cof).

This guy..this guy is onto something!

You didn’t like my reply to him describing what happens by the time we get to these events with DR? I basically said what happens because of DR when we get there. Nothing drops a thing but grey bones and air because of it. I’m hurt. LOL jk

But yeah he’s saying the same. I’m hoping they respond to this with some kind of plan because like the other guys have said there’s other games coming out that are all sandbox that are looking mighty good and the way mmos survive is adapt or die.

Parlourbeatflex.5970:

Well, im neither a farmer nor a gem buyer so I take a pretty sideline stance on this. I tend to play the game for fun only, collecting materials and gold as I go. Yes it does mean im a poor player, however I try and be a extremely happy one at that.

HOWEVER, what I fail to grasp is why Anet nerfs every open world farming area into the ground yet CoF P1 hasn’t changed since release. They advocate farming gold while restrict farming specific materials.

Now thats kittening ridiculous.

Because gold can be used to buy the all mighty gem dude.

JohnLShannonhouse.1820:

Rebound.3409:

Look even at orr, the most hated map, even tho was the place we could farm T6 in big groups and have a bit of fun.

with your miraculous patches have physically and psychologically have reduced us to 3 activities:
1. Fast daily (takes 30 min max)
2. Dungeon spamming
3. Dragon/world boss runs, where u just teleport, kill…and logoff fast before u are jumped on by one of those champions u put in…. or before the RNG system won’t let us move anymore.

This is just opinion. I hated that there were too many people in a few spots in Cursed Shore. I had to find a party to get any loot when I was there, and people would leave veterans to run and group tag the next set of spawns with full DPS/magic find because with all the rain of fury onto the risen they never had a chance to attack us. However, after those mega event farms died down a bit (no, they never went away), I could actually get very decent loot. Going around in a group of 3 allowed me to use my skills and get a steady, valuable stream of loot while doing dynamic events.

If all you do is farm dungeons, do dailies and hop between meta events, that is your choice and your problem. I can go into any number of zones and do major event chains and have a great time getting plenty of loot. I cannot just do a dungeon without speed running because usually folks will do nothing but speed run (resulting in far fewer drops).

All your complaints are options given that players do to themselves. I could come up with other complaints in a similar vein:
Oh, wvw, that is just run to maps we are doing well and leave all the other maps to our enemies because this is the only way to get badges and ranks… no, that is a choice the players are making.

Welcome to my world. There’s so many people in Orr usually that in order to get anything you have to group. I understand they want people to group but there are more people who solo due to different people’s scheduling in PVE in mmos everywhere then there are people who group all the time. It’s a known fact, and the mmo that tries to force people to group for every little thing usually ends up having major player loss.

Every other mmo out there has had to adapt to the flow of the players and the players require solo acquisition of both materials and currencies that’s just the way it is. Even the elephant in the room knows this as shown by their last expansion, they knew they didn’t have a prayer to hold the players interests very long so they started throwing soloable content in there everywhere. It’s the only reason they haven’t lost more players then they have and are barely holding onto the ones they do have.

More solo options for every currency (cept dungeons of course) more ways of gathering said currency (1 daily per character) more ways of receiving rewards from the content they want us to use (jumping puzzles, chests with champion guards, champions, etc etc) and more content in the rest of the world specifically the 30-60 zones would fix the empty world problem instantly.

I myself have mixed feelings about farming. This comes from all the different games I’ve played, which had various different takes on farming.

I myself have farmed before and do sometimes see the need to farm. This game has temporary content, and with many of the stylish things in game only coming possibly once, playing for extended amounts of time to earn them or get enough gold to buy them from other players. Sometimes you are trying out various builds and specs, and due to the uncertain nature of things you don’t want to wait a week just to see if you like how a build plays out. So you go out and grind for equipment to try things out. Maybe your guild buddies need a certain profession, and you think you can fulfill that role. So, you go out and grind to level then get the equipment. Maybe you have limited game time, and the few hours you have make it so casual play for cash doesn’t cut it when you finally get higher level. So, you farm a bit then get the gear.

I can understand players wanting to play the game a certain way. However, this does come with several caveats to have a system like this.

#1: Farming content can trivialize the rest of the game. This is a big one, and I encountered it heavily when I played Phantasy Star Universe. Due to the items in a certain area being high in demand, all of the players would flock to only one area and play only that area. This discourages players playing areas other than the farming ones, largely because there’s no one to help them and it doesn’t give as much money as easily as the farming content does. GW2 does a decent job of avoiding this, though it still does show up time to time (coughCof1cough). This drives players away, because that big and expansive world diminishes into 2 or 3 spots where you can actually do anything.

#2: Farming can trivialize or overinflate the economy. Whichever this does depends on the system in place: If the game is highly dependent on in-game shops, then farming trivializes. If the game is highly dependent on player trading, then it overinflates. While farming, players dump both a lot of gold and a lot of items into the game, and without proper sinks this can lead to there being a bunch of super expensive super rare items while the ones obtained from farming are basically crap that is ineffective at gathering enough wealth to afford the better stuff. This leads players to do two things: first they will seek out new avenues to obtain wealth until the system homogenizes, or they will just farm the same spot more now that farming isn’t as effective.

#3: Basing the game around the presence of farming discriminates against those who do not like to farm. This is a big one with Runescape, where uber boss enemies have one out of a five-hundred-thousand chance of dropping a big otherwise unobtainable and yet necessary item. Guild Wars 2 avoids this, thankfully, by using untradeable currencies for untradeable items, instead of making the RNG the literal god of fortune in the game. There are some issues with super-rare items, like seasonal skins from holidays or precursors, but it isn’t too bad.

#4: Farming is highly exploitable by botting and gold sellers. This is another big one. Whenever there is a certain spot or path or event that gives more than the others, since it is the same spot/path/event over and over again, this makes it really easy to make bots to play this area, and also attracts gold sellers. Then they hound this area, making it impossible to farm for others if it is out of an instance, and thus the best way to get money ends up being to use the now cheaper gold offers from China. Due to this, the economy still inflates in the game, but now the only means of coping are ill gotten ones.

Broadicea.8294:

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”?

While I don’t necessarily mind specific farming nerfs as it’s not often how I spend my time, I think this is a very good point to raise. COF1 is, and has been for quite a while now, a very obvious source for imbalancing the amount of gold in the game. Not only that, but it being such an obvious go to pulls so many players to it that it is the default dungeon. If you want to do anything else, you’re pretty much at the mercy of a lucky dice roll on waiting who knows how long to find a group. There’s at least a few reasons why COF1 should be nerfed, and the problems impact from a variety of players, yet it’s staying untouched.

One thing related to Mr Ordon’s reply is that many months ago ppl were complaining about the high rates of respawns all over the world and the response was it’s all WAI, in my head etc; even though I would literally kill something and watch a new mobs respawn instantly. Took time to get used to this and was told LtP a lot. I guess if no one was upset at Player’s dying and ppl were getting loot and loving it; the respawn rates would have been turned down back then, lol.

Parlourbeatflex.5970:

Well, im neither a farmer nor a gem buyer so I take a pretty sideline stance on this. I tend to play the game for fun only, collecting materials and gold as I go. Yes it does mean im a poor player, however I try and be a extremely happy one at that.

HOWEVER, what I fail to grasp is why Anet nerfs every open world farming area into the ground yet CoF P1 hasn’t changed since release. They advocate farming gold while restrict farming specific materials.

Now thats kittening ridiculous.

Because Anet doesnt want to “fix” it. Face facts, they dont care.

Just look at the Dredge fractal. They fixed the exploit with the cage which shorten it by exactly… nothing, since its about as fast as running the buttons, just a little less tedius. Obviously it was a severe enough exploit for them to fix!

But… Did they do anything else to the Dredge fractal? Anything at all? Like, fixing the godkitten awfull mechanic that literally force you to die multiple times just to complete the fractal? No. Apparently they are happy with how kittenty it plays, they just fix those horrible exploits that clearly ruin it. I am sure that Anet just dances through the instance, never dying on the buttons, always surviving putting bombs by the door.

I am starting to think that by playing some obscure profession with a weird build in a certain way you unlock Anet mode, where you do 10K auto-attack damage and have 50,000+ HP with permanent protection up.

#4.5: To combat this, several regulations are put in place that harm the players. Most of us hate the diminishing return thing because it comes back to bite us unintentionally. Other games will sometimes have other features, like ones that require spontaneous puzzle solving before the game gets locked or others require captcha that are impossible to read to get through, or something else like that.

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.

A bit extreme, but THIS is the painful truth. Farming is not fun, and it cannot be as it’s simply reapeating the same actions again and again and again. What it fun are the rewards you gain from farming, but wouldn’t it be better if you got those from doing content that require your brain to work and challenge you in some way?

I myself farm world megabosses daily, most of the time a boring activity, and I fully know I am addicted to it because of the guarateed rare. I look at the yellow timer, go there, press 12345 for a couple of minutes and get my rare. Much like a mouse presses a button to get water; on a much evolved level, but this is the substance.

There in ONE redeeming quality for thise kind of activities: they are relaxing and allow you to do other things meanwhile. When I am too tired after a day of work, sometimes it’s nice to kill some megabosses while chatting with friends. But that’s it.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On farming in general, there’s a sweet spot that combines good loot with fun, engaging content.

Define “good” loot. Those chests you mentioned barely had enough to cover WP travel. Also is it intentional that none of the pre-queen settlement tasks have no reward? Not that the queen herself had anything worth looting.

I recommend that they remove any and all gold made from running dungeons since they seem to want to make us want to work harder, that would make it a lot harder.

Darkever.9732:

Farming is not fun

Who are you to say what people find fun? What you may find boring, others may not.

wouldn’t it be better if you got those from doing content that require your brain to work and challenge you in some way?

No? If people want a challenge, there are many options for them. WvW, sPvP, Fractals, Dungeons and Guild Missions. What about the rest of us who only got 20 minutes spare time and wanna just relax while killing things? Am I not allowed to achieve anything in that short time I have available?

If something isn’t working in play as intended, but players like it more the way it is than as intended, why not consider it a bonus feature rather than a bug? It seems a lot of game designers, both computer and pen-and-paper, make changes rather than accept that they have fortuitously found something the players enjoy, and the result is always a game the players enjoy less…

ANet just want the ingame gold to be worth kitten all and funnel everybody into COF farming.

This bugs me, as someone who runs dungeons (NOT COF 1) entirely for fun, but allows me to purchase shiny purpz as a result.

The rate this is going, there is no “reward” for my character from doing what I enjoy. Not cool.

Actually they nerfed bag drop rates in dredge fractal too. They also nerfed mob loot at Jade Maw months ago along with most other FOTM mobs. Thus you get content that is much more difficult than COF yet rewards much worse no matter how you cut it.

More “bug” fixes. How about fixing bugged skills/abilities before going all nerf crazy on “bugged” farming areas. Never played a game where they consistently move the same goal further and further away from the average player.

Mada.5319:

Darkever.9732:

Farming is not fun

Who are you to say what people find fun? What you may find boring, others may not.

People often lie to themselves. Want to see an example?

Mada.5319:

What about the rest of us who only got 20 minutes spare time and wanna just relax while killing things? Am I not allowed to achieve anything in that short time I have available?

If you really had fun farming, you wouldn’t need a reward for doing so – you would be happy with the experience itself, and not need to be given loot to feel like you have “achieved” anything.

Those who defend farming are so disconnected from their own speech that they don’t even see the glaring flaws in their own arguments. Saying “I have fun farming but only if I’m rewarded for it” is the same as saying “I’m going to the movies to see something I really like, but I will only be happy if someone gives me money at the exit!”. Both statements are false.