Guild Wars 2

nexxe.7081:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Thus, the ratio of Gems to Gold and Gold to Gems is not indicative of player population.

I disagree. It’s very indicative of the population. Just look at that graph above. Prices were very low, because there were literally millions of players during, and after, launch. Then it continually declined, hence the megaservers (basically a merge).

If there was more people playing, they would definitely be buying gems and selling them for gold, but that’s not what’s happening.

Anyway, i don’t want to steer off-topic into a population argument. The fact is, that not enough players are buying gems, and/or, selling them for gold. This is because of a variety of reasons. The two biggest factors being, that the population dropped off, and the other, is that gold isn’t really needed for anything in game, except for Legendary items. Just look on the Trading Post, and you’ll see every item under the Top Valued Items section, is a Legendary.

Anet needs to make more valuable items worth gold, other than a Legendary item. This would give more incentive for people to convert gems to gold, and bring the ratio down to a more reasonable conversion.

Instead, they just pump out content exclusive to the Gem Store only, which is really limiting their customers, and driving the rest away. People would rather earn their items in-game, instead of with their wallet. I could understand if both Gem Store items, and items earned in-game, were balancing each other out, but that’s not what’s happening.

The items that are earned in-game, are single-piece back slots, or gauntlets, or minis, or tonics, or boosts, or recipes, etc. These things aren’t going to entice players to stick around for the long term. There needs to be full armor sets, like the dungeon sets, added to the game. Sets that don’t require gems. This is where GW2 falls short. A wasted opportunity.

“the other, is that gold isn’t really needed for anything in game, except for Legendary items.”
You must be playing another game. In GW2 everything is based on gold. Most special skins you can’t really work towards to directly (mainly because it are all very rare world drops) but are best obtainable with gold. Same for many mats. It’s of course not strange as that’s the way they like to indeed to sell more gems for gold.

Dr Ritter.1327:

Maybe one day that will read: “Don’t forget to pre-order Guild Wars 2’s upcoming expansion!” instead of “BUY GEMS”

If they would focus on that from that day it it would be a good day for GW2 indeed. But maybe it would come to late.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Then why would people exchange the Gems they bought for Gold when the items they seek are in the Gem Store?

That’s my whole point. People are converting gold to gems, because only the valuable items are in the gem store, and cannot be obtained any other way, unless with real money.

Not enough people are buying gems to convert to gold, because gold isn’t as valuable as gems, and that’s why the conversion rate is so high. That’s why Anet keeps releasing updates begging players to buy gems and trade it in for gold.

TL;DR: Gold is pretty much useless. Gems are far more valuable. Imbalance ensues.

Devata.6589:

nexxe.7081:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Thus, the ratio of Gems to Gold and Gold to Gems is not indicative of player population.

I disagree. It’s very indicative of the population. Just look at that graph above. Prices were very low, because there were literally millions of players during, and after, launch. Then it continually declined, hence the megaservers (basically a merge).

If there was more people playing, they would definitely be buying gems and selling them for gold, but that’s not what’s happening.

Anyway, i don’t want to steer off-topic into a population argument. The fact is, that not enough players are buying gems, and/or, selling them for gold. This is because of a variety of reasons. The two biggest factors being, that the population dropped off, and the other, is that gold isn’t really needed for anything in game, except for Legendary items. Just look on the Trading Post, and you’ll see every item under the Top Valued Items section, is a Legendary.

Anet needs to make more valuable items worth gold, other than a Legendary item. This would give more incentive for people to convert gems to gold, and bring the ratio down to a more reasonable conversion.

Instead, they just pump out content exclusive to the Gem Store only, which is really limiting their customers, and driving the rest away. People would rather earn their items in-game, instead of with their wallet. I could understand if both Gem Store items, and items earned in-game, were balancing each other out, but that’s not what’s happening.

The items that are earned in-game, are single-piece back slots, or gauntlets, or minis, or tonics, or boosts, or recipes, etc. These things aren’t going to entice players to stick around for the long term. There needs to be full armor sets, like the dungeon sets, added to the game. Sets that don’t require gems. This is where GW2 falls short. A wasted opportunity.

“the other, is that gold isn’t really needed for anything in game, except for Legendary items.”
You must be playing another game. In GW2 everything is based on gold. Most special skins you can’t really work towards to directly (mainly because it are all very rare world drops) but are best obtainable with gold. Same for many mats. It’s of course not strange as that’s the way they like to indeed to sell more gems for gold.

Yes, but look at the ratio of those items when compared to Legendary items.
Top Legendary items: ~2000-3000g
Crafting Materials: ~100g or less
World Drops: Average ~10-30g

Crafting Materials are variable of course, due to Ascended items, but it still doesn’t negate the imbalance.

nexxe.7081:

Devata.6589:

nexxe.7081:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Thus, the ratio of Gems to Gold and Gold to Gems is not indicative of player population.

I disagree. It’s very indicative of the population. Just look at that graph above. Prices were very low, because there were literally millions of players during, and after, launch. Then it continually declined, hence the megaservers (basically a merge).

If there was more people playing, they would definitely be buying gems and selling them for gold, but that’s not what’s happening.

Anyway, i don’t want to steer off-topic into a population argument. The fact is, that not enough players are buying gems, and/or, selling them for gold. This is because of a variety of reasons. The two biggest factors being, that the population dropped off, and the other, is that gold isn’t really needed for anything in game, except for Legendary items. Just look on the Trading Post, and you’ll see every item under the Top Valued Items section, is a Legendary.

Anet needs to make more valuable items worth gold, other than a Legendary item. This would give more incentive for people to convert gems to gold, and bring the ratio down to a more reasonable conversion.

Instead, they just pump out content exclusive to the Gem Store only, which is really limiting their customers, and driving the rest away. People would rather earn their items in-game, instead of with their wallet. I could understand if both Gem Store items, and items earned in-game, were balancing each other out, but that’s not what’s happening.

The items that are earned in-game, are single-piece back slots, or gauntlets, or minis, or tonics, or boosts, or recipes, etc. These things aren’t going to entice players to stick around for the long term. There needs to be full armor sets, like the dungeon sets, added to the game. Sets that don’t require gems. This is where GW2 falls short. A wasted opportunity.

“the other, is that gold isn’t really needed for anything in game, except for Legendary items.”
You must be playing another game. In GW2 everything is based on gold. Most special skins you can’t really work towards to directly (mainly because it are all very rare world drops) but are best obtainable with gold. Same for many mats. It’s of course not strange as that’s the way they like to indeed to sell more gems for gold.

Yes, but look at the ratio of those items when compared to Legendary items.
Top Legendary items: ~2000-3000g
Crafting Materials: ~100g or less
World Drops: Average ~10-30g

Crafting Materials are variable of course, due to Ascended items, but it still doesn’t negate the imbalance.

Also looking at your post before this I now figure you not so much mean gold is not important in the game.

Because it is, it’s only viable way to get most things in the game and that’s what turns everything into a boring gold-grind. If you are not willing to do that or just like to hunt down items directly then there is not much to do or much of it is boring.

However you mean gems are getting more important then gold because most interesting reward items are in the cash-shop. While not 100% accurate (you can’t buy a legendary or mats in the cash-shop) I know what you are getting at and the way I think you mean it you are correct. However when I talk about the game I.. well talk about the game and ‘playing’ it or at least being active in the game-world. Buying items / gems with cash is not an element of playing the game and would you want to get anything in the ‘game-way’ them again gold (also to then convert to gems to get the items you talk about) is the way (well and doing achievements against time during the LS).

nexxe.7081:

Lil Puppy.5216:

Well apparently it’s working cause the gold to gem market is dropping like rain right now.

I wouldn’t exaggerate that much. My quote above, from earlier, said 50g for 507 gems. I just checked right now, and it’s 50g for 548 gems. Not much of a difference. lol.

You keep using the wrong conversion rate. The Gold to Gem rate isn’t the same as the Gem to Gold rate. The Gem to Gold rate is only 72.25% of the Gold to Gem rate.

50g at this time is around 637 Gems.

Devata.6589:

He is completely right with that, it’s where I am complaining about here on the forums for over a year. It’s also why I went for GW2 in the first place, this being a B2P game not a F2P game so to not have this. Sadly the game turned cash-shop focused anyway.

It didn’t turn into cash shop focused, GW2 was always cash shop focus. It was added well before the game’s launch. Nobody really noticed because the exchange rate was low enough that those who wanted Gem Shop items could afford them. But now we’ve reached the point where that’s no longer possible. So a segment of the game’s player population who had funded all their Gem Shop purchases with in-game coin are now shocked to see that the Gem Shop really isn’t really free.

nexxe.7081:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Then why would people exchange the Gems they bought for Gold when the items they seek are in the Gem Store?

That’s my whole point. People are converting gold to gems, because only the valuable items are in the gem store, and cannot be obtained any other way, unless with real money.

Not enough people are buying gems to convert to gold, because gold isn’t as valuable as gems, and that’s why the conversion rate is so high. That’s why Anet keeps releasing updates begging players to buy gems and trade it in for gold.

TL;DR: Gold is pretty much useless. Gems are far more valuable. Imbalance ensues.

Funny. There’s a lot of players upset over prices of precursors and skins. And you can only get those with gold.

Behellagh.1468:

Devata.6589:

He is completely right with that, it’s where I am complaining about here on the forums for over a year. It’s also why I went for GW2 in the first place, this being a B2P game not a F2P game so to not have this. Sadly the game turned cash-shop focused anyway.

It didn’t turn into cash shop focused, GW2 was always cash shop focus. It was added well before the game’s launch. Nobody really noticed because the exchange rate was low enough that those who wanted Gem Shop items could afford them. But now we’ve reached the point where that’s no longer possible. So a segment of the game’s player population who had funded all their Gem Shop purchases with in-game coin are now shocked to see that the Gem Shop really isn’t really free.

Nah it’s not that easy. The rate have gone up the last time while I am talking about this for over a year. Also if you where right I would be one of the persons who would be mad because I was not able to get my items any-more that I get get before with gold. However most of the things I did get from the cash-shop with gold where account-expansions and there is not much I still have on my wish list. If it comes to cosmetics as far as I remember all I got from it where a few mini packs and at this moment there are no mini packs in the cash-shop I am even interested in.

So while maybe that’s true for some people it’s not for all. The problem simply is that you can’t work towards items in the game itself. Partly that was true at release (mini’s) however back then the items in the cash-shop where still just a few, may where related to reoccurring events (so people expected them to come back a year later) and many people where still busy levelling there character. Hunting down special items was not yet what they where doing.

By now (and for some time now) most people have levelled, checked the many activities in the world and then what keeps people busy is the horizontal progression what in many cases is hunting down special items.

That comes down to doing achievements against time during the LS or grinding gold. In the beginning people are oke with that but that gets old very fast. Meanwhile Anet has been focusing more and more on the cash-shop, making changes to the world so it’s harder to farm directly for items and putting more of those items people would like to hunt down in the world into the cash-shop.

Also remember how at release they had this vision that no items should locked in a way that they became exclusive. One of the reasons they put the deluxe edition as option in the cash-shop (so the ingame items are still available for everybody) and they stopped giving out ingame T-shirt’s at GamesCom (2012) and did eventually give it out to communities (still meaning many people did not get it but that to the side).
They also came back on that with many items with the temporary available items making them exclusive after that period..

I think it’s still possible to get cash-shop the items with gold.. it’s harder and you can’t get them all but if you really want something it’s possible, so that’s not the problem why people complain. However people are just tired of grinding gold (whether it is to get anything in the game-world or to convert to gems) also more and more players now see how the gold-grind (and other thinks they dislike) are linked to the cash-shop.

Lastly, I did see you say this before in another thread, You seem to use it as an ‘excuse (not mend in a negative way) for why people are complaining as if it’s not a good reason’. But I fail to see how even if you would be truth (what I think you are not but it might be true for some of the people) that would make anything better.

If it makes the game less fun for people it’s a problem, if people are not willing to spend money on those things it’s something to take into consideration and maybe things should change?

Vol.7601:

It’s no coincidence that pretty much every gold-making farm in the game has been nerfed.

I’ve gone from making 15g/h to nothing.

You forget the fact that a year ago before we got the champ bags the CoF-Speedrunner made the most money with around 8g/h .. and personally i was happy when i made 3g with open world farming, while now i can make 6-10g/h.

Vol.7601:

It’s no coincidence that pretty much every gold-making farm in the game has been nerfed.

I’ve gone from making 15g/h to nothing.

One could say if you’re making “nothing”, 0g/h, then you’ve given up. Taking a hit in the amount of gold you get an hour isn’t the end of the world. I imagine if I made that much gold regularly I may feel differently about this – but a 15g/h farm sounds like it needs a nerf.

An excess of gold in the market is damaging. Inflation is a kitten.

A game that relies on cosmetics as it’s endgame, and makes it almost impossible to buy without micro-transactions, in my book it’s called “p2w”

Other games have gear as endgame..this one has looks as endgame.

Rebound.3409:

A game that relies on cosmetics as it’s endgame, and makes it almost impossible to buy without micro-transactions, in my book it’s called “p2w”

Other games have gear as endgame..this one has looks as endgame.

Win what though? Cosmetics are subjective. I’m 100% happy with my character’s look and he isn’t wearing any piece of armor from the gem store. Did I lose because some guy next to me is wearing a gem store set? Does he now win over me?

It isn’t P2W if the end-game is completely subjective. When gear/stats are end-game, that’s objective. They are better stats, thus you are better off than those without that gear. When skins are end-game, who’s to say one skin is “better” than another.

With agony resistance in the TP they stepped a little bit into the Pay2Win realm. Hopefully they realize that and turn around quickly.

ps. For the fanboys, agony resistance does give an advantage and it can be acquire with your wallet now.

cmud.5689:

I am sure Vol is not refering to the Queensdale champ train in terms of his gold loss from farming. Go ahead and search the forum for his gold making guide, you are misinformed. He was doing his rounds at Orr.

I’m not misinformed, I read his guide and know where he was farming. That wasn’t my point. In this thread his complaint is that every gold-making farm got nerfed. That is a fair statement but hypocritical to complain about it while cheering on the nerfing of other gold farming of spots.

Draknar.5748:

Rebound.3409:

A game that relies on cosmetics as it’s endgame, and makes it almost impossible to buy without micro-transactions, in my book it’s called “p2w”

Other games have gear as endgame..this one has looks as endgame.

Win what though? Cosmetics are subjective. I’m 100% happy with my character’s look and he isn’t wearing any piece of armor from the gem store. Did I lose because some guy next to me is wearing a gem store set? Does he now win over me?

It isn’t P2W if the end-game is completely subjective. When gear/stats are end-game, that’s objective. They are better stats, thus you are better off than those without that gear. When skins are end-game, who’s to say one skin is “better” than another.

They are as subjective as gear/stats. As u might feel ok with your look..ppl in p2w games may feel good with their lower stats..having fun in other ways and not needing to invest time/money in +1 stat.

And honestly this pseudo-p2w applies here for gear/stats also (endgame). Events have less and less rewards/gold or are nerfed on a daily basis. The amount of time someone who doesn’t know how to play the AH has to invest in this game to get a few hundreds of gold is insane and only catters to the pinnacle of jobless ppl with almost no chance other then to do the same thing over and over again for 5+months in order to get enough gold to waste it for example on a precursor or to max out his crafting + then farm again for the ascended and so on.

Only way out for people who don’t literaly invest every bit of time and health in this game, is gems. A game that doesn’t offer REAL alternatives…not the crap we have now for event rewards and even better 0 drops from events such as the last one, to their cash shop is a p2w regardless of what u enjoy to get through it.

But again this is my view….if u guys like killing for 0 loot it’s fine i guess. Must be some neo-players.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Vol.7601:

It’s no coincidence that pretty much every gold-making farm in the game has been nerfed.

I’ve gone from making 15g/h to nothing.

That’s funny you should say that since you were such a fan of the Queensdale train nerf.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GOODBYE-QUEENSDALE-TRAIN/first#post4040240

Vol.7601:

As a former hardcore farmer, this is the best change Anet had made in a long time.
They should have done it sooner, but it’s done.

If you were farming Queensdale for gold, you’re playing the whole game wrong.

Vol.7601:

JustTrogdor.7892:

Vol.7601:

It’s no coincidence that pretty much every gold-making farm in the game has been nerfed.

I’ve gone from making 15g/h to nothing.

That’s funny you should say that since you were such a fan of the Queensdale train nerf.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GOODBYE-QUEENSDALE-TRAIN/first#post4040240

Vol.7601:

As a former hardcore farmer, this is the best change Anet had made in a long time.
They should have done it sooner, but it’s done.

If you were farming Queensdale for gold, you’re playing the whole game wrong.

Some people did especially before it got nerfed the first time. I never really farmed the train often aside for doing events for daily/monthly every now and then. However, it was a farm spot to many for various reasons. It’s never a good idea to start cheering on nerfs because it seems game developers like to get a little nerf happy once they get started.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Vol.7601:

JustTrogdor.7892:

Vol.7601:

It’s no coincidence that pretty much every gold-making farm in the game has been nerfed.

I’ve gone from making 15g/h to nothing.

That’s funny you should say that since you were such a fan of the Queensdale train nerf.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GOODBYE-QUEENSDALE-TRAIN/first#post4040240

Vol.7601:

As a former hardcore farmer, this is the best change Anet had made in a long time.
They should have done it sooner, but it’s done.

If you were farming Queensdale for gold, you’re playing the whole game wrong.

Some people did especially before it got nerfed the first time. I never really farmed the train often aside for doing events for daily/monthly every now and then. However, it was a farm spot to many for various reasons. It’s never a good idea to start cheering on nerfs because it seems game developers like to get a little nerf happy once they get started.

The main reason why I liked the Queensdale nerf was because the train gave a very bad impression to new players. It was long overdue. If Anet wanted to ‘move’ the Queensdale train to other maps, then I wouldn’t mind.

There were plenty of other legit farms in the game that were nerfed just cause. Off the top of my head – shelt/pen, plinx, grub farm & grenth.

Not to mention the whole megaserver deal made things a lot worse.

I see some people here talk about grinding gold and if the problem is that they now get less. For many the problem is not getting less when grinding gold but that getting everything requires (grinding) gold.

I never grind gold and I don’t get 15 or 7 gold an hour. I get maybe 3 gold a week as I’m not grinding gold to grind gold. (sometimes more sometimes less)

Not that I mind people liking to grind gold but ask yourself are you one of the persons who likes to grind gold or you just do it because it’s needed and rather have other ways to work to what you want.

Draknar.5748:

It isn’t P2W if the end-game is completely subjective. When gear/stats are end-game, that’s objective. They are better stats, thus you are better off than those without that gear. When skins are end-game, who’s to say one skin is “better” than another.

When end-game is looks, diversity is also, and totally objectively we can say that having different looks adds to diversity. They also tent to be more ‘shiny’ with more effects and moving colours. That’s also objective. Isn’t it P2W if it’s the stuff you want to earn / win in the game? And stats the numbers are objective but if you are interested in it not. You might not care about the highest stats (just as not everybody thinks one skin looks better as the other skin) so from that perspective the value of stats is also subjective. Not that I see why it should have anything to do with if it’s subjective or not. It even has nothing to do with if it’s P2W or P2Kill or whatever.

The question is if the cash-shop focus influences the game (in a bad way). That’s obviously the case and that’s why it is bad. P2W or not.

Even if converting more gems in to gold is good for the gold/gem market, it still stinks of greed. It still requires people to pay real money to make more gems. Advertising it just looks like a cheap, desperate cash grab.

Xenon.4537:

Even if converting more gems in to gold is good for the gold/gem market, it still stinks of greed. It still requires people to pay real money to make more gems. Advertising it just looks like a cheap, desperate cash grab.

On one hand, it’s nice to know the game supports moving away from gold-selling as an out of game market, and it’s nice to know the exchange rate.

On the other hand, Xenon, +1, exactly right.

Xenon.4537:

Even if converting more gems in to gold is good for the gold/gem market, it still stinks of greed. It still requires people to pay real money to make more gems. Advertising it just looks like a cheap, desperate cash grab.

Just so you are aware, ArenaNet is not a not for profit entity. They need players to pay real money in order to operate their business and provide profits for their shareholders.

Hope that cleared things up for you.

mtpelion.4562:

Xenon.4537:

Even if converting more gems in to gold is good for the gold/gem market, it still stinks of greed. It still requires people to pay real money to make more gems. Advertising it just looks like a cheap, desperate cash grab.

Just so you are aware, ArenaNet is not a not for profit entity. They need players to pay real money in order to operate their business and provide profits for their shareholders.

Hope that cleared things up for you.

That is true, they do need players to pay in order for them to operate. However they ARE getting money from game sales and from gem shop purchaces. You can’t convince me that their earnings are low.

Azhure.1857:

That is true, they do need players to pay in order for them to operate. However they ARE getting money from game sales and from gem shop purchaces. You can’t convince me that their earnings are low.

No one said that their earnings were low. The whole point of running a business is to make as much money as possible. They aren’t running some kind of charity where they only need to cover the operational costs, they want to cover those and then get as much additional revenue as they can.

people I hope you do realize that the price of gold / gems is indirectly controlled by players. The reason we’re at the prices we are now is because some players are able to pay those prices and they’re able to do that because like vol said in post #3 he could do 15g per hour.

in november 2012 we were at what 85 silver? but how much gold per hour could you do then ? According to goolge people claim they did about 1-2g per hour.

is it really any different?
For vol 100 gems prior to nerf took 40 mins in november 2012 it took about 30 mins.

So what really changed is its way too easy to make money now then it was back then so farmers bought a ton of gems so price skyrocketed

and how do you fix that? by boosting farms so people do more gold? nope that would continue increasing the exchange rate
what you do is nerf gold aquistion so now people will hopefully no longer be able to afford 10g per 100 and hopefully the price will start to fall again.

also keep in mind not everyone farms. I dont farm for example and am lucky to do 50s an hour yet I still have to pay the 10g per 100 as everyone else.

Still a bit early but there was already a small but noticeable dip if you check gw2spidy.

I was simply saying that the way Anet advertises this, and the way it makes the future look for this game, are not good. It might be good for Anet’s wallet (more like NCSoft’s wallet if you ask me), but the quality of the game may be neglected if all Anet cares about is the gem store.

Think about it this way. Anet wants to earn money. Their customers want a better game experience. Both Anet and the customers don’t want to turn the game P2W. So Anet releases cosmetic stuff like quaggan backpacks. The customers buy these happily. Anet receives a lot of revenue and what do they think? Hmmm these quaggan backpacks sell really well. We should do this more! People obviously want it, and we need the money! So they make another type of quaggan backpack. And another. And another. What do we end up with? A whole lot of quaggan backpacks with not so much in the way of substantial gameplay improvement or expansion. We customers never see a truly substantial expansion pack because Anet is content extracting pennies from us with quaggan backpacks and using the proceeds to drizzle out some living story patches on the side. After 2 years of this they start asking us to buy gems and convert them to gold on top of all the quaggan backpacks.

Let me clarify my concern. Anet’s main revenue streams are the gem store and the initial purchase of the game (the box as it were). If we want to see substantial content added to the game, it would need to be part of Anet’s revenue stream in some way. But it isnt. Anet doesn’t need to really go out of their way to add content. They get money by sitting around and letting players convert gems to gold. How does cash -> gem -> gold incentivise Anet to produce an expansion pack? Again this has nothing to do with the state of the in-game economy.

Xenon.4537:

I was simply saying that the way Anet advertises this, and the way it makes the future look for this game, are not good. It might be good for Anet’s wallet (more like NCSoft’s wallet if you ask me), but the quality of the game may be neglected if all Anet cares about is the gem store.

Think about it this way. Anet wants to earn money. Their customers want a better game experience. Both Anet and the customers don’t want to turn the game P2W. So Anet releases cosmetic stuff like quaggan backpacks. The customers buy these happily. Anet receives a lot of revenue and what do they think? Hmmm these quaggan backpacks sell really well. We should do this more! People obviously want it, and we need the money! So they make another type of quaggan backpack. And another. And another. What do we end up with? A whole lot of quaggan backpacks with not so much in the way of substantial gameplay improvement or expansion. We customers never see a truly substantial expansion pack because Anet is content extracting pennies from us with quaggan backpacks and using the proceeds to drizzle out some living story patches on the side. After 2 years of this they start asking us to buy gems and convert them to gold on top of all the quaggan backpacks.

So by buying gems you are not helping the game forward (something some gem-buyers like to believe to feel special) but you are helping it’s downfall by pointing the game in the wrong direction. Of course they still need money so be prepared to give money but only for expansions.

I love this quote from the Flameseeker Chronicles article:

All of the little things players are used to seeking out in MMOs — quests with unique rewards and pets, reputation vendors with unusual permanent souvenirs — are pretty thin in GW2, and it’s a shame that this wasn’t expanded on, especially since it’s left the karma, heart and event systems underutilized.

That’s my sentiment in a nutshell. I loved quest chains with unique rewards like minipets or other neat toys or unique-looking gear. Why does GW2 have so little of that? Finishing a karma heart is flat-out boring because the related NPCs very rarely have anything unique, and finishing a map or an event chain is even worse. Oooo, an item my character can’t use with a skin I’ve seen a hundred times and and a stat combo I have no interest in. Oooo, 40 potatoes. And even if it’s 40 orichalcum it’s still boring and meaningless. Why don’t we have some special rewards themed on the zone they’re from? Everything is gemstore this, gemstore that. Aside from the ascended armors, has there even been a single actual in-game armor in the almost two years the game as been out?

The gemstore is the way this game is kept alive, but the way it’s handled — while it certainly could be much worse — is really not done well. I have not spent and will not spend real money on something that irritates me like all the gemstore-only items do, especially the ones that need to be gambled for.

well Xenon sure Arenanet want more money thats a given but as they’ve shown in the past they’re not shy of reducing their profits for the benefit of the game.

Examples:
When they introduced crafting from the bank that reduced the need to buy inventory expansions.
When they introduced the wallet that reduced considerably the need to inventory and bank expansion

And personally I think the same is true here, nerfing income actually makes this better not worst. The group who has the biggest issue with gems to gold isnt farmers its those who dont farm. Think about it. Lets say they’re now selling this new awesome quaggan backpack for 800 gems (chose 800 simplicity’s sake). let say with the recent nerf now farming instead of earning people 15g per hour earns them 10g per hour. do you think farmers are going to say “ohh my now instead of taking 5hrs for me to farm enough gold to buy myself 800 gems it takes me 8hrs. no thats way too much I need to get out my credit card” 8hrs instead of 5 is not a big deal. You know whats a big deal? non farmers who make 50s an hour and need 160hrs to earn enough gold for that quaggen backpack. $10 vs 160hrs…. yeah here’s the $10. To fix this they dont need to make farming more profitable that will just keep shooting the gold to gem prices up making the situation worst and worst for the non-farmers. They need to nerf the income from farming so prices start falling down.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

tigirius.9014:

Has anyone else seen the latest article by Anatoli Ingram over at Massively on his article written for Flameseeker Chronicles, where he basically tells everyone that all of the nerfs to open world loot is all in our imaginations. That’s right folks, the past two years never happened. The 9 months we waited on the infamous original loot bug, the constant dropoffs of loot when we login, the sudden no drops from anything even when we teleport to a new location, the T6 material drought, the double RNG on bags, the DR that hasn’t stopped a single bot from logging in since it’s been created, and most recently the Unidentifiable Objects that now drop from boss bags, boss chests, and those special daily rare boxes are all in our heads.

I’m not sure you read the same article as I did, as he mostly comments on how unrewarding most of the systems in the game are to nearly everyone. The article pretty much echoes what is found posted in the forum threads.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/06/03/flameseeker-chronicles-the-strange-case-of-guild-wars-2s-rewar/

“GW2 showers players with loot and rewards.”
“They’ll say it’s extraordinarily grindy, that there’s nothing to work toward, and that ArenaNet is intentionally making things harder than they should be so that we’ll all give up and buy gems.This is confusing and frustrating to me for two reasons: The first is that all of those things are demonstrably untrue.”
“There’s nothing wrong, at a basic level, with offering armor and weapon skins through the gem store — the issue is the lengths to which it’s been taken in GW2 at the cost of making the game itself less directly rewarding.”
“…and if you want a direct drop you’re almost always going to find it less frustrating and time-consuming to farm for it indirectly, if at all possible.”

While he does admit that they could do better he acts like we’re thrown coin like stuff is just falling from the sky in our laps, then he admits that only 2 places actually gives us anything while telling us similtaneously that we’re being unfair when we are talking about places like open world events and mobs. Like that doesn’t exist or isn’t supposed to be the key focus of the game. This game was supposed to never require any player to step into a dungeon ever again as quoted by one of the interviewers before launch because as one of the devs being interviewed put it “the reason why we’ll be adding more content to the open world is due to the ability to streamline content so much faster than in a dungeon. Building a dungeon from scratch is harder and more time consuming that building an event in the open world.”

So here we are with focus being directed away from the PVE open world, with nerfs to loot that aren’t mentioned by the article in fact he acts like they never happened in his comment replies below btw. And he all but insults the playerbase who’ve been saying that this game’s rewards system is terrible for 2 years now.

Yeah it’s the same article, but once again they missed the mark, and it’s yet another writer of such an article that doesn’t get why there’s a problem, he touched on 1 aspect of it, things we do like jump puzzles and other activities don’t really reward, but he avoids the problem of eliminating rewards from the open world PVE zones and acts like the open world rewards have never changed and are on par with the rest of the game when we’re continually seeing nerf after nerf.

Xenon.4537:

Let me clarify my concern. Anet’s main revenue streams are the gem store and the initial purchase of the game (the box as it were). If we want to see substantial content added to the game, it would need to be part of Anet’s revenue stream in some way. But it isnt. Anet doesn’t need to really go out of their way to add content. They get money by sitting around and letting players convert gems to gold. How does cash -> gem -> gold incentivise Anet to produce an expansion pack? Again this has nothing to do with the state of the in-game economy.

yes they do.

- Does the person who doesnt play the game pay for Gems? Definetly not.

- Does the angry person who is unhappy with game pay for gems? some probably do but most will not out of principle.

you know who’s more likely to pay for gems? the happy player who loves the game.

Regardless of business model they choose giving their players what they want is in their best interest!

Devata.6589:

When end-game is looks diversity is also and totally objectively we can say they have different looks so add to diversity in looks. They also tent to be more ‘shiny’ with more effects and moving colours. That’s also objective. Isn’t it P2W if it’s the stuff you want to earn / win in the game? And stats the numbers are objective but if you are interested in it not. You might not care about the highest stats (just as not everybody think one skin looks better as the other skin) so from that perspective the value of stats is also subjective. Not that I see why it should have anything to do with if it’s subjective or not. It even has nothing to do with if it’s P2W or P2Kill or whatever.

The question is if the cash-shop focus influences the game (in a bad way). That’s obviously he case and that’s why it is bad. P2W or not.

My response was specifically to someone’s comment on gem store making GW2 P2W.

I 100% feel the cash-shop focus influences the game in a bad way now. It didn’t originally, but with so much new stuff being funneled into the store following large nerfs to players being able to earn gold in game SOLO, it just feels like the company is blatantly saying “use your CC if you want to progress in this game!” And by progress I mean earn gold, which is pretty much the only way to progress in this game. Everything is a gold sink.

Sure dungeon farming nets decent gold. I typically do 3-4 dungeons/day plus now that I’ve finished all Ascended crafting I can sell the mats for easy daily income (5-6g/day with damask and deldrimor ingots after purchasing all mats from TP + 5-6g/day from dungeons = 10-12g/day in 1-2hrs play time, and that’s if I don’t hit up world bosses every 15min and sell the Rares for 30-35s each, which typically will net me 2-3g/day if I hit 5 bosses or so). So a good day I make 15g essentially, but almost half of that requires dungeon running with 4 other people, which if you PUG could vary your completion times wildly. Thankfully I do not have to PUG.

They need to improve the gold earning methods outside of dungeon running.

Devata.6589:

Xenon.4537:

I was simply saying that the way Anet advertises this, and the way it makes the future look for this game, are not good. It might be good for Anet’s wallet (more like NCSoft’s wallet if you ask me), but the quality of the game may be neglected if all Anet cares about is the gem store.

Think about it this way. Anet wants to earn money. Their customers want a better game experience. Both Anet and the customers don’t want to turn the game P2W. So Anet releases cosmetic stuff like quaggan backpacks. The customers buy these happily. Anet receives a lot of revenue and what do they think? Hmmm these quaggan backpacks sell really well. We should do this more! People obviously want it, and we need the money! So they make another type of quaggan backpack. And another. And another. What do we end up with? A whole lot of quaggan backpacks with not so much in the way of substantial gameplay improvement or expansion. We customers never see a truly substantial expansion pack because Anet is content extracting pennies from us with quaggan backpacks and using the proceeds to drizzle out some living story patches on the side. After 2 years of this they start asking us to buy gems and convert them to gold on top of all the quaggan backpacks.

So by buying gems you are not helping the game forward (something some gem-buyers like to believe to feel special) but you are helping it’s downfall by pointing the game in the wrong direction. Of course they still need money so be prepared to give money but only for expansions.

I would have no problem paying money for an expansion. Buying Factions, Nightfall, and EotN for GW1 were some of the most satisfying game purchases I ever made. In GW2 I feel like my money is evaporating in to thin air and they are just giving me knick knacks as a consolation prize.

Devata.6589:

I see some people here talk about grinding gold and if the problem is that they now get less. For many the problem is not getting less when grinding gold but that getting everything requires (grinding) gold.

This not true. Everything available on the TP was actually acquired by players themselves. You can earn stuff yourself but people choose to go the gold route because farming gives a disproportionately high return. If it takes an hour of farming to get 1 corrupted lodestone why farm it when you can spend that same hour farming gold and buy 15 of them!

Galen Grey.4709:

Xenon.4537:

Let me clarify my concern. Anet’s main revenue streams are the gem store and the initial purchase of the game (the box as it were). If we want to see substantial content added to the game, it would need to be part of Anet’s revenue stream in some way. But it isnt. Anet doesn’t need to really go out of their way to add content. They get money by sitting around and letting players convert gems to gold. How does cash -> gem -> gold incentivise Anet to produce an expansion pack? Again this has nothing to do with the state of the in-game economy.

yes they do.

- Does the person who doesnt play the game pay for Gems? Definetly not.

- Does the angry person who is unhappy with game pay for gems? some probably do but most will not out of principle.

you know who’s more likely to pay for gems? the happy player who loves the game.

Regardless of business model they choose giving their players what they want is in their best interest!

You skipped over my question. Anet is not incentivised to produce an expansion. Yes they would get more money and players if they did, but they already have a steady revenue stream. It’s easier for them to just nickle and dime us with the systems they already have in place.

And yes, giving the players what they want is in their best interest. But how do they know what players want? There’s a massive thread with over 1500 replies asking for Cantha that’s been around since launch and is still actively bumped every week. But where’s Cantha? All I see is gem store gem store gem store.

They seem to think that all players want is what they are currently paying for: gems and knick knacks to spend gems on.

Xenon.4537:

If we want to see substantial content added to the game, it would need to be part of Anet’s revenue stream in some way. But it isnt. Anet doesn’t need to really go out of their way to add content. They get money by sitting around and letting players convert gems to gold. How does cash -> gem -> gold incentivise Anet to produce an expansion pack?

Without new content players start to leave the game.
An expansion would come years later, ArenaNet pace, to bring back those players that left and new players that see it on shelves.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

I see some people here talk about grinding gold and if the problem is that they now get less. For many the problem is not getting less when grinding gold but that getting everything requires (grinding) gold.

This not true. Everything available on the TP was actually acquired by players themselves. You can earn stuff yourself but people choose to go the gold route because farming gives a disproportionately high return. If it takes an hour of farming to get 1 corrupted lodestone why farm it when you can spend that same hour farming gold and buy 15 of them!

The point is when you buy 15 of them you bought all 15 from 13-15 people because rewards are so terrible that you can’t farm anything yourself. You HAVE to use the TP seriously or you’ll spend months.

Look at any guide on youtube for any other game and you’ll see that you can actually farm the top tier items needed for anything. Look at guides from youtube about getting what you need for this game, guess what they say, yep, grind gold and buy it.

Xenon.4537:

You skipped over my question. Anet is not incentivised to produce an expansion. Yes they would get more money and players if they did, but they already have a steady revenue stream. It’s easier for them to just nickle and dime us with the systems they already have in place.

And yes, giving the players what they want is in their best interest. But how do they know what players want? There’s a massive thread with over 1500 replies asking for Cantha that’s been around since launch and is still actively bumped every week. But where’s Cantha? All I see is gem store gem store gem store.

They seem to think that all players want is what they are currently paying for: gems and knick knacks to spend gems on.

No they’re not incentivized to produce an expansion but is that necessarly a bad thing? Personally I think its a good thing. Why?

Well lets say they go with the expansion business model. That means they need to release an expansion as quickly as possible in order to maximize their profit. If they release an expansion per year its more profitable for them then releasing one every 2 years right? An expansion needs to be pretty good, they cant just rush it so what would that lead to? Focusing all of their resources to produce an expansion. Which means if it takes them 1 year or even perhaps 2 years to produce an expansion thats 1 – 2 years we’d have with minimal new content and how do you keep people busy during those 1 – 2 years? well most games do repeatable dungeons and stuff which is what generally drives me away from those games.

With the current business model time isnt a major issue (it still is but not so much) they can afford to release new content every 2 weeks and take say 4 years to finish all the work it would take to create a single expansion. I have a feeling thats exactly what they did. Creating new zones is laborious and they needed time. Its now been 2 years and they’re ready to deliver at least some of them which we got enough hints to think this is actually gonna happen in Season 2 of the living story. Now lets assume they release a new zone every month they’d finish releasing a new continent size of zones in another 2 years but all the while we’d have new content to play every 2 weeks and a new zone every month.

Now that would have taken them perhaps twice as long if they had just focused on an expansion but at the same time we didnt have to live a 1-2 years repeating the same stuff. If thats actually what they’re going to do, for me personally I’d find it a much better model. But we have to see what happens in the next season of living story to be sure for now its just speculation.

@tigirius

Lol. I can cherry-pick parts of sentences out of context, too, but it would not be very accurate for showing the intent of the article.

For instance, one of your quotes comes from the middle of these passages:

Spending gold in GW2 is not particularly fun. There are a few gold-based prestige items, like cultural armor, but for the most part gold is what you farm for because alternative methods for getting stuff are either tedious or nonexistent. Where’s the best place to farm lodestones? Run dungeons for gold and buy them off the trading post. What’s the best way to farm tier 6 materials? Run dungeons for gold and buy them off the trading post. Is it worth farming or buying Black Lion keys to get the new weapon skins? Run dungeons for gold and buy them off the trading post. How do I get a precursor to finally finish my Legendary weapon? Guess. Gold is like air: You need it, it’s everywhere, and it only calls attention to itself when you’re not getting enough of it.

What this means is that gameplay itself is often only tangibly rewarding insofar as it yields gold, and if you want a direct drop you’re almost always going to find it less frustrating and time-consuming to farm for it indirectly, if at all possible. We should do fun things for the experience, sure, but rewards help keep an experience fun through repeat plays. I’d go so far as to say that this is one of the cornerstones of an RPG.

On paper a reliance on universal currency for nearly everything sounds kind of cool. It seems as though it should mean being able to pick what sort of gameplay you’d like to do, rather than being required to pursue a specific activity for the sklorbniks you want. Instead, it ends up placing the highest play value on pure efficiency, and paradoxically GW2’s most efficient farming methods tend to be the most boring. Activities which are fun, challenging, and endlessly repeatable for the skilled — such as holiday jumping puzzles, Fractals, and Queen’s Gauntlet fights — often end up with low monetary rewards, either through design or eventual nerfs. Low drop rates for unique rewards tend to make these activities feel less rewarding than grindy content, in which you’re at least guaranteed some progress for your time. Offering special rewards like the Liadri mini, meta achievement chests, or this year’s tokens is a step in the right direction, but it only solves part of the problem. It’s treating a symptom, when one of the causes is the gem store.

It seems he is saying that is what would be found in other MMORPGs, but is lacking in GW2.

I suppose some people read what they want to see, and find it easier to disregard the rest.

tigirius.9014:

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

I see some people here talk about grinding gold and if the problem is that they now get less. For many the problem is not getting less when grinding gold but that getting everything requires (grinding) gold.

This not true. Everything available on the TP was actually acquired by players themselves. You can earn stuff yourself but people choose to go the gold route because farming gives a disproportionately high return. If it takes an hour of farming to get 1 corrupted lodestone why farm it when you can spend that same hour farming gold and buy 15 of them!

The point is when you buy 15 of them you bought all 15 from 13-15 people because rewards are so terrible that you can’t farm anything yourself. You HAVE to use the TP seriously or you’ll spend months.

Look at any guide on youtube for any other game and you’ll see that you can actually farm the top tier items needed for anything. Look at guides from youtube about getting what you need for this game, guess what they say, yep, grind gold and buy it.

Most certainly and I would recommend that myself actually but why? Only because farming has disproportional rewards right now.

The 1hr per corrupted lodestone didnt come by magically it was carefully chosen by a game designer who decided that corrupted weapons are prestigious items you need to work an average of 30hrs to get. It makes a lot of sense to farm the gold and buy the lodestones because we dont care about game designers we just want what we want and why spend 30hrs to get something you can get in 2 hrs?

But there are 2 forces at working against the better good of the game as a whole with overly profitable farming.
1. is well we’re reducing the list of prestigious items
2. we risk people actually waking up and realising the lodestone they’re selling for 1g isnt actually worth 1g its actually worth closer to 15g because if it takes them 1hr to farm it and people can make 15g farming gold directly then whats the point of selling it at 1g when you could make 15x farming something else? when that happens non farmers are well you know the technical word for it.

Chadramar.8156:

I love this quote from the Flameseeker Chronicles article:

All of the little things players are used to seeking out in MMOs — quests with unique rewards and pets, reputation vendors with unusual permanent souvenirs — are pretty thin in GW2, and it’s a shame that this wasn’t expanded on, especially since it’s left the karma, heart and event systems underutilized.

That’s my sentiment in a nutshell. I loved quest chains with unique rewards like minipets or other neat toys or unique-looking gear. Why does GW2 have so little of that? Finishing a karma heart is flat-out boring because the related NPCs very rarely have anything unique, and finishing a map or an event chain is even worse. Oooo, an item my character can’t use with a skin I’ve seen a hundred times and and a stat combo I have no interest in. Oooo, 40 potatoes. And even if it’s 40 orichalcum it’s still boring and meaningless. Why don’t we have some special rewards themed on the zone they’re from? Everything is gemstore this, gemstore that. Aside from the ascended armors, has there even been a single actual in-game armor in the almost two years the game as been out?

The gemstore is the way this game is kept alive, but the way it’s handled — while it certainly could be much worse — is really not done well. I have not spent and will not spend real money on something that irritates me like all the gemstore-only items do, especially the ones that need to be gambled for.

I completely agree.

Galen Grey.4709:

well Xenon sure Arenanet want more money thats a given but as they’ve shown in the past they’re not shy of reducing their profits for the benefit of the game.

Examples:
When they introduced crafting from the bank that reduced the need to buy inventory expansions.
When they introduced the wallet that reduced considerably the need to inventory and bank expansion

And personally I think the same is true here, nerfing income actually makes this better not worst. The group who has the biggest issue with gems to gold isnt farmers its those who dont farm. Think about it. Lets say they’re now selling this new awesome quaggan backpack for 800 gems (chose 800 simplicity’s sake). let say with the recent nerf now farming instead of earning people 15g per hour earns them 10g per hour. do you think farmers are going to say “ohh my now instead of taking 5hrs for me to farm enough gold to buy myself 800 gems it takes me 8hrs. no thats way too much I need to get out my credit card” 8hrs instead of 5 is not a big deal. You know whats a big deal? non farmers who make 50s an hour and need 160hrs to earn enough gold for that quaggen backpack. $10 vs 160hrs…. yeah here’s the $10. To fix this they dont need to make farming more profitable that will just keep shooting the gold to gem prices up making the situation worst and worst for the non-farmers. They need to nerf the income from farming so prices start falling down.

That there would be a time that we agree well at least partial. The better solution would to put the items in the game so the not farmers can just work towards those items in the game. But except for that you are correct. I think the non-farmers feel it the most. They don’t farm likely because they don’t like farming / grinding gold and the game has become all a gold-grind. So is does indeed effect those the most.

The people grinding gold all day where apparently fine doing so, they apparently had fun earning there rewards that way so for them not much changes one would think?

tigirius.9014:

~

“They’ll say it’s extraordinarily grindy“ He can say it’s untrue but it very much is true.

When reading on in this article he even describes it. How everything is money driven and you can’t get things in a good other way then gold so the best way to get things are to grind gold. So yeah thats why the game is extraordinarily grindy.

Also “There’s nothing wrong, at a basic level, with offering armor and weapon skins through the gem store” is strage because later he does say that much of the things he mentioned (about how everything go’s by gold) is because of how the cash-shop works. What he means here I think is that he thinks they could tweak it a little. I don’t think they can fix is just by tweaking it a little. The problem is that they focus on it.

Devata.6589:

tigirius.9014:

~

“They’ll say it’s extraordinarily grindy“ He can say it’s untrue but it very much is true.

When reading on in this article he even describes it. How everything is money driven and you can’t get things in a good other way then gold so the best way to get thing are to grind gold. So yeah thats why the game is extraordinarily grindy.

Also “There’s nothing wrong, at a basic level, with offering armor and weapon skins through the gem store” is strage because later he does say that much of the thinks he mentioned (about how everything go’s by gold) is because of how the cash-shop works. What he means here I think is that he thinks they could tweak it a little. I don’t think they can tweak it a little. The problem is that they focus on it.

Yep and we’ve already seen how that affects certain games. It’s happened to other mmo’s as well in the past but the most recent best display of how it can adversely affect a game is D3. The sole difference between D3 and GW2 is that D3’s RMTAH directly took payments of real money for items in the AH rather than required an exchange system.

We’ve given them all kinds of ways of changing the game so that it’s no longer a disaster in the economic focus of the TP how rewards are no longer restricted from commonly completed daily processes but they’ve ignored them all.

This isn’t a new problem it’s been going on since launch, but at time goes on and they focus on what people are saying in Reddit rather than these forums even their own suggestions forums are ignored, it’s getting worse and people are starting to wonder why they should even bother.

(I know you didn’t say these things I’m just adding general statements to my agreement with what you said)

tigirius.9014:

Yep and we’ve already seen how that affects certain games. It’s happened to other mmo’s as well in the past but the most recent best display of how it can adversely affect a game is D3. The sole difference between D3 and GW2 is that D3’s RMTAH directly took payments of real money for items in the AH rather than required an exchange system.

We’ve given them all kinds of ways of changing the game so that it’s no longer a disaster in the economic focus of the TP how rewards are no longer restricted from commonly completed daily processes but they’ve ignored them all.

This isn’t a new problem it’s been going on since launch, but at time goes on and they focus on what people are saying in Reddit rather than these forums even their own suggestions forums are ignored, it’s getting worse and people are starting to wonder why they should even bother.

(I know you didn’t say these things I’m just adding general statements to my agreement with what you said)

Heh, funny thing about Diablo 3. They considered their RMAH a success, for all its weirdness. Which means it made them money. But, they figured P2W was hurting the game, and it was. D3 turned into building up increasingly absurd piles of gold just to buy something. The new loot system and subsequent salvage makes it a little more interesting, though still a been-there/done-that grind.

Not to say that real money exchanges are doomed to hurt a game’s progression, but the game needs to release content that brings players to the game, not just the game’s store. Give meaning to the items on sale behind gameplay and lore, and give alternate versions through actual content participation and challenges.

While not a sterling example, I can remember where I got my Desert Rose back piece from, because I was having fun on Sanctum Sprint, then opened the RNG reward and saw it there. A minor Squee-moment. We need more squee-moments.

Draknar.5748:

Devata.6589:

When end-game is looks diversity is also and totally objectively we can say they have different looks so add to diversity in looks. They also tent to be more ‘shiny’ with more effects and moving colours. That’s also objective. Isn’t it P2W if it’s the stuff you want to earn / win in the game? And stats the numbers are objective but if you are interested in it not. You might not care about the highest stats (just as not everybody think one skin looks better as the other skin) so from that perspective the value of stats is also subjective. Not that I see why it should have anything to do with if it’s subjective or not. It even has nothing to do with if it’s P2W or P2Kill or whatever.

The question is if the cash-shop focus influences the game (in a bad way). That’s obviously he case and that’s why it is bad. P2W or not.

My response was specifically to someone’s comment on gem store making GW2 P2W.

I 100% feel the cash-shop focus influences the game in a bad way now. It didn’t originally, but with so much new stuff being funneled into the store following large nerfs to players being able to earn gold in game SOLO, it just feels like the company is blatantly saying “use your CC if you want to progress in this game!” And by progress I mean earn gold, which is pretty much the only way to progress in this game. Everything is a gold sink.

Sure dungeon farming nets decent gold. I typically do 3-4 dungeons/day plus now that I’ve finished all Ascended crafting I can sell the mats for easy daily income (5-6g/day with damask and deldrimor ingots after purchasing all mats from TP + 5-6g/day from dungeons = 10-12g/day in 1-2hrs play time, and that’s if I don’t hit up world bosses every 15min and sell the Rares for 30-35s each, which typically will net me 2-3g/day if I hit 5 bosses or so). So a good day I make 15g essentially, but almost half of that requires dungeon running with 4 other people, which if you PUG could vary your completion times wildly. Thankfully I do not have to PUG.

They need to improve the gold earning methods outside of dungeon running.

But even then it would effect the game in a negative way. Not for you as you obviously have no problem with grinding gold. It does however then still effect the game for people that prefer to work directly towards the items in the game.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

I see some people here talk about grinding gold and if the problem is that they now get less. For many the problem is not getting less when grinding gold but that getting everything requires (grinding) gold.

This not true. Everything available on the TP was actually acquired by players themselves. You can earn stuff yourself but people choose to go the gold route because farming gives a disproportionately high return. If it takes an hour of farming to get 1 corrupted lodestone why farm it when you can spend that same hour farming gold and buy 15 of them!

Thats not true. Many items in the game drop as very rare general loot. That means it’s nearly impossible to work towards that directly but it also means it still drops for many people who are not after it. They put in on the TP. So if you need / want that the only really viable way is by getting gold.

Then there are of-course also the RNG cash-shop items that end up on the TP like mini’s that are also unavailable in the game-world.

tigirius.9014:

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

I see some people here talk about grinding gold and if the problem is that they now get less. For many the problem is not getting less when grinding gold but that getting everything requires (grinding) gold.

This not true. Everything available on the TP was actually acquired by players themselves. You can earn stuff yourself but people choose to go the gold route because farming gives a disproportionately high return. If it takes an hour of farming to get 1 corrupted lodestone why farm it when you can spend that same hour farming gold and buy 15 of them!

The point is when you buy 15 of them you bought all 15 from 13-15 people because rewards are so terrible that you can’t farm anything yourself. You HAVE to use the TP seriously or you’ll spend months.

Look at any guide on youtube for any other game and you’ll see that you can actually farm the top tier items needed for anything. Look at guides from youtube about getting what you need for this game, guess what they say, yep, grind gold and buy it.

Yeah that’s indeed what I am (also) talking about.