Loot scaling please explain why, how is it better?

When I left (open beta for lotro), they used to flag farmers and we would see a message stating we should not exit/enter often to try and farm etc..(or words to that effect).

Now they have loot scaling which means I can fight a high level boss and get re6 items. O.o I completed a tough dungeon and got a blue scroll and a white axe that should drop outside Ascalon. Do players think this is good and wow it's really more fun now?

What am I missing? Also, with all the farming, (only thing to do when you have done all the missions or all you care to) will the loot scaling get even worse?

A friend suggested they needed to reduce server load and wanted to drive players away since they make no monthly income off subs. (Which I replied "take your meds, you're losing it." But ya know, crazier things have happened.).

Did ebayers bring this about? (selling items for real monies on ebay)??? And don't get me started on treasure chests, ran them on all characters, I received purple junk mostly and a few golds with req13, 19% chance etc.. WTF happened?

To show I'm not just a complainer. I think with a few tweaks GW could outdo Warcraft. Gorgeous graphics, compelling storyline, what we really need is a total revamp on loot and rewards.

Note: To those reading this that are not current players, it boils down to high end mobs dropping worthless items with a 99% frequency, and only those that farm over and over have any chance at obtaining desired items, which them sell them in game for high in game money (well they used to).

The way I see it is this:

Loot scaling is better because it doesn't affect the things most sought after, especially for farming: event items, rare mats, golds, greens, collector items. Just affects white junky crap and money.

The way it used to work was a gradual decline across the board while farming, to the point where you were in a huge pit and got nothing for long periods, and had to work to 'reset' anti-farm code (this is what it was called, and what loot scaling replaced) by doing mundane stuff you didn't really care to be doing.

Also, there's virtually no Ebay market for selling in-game goods. More the opposite way, sites selling in-game gold for money (which we all know is bad and abuses human rights of all those poor chinese farmers chained to their puters).

If you are looking to see if you can get rich, forget it, the ship of farming for riches sailed long, long ago. If you are looking to see if farming is easily done and nets lots of nice items, then yes by all means go for it.

The ability to farm, with pve skills, controllable heroes (to clear the area), perma sins, with loot-scaling, farming has never been easier. This point directly refutes your friend's suggestion.

Of course the decline in prices you can sell stuff for somewhat offsets that (virtually all greens nearly worthless, inscribable everythings make perf mod non-inscr stuff cheaper and less sought after, craftable golds and end-game trade ins also contribute for less demand for farmed stuffs).

Personally most of what I farm is stuff I want for myself, such as v spears, gold r9 15^50 canthan skins, certain greens, plus mods for everything, so the price decline doesn't affect me so much.

I see the logic they were using. Less drops with lower party size would mean the bots would less effective. But at the same time it defys it's own logic. What that does is make it harder for people to make money so they are less likely to farm. Meanwhile the bots who have no fear of repetitive tasks will be able to run like normal just with lower results.

Sooo... It takes longer to get gold, (via whites) so gold it thus rarer in a sense. So the gold sellers will still do it (you can still make money from farming whites it's just a lot slower) and charge more for what they get. Gold sellers then get more money. Normal players can't handle the slower rate so they farm rare mats, mainly ecto's, which drop the price of everything else.

Gold sellers make more. Economy goes down quicker. Doesn't work to well to me but hey, I'm not a "whining rich merchant", I don't even have 50k so it doesn't bother me that much.

Prices have fallen and all you need to complete the game is easy available. Things are all better now.

What I want (and thanks btw for the concise replies, well done both of you ) is a reward worth keeping. I wouldn't give a pair of fetid dingos kidneys if they dropped the random loot all together and just issued quest driven rewards, and/or barter items like lotro does.

When you finish a difficult dungeon and get a gold staff with 17% chance and req13 OUT OF THE CHEST, you really feel like you've been kicked in the bollocks.

As for making in game money, the gold (coins) drops do that easily. I have no problem getting money for whatever without farming. Loot, salvage etc.. I don't bother selling items, they either get salvaged or sold to the merchants. Most runes I salvage or sell after id'ing them. I have elite armor on all my mains and even a full set of vabby on my paragon.

I agree. The dungeon chests are not that great.
But I have been lucky a couple of times.

They usually aren't. Sometimes they are. I got a r9 Storm Daggers just taking one of my lesser-played chars through just the first time. They are customized now.

The old adage 'skins are just vanity, max stats are easily obtained and get the job done just as well' still holds value.

Loot scaling was very much needed from the very beginning, but it was quite poorly implemented - worst part is that Gold items aren't affected - this makes them about 2-3x more common than purples!

Loot scaling made gold production from farming greatly reduced = much less gold in economy, but HM introduced ridiculous Gold item droprates, which are not affected by LScaling, and those 2 facts combined caused one thing -> perfect gold items became practically worthless merchant trash.
It was the killing blow to GW economy, far greater than all others.

Another friend pointed out, if you can play the game and not care about the rewards, fancy armor, then you'll enjoy gw. I replied, and on what planet do these people hail from? LOL

They are around, but rare amongst the people I played with. Most of my friends are experienced PvP players with maxed out PvE characters and equipment.

Guildwars =/= wow.

with that said what "tweaks" do you think are needed and how would you redo the rewards and loot because if you want to put in the wow/da2 system of you can never get a perfect item. then i have to disagree 100%

That is nothing to do with loot scaling - that's just how random drops work in GW unfortunately. Loot scaling is simply less drops the smaller your party size, with a number of item types not affected.

No, they've long since removed the anti-farming code that worked that way.

This is to be expected because 99% of items are worthless (i.e not max stats). Nearly but not quite max stat items are much more common so people quickly reach that point and are only interested in the max stat items.

It would perhaps be nice if it was assured that end-dungeon chests give an item with a max component, or perhaps if there was some way of getting a quest to achieve one (remove random grind by having a path to achieve a goal, but probably too late for that). Would have to consider the effects on the GW economy though, and rare skins should be kept like they are now (who needs them anyhow?).

The the classic griffon run used to take about 5 minutes, kill 14 odd griffins and handful minotaurs and pull in ~20k/hr worth of rubbish. Extrapolating that to the raptor run which takes one minute and kills 34 dinos, it would be pushing around 150k per hour per farmer into the economy just through white/blue merchant fodder if it weren't for loot scaling.

Loot scaling was one of the best things that happened to me in this game.
I used to farm hardcore. Now I actually play the game and only farm every once and a while if I'm bored (or during special weekends, but since those items are exempt from loot scaling, that doesn't really count)

Loot scaling removed the "get ahead" attitude people had in Guild Wars. All the rich people in the game were power traders. To power trade in the first place, you needed some money to start out with (otherwise one or two bad investments would tie up all your cash). To do that, you had to farm. But to be able to start power trading effectively, you needed to farm faster/longer then the other guy, or else your relative wealth remained static.

Loot scaling removed the need to farm in order to get wealth in the first place, by making it just as profitable to do normal gameplay.

When loot scaling was implemented I was outraged. Take the following example:

Example A
5 guys rob a bank, steal 5,000,000 dollars and it takes them 15 minutes.
-That's 1,000,000 dollars each.

Example B
1 guy goes into the same bank and steals 5,000,000 and it takes him 15 minutes.
-That's 5,000,000 just for him.

Sure it might take more planning and equipment, but if the lone guy can pull it off doesn't he deserve to get the whole amount of cash just for himself?

Here's the same situation, but with loot scaling.

Example A
5 guys rob a bank, steal 5,000,000 dollars and it takes them 15 minutes.
-That's 1,000,000 dollars each.

Example B
1 guy goes into the same bank and the teller tells him it sucks that he didn't bring his 4 friends with him and he only walks away with 1,000,000 dollars.

Now if I go to kill 20 trolls all by myself outside Droks (settle down you trolls it's just an example) the same amount of loot should drop for me as drops for a full group. It's harder by yourself, for the most part, therefore (sp?) the reward should be greater.

Now though, I just take it in stride. I realized a year or so back that I don't need money to enjoy this game. I have some, don't get me wrong, it just doesn't seem to be as important as it used to be. If I do want to outfit one of my characters heroes with some cool skins, I shouldn't have to farm with a whole fricken group just to get the stuff I need.

What we all really need is for someone to make a program like GWx2, except make it GWx8. Then 1 person, theoretically of course, could get all the loot for himself.

One more thing just popped into my big hairy head, bear with me. Has anyone ever got together with a group of 8 people and farmed a given area a bunch of times (say 50-100), taken note of every single drop, and then farmed the same area with just 1 guy (again 50-100 times) to see if the drops are really 1/8 as much?

You are confusing loot scaling with bad drop tables.

Loot scaling caps the overall vendor-value/time of your drops by causing white, blue, and purple items that you would otherwise get to not drop if they would put your vendor-value/time over the cap.

It has no effect whatsoever on the golds, greens, and rare crafting materials that you're complaining about not getting. You just want a higher drop rate. That has nothing to do with loot scaling.

I don't understand this, how are golds exempt from loot scaling? I remember when I first started my raptor runs and it wasn't uncommon to get around 6 golds in a run. After a few months of doing it I was lucky to get 1 or 2 per run. I thought this was loot scaling, that the more you farm an area the less chance there is of rarer items droping?

Basically the system in Lotro where you obtain barter items that are bind on acquire, for armor etc, and build your elite items that way. They now have legendary weapons that become better as you level etc. It's not perfect but it's light years ahead of gw. Also they have crafting as a profession, which is a big plus to those looking for alternatives in game when they get bored.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Loot_scaling

Loot scaling was introduced in the April 20, 2007 game update. The amount of drops you get are scaled to your party size and to the speed at which enemies are killed.

The following are affected by loot scaling:

* Common (white) items
* Gold

The following are exempt from loot scaling:

* Skill Tomes
* Scrolls
* Dye
* Rare materials, such as Ectoplasm
* Gemstones from the Domain of Anguish
* All other rare (gold) items
* All unique (green) items
* Special event items

any other questions?

Yeah, I already know this but it just doesn't add up to my experience in many parts of the game.