Guild Wars 2

The whole concept of obtaining huge amounts of wearable stuff from nowhere and piling it on market or salvaging appears somewhat… insane.

Why not remove all these scrappy drops entirely and repurpose them into craftable gear, and leave only special rewards like end track chests?

paShadoWn.5723:

The whole concept of obtaining huge amounts of wearable stuff from nowhere and piling it on market or salvaging appears somewhat… insane.

Why not remove all these scrappy drops entirely and repurpose them into craftable gear, and leave only special rewards like end track chests?

Two words: Skinner Box.

~EW

Nope. Salvaging all that useless gear goes a long way towards keeping me supplied with crafting mats. Also, I still have hope that one day I’ll get a precursor drop. Or at the least, some very valuable exotic that I can sell so I can maybe buy my precursor.

Also, what is this “end track chest” you speak of? I don’t believe I’ve seen these in PvE before.

Ok, pls show me the leather and wool nodes. And in D3 you get like ton of mats fpr the loot u can salvage… its like gw2 just with much much much more loot! o0

Leather and wool nodes are called “sheeps”.

Which exist in Minecraft, but not GW2. So, salvaging still needed.

Wow…. no need to be an kitten -hole, OP. You have no idea how much I use the TP or node farm for my mats. I sometimes run node routes till I’m absolutely sick of farming. Also, not everyone has tons of gold to spend on the TP, so it’s hard to be greedy when you can’t afford all of the items you need.

Also, since some of us don’t sPvP, there is no track rewards. We have to do event chains. If they didn’t give us any drops then what would be the point of even doing the events (even if the drops are mostly blues and greens)?

And last thing: The plural of sheep is sheep. You’re welcome.

paShadoWn.5723:

Leather and wool nodes are called “sheeps”.

Please, tell me where these “sheeps” spawn so I can go farm leather and wool consistently and not have to hope for it to be in a drop or salvaged. I need leather for my precursor and I need gold which I can get for selling the wool.

Salvaging for mats is kind of a staple since gw1.
Could all drops simply be mats and not “garbage” gear? Sure.
But the more layers you peel back, the less immersive the game feels.
There was a joke, where the next raid/dungeon/fractal was going to be a little white room where players could beat on a boss and get loot. Or something like that. If you ever game so hard for so long that the game feels like a little white room with a loot piñata you should take a step back and reevaluate how you are spending your time.

As to your thinking that players should be able to do crafting by simply salvaging for their mats, instead of looking to the trading post, I don’t think you will find many who disagree with that.

We’ve been salvaging materials from gear for 11 years. You don’t mess with tradition.

It’s a design decision, and one with a long history in computer RPGs (and their predecessors as well). If you don’t like it then design your own game, or look for another that better suits your playing style.

Valejo.1950:

Ok, pls show me the leather and wool nodes. And in D3 you get like ton of mats fpr the loot u can salvage… its like gw2 just with much much much more loot! o0

Diablo 3 is a bad example because while you do get a tonne of loot, it’s all very simplified and you can break down your inventory into identical items based on rarity with the a single click of a button. Diablo 3 also often drops items you will equip and upgrade your stats with, Guild Wars 2 almost never does, so while loot in Diablo 3 is very exciting, loot in GW2 is a tedious bore that takes up time and adds chores after every encounter.

“Gear drops” are an artifact of MMO genre expectations which began with stats on gear. The idea of "magic gear’ is permanently ingrained in the minds and psyches of RPG players (paper or video) and is likely to remain there. Anet has incorporated the idea of magic gear into the economy, by making it a source of crafting mats via salvaging. Salvaging also creates a coin sink, albeit a small one, and selling those mats on the TP creates the largest coin sink in the game.

The phenomenon is not going anywhere. Removing it would require a massive rework of game systems which imo the game cannot afford.

It turns out that people prefer constantly earning ‘something’ rather than mostly nothing with intermittent bursts of good stuff. For example, look how many of us are looking for any sort of reward from accumulating XP (after maxing masteries).

Despite my understanding how skinner boxes work and how much of this RPG/MMO setup owes itself to the original D&D (and all its pre-computer issues and standards), I find that I’m with the masses: I like getting lots of stuff better than getting lots of nothing. I prefer a lot of RNG over tokens for everything.

paShadoWn.5723:

repurpose them into craftable gear, and leave only special rewards like end track chests?

I do repurpose all my drops into craftable gear.
Salvage unwanted gear, deposit as mats, convert mats to crafting items at crafting station, combine crafting items to make new gear, sell new gear on market, profit!

Please leave my unwanted gear alone, I want it.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It turns out that people prefer constantly earning ‘something’ rather than mostly nothing with intermittent bursts of good stuff. For example, look how many of us are looking for any sort of reward from accumulating XP (after maxing masteries).

Despite my understanding how skinner boxes work and how much of this RPG/MMO setup owes itself to the original D&D (and all its pre-computer issues and standards), I find that I’m with the masses: I like getting lots of stuff better than getting lots of nothing. I prefer a lot of RNG over tokens for everything.

This is generally my opinion as well. People like getting stuff, even if most of it is stuff they won’t actually use.

paShadoWn.5723:

Leather and wool nodes are called “sheeps”.

Oh dear lord yes. Shearable sheep. Please make it so!

Actually in this game it’ll be more like Shearable Hirsute Cave Spiders.

Was about to write an entire paragraph about how rewards play into player mantality and getting drops is part of that, yada yada yada until I noticed:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It turns out that people prefer constantly earning ‘something’ rather than mostly nothing with intermittent bursts of good stuff. For example, look how many of us are looking for any sort of reward from accumulating XP (after maxing masteries).

Despite my understanding how skinner boxes work and how much of this RPG/MMO setup owes itself to the original D&D (and all its pre-computer issues and standards), I find that I’m with the masses: I like getting lots of stuff better than getting lots of nothing. I prefer a lot of RNG over tokens for everything.

that Illconceived Was Na beat me to it.

That is exactly the reason we get trash loot which we salvage down. It looks nicer when your inventory is full with “stuff”. Even the entire hassle of breaking down the “stuff” is part of the process. Who here counts the ectos they get when salvaging the X amount of rares from the last farm run? When ectos in number are > than the rares salvaged it’s a good day.

playing gw2 meta events is 40% fighting, 10% standing around, and 50% opening chests, salvaging, depositing materials, selling on TP.

next xpac, GW2: Inventory Manager of Tyria

Other people have already covered the main reasons but I suspect originally it was also because Anet didn’t realise just how easy exotics would be to obtain (they didn’t intend it to be as difficult as BiS gear in other games, but still not quite you get to 80 and immediately get a full set) so the lower tiers would have had more use.

I do think it’s a better option that simply awarding crafting materials because it gives players options. You can salvage them for materials, or sell them (on the TP or to a merchant), or throw them in the Forge to try for something better, or use them on one of your characters if you need them.

I definitely think it’s a better option than not having enemies drop anything at all and getting cloth and leather from nodes because it means you can get stuff you need from actually playing the game instead of spending most of your time gathering nodes and crafting and only occasionally doing events and things for whatever that ‘end track chest’ would be.

I either put the drops on the TP, including the white level gear, as long as it is more than double what I would get from selling it straight to a merchant. If it is not then I usually salvage it.
Some I save to put into the Mystic Toilet, there is no rhyme or reason to what I throw in there but sometimes I get nothing and sometimes exotic stuff comes out. Since I don’t spend money on it and it’s just trash going in I have no complaints about it, lol.

With the exception of rare and exotic gear and unique drops , I do think that gear drops should be greatly reduced and replace with salvage items (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Salvage_item) or containers (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Container) with an open all option.

This has a number of benefits:
- Items would stack and save inventory space
- you would still get all the mats from salvage
- it would reduce the excess gear on tp
- it would make crafting more useful

I sell any surplus mats and any gear that goes for 20 silver and up, and salvage the rest. Getting all this “useless” gear is one of the main ways to get mats, especially since leather and cloth are very difficult to obtain via drops from enemies.

Jaxom.7310:

playing gw2 meta events is 40% fighting, 10% standing around, and 50% opening chests, salvaging, depositing materials, selling on TP.

next xpac, GW2: Inventory Manager of Tyria

If you’re spending that long doing inventory management, you’re doing it wrong.
Stand next to a vendor.
Click the option to show rarity on items, salvage all blues and greens.
Deposit all mats.
Open bags – don’t open so many you overfill your inventory.
Salvage all blues and greens.
Deposit all mats.
Sell junk at the vendor, sell all minor runes / sigils etc
Repeat until you’ve opened everything, sold everything you don’t want.

You’re now just left with rares/exotics. I dump them in my bank until I’ve stockpiled a few then do a mass salvage with the silver-o-matic and sell the ecto as it’s worth more than the rares. Takes a couple of minutes extra.
Press g to do this in your guildhall and combine it with guild node salvaging, refreshing guild tavern boosts and buying stuff with commendation from the trader.

paShadoWn.5723:

Leather and wool nodes are called “sheeps”.

Its sheep, there is no such word as “sheeps”

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Two words: Skinner Box.

~EW

This is the best explanation.

BrotherBelial.3094:

paShadoWn.5723:

Leather and wool nodes are called “sheeps”.

Its sheep, there is no such word as “sheeps”

I am known for making my own words by breaking and combining existing ones.

After a couple hour run through a zone i’m left with several bags full of mastercraft gear which I use to combine in the mystic forge. Then salvage or sell off the rares for a tidy profit. Also opening champ bags with a level 53 toon gets rid of the issue of unwanted bloodstone and salvages for more valuable materials.

I like the loot system as is, please don’t change it

And well, the gear can also be used by people who want to play the game without having to stop and craft their gear, just to keep on doing stuff as they see fit.

Although it would be quite random, which those type of players would have to deal with.

On of the problems gear drops have in GW2 is not making changes to old content based on new designs.

They changed drops to scale to player, so people stopped having so many useless drops since they would not equip that, and those materials didn’t havemuch use after leveling up crafting.

But since lower level materials were not very useful, they added uses for them.

But when they did that, they didn’t partially undo the scaling change for most of the game, only in starting areas. And now people get useless drops again as they don’t need any more freaking mithril, but most level 76-80 gear drops salvage into that.

One of the many cumulative solutions to that we could use would be increasing the chances of lower level drops for basic, fine and masterwork gear.

Other examples of changes that would allow players to aim towards those materials instead having to rely on RNG could be:

• Adding gathering nodes for the remaining basic materials. For example, they could be tied to events, available to those who participate in those events. Raid an enemy nightmare court camp, after fighting a boss or some waves of enemies at the end of the event chain, a coth node appears that can be used once a day.
• Updating boss meta-events in core content to the participation system, and giving Hero Choice chests with enough participation in all events of the chain, replacing the bonus daily reward we currently get, which is often 1-2 rare gear and 0-2 champion bags. These hero choice chests would give the champion bags plus a choice between the 1-2 random rare gear drops they would get before, a stack of 15-50 of a basic material, 3-10 of a fine material, or 1 of a rare material like a fragments, a core or a lodestone, depending on the level of the event.
• Taking more advantage of vendors with limited daily stocks. Those are great to let everyone have access to something without allowing anyone to get too much of something that way. With limited stock vendors, it would be possible to do things like letting players buy small stacks of a material in certain karma vendors that are mostly useless nowadeays, or trade some materials for others daily. For example, the Labyrinthine Clifss could be brought permanently as part of a Season 1 return, and it could feature a set of vendors available after a meta-event against the remnants of scarlet’s forces, that exchange some materials for others. The market has too much mithril? People can exchange it there for some leather daily. Market evens out itself.

FrostSpectre.4198:

And well, the gear can also be used by people who want to play the game without having to stop and craft their gear, just to keep on doing stuff as they see fit.

Although it would be quite random, which those type of players would have to deal with.

When i tried to playthrough without crafting, i had to stock on TP every five levels because drops were simply not covering, so this point is not quite valid.

paShadoWn.5723:

The whole concept of obtaining huge amounts of wearable stuff from nowhere and piling it on market or salvaging appears somewhat… insane.

Why not remove all these scrappy drops entirely and repurpose them into craftable gear, and leave only special rewards like end track chests?

Thinking outside the box… I like this

Does such thing as thinking in the box exists at all? Because is regurgitating boxed thoughts a thinking?

Also, i dont think outside of the box per se; i simply travel and get stuff from other boxes.

The point of getting so much gear is to inconvenience you by taking up inventory space and thus making bag slot expansions more enticing.

The very reason of why SWTOR had failed.

When you are reminded “pay up pleb” freaking EVERYWHERE, eventually (very fast) you get outraged and leave.

The only proper way to entice kittens to pay up is with enticing shinies.
LoL does it, and LoL is one of the most successful games in the world.

I haven’t gotten outraged and left and I’ve been with GW2 for 3 going on 4 years now. And for a good amount of time, I operated off of the only bank slot given to accounts. And I’ve never felt forced to buy more bank slots. Yes, I’ve bought a few, but that’s only so I don’t have to control my hoarding tendencies as much or store more in my characters’ bags.

So there obviously isn’t enough reminders for it be freaking everywhere that I have to pay up.

And the bank slots are the only QoL items I have purchased.

I took your example, SWTOR, and applied it to this game. If you meant something else like you did in your original post on this thread, maybe you should work on word choice and phrasing. You seem to have an issue getting your point across to people. When miscommunications happen multiple times when you’re around, it’s time to investigate if you are the reason for it.

Oh, I am capable of being outraged. I don’t however feel outraged at a game that doesn’t force me to buy things in their gem store (or their equivalent to the gem store) and doesn’t constantly push me to make purchases.