Guild Wars 2

Vol.5241:

plasmacutter.2709:

Ryuujin.8236:

plasmacutter.2709:

exionn.8152:

after you learn to use the tradepost correctly, 2k gold is not that far

The devs should pay attention to this statement:

It should be GW2, not TP2, time to un-suck quest gold and drop rates.

awe extender.1908:

So there’s some offer for a legendary gsword for 2200g on TP!

Is it legit gold? I mean is it really possible to make 2200g in game after 3 months? Or is it real life cash? Or bots?

If it’s legit gold from playing the game (credit card players / gem buyers don’t count!), whoever you are my friend, I salute you! Kudos!

Yes, it is possible:

exploit godskull, subvert the spirit of the game by hitting 80 in a day and farming the first month and a half when there was no DR on loot, exploit snowflake-to-ecto, profit while everyone else has zero way to actually reach that level of gold.

Alternatively make up sour spirited false accusations to help justify your own lack of gold when compared to players who count a spreadsheet and calculator amongst their inventory, and traited mathematics instead of making it a dump stat

It’s a GAME

I work in applied mathematics, I don’t want to do it to be viable in a GAME , I want to play a WIZARD, not an ACCOUNTANT . When I want to day-trade, I do it with real money.

Then don’t do it. Nobody is forcing you.

It’s my choice if I want to exploit other people’s ignorance or impatience which allows me to profit off of them.

You don’t like a game that doesn’t have an economy? You’re playing the wrong genre.

The progression in this game is via cosmetics.

The pinnacle of cosmetics are legendaries, which come from precursors.

The other useful cosmetic items for muting involve ludicrous amounts of lodestones.

All of the above have skyrocketed because ANet allowed the exploits mentioned to happen, producing wealth gaps that make the situations leading to the arab spring look like absolute bliss and social justice by comparison.

Ryuujin.8236:

plasmacutter.2709:

exionn.8152:

after you learn to use the tradepost correctly, 2k gold is not that far

The devs should pay attention to this statement:

It should be GW2, not TP2, time to un-suck quest gold and drop rates.

awe extender.1908:

So there’s some offer for a legendary gsword for 2200g on TP!

Is it legit gold? I mean is it really possible to make 2200g in game after 3 months? Or is it real life cash? Or bots?

If it’s legit gold from playing the game (credit card players / gem buyers don’t count!), whoever you are my friend, I salute you! Kudos!

Yes, it is possible:

exploit godskull, subvert the spirit of the game by hitting 80 in a day and farming the first month and a half when there was no DR on loot, exploit snowflake-to-ecto, profit while everyone else has zero way to actually reach that level of gold.

Alternatively make up sour spirited false accusations to help justify your own lack of gold when compared to players who count a spreadsheet and calculator amongst their inventory, and traited mathematics instead of making it a dump stat

It’s a GAME

I work in applied mathematics, I don’t want to do it to be viable in a GAME , I want to play a WIZARD, not an ACCOUNTANT . When I want to day-trade, I do it with real money.

exionn.8152:

after you learn to use the tradepost correctly, 2k gold is not that far

The devs should pay attention to this statement:

It should be GW2, not TP2, time to un-suck quest gold and drop rates.

awe extender.1908:

So there’s some offer for a legendary gsword for 2200g on TP!

Is it legit gold? I mean is it really possible to make 2200g in game after 3 months? Or is it real life cash? Or bots?

If it’s legit gold from playing the game (credit card players / gem buyers don’t count!), whoever you are my friend, I salute you! Kudos!

Yes, it is possible:

exploit godskull, subvert the spirit of the game by hitting 80 in a day and farming the first month and a half when there was no DR on loot, exploit snowflake-to-ecto, profit while everyone else has zero way to actually reach that level of gold.

Astraea.6075:

Avan.1540:

Likely not when a very large number of people started recording these issues; there’s a thread with well over 1000 posts on it in the general forum.

Look up the phrase “confirmation bias”. I’m not saying there isn’t an issue with drop rates, but citing numbers of posts that support your view doesn’t actually prove it.

It does when you’re trying to confirm people are not delusional.

Generally you can confirm something is “real” when a significant number of people observe it.

when was the last time over 2000 people were kitten enough to go post in a thread?

Was it a real in-game issue then?

Fay.2735:

plasmacutter.2709:

Waffler.1257:

How is it possible that you have played 1500 hrs? The game has been out 4 months so that means you would have to play 12.5 hrs a day every single day since the game launched. That blows my mind.

he played all the beta weekends.

She* but yes I play a lot most of the day That’s beside the point other than me having experienced the game a lot to give some weight to my feedback. I just hope the dev’s read and take note of my concern to the community building issues especially.

This is the internet, we all know you’re made of spaghetti and longcats.

I agree with you btw.

I play maybe 6 hours a week (2-3 evenings) and am hit so hard with DR I just have zero chance of personal progression beyond nominal level gains on alts.

I can’t make gold legitimately thanks to ANet’s bugged DR, and I don’t exploit, so I’m hosed.

marnick.4305:

Those who will never see 1400 can still get a legendary by playing the game. Almost everyone can get one sooner or later,

I wanted to be very rude about this, but I decided to hold off.

Look, the BASE probability of a precursor from a chest is something like 0.001%

Then you add in the ludicrous DR that about half the population has (the same reason that same half can’t even break 3-digit gold figures and is being slowly bled by waypoints alone), and you’re looking at 0.00001%

now at the base amount, you would take about 10 years before the probability began to approach 1.0

at the DR amount you’re more likely to be struck by lightning while simultaneously being blown up by a suicide bomber in the back of your personal hatchback on second street in sioux city iowa at exactly 5:35:34 PM, central time on any given wednesday.

They will find life on mars before most of us see a precursor of any type actually show up in our personal chest loot.

It’s not a grind though right now.

You either exploited and have the money to get what’s on the TP

Or you’re punished with DR and have no money for the tp and so no hope of ever actually attaining the gear.

so, no grind.

Frankly, given the above scenario, i’d prefer the grind. At least in grind there’s hope

Waffler.1257:

How is it possible that you have played 1500 hrs? The game has been out 4 months so that means you would have to play 12.5 hrs a day every single day since the game launched. That blows my mind.

he played all the beta weekends.

Groovy.6749:

plasmacutter.2709:

There is a word for what DR is doing to a wide swath of legitimate players:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment

Collective punishment is the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behavior of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions. In times of war and armed conflict, collective punishment has resulted in atrocities, and is a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions.

I’d rather have the bots than be denied the ability to be self-sufficient and work toward a precursor.

I think the comparison is a bit over-the-top, that itself being a euphemism considering you are drawing parallels between genuine human catastrophies and loot drops in one game. I am just saying that because it isn’t worth getting the thread locked because we are feeling frustrated (legitimately to a certain extent) over the issue discussed here at hand.

But I do see where you are coming from. I would just hope things stabilize in the near future and we get more options to make some coin (other than dungeons, which is fine by me but definitely boxed-in).

I may not wait that long.

I HATE farming and play the following pattern:

Log in – do one or two explorables on main, log to alt, spend 2 hours working to 100% whatever zone the alt is in, log back to main if any dragons or favorite dungeons are called in guild chat.

in the past MONTH, I’ve received 5 items of rare or higher quality, 3 of them only in the 1 hour window following a new build.

My buddies all get 3 ectos an event.

I’m tired of it. There has been no word from ANet on it. The game is fundamentally broken for me when I have no way to work toward the stated goal of a precursor and eventually a legendary, when the waypoint fees are killing what little I have on my toons by 1,000 cuts.

Scenario 6 – Permanent “bad luck”

since the 11/15 patch, the ONLY time I’ve had loot drops that are in parity with everyone else is after a new build.

I only play a few hours a day about 2 days a week.

I don’t actively “farm”, I do dynamic events, dungeons, seasonals, and level alts (trying to 100% zones)

I get squat while others receive 2-3 ectos an event, I lose money on waypoint costs, I watch as the dev-stated “end-goal” of legendaries (precursors) skyrocket faster daily than my income is monthly.

I’m seeing zero feedback on this.

If I don’t see an update soon, i’m beyond done, i’ll have them liquidate my account, refund my money, and I’ll go buy a couple other game titles.

I will also never come back to MMO.

Rustypipes.6238:

If the economy was destroyed because of the botting, would you still feel the same?

I agree the players who are legitimately trying to make themselves better by farming for materials to do so are taking the brunt of this choice by the devs. But, to sit and claim that they added DR specifically to force players to spend money is absurd, very narrow minded and dare I say ignorant approach to the problem of botting.

Bots can kill a game’s economy and when you have the potential to exploit real money is can devastate the game completely.

The best course of action as a player is to report the bots as you witness them and perhaps give some valid ideas on how to combat them. Think of it as crime in your neighborhood, report it, help the police take care of the problem.

The worst thing you can do is give up. If you enjoy the game, help make it better, don’t quit on it.

No, I would not feel the same, because I could still farm up what I need myself if I didn’t like how the TP was working. I was not FORCED to use the ah in wow when they had bots everywhere during burning crusade. I was not FORCED to use the shop in D3 either, and neither were my friends.

Thanks to DR, i’m FORCED to use the tp if I want anything of value in the game because i can’t get it myself

I want my money back, I want my time back.

Aarioch.9650:

I only started playing around 11/27 this year… and I must have really missed out on some fantastic drop rates… ‘cause I don’t see the issue. I only have a couple level 26s and so far I feel pretty good about the drops and coin return.

Maybe this will change for me down the leveling spiral… but honestly most of what I keep reading in these DR related posts are people that seem to think legendary effort equals about a week…. and like you; wealth should be applied by rights not by time and effort.

Maybe it’s just me though….

It is seriously just you.

As was indicated, there are half the playerbase that get tagged ‘false-positive’ with DR and get hammered for no loot.

The other half get 5 ectos a dynamic event and call the rest of us “crazy”.

it’s ludicrous.

I’m about ready to go demand a refund.

Fuz.5621:

You forgot to mention people who exploited the godskull bug and got lots of precursors before it was fixed.
Which are, most likely, the few ones guiding and abusing the whole economy of this game.

wow.. ANet did not take back the gold?

wow.. ANet did not take back the gold?That’s INSANE

Walle.6087:

I agree all games do have a grind.

GW1
– Had an acceptable grind
– Players were able to get max level stats and play everything in the game with their friends rather quickly.
– Armor was about looks not stats.
– We were able to have as many alternate characters as we wanted.

GW2
– Unacceptable grind, I find it more like a Korean MMO rather and a Western AAA title.
– We are now grinding for gear and stats.
– making harder to level alternate characters.

“Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games.”
- Mike Obrien

You missed one:

We are collectively punished with DR because of the actions of unrelated botters, and therefore have to grind to even break even on waypoint costs.

We then get to look in despair at the TP as the legendaries we were told we should be able to eventually attain fly further and further into the stratosphere.

From wikipedia:

Collective punishment is the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behavior of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions. In times of war and armed conflict, collective punishment has resulted in atrocities, and is a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions.

We legitimate players are being denied the capacity to be self-sufficient and get our own materials by DR in this game because ANet has decided to punish US for the actions of botters over which we have no control.

The DR mechanics flag false-positive on wide swaths of legitimate players, causing them to fall behind even on basic waypoint fees, while those who were around before DR or have exploited are sitting on enough gold to control the in-game economy.

Since the 11/15 patch, this has been turned up to an absurd level. A full 30% of post volume on this subforum pertains to this. It’s killing the fun of the game when you look in despair and see that zap has risen 30G in 24 hours while you count your porous bones.

I’d rather have every continent FILLED with botters than be denied the capacity to gain my own loot legitimately.

There is a word for what DR is doing to a wide swath of legitimate players:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment

Collective punishment is the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behavior of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions. In times of war and armed conflict, collective punishment has resulted in atrocities, and is a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions.

I’d rather have the bots than be denied the ability to be self-sufficient and work toward a precursor.

logged in today after not playing for nearly a week.

Did one path in the tixx instance, then shatterer because it was up.

In that entire time, the only thing I got was 20 random whites and blues, besides the obligatory mystic gears & stuffing.

What is the point!?

Why do I log on even!

I LOSE money on waypoints, i’m certainly not self-sufficient, and I don’t have a chance in frozen hell of getting any decent skins.

Zimlobo.3962:

Karizee.8076:

Legendary items will take time. Not meant to be had in a matter of weeks.

I do believe that’s the answer to the question. Honestly I’m surprised to have seen as many legendaries as I have. Yes, the system is working as intended because through normal game-play it could take a year+ to achieve a legendary. I think of it as a built in customer loyalty incentive… Just one man’s opinion

Precursors are inflating faster than I, as a normal person playing the game in the intended, paced manner, can gain cash.

Further, the DR applies to world events and dungeons, so my chance of receiving a precursor the normal way is reduced considerably from people who played 2 months ago.

Finally, charged lodestones are used in virtually every weapon with a decent skin, not just legendaries, and they are also inflating faster than normal people can earn gold.

To me it sends a clear message “stop playing after 80, don’t log on again”.

If i’m able to actually collect cool weapon skins, then I win.

(right now, anything worth having on the TP is inflating at 3x what I can earn, i can’t win this game unless they fix the economy, and worse for ANet, i’m convinced that once I reach 80, there is no hope of actually getting anything when prices on cool things like foefire’s essence — not even a precursor rocket 30G a day)

with the DR system “shutting the gateway to wealth” for everyone who either does not exploit or did not get to farm orr for the first month of the game, and the current droprates on lodestones and precursors, what is being done to staunch the massive wealth gap and price inflation which has caused any weapon skin worth having to quickly soar out of reach for players who play the game in the intended, paced manner you have presented?

examples: precursors inflating by double-digit gold figures every day, foefire’s essence costing 700g.

Thanks to ANet balancing lodestone drops terribly, anything which requires lodestones in large quantities (e.g. EVERY SKIN WORTH HAVING) actually costs more than half the precursors in the game.

Most of this game is fine, but there are two major failings which are quickly snowballing and need ANet’s attention:

1 – fractals being the only source of ascended and “draining the world”

2 – DR combined with massive inflation causing the most extreme wealth gap in terms of actual ability to attain desired gear that i’ve ever seen in any game, period.

Solrune.2691:

Even though it may be a huge gold sink, the gap between the people who start farming for a legendary now and those who started day one is enormous. They are going to be be hurting to keep up with the rapid inflation. Seriously Zap has went up by 40g in 3 days. if you can make 40g in 3 days please share what you do :}

With a tangible achievable way to get them 100%, as crazy as it may be, would still be awesome because it would give us a realistic goal to work toward. I would gladly pay 1 million karma or like 500 of each dungeon token to get my zap :{

I agree with this, and was talking about it before.

There are people in this game who subverted its purpose by ignoring all content to power-level to 80 and hit orr in the first couple days, they then got to farm with NO DR for a month and a half, get their precursors, turn them to legendaries, and then put their copious extra gold into power-trading, market-cornering, and speculating.

Then they put in DR, slamming the gates to wealth shut for the rest of us, punishing people for experiencing the game as in the intended, paced manner.

now the only people who make money in this game are those first-gen power-traders and people who find and exploit holes in the game’s economy like the snowflake-to-ecto issue.

Meanwhile, the price of precursors and even normal exotics skyrockets faster than normal, non-exploiting players who are not already in “the virtual-1%” can keep up.

This needs fixing, or I see no point after reaching 80 of continuing to play. Why reach for something when the goalposts move 3x as fast as you can run?

The one part I agree with:

The crafting needs a better system.

I like the discoverable recipes, but at the same time, I should be able to click on a finished product and see all the raw components required to create it.

This is something many MMOs fall flat on.. in WoW you had to compensate with advanced tradeskill window.

I’d love to see ATSW built into crafting pane.

mojodamm.6854:

How are TP prices adversely affecting your gameplay when you never have to purchase anything from the TP?

Progression in this game is aesthetic.

The best aesthetics come from legendaries.

legendaries come from high end crafting mats and precursors.

precursors have a 0.001% drop rate in the real world.

This means the TP is the only non-RNG place where it will drop.

Otherwise you’re looking at approximately 10 years before your probability for a precursor starts to approach 1, assuming you get at least half the dragons and world events each day.

This means that in order to feel like you’re getting to your goal of that super-cool-looking weapon, your income needs to outpace inflation, even if just a little.

Oh.. and it means by the laws of probability that ANet really needs to increase the drop rates for precursors.. to make it fair primarily in events that require substantial effort (the temples, the world bosses, the dungeon bosses)

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.

Except they’re not protected by it. It’s too little too late. The exploiters and the people who got filthy rich before the DR are the horses that have already escaped from the barn.

Their cash is not going away, and thanks to DR it’s not leaving their hands either. They now form a plutocratic cabal of power-traders who are free to manipulate the TP without the competition of new materials entering the market at a sufficient rate to punish them for trying to speculate.

They are rich, and thanks to DR their TP listings are the only reliable source of mats.

They will continue, like an embedded tick, to extract the majority of the playerbase’s wealth, and will be the only people who will be able to buy precursors (and many exotics, which are already out of range thanks to DR.. really. try to price out foefire’s essence!)

Rieselle.5079:

Strayhand.8216:

Btw, am I the only one who doesn’t play the game for loot? I never had an MF gear on me so far. I’m full exotic with 2 different sets with zero grind. At least nothing felt grindy so far. Whatever you do in this game, gets you gold, and then you just buy your gear on the TP, plus you go some explorable dungeons and buy the rest from tokens. I just don’t get what you’re saying…

You’re not the only one who doesn’t play for loot.

Personally I like games such as Dark Souls, which has almost no economic features at all. No currency, no trading, no random drops. Just pure RPG stats, adventuring and combat. Contrast with Diablo 3, which I quit as soon as I got 2 characters to max level. Yikes, D3’s forums, what a cesspool of envy, greed, entitlement, jealousy. That’s the sort of player you attract when you design a game that revolves entirely around loot.

Like you, I just play the game normally, buy what I can afford, and play the content I enjoy. I’ve never farmed, never grinded, I rarely even repeat content unless I want to play it again.

Most of my friends play in a similar way, but they are much smarter than me and avoid MMO forums like the plague. That’s why you don’t hear about players like us – mostly the whiney ones come here (me included!)

I was hoping GW2 would be less centered on grind and having to worry about gear, but the following is what actualy happened:

Day 1 to day 10 of release:
A subset of the community, likely fresh out of WoW, thwarts the efforts of the devs to make an engaging world by bum-rushing to 80 and farming Orr DE’s, collecting tons of exotics, crafting their legendaries without it feeling grindy (as Anet intended), and becoming filthy rich.

At the same time, A subset of this subset begins to figure out exploits to gain yet MORE money.

Meanwhile, the average player who was sold on a relaxed pace is poking around at lvl 20, having fun (GASP), not realizing that the economy is already starting to inflate out of control.

Finally, ANet comes in, and instead of taking efforts to mitigate income inequality produced by this, they clamp the valves shut on all legitimate sources of gold, insuring the dominance of those who exploited or thwarted the intent of the game

Which brings us to now:
The average price of a precursor rises faster than the income of a non-exploiting, normal player.

Obliterated is the ANet concept of gameplay, where you play at your own pace and gradually attain things like legendaries, they are now permanently out of reach

They will never eventually get there. They are faced with a choice: Jump on the fractals treadmill or face the idea that their gaming experience will be permanently lesser than the peers who came before them.

Erasculio.2914:

Gehenna.3625:

The problem is this. If it’s not rewarding, people don’t go there.

So your point is that people only play to grind? In other words, unless content gives then gold or an equivalent reward, they won’t play it?

plasmacutter.2709:

Let’s see, a game where people can make enough to survive, or a game where you barely cover waypoint costs

Which is even worse – do you honestly think people should only be able to cover waypoint costs if they grind and farm, since that’s what the DR punishes?

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

I play “normally”, with my guildies, barely make waypoint costs, and I watch as the price of precursors floats further away from me like a carnival balloon accidentally released because people who thwarted this game’s purpose by rushing to 80 and received pre-dr drop rates for everything — and exploiters — are now wealthy and manipulating the TP, while ANet comes diligently behind these people and shuts the vault door, ensuring the remaining population is dirt poor.

I’m sorry, I don’t see how that does anything but exacerbate the economy of the game.

It’s like laws protecting DRM to “protect against piracy”…. the horse is already out of the barn… all you’re doing is harassing legitimate customers.

reiselle:

they have “arbitrarily” created a game where the pinnacle of achievement are legendaries.

they then “arbitrarily” nerfed drop rates into the ground in a way in which a significant fraction of the playerbase is more impacted then others.

then, they “arbitrarily” failed to correct for massive market distortion from exploitation.

The result:
their arbitrary pinnacle of success moves further and further out of reach for the vast majority of the playing population.

You want a gap between grinders/farmers and people who play the other 99% of the game, so your point doesn’t really have much merit…

Let’s see, a game where people can make enough to survive, or a game where you barely cover waypoint costs while the exploiters drive precursors into the stratosphere to the point they’re more a mockery than a realistic goal.

Lol, I thought you have no gold? Isn’t that your entire point? :P

Not in-game. Of course, you have to satisfy yourself attempting to claim the high ground on an internet message board.

No, my gold is in real life, something you are eminently unfamiliar with.

“The bucks stop here” — literally.

So instead I get to have the people who started the first month paraded in front of me with their legendaries and 4 figure in-game gold, which they got naturally with no grind, while in the name of “no grind”, ANet eliminates all hope of me ever attaining a legendary in the life of the game by saddling me with bugged DR?

I’m not buying it.

Please, go start a lecture series on the benefits to society of offshoring.

ANet decides how valuable your “achievement” is, not you.

welcome to the world of capitalism:

The Customer Is Always Right

ANet makes this game for players

You have every right to say how you feel. But your feelings aren’t more or less correct than anyone elses.

I will repeat to you, again, since you seem to think starting a company makes you a king:

The Customer Is Always Right

when you have a thread 2000 replies long with 35k views and 3 out of 4 people agreeing with the complaints, you have a customer service problem, and the customers are not wrong

If you want to have a fiefdom, go buy a spread in north dakota and be the county’s only resident, but this game doesn’t belong to ANet, it belongs to the players, to the customers

And ANet if you’re reading, reiselle here and the lack of replies to said thread with 35k views ha convinced me not to buy a single gem until the loot problem is fixed.

Welcome to the golden rule reiselle: I have the gold, I make the rules, and 75% of the playerbase, according to that thread, agree with me.

. You don’t “make a living” in GW2, decent or otherwise – you receive a reward by succeeding in a game.

oh if only I did.

I’ve soloed plenty of champions that normally take a group and received nothing for them but trophy items.

I’ve spent 45 minutes killing jormag and see at most 3 blues.

Like I said, feel free to complain about game mechanics. But it’s stupid to claim some sort of moral justification

I’m SAVING TYRIA and while i’m doing it i’m living hand to mouth barely covering waypoint fees!

I’d say theres some moral justification in it.

ANet is not “someone” – ANet is the creator of the game. They are the god of Tyria,

Oh please, now look who is trying to load on the morality here. They want my money, but their loot system makes me feel thoroughly unrewarded, especially in that they program it to “play favorites” consistently. I wouldn’t care about rares and exotics being infrequent if it were that way for everyone, but it’s not the case, and that’s waved in my face every day.

I have every right to say I feel unrewarded for my effort, and consider that wrong.

Rieselle.5079:

if you cut down trees all the time, eventually there won’t be any left. There’s no god-given law saying that drop rates have to be constant or high or even fair.

A specious analogy.

A proper one would be a christmas tree farm.

You grow trees, cut them down periodically, and sell them, and by doing that you make a decent living.

Then someone (ANet) comes along and routinely torches your forest while it’s still growing.

Are you going to continue farming christmas trees(playing the game)?

EverythingXen.1835:

You’re just unlucky. And delusional.

I’m not delusional, i’ve literally gotten absolutely nothing of worth for 2.5 weeks in a row.

I’m under bugged DR that’s lasted that long, and I’m not alone. Roughly 50% of my guild has the same issue while the other half makes enough to accumulate significant gold without issue.

DR is bugged, and its selectively crippling very real players who have never attempted to break the game.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Honestly, I’ve played this game like 1500+ hours and I’ve not once complained about the loot. I never think about it as I’m playing the game, if it drops it drops. And you know, if you actually don’t think about it, it’s always a nice surprise when you do get something.
I found even in gw1, when i was after a particular item, the more i wanted it the less chance i seem to have getting it. The moment i stopped thinking about it and just played the game, the drops seem to come. I find the same in gw2. It could be just a state of mind.
It’s like if you sit there watching the grass grow, nothing is happening, but if you forget about it and go have some fun doing other things, when you look at the grass again, voila its ready for mowing hehe.
What I’m trying to say, is if you want something really bad and you focus all your thoughts on it, the more you think about it the slower it seems to be happening.

2 weeks of nothing but blues, whites, and “junk” while half my guild was getting 3 ectos an event.

It’s not “all in the mind”.

There’s broken DR in this game that punishes a consistent group of players (as in the same people for WEEKS) arbitrarily, and nobody has a clue how to avoid it.

The difficulty is dependent upon the type and level of the mob.

The centaur toys and epsecially princess dolls can be very tricky, and their mechanics (spammed range and ice aoe for the centaurs, stacking confusion on you and boons on themselves for the princess dolls).

If you don’t have a full set of traits to deal with things like this, (e.g., if you’re a lowbie rather than a scaled-down 45 or higher), you’re best grabbing the present and dodging out.

As a mesmer I found the princess dolls to be the most challening (but fun). They stacked confusion to 15 and they have protection, regen, and fury all the time. I’d have to spec boon-strip on shatter specifically for them to make them easy.

I do think the centaurs and princesses that spawn in under-40 zones could use a tone-down though.

slythetove.6253:

Is it just me or is 9,800 karma for a level 40 weapon unreachable? Why even have these if nobody can actually buy them at the appropriate level?

Maybe it’s just me. If so, please share how you made over 10,000 karma by level 40.

Daily rewards are the same at lvl 10 as they are at 80.

I don’t necessarily shoot for dailies, but I’ve received 3-4 of them on my elementalist and am sitting on enoough karma to buy 3 lvl 40 weapons (and i’m not even 30 yet)

buki.3108:

plasmacutter.2709:

I wore about 45% MF, and my drops went to zip.

I took it off, so i had not 1% of magic find and within the next hour got a corrupted lodestone and an exotic soloing a random world champ (non-event).

MF is bugged, i’d remove all of it if I were you.

Agreed. MF ruins your drops. Ironic.

From the behavior people notice on it, I believe I know what the issue is, but can only make an educated guess.

People who wear or use consumables for sane amounts (under 100%) get worse drops.

People who wear or use consumables for insane amounts (over 150%) notice better.

I contend that instead of augmenting your existing 100%, to say, 130%, a 30% MF consumable or gear set is actually REPLACING your existing 100%, so you go from 100% to 30%.

It makes sense from the pattern.

people who stack MF to over 100% see returns, people who don’t see a lot less than normal.

This bug is far less amusing than the one that caused my staff mesmer to fall through the world on phase retreat and die of fall damage.. that was amusing.

I thanked them plentily.

This patch fixed mesmers and made them more engaging with the might duration, and fixed a lot of ele issues.

I defend them overall in the forums, and most people in every subforum but this one are generally happy and thankful.

I rewarded them with 20 bucks in the cash shop this month (but not last month due to lost shores patch).

I would reward them with a lot more if they dumped DR and raised mat costs instead so the game wouldn’t unfairly punish and make-poor people whose playstyles somehow triggered false “bot-positives”.

Astraea.6075:

While your arguments against “degressive” random chance have some merit, your argument against the TP seems to come down to envy over the profits that some people are making playing the market.

The games I’ve played that have “progressive” random chance tend to have it in place for items that are required or necessary to progress further in the game (i.e. as part of the gear grind), which doesn’t quite apply to GW2 as there really aren’t any gear checks holding you back from content (with the exception of higher levels of fractals).

The TP is not “pure capitalism”, but is a (lightly regulated) competitive marketplace. Capitalism involves private ownership of the means of production and the production of goods and services for profit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism). While those who amass great in-game wealth are able invest heavily in the markets, they cannot take control over the means of production for goods and services (i.e. loot drops, gathering nodes, crafted items) or use that wealth to bar others from entering into the market.

Look, during the first month or so, there was no DR. The no-lifers who play 24/7 got to 80 and received, in that month window, probably more than double what everyone else who came after got in the 2+ months which followed.. cumulatively.

These people got precursors, t6 mats, ectos, and exotics at rates which are ludicrous by today’s standards, and now sit on hundreds of gold inflating the economy and pushing things even further out of reach for the rest of us.

I don’t blame them entirely; ANet produced this situation by nerfing drop rates instead of raising mat requirements — and they continue to nerf the bejesus out of drop rates in a very individually biased way which misses wide on bots and punishes legitimate players en-masse --- many complain of being on permanent DR and not knowing how they got there..

This means that everyone who follows the first-month no-lifers has zero chance, beyond the odds of “winning the lottery”, of ever gaining anything resembling solvency.

It’s a slap in the face to those of us who were sold on a game that was supposed to be paced rather than rushed.

When the game first came out I was recommending it, but now i’m on the fence. The combat is fun, the story compelling to me, but I feel completely unrewarded, and worse, it’s as if ANet has created a system in which the “haves” are permanently ensconsed and flaunt against the have-nots.

Signed – someone who doesn’t farm AT ALL, only does events and dungeons of opportunity, yet somehow remains on permanent DR at all times >.<

Miss Pink Floyd.9730:

pickpocket.2071:

anet wont fix it, just say bye bye to the old days

That’s okay, they can say goodbye to any more money from me!

I’ve recently shaken off TWO WEEKS of solid DR… where I would go from zone to zone on different toons and still receive nothing worth mentioning. The sad thing is I only get enough time to log in a couple hours every other day, and this DR means that no matter what I do I get zero reward for it, just enough to cover waypoint costs.

I wonder if i’m going back on DR now that I received a single exotic in over two weeks of play.

Sad thing is, I don’t like farming, but I barely break even, and I still have non-exotic armor pieces after a month at 80 due to the horrifically bad gold.

In the mean time, the people who were grandfathered-in before DR have hundreds of gold and power-trade the economy into massive inflation, so anyone who came after them suffers in permanent poverty.

Add insult to injury, ANet continues to nerf T6 mats and drive exotics through the roof.

I wore about 45% MF, and my drops went to zip.

I took it off, so i had not 1% of magic find and within the next hour got a corrupted lodestone and an exotic soloing a random world champ (non-event).

MF is bugged, i’d remove all of it if I were you.

master kit will get you the upgrade items the vast majority of the time.

Rieselle.5079:

People who think ANet somehow profits or wants this sort of thing is ignoring the fact that it’s impractical / impossible for anyone to buy that much gold through official channels.

Just like pretty much any MMO, these items are being listed at these prices because someone out there has enough gold to buy them, probably via 3rd party gold sellers.

When most other MMO’s have failed to stop such things, how can you expect ANet to? All they can do is to ban bots as much as possible.

If they removed the RNG aspect of obtaining vital mats and precursors and made them a function of karma and crafting, this would not be an issue.

I’m very much behind their manifesto, which involves players progressing playing how they want to play.

When you tie legendaries to RNG:
RNG on whether you get a precursor
RNG on the sub-materials

Then nerf the bejesus out of it with DR

you no longer progress playing how you want to, because the rates on certain items if you don’t actively look for them would mean years before it yielded anything.

Ideally legendaries would be the result of skillful participation in every aspect of the game, it would be like having fractal weapon skins on steroids.

The underlying issue here is not champions hitting hard, its them having some Unbroadcasted Attacks which can 1hko you.

Fix the broadcasting issue, and this goes away.

(please note: a visual broadcast with “shining boss” is actually not so great in groups, you just cant see it through the spell effects, it’s best to have a grunt or roar as well)

I just want to post here in support of the devs.

I have my disagreements with them over the lost shores patch, but in the AMA they said they wanted to make it right, and all the changes since have been much better considered.

Removed the MF gear and in the immediate hour afterwards got a corrupted lodestone and an exotic that covered 10% of my gear cost.

Something is definitely up with MF

Medazolam.3058:

In terms of jormag, Iooted a charzooka (20 gold) there of one of the mobs post patch, also getting a lot of vicious claws and other decent loots. Also much more rares in Orr. Is it possible that some people are affected while others are not?

yes, and that’s what many people in this very long thread have observed.

since 11/15 half my my regular guildies have been taking home 3 ectos from the average event, while the other half get absolutely nada consistently, event after event, day after day, week after week.

Cumulatively, this means a severely diminished game experience for the latter half.

The current dominant theory is bugged DR (or perhaps DR rules which flag false-positive “bot” behavior on real players)

confirming this behavior since patch.

mildly annoyed by it, but since you can’t preview where it counts and have to look it up anyway (3-figure gold items on the TP), I’m not having fits over it.

Anet, please do fix it, after you deal with the loot DR and “fractal-only ascended gear killing the world” issues.