Guild Wars 2

maddoctor.2738:

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

Gear that is equal to the best should always be available for gold, karma, skill points, via regular crafting mats, and/or as very rare drops that can be gathered/earned in any zone in the world.

IOW, “Play Your Way”, and “The Whole Game Is The End Game” as was originally marketed, not “the best stuff is reserved for the most dedicated players”.

The problem is, getting the “new” Best gear (until Ascended came out Exotic was the best) using the SAME way as the previous one, defeats the puprose and existance of the previous tier (Exotic)

All the previous tiers are accessible using the same ways as well. Why only ascended need to be gained differently?

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

Ah, but there’s the question – will the other items accessibility be based on ascended rings, or backpieces?

That’s a very good question. Backpieces require a serious grind but don’t have any RNG. Rings don’t require a serious grind but require a high amount of luck (so they “might” take a serious grind if you aren’t lucky) can we get a compromise between them?

I’m sure we can. As i said many times before in more than one topic, i can accept ascended items being twice as costly/hard to get as current exotic items (karma costs, tokens needed, crafting mats needed, drop rate etc). Assuming we’ll never need to change them for anything better, that is – if we’ll need to, in the future (because of better ties, higher level cap etc.) then they should be cheaper than that.
In any case, they definitely should be tradable.

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

I’d phrase it a bit differently: “Let the ascended gear be easily available”.

How much easier than it is now???? It is already so easy to get those Ascended Rings that there is absolutely no reason to craft/buy Exotic Rings anymore. Just get a character to level 10 Fractals and in less than 2 weeks you can dress all your alts (even those you haven’t created yet) with all the rings you will ever need.

Ah, but there’s the question – will the other items accessibility be based on ascended rings, or backpieces?
Another fun fact – to get the rings, you need to get to fractal level 10 first. This sound trivial… until you realize that getting a fractal group at lower levels nowadays can take hours (and lot of those groups end up in fail, for usual pug-related reasons). This is not going to get any better with time, by the way (rather the opposite).
And then you find out that the stats you need don’t even exist yet at the ascended level.

Mackdose.6504:

I’ve read this a couple times, where are you getting the information that the players just up and left?

Well, for first, you could check the forum posting history of those players that complained then. You coud also see, that the complains about the endgame were mostly gone already even before November 15 patch. Additionally, the posts were mostly from content locust – players, that (if they were still in a game) would be complaining NOW as loudly as then, about a lack of endgame (because they would have devoured the new content long ago).

All of those above is circumstantial, not hard proof, but points to the fact that the endgame complainers of that time are no longer playing.

Mind you, i did not claim that there is less people playing now than them. While i personally think that this is the case, it is a result of my personal observations that are way less conclusive (and definitely do not qualify as a proof of any kind).

Evalia.7103:

It is just such a minor stat % increase as of now. Of course it would be a problem if it would be released and you could only get full ascended only from fractals. Now that would be ridiculous, but I don’t see that happening.

As of now. I am not concerned about today, even though, as can clearly be seen, they already heavily impacted the game, even with only a minor stat advantage that the 3 pieces give (because perceived advantage is even more important than actual one to the community at large). I am worried about tomorrow. Devs clearly said that not only we will get full ascended set before the end of the year, but that won’t be the end of their “item progression” plans. So, the difference will eventually become too big to be ignored if the current trend will continue. I prefer to check for fires as soon as i see smoke, instead of adopting the “wait and see” approach till the whole house burns down.

I can also see, that – no matter how they acknowledged that new items being accessible only from fractals is a problem – they did nothing to fix that for whole two months now (and everything points to it not being fixed for at least one more month, since the next update seems to be about minor bugfixing only). In other words, they don’t really consider this a serious problem at all. Nor were the extraorbitant crafting proces of backpieces addressed – which is even more worrying, because it suggests that, even if/when new avenues of getting ascended eq become available, their price/difficulty might also be ridiculously high.

What worries me the most, however, is the newly-seen attitude (both ingame and on devs side) that only the most dedicated players (read – content locust and heavy farmers) deserve to get top tier eq. Especially since it goes in direct opposition to the original game ideology (the one that made me buy that game).

ASB.4295:

Astralporing.1957:

I’d phrase it a bit differently: “Let the ascended gear be easily available”.

“Easily” suggests that it should take less work, which would defeat the purpose of being something exclusively for the dedicated players.

Yes, exactly – that is the idea, after all. Top tier should be accessible to all players, not exclusive to the small minority. That in fact has been definitely and clearly promised to us.

Xenth.2408:

If each try gives a 33% chance, out of 8 tries, there’s roughly a 11% chance of getting none.

Check your math. It’s about 4%, actually.

John Smith.4610:

the immediate question that comes up is: Do players who spend more time in game have more wealth because they play more, or are they more efficient because they’re really good at the game or both.

I’d say neither. The people that have more wealth are those that spend more time on a few, very specific activities (namely: farming and TP playing). If you do anything else, you accumulate wealth very slowly, if any. If you are good at the game, it also doesn’t make you any more efficient, since neither of wealth-gaining activities require any skill whatsoever (well, any skill at the game. TP playing does require some ability, but it is an ability completely unconnected to the game).

klesk.1790:

Yes… Ascended gear is out their is no turning back now
I think the main important thing here is “Let ascended gear be available outside FOTM” for all the players

I’d phrase it a bit differently: “Let the ascended gear be easily available”.

eisberg.2379:

There is already a difference between a level 80 character and a level 10 character that has been bolstered up, the level 80 character still has the advantage over the level 10 even though the level 10’s gear was bolstered up, it still doesn’t compare to the level 80 character.

Yes. That is a problem that should also be solved eventually. There is no point in making it even worse than it already is.

Evalia.7103:

Do you use food buffs?
Do you use wrench buffs?
Do you stack stacking sigils , then wield a weapon with different ones in actual wvw combat?
Do you buy stat karma boosts from wayfarer foothills?
If the answer to at least one of these question is NO,
you can’t grumble about ascended gear because you denied yourself amount of power (not as in stat but as in overall character strength) 10-20 times bigger (or the same as difference between exotic and ascended ring, in karma buffs case) than a difference between exotic and ascended currently gear pieces.

As soon as the ascended gear will be as easily accessible and as cheap as omnomnom bars, i’ll agree with you. Until that i’ll have to consider this argument as completely missing the point.

Mackdose.6504:

Raine.1394:

You can say that a treadmill that turns slowly is preferable to a treadmill that turns rapidly. And, I’ll agree with you. What you can’t disagree with is what I said in the post you have replied to. (I’m not going to repeat it.) It’s not about being black and white, it’s a matter of logical coherence.

Here’s what I’m trying to say:

We’ve defined vertical progression’s problems. Now it’s up to the designers to mitigate or eliminate them while still giving the VP players the option of VP without diminishing or alienating the HP players.

You say this cannot be done due to the nature of VP. Why?

I think Anet has done a bang-up job for a first pass.

Virtual progression aims at the people that want to be better than others. They want that progression to give them advantage over the average player. Horizontal progression players on the other hand want a level field, where none of the available options are clearly advantageous over the others – and they want that field to be easily accessible. Those two goals lie in direct opposition – you cannot have a playing field when at the same time a minority of players have an equipment-based advantage.

Now, it is possible, usually, to satisfy the VP group by offering them a surrogate – something that would give them bragging rights without offering advantage (legendary weapons atm fill that niche). It is NOT possible to pacify the those that want horizontal progression, because once the level field gets broken in any way, it IS broken and no amount of sugarcoating can change that.

The devs said something about first news being given somewhere later this week. The update itself will be likely near the end of the month.

Mackdose.6504:

False, I ran all paths of AC in blues and greens my first time out. You don’t require max gear to not get owned by mobs. you just need to not get hit by the mobs.

I bet this is why new mechanics were introduced that make dodging impossible, and can be mitigated by eq only (Jade maw agony attack). Expect to see more of those in the future.

proxy.7963:

Could you link me to where the Devs explicitly stated that vertical progression would be implemented into GW2? I understand that there was mention of the addition of Ascended gear, but I’m more curious to see an actual statement pledging to vertical progression by a Dev member, or the addition of further tiers of gear potency/efficiency over time.

Chris Whiteside AMA:

That is why there is no plan for new Rarity Tiers of loot but there are plans to enhance or gain items within the existing rarity design whose properties continue on a shallow power curve

However we have no intention of adding a new Rarity of Gear such as Ascended. Instead and as we evolve the game existing Rarity’s will evolve over time

Through infusions and existing Tiers there will be the opportunity to increase stats or abilities on a low power curve through multiple types of gameplay in GW2.

The opportunity to enhance existing tiers of loot will not be through a regular cadence of monthly updates instead it is more likely to come from expansions or very big drops of content.

Mike o’Brien from the same AMA (those are even clearer):

How is introducing VP respecting the player? Because it’s fun to be challenged and rewarded. Because it’s fun to have the character you play grow and evolve over time. Because ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 — no VP ever, year after year — and it wasn’t that fun. It was stagnant.

But rephrase, perhaps to something like this: I want to play a reasonable number of hours per month and still be competitive, not falling behind a power curve that’s only accessible to those with the most time. Then that is more along the lines of what we said, and we intend to stick by it.

Especially the last one is telling – to not fall behind, we’ll be expected to continue playing “a reasonable number of hours per month”. Resonable for people that are not sure whether 250 t6 mats stacks (+ ecto) used for crafting aren’t a bit too much to be called “zero grind”

DevilLordLaser.8619:

I love how none of these threads remember the intense caterwauling that was going on prior to the fuzzy-kittened Fractals update absolutely demanding more gear progression, more endgame, more gated content, MOAR VEE PEE. That particular litter of kittens was just as bad as the Ascended complaints are.

We had our mostly-horizontal game, the idiots on the forum harshed ArenaNet like crazy over it, so we got Fractals. Were Fractals a good idea? Not really, no. Was Ascended gear a good idea? No. Did ArenaNet botch the bejeezus out of it and earn every inch of the fan backlash. Yes. Was the introduction of Fractals, Ascended gear, and all that entitled all y’all’s own dang fault?

YES. YES IT WAS.

Lesson: be careful what you wish for (and by wish, I mean demand in an aggressive and impolite manner or threaten to LEAVE 4EVERZ), because you just might bloody well get it.

Except of course fot the tiny fact you overlooked, that people that “asked for it” are different people than those that are put off by Ascended eq. And they are even no longer playing (most of them left long before November 15th).

So no, we got something that people that are no longer playing that game wished for. No wonder we don’t like it.

And yet, you could get to the point when you didn’t need to look for anything more in about a week (that includes advancing storylines to unlock access to several areas). And you didn’t even need to work for it too much – if you did, i bet you could do it in day-two tops.

FacesOfMu.3561:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Ascended gear was added because people asked for it. Before the lost shores update the forums were filled with nothing but “I’m at endgame with full exotics which were too easy to get, and now I’m bored, I have nothing to go for but a legendary.” and anet responded.

Anet have stated Ascended gear was added because it was always intended to be in the game from the beginning, it was just late. In that sense it has a natural place in gear progress, but implemented in a delayed way.

Their consistent claiming (for many, many months before the game even shipped) that exotics are the top tier show us, that it isn’t really true. If they thought then that Ascended eq will be on launch, they would not have been hammering into us the idea that exotics are BiS always and forever.

I believe they have said they are also looking at ways of players being able to acquire ascended gear outside FotM, from other areas of the game inside and outside PvE.

It’s 2 months now, and they are still looking. Considering what they said about January update so far, they will be looking for at least another month as well. With that speed they will introduce other ways to get ascended eq just in time for that eq to become obsoleted by a new tier (or new level cap).

My problems wit ascended eq:

1) Acquisition – the ascended eq should be obtainable by all the means that are currently available for exotic items. While devs mentioned that they will do something about making them accessible outside Fractals, they hadn’t really specified how they are going to solve that (and even then, the Bound on Equip trait remains, which makes them untradable on TP).

2) Price – they are currently way too costly to acquire. Devs said they will look into it, but just “looking into” won’t solve that problem. The price/difficulty to get should be no more than twice the exotic eq – anything more, and collecting more than one stat set for one character becomes unrealistic. So, no more trying out different builds, no more playing several characters.

3) options – lot of popular stat builds are missing in the current ascended eq – Knight, Carrion, rampager, all the Healing Power sets etc. That severely limits build options. All the missing sets must be equally obtainable.

I’m not going to address the sigil/rune case before i know how they will be implemented on ascended eq, so that point is for now out

and finally

4) Vertical progression – I don’t want that in this game. That means no eq tier above ascended – ever. No already existing tier items with stats better than what we have now – ever. Consequently – no level 81+ level eq with better stats than the level 80 ones – ever.
(Points 1, 2 and 4 should hold true also for infusions – though personally i’d rather see the whole badly-conceived Agony mechanics discontinued completely)

Siliconhobbit.4361:

PS: I haven’t forgotten the fact that in the entire scope of Ascended Gear, there will be a LARGE gap…at SOME point. But right now…the gap is miniscule and worrying about acquiring the gear over your regular exotic set now is just silly..

You have pointed out already, that getting the ascended gear we have now is neither fast nor easy. Nothing so far suggests, that the future gear will be any easier to get. So, we really have to worry about it now, because once the full set will be available and the gap will widen to meaningful range it will be too late to jump on a treadmill – we’ll already be months behind.

stof.9341:

Chase.8415:

Or maybe the players are tired of being gimped over “lore”.

It’s not fun facing an enemy only to find out your main dps is now destroyed due to “realism” in a game with magic and backpacks with over 120 slots.

But then the monsters become extremely mechanical and bland, they are just a number : how much HP they have and little else.

Specific resist and weaknesses add a lot of flavor and promotes balanced builds instead of specialized ones and adds variety of situations.

In other words, you want to say that bland monsters allow personal variance, but interesting monsters promote build blandness?

xiv.7136:

cNcHellShadow.7691:

xiv.7136:

It’s kind of interesting.

Just like real life.

If anything, more people should play GW2, understand its economy – and perhaps gain wisdom about real life they would not otherwise have.

Eh, no…A fantasy game where the end goal is to end a dragon’s life should NOT emulate real life. People play games to enjoy a “seperate” life. If you want the life simulator, play the Sims, or games similar to that. It should never be a job or a chore to achieve anything in a video game. And please do not confuse job/chore with challenge, as challenge is fine…as long as it doesn’t require you to make real life a second to the priority of obtaining an item in any game.

Here’s what’s really going to blow your mind.

Even in a high fantasy setting, people who aren’t fighting dragons or fighting wars against the undead will trade. Trading is an activity as old as human history. And where there are traders, there are market manipulators.

Even during famines, during plagues, during wars, even during dragon and undead invasions – the market remains.

And that’s a very real lesson for real life

And? In a realistic setting, in the situation we have now in Tyria, most of the players should be working extremely hard just to be able to eat something on the next day. That would have been an even better lesson for real life, yet for some reason noone wants to experience that in MMO games.

There are some RL lessons that we’d really, really want to go without in virtual settings.

Humanoid shape is not a problem. Though greater variance might be nice, what we have clearly puts across how alien the Sylvari are – while some shape combinations are indeed beautiful, others can be downright creepy. It’s the fact that their behaviour is too human that is problematic.

The designers managed in many places to show how young a race they are, but – no matter the youth – that is still a human race in behaviour and thoughts. The existence of the Dream/Nightmare is mostly ignored (it is explicitly acknowledged in many places, but does not affect the general behaviour), so is the fact that every Sylvari is a genderless drone. Their culture is also too complete, considering how young they are – with the model they have, it should be still in the most promitive stages, with big patches outright stolen from other races. It isn’t. Why?

oryza.5039:

So basically, the 10% trait, the 25% trait, and sigil of air are all 100% combat worthless when using the staff because you have haste?

yes, they don’t add up. That doesn’t make them completely worthless (10% trait definitely is, though).

There is no “legendary loot”. All those weapons on TP were crafted normally – it’s just that the end result is “bound on equip”, not soul- or account bound, and so it can be sold normally.

Lafiel.9372:

*However, given that they said they would scale ascended gear with legendary, i would assume if a level cap was raised, the current legendaries would be given a raise too. *

We have assumed (based on the information from the devs) for the long time that there will be no new tiers above exotics as well. In the end we got told, that while they did indeed might have suggested that, they never actually said it out straight, so they don’t feel bound by it. The same situation is now – the only thing they said out straight is that the legendary tier will always be equal to top tier. It does mean that the current legendaries will be bumbed up a tier, but it does not mean that their levels will be adjusted as well.
Since November 15 it became really important to analyze semantics in developer quotes, bacause it’s obvious the devs consider those very, very important.

Evalia.7103:

but there wasn’t a level increase in gw1. ever.
Why do you think it will increase? It’s not WoW after all.

Unfortunately they did confirm that they intend to raise the level cap. And yes, it’s very likely that they will use that as an excuse to keep us on a treadmill (while insisting loudly that there is no evil treadmill here – only “item progression”, and progress obviously is good, right?)

Also… ectos abundant in the game? We’re obviously playing a different game. And as for backpack cost – look for books and quivers and their 250-stack of t6 mats requirements.

Personally? I’d like to be able to deck out with top stat eq in no more than a month of casual gameplay per character. Vanity drops can range from just above that to years (but there should be something good in each drop rarity category).

Horheristo.3607:

A player who made 1kg is still more competent than a player that didn’t.

Ah, but more competent at what? Orr running the same event chains over and over? Or sitting in LA and playing TP?

UnderdogSMO.9428:

AdelaisAer.4109:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

That was somthing thay wanted thay have stated that thay didnt get to do what thay wanted with it and that there are big plans for this stuff.

There are a lot of things they promised us that we didn’t get to see as of yet. I think they are trying way too hard to push events and extra content (such as Lost Shores or whatever it was called) instead of actually working on implementing features that should have been here since launch. :/

No most of what was promised to be in game at louch is there

These is so much stuff missing still, that the only reasonable conclusion is that the game was rushed to the market long before it was finished – and by “long before” i mean at least half a year, perhaps a year.

Okay, i’ll rephrase my questions:

Can we expect for currently missing stat sets (knight, Carrion, rampager, healing power ones, etc) to become available in ascended tier eq (and if so, when?)

What is considered to be a reasonable price range for Ascended items? (aproximate gold/karma value, mats used, hours needed to obtain)

Of the major stat sets, Knight (Tough/Power/Prec) is missing as well. So is Carrion and Rampager

They do give sigils/runes back,though the chance seems to be significantly lower than 20%. More like 5-10%

Draknar.5748:

I’m assuming this video is to highlight that player hacking? That’s some seriously blatant shenanigans.

Wasn’t that just Judge’s Intervention?

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

We’ve seen reports from players questioning the randomness of the drop mechanisms in GW2 and in particular asking if it’s been changed recently. This is not the case

How so? It was even in the patch notes for kitten’s sake.

fellyn.5083:

Liquid Swords.1740:

When a game expansion is realeased and the level cap is raised what are the plans with legendaries? Are they obsolete lvl 80 weapons or do they get thier stats bumped to lvl 90 or whatever the new expansion lvl will be?

They’ve already answered that. They said legendaries are meant to be best of the best and will be upgraded whenever something new comes out. For example when ascended weapons are finally released Legendaries will be upgraded to ascended stats.

Their answer addressed only the eq tier, not the level. And since they are now playing the “we might have suggested this, but we have never said this explicitly, so we didn’t break our word” game, what they didn’t say becomes also very important.

So, by their explanation it’s entirely possible that the Legendaries will become ascended/any new tier, but their level will not go up.

Emerge.9640:

You know what happens to the grand scheme of things when drops are increased or decreased? NOTHING. The market stabilizes!

Perhaps it changes nothing for the heavy farmers and TP players, but for people that’d rather get what they need on their own, instead of being forced to buy everything from the market, the change is very, very significant.

So, in other words, one in a hundred players will need at least 285 tries? One in thousand at least 304? In a game with few million accounts that is a huge number.

Illiander.8049:

Didn’t we do this here for the last one as well?

And they dodged the important questions (or gave handwavy answers that didn’t actually mean anything). I don’t expect any better from their PR department this time around.

You suggest we should make it even easier for them by not asking hard questions?

zippo burntfur.9307:

1. When will we be able to get ascended gear outside of FoTM, wheather by crafting or karma vendor?

I’d expand this one a bit:

It has been already acknowledged in previous AMA, that you understand you have made an error in both limiting ascended eq to Fractals dungeon, and making it’s cost extremely prohibitive. Considering it, can you tell us:
1. when can we expect other ways to get current ascended eq to appear
2. which of the currently existing methods (Crafting, MF, karma vendors, WvW vendors, TP resale, dungon token vendors – both fractal and older ones, event chest drops, open world drops) will be used for this
3. what would you consider a reasonable price range for these items? (aproximate gold/karma value, hours needed to obtain)
and
4. can we expect for currently missing stat sets (knight, healing power ones, etc)to become available in ascended tier eq (and if so, when?)

mulch.2586:

I can’t see ascended gear coming on a for-gold vendor.
That’d be really jumping the shark.

That’s okay, there can be craftable, sellable versions to be bought from TP. As long as making them won’t be more than twice as hard/costly as exotics.

Astralporing.1957:

What will be the other sources of new eq? Will the grind requirement be reduced? By how much? How soon? – Those are the important questions now. The answers to them will decide everything.

Quite a long time passed since AMA… and yet all of the above questions still remain unanswered (Except perhaps for the last one, th answer to which now seems to be “not soon enough”).

Star Ace.5207:

I am sure they will find a way to acquire this stuff in other ways. It just doesn’t make sense to force players into one mode of play. I believe developers agree as well.

They do. Unfortunately, even though they admitted that they made a serious mistake in locking out ascended eq to one game mode (as well as making them way too grindy to get), it’s apparently not serious enough to warrant actually doing anything about it. Fixing it in half a year from now is simply not an option they should even consider. They should either address that now (preferably by yesterday), or just admit that they don’t really consider it a mistake and their AMA answers were meant only to delay the problem in hope the community will stop asking about it.

Twaddlefish.6537:

Won’t happen, or shouldn’t.

Again, cultural armours are about skins, not stats, just like the Order/Priory/Vigil armours. Wouldn’t make any sense and would be a serious u-turn as 119g for a full set of Ascended is pretty shiny.

Actually, if a basic set of ascended armor will cost anywhere near 100+g, i will consider it seriously overpriced. Not that i think that Anet will keep their no-grind promises, since they’ve already broken them once and are in no hurry to fix current grindy prices of Fractals eq.

Ballistic.4531:

Hawkian.6580:

Well, I meant, ArenaNet has sort of hinted at just straight up patching the recipes to have fewer reqs. That would be easier :P

Oh, but they already did! I laughed hard when I saw it, but they technically did lower requirements.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Adjustments-to-the-Cost-of-Infusions-and-High-End-Materials/first#post998529

Yeah, i laughed long and hard when i saw that.

Mayam.8976:

I realize it’s kinda apples to oranges, or maybe apples to pears, or crabapples maybe? I dunno, similes aside, anyone else find it a tad ironic that on one hand there is a segment of the player base raising Cain about “verticle” gear progression and there steadfastness that they don’t want to have to put any more time or effort into their gear once they have reached the level of gear they are comfortable with. Then at the same time you have a portion of the player base constantly pointing out any discrepencies or illogical loot drop rates and tables.

So, if both of those groups are suggesting (very loudly) that perhaps in this case rewards are seriously underwhelming compared to effort, it just might mean that this is a real problem after all.

Lynne.8416:

Anet will provide players with the ability to obtain “max gear” relatively easily.

Their current definition of “relatively easy” seems to be significantly different than the common one. Getting ascended rings and backpieces is still an insane grind – and some stat configurations aren’t even supported. And there seems to be no big hope that they’ll do something about it anytime soon.
Apparently nerfing drops in open world is a bigger priority.

Did it on my ranger, solo, way back ago. Unless she was buffed since then, it’s a hard fight, but doable and soloable. It just takes a lot of time (…on a ranger. A guardian or warrior should be able to do it way more easily).

I certainly hope so. Unfortunately, so far they didn’t even acknowledge that this may be a problem.

Some sort of info on the timetable of implementing it would be nice. If they aren’t going to do it soon (and by “soon” i mean real soon, like “next patch”, not “eventually, someday… we hope”) then it would mean they, contrary to what they claim, are generally okay with ascended eq requiring heavy grind.

There are also no Healing Power rings or backpacks (i don’t count the divinity ones – those are generalist type eq, and thus useless for most specialized builds). Will there be more stats for ascended eq accessible in the near future?

Erasculio.2914:

Gehenna.3625:

So yes, I do say that if something’s not rewarding, people will stop doing it. That’s why they abandoned Orr, because aside from the original rewards, it wasn’t actually fun to begin with.

Which is exactly the point I want to make. Making Orr to be rewarding without being fun is only going to make people grind there – play without having fun until they find something more rewarding to do.

If Orr were fun, people would play there even without any kind of reward.

You asked me how I think ArenaNet should fix the game. Does that answer your question?

plasmacutter.2709:

I don’t farm, I hate farming, I also don’t get SQUAT when I play the game “normally”.

If you don’t farm, not only you would continue to get SQUAT when playing the game normally, but you would also see prices being inflated even more due to grinders making small fortunes very quickly, in addition to the current exploiters.

Wanting the DR system to go only makes sense for farmers and grinders – everyone else is being protected by it.

That may seem true if we look at DR system alone. If we see the problem as a whole however, it’s rather obvious that DR doesn’t protect anyone. Grind, even with DR, is still more rewarding to most other activities.
Lowering rewards for something (anything) is a bad choice when the game lacks any good rewards to balance it.

What needs to be done is not making grind unrewarding enough, but go in opposite direction – make other gameplay options rewarding (preferably in ways that would make farming unappealing or not very profitable).

Increase drops for mobs that aren’t done often/in less populated zones. Increase rewards for dailies/monthlies, make more once-per-day rewards for different activities.
Make Order quests (in the GW1 zaishen quests style).

You don’t want people sitting in one place? Lower/remove cost for waypoint travel.
Don’t want people to keep to one dungeon? Don’t make mistakes like putting ascended drops there and only there.
And so on, and so on.

Carrot is always better than a stick. Unfortunately, Anet’s mixture is 0.01% carrot and 99.99% stick (and a very heavy one).