Guild Wars 2

Not to rage, but when farming earth elementals in cursed shore for 3 days (its 3:35 AM IN THE MORNING) yields NO onyx lodestones…

I play a lot of mmos and I am familiar with grinding, but this is ridiculous, I want to at least see ONE drop, ONE DROP! I feel like getting to 400 weaponsmithing was simply a waste of time because every weapon requires 20+ lodestones and A-net just wanted to artificially elongate gameplay by making these “ingredients” pretty much impossible to find.

Anyway, if anyone could even confirm that earth elementals even drop lodestones anymore…that would be nice.

Because they want you to buy gems from the store to exchange them for gold.

Indeed, then use that gold to buy the items on the TP. I wouldn’t be surprised if drop rates were tied to the amount of items already on the market. Lower the supply, push prices up, force people to buy gold. Pretty sinister, and the reason I will never touch the cash shop, but it was pretty obvious this would happen. Even people who want to just farm their Legendary are being pushed into buying it for real money instead.

It’s easier to farm onyx cores and lodestones in dungeon than on earth elementals imo. I also highly doubt they’re tied to TP the drop rates though I do suspect that drop rates in the game can be manipulated freely without notice or new builds.

I don’t know what’s the point of driving people to buy lodestones from the TP as well.

Even if they hadn’t expected many people to be acquiring Legendaries this early in the release, there are more efficient ways of controlling this progression than reducing the drop rates of lodestones.

What it does is just to increase the price of lodestones. So if I have a lodestone that I don’t need for the Legendary that I am working for, I might as well just sell it on the TP for a hefty sum, because I will need the gold to acquire the lodestones that I need -through the TP also.

But gold is not a problem either. Because just as you can farm lodestones, you can farm gold too. So this move, if there’s a move at all, achieves nothing.

Lafiel.9372:

I do suspect that drop rates in the game can be manipulated freely without notice or new builds.

Stop suspecting: They stated it in an interview.
They can monitor drop rates and change them whenever they want.

ArenaNet can push the prices up past the point that you can afford them just from farming gold. And the amount of gold you can farm ties in to how much time you spend playing per day. Some play more, some much less.

Also, once you make that first purchase in the cash shop, it becomes easier and easier to do it again, unless you have a lot of patience, or no cash to spare. Don’t expect to be getting anything easily in this game. If they can make you grind for it, they will, to encourage you to take the ‘easy’ option of buying gold.

Zantetsuken.9051:

ArenaNet can push the prices up past the point that you can afford them just from farming gold. And the amount of gold you can farm ties in to how much time you spend playing per day. Some play more, some much less.

Also, once you make that first purchase in the cash shop, it becomes easier and easier to do it again, unless you have a lot of patience, or no cash to spare. Don’t expect to be getting anything easily in this game. If they can make you grind for it, they will, to encourage you to take the ‘easy’ option of buying gold.

How about “Im not paying extra money for a game I already paid a one-time payment for just to get an aesthetic weapon that has statistically no advantage over something I can also get for less trouble in-game”?

projectcedric.6951:

Zantetsuken.9051:

ArenaNet can push the prices up past the point that you can afford them just from farming gold. And the amount of gold you can farm ties in to how much time you spend playing per day. Some play more, some much less.

Also, once you make that first purchase in the cash shop, it becomes easier and easier to do it again, unless you have a lot of patience, or no cash to spare. Don’t expect to be getting anything easily in this game. If they can make you grind for it, they will, to encourage you to take the ‘easy’ option of buying gold.

How about “Im not paying extra money for a game I already paid a one-time payment for just to get an aesthetic weapon that has statistically no advantage over something I can also get for less trouble in-game”?

That’s up to each person. For me, I have little interest in such things. I can easily afford to spend money on in-game cash shops, but I choose not to unless I am buying something that has no effect at all on the game. Skins, emotes, fun items, I am happy with things like this. Buying gold though from the very people who are in control of the market and can manipulate it to suit themselves, well, that is going too far.

This game is pretty much ruined because the cash shop is behind every decision that is being made. The good news is, the game isn’t brilliant, so walking away isn’t that hard. Staying away will be harder though, due to no sub fees

Games where you have milions of gold – ppl cry
Games where gold is really wort sth – ppl cry

Fuz.5621:

Because they want you to buy gems from the store to exchange them for gold.

1) The price of some fine materials (for example Powerful Blood) was too high so they increased the drop rate of those materials and the price already dropped

2) Lodestones are hard to get, but they used to be a lot harder, that’s why each Fractal has a chance to drop some of them, Dungeon rewards were also increased/modified (to what extend is arguable) and more rare materials are rewarded by running them

3) The price of precursor items is extremely high, that’s why they gave us another way of getting one (Karka event) and for a while after that event prices dropped, they promised to add a new way of getting precursors (scavenger hunt) so prices will drop again

4) Karma rewards in the game were too low, leading to extensive farming of events for it, thus they implemented the Jugs of karma

5) Pristine Fractals were a nice addition, to reduce the RNG required to get Ascended gear.

I don’t know about you but I believe the devs aren’t idiots. They can see the grind/RNG required for certain parts of the game and they’ve already made adjustments to reduce it. I’m sure they will do a lot more to reduce the current level of grinding/farming in the game, try to be more positive.

Zantetsuken.9051:

The good news is, the game isn’t brilliant, so walking away isn’t that hard. Staying away will be harder though, due to no sub fees

Well said.

Maybe that’s the point of it all.

Fuz.5621:

Because they want you to buy gems from the store to exchange them for gold.

right, thats business as usual……..

Zantetsuken.9051:

projectcedric.6951:

Zantetsuken.9051:

ArenaNet can push the prices up past the point that you can afford them just from farming gold. And the amount of gold you can farm ties in to how much time you spend playing per day. Some play more, some much less.

Also, once you make that first purchase in the cash shop, it becomes easier and easier to do it again, unless you have a lot of patience, or no cash to spare. Don’t expect to be getting anything easily in this game. If they can make you grind for it, they will, to encourage you to take the ‘easy’ option of buying gold.

How about “Im not paying extra money for a game I already paid a one-time payment for just to get an aesthetic weapon that has statistically no advantage over something I can also get for less trouble in-game”?

That’s up to each person. For me, I have little interest in such things. I can easily afford to spend money on in-game cash shops, but I choose not to unless I am buying something that has no effect at all on the game. Skins, emotes, fun items, I am happy with things like this. Buying gold though from the very people who are in control of the market and can manipulate it to suit themselves, well, that is going too far.

This game is pretty much ruined because the cash shop is behind every decision that is being made. The good news is, the game isn’t brilliant, so walking away isn’t that hard. Staying away will be harder though, due to no sub fees

Yup

Drop rates are good in fact, even high. If you want bad drop rates go play L2. PvE is grind, and it always be. And every time ppl complaining about the drop. If drop rates are higher you will make gear so easy that PvE will be pointless.

Ikcen.7518:

Drop rates are good in fact, even high. If you want bad drop rates go play L2. PvE is grind, and it always be. And every time ppl complaining about the drop. If drop rates are higher you will make gear so easy that PvE will be pointless.

But… Was this game ever meant to be about gear ? Seems to me that many things have changed here since release, and not always for good…

Kestral.4038:

Not to rage, but when farming earth elementals in cursed shore for 3 days (its 3:35 AM IN THE MORNING) yields NO onyx lodestones…

I play a lot of mmos and I am familiar with grinding, but this is ridiculous, I want to at least see ONE drop, ONE DROP! I feel like getting to 400 weaponsmithing was simply a waste of time because every weapon requires 20+ lodestones and A-net just wanted to artificially elongate gameplay by making these “ingredients” pretty much impossible to find.

Anyway, if anyone could even confirm that earth elementals even drop lodestones anymore…that would be nice.

simple answer it dont drop in CS

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Onyx_Lodestone

Fuz.5621:

Because they want you to buy gems from the store to exchange them for gold.

No, if A-net wanted people to buy gems for gold, they would make the exchange rate so that it’s actually worth doing so, not by decreasing drop rates. And if that made them more money, they would already be doing that. But they haven’t. Because it’s not their business plan. If they wanted a pay to play game they would have created one. But they didn’t. Making a microtransactions game and then essentially making it pay to play is not a sound business strategy and it doesn’t work (and again, because if it did, it would already be in place.

Too many people on this forum with tin foil hats.