Guild Wars 2

Updated my guardian main with new phalanx pieces, so now it is:
- T2 Helmet
- T3 Gloves and boots
- Phalanx Armor, shoulders and legs

Greetings.
There are 2 notions about MMORPG’s that blow my mind:

1-Goals and objectives must require excessive amounts of time/grinding. Yeah, because there cannot be a middle ground, no no, no sir. It’s either super-fast or super-slow, nothing in between.
2-Progression must be vertical, with gear treadmills locking people out of content.

GW2 is supposed to have horizontal progression, having new things to do that doesn’t lock people with stat inflation nonsense.
But 9 months after release we still have the same armor sets, same “normal” dungeons ( as fractals have its own system ). And the new weapon sets are locked behind kitten lottery boxes or require mind-numbing grinding like fractal ones.
Content added is extremely shallow, with “living stories” that you can complete in a day or two. No challenges, no interesting side stories, no new interesting titles or achievements, nada, except for Adventure Box, which is gone.

I already know that content cannot be created as fast as people complete it, but i’m sure they can slowly add objectives and motivations for all kinds of players that doesn’t require an asinine amount of time to do. It seems to me they aren’t even trying, and just want to milk casual players with the gem shop.
MMORPG’s need some form of retention, motivations to continue playing and enjoying the game and its world either solo or with others, i’m sure it can be done without resorting to the trap of gear treadmills or vertical stat inflation. GW1 survived lots of years without that, surely this game can too, it has incredible potential that i feel is being wasted.
I love this game, but i’m quickly becoming bored without new substantial things to do. You can only repeat so many times something “for fun” before getting bored of it or looking at some sort of reward for time spent.

Good example of something moderate: dungeon token system, SAB.
Bad example: the terrible legendary grinding.

Honestly, who didn’t see all this rng skins bull coming sooner or later?
The moment i knew they hired a person from Nexon i was convinced that something like this would happen. Not surprised, really.

The progression in this game is cosmetic. Locking that progression behind rng is stupid and it doesn’t interest me one bit. Dungeon skins aren’t locked behind rng, we can pick the ones we want and it works perfectly.

Let people buy the exact skins they want and all will be fine.

You have my mace! /signed
I have a golden armor and i’m using a Guild Mace, which is dark blue/black. I would love to dye the mace golden or silver.
This would make the game so much better!

I totally agree with this!

I’m all for lateral/cosmetic progression, but i feel the variety of armor/weapon skins is very lacking. The dungeon sets are nice and all ( don’t like most of them though :P ), but those dungeons have been there since launch. Fractals only introduced some weapons and the backpiece, but i don’t go for those because they are tied to rng, while dungeon sets have the system i like wich is badges, getting exactly the pieces you want and you can preview the items.

We need more objectives to achieve, we were told that progression would be cosmetic but we need much more variety, let the game shine as it should!
And please, don’t tie new skins to rng. Since karma is the main currency in PvE along gold, make all that karma we have useful and let us buy nice skins with it.

I want to share my human support Guardian, my main char, i’m pretty proud of him.
He wears:

T2 Helmet
Heavy plate armor
T3 Shoulders, gloves and boots
Vigil Legs

There is a big objective that keeps me motivated:
- Helping my guild with influence gain, gold gathering and providing items for the bank.

It works for me, big time. I enjoy being in my guild a lot, playing/chatting with guild buddies and helping the guild grow and prosper. Guild missions give a big incentive for amassing those influence points. Love getting involved in an awesome guild.

Other than that, i go for having the best look i can for my chars, since aesthetics is one of the main draws of the game ( and like it that way ).
I’m not going for the mystic forge recipes or legendaries though, since i feel it’s too painful of a grind. I am enjoying getting the gold for my desired cultural items though.

Don’t care much about ascended trinkets. If i get them for my main by playing normally, cool, if not it’s okay too. Thank Dwayna there’s not a gear requisite for completing content.

I seem to get consistently better drops now after the mentioned changes made to kill credit. Loot seems to be “ok” for me now. Greens are still rare for me though and dyes still have miserable chance to drop, but i seem to get more blue gear now.
I can make decent money, but it is because of the big inflation, as selling mats and bags in the TP is very profitable. Remember i said the eggs selling for 60c? Now it’s 80+ lol.
Dragon chest loot is awesome now, thank Dwayna.

Thank you for this positive change in drops. About time.

Would like to read more opinions here about the changes.

I don’t want to see this implemented EVER. Like it has been said, the negatives are way too many, and i don’t want to see this great game turn into WoW 2 ( dungeon gear-checks ).
If i wanted to be in a group and they demanded me to show my gear before, i would never join these people. As for “popular” builds i don’t give a kitten, i play games the way i want and with the “builds” i want to.

Thank god i’m in a great guild and we group and have fun without stupid rules or checks.

Halanna.3927:

You can’t buy ecto’s with laurels. Or orichalcum ore. If the game is not about loot, then how shall I obtain the items I require to do what I wish? Shall raspberries just appear at log in? Omnomberries just be plucked from the air?

Yes, farming for items is a part of the game. Is is both needed and necessary. The problem is all the anti-farming protocols in place make trying to do anything for yourself impossible.

I don’t want to buy earrnings from the TP. I leveled jeweling so I can make these things for myself and my alts. Same with tailoring. So I can make bags. But if I can’t farm cloth, how is that supposed to happen?

Exactly! I want to be able to gather the mats myself, i enjoy doing that so i should be able to ( play the way you want, remember? ).
I had to give up and buy all the yellow equipment i have on my main char ( guardian with armorsmithing ), because it was just too mind-numbingly boring to try and get the fine mats myself. It felt like someone was pulling the rug from beneath my feet so i couldn’t advance.

About farming for money, i have chosen to go for some human cultural armor pieces for my guardian because i love the skins, and they will cost me 40+ gold.
I have been farming this last 3 days, but not staying in one place, i move around the zones. I can make about 2g in a 3 hour session, it’s not bad but not exactly amazing either. And that 2g is in a big part because of the high prices that mats sell for in the TP, if there weren’t this inflation i wold be making much less. Example, yesterday big moldy bags were selling for 3+ silver O.o It gets annoying to me having to rely so much in the TP to make decent money ( as merchants give kitten for everything ).
Last night i had to exchange 4g for 200 gems, to get 5 yellow transmute stones. Blowing the gains of 2 days for just 5 stones did hurt.

In my opinion, you make poor money in a game that is supposedly “casual-friendly”. If you don’t want to do a lot of dungeon runs you have to grind quite a bit…

My guardian is “healer/tank” ( mace+shield, love support roles ), if dps is the issue i shouldn’t be forced to switch to dps to solo farm, it’s asinine.

I appreciate that they have grown a pair and actually admitted there IS a problem, i will give them the benefit of doubt for now, waiting for that 26th Feb patch.
But i have hit “confidence DR” with this company long ago, so i will believe the problem gets fixed when i see it.

Before more people say that “farming isn’t intended” here is this quote from Jon Peters again:

While we need a safety net to stop unanticipated economy-breaking exploits and botting, we have no desire to stop farming. Farmers are a part every online economy and when they are doing normal game activity they do not cause any harm. If a player finds a normal game activity fun and would like to keep doing it, that’s fine with us.

There is a big difference between gaining reasonable returns for your efforts ( blues being common drops as well as fine materials/bags, a green once in a while ) and receiving crap most of the time ( gray junk, whites ). The second case has been predominant for me since the famous november changes.

And the ridiculously low merchant sale value of everything doesn’t help either. You know something is screwed with drops when you see a freaking EGG selling in the TP for 60c a piece, almost the same a merchant gives you for a high lvl blue item. Seriously….

I couldn’t agree more with the OP.

Like i said in the pinned thread, DR is like a leecher that sucks the life and fun out of the game, at least for me.

I want to feel rewarded for my time and effort, not punished.
I don’t want a proverbial “loot heaven” like this is Torchlight 2 or something like that, i just want the drop rate like it was before the ever-famous 15th November patch ( it’s famous for a reason ). Nothing more, nothing less.
First it was the dye drops that got nerfed into the underworld, and then the rest.

We were supposed to be playing this game the way we wanted and feel rewarded for it, but there is a massive difference between open world drops and dungeon drops. I don’t want to be forced to run dungeons ad-nauseum.

Suggestion for a ranger name:
Arrowin Denee
or
Bowin Debak

Pretty silly i know :P hahaha.

I would be ok with that too.

Since i feel this is getting nowhere, i want to make a proposition to ANet.

We know you want the DR system on place, and we have problems with it. So my proposed solution is this:
Tone down the DR severity a few notches, to a happy medium where it still provides that safety net to the ingame economy, while letting legitimate farming players gain a decent return for their time.

I can’t speak for everyone, but i would be satisfied with that.

Awesome. Now it’s official, all the DR problems amount to this:

Sorry but I’m going to quote Jon Peters again about DR and farming so that people see and remember the blatant lies told to us and the hypocrisy. The post i quote is this one: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Let-s-Start-the-Karma-DR-Dialogue/page/5#post338359

JonPeters.5630:

Guild Wars 2 is a game about freedom. We want you to be able to explore the world and engage in a huge variety of activities, focusing on whatever best suits your tastes.

SO false. I cannot farm at my leisure without constantly hitting the DR wall and it becoming a pointless activity.

JonPeters.5630:

Some players have run into “diminishing returns” thresholds we put into the game to provide a safety net against unanticipated economy-breaking issues. We do have these thresholds in place, but it’s not our intention that normal players should ever run into them.

Yeah, “some” players, right. We “should never run into them”, which is absolutely false.

JonPeters.5630:

While we need a safety net to stop unanticipated economy-breaking exploits and botting, we have no desire to stop farming. Farmers are a part every online economy and when they are doing normal game activity they do not cause any harm. If a player finds a normal game activity fun and would like to keep doing it, that’s fine with us.

Total hypocrisy. And yes, farmers do not do any harm according to a lead game designer.

JonPeters.5630:

Please bear with us while we gather more data and lower the safety net until it’s only providing critical economy protection. Looking at the numbers this morning, we believe some of the threshold systems are just too harsh empirically and we’ll be adjusting those systems within the next few weeks to ensure that fewer legitimate players are being impacted.

It was “going to get fixed” in a few weeks…. 3 months ago. We got a response from Colin earlier in this thread saying it would “take some time” to fix drops and that “they are looking into it”, so it seems 3 months wasn’t enough. How many more months? All they have to do is take a look at pre-Lost Shores drop rates. Cannot be that hard, they have all the data.

JonPeters.5630:

I hope this helps to explain why a game like this needs systems such as this to protect its economy. I also hope it gives some insight into our philosophy about botters (BAD) and exploiters (BAD) vs. farmers (GOOD).

Yep, farmers are good and ok. But cannot do that activity.

Buttercup.5871:

Today’s patch makes it blatantly obvious this thread is a red herring. There was never any intention of satisfying the player’s concerns regarding the rewards for open world PvE.

If Arenanet can figure out within a day that drops should be lowered to their previous atrocious level, rather than the level it was when the merged thread that preceded this thread was created, then it’s obvious the current atrocious droprate and hard hitting DR are working as intended. I feel cheated wasting time posting my concerns previously – in this thread and the one that preceded it.

Suck it up. Your reports on droprates are showing them it’s working as intended; when you reported getting more stuff, the droprate was nerfed instantly.

Yeah, I have seen that ridiculous patch note and have reached the same conclusion, they don’t care, no matter what Colin said here earlier, it’s more PR bull. Drops are most likely going to stay like this. As you said i’ll have to suck it up and go on.
If i wasn’t in the great guild i am, i would leave the game alone as i said, but i reached the conclusion that waiting for a fix is pointless. As the game has no sub fee, stopping to play entirely is going to do me more harm than good since i have fun with the guildies, so i’ll go on and continue whenever i feel like it.
Not expecting a fix anymore.

I played yesterday for about 3 hours with the new patch.

First i did an escort event in Malchor’s Leap that i didn’t do yet after a little bit of mob-killing , it was good fun and the drops were fine, some blues and one green and about 10 bags, also 2 t6 venom sacs that i didn’t even see before. Nice.
But then, after that first hour or so, i did hit the DR wall and the drops worsened as usual. And i didn’t stay in one spot all the time, no, i was traveling through Malchor’s, and slaying different mobs in the process.
After that, i was bored and i traveled to Sparkfly Fen to see if changing zones matter. Didn’t for me, i was also getting crap out of the enemies, again not staying in one place, moving around the zone.
Then took a break from the mobs and decided to finally bring my armorsmithing to 400, since i saw the yellow silk insgnias in the TP for a really nice 30-40s each. I had around 11G total so no problem.
Finally, traveled to Straits of Devastation and again the drops were terrible throughout.

About veterans: i killed 2 in the escort event and each gave me a blue, also killed the veteran boar in Straits of Devastation and it gave me another blue and some copper.

About the loot chests: i saw only one, it was for the green that i got in the Orr event. Did not get any chest for any of the blues, so it seemed to work fine for me.

As i said in a previous post, why don’t they make karma changeable to laurels? No, instead of that, they have put those rng “jewel boxes” while world drops are untouched, so you are forced to do achievements if you want rare/exotic gear. Everyone go do your daylies! But as i said before, i don’t care about achievs, so thanks but i pass.

I don’t have any problem with rare gear taking time to get, and i also like finding my gear upgrades through drops, i am a lover of action-rpgs after all and enjoy grinding in a relaxed way.
I’m not one of those that “want all the things and right now” as some fanboys say to discredit those of us who express our concerns about how drops have noticeably worsened. If the drops were in the same state as they were pre-Lost Shores patch i wouldn’t have a problem taking my time grinding and doing events to find my rare ( and exotic? ) upgrades, but with the current system i lose all interest and a great game becomes a borefest because of a single dumb mechanic, DR.
One of my goals is getting some t3 human plate set pieces and other Vigil set pieces for my guardian because i love the skins, but i don’t feel like going for it and the price of fine transmute stones right now.

Sorry if i repeat myself too much but i love the game and would like to see it reach its full potential, however this problem ruins it for me and i’m going to play other things until they change it for good.
My server is Baruch’s Bay, btw.

wildcode.5403:

Prior to Nov15, I was able to upgrade characters I was levelling solely from drops. Since Nov15 I am forced to use TP to upgrade characters because they are just not getting the much needed drops.

This is NOT fun.

Yeah, and THIS is exactly why i refuse to level my alt at all. I know i will only get frustration out of it.

Arrclyde.6358:

I don’t know how i triggert the DR in 3-4 Hours of play after almost one month of absence, but something ist not right here.

The other day i entered the game, after being out of it for almost a month.
Intentionally farmed ( without MF ) for about 2 hours to make money on Malchor’s Leap. The first hour or so, the drops were almost constant and good quality, even got a rare weapon! And then suddenly the drops transformed to kitten AND were more scarce, having to kill a bunch of enemies to get something at all.
Yep, one hour. After a whole month. Great huh?

I’ll say it again, the DR needs to be removed before it sucks away the life from the game. It’s like a leecher.

Finally!
Thank you Colin for informing us about your stance on this problem.
I am willing to help, as has been said, if you provide us with more info on how to do so. Communication is key.

I have asked in the developer livestream thread about the drop rates, along other people.
This is what i posted:

Is the drop rate going to be fixed back to pre-15th November status? Or at least close to it? We’ve got no response to this issue in more than 2 months, and we have 2 big threads, one closed long ago and another pinned on general discussion. No, i’m not talking about dates or anything specific, just want to know if this is being looked into.
This is directly related to making open world more rewarding.

Let’s see if they answer with anything, we only have silence around here.

Hello, i have two questions:

1- Is the drop rate going to be fixed back to pre-15th November status? Or at least close to it? We’ve got no response to this issue in more than 2 months, and we have 2 big threads, one closed long ago and another pinned on general discussion. No, i’m not talking about dates or anything specific, just want to know if this is being looked into.
This is directly related to making open world more rewarding.

2- About the achievement rewards. Will those rewards be available in an alternative way by spending karma instead of crowns? Not everyone wants to do achievements.

Thank you.

Hawkmoon.5849:

I agree with this completely. It sounds like the “achievement” reward system, which appears to be token-based, is their answer. Which equates to actual mob drops not changing in the slightest.

I strongly hope this is not the case, but after all the silence on this thread ( and the old one ) plus this vague new info, i am skeptical. : /

It is a shame the drops are not fixed yet, it is the only thing that prevents me from loving and playing this game. I could level my only alt, but since the drops are in this state i wouldn’t be able to upgrade his gear without using the TP, which i don’t like much. Also with my main i don’t want to do the bit of remaining story i have left and Arah, knowing the rewards are most likely going to be terrible.

PS: got two “messages of love” from goldsellers, wonderful…

I stopped playing since christmas until now, waiting for a response to this issue.

Colin has now posted a a whole blogpost… and frankly, i don’t feel much better after reading it. I only see vague references to “making open world more rewarding” but not a single word about monster or event/world chest loot at all.
It is indeed nice that they are going to add a reward system for achievements. But what if i don’t care about achievements? Will open world loot continue to be crap and will i be forced to do achievements if i want good loot? How does that tie with “play the way you want”?
I could understand if those achievement chests only have rare skins, but again, if i don’t care about achievs i would like to be able to get those skins with karma.

We need a response, this is becoming ridiculous. 2 months and counting.

@puffintoast, i completely agree.

To me, a simple solution would be to scrap the asinine DR mechanics. Didn’t they post official information on the blog about more than 30K bot accounts terminated and their population being greatly reduced? Then remove DR, as it is only punishing legit players. If i’m supposed to play the way i want, i shouldn’t be forced to run dungeons.

I have stopped playing until i see some positive change. I don’t expect them to reply much being christmas and all, after all, they still deserve a rest as much as everybody. Communication IS poor but they won’t be able to ignore this issue forever.

Happy holidays to all.

Hello, i’m a spanish player but i want to give my opinion on this, as it’s a very important issue to me and a big flaw on an otherwise excellent game.

I do not have “concrete data”, which is ridiculous to ask us for. Don’t you have full access to test your own freaking game?

But i know for sure that world drops are terrible currently.
Today i arrived at Malchor’s Leap and have been exploring, killing mobs and doing events, and in about 3 hours only got one green and maybe 4-5 blues, all the rest whites ( on endgame mobs, yeah… ) and junk. I’m not saying rares should drop left and right, they are “rare” after all. I’m talking about even blues being rare.
In over 250 hours total played with my main i have got about 10 or so rare gear drops from world mobs including champions, i find it quite horrible, considering that gear is not very important. I won’t bother talking about mat drops, other than saying it’s utter crap.

Supposedly in GW2 you could choose what activities to do and feel rewarded for doing them, but i am not seeing it. As a PvE player that has no interest in PvP or running dungeons an absurd amount of times and loves crafting, i find the rewards for killing world mobs terrible. Adding to that the diminishing returns, I’m feeling punished for doing what i want to do in the game, and being forced to run dungeons if i want something worthwile. I find it unacceptable, and i’m thinking about leaving the game until the loot system is fixed.

I’m quickly loosing faith in this company. Was locking the other big thread really needed? Seems like a smokescreen.