Guild Wars 2

I have noticed a decrease in the drop rate of Heavy loot bags in WvW, a lot of other people have to, this isn’t suprising as Anet doesn’t seem to like WvW that much, but why take away one of our only means of income? Anet continues to take away from WvW and continues to give to PvE. Why? What do we in WvW do that you seem to dislike us so much?

Can I get a an official answer here please, I want to know why Anet dislikes the WvW community so much they want us poor all the time.

Rama.6439:

Look Anet, if you are gonna nerf our income in WvW, then give us something else, we need something to make a living on there. You take it all from us and you will start to lose a lot of us, a lot of us only like WvW. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need gold.

First off, no one is making 50g an hour in Frostgorge unless they get really lucky, and it’s definitely not consistently that profitable, but that’s really irrelevant.

You’re completely missing the point. Anet doesn’t give a kitten about your drop rates if you’re not giving them money. The WvW community has shown very little interest in buying anything out of the gemshop and the only way they were making money off us was the constant server swapping shenanigans. It’s pretty clear that we’re all getting sick of that and lots were opting to grind the gold ingame anyway, refusing to pay for it with real money. Anet knows that probably won’t be a reliable source of income for much longer, with the upcoming leagues largely locking down server transfers for almost two months at a time, especially considering how many WvW guilds have outright quit or stated they’re only waiting around for ESO to come out next year.

The gemshop offerings such as finishers are likely Anet’s final attempt to turn the WvW game mode into a profitable portion of their business, and if it fails, there is literally no reason for them to continue supporting the game mode. The WvW servers cost a lot of money to operate and maintain, and the dev(s) responsible for WvW have salaries that need to be paid, which means that if WvW players don’t start buying things from the shop, Anet will do everything they can to drive us into a more profitable gametype, or at the very least out of the game altogether so we stop hogging server resources.

tl;dr you’re thinking like a player who wants loot, they’re thinking like a company that wants money.

It’s not the “official” answer you’re looking for and I highly doubt you’re going to get any response from Anet, but I can give you my perception of why game companies tend not to cater to the PvP communities like they do to PvE players. The simple explanation is that we aren’t as easy to monetize as PvE players. Traditionally speaking, PvE players are motivated by aesthetics and the perceived social prestige that goes with always having the new cool thing ie: extrinsic rewards. They are far more likely to buy things from the gemshop like mini pets and exclusive armor skins, as these items are visual proof that they are good at PvE (read: good at having lots of money.) This gives Anet the ability to charge real-world money as a shortcut to obtaining the rewards with ingame gold/grinding.

WvW/PvP players on the other hand tend to be motivated more by glory, or the thrill of the fight ie: intrinsic rewards that are hard to quantify and near impossible to charge money for. Most of us tend to care more about whether or not we won the fight than what we looked like while doing it or what mini pet followed us into battle. Basically, PvE players like rewards that are purchased and Anet would love to sell those to them, PvP players mostly appreciate rewards that are earned and without a subscription fee Anet has a hard time making money off that.

I’m not sure I’ve noticed the decrease in drop rates in WvW, but granted I haven’t been playing as much lately, as this week’s matchup is a blowout and we’ve been having trouble finding enough opponents to fight. If there was such a nerf and I had to guess why, I’d say Anet is hoping that if they decrease our droprates to the point where we’re no longer able to sustain our gameplay (repair costs/consumables/siege) that we’ll be forced to buy gems to convert to gold in order to remain competitive.

tl;dr PvE players buy their crap, WvW/PvP players don’t.

EDIT: puts on tinfoil hat I have a suspicion that the extra points for stomping were added to the bloodlust buff in combination with the slew of new gemshop finishers in an attempt to combat the whole “WvW doesn’t make us any money” issue.

And yet LoL is pretty much a pvp game that monetizes pvp players extremely well.

Look at things like finishers and armors, pvp’ers care about looking good aswell.

I have noticed a significant buff to loot quality. However my perception might be skewed and having never run MF gear in WvW the new account MF might be increasing the loot quality beyond what I am used to.

I’m not saying it can’t be done, obviously LoL is a great example of a game that monetizes PvP players extremely well. It just seems like Anet either hasn’t fully embraced the idea that we too have money to spend, or they haven’t quite figured out how to go about getting us to spend it. If nothing else, the new finishers are proof that they are trying to make our gameplay a viable part of their business model, and I honestly hope that enough people buy them to prove that our community is worth supporting in the same way as PvE. I just fear it might be too little, too late.

I think the OP is right, I’ve noticed less Heavy loot bags and boh in the last 1 month, but I think it’s supposed to be like that, now I salvage everything, and with 60%+ of MF i noticed more nice drops, don’t know the cap of it, but with more MF i noticed a costant increase of rare loot.

Silas.8630:

EDIT: puts on tinfoil hat I have a suspicion that the extra points for stomping were added to the bloodlust buff in combination with the slew of new gemshop finishers in an attempt to combat the whole “WvW doesn’t make us any money” issue.

Tinfoil hat? That is painfully obvious…

Also worth noting, is that a large portion of the PvE playerbase puts the cart before the horse, for them the shiny at the end of the grind is the whole point of the game, not a nice little addition. Those are the players who will run an excruciatingly boring champion farming train for hours, days, or weeks on end if it gives them more buying power and if you can charge them a few dollars to speed that process along they’re more likely to take the bait.

PvP players on the other hand tend to prefer PvP over PvE precisely because it’s not boring and repetitive. They prefer a dynamic and compelling fight against a living, thinking, reacting opponent instead a static encounter repeated over and over. The shiny you buy for a couple bucks is just a nice little addition to make you look cool while you’re playing the game, not the game itself. What this means is that PvE players are more likely to overlook flaws in the journey as long as the shiny at the end is shiny enough, because they’re playing for the shiny at the end. Anet is therefore free to spend less time polishing the game (because it’s difficult and requires complex balance and mechanics) and more time polishing the prize at the end (because it’s simple and can be churned out by the thousands)

What I mean to say by all this is that Anet may have already shot themselves in the foot with regards to PvP players because we’re here for the gameplay not the prize, and they failed to provide an engaging and balanced WvW experience before they tried to sell the cool armor in which to play it.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Silas.8630:

EDIT: puts on tinfoil hat I have a suspicion that the extra points for stomping were added to the bloodlust buff in combination with the slew of new gemshop finishers in an attempt to combat the whole “WvW doesn’t make us any money” issue.

Tinfoil hat? That is painfully obvious…

What I meant was that it was an (albeit failed) attempt at subtlety on their part to hide the motivation for cool finishers inside a new game mechanic most of didn’t really want. I honestly think they would have been much more successful if they had just come right out and said “look, we’re adding cool finishing moves to the shop, if enough of you buy them to support the development, we’ll add GvG.”

Silas.8630:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Silas.8630:

EDIT: puts on tinfoil hat I have a suspicion that the extra points for stomping were added to the bloodlust buff in combination with the slew of new gemshop finishers in an attempt to combat the whole “WvW doesn’t make us any money” issue.

Tinfoil hat? That is painfully obvious…

What I meant was that it was an (albeit failed) attempt at subtlety on their part to hide the motivation for cool finishers inside a new game mechanic most of didn’t really want. I honestly think they would have been much more successful if they had just come right out and said “look, we’re adding cool finishing moves to the shop, if enough of you buy them to support the development, we’ll add GvG.”

Yes, and I mean, I think you are correct.

Well I have noticed the decrease in drops, I have a decent increase in my MF% to, almost to 100% now and you would think that would mean more loot, not less, and the only rares I have been getting are from the champ bags from the WvW champs, and I get about 1 out of every 10, I know thats just rng and I’m not complaining about that, but if Anet is nerfing drops in WvW that is just plain wrong, we hardly make anything there as it is, the PvE crowd that farms champs all day and does metas all day and dungeon runs, that’s what needs the nerfing. I keep hearing about people making 50g an hour farming frostgorge, I’m lucky to make 3g an hour in WvW. I know what you are all gonna say, go farm frostgorge, no thanks, I hate PvE, it’s for the weak minded imo, I can’t do that champ farm for more then 5 mins, let alone hours.

Look Anet, if you are gonna nerf our income in WvW, then give us something else, we need something to make a living on there. You take it all from us and you will start to lose a lot of us, a lot of us only like WvW. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need gold.

Heavy Loot bag suck anyway, most of time they give the 7 copper craft material wich sucks plain. To get every 8 bags a t6 mat (26 silver, thus equal income as you would get by selling bags to TP), you need a lot of luck.

Loot is a problem in pve too tbh. T6 mats, drop almost nowhere anymore, but we need craploads of them. Now the stupid bloodlust pesters everyone. I got 9000+ Bloodlust going up daily a lot, i hope they soon, change this somehow.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Heavy Loot bag suck anyway, most of time they give the 7 copper craft material wich sucks plain. To get every 8 bags a t6 mat (26 silver, thus equal income as you would get by selling bags to TP), you need a lot of luck.

Loot is a problem in pve too tbh. T6 mats, drop almost nowhere anymore, but we need craploads of them. Now the stupid bloodlust pesters everyone. I got 9000+ Bloodlust going up daily a lot, i hope they soon, change this somehow.

Theres no problem with loot in PvE, they are always adding new crap, all the metas, temples, champ farms, dungeons, living story, what in PvE is there that don’t give loot?

If you are having trouble getting loot in PvE, you are playing the game wrong.

I bought my finisher. And likely will buy another… just read the tag line /supportinGvG

This wouldn’t surprise me. When I’ve asked about why we can’t get the vial of essence for the ascended back piece in wvw, I was informed that Anet wants all of us to experience fractals because its good for us. I guess they all want us to experience Orr because its good for us too, lol.

It is quite clear to me that anet despises wvw, simply because they promised that all ascended items would quickly be available in wvw, and they aren’t.

Hexin.5603:

I bought my finisher. And likely will buy another… just read the tag line /supportinGvG

I’ve bought several finishers as well, unfortunately it may be too late at this point and we’re kind of stuck in a Mexican standoff. Anet isn’t willing to devote resources to fixing a game mode that isn’t profitable and WvW players aren’t willing to throw more money at a company that doesn’t support their game mode. Realistically, they have until Q2 2014 to decide if it’s worth trying to keep us around, and we are a rather fickle bunch…

Sanduskel.1850:

This wouldn’t surprise me. When I’ve asked about why we can’t get the vial of essence for the ascended back piece in wvw, I was informed that Anet wants all of us to experience fractals because its good for us. I guess they all want us to experience Orr because its good for us too, lol.

It is quite clear to me that anet despises wvw, simply because they promised that all ascended items would quickly be available in wvw, and they aren’t.

Hey, run a few fractals, die a few times, break all your gear, maybe you’ll buy a couple Recovery Packages *cough cough*

Finishers for gems should have been in the game from the start. It’s a obvious way to make money. That they weren’t probably points to the fact that Anet doesn’t spend much resources thinking about WvW at all.

Silas.8630:

Sanduskel.1850:

This wouldn’t surprise me. When I’ve asked about why we can’t get the vial of essence for the ascended back piece in wvw, I was informed that Anet wants all of us to experience fractals because its good for us. I guess they all want us to experience Orr because its good for us too, lol.

It is quite clear to me that anet despises wvw, simply because they promised that all ascended items would quickly be available in wvw, and they aren’t.

Hey, run a few fractals, die a few times, break all your gear, maybe you’ll buy a couple Recovery Packages cough cough

I’d rather uninstall than do a few fractals.

Silas.8630:

Rama.6439:

Look Anet, if you are gonna nerf our income in WvW, then give us something else, we need something to make a living on there. You take it all from us and you will start to lose a lot of us, a lot of us only like WvW. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need gold.

First off, no one is making 50g an hour in Frostgorge unless they get really lucky, and it’s definitely not consistently that profitable, but that’s really irrelevant.

You’re completely missing the point. Anet doesn’t give a kitten about your drop rates if you’re not giving them money. The WvW community has shown very little interest in buying anything out of the gemshop and the only way they were making money off us was the constant server swapping shenanigans. It’s pretty clear that we’re all getting sick of that and lots were opting to grind the gold ingame anyway, refusing to pay for it with real money. Anet knows that probably won’t be a reliable source of income for much longer, with the upcoming leagues largely locking down server transfers for almost two months at a time, especially considering how many WvW guilds have outright quit or stated they’re only waiting around for ESO to come out next year.

The gemshop offerings such as finishers are likely Anet’s final attempt to turn the WvW game mode into a profitable portion of their business, and if it fails, there is literally no reason for them to continue supporting the game mode. The WvW servers cost a lot of money to operate and maintain, and the dev(s) responsible for WvW have salaries that need to be paid, which means that if WvW players don’t start buying things from the shop, Anet will do everything they can to drive us into a more profitable gametype, or at the very least out of the game altogether so we stop hogging server resources.

tl;dr you’re thinking like a player who wants loot, they’re thinking like a company that wants money.

The only reason I don’t play PvE anymore is it’s all to easy, they keep introducing this temp content every 2 weeks and 99% of it is a joke, collecting, dancing, smashing stuff, who wants to do that stuff except players that have no skill in the game in the first place, most servers don’t even do teq anymore, they should have learned from the karka queen that these things get old real fast.

If they want the WvW community to get involved with the rest of the game they should start adding in permanent content, new areas, new dungeons, and maybe make an open world pvp area, Orr would be good for this, this would also make GvG available, and they could add in some kind of point reward system for the GvG.

Of course all this matters not, they don’t care about us and we will probably all leave eventually, I also am waiting for ESO, and am waiting for EQN, just anything to be released to get away from Anet, don’t get why want to ruin it for us, so what we don’t waste money on gems for stupid fluff, put something on there we could use and maybe we would. But they never read our suggestions, they know what we want without looking…

Silas.8630:

Rama.6439:

Look Anet, if you are gonna nerf our income in WvW, then give us something else, we need something to make a living on there. You take it all from us and you will start to lose a lot of us, a lot of us only like WvW. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need gold.

First off, no one is making 50g an hour in Frostgorge unless they get really lucky, and it’s definitely not consistently that profitable, but that’s really irrelevant.

You’re completely missing the point. Anet doesn’t give a kitten about your drop rates if you’re not giving them money. The WvW community has shown very little interest in buying anything out of the gemshop and the only way they were making money off us was the constant server swapping shenanigans. It’s pretty clear that we’re all getting sick of that and lots were opting to grind the gold ingame anyway, refusing to pay for it with real money. Anet knows that probably won’t be a reliable source of income for much longer, with the upcoming leagues largely locking down server transfers for almost two months at a time, especially considering how many WvW guilds have outright quit or stated they’re only waiting around for ESO to come out next year.

The gemshop offerings such as finishers are likely Anet’s final attempt to turn the WvW game mode into a profitable portion of their business, and if it fails, there is literally no reason for them to continue supporting the game mode. The WvW servers cost a lot of money to operate and maintain, and the dev(s) responsible for WvW have salaries that need to be paid, which means that if WvW players don’t start buying things from the shop, Anet will do everything they can to drive us into a more profitable gametype, or at the very least out of the game altogether so we stop hogging server resources.

tl;dr you’re thinking like a player who wants loot, they’re thinking like a company that wants money.

Not our fault that we don’t buy things for them. It’s more their fault that they aren’t in touch with the community enough to know what we really would want. I could think of a multitude of things I would buy if they were put in the gem store, the problem A-net just doesn’t know their community well enough to implement them.

Sanduskel.1850:

Silas.8630:

Hey, run a few fractals, die a few times, break all your gear, maybe you’ll buy a couple Recovery Packages cough cough

I’d rather uninstall than do a few fractals.

I was kidding of course.

Not our fault that we don’t buy things for them. It’s more their fault that they aren’t in touch with the community enough to know what we really would want. I could think of a multitude of things I would buy if they were put in the gem store, the problem A-net just doesn’t know their community well enough to implement them.

Oh I’m not saying it’s our fault at all, Anet made their bed as far as our community is concerned and now they have to lie in as far as the lost profits are concerned. I’m simply pointing out that from their perspective we haven’t exactly demonstrated that we’re a community worth catering to. PvE players enjoy the game Anet puts in front of them and keep spending money on it, so Anet keeps doing it. However plenty of WvW players have expressed since alpha how much we dislike the game Anet made and the multitude of ways it could be made better. Unfortunately no matter how good these changes would be in the long run many of them would be costly and time consuming to implement, and they see no reason to spend the time fixing what we probably won’t like anyway when there’s a community of perfectly content wallets at the other end of the forums.

Silas.8630:

Hexin.5603:

I bought my finisher. And likely will buy another… just read the tag line /supportinGvG

I’ve bought several finishers as well, unfortunately it may be too late at this point and we’re kind of stuck in a Mexican standoff. Anet isn’t willing to devote resources to fixing a game mode that isn’t profitable and WvW players aren’t willing to throw more money at a company that doesn’t support their game mode. Realistically, they have until Q2 2014 to decide if it’s worth trying to keep us around, and we are a rather fickle bunch…

I think anet’s wvw community represents one of the most loyal and patient player bases yet seen in a mmo. Can you imagine the pve community putting up with the party system being broken for over a year with no eta on fix either? Wvw reward to effort ratio is just staggeringly bad and yet the complaints are polite and restrained. Rampant promise breaking power grind that infests our game mode further with every patch. Moves hated by the community like char bound wxp grind, outmanned staying useless while we get bloodlust instead etc.

I’m very surprised anet doesn’t get a lot more ‘feedback’…

Kalan.9705:

Silas.8630:

Hexin.5603:

I bought my finisher. And likely will buy another… just read the tag line /supportinGvG

I’ve bought several finishers as well, unfortunately it may be too late at this point and we’re kind of stuck in a Mexican standoff. Anet isn’t willing to devote resources to fixing a game mode that isn’t profitable and WvW players aren’t willing to throw more money at a company that doesn’t support their game mode. Realistically, they have until Q2 2014 to decide if it’s worth trying to keep us around, and we are a rather fickle bunch…

I think anet’s wvw community represents one of the most loyal and patient player bases yet seen in a mmo. Can you imagine the pve community putting up with the party system being broken for over a year with no eta on fix either? Wvw reward to effort ratio is just staggeringly bad and yet the complaints are polite and restrained. Rampant promise breaking power grind that infests our game mode further with every patch. Moves hated by the community like char bound wxp grind, outmanned staying useless while we get bloodlust instead etc.

I’m very surprised anet doesn’t get a lot more ‘feedback’…

It’s because there is no other decent open world pvp game out there. Daoc was good, but it’s dated and unsupported. Failhammer died a justified death. Aion is far too grindy, gear heavy and rng dependent. I will eagerly try teso and Camelot unchained once they launch.