darkk zhaitan

I originally posted this topic on the official forums but as it's most likely to be burried there, I want to open the discussion here too.

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After 5 months of pretty hardcore playing and farming, I saw 3 precursors drop to pretty new players (between 1500 and 2500 achievement points) the past few days I decided I’m pretty much done with the game.
In 5 months …

- I have farmed over 5000 events, yet I never found an exotic / precursor.
- I have farmed over 250 dungeon paths, yet I never found a named exotic / precursor.
- I have farmed over 250 fractals, yet I never found a named exotic / precursor.
- I have opened over 50 black lion chests and only received a few boosters along with transformation potions.
- I have spent over 500k karma on Orrian Boxes and have yet to receive a mini (love gathering these in any mmo).

I have reached world completion on 5 characters of which I deleted two, I have seen the world inside out and I have dropped absolutely nothing anywhere while doing so.

I have hoarded nearly 5.4k achievement points (only 200 are from infinite sources) yet again nowhere any closer to my legendary.

Now after 5 months I have absolutely nothing to show for it, I am nowhere closer to my legendary with my bad luck, I have only half of a T3 set along with a few dungeon skins on all my characters.

I played Korean MMO grindfests for 6 years and even had better drops there. This is simply mindblowing that a supposed AAA mmo can have this much RNG involved.

Anyone else who has the same experience as me?

OP here.  Just to give you an update:

All active players in our guild changed servers and joined a new guild.  The new guild is large and has multiple leaders.  We are all much happier and don't regret leaving.  The new guild is a lot more active in every aspect of the game and earns more influence in an hour than we were able to in a week.  Thanks for the advice everyone.

TO CONDENSE MY SENTIMENTS:
Good players are not rewarded for overcoming challenges – the majority of the game’s status symbols and cool items are gained from performing an easy task for an inordinate amount of time. This sums up my opinion, and why I think GW2 is not as good a game as it could be – but I implore you to read the rest of the post if you’re going to add to the discussion.



I believe that Guild Wars 2 was designed with the philosophy of urging players to spend money to buy Gems to convert to Gold – first and foremost; with every system in the game pushing players to spend money on the Gem store for gold.
Every single item that is even remotely neat or hard to get in this game is received from the Mystic Forge.
Not only does tossing a huge amount of trade materials into the forge remove flavor from the items you’re getting; but it empowers players who have a lot of RL capital to spend far more than it should.

The exotics for a fresh 80 are cheap enough – 12g maximum to deck yourself out, inclusive of exotic jewelry. This ignores runes and sigils.
After this, players go for cosmetic gear to transmute their stat-gear into. Here is where the tacky design starts up.
When you transmute gear’s appearence, you lose the actual item you’re transmuting. The two items fuse into one. That means that if you ever want to use that item’s skin again, you need to reacquire it.
After getting the item skins and transmuting your exotics to what you want, what do we, as players, have to strive for? Vanity items, like Mystic Weapons and other neat-looking gear from the Mystic Forge.

Mystic Weapons are Okay. They have a feasible grind attached to them. To make a Mystic weapon, it usually costs between 7 to 12 gold , which is entirely feasible. I wish it were more than a simple grind for gold, but hey, it's from the Mystic Forge. No big deal. ...Or it wouldn't be, if there were unique items to get that were ~not~ tied to the Mystic Forge (and thus, gold).

Check these recipes out:
http://wiki.guildwar...rge/Other_Items
Most of these unique equipments take an excessive, unfeasible amount of goldto get. No flavor. No quest. No challenge. No adventure. No journey. No ~fun~. Just grind. Plain, boring gold grind.
These equips don’t even have a unique sigil or rune.

With the way the market works, it’s nearly impossible for the average player to amass money at a decent rate without grinding, unless they convert bought gems to gold. Killing a champion in the world does not give you appropriate reward for the effort involved. Aside from this fact, Champions are generally pretty bland – just normal mobs with more health and damage. ~That’s it~.


As you can tell, I am very disappointed with how GW2 turned out – and have seen these sentiments mirrored by many other players. The game’s combat is fluid, and the gameplay is solid – but gameplay should be supported by strong systems that reward good players – and GW2’s economic and legendary/vanity item systems simply do not deliver on that. They reward spending real money on the gemstore and converting to gold; or grinding easy content until you drop.


As far as discussion goes, I’m interested to see what the broad community of GW2Guru forums think about the state of the game; and what they feel about my opinions on the underlying item-acquisition systems of GW2; independent of the gameplay.

Anet's decision to always make recipes cost a full stack of rare materials is puzzling to say the least.  They have other cool numbers too, like 25.  I don't really plan on going past 10 because drops have been good enough for me since 7, and my interest there is mostly the cores, ectos and shard exchange because still working on a legendary and they nerfed the crap out of cursed shore farming.  I can see why people would be bothered who are trying to get to higher levels and are limited by the high cost of combatting agony.

The difference between what Andrew said about GW1 and player behavoir is that the 'must take this or that' gate was purely player determined. I.e you did NOT Need lightbringer 8 to do DoA, Ghastly stones proved nothing and many different team and build compositions could be used to beat the areas.

Now the 'must take this or have ascended that' is a GAME imposed restriction. Does'nt matter how skilled, or how great your build is sooner or later you'll hit the 'must have infused gear' wall the GAME imposes.

Two very different things.

That's kinda the whole bitter-sweet thing with fractals. Sooner or later I know i'll hit a game imposed wall that is nothing to do with my skill, willingness of my guild to help or my build and every time I complete a level that moments becomes ever closer.

RISEN PUTRIFIER

KodakMoment, on 26 October 2012 - 09:33 PM, said:

Scariest. Halloween. Clown. Ever.

Because I still have fun, nothing more, nothing less.

Mondy, on 22 October 2012 - 05:22 PM, said:

So wait... they made an undesirable item desirable, and  people think that's a problem?

I don't see how when something in the game is disliked by the majority of players, it's a bad move for ANet to change it so it will be received more positively? The game would never improve if that logic was applied consistently, and I don't see how this is some kind of exceptional case.

Sevens, on 22 October 2012 - 05:31 PM, said:

It's madam. And thanks.