Guild Wars 2

“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.”

That made me so happy to read.
I’m glad to know ArenaNet ISN’T trying to stop people from farming/grinding.

“This mirrors United States politics well, doesn’t it? The people who can’t put in the amount of time don’t want to have work as hard as those people who DO have the time, but the people WITH time don’t want to be punished (or taxed) for trying hard. Insane! "

Hard to decide between Tybalt, Sieran, and Zojja. All three of them!

Professor Gorr’s a boss, too.

People are angry because we were promised ‘no grind’, but to fulfill endgame goals, there’s grind. And, with diminishing returns, we are actively being discouraged from grinding. There are so many diminishing return mechanics in the game that it’s as if ArenaNet is telling us, “You can work towards your goal, but if you work too hard, you won’t reap any rewards.” I feel almost as I’m being forced to play less often than I’d like to.

Everything in GW2’s endgame is for prestige, and that prestige is achieved through grind, just like in the first GW. But with DR, grind is made worse. In order to maximize my time, I’m forced to spend time finding ways to get around the anti-farm code. While I might get the whole weekend to play, the code kicks in, and makes me feel like I’m wasting time when I’m trying to work towards my goal.

I can understand the desire to not have players grinding 24/7, but the code is screwing up the game for everyone. DR should not punish someone playing in a segment of time that the average person can clock in an evening after work (2 – 3 hrs). You should never see DR no matter what you do in a chunk of time this small.

From levels 1-79, I felt as if the philosophy of the game was ‘no grind’, and I had a blast. But once I hit 80 and looked at the endgame goals, I ran into a heavy grind.

It costs 252,000 karma for a full set of exotic Karma armor, or 1,380 tokens for a dungeon set, or 1,889 badges for a WvW set, or 30 ectos+various other materials for a crafted set. Not the mention the costs of jewelry, exotic weapons, and legendary weapons.

ArenaNet put some very big goals in front of us, and then implemented code actively impeding us from reaching those goals. The only way to acquire a legendary weapon is to farm, but you’re punished if you try to farm towards it. So how am I expected to achieve my goals? My complaint isn’t “I can’t grind”, it’s “I feel penalized for trying to achieve my goals”.

I don’t mind ANet nerfing our ability to farm or speedrun, and making content harder, if and only if they reduced the costs of endgame equipment. Removing the ability to farm/grind means I have no efficient ways to obtain the currencies I need.

Penalizing farmers wouldn’t be a problem if there were other, more efficient things to do at level 80, but right now, there aren’t. The whole game isn’t endgame, even though we were told so, because the only relevant drops and mats are from the high level zones. There need to be endgame zones other than Orr/Frostgorge, so that players can get level 80 rewards outside of these 4 zones and not get hit by DR. The solution is not DR, which leads to punishing players, but more content.

From what I’ve noticed, the biggest problem in Guild Wars 2’s endgame seems to be the fact that most level 80 players stay in Orr/Frostgorge Sound. This occurs because the only relevant rewards and drops are from these zones. Since the areas are so limited and have little creature diversity, we get hit by diminishing returns very quickly.

My proposed solution is a “hard mode”, where you could go through level 80 versions of the lower-leveled zones. Players could walk around the world, and get level 80 drops, karma, gold, and mats. Monsters and DEs would be scaled appropriately to level 80 players.

There are very few people who currently use the downleveling system for solo play. This is due to the fact that the drops are subpar, and doing events gets you very little gold and karma. If you just increased the rewards of the downleveling system, then most people would leave Orr/Frostgorge and just camp the low level zones, because you can one/two shot every mob.

If you added hard mode, all the level 80 players would naturally spread out, and there would be a lot more to do in endgame.

Also, add boss rush DE chains. Personally, I liked the Straits of Devestation farm route. Running around with a huge group of people killing bosses is a fairly enjoyable way to farm, and different from most other MMOs. I think you should add more “boss rush circuits” like these. Implement them as meta-events, and make them challenging, open-world raids that anyone can join.

I have 100% map completion, full magic find gear, and karma boosters. What do I do? I head to Cursed Shore to farm DEs. 30 minutes in, and I get and nothing but porous bones.

Last week, I did this with no magic find gear and no karma boosters, and it took me an hour to hit DR. I also got better karma and more drops.

It’s ridiculous that the Magic find buffs and Karma boosters I have are hurting me more than helping me when I try to farm. Not the mention the fact that it’s almost impossible to farm at this rate, with the DR system.

First they nerf farming mobs/item drops. Now, they nerf Karma farming. Why can’t we just farm? All of these nerfs hurt legitimate players more than bots. I should be able to play the game the way I want to, and not be punished for it.

Let’s look at the goals of GW2’s “endgame”:

• Exotic Karma armor/cultural weapons.
• Dungeon sets.
• L400 crafting.
• WvW badges.
• PvP glory.
• Collectibles, commodities, any other form of currency (Mystic Coins, minis, dyes, etc)
• Commander’s tome.
• Legendary weapons.
• (probably a few other things I’ve forgotten to list)

Almost all of these “endgame goals” require me to grind if I want to be efficient in working towards them. And, honestly, I enjoy grinding. After a long day of school or work, I don’t mind farming for a few hours – I find it very relaxing. It’s what I did with other MMOs, and I would like to be able do the same in GW2. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.

The argument I’ve read is that ArenaNet is nerfing farming/grinding so that casual and hardcore gamers will be on the same footing. What is the point of this? Let’s assume I grind for 8 hours a day. I should be ahead of a “casual” player who only spends 2-4 hours a day. I shouldn’t feel as if I’m being forced to play less often than I’d like to.

Look, for a Legendary, you need:

• 1,000,000 Karma
• 350 Skill points
• 500 Badges of Honor
• 500 Globs of Ectoplasm
• 250 Mystic Coins
• 250 Vicious Fangs, Vicious Claws, Vials of Powerful Blood, Elaborate Totems, Armored Scales, Ancient Bones, Piles of Crystalline Dust, and Powerful Venom Sacs.

This will allow you to create the Gift of Fortune and Gift of Mastery… and doesn’t include the precursor weapon and the Legendary’s gift. The precursor weapon costs at the minimum 50 gold, while the Legendary’s gift costs 500 dungeon tokens along with 250x of an item specific to the Legendary.

Also, it would cost me 252,000 karma for a full set of exotic Karma armor, or 1,380 tokens for a dungeon set, or 1,889 badges for a WvW set, or 30 ectos+various other materials for a crafted set.

I don’t mind ANet nerfing our ability to farm or speedrun, and making content harder, if and only if they reduced the costs. Removing the ability to farm/grind means I have no efficient ways to obtain the currencies I need.

From 1-79, I felt as if the philosophy of the game was ‘no grind’, but once I hit 80 and looked at the endgame goals, I ran into a heavy grind. And with the DR system, ArenaNet is discouraging me from doing that heavy grind… So how am I expected to achieve my goals? My complaint isn’t “I can’t grind”, it’s “I feel penalized for trying to achieve my goals”.

There’s a reason you see so many people around Orr/FGS. The only relevant drops and mats are from these zones. Since the areas are so limited and have little creature diversity, we get hit by DR. If level 80 players would get level 80 rewards everywhere in the world, or there was a “hard mode” where you could go through level 80 versions of the lower-leveled zones, people would be complaining a lot less.

Penalizing farmers wouldn’t be a problem if there were other, more efficient things to do at level 80, but right now, there aren’t.

The Lifetime Survivor title is bugged. I’ve gotten to level 79 without dying and achieved the monthly Experience Survivor, but the Lifetime Survivor title is staying at 0/200,000 in the hero panel. ):