Guild Wars 2

Really when it comes down to it not many items are out of reach price wise.

Although I’m not a fan of the recent chest changes, it does help bring the ecto market back under control, and gives people yellows which they like. Win win.

However, and maybe this will take some time, the precursor market hasn’t seemed to budge. The chests were apparently suppose to allow more precursors into the marketplace, and thus far, at least for Spark that hasn’t happened.

Unless the market on precursors takes a turn for the better they’ve turned a situation where dedicated farmers could possibly achieve savings for the item in say 4-6 months to double that time.

They’ve made what was already a problem even worse.

There needs to be a means by which people who want to put in the time to make money in the open world the ability to do so. Not auto attack dragon spawn camps with 8 alts. Took more effort to farm. At least you earned those rewards.

I think the change to the chests is fine but I do have some issues.

1. I’ve seen lots of comments about how folks are happy about the Penn / Shelter nerfs because it didn’t take any effort. I can tell you from having done dragons and Penn / Shelter farming it took me much more effort to farm. The dragons require little to no effort or coordination at all. It’s very boring.

2. I keep hearing about ANET wanting us to travel around the world. I have no problem with that and would like to do so jumping from location to location frequently. The problem? The cost. Yeah 3s is not much but after a couple of way points it gets expensive. Their talking out of both sides of their mouths on this. Either they want us to explore the world or they don’t. If you want us to do this stop penalizing those who do.

3. They need to limit the chests to once per account per day. I’m sorry but those who are altaholocis shouldn’t be able to see greater gain than someone who has invested as equal time into the game, but on one character.

I’m still getting a feel for what this whole patch has to offer but my play habits over the past couple days haven’t been that exciting. I use to farm Penn /’ Shelter with quite a regular group I enjoyed grouping with and conversing with, but with Penn / Shelter nerfed into oblivion I now just log on, kill a dragon, and log off. I don’t see myself doing that for long. It’s just not fun. It’s a problem.

Day 2: Dear God this is terrible.

Not enough people to do grenth.

Came on with the soonest dragon spawning around the 2 hour mark.

Not enough time to run an instance.

Nobody doing Penn / Shelter.

Looking like I’ll have to give up affording the cultural set. Seriously what are we suppose to do to earn coin where it won’t take months to afford something?

The point is I was experiencing a lot of the game. I only play for about an hour or two an evening, and what the weekend would allow.

Penn/Shelter was that aspect of the game which allowed me as a player to have a means of keeping up with the economy that I could jump into anytime. At most you have a 10/15 minute window between events. I could login at anytime and join up with my fellow farmers who have become my friends.

A game like this needs a means to fill that very hole. Something that doesn’t require planning you could jump into with anyone that yields reward. Penn/Shelter was it.

With that seemengly removed (like I said I haven’t been everywhere since patch yet, so could not be the case) I’m forced into the following scenarios.

1. Dungeons
2. Temple Events
3. Dragons

I know I’m probably missing more, but they all share something in common. The timers are long, and require more coordination to succeed at such event. I could be very screwed by this. What if I jump on at 8pm and there is still an hour and a half between the dragon events to pop? Am I staying up till 10:30 to do this task? Not likely.

What if I jump on during non peak hours to do a temple? Am I going to succeed without the numbers to pull through? No we will not.

Do I want to put myself in a dungeon and risk putting burden on those I’m playing with if I have to go away from my PC? I don’t want to do that to other players.

The point is Penn / Shelter provided that jump on at any time, and get done what you need to get done aspect. The alternatives as I see them now don’t provide that flexibility, and they certainly don’t provide the necessary amount of reward to keep up with the economy.

People have pointed out ANETs intention may be to force us to other parts of the world and I’m all for that. Its a big place and I like moving about, but if ANET wants me to move from point A to B a lot then they need to remove the cost in doing so. Many of the events barely yield enough currency to reimburse the cost of traveling there.

Also what about all the other play styles. What about the people that spend all their time in WvW? Should they be forced to do other things? What about the people who do nothing but dungeon speed runs? Should they be forced out to do other things?

Part of the point is I get to decide how I want to play on any given day due to the time I have available and the benefit I can see from such activity.

Also lets talk about loot. Let’s face it gold is necessary. This game like every other MMO drops you loot that 99% of the time you don’t need or want. These games are about taking the loot you dont want, and turning it into the loot you do want. That involves selling to vendors and to the TP. With the Penn / Shelter change there may not be enough opportunities to generate the revenue necessary to do so.

Because I was very happy with the game ANET has put together I bought gems every month. Even if I didn’t have anything to spend them on because they deserve to yield the fruits of their labor. I don’t think I’ll be doing that anymore.

I expect to be able to do the same. Get the fruits of my labor. I still have a lot to do on my character from getting bags, dyes, armor sets, and my legendary. If the new norm now comes to only getting an upgrade of a sort once a month, then sorry that isn’t near enough reward for the time I’ll be putting in to do those things.

Like I said I’m still open to seeing what will come of this, but if part of this envolves waiting for the economy to adjust to the new normal we could be in for a very long wait. I don’t know if I’m willing to wait that long.

Since I started this post yesterday I’ve had some time to read the replies and think more about this subject. Pardon my verbal vomit as my thoughts will be a little all over the place.

First to give you an idea of what my current goals are right now, I am on the tail end of getting a legendary. I like many others am missing the precursor. My current poison of choice was to use the Mystic toilet to drop rares in hopes of obtaining one. I was fine with that for now.

To do so requires about 32g for 20 attempts (80 rares). So I could come to expect I could try this out around once a week. This is why I was farming Penn / Shelter and likely why many others do as well.

Let me say that there were things I liked about it, and things I didn’t like. I didn’t like the routine. As others have pointed out it gets boring, but it is necessary because of the costs associated with this task. I did however like the “regulars” I came to know. The feeling was like walking into a bar where you are a regular. You pull up a seat and chat with your buddies. The commoradity was further solidified because grouping yielded more loot, so I came to know these people well.

This however isn’t all that I did. When time allows I go to other aspects of the game. Recently I’ve been in CM working on getting my set. Sometimes I’d poke my head into WvW, that is when I wasn’t spending time on the web searching for the next rune, weapon, or piece of armor I’d like to get. I’d even go kill dragons when the time synced up.

Cont…

I farmed Penn / Shelter to get gold, so that I could buy mats to make rares, to throw those rares in the mystic toilet, in hopes of finally getting my precursor.

My gold rate plummeted in the two hours I played today due to those champions.

They dropped blues….wow.

I’m probably one of the few but I bought gems as a way of showing ANET that I like what they are doing. I’ve bought them almost every month since launch.

Everyone has their own thing. Mine is the changes to Penn / Shelter in Cursed Shore.

I ’ve spent much of my time working on a legendary. All I need is the precursor.

I’ve been using the Mystic Forge to use rares to try to get one.

20 attempts costs around 32 gold to do.

Gold is hard to come by in this game. I could be wrong but looks like they’ve killed the penn / shelter farming spots which in an hour would yield about 4-5 gold an hour. This allowed me one series of tries a week.

Now I’m looking at one series of tries a month, and that is if I don’t use the money on anything else? No thanks…

I don’t feel like doing speed runs in dungeons all the time. Penn / Shelter was my relaxation as I could walk away from the PC if something came up.

I could be wrong about my initial reaction, but right now I’m pretty ticked. I hope I’m wrong.

The addition of the Champions makes me more angry they only drop blues most of the time.

The reward doesn’t equate the amount of time invested.

I think I’d still be PO’d if they were green in this case. I’m forced to fight them as opposed to wanting to do so.

Just got done with my nightly Penn / Shelter farming, and I wanted to ask for peoples feedback who farm there on a regular basis?

Why?

Because I have a bad feeling about this.

I actually do like the addition of the Champions, but I don’t like how they affect the events. The point of farming Penn / Shelter is to either rack up karma, or currency, possibly both.

Maybe tonight was an odd night with it being patch day and all, or maybe I’m unlucky. My nightly haul of money was at least half of what it normally is. In an hour I’d roughly get around 4-5g which is about the norm for anyone who farms there.

Tonight…..1-1.5g at best.

The Champions seem to be having an ill effect. There are a lot less packs of mobs coming through in the events. People are focusing on the champions, and rightfully so. They need to go down. They do a lot of damage.

Less mobs = less loot

And the bodies….my god the bodies. Perhaps a boon when one is doing daily healer, but….

Time used to rez players = less loot

Gold is hard enough to get in this game as it is. I’m reserving judgement but right now I have a bad feeling about this.

Has your experience been similar?