Guild Wars 2

Topic. What if trash mobs in the expansion new zones weren’t to drop loot and instead the new zones behaved like the Silverwastes?

I reaaaaally hope they do this. This way people are not afraid of missing out on loot if they do not zerg.

That would suck. Way to encourage skipping content, downplaying effort, and glorifying ignorance.

edit: I assume what you mean is that loot would only drop from champions and chests, or something like that, which is what would suck. Essentially you’d be encouraged to zerg with all your might just to get anything at all, instead of allowing yourself to fight lesser creatures.

Starfleck.8392:

That would suck. Way to encourage skipping content, downplaying effort, and glorifying ignorance.

It’s the other way around. Allowing mobs to drop loot, promotes skipping content (mobs that don’t drop good loot), downplaying effort (fight for tags and lootz instead of for finishing the event)

If the new HoT zones behave like the Silverwastes (without the lost bandit chests) it will make the game better, instead of hunting for loot (and aoe tagging as many mobs as possible) players would play to win.

Starfleck.8392:

edit: I assume what you mean is that loot would only drop from champions and chests, or something like that, which is what would suck. Essentially you’d be encouraged to zerg with all your might just to get anything at all, instead of allowing yourself to fight lesser creatures.

No. The Silverwastes EVENT mobs do not drop loot at all, instead players are getting their loot in packages once they succeed in an event. So players are not playing for the tags and the loot, but to finish the event. If the event fails, no loot for anyone.

Normal world mobs drop loot like all other mobs, only event mobs are loot-less.

No sorry I get what you mean, I edited my post once I thought about it for a second more. I figured what he meant is, like he said in the first post, “trash mobs weren’t to drop loot”, but that the greater mobs would. I haven’t played Silverwastes enough to know but I gather that champs don’t drop loot either? Kinda makes up for it a little. But nearly everything in the silverwastes seems to be tied to an event anyways so what’s the difference?

Starfleck.8392:

No sorry I get what you mean, I edited my post once I thought about it for a second more. I figured what he meant is, like he said in the first post, “trash mobs weren’t to drop loot”, but that the greater mobs would. I haven’t played Silverwastes enough to know but I gather that champs don’t drop loot either? Kinda makes up for it a little. But nearly everything in the silverwastes seems to be tied to an event anyways so what’s the difference?

In other events players “need” to tag as many mobs as possible to earn rewards. In the Silverwastes you do not rush to tag, instead players cooperate to finish the events.

Imagine a camp getting attacked by centaurs that has 2 entrances. In the rest of the game, a player might drop a couple of aoe on the south gate, then go to the north, go back and forth with ranged aoes so he can tag mobs for loot on both sides. In SW, that’s not needed. He picks the gate he wants to defend, and if the players succeed they are all rewarded.

Also, in the rest of the game, players can zerg an event to force champion mobs to spawn for more loot. In SW that’s impossible, so mobs can actually scale to offer more of a challenge for more players without the consequence of giving way more loot.

Melee players and players offering Support skills can contribute in SW events. In the rest of the game, it’s all about having as many ranged aoes as possible.

Event success reward brings some nice things to the table, like encouraging players to go after the main goal of the event over tagging as many mobs as possible and being able, even if it has not been extensively used yet, to provide bonus rewards if some not slaughter based special conditions are met (for Silverwastes, that could happen if a fortress is defended without losing walls and/or doors)
There are two major issues, however, with the Silverwastes model:

- Magic Find becomes useless.
I don’t like this kind of mechanic and would have prefered a game without MF, but truth is we have it and a lot of players have made investments around it. Nullifying it by rewarding some unaffected loot bags on event completion is quite a slap in the face for them.

- Event tagging
This is a major flaw. Achieving a minimum contribution is enough to be rewarded, so nothing prevents a player from jumping between active events and get more loot than those doing all the hard work on each one.
In order to prevent this, ANet should improve the event contribution system (the medal thing), which is in a quite bad state atm.
For timed defenses or wave based fights (like fort defenses or dolyak scorts), it shouldn’t be difficult to check player activity for different timeframes/stages and then assign different contribution rewards based on the combined activity. If the event success reward would depend on that contributuon level, that would be enough to solve the issue to some extent (it will always be a somewhat slacker friendly system).
For events that can’t be structured like this, like retaking a fortress from the mordrem, a reworked mob loot or mixed system could be better.

The biggest problem with the classic mob loot system is how dependant the loot is on scaling. There’s a world of difference between the loot you get by completing an event alone or with a couple of friends and what you can get by zerging it.
In order to make it fairier, all ANet needs to do is disable any loot from those additional enemies scaling creates. Since an upscaled event will usually promote some enemies to elites and/or even champions, they just need to make sure that the base enemies are prioritized so the biggest (and easier to tag) guys are the ones providing loot.
The sytem would still promote tagging over anything else but, in the positive side, would allows MF to work and punish slackers and AFK-ers much more than the event sucess one.

Needless to say that a mixed system, where you have both mob and event reward, is absolutely possible and might be the best system for a lot of events.

Vargamonth.2047:

There are two major issues, however, with the Silverwastes model:
- Magic Find becomes useless.

You can still use Magic Find on random mobs and the Lost Bandit Chests.

- Event tagging

This is the greatest flaw of the Silverwastes mechanic. I agree, a better participation is badly needed.

I think the best thing about the SW system is it allows players to use multiple and different builds. Outside SW, maximizing ranged Area of Effect skills is all you need to succeed, so some professions / builds are having a harder time. Events shouldn’t depend on that part of your build (how many AoEs you have) to be rewarding.

My problem is: you do Melandru chain in orr, you end up with a lot of loot and gain a lot of money.

You do one assault chain and get to kill the boss in Silverwastes, you gain almost nothing. It’s way more rewarding to just Chest train.

I know it’s a game and it should be all about fun and I agree that people should actually play an event to beat it instead of just race to tag, but if you want people to clear the events you should reward them in a meaningful way to do so otherwise the content won’t be played for long. A good example is when people refuse to clear an event chain because failing it is more rewarding: people should gain more by clearing the event instead of failing it.

Also yeah, if enemies don’t drop loot why the hell are we building Magic Find?

Dropping loot or not dropping loot is tied to incentives to the players.

In dungeons, you want mobs to drop attractive loot to discourage skipping (hint: arah pendant). This is especially true in arah where everything bar bosses can be skipped, which is removing “the meat” of the dungeon.

In open world with large zerg events, you want mobs to not drop loot to encourage players to complete the event rather than just tagging.

In open world with no event, you want mobs to drop normally to encourage roamers to kill them.

VodCom.6924:

In open world with large zerg events, you want mobs to not drop loot to encourage players to complete the event rather than just tagging.

… or encourage them to go and play another, more rewarding, event, like one where mobs drop a crapload of good stuff! =/

I would actually prefer that (most) loot be tied to successfully completing events rather than killing mobs. Not only does it help counter the zerg/blob mentality, it allows Anet to design more interesting encounters and events.

VodCom makes a good point about dungeons, however.

Mobs that are spawned due to scaling should not drop loot. Scaling is supposed to keep the difficulty up, not multiply your rewards.

The problem with loot being tied to events, like in the Silverwastes, is that you can tag and run. The contribution system needs to change if they want to continue doing this.

Oh boy, even less reason for magic find to exist.

Lucky Shot.7650:

VodCom.6924:

In open world with large zerg events, you want mobs to not drop loot to encourage players to complete the event rather than just tagging.

… or encourage them to go and play another, more rewarding, event, like one where mobs drop a crapload of good stuff! =/

Well, last time I went in the SW it was full of players. So I doubt the lack of loot from mobs is discouraging them. Also, keep in mind it is now one of the most lucrative open world farm zone.

Cursed Shore is nice for T6 and dragonite but offers a lower gold/hour rate IIRC.

maddoctor.2738:

You can still use Magic Find on random mobs and the Lost Bandit Chests.

They still should make event loot affected by MF just like pvp containers are.

rotten.9753:

maddoctor.2738:

You can still use Magic Find on random mobs and the Lost Bandit Chests.

They still should make event loot affected by MF just like pvp containers are.

You mean the event chest rewards? Yes that would be the best option for sure

God I hope the sanity prevents them from making such a decision.

Lucky Shot.7650:

Topic. What if trash mobs in the expansion new zones weren’t to drop loot and instead the new zones behaved like the Silverwastes?

If they make my MF affect the containers then sure.

Then again, that would effect all containers I guess.

Then again, that would lead to people stacking up thousands of bags and opening them at once with MF boosters.

Then again: No. I would not like that to happen.

Sidenote:
@maddoctor: afaik MF doesn’t effect bandit loot chest, only the silverwastes event MF buff does (dunno what’s it called).

Bubi.7942:

Sidenote:
@maddoctor: afaik MF doesn’t effect bandit loot chest, only the silverwastes event MF buff does (dunno what’s it called).

There’s nothing official about that but when you open a bandit chest your MF increases by the bonus MF and that makes only sense when your MF matters there.

Would not do it for me, I love loot. That is my main issue with this whole game, the loot is so kitten rare it makes all other games shined imo.

Blaeys.3102:

I would actually prefer that (most) loot be tied to successfully completing events rather than killing mobs. Not only does it help counter the zerg/blob mentality, it allows Anet to design more interesting encounters and events.

VodCom makes a good point about dungeons, however.

Actually having all loot tied to events encourages afking (see other topics) and event skipping, as well as playing in a zerg (to kill whatever boss event spawns faster). This is perfectly demonstrated by Sw, with taxis to maps that are almost ready to pop the final event chain (where other people have spent all their efforts completing the lead up events to fill the bar whilst loads of people just afk).

Run up, tag a mob, run off (or go stand in a corner upping scale but not contributing), tag another event, do it in a group to increase tagging. As mobs don’t drop loot in your scenario, no point in helping kill the rest of them (sorry you died to those mobs, but why should we bother to help you, they don’t drop anything and we’re busy afking…)

A much better design would be for each event mob to drop a token, and for the number of tokens you collect to reflect your final reward from the whole chain as well as from each event. Applying this to SW would stop the lazy taxis and encourage people to actually help build the bar rather than just jump in a reap rewards before taxing to the next map that’s need almost done by others.

Baldrick.8967:

A much better design would be for each event mob to drop a token, and for the number of tokens you collect to reflect your final reward from the whole chain as well as from each event. Applying this to SW would stop the lazy taxis and encourage people to actually help build the bar rather than just jump in a reap rewards before taxing to the next map that’s need almost done by others.

You make an excellent proposal, but note that it is similar to what other people have said about ‘improved participation checks’. It doesn’t matter if you’d actually loot the tokens or if they’d be rewarded invisibly. Completing different objectives could also up your token count, improving your event participation. In the end you’ll have events with unique participation checks reflecting your efforts in the event or chain. The result would still be no loot from mobs while preventing event tagging to be more lucrative than putting in effort. (note that my personal preference is that rewards increase exponentially with tiers rather than linearly. This further rewards players helping out from the start and to their fullest capacity)

• To the open-world roaming/skipping issue: non-event mobs could still be dropping loot.
• To the dungeon issue: dungeon mobs could still be dropping loot, and add a dungeon specific MF buff for non-boss enemies or smth to demote skipping.

I feel this would improve how events and maps are handled in general… Is Anet reading this?

rotten.9753:

Bubi.7942:

Sidenote:
@maddoctor: afaik MF doesn’t effect bandit loot chest, only the silverwastes event MF buff does (dunno what’s it called).

There’s nothing official about that but when you open a bandit chest your MF increases by the bonus MF and that makes only sense when your MF matters there.

Dunno, it seems pretty explicit to me: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Perseverance

Baldrick.8967:

Run up, tag a mob, run off (or go stand in a corner upping scale but not contributing), tag another event, do it in a group to increase tagging.

Yeah, it’s horribly easy to get gold for events much less the arbitrary bronze for event rewards. I think it’s a problem in how Anet measures event participation. They don’t seem to use a time based model, so in 10 minute event you can rush in during the last minute kill a few mobs and get gold. However using a time based model would incline people not to participate in soon to be done events.
At least in dungeons it would be easier to measure participation, simply count how many dungeon events were completed and how many bosses and mobs were killed and reward accordingly (granted this would infuriate speed runners).

VodCom.6924:

Well, last time I went in the SW it was full of players. So I doubt the lack of loot from mobs is discouraging them. Also, keep in mind it is now one of the most lucrative open world farm zone.

Funny thing, though, that events is not why it’s a good farm. There’s a reason why people either join in late, when metaevent is almost completed (thus skipping most of the events), or go into chest farm instances that barely advance the progress bar at all.

CureForLiving.5360:

At least in dungeons it would be easier to measure participation, simply count how many dungeon events were completed and how many bosses and mobs were killed and reward accordingly (granted this would infuriate speed runners).

It would also infuriate anyone that had got dc-d during dungeon run, and make getting a replacement for a quitter/dc highly unlikely.

I have mixed feelings about this. In some ways it could improve things..in other ways it’s pretty obvious why ppl wouldn’t feel content with killing stuff anymore….there’s something about kill a mob and being rewarded for it.

Bubi.7942:

Dunno, it seems pretty explicit to me: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Perseverance

I’m pretty sure you misunderstood me. I’m saying that when you open a chest your MF increases for about 1s (which wiki seems to confirm) and that would make sense only if your entire MF was calculated for those chests, not just the bonus one you get from Perseverance. Besides, I thought people farmed bandit chests for champ bags which are not affected by MF.

rotten.9753:

Bubi.7942:

Dunno, it seems pretty explicit to me: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Perseverance

I’m pretty sure you misunderstood me. I’m saying that when you open a chest your MF increases for about 1s (which wiki seems to confirm) and that would make sense only if your entire MF was calculated for those chests, not just the bonus one you get from Perseverance. Besides, I thought people farmed bandit chests for champ bags which are not affected by MF.

You can get other things from the chests as well. For example, did you know they can drop ascended gear boxes?

The simple answer is that this is not how it works. I looted crap from random mobs during the demo.

Astralporing.1957:

You can get other things from the chests as well. For example, did you know they can drop ascended gear boxes?

Yes, I know. But I haven’t said that you cannot get anything out of those chests except champ bags.

rotten.9753:

Bubi.7942:

Dunno, it seems pretty explicit to me: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Perseverance

I’m pretty sure you misunderstood me. I’m saying that when you open a chest your MF increases for about 1s (which wiki seems to confirm) and that would make sense only if your entire MF was calculated for those chests, not just the bonus one you get from Perseverance. Besides, I thought people farmed bandit chests for champ bags which are not affected by MF.

Huh! I did misunderstand you, and you are right, it really doesn’t make sense my way then.

Killing mobs should have a chance to give loot. Period. This is a common thing in MMOs and a lot of players like to be rewarded for killing things. It’s already pathetic that personal story instance mobs no longer drop loot. We don’t need an entire world where loot doesn’t really exist.

If it is anything like the SW then:

• Free roaming trash mobs will still be dropping loot.
• It would only effect the mobs tied to events, where they them selfs drop nothing and the event it self gives you the appropriate rewards.

This would discourage over-scaling an event with zergs to get seas of loot.
The free roaming trash mobs aren’t zergable, so since they give loot they would still reward exploration, but at the same time could not be exploited.

I’m totally in for it!

Kite.2510:

This would discourage over-scaling an event with zergs to get seas of loot.

On the other hand, it would encourage tagging an event, and getting the kitten out. I’d rather see people having an incentive to stay, even if it means that events get zerged.