Guild Wars 2

Full title: [Suggestion] Solutions for balancing open world rewards and bring life in the whole world

Hello,

I open this topic for raise some game design problems about the rewards and the player apportionment in the world of Tyria and bring solutions to resolve thems. I’ll be concise in order to save time. (sorry in advance if my english isn’t perfect, I learn it)

Problem: Champion’s bags farm monopolize the great part of the player population in some maps (examples: Frostgorge Sound, Cursed Shore) and leads sometimes some conflicts.

Solution: Champions alone without events or who are the only objective to accomplish them can only give one loot bag per account per day.

Why: Champions loot bags originally were created for reward adventurer players who get off the beaten track. Then, this concept was deflect for farming. So, this solution allows to always reward the adventurer instead of the farmer.

Problem: Some players force others players to fail some events because failure is more rewarding for farming (examples: “Defend Penitent Camp from Risen”, “Defend Jofast’s Camp against Risen attacks”) and leads sometimes some conflicts.

Solutions:
- No loot bags from monsters but a bonus chest at the end of the event (with heavy moldy bag for example) only if the event is a succes.
- A bonus chest with tokens (like geodes from the new area Dry Top) only if the event is a succes to exchange to a special merchant specific to an area with general rewards (Obsidian Shards, Heavy Crafting Bags, Letter of Commendation, Profession Gear Box, Unidentified Dye, etc) and specific rewards to an area (miniature Eye of Zaithan in Malchor’s Leap, unique weapon sets, unique food recipes, etc).

Why: The vast majority of Tyria is deserted because some areas aren’t “lucrative”. With a token system only founded on every events, who providing access to good general and unique rewards, all areas of the world could be populars instead of few of them.

This solution should allow the players to earn T6 materials as easily as they could do from champions farming, but simply by doing dynamic events and bring life to the world.

Really, I understand players when they say they farm champions loot bags because 250 Vial of Powerful Blood requierement for an item is terrible, and they are right, but this game could be both more rewarding and more enjoyable for all with others solutions.

Thank you for listening.

You can suggest another solutions for balancing open world rewards but please, respect the “Problem, Solutions, Why” model and be concise. It’s the better thing to do to save the developpers time ; time that they can reinvest for more answers on forums or in the development.
Agressivity leads to nothing too. Be thoughtful. The goal is to find solutions to some problems, and no to enter into another debates without background.

So…your first idea is to nerf one of the few ways players have left to farm gold just…what, because you think a game shouldn’t have any farming?

They’ve already nerfed the QD train (now dead) and the Frostgorge train. They nerfed the world boss train by making it horribly inefficient for profit, too, and megaservers nerfed Cursed Shore temple event farming for t6 mats, since the events don’t scale high enough for 100+ people.

You can’t nerf every viable way of making gold without opening your wallet unless you want to kill the game. As it is, there aren’t that many left. And if by “conflicts,” you mean arguments in map chat, that’s not going to be fixed either through champ nerfs – those players will just move on to their next preferred farming spot, and then there will be “conflicts” in that map, too. Just block them and move on.

I understand that my first idea is a little brutal but, without getting into an another debate “farmers versus others players”, I want to find alternative solutions to a much more complex problem.

I understand that champions trains are the less painful solution to earn T6 mats and I understand players who doing that, but I don’t think it is the ideal solution for a game who want to shove the ideals sets and revolutionize the genre.

I don’t say that they should remove champions trains immediately. As you say, this could kill the game. On the contrary, I say that they should remove champions trains with the only condition that they offer to players a similar or better alternative, but only an funiest and more interesting alternative.

There are more than 1700 events in this game. It’s a thing more fun to do them than have to kill always the same monster all over a day a week and all of this events could better satisfy players who complain about the lack of content. All of them just need a good dose of balancing.

And for the “Just block them and move on.”, I have to disagree. As a player who play the game for the pleasure and the relaxation (I’m not jobless and GW2 isn’t a second work after the first), I don’t have to suffer bad behavior from a handful of players who decided to make their own law against other players and against the rules of conduct. If I want to kill every champions or win every events of this game, it’s my right. I don’t have to just move on to another place.

“No Tazza” is now popular. And temple of Grenth defend Jonez loot fest scales better than temple of Melandru. Just an FYI for would be farmers.

And only three world bosses are really worth doing for dragonite and rares in terms of time spent: namely, Golem Mark II, Karka Queen and Tequatl. The former two can be done in 10-15min at most including pre events and yield good loot whereas the latter can be done in 20, provided it is organized.

I have to disagree as well. It would make things worse, not better.

1. Useful items are hard enough to get as it is. Buying them can take a few days unless you get really lucky and get something that sells for /gold/ as opposed to silver.

2. I think I’ve encountered both minor and major world events failing for reasons like player inexperience/insufficient amount of players/lack of coordination/etc. Karka even bugged on my server once and we couldn’t even lure the queen. I have never seen people try to fail an event for the loot you get even if you fail, as the rewards for success are usually much better.

3. Wouldn’t it be better to reward both Farmer and Adventurer? It’s the lack of content with sufficient rewards outside the world boss trains and the like that kinda forces the people out there that would /rather/ be exploring [like myself] to find good stuff, to buckle down and join the farm for x amount of hours. For some people, that takes up all the time they have per day to play GW2.

On the other hand, some people like farming as opposed to exploring. Why punish their prefered play style. That is just as unfair as the lack of exploration rewards outside of jumping puzzles, which can test the patience of even those who /like/ to do them. {Morgan’s Spiral anyone >.<]

You have a point that there is an inherent grind problem in the game, but I don’t feel that making farming harder to /force/ people to find other ways of earning gold or items is going to help. Instead more things like the jumping puzzles should be added.

Possibly environmental puzzles that require more than one person to do [2-3 seems like a decent number]. Even better, make them instanced so players don’t have to wait for something to reset because someone else just went through there, and trolls can’t foul you up. Make those daily like the boss trains, and that would be a good start. [Maybe change the instance maps it every so often so the same puzzle doesn’t get stale :P]

Sound fair enough?

I like the idea of mobs that spawn because of an active event not dropping any loot at all, provided that events give decent rewards to compensate.

It would change the game from “racing to tag as many mobs as possible” into “complete events as efficiently as possible.”

Farmers can just go farm non-event mobs.

I’ve read your post a few times, and honestly . . . I think your solutions might cause more problems than the “Problems” being “fixed” these ways.

The first one is a solution to a problem which isn’t really a problem – Champion Bags aren’t good for much other than overflowing you with Bloodstone Dust, and giving you a few extra pieces of silver from the equipment inside. Sure, there’s chances of Rares and Exotics . . . but those are consistent enough with other methods of farming to make it almost less useful to chase after those as opposed to finding some places with densely packed enemies and going to town.

The second “solution” would muck up things by making things far more complicated as far as the program doling out loot – and it would be prone to any bugs which might crop up. Not to mention . . . adding tokens, yet another currency to keep track of. This is on a bad path already, to fix something which isn’t entirely broken in and of itself.

Not to mention you’re talking about nerfing loot by introducing . . . more worthless loot rather than desirable loot. The game doesn’t need loot nerfed or buffed in a simple range – what it needs is something more interesting to bring people to do things.

. . . unfortunately, that only works short-term until it’s determined the “interesting” quality isn’t worth the time taken away from a farm of choice.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I’ve read your post a few times, and honestly . . . I think your solutions might cause more problems than the “Problems” being “fixed” these ways.

The first one is a solution to a problem which isn’t really a problem – Champion Bags aren’t good for much other than overflowing you with Bloodstone Dust, and giving you a few extra pieces of silver from the equipment inside. Sure, there’s chances of Rares and Exotics . . . but those are consistent enough with other methods of farming to make it almost less useful to chase after those as opposed to finding some places with densely packed enemies and going to town.

The second “solution” would muck up things by making things far more complicated as far as the program doling out loot – and it would be prone to any bugs which might crop up. Not to mention . . . adding tokens, yet another currency to keep track of. This is on a bad path already, to fix something which isn’t entirely broken in and of itself.

Not to mention you’re talking about nerfing loot by introducing . . . more worthless loot rather than desirable loot. The game doesn’t need loot nerfed or buffed in a simple range – what it needs is something more interesting to bring people to do things.

. . . unfortunately, that only works short-term until it’s determined the “interesting” quality isn’t worth the time taken away from a farm of choice.

Dont forget ascended + t6. I was feeling curious one day when I came back to GW2 and tried FG train after it was reportedly nerfed. Lo and behold Carrion Ascended chestpiece after one train run. However I never went back again as I worked on getting some other stuff.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Dont forget ascended + t6. I was feeling curious one day when I came back to GW2 and tried FG train after it was reportedly nerfed. Lo and behold Carrion Ascended chestpiece after one train run. However I never went back again as I worked on getting some other stuff.

I do forget it, because Ascended as a drop is rare enough it might as well not be something to try farming to drop.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Khal Drogo.9631:

Dont forget ascended + t6. I was feeling curious one day when I came back to GW2 and tried FG train after it was reportedly nerfed. Lo and behold Carrion Ascended chestpiece after one train run. However I never went back again as I worked on getting some other stuff.

I do forget it, because Ascended as a drop is rare enough it might as well not be something to try farming to drop.

I wasn’t even aware you could /get/ ascended as drops .-.

How about no.

First, the events the OP listed in Cursed Shore that he believes people fail on purpose, are not the ones that people fail on purpose. Defending Penitent and Jofast’s camp are pretty much always successful unless there aren’t enough people. The ONLY event that players want failure at is the defend Arah one. If you defend it, you can’t take the temple, so ya, please let it fail because at least for most of us, taking the temple is better and more fun.

Second, I’ve totally had it with the loot nerfs in this game. Were the OPs suggestions be implemented I can positively say that would be it for me for GW2. I do not find my gaming time enjoyable to do the same content for years on end with pretty much zero reward. But hey OP, you have fun with the few noobs that might stick around and play with you.

FG Train is already mostly dead why nerf it even more ? Whenever i make my daily
Ori / Ancient Wood harvesting runs i notice that mostly there is even just 1 map, seldom 2 of FGS for Europe beside the times around the Jormag spawn.

That shows how much life the last nerf already has taken out of the world.

So before starting with even more nerfs, maybe look where actual the trains are running, and thats maybe EoTM after all i read, and Dry Top.

But i also think (nearly) nobody would like Dry Top to get nerfed so that it is impossible to ever get R4 again.