Guild Wars 2

Well haiya GW2 Dev, who I assume is reading this with a blaze amount of interest after the immense number of concerns brought up to you in these here forums. My intentions in this post are to send a message, a positive message comprised of feedback that will help you grasp a bit of an idea of what it is like for a player of my slew. I’ll start with my background and what kind of player I am, and don’t worry this won’t take more than 10 minutes to read. (For your convenience I will be sure to test this)

There are players such as me who play this game more than they probably should I’ll admit, and I will go further to admit that nothing in game should favor our crowd over the commercial players. I both enjoy the game, and wish to play it the best I can. I am not an elitist, but I do love finding efficiency wherever I can in the content, as per legitimate uses of mechanics (And admittedly, sometimes, otherwise). I simply enjoy grinding out end game once I make it, and accomplishing all their is to accomplish. I love it, relish it, crave it!

Despite my enjoyment, one could even say fondness of Guild Wars 2 as to this point… I have discovered one of the darkest, most dangerous things for an 8+ hours player like myself. Diminishing Returns. The great and terrible bane of any long-session MMO’er.

My concern which I submit to you Developers is that I do not disagree with your system, and I mean that sincerely. Before I raise my issue with it I would like to honestly and fully congratulate you on the single most impressive design for global DR (diminishing returns) which I have seen implemented in any large scale game. The problem with your system.. admittedly, is that I cannot find a problem with it for commercial players. I do not see how you could possibly change it, and not hurt the larger player group more than was worth for the long-session players. It is quite the conundrum, and for a week here I’ve given it good thought, and a lot of consideration.

I concede that I find no reasonable solution that will fix much at all the problem it creates for long-session players, and so I submit this to you. The masterminds behind the curtain, that you may possibly do so if you hear my plea.

I’ll start off with the largest concern~
Daily Restriction- It seems to me, and by all means let me know if I am incorrect (It is very possible I simply have bad luck), that as my play session stretches on I notice a deter in just about.. everything. It seems my salvage luck gets worse as time passes, my loot gets lower grade as my session ages, and my kills drop loot less and less (etc.). Perhaps the worse of this is transmuting at the forge, and I’ll explain why in point #2

Numerous repetition- I have noticed that through a day I gain more supplies than I can do away with through a moderated rate without vendoring a large portion of my loot. I do not wish to vendor my loot, because often I find (It is either way irrelevant in all sincerity) that vendoring is more efficient. As stated previously salvaging becomes less and less lucky as I do it more and more. I can’t save up my gear and salvage over time, but neither may I do it all at once every 30 minutes because my salvages begin to yield better materials at as low (a s) 5 percent rates.. This is needless to say very frustrating =/ Along with salvaging I obtain roughly enough materials to transmute 250 mithril/elder wood/silk scrap into their higher quality counterparts 3-5 times a day. To my absolute horror I found that even this has a diminishing effect.. So the way it works is my salvages become less potent, giving me these 3 materials to transmute.. but when i end up doing so 3-5 times a day, I begin to lose out against simply selling them on the Trading Post.

My final and most pressing concern~
Diminishing drops

I find that staying at a spot, repeating the same kills, running the same dungeon (I am aware of all developer statements made on dungeons. I am glad to see your feedback to player concerns, and I await your changes to the current working of them), and even doing the same events will result in the lessening not only of the quality of the drops of given kills.. but indeed in their frequency, until they do not drop anything at all. I am 100% positive of this, and I know I’ve been somewhat humble until now about my positivity in my statements, but this is something I am very sure of.

I am not allowed to enjoy the content I find the most fun repetitively, because I play more than most players do.. I cannot enjoy a single spot idly without beginning to get nothing for it very quickly. Even if I run the same events enough I begin to receive nothing, or little next to it.

Now. You have my concerns developers. My intention as I stated was to bring this up to you, and to ask you to consider it. I have found no way to remedy any part of this problem without creating a larger one. I am a concerned long-session player. Nothing more.

(Please forgive me if anything I have stated offends any player/employee. My intention was only to voice the somewhat unfairness of the completely reasonable, and very well-crafted system in place to keep the game in balance to long-session players.)
Truly appreciated ? Nephe~

I just want you to know that I read your post, and you make a good point

That is the problem with systems such as this, either it is not in place and there will be people exploiting it, or it is in place and people innocently playing the game suffer.

Thank you for the respectfull way you adress this situation i wish more people would formulate their concerns in a similar fashion…

One of the ways this could be adressed, is to scale down all drops across the game a bit, to keep diminishing returns but reduce the slope a bit. Then compensate this by increasing the daily rewards, and adding in a weekly reward. To further compensate the still leveling players, making use of the Personal story instances could be a another way to specifically compensate players during the level-up phazes, these personal story steps can’t be repeated by lvl80 players and thus they could be a great source for specifically rewarding lower level players and specifically those on a less lengthy playsession.

Another way to compensate (mostly higher value drops) is to increase the chances they drop from ‘group event’ DE’s. These tend to be on a more lengthy recharge sequence, and these can not be ‘farmed’ by individuals. Because some of these events already reward people with a long list of items (sometimes in the absurde of 7 items or more), i would suggest reducing the amount of items, but increasing the chances on the items ‘to drop’ being of better quality.

A last measure, which is hard for me to judge, as i haven’t gotten there yet. Is to make the endgame areas 70-80 harder. So more time is needed to slay these monsters, and thus in essence, less items drop in a certain amount of time. It may be an idea to reduce the chances of high quality loot dropping from these critters aswell, but to introduce some Mystic Forge recipies that compensate this droprate by letting players combine their drops in the forge to create the desired items. Time spend in LA is time spend not farming, while the reward of getting the desired outcome (items to salvage for ecto’s f/e) is more then worth it. If Anet is smart about this, they will include 1 or 2 items in these recipies that can only be found in several lower/mid level areas, to stimulate these level 80 players to experience the intended ‘the whole game is endgame’-philosophy. Seeing various people will turn to the AH instead, it would give lower/midlevel players a good item to sell on the AH, and thus spread the wealth in another way…

In essence this would mean that less items would drop (or less valued) for all people, that harder group content is rewarded more (but these are also more timed), that leveling players are compensated to keep a balanced play-curve, and it would likely mean that if you get a good drop it is actually recognized as such. Shorter play session players, don’t get to far behind due to daily & weekly rewards. And long playsession players do not have to feel cheated out of their time, by being hit specifically by some artificial DR measure. Any lvl80 going for their legendary’s/armors will notice they have to work harder for their drops, and may notice a slight drop in returns from the current situation. BUT! By utilizing the Mystic Forge, they can still get their time’s worth of ecto’s.

Yes this would hit everybody in regards to worldly drops, but it hits everybody equally, and mostly it means that if you get a good drop you can feel extra rewarded for it.