Showing Posts For Sphynx.9617:
On my last post (listed below), I spent a good 4-5 hours writing about the conditions and issues of the current DR systems. I intentionally asked that my thread not be locked and “thrown into the pile” by being directed to the main DR thread. Instead, it instantly got locked with no answers and no information. Lately, from reading the multiple locked threads on these forums, I feel as though some of the forum moderators are intentionally trying to irritate the community and I feel this is very disrespectful.
Here is the link to my previous post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-Deeper-Look-on-Diminishing-Returns-Long-Read/first#post344895
The in-world Loot DR system was implemented and focused towards botters. It prevents them from making large amounts of money over a long time. It’s doing very well at lowering drop rates against botters, but it is hitting “normal” players just as hard. With 235% magic find, I can do about 4-5 events or about 1 hour of farming for fine crafting materials, before I start to see a huge difference. As a “normal” player I am getting smacked just as hard by this system as any bot would. Yet, of the 3 weeks that I have been in Cursed Shore I have yet to see a single bot banned or removed from the game. Everyone of them (I even remember a few of them by name) are still there farming day in and day out. This means 1 thing, this system doesn’t put a hurt on bots as much as it does on players. The bots will always be there to farm even if you give them 1 cotton scrap an hour. The problem is they are not getting removed from the game and the longer they sit there, the more the economy will become unstabilized. A system to fix that? Put a report counter on each account. If a player reaches 50-100 reports for botting or gold spamming they are put on a 3 day ban until their account is further reviewed. This is a near instant, less “office labor” system and helps players greatly in 2 ways. It clears the bots, making events easier to complete and mobs easier to “tag”. It also puts a little more fear into eyes into any player looking to bot. This should have been implemented long ago since it is such an easy and simple system.
Next topic. The tier 6 gathering nodes, Ancient Wood Logs, Omnomberries, and Orichalcum Ore have all been hit with either a bug or a longer respawn timer. Some players have stated they haven’t seen any changes and their nodes are still spawning every 5 hours. Others, including myself, are seeing a 24 hours spawn time that resets with the dailies. To me, the problem isn’t that it might be a bug or a change to raise the price of higher end crafting materials, it the issue that ArenaNet has yet to made a comment on what is going on (was not included in the patch notes). We are left in the wind, not knowing if it’s a bug, or a permanent change.
The lack of a proper beta (GW2 beta events only added up to about 10 days) has really made it feel like I am currently playing a beta now. Updates to game breaking issues are only being touched once a week. New systems are being implemented without being tested. The boundaries of these systems are just guesses, incredibly bad ones at that (Karma 1hr DR). There isn’t even a simple bot removal system. Add all that to the incredible lack of communication and the “shove into one pile” mindset that these ArenaNet forum moderators have, it makes an incredibly rough and frustrating beginning to this beautiful MMO. With hundreds of new ones being release monthly, people are always coming and going, but with no communication between players and ArenaNet, it is even making it hard for dedicated Guild Wars fans to stick around. As I said at the beginning of this post, I hope we can get some answers and most importantly I hope this isn’t just thrown into the pile of the 8 page discussion. Thank you for your time.
-Sphynx
The target of this post will be about focusing on each one of the new diminishing return systems that have been put in place. Also, I will talk about how the economy is being changed by little tweaks that ArenaNet has made. Now, I’m hoping this thread doesn’t get swept under the door and closed; only to be piled and directed by moderators to the other 8 page DR thread.
In each category, I will discuss how ArenaNet has proposed these DR systems affect bots, gold sellers, and players. Then, I will list how it is affecting players; Ranging from casual gamers to 10-14 hours-a-day gamers. From there, I would like to add my own opinion on how things might be able to change for the better.
Lets start with the new Karma DR system. Many players, from casual to hardcore, have hit this new DR system within 1 hour of farming events. At this time, bots do not gain any benefit from farming karma, for there is no way to make gold off of it. Although, ArenaNet has stated that none of these DR systems are supposed to affect the every day casual to hardcore gamer. Quoting, “We do have these thresholds in place, but it’s not our intention that normal players should ever run into them.” So, here is the issue with the Karma DR. If it doesn’t affect the economy, and it doesn’t affect bots, that only leaves the “normal players”. Meaning, this DR system was implemented to either slow down or stop the process of farming karma. That booster you bought will get it’s full use, but the “+15% Karma for 24 hrs” banner that you invested all of your guild influence in will only be useful for about 1/12 of that duration (2 hours). My opinion on the matter? Throw the karma DR system away. Get rid of it completely. If you want to limit the Karma per hour, add hearts to the 75-80 zones and increase the respawn timer on dynamic events. Once you clear a 75-80 map, there is no other reason to “explore” the map unless you are doing the dynamic event chains.
On to the next topic, the dungeon DR system. There are 2 main focuses of this system. One, was to eliminate anybody using exploits to clear a dungeon faster than a normal run would take (around 30 minutes.) The other, was to prevent people from farming “the easiest” chain over and over again. A completely understandable and respectable system, until they made it account wide. Meaning, all that time I spent leveling my second character to 80 doesn’t mean anything because now that character is linked to my first character. Here is how that system works. If I clear the 3 paths on my first character, the second character will be hit with the DR system, preventing it to receive the full reward. This is a new system, implemented last patch (October 2nd). This system seems to do nothing but punish the more hardcore gamers. It doesn’t effect bots at all. One of the main themes of Guild Wars is to enjoy the world, and level up new character with new story lines. Yes, the story line is interesting and fun to follow, but when all of these DR systems are linked to your first character, it makes you chose which character you want to play per day instead of playing them both together. Just roll-back this system to make it not affect other characters. I didn’t go through the entire process of hitting 80 twice to be forced to play only one of the characters a day.
I want to thank you all for posting your feedback and opinions. Positive or negative, everyone is entitled. To further add, on my thief, I never once skipped a cut-scene or did an event just because I saw the orange circle. As I said, I was always intrigued by the story line and how each of the events do have an outcome on the world, small or large. I never meant to “boast” or “brag” about my credentials. Listing them only to show that I am a mechanically sound and dedicated player. To this day, I have yet to even think about playing WoW. It just doesn’t appeal to me, as I enjoy games with a solid backbone and storyline. Many people have suggested I should take a break and come back in a month or so, when everything is fixed and up to par. That is exactly what I want to avoid. I have spent plenty of time fighting and defending for this game, trying to keep guildies and other people I have met across Tyria from taking a break or leaving and if I join them in leaving, the fight would have been for nothing.
With all said, I want to thank you all again for taking the time and posting your feedback and opinions. With your positive posts, I feel my love for the game has grown a little more. It has definitely given me more motivation and will power to stick around and weather the storm.
I sit here, even as I write this, constantly wondering what exactly am I supposed to do to further my experiences in this game. I’ve tried to wait it out and be patient. I’ve leveled other characters. I’ve tried dealing with the WvW flaws, which are tolerable until a certain point, but usually ends up with me spending lots of gold and leaving with a frustrated state of mind. I can keep doing dungeons, but if I am making 6-15 tokens per run, it is going to take me at least 93 runs to complete a set of armor and I don’t even want to think about how many runs it will take to get enough items for the legendary. sPvP isn’t an option since most of my guild decided to call it quits until the dungeon reward system is fixed. I’m trying to stay strong, trying to pull guildies back into the game. I enjoy playing this game very much. When everything is fixed and the flaws are ironed out the game would be even more addicting than it is now. I just hope it is sometime soon before my enjoyment/patience factor runs out.
I’d like to first off thank you for reading my post. I’m sure some of you are going through the same frustrations I am. I just wanted to share my experience in Tyria and hope to keep more players playing for a great looking future. Again, I appreciate your time.
-Sphynx
4/4 Finished
My guild went from small to smaller. With about 3-4 active members for about 3-4 days. During this down time, I thought I would try WvWvW for the first time. I picked a random borderland and queued up. Upon entering the map, I was greet with a chat box being spammed by people shouting orders and down talking other players. I ignored chat for a bit and poked around trying to pick up the mechanics of the WvW system. It didn’t take long (about 2-3hrs) to learn how everything worked and how the current meta of the process should be played. This was last week, we had pretty even match ups and it was actually quite enjoyable. On top of that, the Karma/Gold/Exp rewards are pretty good. Everything seemed really put together and I was very satisfied with that rotation. A few days passed and I really got pulled into WvW. It was pretty much all I was doing while I waited for a fix for the dungeons. I had earned enough karma to buy my first exotic karma item (Power, Toughness, Vitality shoulders for my warrior).
A new rotation began and I was eager to play against some new competition. I entered the map just as we were working on taking an enemy tower. We successfully took over the tower. Not bad for the first achievement of the day; except moments later there was a “spy” that threw down 2 rams and told people to take tower supplies to build them. One of the more major issues in WvW at the moment. You see, with free server transfers on a 24 hour limit, “spies” can transfer onto enemy teams and basically sabotage what they have worked for to complete. I’m assuming this is especially effective on the first day of a rotation because if a team can get 2-3 orbs in the first 5-6hrs it pretty much ruins WvW for the rest of the week. Yes, you can take back orbs and try to make a recovery, but why should you have to make a recovery from something that shouldn’t even be allowed? I’m not really talking about balancing here. I’m talking about giant flaws in the system that can basically erase what you just spent 2-3hrs trying to obtain. You can spend quite awhile trying to take a tower and when people don’t realize/purposely take supplies from towers it hurts your ability to defend that tower. There is no forced tutorial instructing players about how the actual basics work. For example, buying siege equipment, the proper places to get supplies from (supply camps), and how to fortify a tower. With hundreds of new players entering WvW daily, it makes it incredibly hard to make sure people are all on the same page and working towards the same achievement, instead of spamming skills at red names and red bars of health. Even most of the Commanders are running around aimlessly. From my 8-10 days in WvW, I have found maybe 2-3 Commanders across 2 borderlands that are actually getting work done. The rest of them either never say a word in chat or have idea on how to even command people as to what they should be doing. Coming near the mid to end of a rotation you see people jumping ship and saying in chat, “I’m going to the winning server, this server is bad.” They are free to do so at no cost or no penalty, increasing the odds in the favor of the enemy team even more. Another issue that would be fixed if they stopped the free server transfers. These are only some of the flaws in the system, many of other exploits and unfair advantages have been reported but as I said this is not the place for that.
Tuesday, the 25th, ArenaNet released some promising patch notes that almost made me tingle inside with happiness. At last, after waiting over a week, good news came with a new system for dungeon rewards. I immediately logged on and hit Ascalonian Catacombs Explorer Path 2. Our group did really well with no wipes and only a few downed players. Our run lasted about an hour, everything seemed just right.. Until.. Our rewards came up and I only received 15 tokens. One member of the group picked up 45, two members received 20, and only one member of our group was rewarded with the full 60 tokens. Since one member in the group did receive the full 60 tokens, that rules out the “quickness of the run” diminishing return. Also, since I haven’t ran a dungeon in over a week, that rules out the “multiple runs in a single day” theory. I decided maybe it was just a fluke or a bug, so I headed to Citadel of Flame Explorer Mode Path 2. A clean and clear run that lasted about 1h15m. Upon completion I received 6. Yes, that is right, not 60 tokens, 6 tokens. So, the system is not only still broken, it’s even worse than it was before.
3/4 Continued Below
With my full exotic set complete, I finally decided it was time to try out the dungeons. I headed for the first dungeon on this list, thinking it would be the easiest. Ascalonian Catacombs, Story mode. The group I had was a random, pick-up group. At the time I thought we wouldn’t have an issue because I was really ahead in gear. First room, 2 people open up 2 different caskets spawning 2 ghosts. Our whole party instantly wipes. I literally took one shot from a mob and was dead before I couldn’t even finish saying the words, “Oh god”. I was a level 80, wearing the best armor available in the game, in a level 30 dungeon and I hit the floor faster than a sack of potatoes. It was at this time that I realized.. Dodging is very important and unless you are running some sort of beef (toughness or vitality) melee range is probably the worst place for a thief to be. Our group eventually made it through and cleared the dungeon but my comfort in my new exotic armor just took a giant downfall.
After dying many many times on my first dungeon run, I decided maybe I should craft an off-tank set of armor. I really didn’t want to give up on dual daggers, but running dual daggers with glass cannon armor in dungeons was very nonviable. To the crafting station I went and made myself a full Knight’s exotic set giving me power, precision, and toughness. I chose Superior Rune of the Wurm, which gave me 160 vitality, +6% critical damage, and +3% damage. This set was more of a balanced set. Not taking too much away from my damage and giving me a bit more survivability. This set-up worked pretty well in dungeons and really helped against a lot of AOE mobs. I was satisfied.
I had held back from doing anymore dungeon runs for a bit. Mainly because I didn’t want to do them before my friends did them. We were planning on doing most of them together. While waiting for them to get up to 80, I farmed a lot of bloods and ectos. I turned most of it into profit and helped a lot of my guild members with leveling their crafting and such. We made it into CoF and I was having a really tough time in dual dagger spec. I felt as if (and still do) I’m being forced into playing ranged thief in dungeons. Even with dodging as many attacks as I could and trying to time my evades, I still went down a lot. I wasn’t comfortable with this at all. All of my utilities were only beneficial to myself. I was only bring DPS to the group and I could barely do that from melee range.
With the money and extra time I had, I decided to roll a warrior. A warrior brings so much more utility to a group with regens, tanking ability, and buffing allies power. Also, I was very disappointed with the looks of the leather armor and thief weapons that you can get with dungeon tokens. In my honest opinion, there are only two leather sets that are appealing to me: Duelist and Krytan (Cash Shop). Myself and pretty much every ranger/thief/engineer I have talked to, all agree that all the leather coats really limit a character; as there is only 2 sets that do not have coats (listed above). So I craft-leveled the warrior to 40 with about 10g and mats I had left over from my thief. From there I ran CM Story over and over again. Just as I hit 76, the first dungeon “change” was implemented. I logged back on, got another group for CM story and cleared first and second boss no problem. When we got to the room that spawns many adds right after the second boss (before heading to the basement), our party wiped. Followed by another 4-5 times after that. Finally we got past it, clearing the the dungeon in about 2 hours. Our rewards.. definitely not worth the time or effort. We paid probably 4 times the reward in repairs. Plus, the trip to and from the dungeon, which is quite hefty depending on which part of the map you are on. To this day, I have not gone back into CM and I do not plan to return ever in the future. So, I crafted 76-80 and got the warrior all suited up with exotics. I now favor playing it more than my thief. Although, it is nice to go back and play the thief if our group needs more DPS instead of another tank. I just feel like I’m doing so much more for my group as far as contribution goes. Also, I can farm the T6 nodes on both characters, which is also a plus.
With the dungeons being “nerfed”, a lot of my guild members lost interest in the game. Some haven’t logged back on since that day. I tried and argued with them, telling them that there were a few dungeons that were really easy and needed to be fixed. I almost felt to some degree that I was begging for them to stay around a play through it. Some of the debated coming back, some of them didn’t. Hey, I tried my best.
2/4 Continued Below
Before I get started, let me list some of my credentials. In the game Runes of Magic. I was the highest physical attack (Top rated DPS) Rogue/Knight for about a year and a half. My guild had many “world firsts” in multiple dungeons of that game. From there, I moved onto League of Legends. I played for about 2 years and reached an elo of 2206. Which is rated in the top 350 players. I put anywhere from 10-13hrs a day into gaming and I am very dedicated to it.
During this article, I will be going into my experience with the game, some of its strong points, and some of its weak points. This is not a rage thread. Nor is it a way to propose future changes to the game. It’s more about my personal opinions of these topics and how they make me feel on a weekly bases.
I joined Guild Wars 2 during the second BWE. I think I got around 6 hours of sleep that entire weekend. Needless to say, I was obsessed. Throughout my MMO “career” I have always rolled a Rogue/Assassin/Thief type class. Without a doubt, my first GW2 character was a female Norn thief. That weekend, I would try to clear maps. When that got tiring, I got myself into crafting and playing around on the Trading Post. A few things absolutely amazed me and those were: Crafting was fairly simple. The trading post was unlike any other trading post I have ever dealt with. Having an option to place an order for something was very interesting to me. The World of Tyria was breath-taking, backed with a very intriguing story line. From 1-43 I never ran into a bugged NPC or event. Aside from running dungeons and WvWvW, I believe I experienced most of the solo content that was available. I was shocked at how stable the game was. It seemed 100% playable and ready to go. After this beta, I decided it was time to pre-order my copy. I had access to the other beta events but I decided not to participate because I didn’t want to get too far in the game before it was actually released.
Up came the release. Since I had chose the same path as when i played in beta, I breezed through the maps and personal story line up to 43. I wasn’t worried about dungeons, I just wanted to hit 80. I picked up Leather worker and Weaponsmithing also and did that when I got burned out from clearing maps, although that was incredibly difficult with the first issue I’m about to discuss. With a flawless working Trading Post in all of the previous beta events, something happened between then and release. For almost 2 weeks the Trading Post was down for maintenance. This greatly held back the ability to craft; however, many people used chat to buy materials they needed. That was a temporary solution. Although frustrating, it was tolerable.
Eventually, the Trading Post was fully operation and back in business. I made a good amount of profit selling level 50 rare leather armor. Buying the mats from the auction house, I was making about 10s a sale. Selling an item about every 15-20 minutes or so. With the money I was making, I took both of my crafting skills up to 400 and crafted myself my first full exotic armor set (Berserker’s) and 2 daggers. I had been using dual daggers my whole level 1-80. It was the rogue in me. Switching between dual pistols and short-bow on the secondary.
1/4 Continued Below
1:00PM EST Ascalonian Catacombs Explorer Mode Path 2
- I have never cleared an explorer mode in AC before (Ruling out diminishing returns)
- The run lasted about 45m-1h long (Ruling out “speed of run”)
- One member received 60 tears, one received 45, one received 20, and two received 15 (including myself). (Also ruling out “speed of run” mechanic)
2:30PM EST Citadel of Flame Explorer Mode Path 2
- I cleared an explorer mode (Path 2) in CoF over two weeks ago on September 10th (Ruling out diminishing returns)
- The run lasted about 1h-1h15m long (Ruling out “speed of run”)
- Two members received 60 carvings, one received 20, one received 15, and I received 6. (Also ruling out “speed of run” mechanic)
Shouldn’t this system work 100% if:
- I haven’t ran a dungeon in over a week
- Everyone else in the party received 60 tokens
- Story mode has been completed
I qualified with all of the above. Still received 15 tokens out of my first AC Explorer and 6 tokens on my CoF explorer run immediately after. So rather then going in circles here, can we get an actual answer as to what is going on?
Diminished returns? I haven’t ran a dungeon in over a week. Tried AC explorer path 2 and only got 15 tears. Went to CoF explorer path 2 and only got 6 carvings. Either these diminishing returns last longer than a week or there is a flaw in the system. How can you answer a post with 3 words and no further information? To the thousands of other players out there wondering why they are now getting even less tokens with this “improved system”. There is still (over 7hrs) no answer on what is going on other than “Diminished Returns system.”
Edit: Also, If 3 other people in my group got 60 tokens, why am I the only one that got 6?
(edited by Sphynx.9617)
Cleared CoF with about 5 deaths to our group, never wiped. We never had an issue on anything. Except for the fact that I only got 6 carvings for completion.
I haven’t ran a dungeon in little over a week. After looking at the release notes, I decided now would be the time to start back up again with the improved reward system. Got a good group and cleared AC exp Path 2. To my surprise, I was rewarded with 15 tears instead of the proposed 60. I figured it was probably just a bug. I gave it a second chance and went straight to CoF. My group cleared Maggs path with no problems, no deaths, and I was granted with a hefty reward of 6 carvings. The “It counts if you ran the dungeon prior to the patch.” argument is invalid, since I haven’t ran a dungeon in over a weeks.
At this point, lots of people that I have met playing this game are already starting to give up. Dungeons are not rewarding properly and WvW is incredibly flawed. Leaving this game with absolutely no end-game. Unless you feel like running around with a bunch of bots to farm blood. Many people are starting to lose interest. Any info on this would be greatly appreciated by ArenaNet. At least an acknowledgement from them saying that they are aware of the issues.