Guild Wars 2

I’m in the “players should be able to do what they like” camp.

Say I can’t sleep at 2/3am, I used to be able to log on, go to Cursed Shore and beat on some undead with my Thief/Guardian and maybe get some T6/trash rares (as in mindless half-asleep camp farming), and it was amazing (as well as nice stress relief from my illnesses)

As that’s gone, and I don’t like the whole WP from world boss to world boss, I now spend the time sliding around Lion’s Arch as a dolyak, or getting my face kicked in trying to get my world completion in WvW (I’m on Gunnar’s Hold, we’re getting crushed this week, it’s demoralising; but that’s another issue!)

I know it feels like it falls on deaf ears, but I have hope that something will come! I still love the game as much as I did when I started, but sometimes I want to be a mindless killing machine.

Which brings me to a suggestion:

Two dungeons, solo and group, where you are scaled to 80 (from say level 20-25 up) and have to fight your way through loads of enemies (such as recreating epic battles through lore) and each wave/set of waves you beat, you get a reward, say a bag of level-scaled crafting mats (like the laurel crafting bags) or a rare, plus some (scaled) coin and exp, and if you die, it’s ‘the end’.

There could be silver-purchasable “boosters” such as damage reduction, power/health boosts, etc. Maybe after a set of waves (10-15) there’d be a ‘boss’ which dropped a chest, containing rates, a named exo (from a “guaranteed” loot table) and if 80, a slim precursor chance.

It wouldn’t be for everyone, sure, but it’d be a nice change of pace and a chance to hone combat skills. Something just sounds nice about kicking around 20-30 centaurs in a huge open field…

@vayne:

Who was name calling. Not I. I said that your overassumptions, because that is what they are, are outrageous. What name did I call you?

You say that if someone plays casual and if they want stuff off the gem store, they will pay. Well, keep filtering down that crop of people! I could simply sit back and say, if someone plays casual they probably have the casual mind set of “I dont care for all of these vanity items”, and wont spend a cent. And whose to say the hardcore guys, the ones that play hours per day, farm per day, do not spend money in the gem store? Again, an enormous assumption. Starting out, i played 5+ hours per day in this game…not bad. I still spent a pretty penny in the gem store. Bank space, char slots, boosts, keys, etc.

Simply put: You are over generalizing and your assumptions show it.
-You are linking time spent in game with attitude toward the game(little time = casual, lots of time = hardcore). I play 2 hours per night now, but I take GW2 very seriously since I WANT it to be my mainstay game. Do I consider myself casual? No. Just look at me on the forums. Im on here every day. Definately not casual. A casual doesnt know about the forums. I play as much as a casual, but am not casual.

-You are linking attitude toward the game(casual/hardcore) with desire or need to spend gems. A casual might not want to spend the time to farm so he might buy gems to conver to gold to purchase mats. AND a casual might just look at all of this materials gathering, gem store and say "I dont care…Im casual, I play a limited time). You can’t focus on one viewpoint without acknowledging the other, and expect us to take you seriously. A hardcore player with loads of hours(again this is all assuming your link between time spent and attitude is true) may just want to farm his mats and not spend a cent. Or that hardcore player may need more bag space for all the junk he has, more magic find boosts, more character slots if hes an alt-aholic yet a hardcore player. In these cases, he spends gems.

And this is a kittenumption, I acknowledge it: But I am willing to bet that the so called hardcore players aren’t converting gold to gems to purchase things on the TP. The conversion rate is out of this world. Im at work, but if someone could log in and check how many gems 1 gold will get you, it would be appreciated. Even with a small fortune, I highly doubt many are converting gold to gems for the sake of gem store purchases. Its a rip off.

Dont generalize.

cesmode.4257:

@vayne:

Who was name calling. Not I. I said that your overassumptions, because that is what they are, are outrageous. What name did I call you?

You say that if someone plays casual and if they want stuff off the gem store, they will pay. Well, keep filtering down that crop of people! I could simply sit back and say, if someone plays casual they probably have the casual mind set of “I dont care for all of these vanity items”, and wont spend a cent. And whose to say the hardcore guys, the ones that play hours per day, farm per day, do not spend money in the gem store? Again, an enormous assumption. Starting out, i played 5+ hours per day in this game…not bad. I still spent a pretty penny in the gem store. Bank space, char slots, boosts, keys, etc.

Simply put: You are over generalizing and your assumptions show it.
-You are linking time spent in game with attitude toward the game(little time = casual, lots of time = hardcore). I play 2 hours per night now, but I take GW2 very seriously since I WANT it to be my mainstay game. Do I consider myself casual? No. Just look at me on the forums. Im on here every day. Definately not casual. A casual doesnt know about the forums. I play as much as a casual, but am not casual.

-You are linking attitude toward the game(casual/hardcore) with desire or need to spend gems. A casual might not want to spend the time to farm so he might buy gems to conver to gold to purchase mats. AND a casual might just look at all of this materials gathering, gem store and say "I dont care…Im casual, I play a limited time). You can’t focus on one viewpoint without acknowledging the other, and expect us to take you seriously. A hardcore player with loads of hours(again this is all assuming your link between time spent and attitude is true) may just want to farm his mats and not spend a cent. Or that hardcore player may need more bag space for all the junk he has, more magic find boosts, more character slots if hes an alt-aholic yet a hardcore player. In these cases, he spends gems.

Dont generalize.

I’m generalizing because there are truths in things. Do you really think Anet designed this game for hard core players? Really? That’s a generalization. Some parts of this game are for hard core players, but it was clearly not the focus. Why would that be? Why would Anet focus on the market least likely to use the gem shop.

Casual players tend to focus on fluff stuff. Hard core players, as a thumb rule, want hard, challenging content, and care less about fluff. Of course there are exceptions but surely you’ve seen all the complaints about fluff on the forums, usually coming from harder core players.

Sure it’s a generalization and it’s not true for everyone. But I’m pretty sure if Anet thought hard core players were their bread and butter, they’d have designed a game for hard core players. Doesn’t that make sense?

I’ll add my 2 cents. Let people play the way they want! Some people who play this game tell me they hate the meta events because their PC just can’t handle it and its not fun.

On a side note I have to say everyone pigeon holed in South shore is funny….. spread the love around everywhere!

I guess if people like to farm, then have at it.

Me? I did the raptor cave in GW1. Actually, I’m so old school that I did the Troll cave too.

“WTS TROLL TUSKS!”

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Never again.

Astralporing.1957:

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.

If they were really trying to encourage “casual” farming over the “hardcore” one, then they should not be introducing constantly new recipes that require full stacks of t6 mats. It’s because everywhere you go you bump up in things needing stacks of T6, ectos or lodestones that hardcore farming is necessary. Without steady supply of mats to TP that those farmers provide you’d never be able to match those prices. And this is a direct encouragement of mindless farming.

Well put, they do add in these items that need insane amounts of mats and then like they always say, it’s all optional, this game isn’t a grind, but everyone want’s them, they are the new BiS items, and eventually they will up the lvl cap and new items will come out with new recipes requiring more insane lists of mats and of course there will be no mats out there to get, except the ones on the TP at the very high prices that will be set.

ref.8196:

This is ridiculous. You can still farm extremely efficiently in southsun cove. If you know where to look and how to farm, it’s possible to find 20t6/5 crates an hour with 350% MF. Even after this ‘nerf’.

There was an area of the map which was completely bugged. There was a spawn area for skelks where about 20 would spawn just outside of the map, but you could still see them, and if you had long enough aoe range you could pull them all. It was obviously a bug, and it has been fixed. But it has not affected in any way the efficiency of farming before the patch (assuming you didn’t spend all your time on that 1 beach, running around tagging skelks).

And you need to read other posts dude, yes you can aquire blood, scales, and poison sacs from southsun, but what about all the other T6 mats? Ever think about that? T6 dust prices have sky rocketed, and the only real place that there was to acquire it was Orr, which is a total joke now, if you run Orr, from the straits to cursed shores now, you might get 35-40 heavy moldy bags, and most of the mats in those bags are silk and leather, then you get T5 mats, and maybe a couple T6 mats, if you’re really lucky, a T6 dust. Happy hunting…

Just a quick one for the farm haters:
1. Some of us enjoy it.
2. You don’t have to like it or do it… just like you don’t ‘have’ to PvP or WvW.
3. Those cheap mats you are so excited to buy… they are cheap because of farmers and likely the bots too. Take farmers AND bots out… enjoy the huge spike in mat prices.
4. Like it or not… these “farmers” you are hating on… are working for you! Saving you money and making some of their own at the same time.

So… next time you are at the TP getting a good deal… remember… “farmers” are part of the reason the prices are lower. Next time you see another farm go down because you reported it and ruined someone else’s income and enjoyment – supply will go down and prices will go up.

As much as you’ll all hate the logic of it… you can’t argue it. You may not like it but we are all part of of the game and we all do our part. If I spend 8hrs farming… I worked for my mats and gold… if 1000 of us spend 8hrs farming… enjoy your reasonable prices.

Just my cents,
SKiN.

Oh and PS: If it’s mindless or difficult, quick or time consuming… what difference does it make to you… really? CoF P1 is mindless and quick… I don’t hear people making a fuss over that.

SKiNBuS.4730:

Just a quick one for the farm haters:
1. Some of us enjoy it.
2. You don’t have to like it or do it… just like you don’t ‘have’ to PvP or WvW.
3. Those cheap mats you are so excited to buy… they are cheap because of farmers and likely the bots too. Take farmers AND bots out… enjoy the huge spike in mat prices.
4. Like it or not… these “farmers” you are hating on… are working for you! Saving you money and making some of their own at the same time.

So… next time you are at the TP getting a good deal… remember… “farmers” are part of the reason the prices are lower.

All lies .. the Wall Street Guys would still make huge money even if nobody would produce anything .. who needs farmers .. i just buy and sell stuff ..

oh .. wait ..

pricer.5091:

If you can only gather about 1-2 gold in the game in a day (say two hours playtime)and there are items that are available that cost between 500 and 900 gold to craft (any of the more desirable exotics like Volcanus and legendaries) that would take you somewhere between three and five YEARS to achieve.

I believe that it taking years is the intended design goal.

- This is likely where the disconnect occurs. They put stuff in at launch that was not intended to be seen in game for another 3 years. Some few managed to get it in under a month (those first few mostly from exploits / hacking), and suddenly a mass of people were aware of it and thought they had to have it NAO!!!

They however, still seem to see this as content for somewhere down the road of years.

That said – if you look back to GW1, this is not different from there. To get the top armors can cost thousands of ectos. If you play “normally” it could take 5+ years to get the mats for them. Some like myself have never had the mats for even one armor piece despite playing for over 7 years. Others have them within a week of buying the game – exploits for some, others legit trading maximization and farming.

GW2’s loot system is not all that different from GW1’s.
- You do not NEED a legendary. Its a stat boost of about 1-2%, for a cost boost of about 50-thousand percent. Why? Because it is really meant to be ‘legendary’.

How many people in WoW own ‘Thunderfury, Blessed blade of the Windseeker’?
- Maybe 1 or 2 per server, tops. If even that.

That is where these items were intended to fall.

Not many in WoW complain that they don’t yet have the Windseeker. So I am always baffled at the people complaining about it here.

(and yes I know that some newer legendaries over in WoW are actually semi-common. WoW has changed its model over time. GW1&2 though – have partially stuck to their guns on the idea that it is supposed to be legendary. Partially only in that they did not make it -MORE- expensive after players started proving they could get to it before the third anniversary of the game.)

SKiNBuS.4730:

Oh and PS: If it’s mindless or difficult, quick or time consuming… what difference does it make to you… really? CoF P1 is mindless and quick… I don’t hear people making a fuss over that.

Then you must have me and many others on mute.

pricer.5091:

This isnt about “farming” and you people are making me angry…its common sense.

Would we like you when you’re angry?

pricer.5091:

Its not about farming, its about reward for your play time. I would expect anyone to be abkle to craft a legendary with between 9 months and a year of play time. This also used to be well within reach. Now it is not..

If you did the things you enjoyed instead of grinding for gold or materials you’d be rewarded each and every time you logged on. If you only log on to chase the carrot you’re always going to be beating your head against the wall.

Ramus.2546:

ref.8196:

This is ridiculous. You can still farm extremely efficiently in southsun cove. If you know where to look and how to farm, it’s possible to find 20t6/5 crates an hour with 350% MF. Even after this ‘nerf’.

There was an area of the map which was completely bugged. There was a spawn area for skelks where about 20 would spawn just outside of the map, but you could still see them, and if you had long enough aoe range you could pull them all. It was obviously a bug, and it has been fixed. But it has not affected in any way the efficiency of farming before the patch (assuming you didn’t spend all your time on that 1 beach, running around tagging skelks).

Have you actually farmed skelks since this patch hit? I am not sure what you are talking about above, because I do not abuse exploits and that sounds like one. The biggest nerf was to the beach just north of Pearl Islet. There was no exploit there, it was just fast spawning/dense clusters of skelks. Now there are half the skelks, with a longer spawn time. Not to mention all of the reports that the drop rates were also changed. There is no way you are getting as much T6 now, as you were getting before, on legitimate skelk farming paths. I just did 45 minutes @ 300% mf and got 5 T6, a bunch of T5, 0 yellow, 0 exo, 0 crates, 15 or so whites, 6 blues and 3 green. I’ve farmed here enough days to know that isn’t “RNG bad luck”. The best run ive had since nerf was 1 throwaway settlers exo, 1 yellow, and 5 T6 in about an hour.

Time to go farm CoF1 I guess.

watch anet nerf cof p1 again

Kichwas.7152:

I believe that it taking years is the intended design goal.

- This is likely where the disconnect occurs. They put stuff in at launch that was not intended to be seen in game for another 3 years.

Of course, they probably wanted everyone running around doing the same boring content for three years with no hope of gaining anything.

If this is true the game will be dead on its kitten in five minutes flat.

Ping.5739:

watch anet nerf cof p1 again

I sure hope so. I don’t think there should be one right answer and 23 wrong ones when it comes to running dungeons for gold.

darkace.8925:

If you did the things you enjoyed instead of grinding for gold or materials you’d be rewarded each and every time you logged on. If you only log on to chase the carrot you’re always going to be beating your head against the wall.

I would so love it if people read everything and not just bits at random.

I AM NOT A FARMER. I DO play the game the way it is intended to be played. I go everywhere, I do dungeons, I do DE’s, I WvW, I do fractals.

AND GUESS WHAT? The loot has been nerfed everywhere, making it very hard for me to gather gold. This is comparison to doing exactly the same stuff three months ago and having saved up 400g.

That is my point. Again. It is not about farming, it is about ANet consistently lowering rewards everywhere every time there is patch in order to try and drive people to the cash shop.

The skelks in Southsun…wow where have they gone. It now takes forever for them to spawn. There are 3 nests there with none around which is kittened.
Thanks for taking away the one spot I actually enjoyed farming. Looks like I’m going to start having to use my 80 warrior to do CoF which I’ve been avoiding. With my luck, I’m going to gear him up and then they will finally drop the nerfbat down on it too…
Starting to not enjoy this game anymore

pricer.5091:

I would so love it if people read everything and not just bits at random.

I AM NOT A FARMER. I DO play the game the way it is intended to be played. I go everywhere, I do dungeons, I do DE’s, I WvW, I do fractals.

AND GUESS WHAT? The loot has been nerfed everywhere, making it very hard for me to gather gold. This is comparison to doing exactly the same stuff three months ago and having saved up 400g.

That is my point. Again. It is not about farming, it is about ANet consistently lowering rewards everywhere every time there is patch in order to try and drive people to the cash shop.

I understand what you’re saying. My point is this: if you play the game because you enjoy the game, then the farming nerfs will never be more than a minor inconvenience. If you enjoy the game, then expensive cosmetic items are luxuries. And while luxuries are nice – I myself am slowly working on a Legendary – they do not make or break a game. Thus farming nerfs, real or perceived, won’t make or break the game.

darkace.8925:

pricer.5091:

I would so love it if people read everything and not just bits at random.

I AM NOT A FARMER. I DO play the game the way it is intended to be played. I go everywhere, I do dungeons, I do DE’s, I WvW, I do fractals.

AND GUESS WHAT? The loot has been nerfed everywhere, making it very hard for me to gather gold. This is comparison to doing exactly the same stuff three months ago and having saved up 400g.

That is my point. Again. It is not about farming, it is about ANet consistently lowering rewards everywhere every time there is patch in order to try and drive people to the cash shop.

I understand what you’re saying. My point is this: if you play the game because you enjoy the game, then the farming nerfs will never be more than a minor inconvenience. If you enjoy the game, then expensive cosmetic items are luxuries. And while luxuries are nice – I myself am slowly working on a Legendary – they do not make or break a game. Thus farming nerfs, real or perceived, won’t make or break the game.

For you. Everyone doesn’t enjoy games the same way you do. When are you going to drop this self absorbed line of argument.

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.

Wait, there’s free magic and gold find buffs in southsun?

I did NOT notice this at all.

darkace.8925:

I understand what you’re saying. My point is this: if you play the game because you enjoy the game, then the farming nerfs will never be more than a minor inconvenience. If you enjoy the game, then expensive cosmetic items are luxuries. And while luxuries are nice – I myself am slowly working on a Legendary – they do not make or break a game. Thus farming nerfs, real or perceived, won’t make or break the game.

They will if you already find the game extremely boring and repetitive (wherever you are in the world) and your only reason for playing is to craft or buy something. Which is where I am right now. Happy you aren’t though.

Vive la difference etc etc

Vayne.8563:

pricer.5091:

marnick.4305:

I do not agree with your assumption that casuals don’t pay for gems. In my experience, casuals pay far more than so called hardcore people and I will continue to do so.

In your experience of who? You? Well thats one customer ANet are making happy then I guess. Unless you somehow have have access to the bank accounts of everyone in the game that plays less than one hour a day of course.

I used to be fairly “hardcore” and occasionally spend cash…now I am “casual” because the game is so bad and I refuse to spend anything.

Great, thanks for the meaningless observation.

It’s quite logical that casuals will spend more in the gem shop. Many hard-core players have no very few commitments and can sink 30, 40 hours a week into a game. People with real life commitments that can play a couple of hours a day max are people that will feel they’re falling behind. Since many have a job, they could conceivably have extra money to spend on a hobby…and people do spend money on entertainment. That’s a proven fact.

So if this is your entertainment (and this game is far better for casual than hard core players anyway), you’re more likely to buy gems to get some gold, or buy stuff that makes the game fun for you.

Hard core players can farm gold to buy gems for certain things. That’s harder for casual players.

You really need to quit with your generalisations of what you perceive is meant by casual and hardcore.
By your own statement your are telling us all how ANET has obviously designed this game around the casual gamer… so why are there sooo many hardcore players doing the things you perceive to be hardcore.. farming, grinding, speed running, camping etc etc…. its not about the game design its about how different people enjoy playing the game the way it suits them.. it has nothing to do with time served in game or that feeling of special snowflake.
If this game is all about the casual gamer then why would a casual player feel they have to spend in the gem shop to catch up… causals wont need to catch up, there is no requirement to in GW2.. you have said it yourself, think it yourself but then argue against your own opinions…
Casuals can farm as much gold as any other kind of player, they just don’t set a goal of having it today or tomorrow but they can still spend every minute of their allotted gametime farming something relentlessly or just running the odd CoF1 whenever they can – so just please just quit before you get yourself so entangled in your own arguments and opinions that you begin to loose credibility in your postings.

For your info I play pretty regularly, maybe not as much as I used to b ut still a good 3-4 hrs a day, maybe more sometimes.. does that make me hardcore, does that make me special or is it not enough so I should be classed as casual. I don’t pay 2 win in the shop but I also don’t go out of my way to farm, grind, dungeon run relentlessly in order to get rich, have it all and be the “special one”.. in fact I am still only 2/3 through acquiring what I need for for my legendary, I only have 3 lvl 80’s none of which are fully geared, only 2 are max craft levelled and I still struggle to keep more than 10g in my bank…. and all since playing the game from beta, clocking a good 2-3k hrs up and putting in the best effort I can in whatever game environment I choose to run in any given day/night.

So how does that fit into your analogy of a GW2 gamer … you simply cant see past your own assumptions.

I’m near the end of my legendary process. All I have one set of very expensive mats and a handful of dungeon runs to knock out. This is how I’ve been making 10-15 gold every time I do it.

I go on an “ore run” which is simply a gathering node stomp through the high level zones. I use the T5/T6 nodes like I used the hearts when leveling: As a framework for running around in the world. Along the way I stop for any DE that strikes my fancy. Specifically the mob heavy ones. I keep an eye on event timers and hit up any of those I feel like doing.

This can literally take from a little less than two hours to as long as I want for full completion. Just depends on what I feel like. I am currently hocking every single thing I get from these runs excepted for Charged lodestones, and my average is coming in at about 13 gold a night. I got hot with drops last night and pulled more than 18g. It was also a very long play session.

The point is I am never standing still or grinding mobs. I’m just out and about playing the game with purpose. Even better, this system is completely adaptable to my schedule. I have two 80s so one is always off CD for the nodes, and with SS and FG it’s very easy to only do it for 15-20 minutes.

The game flat out rewards you for getting off your digital butt and running around.

It might be “quite logical” (in your mind anyway) that this is true, but that doesn’t make it actually true. Some people believe in God, I think it’s totally illogical. Who is right? No way of knowing, because there aren’t any facts to back either side up. Just like your assumption. But thanks for the input anyway.

I agree with bloodstealer. That is exactly what I am trying to tell vayne. He is telling us how arenanet thinks, how they designed the game and what a hardcore and casual is. He is pulling all of this out of his a$$, like he does in many threads, and generalizes.

When I played the game hardcore, I spent more money in the cash shop than I do now. How does that fit into your logic, Vayne? I spend money in the cash shop to reward arenanet for that particular month, if I feel that they earned money from me for that month. It has nothing to do with necessity, buying my way to gold, or anything like that. If they provided us with good content, updates, customer service, forum feedback, whatever..they get some money from me. If they are quiet for the month, or I disagree with a lot of what they did this month, they get nothing. Thats how I spend.
A casual might not care enough to spend money, which goes against your logic.
A hard core player might need more bag space, bank space, boosters, or keys, which goes against your logic.

Take off your rose colored glasses and see past your own assumptions and generalizations. Your preach is not gospel my friend. There are many people who play the game for various reasons and many people spend money in the cash shop for various reasons, and varying styles of play. To say that casuals spend the most money in the cash shop without an ounce of fact just makes you look silly.

Uruz Six.6594:

cesmode.4257:

Vayne, your general assumptions are outrageous. “Casuals will spend more, thats a fact”. How do you know? Casuals might view this game as a pass-time hobby, something to do for an hour each night, and then log off, not taking the game too seriously. Thus, why would they spend money on it? If I am a casual, and I only play for a short period each night or every other night, why would I want to invest a lot of money in something that I spend little time on, and possibly care little about? Youre entire arguement is insane and infact contradicts logic.

I’m throwing the flag, there’s too many absolutes between the both of you. Its likely that casuals such as myself with less free time and more money will actually spend considering that we’re enjoying what time we can spare with our favorite hobby. That’s my experience. That said, its also not a certainty. Some will spend less, some will be more hardcore.

I’m a casual, prolly the most casual here. I do have alot of free time, and even with that free time, I don’t get rewarded for my time doing even the things they want me to do much less the farming in this title.
I also haven’t spent a dime since Nov 2012 because of all of the nerfs to loot, DR, and such. I do have money, but why spend it as a reward to those who spit in your face because you have this play style and they don’t want you to play that way. That’s not how you endear your players to you or your products. A car salesman doesn’t spit in the faces of those who drive sports cars while trying to sell sports cars.

It’s like they’ve forgotten that the real reason people play is for the dangling carrot on a stick. That’s what’s fun and addictive about it all. Take that carrot out and there’s nothing to login for really except some tidbits of repeating lore and some backdrops one takes while on vacation in some foreign location.

Persoanlly I spent the most money when I was grinding mats for Volcanus, just to get those bits I didnt quite have. As the next thing I am going for (legendary) seems to be now so far out of reach that it is nigh on impossible, I have vowed to not spend any more money until those T6 Mats start dropping like they used to.

Basharic.1654:

I’m near the end of my legendary process. All I have one set of very expensive mats and a handful of dungeon runs to knock out. This is how I’ve been making 10-15 gold every time I do it.

I go on an “ore run” which is simply a gathering node stomp through the high level zones. I use the T5/T6 nodes like I used the hearts when leveling: As a framework for running around in the world. Along the way I stop for any DE that strikes my fancy. Specifically the mob heavy ones. I keep an eye on event timers and hit up any of those I feel like doing.

This can literally take from a little less than two hours to as long as I want for full completion. Just depends on what I feel like. I am currently hocking every single thing I get from these runs excepted for Charged lodestones, and my average is coming in at about 13 gold a night. I got hot with drops last night and pulled more than 18g. It was also a very long play session.

The point is I am never standing still or grinding mobs. I’m just out and about playing the game with purpose. Even better, this system is completely adaptable to my schedule. I have two 80s so one is always off CD for the nodes, and with SS and FG it’s very easy to only do it for 15-20 minutes.

The game flat out rewards you for getting off your digital butt and running around.

So through the lvl 80 zones, you node farm, stop for DEs, and sell everything except for charged lodestones? Thats it? this nets you 13 gold? Do you not save any of the T6 mats such as armored scales or anything like that? Sell it all? Salvage Rares?

How long have you been doing this? A month? Few months? And is this with MF gear? Whats your percentage, without southsun buff?

I might try this.

I don’t think that Anet particularly cares if people farm or not, but what they do care about is not letting inflation get out of hand. People are saying that the farming nerf is causing the price of mats to rise, but they aren’t looking at the other side of the equation. In order for the price to rise, people also have to have the gold to buy the mats at the inflated prices.

I think Anet introduced the new content at Southsun and people started farming it like crazy. This caused prices to inflate faster than they wanted it to, so they nerfed Plinx. When that didn’t slow down the rate of inflation, they nerfed Pent/Shelt. If that doesn’t work, I’m sure there will be more nerfs incoming. I don’t think Anet enjoys kitten ing farmers off, but it will do what it has to in order to keep the overall economy healthy.

tigirius.9014:

I don’t get rewarded for my time doing even the things they want me to do much less the farming in this title.

If the game is fun, playing should be reward enough. If the game isn’t fun, then you should find something else to do with your free time. It really is that simple.

darkace.8925:

tigirius.9014:

I don’t get rewarded for my time doing even the things they want me to do much less the farming in this title.

If the game is fun, playing should be reward enough. If the game isn’t fun, then you should find something else to do with your free time. It really is that simple.

So basically you want everyone to login just for the scenery and to watch some NPC’s do some dialog everyday?

That’s a bit naive that everyone should expect that from an mmo because that’s what’s happening here. Do you think WoW would have kept their 8 million players had they done that? nope.

pricer.5091:

Persoanlly I spent the most money when I was grinding mats for Volcanus, just to get those bits I didnt quite have. As the next thing I am going for (legendary) seems to be now so far out of reach that it is nigh on impossible, I have vowed to not spend any more money until those T6 Mats start dropping like they used to.

Same here, I have bought gems in the past and have planned on doing it again for 2 more chars I have yet to lvl cause they will need more bag space and I like to have that maxed out.
But my first goal was to finish my legendaries, I’m currently in the middle of crafting 2 and all I need for them are the T6 mats and now with the T6 nerfs it seems impossible and if they don’t set the loot tables right then I see no reason to continue playing a game that pretty much has failure in it’s coding.
I mean let’s look at it like this, they are trying to say that the farming nerfs were a bug fix to fix spawning issues, well, I know something about this. I know that when you set a spawn all that you do is set the type of spawn “creature” rate of spawn “time at which they will spawn per min” amount “how many spawn” and range “the area that the mob can go before it turns back to the spawn area” So if there was an issue, where is the issue with the loot here?

I very much doubt we will get a response here cause I called Anthony out on this on the first page for lying about this. I’d like a developer to give us some lame explanation.
Watch, I bet I get an infraction…

ANet’s not against farming, but against there being a possibility to significantly decrease the amount of time they think legendaries and other endgame items should take to acquire. Same reason they added or were forced to add ascended gear – People plateaued too fast for their liking.
Once a player stops playing the gamer, temporarily or not, he is no longer a potential cash shop customer.

The reason they don’t nerf CoF is probably the same reason they never really nerfed ShadowForm in GW1: To not enrage the people that REALLY want to progress faster than their peers. They don’t want to encourage farming and supercharged progression, but they know making it entirely impossible will do them more harm then good.

tigirius.9014:

darkace.8925:

If the game is fun, playing should be reward enough. If the game isn’t fun, then you should find something else to do with your free time. It really is that simple.

So basically you want everyone to login just for the scenery and to watch some NPC’s do some dialog everyday?

That’s not even remotely close to what I said. Try reading it again.

i just don’t understand why cof isn’t nerfed yet??

Here’s what I think. In GW1 when I had all the time in the world, I would dedicate entire days and nights to farm. I was a young teen who wanted to play a game he enjoyed and make some money so I could buy stuff that I wanted. I would 55 monk farm trolls, farm raptors on my warrior,vaettirs on my sin and one day, when I was sitting on a healthy sum of gold, I started to powertrade. From that day forward I never again had to farm to make money. In a little over a year I went from having a few nice things, to owning some very sought after weapons and enough money to easily put me in the top 10% wealthiest player pool.

In GW2 it’s a whole new ballgame. I can still farm sure, but lord almighty is it TOTALLY NOT WORTH MY TIME. I started with the icebrood elementals in frostgorge sound. Running upwards of 370% MF I spent well over 200 hours farming here. On average from what I could come up with, every 2 hours would reward me with ~1.5g. This is with corrupted lodestone drops noted,vicious claws,rares salvaged or sold. Here’s what bothered me though. 2-3g was a GOOD run. The average run would net me 1.5 due to corrupted lodestones barely dropping. Am I really supposed to spend 2 hours just to make 2-3g IF im lucky?

Then I went off to southsun. I saw that you could get a 200% mf boost and thought, ‘’wow, I’ll be getting a kittenload of rares and exos now’’. Here’s my experience with how that went. 6 hours of intense instigator zerging, event farming and general mob brutality towards the karka. 2 exotics which were the settler gear things, 5 rares I think it was and a bunch of mats. In this 6 hour period, I pulled off something like 7g which I thought was great, but then I remembered, I only made this much because of the zerg moving through events and bosses so quickly and efficiently. Solo play I could only dream of making that much in 6 hours.

The day after this 6 hour extravaganza, I wanted to see if my MF gear investment was worth it. Lo and behold after 45 min, I got similar amounts of t6 mats as yesterday and a mini reef rider. MF % this time around = 41%. Now, I know saying this isn’t very reputable information to base all claims on, but I’ve farmed enough and spent enough time to make the decision that for me personally, MF is not worth it. The way I see it now is, my chances of better drops with insane MF% is 0.00005%. Without MF, my chances drop to 0.00001%

I stayed farming at southsun for another ~100 hours or so. Got 2 more reef riders to drop, more exotic settler gear and random rares. Also made 7g back from selling the sigils on my MF gear.

Now back to the topic at hand, give us some decent farming spots. If you want to fuxk with numbers, go fuxk with RNG boxes. You guys like to do that, so keep doing that. Let us have some spots where we farm and make VIABLE money. This game is casual ffs, you guys are just turning it into a dress up with terribad droprates across the board. You can still cater to the idiots that drop obscene amounts of money to dress their character kawaii as can be. But think of the rest of your playerbase. If not, my account will get sold for a 40oz of vodka so I can party on the weekend. I know saying something like that doesn’t mean much to you big important anet people , but with how the game is right now, this option appeals to me more, day after day.

TL;DR GIVE US SOME PLACES TO FARM WHERE THE DROP RATE ISNT 0.00005%

Balkanwarrior.5132:

In GW2 it’s a whole new ballgame. I can still farm sure, but lord almighty is it TOTALLY NOT WORTH MY TIME.

MF % this time around = 41%. Now, I know saying this isn’t very reputable information to base all claims on, but I’ve farmed enough and spent enough time to make the decision that for me personally, MF is not worth it.

TL;DR GIVE US SOME PLACES TO FARM WHERE THE DROP RATE ISNT 0.00005%

Totally agree something has been very wrong with the magic find system for a long time. I use the luck sigil on my gear. I get it from 101% to about 116% while trying to build the maximum amount of mf I can get right now with the total lack of income due to the total lack of drops off anything.

I get it to 116% and suddenly I get all kinds of drops off everything. I get it to 147% with food and nothing drops?! this happens all the time and not by killing the same mobs either this is from farming just about anything suddenly it stops working after you reach a certain point. I’m going to test this more. The next time I get a few luck stacks I’m going to switch out my weapons and stop the luck from building to see if there’s a sweet spot where the MF doesn’t cut off the drops.

Kichwas.7152:

Personally I think the more they nerf farming, the better for the rest of the game. On the forums I seem to be a minority in this, but in game among those I encounter at least, my stance is not unusual.

Farming / botting / hacking / glitching – all just various degrees of the same thing.
- Its people who attempt to avoid or bypass the intrinsic aspects of the game to focus on extrinsic, external rewards – often to the selfish detriment of the larger community.

Baloney.

The only “intrinsic” end game in Guild Wars 2, just like Guild Wars 1, is uber-expensive, grind-mandated shinies. If they don’t want people to grind and farm they should release end game content that isn’t ENTIRELY DEPENDENT ON IT.

Not only that, how do you figure that having skyrocketing prices for crafting materials helps regular players? Their ability to obtain gold is hurt like everyone else’s, but bots aren’t going to be hurt. They’re already farming 24/7. They’ll sell fewer things, but at a higher rate.

There’s no sensible reason for this ongoing assault on their own game. None.

Rama.6439:

pricer.5091:

Persoanlly I spent the most money when I was grinding mats for Volcanus, just to get those bits I didnt quite have. As the next thing I am going for (legendary) seems to be now so far out of reach that it is nigh on impossible, I have vowed to not spend any more money until those T6 Mats start dropping like they used to.

Same here, I have bought gems in the past and have planned on doing it again for 2 more chars I have yet to lvl cause they will need more bag space and I like to have that maxed out.
But my first goal was to finish my legendaries, I’m currently in the middle of crafting 2 and all I need for them are the T6 mats and now with the T6 nerfs it seems impossible and if they don’t set the loot tables right then I see no reason to continue playing a game that pretty much has failure in it’s coding.
I mean let’s look at it like this, they are trying to say that the farming nerfs were a bug fix to fix spawning issues, well, I know something about this. I know that when you set a spawn all that you do is set the type of spawn “creature” rate of spawn “time at which they will spawn per min” amount “how many spawn” and range “the area that the mob can go before it turns back to the spawn area” So if there was an issue, where is the issue with the loot here?

I very much doubt we will get a response here cause I called Anthony out on this on the first page for lying about this. I’d like a developer to give us some lame explanation.
Watch, I bet I get an infraction…

To be fair, if you get infracted, it’ll be for calling out ANet in a spiteful way.

ASB.4295:

ANet’s not against farming, but against there being a possibility to significantly decrease the amount of time they think legendaries and other endgame items should take to acquire. Same reason they added or were forced to add ascended gear – People plateaued too fast for their liking.

I don’t disagree – from the perspective of someone currently trying to earn a legendary though, it feels odd because there are already quite a few people with legendaries, some of which they’ve had for a long time. It wasn’t ‘easier’ to get them earlier, per se – still needed all the same things we need now, and had less time to earn gold – but some of the bits were certainly cheaper, such as T6 mats. If I’d really powered through everything and focused on farming and earning gold quickly, I might have a legendary already like many others do. Instead I went at a steady pace, just trying to earn all the components as I went along – as it would seem was more the intent – and I’m now paying for that.

As far as the precursors go, the original karka event chests seem to have had a much higher chance of dropping one than anything else before or since, so if you got one then, or had the money to grab one while they were going cheap, that made life a lot easier. I sometimes wish I’d bought some gems and converted to gold to get my precursor when it was around 120g compared to the 450g it costs now. Until another comparable source of precursors is made available people are going to be spending a lot more getting them than they would have some months ago, or rely a lot on pure dumb luck.

In short, I totally understand that Anet intended the legendary process to be time-consuming and, well, legendary. When there are enough people who have already had them for months, though, it kind of feels like that ship has sailed. Making it progressively more difficult for people trying to get them later feels inequitable and counter-intuitive.

Decreasing loot is part of the plan to make the legendary grind take longer. It’s simple. They’re making precursors more available so they have to make the mats rarer/harder to get.

Most people in the game don’t realize that. They said they wanted more precursors. They’re getting em, but that doesn’t mean T6 mats won’t be rarer in the future keeping the time the same, or more likely, longer to attain a legendary.

I can’t imagine working on a legendary now. All the areas that I farmed for karma, and/or T6 mats are gone. You really are left with horrible options or the TP/COF gold farm. Play how you want?

Kichwas.7152:

pricer.5091:

If you can only gather about 1-2 gold in the game in a day (say two hours playtime)and there are items that are available that cost between 500 and 900 gold to craft (any of the more desirable exotics like Volcanus and legendaries) that would take you somewhere between three and five YEARS to achieve.

I believe that it taking years is the intended design goal.

- This is likely where the disconnect occurs. They put stuff in at launch that was not intended to be seen in game for another 3 years. Some few managed to get it in under a month (those first few mostly from exploits / hacking), and suddenly a mass of people were aware of it and thought they had to have it NAO!!!

They however, still seem to see this as content for somewhere down the road of years.

That said – if you look back to GW1, this is not different from there. To get the top armors can cost thousands of ectos. If you play “normally” it could take 5+ years to get the mats for them. Some like myself have never had the mats for even one armor piece despite playing for over 7 years. Others have them within a week of buying the game – exploits for some, others legit trading maximization and farming.

GW2’s loot system is not all that different from GW1’s.
- You do not NEED a legendary. Its a stat boost of about 1-2%, for a cost boost of about 50-thousand percent. Why? Because it is really meant to be ‘legendary’.

How many people in WoW own ‘Thunderfury, Blessed blade of the Windseeker’?
- Maybe 1 or 2 per server, tops. If even that.

That is where these items were intended to fall.

Not many in WoW complain that they don’t yet have the Windseeker. So I am always baffled at the people complaining about it here.

(and yes I know that some newer legendaries over in WoW are actually semi-common. WoW has changed its model over time. GW1&2 though – have partially stuck to their guns on the idea that it is supposed to be legendary. Partially only in that they did not make it -MORE- expensive after players started proving they could get to it before the third anniversary of the game.)

Do not even try to compare wow legendarys to gw2 unique weapons skins tagged as legendarys.

Sure wow legednarys are more common these days, still less common than gw2 legendarys but they all come from group play, are the best weapon in their class, higher base stats, higher base weapon dmg, special proc effects and of course a unique look.

Gw2 legendarys are a disgrace to the word legendary.

Very simple, right now running any content that isn’t first time doesn’t feel rewarding due to lack of loot and treasure.

Considering new content only comes out maybe once a month, and is short-lived, its not good enough.

You kill 5 enemies, very typical only one drops loot. And you very rarely ever see a rare or exotic anymore. Even after doing 4-6 events and killing 100 of enemies.

Feels like your time is being wasted. The loot system is de-incentivizing you to just play the game normally, and explore the world. It’s a shame.

Pendragon.8735:

Very simple, right now running any content that isn’t first time doesn’t feel rewarding due to lack of loot and treasure.

Considering new content only comes out maybe once a month, and is short-lived, its not good enough.

You kill 5 enemies, very typical only one drops loot. And you very rarely ever see a rare or exotic anymore. Even after doing 4-6 events and killing 100 of enemies.

Feels like your time is being wasted. The loot system is de-incentivizing you to just play the game normally, and explore the world. It’s a shame.

Pretty much. The hectic nature of some of the events was a lot of fun. In fact, for all the flak they got about the Champ spider and his little dropless vets at Melandru, I kind of enjoy them. Provides a little more adrenaline sometimes when things start getting a little out of hand.

But doing Penitent once for three or four blues, two or three greens and 2 silver worth of trash and then just wandering aimlessly through CS or Malchor’s for thirty minutes waiting for something else to spawn or hoping a group gets together for the arena champ?

It’s crap. It’s boring. I already did it. I saw the event I saw how it works, I saw the story behind it, now I just want to play for fun and see what nifty stuff I can get. But I can’t, because nothing ever happens anymore and even when it does the stuff you get from it’s crap. I did Dwayna, Penitent and Jofast’s earlier and it took 90 minutes, I got one trash rare that I broke down for ectos and maybe 20 silver worth of blues and greens.

It’s just crap. I don’t even care about legendaries. I never had any intent on even trying to grind that out because it looks painfully boring to me. I just want something to friggin’ do when I log in.

At some point ArenaNet needs to admit they haven’t figured out how to better some of the basic aspects of the MMO and stop trying to hurt people because of it. They act like this farming behavior is something special to their game, but it’s just not. I remember when I played WoW sometimes I’d just go out somewhere and start wailing on whole loads of MOBs for a bit when I had nothing better to do with my time. Did the same in LOTRO. Hell, that’s pretty much what all of EvE Online is based on.

Because that’s fun. People just like engaging in combat in RPGs.

So stop attacking us for doing it.

Laurelinde.4395:

In short, I totally understand that Anet intended the legendary process to be time-consuming and, well, legendary. When there are enough people who have already had them for months, though, it kind of feels like that ship has sailed. Making it progressively more difficult for people trying to get them later feels inequitable and counter-intuitive.

Fantastic point, and those of us who decide to try for a legendary late are essentially being punished for it. Which is ludicrous given the amount of legendaries around.

MakersMark.8420:

Most people in the game don’t realize that. They said they wanted more precursors. They’re getting em,

They are? Is the price of them going down?

morrolan.9608:

MakersMark.8420:

Most people in the game don’t realize that. They said they wanted more precursors. They’re getting em,

They are? Is the price of them going down?

Dude, I have multiple precursors, but now I cant build the legendaries cause the mats are pretty much unobtainable. I have friends in game that left cause they built their legendaries after 1 month of playing and got bored cause there was no end game and saw no future end game in the game, they stop in every other month to see if the game has changed but it hasn’t changed for the better.
And as far as prices go, buying a precursor is easy, run CoF, it will never get nerfed, and it’s easy money, I don’t like running it cause it’s mind numbing. I just want to acquire the mats the way I want to, the way they should be acquired, from killing stuff.

Also when buying a precursor, don’t buy it out right, place a buy order, you don’t lose money placing and removing buy orders, and you can usually get them cheaper that way. I got both mine for 500g.

You realize that the players paying the most (in Gems) are not the players farming all day?
Because if you don’t farm, you pay real money in the game to invest your time in less subtle entertainment and still have fun in the game once in a while.

I like to go out and farm too. For 30 minutes a week event farming, not hours and hours and hours and hours to get something shiny that will never be of the same value as spending time with something more fun and less repetitive.
And until now, every single farmer has regretted to spent this much time of his life farming for a digital shiny. Every one of them, at some point, when they wake up and realize what they could have done instead…

Well, its been a good few months. Time to hammer the last nails on the coffin for this game, lol.

ANet loves this game so much (its obvious as to how beautiful they had made it to be) but they hate their players just as much.

kittening supermega-hyper rate of changes. I log in one day, and next day it’s a different game I’m playing.

Bloodstealer.5978:

Vayne.8563:

pricer.5091:

marnick.4305:

I do not agree with your assumption that casuals don’t pay for gems. In my experience, casuals pay far more than so called hardcore people and I will continue to do so.

In your experience of who? You? Well thats one customer ANet are making happy then I guess. Unless you somehow have have access to the bank accounts of everyone in the game that plays less than one hour a day of course.

I used to be fairly “hardcore” and occasionally spend cash…now I am “casual” because the game is so bad and I refuse to spend anything.

Great, thanks for the meaningless observation.

It’s quite logical that casuals will spend more in the gem shop. Many hard-core players have no very few commitments and can sink 30, 40 hours a week into a game. People with real life commitments that can play a couple of hours a day max are people that will feel they’re falling behind. Since many have a job, they could conceivably have extra money to spend on a hobby…and people do spend money on entertainment. That’s a proven fact.

So if this is your entertainment (and this game is far better for casual than hard core players anyway), you’re more likely to buy gems to get some gold, or buy stuff that makes the game fun for you.

Hard core players can farm gold to buy gems for certain things. That’s harder for casual players.

You really need to quit with your generalisations of what you perceive is meant by casual and hardcore.
By your own statement your are telling us all how ANET has obviously designed this game around the casual gamer… so why are there sooo many hardcore players doing the things you perceive to be hardcore.. farming, grinding, speed running, camping etc etc…. its not about the game design its about how different people enjoy playing the game the way it suits them.. it has nothing to do with time served in game or that feeling of special snowflake.
If this game is all about the casual gamer then why would a casual player feel they have to spend in the gem shop to catch up… causals wont need to catch up, there is no requirement to in GW2.. you have said it yourself, think it yourself but then argue against your own opinions…
Casuals can farm as much gold as any other kind of player, they just don’t set a goal of having it today or tomorrow but they can still spend every minute of their allotted gametime farming something relentlessly or just running the odd CoF1 whenever they can – so just please just quit before you get yourself so entangled in your own arguments and opinions that you begin to loose credibility in your postings.

For your info I play pretty regularly, maybe not as much as I used to b ut still a good 3-4 hrs a day, maybe more sometimes.. does that make me hardcore, does that make me special or is it not enough so I should be classed as casual. I don’t pay 2 win in the shop but I also don’t go out of my way to farm, grind, dungeon run relentlessly in order to get rich, have it all and be the “special one”.. in fact I am still only 2/3 through acquiring what I need for for my legendary, I only have 3 lvl 80’s none of which are fully geared, only 2 are max craft levelled and I still struggle to keep more than 10g in my bank…. and all since playing the game from beta, clocking a good 2-3k hrs up and putting in the best effort I can in whatever game environment I choose to run in any given day/night.

So how does that fit into your analogy of a GW2 gamer … you simply cant see past your own assumptions.

1. Generalizations apply to percentages of the population, not the whole population which I also explained in another post.

2. I also said casual gamers tend to be more into fluff than hard core gamers. By hard core, I am NOT referring to time spent in game, because I’m actually quite a casual player and I play a lot more than you. I’m referring to highly competitive players who play only to do the hardest stuff in the game. Or hard core farms who play to get as much money as they can in the shortest about of time. This game isn’t really designed for them. If you don’t believe me look at the posts. All you see is no end game posts and I can’t farm any more posts (along with people who hate RNG posts).

The point is, generalizations don’t take everything into account, but if you really think this game is made for hard core players, competitive players, you’re in the minority in that opinion. If you dont’ believe me, ask the hard core guys who are complaining there’s not enough content, the content isn’t hard enough, and there’s no reward for doing the hard content.

If this game was pushing hard content, the rewards to do Arah would be greater than the rewards to do CoF path 1.

BTW, you really have to stop telling people how they should and shouldn’t post. Because no one is going to listen anyway.