Guild Wars 2

So I’m running with the champion zerg in Lost Shores today. Over a 45 minute stretch I see the following:

Lost Shores Player to Champion Zerg, “Gates of Arah is up.”
Champion Zerg to Lost Shores Player, “Not enough champions.”
/Champion Zerg continues zerging champaions

[sometime later]

Lost Shores Player to Champion Zerg, “Grenth is up.”
Champion Zerg to Lost Shores Player, “Not enough champions.”
/Champion Zerg continues zerging champaions

Never mind the chests or the hordes of trash mobs that drop loot or the notion that someone might need the Grenth Skill Point…just keep killing the same three champions in the same order for hours on end.

I didn’t make this post to tell anyone how to play the game or to anyone how to play the game, I’m not criticizing anyone for farming champions; I’m just making an observation. Make of it what you will (nothing is certainly an acceptable answer).

The champ boxes are the new thing, and everyone is gunning for the new weapons.

I think people will lay off when the new champ weapons get low enough in price.

Farmers take the fun out of Mmorpgs. Not sure what the solution here is, Anet must have seen this coming with the implementation of their huge champ loot. Maybr make it so that you can only get the special loot from each unique champ once a day? That might be too destructive, but I think Anet should aim for rewarding what resembles a ‘natural’ playstyle rather than allowing the ‘loot metagamers’ to chase around several easy champions in queensdale/other zone all day while ignoring the rest of the game.

*Or make champs very difficult so that they kill many players (lvl 80 too) and arent so farmable nonstop.

Perhaps randomize spawn locations and tweak spawn rates. Adjust the reward as necessary to keep the players motivated to stay, but they’ll now have downtime to make doing other activities, or chatting, a nice filler option.

Celtus.8456:

Farmers take the fun out of Mmorpgs. Not sure what the solution here is, Anet must have seen this coming with the implementation of their huge champ loot. Maybr make it so that you can only get the special loot from each unique champ once a day? That might be too destructive, but I think Anet should aim for rewarding what resembles a ‘natural’ playstyle rather than allowing the ‘loot metagamers’ to chase around several easy champions in queensdale/other zone all day while ignoring the rest of the game.

*Or make champs very difficult so that they kill many players (lvl 80 too) and arent so farmable nonstop.

Champion Karka down and kill characters left and right. The only Champ+ event where I’ve seen a higher body count was at Temple of Balthazar. If its in the open world, and players want the drops, they’ll just get a bigger zerg. I’m seeing the same thing in the Queen’s Pavilion, bodies all over the place, no one deterred.

The Queensdale zerg will taper down to closer to what it was — Southsun, I’m not so sure. T6 Mats are a bottleneck for desirable items — like Legendaries. They’re also going to become more desirable when the “convert T6 to T7” madness hits. No one’s getting T6 mats in abundance in lower level zones.

Champion farming will cease as soon as people stop paying ridiculous prices for Genesis, Entropy, and Lord Taeres’ sword. If you look on the trading post you’ll be hard pressed to find non-crafted exotics that are worth over 10g. The drop rates on these hammers are quite common (my guild has gotten over 15 in total while farming champs so far).

Celtus.8456:

Farmers take the fun out of Mmorpgs

Farmers are pretty much all the players of MMORPGs. If you are not one, you are a small minority that borders on insignificance.

GW2 would have been a better game if ArenaNet had claimed it wasn’t a MMORPG, rather something else (maybe a CORPG, like GW1). Alas, now it’s too late. Instead of players, ArenaNet got farmers. They can’t remove farmers without angering most of their playerbase.

Erasculio, I think you meant CORPG like GW1. A small typing oversight. XD
But we have to admit that GW1 had farmers too. Lots of solo farm builds in that game.

P.S. I haven’t seen your name in ages. Not since my gwonline/guru days. :O

Redfeather.6401:

Erasculio, I think you meant CORPG like GW1. A small typing oversight. XD
But we have to admit that GW1 had farmers too. Lots of solo farm builds in that game.

P.S. I haven’t seen your name in ages. Not since my gwonline/guru days. :O

Lies!!!!!!!

Thanks, I fixed it. I post here a lot, actually, but you haven’t been missing much :-P

Celtus.8456:

Farmers take the fun out of Mmorpgs. Not sure what the solution here is, Anet must have seen this coming with the implementation of their huge champ loot. Maybr make it so that you can only get the special loot from each unique champ once a day? That might be too destructive, but I think Anet should aim for rewarding what resembles a ‘natural’ playstyle rather than allowing the ‘loot metagamers’ to chase around several easy champions in queensdale/other zone all day while ignoring the rest of the game.

*Or make champs very difficult so that they kill many players (lvl 80 too) and arent so farmable nonstop.

I don’t understand this comment. Farmers here have no bearing on the events in this instance. If the farmers were not farming the champs it doesn’t mean they would be helping with the events. Just pretend the farmers are not there and boom personal problem solved. They are not effecting you unless you choose to let them effect you…I don’t like players farming, thus they effect me?

Essence Snow.3194:

I don’t like players farming, thus they effect me?

They do, but more indirectly than that.

We have farmers directly influencing people in Queensdale, for example, but that’s the exception rather than the rule. We have the entire negative economic impact of farmers, although they are never going to admit how they make the economy worse for everyone else.

However, the real issue is in how they change the direction of the game. ArenaNet has likely realized that more players want to farm than to play in Dynamic Events. What is the company going to do, then? Put events in the sidelines, and add more and more ways to farm. For those who wanted other kinds of content, instead of farming, this makes the game worse (than what it could have been).

Essence Snow.3194:

I don’t understand this comment. Farmers here have no bearing on the events in this instance. If the farmers were not farming the champs it doesn’t mean they would be helping with the events. Just pretend the farmers are not there and boom personal problem solved. They are not effecting you unless you choose to let them effect you…I don’t like players farming, thus they effect me?

I tend to avoid them, I am not saying their presence traumatizes/directly effects me. But I do think Anet, in striving for ‘innovation’, should perhaps avoid having their game devolve to something which neglects the other 99+% of the game world they have worked hard to create.

Erasculio.2914:

Essence Snow.3194:

I don’t like players farming, thus they effect me?

They do, but more indirectly than that.

We have farmers directly influencing people in Queensdale, for example, but that’s the exception rather than the rule. We have the entire negative economic impact of farmers, although they are never going to admit how they make the economy worse for everyone else.

However, the real issue is in how they change the direction of the game. ArenaNet has likely realized that more players want to farm than to play in Dynamic Events. What is the company going to do, then? Put events in the sidelines, and add more and more ways to farm. For those who wanted other kinds of content, instead of farming, this makes the game worse (than what it could have been).

If they want the farmers to do events simply increase rewards of the events. Make it so they do not add gold creation and bingo…farmers move to event and don’t add to inflation. But, here is a question would farmers play without the ability to farm? What I am getting at is…Some player play to farm. Without the ability to farm they simply would not play. Is it better to have players farming or not having those players at all? Prime examples of this are currently available. There are a couple of zones that have been basically empty until the influx of farmers. Are those zones better empty?

I’ve had nothing but the occasional rare and a bunch of green things in the last few days from champions. As far as I’m able to tell, exotic items have been removed from the drop table…

It’s just new. Same thing happened with world bosses. There aren’t nearly as many people doing those on my server anymore. This’ll die down too.

lunawisp.2378:

I’ve had nothing but the occasional rare and a bunch of green things in the last few days from champions. As far as I’m able to tell, exotic items have been removed from the drop table…

I can relate to this as well. Hell, I don’t think I ever got an exotic weapon or armour as a drop since I started playing (almost since the game launched). Mystic Forge, Fractals or dungeon chests? I got a handful from them (less than 10 so far). But at least you get plenty of greens and silver from the champion boxes, and they add up.

Farmers = Swarm of locusts

They’ll swarm over whatever’s the most profitable until ArenaNet decides to nerf it, then move on to the next best profitable spot. Rinse and repeat.

What Arenanet have done is remove the farming opportunity from one area of the game (CoF P1 zerker runs) and shift the emphasis onto champ giants instead. They have, in effect, enabled these people to abuse the system in the way that they never wanted it to be abused.

GG Anet.

I’ll give you a prime example of how it hinders everyone else’s ability to have a fun game… our server just had the claw of jormag come up, and we barely had enough people around to get the pre-events done. Everyone else was busy zerging champs (6 champs in 6 minutes was the word on map chat) and that was the proof in the pudding. If you said anything about the claw of jormag in map chat you were scoffed at and ridiculed for not zerging with them.

Well done Anet, you’ve turned this game into Greed Wars 2. You’ve killed one area of the game and shifted the greediness into a more prominent and obvious focus, such as being in an open, persistent world, instead of being confined to a dungeon instance. You’re effectively hampering everyone else’s ability to play their own game in an open world, and for what… all for a very rare chance at a skin?

I see zerg trains in Queensdale running from champ to champ for hours and hours straight. I expect that the majority of the players in the zerg are only there for the chance at looting the new skins.

Now, in this group of players only in the zerg for the skins, there are those who want the skins for personal use, and those who want them just to sell on the TP for gold.

As to the players of the zerg who are actually hoping to loot the skins for personal use, your time would be better spent in the Crown Pavilion zerg. After taking part in the CP zerg off and on for about a total of 4 hours over 3 days, I had ‘earned’ enough gold (85g) to buy two Rapiers off of the TP if I wanted to. And this also shows that those of the champ zerg who want the skins to sell them, you’re likely to make more gold in the CP zerg than what you might make from selling a skin if you happen to get one to drop for you.

Not to also mention the foul environment created in the Queensdale starting zone
due to the players that are farming champs getting very offensive in chat when people interrupt their champ kill order (thanks, report function).

Give the champ farmers a week and they’ll move on. In about a week, I foresee most of the new skins being worth under 5 gold on the TP, as many are already down to a gold or two and change.

Think I might spend the afternoon tomorrow in the CP zerg just to hit the 200g mark for the achievement.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

Well done Anet, you’ve turned this game into Greed Wars 2. You’ve killed one area of the game and shifted the greediness into a more prominent and obvious focus, such as being in an open, persistent world, instead of being confined to a dungeon instance. You’re effectively hampering everyone else’s ability to play their own game in an open world, and for what… all for a very rare chance at a skin?

It’s always been Greed Wars 2. Before, people were farming Plinx and that camp event in Orr. Then that got nerfed, and people moved on to farming the hell out of world bosses. Now Champions got better loot, and everyone is doing that now instead. Really, nothing has changed if you think about it.

StinVec.3621:

Not to also mention the foul environment created in the Queensdale starting zone
due to the players that are farming champs getting very offensive in chat when people interrupt their champ kill order (thanks, report function).

This has been going on in Queensdale for a while. I haven’t been back since the champion loot system was implemented, but I can imagine it’s worse than ever.

StinVec.3621:

Give the champ farmers a week and they’ll move on. In about a week, I foresee most of the new skins being worth under 5 gold on the TP, as many are already down to a gold or two and change.

Most are already under 5 gold.

That said, I don’t understand either why people farm Queensdale when there is a much more time-efficient and rewarding “Champion loop” in Frostgorge Sound (Drakkar Spurs).

This reminds me of when people used to farm Maishang…

There’s always a more efficient farm that the newb zerg doesn’t know about.
Infact there was more profitable Farm than COF-1 that’s still mostly in tact right now…

meanwhile

…I’m GLAD the champ farm n00bs aren’t touching Grenth or most of the other Temples. They took over our Gates push that we were carefully setting up the "pre"’s for last night (while waiting for the rest of our Temple Team to show up) and that REALLY kitten ed some of our regulars off.

….then again, it never would have been a problem if Anet kept a closer Eye on event Scaling … especially when squishy NPC’s we can’t control are dying instantly to some incredibly broken Champ Jesters/Nobles… (or massive Well-spam that last way longer than 10 seconds)

Waar Kijk Je Naar.8713:

StinVec.3621:

Give the champ farmers a week and they’ll move on. In about a week, I foresee most of the new skins being worth under 5 gold on the TP, as many are already down to a gold or two and change.

Most are already under 5 gold.

That said, I don’t understand either why people farm Queensdale when there is a much more time-efficient and rewarding “Champion loop” in Frostgorge Sound (Drakkar Spurs).

The two most popular weapons probably have a little before they reach the 5 gold mark, I don’t think some of them will ever reach that mark

If they nerf anything I hope they just adjust the champion scaling for events(even the ones in FG drop like flies), and non event mobs, and they may reduce the max silver reward to 3-4s.

darkace.8925:

So I’m running with the champion zerg in Lost Shores today. Over a 45 minute stretch I see the following:

Lost Shores Player to Champion Zerg, “Gates of Arah is up.”
Champion Zerg to Lost Shores Player, “Not enough champions.”
/Champion Zerg continues zerging champaions

[sometime later]

Lost Shores Player to Champion Zerg, “Grenth is up.”
Champion Zerg to Lost Shores Player, “Not enough champions.”
/Champion Zerg continues zerging champaions

---

Never mind the chests or the hordes of trash mobs that drop loot or the notion that someone might need the Grenth Skill Point…just keep killing the same three champions in the same order for hours on end.

I didn’t make this post to tell anyone how to play the game or to anyone how to play the game, I’m not criticizing anyone for farming champions; I’m just making an observation. Make of it what you will (nothing is certainly an acceptable answer).

If you think it’s bad in orr you should see queensdale. Everyone here that was in orr left because wow at the farming you can do. It’s almost a nonstop circuit of champions. Orr is empty again, and champions there are dieing almost as soon as they spawn.

well, how should I put it. Those people arn’t doing the event before, why would they do it now?

You might as well complain to every living soul logging in why they arn’t doing the CS event.

Celtus.8456:

*Or make champs very difficult so that they kill many players (lvl 80 too) and arent so farmable nonstop.

^this

But of course, it would go against the main goal of this game, which is ‘keep people hitting buttons for as many months as possible’

Just allow us to get a big chance on champion loot (at least rares should always drop) and let DR kicks in as it always did.

Right now, I dont really get anything special from champion loot.

Im tired of people guesting on multiple servers and camping Frequently spawning champs. These people are USUALLY the diehard farmers and have HORRIBLE trolly attitudes. PLEASE A COOLDOWN ON SERVER JUMPS. (I know, I know… only 2 GUESTED servers at a time, but make a COOLDOWN time between CHANGING to those servers!)

I actually achieved satori simply by abandoning the need to monitor and control others gaming habits.

It’s not like farming is such an evil thing, it’s simply what people do when they desperately want to reach a goal, they’ll put a lot of time and effort into it!

-the main problem is attitude – now that the gates of arah is fixed this really shouldn’t be a problem lol?
-the reason why people farm is because the items they want are so ridiculously priced
-people get frustrated when they see their life slipping away hour by hour farming

Not interested in these champion trains mainly because I don’t find the skins amazing enough to work towards, or throw that much gold at 8|
And also DR keeps telling me I should stop killing things in the open world that isn’t a world boss, I’ve started to listen.

lunawisp.2378:

I’ve had nothing but the occasional rare and a bunch of green things in the last few days from champions. As far as I’m able to tell, exotic items have been removed from the drop table…

How is this any different from how it has always been?

I’d like to see each champ drop on a cooldown so you have to roam through many zones to keep up the champ train.

They could just add a chest at each stage of the Grenth event which gave participating players a number of champ loot bags. That would solve it.

But, this isn;t Anet’s fault really. Its pretty much known fact that most MMO gamers don’t play for fun, they play for efficiency.

I’m a Frostgorge farmer/zergling on our server and I like it. It’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time in this game. With all this ridiculous, half-polished, buggy and often incredibly frustrating Living World content ArenaNet insists on adding every two weeks, I have found a place where I can enjoy the cameraderie of my fellow players (a cornerstone of this game, supposedly), visit an area I love the look of (all that design work paid off) and get rewarded for it. With how prohibitive this game is to amass anything worthwhile, I’m glad I (as a casual gamer with a full time job) can at least get ahead a little with my casual builds and professions.

So to those calling for nerfs to the champions, QQ more. Maybe if ArenaNet didn’t introduce the massive zergfest (AKA the Pavilion) themselves, I would have cared more for maintaining the (already effed up) economy, helping with (one pathetic reward a day) bosses, or setting foot in dungeons.

Part of me likes the zerg farming. I haven’t socialized this much in game since launch.

Raine.1394:

I actually achieved satori simply by abandoning the need to monitor and control others gaming habits.

This,
You really made me smile.

I know there are people running in circles in this game trying to get stuff over and over.
Personally I have never gotten it and never will.
As long as they are polite to other players, I don’t care what they do.

There are some people playing the game as a game for fun- I just hang out with them instead.

• add a even smaller chance (but a chance) to drop the new weapon-skins to normal mobs.
• then increase magicfind on events which haven’t been finished for a long time, the longer – the more magicfind.

—> people would go out in the world and look for hidden events (huge magicfind → more mats + higher chance than on champion lootbag to drop the skin)
—> or people farm events which have really high mob-spawns

emikochan.8504:

I’d like to see each champ drop on a cooldown so you have to roam through many zones to keep up the champ train.

I’m all for champ zerging, but I don’t see why the above suggestion isn’t in place anyway. Why do champions have to be there constantly, and respawn a mere 2 minutes after they’ve been killed? It’s not like they were being taken down before the loot change. People just ran around them because there was no reward for doing anything.
Some friends and I have taken down champions because we wanted to see if we could, but if I’m out looking for loot or materials, I skip champions. Same thing with veterans, to be honest. Their loot drop isn’t worth my time or effort, so I only kill them if they are between myself and an objective.
Of course Arenanet would read that last line and decide to put a champion in front of every single skill point, Point of Interest, and Waypoint in the game, but that’s a different issue. They think difficulty equates to loot being worth more. News flash for Arenanet: trash loot is trash loot, no matter how hard it is to get to it.

KyreneZA.8617:

I’m a Frostgorge farmer/zergling on our server and I like it. It’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time in this game. With all this ridiculous, half-polished, buggy and often incredibly frustrating Living World content ArenaNet insists on adding every two weeks, I have found a place where I can enjoy the cameraderie of my fellow players (a cornerstone of this game, supposedly), visit an area I love the look of (all that design work paid off) and get rewarded for it. With how prohibitive this game is to amass anything worthwhile, I’m glad I (as a casual gamer with a full time job) can at least get ahead a little with my casual builds and professions.

So to those calling for nerfs to the champions, QQ more. Maybe if ArenaNet didn’t introduce the massive zergfest (AKA the Pavilion) themselves, I would have cared more for maintaining the (already effed up) economy, helping with (one pathetic reward a day) bosses, or setting foot in dungeons.

This guy makes a pretty solid point too :\

Anet’s sending more mixed signals than usual lately…

Funny question of the day: Why do people farm champs?

Answer: The game has massive gold sinks but low rewards for many features of the game as well as RNG

maybe everybody is a mouth of zaithan now and hungry for shiny…
you should expect such a end in orr

Ok so first of all MMORPG’s are based around farming…so saying farmers ruin the game and such is just stupid. Not to mention that people who enjoy farming are already being shafted from every angle possible. Diminishing returns, thanks to all the bots. People complain about champ farming, instant nerf to champ drops. Guild wars has become the only MMORPG where farming is simply not as fun, fluid, profitable, and can’t be done for extended periods of time. Making money and getting rare items is the name of the game…..if you don’t like that you may need to find a new game genre, and if you really want someone to be mad at…lets rage at the bots who are destroying the economy and making the game less enjoyable for everyone! This is my take on it..with all this going on i really haven’t touched the game in over a week…to much complaining and griping everywhere you go. Anet cant satisfy everyone!

Also KyreneZA made the best point, fixing bugs and issues in content that is already available would be preferable for everyone and may encourage some of the farmers to stray from their daily routine. Ive had the same routine for almost 6 months and still run into the same bugs now i did when i started, so why not go farm where i wont have to deal with these issues?

I need to find out what drops the new dagger i realty want 2 of them!
Any way its the Pokemon effect you got to get them all or such there are ppl who play games to only get all of the items you can get. In a way these champion farming is going to get a lot of longevity to GW2 pve. Now they can just simply add a new skin to a loot table to existing mobs and ppl will go spend days trying to get it. I can see this happening to a lot of event mobs giving more reason for level 80 to go back to level low level zones just for these skins.

It’s a vicious circle.

1. Some players farm, because they are driven to chase goals in the most efficient manner.

2. Developers balance the money/mats/tokens/rng so that farmers don’t get things too quickly.

3. People who wouldn’t otherwise farm see that it will now take months worth of “regular play” to ever see a reward, so they are motivated to join in with the farmers.

4. Devs implement more rewards that require a great deal of gold/mats/tokens/rng rolls in an attempt to keep the farmers in the game.

And on it goes…