Guild Wars 2

I don’t understand why the loot in this game is so, so horrible! You kill tons of mobs (incuding vets and champs), you do dungeons and FoTM and 85-90% of the loot is only JUNK or some useless thing like silk scrap or white itens. Why you guys nerf every place so freaking much? Why i can’t acquire some nice cores or lodestones or T6 mats and rares, seriously, all this RNG/lottery crap is disgusting!

Please, stop nerfing every place and mobs and stop forcing people to buy gems to convert to gold or to run CoF P1 9999999x times! Everything in this game rely on farm gold! ugh

Please, i’m so tired of getting junk from everything! I just want some money, just some!

This is being changed next patch, please wait for that before whining.

I’ve never had any issue with the drops. You don’t have to farm, just relax and take your time.

GW2 approaches D3 in terms of a lack of a sense of reward for play. I remember in D3 feeling like I was driving a double-wide trash truck around the maps, sometimes bobbing and weaving and sometimes up on two wheels driving sideways. But, always picking up the trash and wondering why the mobs even would carry such trash. And, also wondering why I, the player, had to pick up the trash. Couldn’t they find an NPC to do this?

emikochan.8504:

This is being changed next patch, please wait for that before whining.

I’ve never had any issue with the drops. You don’t have to farm, just relax and take your time.

I’m not “whining”, i’m talking about a serious problem in this game, the insane lack of worth drops and this RNG crap. If you like to get junk for reward, good for you.

Also, just because the RNG favors you, this doesn’t mean that the loot is not completely broken in the game, there is a LOT of people complaining about the junk loot, try to search in the forum before saying stupid things, pal.

""I get rares and lodestones, oh, the loot is so good, i don’t know what you guys are talking about!""

Give me a break.

I once felt this way, then I got off PermaDR and for the first time in months I get a lodestone from Orrian boxes. Just wait your turn.

In other MMO’s, the only valuable loot I remember was the BoP drops from dungeon or raid bosses, or an extremely infrequent epic drop from raid trash. These drops were replaced in GW2 with tokens. In the other games, I might get loot piece x on the first run, or never. In GW2, I can get the chest piece I want after 6 dungeon paths. Slower than being lucky over there, but a sure thing here.

Again, in those other MMO’s, the stuff that dropped in the open world was usually vendor trash. The one exception I remember was cloth, that could be sold. All other crafting mats had to be harvested. GW2 open world drops are better than those in most other games I’ve played.

Imho, Magic Find was a terrible idea. It was/is a tax on farming. Also, in conjunction with rapid spawns of large numbers of higher-level-than-you mobs, coupled with the ability to tag virtually all of them, MF allowed people to get a taste of better drops (quantity and quality) than I’ve ever seen in any online game. That quantity and quality of drops from event farming with MF raised expectations so that anything else looks bad.

OP is absolutely right, something the die hard ANet apologists just can´t allow themselves to admit.

Loot is horrible because ANet is horrible at policing the gold farmers.
Another reason is simply the fact that rich players don´t need to buy Gems for real money anymore.

So they are a net-loss by using up valuable sever resources without paying a dime for it.
At least for the shortsighted bean-counters.
The simple fact that empty servers are even worse than rich players somehow seems to be hard to grasp in an accounting spreadsheet.

IndigoSundown.5419:

In other MMO’s, the only valuable loot I remember was the BoP drops from dungeon or raid bosses, or an extremely infrequent epic drop from raid trash. These drops were replaced in GW2 with tokens. In the other games, I might get loot piece x on the first run, or never. In GW2, I can get the chest piece I want after 6 dungeon paths. Slower than being lucky over there, but a sure thing here.

Again, in those other MMO’s, the stuff that dropped in the open world was usually vendor trash. The one exception I remember was cloth, that could be sold. All other crafting mats had to be harvested. GW2 open world drops are better than those in most other games I’ve played.

Imho, Magic Find was a terrible idea. It was/is a tax on farming. Also, in conjunction with rapid spawns of large numbers of higher-level-than-you mobs, coupled with the ability to tag virtually all of them, MF allowed people to get a taste of better drops (quantity and quality) than I’ve ever seen in any online game. That quantity and quality of drops from event farming with MF raised expectations so that anything else looks bad.

QFE , the loot in gw2 is way better than every other game, just look at what you are actually getting.

When I played wow it took months to get geared – sometimes longer, look at headmaster’s charge, the only survival staff pre raiding 1/200 dropchance..

and there was no crafting option, no trading post. It was dungeons for BoP gear or nothing.

In gw2 you can work towards the best gear without rng. The skins are optional.

IndigoSundown.5419:

In other MMO’s, the only valuable loot I remember was the BoP drops from dungeon or raid bosses, or an extremely infrequent epic drop from raid trash. These drops were replaced in GW2 with tokens. In the other games, I might get loot piece x on the first run, or never. In GW2, I can get the chest piece I want after 6 dungeon paths. Slower than being lucky over there, but a sure thing here.

Again, in those other MMO’s, the stuff that dropped in the open world was usually vendor trash. The one exception I remember was cloth, that could be sold. All other crafting mats had to be harvested. GW2 open world drops are better than those in most other games I’ve played.

Imho, Magic Find was a terrible idea. It was/is a tax on farming. Also, in conjunction with rapid spawns of large numbers of higher-level-than-you mobs, coupled with the ability to tag virtually all of them, MF allowed people to get a taste of better drops (quantity and quality) than I’ve ever seen in any online game. That quantity and quality of drops from event farming with MF raised expectations so that anything else looks bad.

No. No. No!!! There was never a single mmorpg that dropped loot as terrible as in Guild Wars 2. I know because I’ve personally played nearly all of them. F2P and P2P. Sorry, but you obviously don’t have any sort of vast mmorpg experience that you can use to support yourself here. In every mmorpg I’ve played, I could use some of the items that dropped. In Gw2? I have played over 3000 hours and jar only gotten one armor piece I could use. Sorry, but GW2 takes the cake for the worst drops in a game in the history of ever.

ITT: People who have no idea how the trading post and supply and demand work, complaining about how they rarely get anything valuable, only to come back here complaining that nothing is valuable anymore after the inevitable and unfortunate loot buffs.

Galtrix.7369:

No. No. No!!! There was never a single mmorpg that dropped loot as terrible as in Guild Wars 2. I know because I’ve personally played nearly all of them. F2P and P2P.

No. No. NO!!! You are completely wrong about everything you say!

See how opinions work?

aophts.9862:

Please, stop nerfing every place and mobs and stop forcing people to buy gems to convert to gold or to run CoF P1 9999999x times! Everything in this game rely on farm gold! ugh

CoF P1 farm is about to be killed off (finally). Buying gems to convert to gold does not create gold, it is actually a gold sink, therefore this is an unrelated tangent to the point you were trying to make.

Everything being reliant on gold could be a bit of an issue though, as having some items only dropping from specific bosses could make for a more traditional MMO grind kind of way of acquiring certain gear that some people enjoy.

If good loot drops were more common, that would simply depreciate the value of that loot, and it would no longer be “good loot drops”.

Said this in another thread,

The loot looks bad because of high tp prices on items we want,
we get trash look at price, then look at some stuff to buy and wow what a differance, yes its supply and demand but it is what makes the loot look rubbish.

emikochan.8504:

This is being changed next patch, please wait for that before whining.

So you actually believe that Arenanet is going to implement this new change without gimping it to the point that people will still run right past champions? That’s foolishness. Arenanet will change loot drops on champions, then make it so you can only get said loot once a day or something dumb like that. The end result will be that people will just continue to completely ignore champions.

Loot in this game is pathetic. I calculated out the loot drop rate after a week of spending half an hour a day specifically killing mobs in Orr for T6 mat drops (whether direct or through bags). The rate of return on it would net the total amount of mats needed for a legendary at around 2 years of playing half an hour a day (to avoid being punished for playing how I want to play, a.k.a. DR).
Yes, that time can be cut down by doing two zones for half an hour each, but I’m not interested in farming for an hour straight every day. There is no mythical “just play the game” method for obtaining the required materials for something like that. The best mats for the best skins and armor drop only in 3 or 4 zones in the entire game, and you don’t get them while leveling through places like Queensdale, Genderran Fields, etc.
As others have mentioned, loot in this game is often useless. At 70+, it’s pointless to even look at anything that isn’t orange, and good luck if you want to outfit yourself with yellows through game interaction. With all the crap on the yellow table, you’re lucky to even get a yellow drop that matches your profession.
Everything in this game is geared towards the gem store.
If you enjoy a challenge in various fighting circumstances, GW2 delivers (for most people). If you want to explore, it’s there for you, but god forbid you come to GW2 and want to craft things with materials you harvested yourself, because you are going to either grind until your fingers fall off, or spend years via “casual play”. Meanwhile your friends who like challenges or exploring are burned out on content in just a few months.

Galtrix.7369:

No. No. No!!! There was never a single mmorpg that dropped loot as terrible as in Guild Wars 2. I know because I’ve personally played nearly all of them. F2P and P2P. Sorry, but you obviously don’t have any sort of vast mmorpg experience that you can use to support yourself here. In every mmorpg I’ve played, I could use some of the items that dropped. In Gw2? I have played over 3000 hours and jar only gotten one armor piece I could use. Sorry, but GW2 takes the cake for the worst drops in a game in the history of ever.

EverQuest says “hi”.

Galtrix.7369:

No. No. No!!! There was never a single mmorpg that dropped loot as terrible as in Guild Wars 2. I know because I’ve personally played nearly all of them. F2P and P2P. Sorry, but you obviously don’t have any sort of vast mmorpg experience that you can use to support yourself here. In every mmorpg I’ve played, I could use some of the items that dropped. In Gw2? I have played over 3000 hours and jar only gotten one armor piece I could use. Sorry, but GW2 takes the cake for the worst drops in a game in the history of ever.

We aren’t going to agree about this. In the other games I’ve played (WoW, Rift, TR, Rappelz, Last Chaos, Tera, ToR — a little) gearing up was a pain in the skritt. Here, it’s quick and easy (well, except for the poster child for the I Need Something to Work For Foundation).

What does it matter if you can use the occasional drop in other games? You aren’t likely to get a full set from drops unless it’s a dungeon set. The other loot from mobs is insufficient to buy what you want from the AH/TP/WE without worrying about having no cash. Most of the gear that I wore came from quest loot.

In GW2 I sell things I gather and get as drops. With that coin I buy the gear that I want. Did you ever stop to wonder why most of the gear on the TP is so cheap? It’s because the game drops more of it than people want. Even rare gear below the ecto salvage level is very affordable.

If there’s a problem with the GW2 reward/economy system, it’s that there is relatively little that is highly-valued. Only Legendaries, precursors, Mystic Toilet recipe items valued for their scarce skin, and some of the T6 mats used to produce them sell for higher prices. High level rare gear sells for 15s and up only because of ectos or because people are throwing them 4 at a time into the toilet. This creates high demand for items and mats at the highest tier. That issue existed in every game I’ve been in (except for CoX, but that economy was a train wreck).

I farmed a ton in WoW — nearly every day (late BC through WotLK Ulduar). After a year, I had 21 gold. That amount was sufficient to buy 6-7 crafted 1st tier Wrath epics. After nearly a year in GW2 I have 350 gold. That’s after gearing 7 characters in Exotics, re-gearing 2 of them, getting 5 crafts to 400 and spending ~150 gold on gems. I farm in GW2 once or twice a week.

IndigoSundown.5419:

We aren’t going to agree about this. In the other games I’ve played (WoW, Rift, TR, Rappelz, Last Chaos, Tera, ToR — a little) gearing up was a pain in the skritt. Here, it’s quick and easy (well, except for the poster child for the I Need Something to Work For Foundation).

Maybe it’s a large difference in playstyle, but I never found gearing up in Rift to be that difficult (though it should be noted I never hit the level cap or got into raids, etc.). I was able to progress on gear via the class-specific quest rewards usually or through drops. Anything I purchased was done so via coin made by selling loot and mats. This was also my experience in Vanguard.

Neural.1824:

IndigoSundown.5419:

We aren’t going to agree about this. In the other games I’ve played (WoW, Rift, TR, Rappelz, Last Chaos, Tera, ToR — a little) gearing up was a pain in the skritt. Here, it’s quick and easy (well, except for the poster child for the I Need Something to Work For Foundation).

Maybe it’s a large difference in playstyle, but I never found gearing up in Rift to be that difficult (though it should be noted I never hit the level cap or got into raids, etc.). I was able to progress on gear via the class-specific quest rewards usually or through drops. Anything I purchased was done so via coin made by selling loot and mats. This was also my experience in Vanguard.

Maybe so. I did find Rift easier to gear up in than WoW, which was in turn easier than the F2P grinders.

In Rift, when I got my mage to cap (50 at the time) I was able to buy three of the epic crafted pieces. That, plus buying the faster mount (at whatever level it was available) took almost all of the gold I’d accumulated while leveling. That still left me in mostly mid-40’s quest greens. My first character to 80 in GW2 was able to buy rares (equivalent of Rift/WoW blues) for every slot, and get Exotics within 2-3 weeks.

I won’t speak to what Rift is like now. I haven’t played it — except for yesterday — in about two years.

Neural.1824:

emikochan.8504:

This is being changed next patch, please wait for that before whining.

So you actually believe that Arenanet is going to implement this new change without gimping it to the point that people will still run right past champions?

I said, please wait for that before whining, because whining before you even know what is changing, is pointless.

Also you don’t just get the mats, you get gold from anything you looted that wasn’t the mats, which you can use to buy more mats.

If you want to grind every last little piece you’re insane.

In other games you couldn’t get a legendary solo either.

There are legitimate reasons to nerf things. When something is horrifically out of whack with the rest of the game, then it trivializes content elsewhere, and suddenly the whole metagame revolves around those small areas of the game; also the economy gets flooded and everything has no value especially when things can be generated out of thin air. However, someone would argue it happened regardless.

Indeed, when people ask whether something is viable or not; they care not if it’s a good build in various aspects of the game, but rather a build that will let them earn quick cash and every other build/class is just “objectively” inferior and nub bait.

However, it seems that the main reason is to protect the economy and thus the gem store at the expense of the players. By limiting the gold accessible to a player, it may encourage them to buy it. That’s why I found the d3 comparison kinda sad, because that was a game that completely destroyed its gameplay integrity for the sake of their own cash shop. I once remarked in d3 that one was not a hero, but a sweatshop laborer.

Fortunately, Gw2 doesn’t have the mandatory steep vertical progression that gates content, so it is somewhat saved from such a fate. However, one does have to be wary when protecting the economy is worth worsening the gameplay experience itself.

In the end, the excessive reliance of RNG has made quite a few players unhappy. The RNG IS working as intended, and well, it’s not pretty.

Thus, I’ll give you what I feel the formula is for a terrible game, and hope Gw2 never becomes like this:

Constant Vertical Progression + Excessive RNG Elements+ Grind Requirements + Poor Risk/Reward Ratio + constant nerfing of new player created builds = shallow game play that minimizes the relevance of skill and focused around the best way to cut corners in the easiest and fastest area of the game with a focus on cash shop goods and ultimately = content gating = terrible gameplay. Gw2 is missing one of these, thankfully for now…

It’s interesting that people think the rewards are what the game should be played for.

It’s kinda sad that people don’t really play to have fun, just to get stuff.

I wonder how many of those posting in this topic would play Guild Wars 2 at all if it had no items or gold. Just the experience of playing the game, without any kind of reward.

emikochan.8504:

Also you don’t just get the mats, you get gold from anything you looted that wasn’t the mats, which you can use to buy more mats.

If you want to grind every last little piece you’re insane.

In other games you couldn’t get a legendary solo either.

Then perhaps I am insane.

While I found gearing-up in Rift and Vanguard to be easier due to quest rewards being relevant to character class, level, and so on, I have always been a crafting person.
In Vanguard, I got my armor from quests or trading, but I made all my weapons from scratch (save for the materials you needed to craft with that you had to buy, kinda like you can’t find lumps of coal in GW2).
In Rift, having multiple characters, I have each of them leveled in their professions to match the levels I require to make armor and weapons for any of them that need it, and I gather the materials for it.
In Eve, I’ve mined the materials for a few hundred ships ranging from frigates to battleships, along with 2 Orcas, 2 freighters, and a Rorqual. With the exception of Megacyte and Zydrine which can only be found in decent quantity outside of high/low-sec areas, everything else was mined.

So maybe I am insane, but that is where I find enjoyment in games. For me, it’s all about the challenge of facing an open world to obtain the resources needed to create/build an objective. I think the only time I’ve ever really deviated from that was in Rift when I ran dailies and various quests in order to get a Nebula mount.

Last year I read about GW2 and the way crafting was done here. I read about nodes not being first-come-first-harvest like many other games. I dropped $50 or whatever it was, and for a few weeks was very happy with the way the game was going. Then the nerfing started. All in the name of stopping bots and gold sellers. GW2 quickly became a typical grinder game in that respect. Now, instead of “just playing” when I log in, I farm/grind for mats for half an hour, then do something else once I notice I’m being punished for playing my way.

Am I burned out? No. Far from it, but I am burned in general. Arenanet has some clinically obsessed person running their monetization group, and everything in the game is tailored to gem store sales. This is compounded by the incredibly not large selection of items to be purchased there. The only other game I’ve played that had such a tiny store was Eve, and that’s because they listen to their players and the players did not want a store. To their credit, Arenanet does appear to be making an effort to expand the gem-store item availability, at least for armor skins, but they needed to hit the market on opening day with a lot more than they have now. Still, this doesn’t take away from the overall feeling that the mentality behind the gem store is that people can be forced to spend money, where-as other games run on the philosophy of enticing people to spend money.

Erasculio.2914:

It’s interesting that people think the rewards are what the game should be played for.

It’s kinda sad that people don’t really play to have fun, just to get stuff.

I wonder how many of those posting in this topic would play Guild Wars 2 at all if it had no items or gold. Just the experience of playing the game, without any kind of reward.

A lot of people may play/have played GW2 for the fun. The question then becomes, “How many times will people repeat the same content just for fun, and at what point for them does it get old?” MMO players — well, some of them — expect their MMO to hold them for many thousands of hours of play. And they’ll “finish” a month of content programming in a few hours.

I’ve yet to see a realistic suggestion for keeping the interest of a diverse player-base, some with the time and inclination to throw many hours a day at their game, without relying on rewards. It’s fine to bemoan the state of MMO’s which rely on rewards to hold player interest. I’ve seen a lot of suggestions for “more engaging content.” Heck, I’ve made some of them. But “more engaging content” will not stand up to player demands — programmers cannot program fast enough.

GW2’s B2P business plan was the ideal vehicle for a game model based on providing engaging content “when it’s ready.” Players could log on or not as it suited them. However, players who aren’t playing aren’t likely to buy gems, and some players won’t stand for having to find something else to do with their time.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Galtrix.7369:

No. No. No!!! There was never a single mmorpg that dropped loot as terrible as in Guild Wars 2. I know because I’ve personally played nearly all of them. F2P and P2P. Sorry, but you obviously don’t have any sort of vast mmorpg experience that you can use to support yourself here. In every mmorpg I’ve played, I could use some of the items that dropped. In Gw2? I have played over 3000 hours and jar only gotten one armor piece I could use. Sorry, but GW2 takes the cake for the worst drops in a game in the history of ever.

We aren’t going to agree about this. In the other games I’ve played (WoW, Rift, TR, Rappelz, Last Chaos, Tera, ToR — a little) gearing up was a pain in the skritt. Here, it’s quick and easy (well, except for the poster child for the I Need Something to Work For Foundation).

What does it matter if you can use the occasional drop in other games? You aren’t likely to get a full set from drops unless it’s a dungeon set. The other loot from mobs is insufficient to buy what you want from the AH/TP/WE without worrying about having no cash. Most of the gear that I wore came from quest loot.

In GW2 I sell things I gather and get as drops. With that coin I buy the gear that I want. Did you ever stop to wonder why most of the gear on the TP is so cheap? It’s because the game drops more of it than people want. Even rare gear below the ecto salvage level is very affordable.

If there’s a problem with the GW2 reward/economy system, it’s that there is relatively little that is highly-valued. Only Legendaries, precursors, Mystic Toilet recipe items valued for their scarce skin, and some of the T6 mats used to produce them sell for higher prices. High level rare gear sells for 15s and up only because of ectos or because people are throwing them 4 at a time into the toilet. This creates high demand for items and mats at the highest tier. That issue existed in every game I’ve been in (except for CoX, but that economy was a train wreck).

I farmed a ton in WoW — nearly every day (late BC through WotLK Ulduar). After a year, I had 21 gold. That amount was sufficient to buy 6-7 crafted 1st tier Wrath epics. After nearly a year in GW2 I have 350 gold. That’s after gearing 7 characters in Exotics, re-gearing 2 of them, getting 5 crafts to 400 and spending ~150 gold on gems. I farm in GW2 once or twice a week.

No offense, but you have some serious L2P issues if you only earned 21 gold after a year. And please read the bold letters in your post. Think about it for 5 or 10 minutes. The gear on the TP is so cheap because nobody gives a single flying crap about blues/greens/rares unless they’re Mystic Forging them. If a blue drops? “Oh look! More junk that I can sell for 10 copper”. If a green drops? “Oh fantastic! More garbage to vendor for a silver”.

In WoW, there was relatively little that dropped that I couldn’t sell or make a profit of. And level 30’s+ rarely, and I mean very rarely ever dropped grey or white garbage like I get in GW2 every single monster I kill. Seriously, the item levels should scale with the level of the character, and instead, I get level 14 blues in Ascalonian Catacombs. I never would’ve dreamed of Blizzard being that inconsiderate to their players.

And let me clarify: when I said that I get drops that I can equip in WoW, that was just an example. What my point actually is is that the drops in WoW are altogether more valuable than in GW2. I never farmed in WoW and I had more money than most people in the game. I made that money by selling gear I found from dungeons or from killing monsters. It wasn’t rare that I actually got some armor that was valuable. In Guild Wars 2 I’d be lucky to get an exotic drop. Do you know that it took me 3000+ hours to get my first exotic drop? That’s kittening unbelievable and the RNG in this game makes me want to throw my laptop in pure, incessant fury. If I put the amount of hours into WoW that I had into this game, I’d have at least 100 times the rewards I have in Guild Wars 2.

This isn’t an opinion. The drops are definitely worse than in any mmorpg ever made. Sure, you can make some profit, like you were saying you did, but that’s based on a broken RNG system that is so unbelievably broken that it’s almost beyond repair. You probably got more exotic drops than me, and that’s how you made your money. I can’t make money because I’m convinced that Anet tagged my account with .00001% chance to get an exotic. So congratulations on being lucky and getting drops, because the majority of the players experience no drop rate on exotics like I do, and I foresee masses leaving Guild Wars 2 and flocking to the next best mmo.

IndigoSundown.5419:

GW2’s B2P business plan was the ideal vehicle for a game model based on providing engaging content “when it’s ready.” Players could log on or not as it suited them. However, players who aren’t playing aren’t likely to buy gems, and some players won’t stand for having to find something else to do with their time.

ArenaNet’s current strategy of releasing new content every two weeks would actually be perfect for this. It doesn’t really matter if the content is played by in one day – if everyone logs in at least for a day every two weeks, it’s already exposure to the Gem Store, and it’s enough to keep the game in players’ minds.

Galtrix.7369:

You probably got more exotic drops than me, and that’s how you made your money. I can’t make money because I’m convinced that Anet tagged my account with .00001% chance to get an exotic.

Uh… That’s not how most people make money. If you think the only way to make money is by getting an exotic, you are ignoring how people really make money, as far as open world drops are concerned – by selling everything else. Selling all blues and greens you get would be enough to get money to buy an exotic.

emikochan.8504:

This is being changed next patch, please wait for that before whining.

hehehehehehehhhh….

The RNG part isn’t.
(IOW: drop RATES will STILL SUCK… and most ppl will stay in Queensdale to get ’em)

They nerf the drops so people have to spend real cash in the gem shop to buy stuff. Smart from a business standpoint till it backfires and people get sick of it and move on to a different game which atm there really isn’t one. I like being able to farm stuff I need vs having to spend real cash. Doesn’t quite feel the same when you whip out the credit card and buy yourself to uberness.

This game actually has the worst drop rate chances out of any MMO I’ve played in over 10 years. At least in the other MMOs, you actually could farm stuff you need. In about 2300 hours and 11 months I’ve never seen a precursor drop and the amount of exotics I’ve seen drop can be counted on 2 hands. Pretty kitten poor if you ask me.

Galtrix.7369:

This isn’t an opinion. The drops are definitely worse than in any mmorpg ever made. Sure, you can make some profit, like you were saying you did, but that’s based on a broken RNG system that is so unbelievably broken that it’s almost beyond repair. You probably got more exotic drops than me, and that’s how you made your money. I can’t make money because I’m convinced that Anet tagged my account with .00001% chance to get an exotic. So congratulations on being lucky and getting drops, because the majority of the players experience no drop rate on exotics like I do, and I foresee masses leaving Guild Wars 2 and flocking to the next best mmo.

Exotic drops? Me? My drop rate for exotics is not significantly different from yours. I’ve gotten 2 from mobs, 3 or 4 from the meta chests. That’s across +/- 1800 hours played. All but 2 of them were sold for less than 2 gold each. One (Adam) is waiting for my 2nd necromancer to get to 80. The other was salvaged for a rune that sold for ~6 gold.

I make money mostly from selling mats on the TP. Drops at max level? If it’s white or blue metal or wood, I salvage it. If it’s green, or white/blue cloth or leather, I sell it for the coins. Lower level drops get salvaged or vendored depending on my knowledge of the current prices on mats — although leather items in general, it’s usually better to sell the item over salvaging. A 1.5 hour trip through Orr nets me anywhere from 2 to 7 gold depending on RNG from the HMB’s. That’s with killing most everything that gets in my way.

Gold drops? I salvage these rare drops and bank the ecto rather than selling them. The exceptions to this are daggers and greatswords, which I sell for anywhere from 30-40 silver each — doubtless headed for the MT. Regardless, absent meta chests, I don’t often get a rare.

As to WoW… perhaps we played at different times, on different servers, I don’t know how to account for it. I do know I have a bad taste in my mouth when I think about drops in it and most other MMO’s. In a year played in WoW I got two blue drops that were worth something. The greens were selling half the time for so little above vendor price that it wasn’t worth the bag space to hold onto them. The only epic drops I ever got were from dungeon/raid bosses. Those had to pass the RNG from the boss test, and I usually had to be the only one wanting them, as our guild used RNG rather than DKP.

Look, I’m not saying that drops in GW2 are great. I just don’t think they’re as bad as I’ve seen elsewhere. I’d like to see:

• MF done away with completely
• Drop tables buffed so that the rates now enjoyed by people with moderately high MF could be enjoyed by everyone
• Exotics drop (without MF) with about the frequency golds dropped in GW (It was a rare week when I didn’t see 3 to 4 in normal mode play, with a higher rate in hard mode)

I’m not sure what those changes would do to the value of those drops, though. Would exotic become the new “rare?” Greater supply would certainly have some impact on value, especially with exotics about to be devalued. That last is a real concern. If the promised Ascended drops are an order of rarity higher than exotic is now, I’ll never see one — and likely you won’t either, if you stick around.

I’ve never had any issue with the drops. You don’t have to farm, just relax and take your time.[/quote]

My problem is you CAN’T farm. There really is no choice to it. Some days when I got a few hours to kill, i’d like to be able to pop a movie on my tv or second monitor and just relax by mindlessly farming mobs that are known to drop X mat which I might need but I can’t since the drop rate is so horrible, that even with full MF gear and food, it is more productive to run cof p1 500 times a day and just buy the mats I need. So really it boils down to if you need a precursor or mats or anything requiring gold, you got 2 choices, run cof p1 till you puke or bust out the credit card buy gold in the form of gems.

This changes with the patch but only in the fact now I can’t even farm cof p1 for quick cash. The drop rates are still gonna be ridiculous but I guess we’ll see.

Erasculio.2914:

IndigoSundown.5419:

GW2’s B2P business plan was the ideal vehicle for a game model based on providing engaging content “when it’s ready.” Players could log on or not as it suited them. However, players who aren’t playing aren’t likely to buy gems, and some players won’t stand for having to find something else to do with their time.

ArenaNet’s current strategy of releasing new content every two weeks would actually be perfect for this. It doesn’t really matter if the content is played by in one day – if everyone logs in at least for a day every two weeks, it’s already exposure to the Gem Store, and it’s enough to keep the game in players’ minds.

Now, if the Living Story were to live up to its name and consistently give me the feeling I’m playing through a story, and if the focus of the content was regularly something in addition to bread (the scarce cosmetic item) and circuses (mini-games and/or press F 150 times)…

You’re not supposed to get drops that you want from mobs, you’re supposed to get stuff you can sell on the TP to make the money you need to buy the stuff you want, just like D3. Still confused how people don’t get it.

Sauzo.6821:

I’ve never had any issue with the drops. You don’t have to farm, just relax and take your time.

My problem is you CAN’T farm. There really is no choice to it. Some days when I got a few hours to kill, i’d like to be able to pop a movie on my tv or second monitor and just relax by mindlessly farming mobs that are known to drop X mat which I might need but I can’t since the drop rate is so horrible, that even with full MF gear and food, it is more productive to run cof p1 500 times a day and just buy the mats I need. So really it boils down to if you need a precursor or mats or anything requiring gold, you got 2 choices, run cof p1 till you puke or bust out the credit card buy gold in the form of gems.

This changes with the patch but only in the fact now I can’t even farm cof p1 for quick cash. The drop rates are still gonna be ridiculous but I guess we’ll see.[/quote]

i would like to know what mats that are so hard to get that in the timespane of a movie(1 hour and 45min or there about) could make more gold doing cof1 to buy mats instead of killing mobs to get the mats (unless its not t5-6 mats you need) as they should be fairly easy to get killing mobs the right places

and drop rates in wow where a hell lot worse if you begin looking at it as you have karma for exotics and you have drops and dungeons for it to, in wow if you should have best in slot(latest tier) and needed a full set i would say you needed to be happy if you got it in a month(4 resets) as wow had once a week bosses to kill instead of once a day(tho they also had them)

Neural.1824:

stuff

Yes I love gathering materials for stuff too, but you didn’t gather the minerals for a titan on your own. I built my first myrmidon from scratch, it was great.

I’ve farmed up half my exotics (and all my deadspace fit), I didn’t farm up a legendary (and I bought the parts for my proteus). Do you see what I mean?

I would call anyone that tried to build a capital solo insane :P

arctorius.3025:

You’re not supposed to get drops that you want from mobs, you’re supposed to get stuff you can sell on the TP to make the money you need to buy the stuff you want, just like D3. Still confused how people don’t get it.

Not saying you’re wrong…..just curious where you came up with that? Is it opinion, or a statement about the game design from Anet?

Erasculio.2914:

It’s interesting that people think the rewards are what the game should be played for.

It’s kinda sad that people don’t really play to have fun, just to get stuff.

I wonder how many of those posting in this topic would play Guild Wars 2 at all if it had no items or gold. Just the experience of playing the game, without any kind of reward.

But you’re trying to dictate what everyone considers “fun”. People value things differently. In this discussion, there is no right or wrong, only perception and opinion.

emikochan.8504:

Neural.1824:

stuff

Yes I love gathering materials for stuff too, but you didn’t gather the minerals for a titan on your own. I built my first myrmidon from scratch, it was great.

I’ve farmed up half my exotics (and all my deadspace fit), I didn’t farm up a legendary (and I bought the parts for my proteus). Do you see what I mean?

I would call anyone that tried to build a capital solo insane :P

If you want, I can send you the spreadsheet for the Rorqual I built :P

Skill, time, dedication to the reward ratio is extremely bad, everyone knows that. But if gold is the your main goal and you want to farm for it… Climb yourself up to fotm 40+. When I hit fotm 41 I ended up with around 200g+ so ye..

aophts.9862:

I don’t understand why the loot in this game is so, so horrible! You kill tons of mobs (incuding vets and champs), you do dungeons and FoTM and 85-90% of the loot is only JUNK or some useless thing like silk scrap or white itens. Why you guys nerf every place so freaking much? Why i can’t acquire some nice cores or lodestones or T6 mats and rares, seriously, all this RNG/lottery crap is disgusting!

Please, stop nerfing every place and mobs and stop forcing people to buy gems to convert to gold or to run CoF P1 9999999x times! Everything in this game rely on farm gold! ugh

Please, i’m so tired of getting junk from everything! I just want some money, just some!

Reserve judgement for next patch ^^…have fun and good luck…and I agree with you, bring back old Orr [drop rate, events, etc]

d3 does not allow you to obtain max stats items easily.

Raine.1394:

GW2 approaches D3 in terms of a lack of a sense of reward for play. I remember in D3 feeling like I was driving a double-wide trash truck around the maps, sometimes bobbing and weaving and sometimes up on two wheels driving sideways. But, always picking up the trash and wondering why the mobs even would carry such trash. And, also wondering why I, the player, had to pick up the trash. Couldn’t they find an NPC to do this?

You know, there’s always this thing nagging in the back of my head whenever I read a topic like this. The thing is this:

Aren’t things valuable because they are rare?

It is an issue I’ve seen in a lot of MMOs where people want the rare, powerful equipment, but they want this rare and powerful equipment to be really common and easy to get. But then, that rare and powerful equipment is now extremely common, and since everyone has the equipment, it isn’t powerful anymore. It is no longer valuable.

The insane rarity of tier 6 crafting materials, I can understand to some degree. When I was trying to make an ascended backpack, I killed polar bears, skelks, and ice worms for vicious fangs, and after a few hours I barely received anything. Eventually I just gave up and bought the ingredients for a backpack later. And that isn’t the most expensive stuff some people have to buy.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

d3 does not allow you to obtain max stats items easily.

Raine.1394:

GW2 approaches D3 in terms of a lack of a sense of reward for play. I remember in D3 feeling like I was driving a double-wide trash truck around the maps, sometimes bobbing and weaving and sometimes up on two wheels driving sideways. But, always picking up the trash and wondering why the mobs even would carry such trash. And, also wondering why I, the player, had to pick up the trash. Couldn’t they find an NPC to do this?

D3 is actually more rewarding than Guild Wars 2 now. I got on for the first time in months and received more in 10 minutes of gaming than I did in 2 months in GW2.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/august-06-2013/

Bonus Rewards for Dungeons
Each day when you finish a unique path for any explorable or story dungeon, you’ll receive a bonus reward for completion—1 to 3 gold for explorable dungeons depending on their length and difficulty, 50 silver for story dungeons. Guaranteed coin rewards that previously dropped from bosses in dungeons have been removed in lieu of these new rewards for dungeon completion; all other drops off of bosses have not been changed. Now you have even more incentive for braving the hazards of the dungeons of Tyria!

Champion Loot Updates
All of the champions in the game will now award a new bonus loot bag upon their death if you qualify for loot rewards on that boss when it is killed. These bags have a chance to contain rare crafting materials, items that award skill points, and more!

Coming August 6th. 48 hours. -.- At least wait and see.

dargosian.2704:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/august-06-2013/

Bonus Rewards for Dungeons
Each day when you finish a unique path for any explorable or story dungeon, you’ll receive a bonus reward for completion—1 to 3 gold for explorable dungeons depending on their length and difficulty, 50 silver for story dungeons. Guaranteed coin rewards that previously dropped from bosses in dungeons have been removed in lieu of these new rewards for dungeon completion; all other drops off of bosses have not been changed. Now you have even more incentive for braving the hazards of the dungeons of Tyria!

Champion Loot Updates
All of the champions in the game will now award a new bonus loot bag upon their death if you qualify for loot rewards on that boss when it is killed. These bags have a chance to contain rare crafting materials, items that award skill points, and more!

Coming August 6th. 48 hours. -.- At least wait and see.

Eh, the dungeon bonus rewards just replaced CoF part 1. That didn’t really “improve” rewards, all it did was change them.

I can’t speak for the Champion loot though, because I honestly have no idea what that will be like. Hopefully it will drop some good materials that I can use or sell for a decent price. This will probably inspire some more zergs in Queensdale though, which is a big negative.

I see nothing in this game has changed for the better. Color me surprised.

Galtrix.7369:

This isn’t an opinion. The drops are definitely worse than in any mmorpg ever made.

. . . EverQuest. “Common” rare spawn loot which was useless by the time you could earn it, for instance. Or worse . . . trying for quest pieces ruled by RNG both for spawn and drop rate.

. . . OR EARLIER, Ultima Online. Where half the drops on a enemy monster body would rot because it wasn’t worth the weight.

Or earlier, Meridian 59, where there would often-camped rooms with tons of stuff on the floor. All not worth the weight to haul it to a merchant.

emikochan.8504:

QFE , the loot in gw2 is way better than every other game, just look at what you are actually getting.

When I played wow it took months to get geared – sometimes longer, look at headmaster’s charge, the only survival staff pre raiding 1/200 dropchance..

and there was no crafting option, no trading post. It was dungeons for BoP gear or nothing.

In gw2 you can work towards the best gear without rng. The skins are optional.

You are incorrect. There are many other games with better loot systems. Just because you played wow a long time ago, doesn’t mean you have a clue about other games. Besides as far as I know there is an Auction House in WoW.

Also lots of games have crafting.

In GW2 you cannot get the best gear without rng. The skins are actually more the point here and the only stats improvement is ascended gear and that is not loot…that just means logging in 30-40 mins a day doing stuff that any idiot can do. That’s not rewarding effort but rewarding attendance.

I think GW2 is ideal for people who are lazy, dumb and entitled. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying everybody playing the game is like that but if you are lazy, dumb and entitled, this game caters to you.

Meh
I have never thought that GW2 was particularly about loot.

I like the fact that we have almost no inflation after almost a year.
the “good loot” is cosmetic anyway
You can gear yourself easily anything after that is based on personal taste.
People just seem to think that they must have whatever cosmetic they want asap.

I would like to see more unique skins tied to specific bosses, events or regions just to mix it up.
Crafting recipes, materials and the like.
I am curious to see how the patch will address this

The problem is that people have this strange idea ( to me) of reward vs time spent, this is at the root of the loot complaints.
It is like people think if they don’t make x gold an hour the system is broken.

I honestly don’t know where that idea comes from- do you play single player RPG’s for the loot or the game?
RPG’s in my experience have very rarely been about loot.

Korsbaek.9803:

Sauzo.6821:

I’ve never had any issue with the drops. You don’t have to farm, just relax and take your time.

My problem is you CAN’T farm. There really is no choice to it. Some days when I got a few hours to kill, i’d like to be able to pop a movie on my tv or second monitor and just relax by mindlessly farming mobs that are known to drop X mat which I might need but I can’t since the drop rate is so horrible, that even with full MF gear and food, it is more productive to run cof p1 500 times a day and just buy the mats I need. So really it boils down to if you need a precursor or mats or anything requiring gold, you got 2 choices, run cof p1 till you puke or bust out the credit card buy gold in the form of gems.

This changes with the patch but only in the fact now I can’t even farm cof p1 for quick cash. The drop rates are still gonna be ridiculous but I guess we’ll see.

i would like to know what mats that are so hard to get that in the timespane of a movie(1 hour and 45min or there about) could make more gold doing cof1 to buy mats instead of killing mobs to get the mats (unless its not t5-6 mats you need) as they should be fairly easy to get killing mobs the right places

and drop rates in wow where a hell lot worse if you begin looking at it as you have karma for exotics and you have drops and dungeons for it to, in wow if you should have best in slot(latest tier) and needed a full set i would say you needed to be happy if you got it in a month(4 resets) as wow had once a week bosses to kill instead of once a day(tho they also had them)[/quote]

@Korsbaek
Well for example let’s start with charged lodestones. A lot of recipes need those yet you can not realistically farm for them. You have to run fast money making dungeons like CoF P1 and then buy them off the TP. Also T6 mats, any of them. The mobs that drop them have such a crappy drop rate on them that if you tried to farm 250 of em, it could take you 2 weeks. Now yes you can just run CoF P1 all day and make the cash to buy the T6 mats but that seems to be pretty much the only answer to any way of acquiring anything in this game…run CoF P1 all day everyday. I personally like to vary it up by farming X mobs for awhile and then maybe switch you Y mobs but unless you want to take 1 year to get your mats, you are again stuck with CoF P1. And sometimes I just don’t feel like running dungeons.

I mean maybe I’m missing something but I’ve crafted 2 legendaries, Sunrise and Kudzu, and both precursors were bought by farming the bejebus out of CoF P1. Exotics if they ever do drop 90% of the time sell for less than 2g each and any mats other than maybe Heavy bags from Orr are almost as rare as rares and exotics.

Then there is the whole DR which is ancient now since it was implemented to stop gold sellers which I guess it did but it hurts the average guy who wants to spend a couple hours farming on a weekend when the wife is out since like I said above, drop rates are already scaled so far to nonexistent that DR is like salt in the wound.

And as for precursors, here is food for thought. Now I know a lot don’t sell their precursors since they want to make the weapon but look at what’s up for sale. Now I’ve been told that the TP is both for NA servers and EU servers. If that is true, then you look at precursors and between ALL the servers, there are like 10-14 of a specific precursor up for sale. Now add in how many people are just holding(no way of knowing) and regardless that is pretty freakin low imo. Now yes, rares should be rare but there is a point where rare becomes a pipe dream and when it’s so hard that it becomes discouraging, people will just quit and find something else to do. And since for most i’m gonna guess a legendary is their last thing to do, that can get so discouraging that they just leave. I mean not like their is a monthly fee where you gotta play to feel like you are getting your moneys worth. Anyways, enough rambling.

Morrigan.2809:

Meh
I have never thought that GW2 was particularly about loot.

I like the fact that we have almost no inflation after almost a year.
the “good loot” is cosmetic anyway
You can gear yourself easily anything after that is based on personal taste.
People just seem to think that they must have whatever cosmetic they want asap.

I would like to see more unique skins tied to specific bosses, events or regions just to mix it up.
Crafting recipes, materials and the like.
I am curious to see how the patch will address this

The problem is that people have this strange idea ( to me) of reward vs time spent, this is at the root of the loot complaints.
It is like people think if they don’t make x gold an hour the system is broken.

I honestly don’t know where that idea comes from- do you play single player RPG’s for the loot or the game?
RPG’s in my experience have very rarely been about loot.

This whole game is really just cosmetics, from the stuff for sale in the gem store to the fact that you could run any dungeon in blue gear if you know what you are doing. The problem is Anet seems to be going the way of a money grab by making you purchase black lion keys from the gem store to be able to get the nifty skins. Look at the keys, they pretty much removed them or at the very least made their drop rate very low thus reinforcing my thought of the money grab system.

I personally don’t really tie reward vs time spent since I play for fun as well but once you do pretty much everything(dungeon master title, world exploration on multiple toons, multiple 80s, max crafting on all crafts, dungeon armor set from every dungeon) you log in to do a specific thing like say farm up 100 charged lodestones. Then it does become reward vs time spent unless you just log in to do your daily, maybe catch a round of daily dragons and then log off to do something else.

I do come from the mindset of reward vs time spent though since my first MMO was EQ1 which I was in hardcore raid guilds and then I would just do the same with each new MMO as we moved over to conquer more/new content. I know GW2 is not like that but hard to break that mindset after so many years

I don’t mind the good stuff taking awhile to get. Just give us ways of getting it ingame other than a credit card on the gem store or running 1 or 2 dungeons to make the cash(CoF P1, SE P1, SE P3). Hopefully this patch will open up more fun and diverse ways of earning cash and mats.

I also build up materials to sell or I up their tier in mystic forge to sell them. Essentially it is not about drops as a total. The problem I see is the balance between the various ways to make money. Crafting, gathering materials, selling drops, and gold from foes should all balance out. I know there are ideas about what is intended as normal GW2 game play and it has been suggested many times that mob grinding has been purposely hindered. If a person goes out to kill monsters in hopes of selling the drops it should provide income comparable to the guy in town crafting armor, or the person gathering the mats he needs. Market saturation would hopefully keep people from farming one thing and not moving around. The synergy forms an economy where everyone makes money doing what they enjoy. The problem with a complex problem is it practically never has an easy answer. At the current game state the bulk of profitable things to do are limited to discovering the thing very few people are doing and just monopolizing on a esoteric or overlooked income. If everyone does what makes you money it wont make you money. The various ways to make money in this game need to be synergized. If Crafters don’t make money, mats become mostly for Legendaries and only those needed for rare items are worthwhile. Whites and blues are worthless because they play no part in providing Crafters who are making many items at a loss. Your drops are average or decent just nobody needs 90% of the stuff you get as it is set up currently. I honestly think they know this and the new update coming out is trying to balance the problem.

Villious.8530:

arctorius.3025:

You’re not supposed to get drops that you want from mobs, you’re supposed to get stuff you can sell on the TP to make the money you need to buy the stuff you want, just like D3. Still confused how people don’t get it.

Not saying you’re wrong…..just curious where you came up with that? Is it opinion, or a statement about the game design from Anet?

More of an observation. It’s the best way to get what you want in the game, particularly when you factor in diminishing returns on drops from killing specific mobs. Obviously they did this because they don’t want people to farm for specific items because it would mess with the economy and people would just be farming all day. With the above system, you can continue doing whatever you want, knowing that you’re going to at least be making money to buy the items you want.

This was particularly obvious when you get into crafting. I would probably still be working on getting my disciplines to max if I wasn’t buying mats of the TP using money I got from selling mats and items that I wasn’t using.