Yesterday, John Peters, Game Designer for Guild Wars 2, had a few interesting things to say about the diminishing returns some players are seeing for rewards such as karma during dynamic events. These diminishing returns, it seems, were put in place to stop bots and economy-breaking exploits, and not normal players who happen to be enjoying an endgame gear farming session. The problem? It’s affecting everyone, even some players at lower levels.

Guild Wars 2 is a game about freedom. We want you to be able to explore the world and engage in a huge variety of activities, focusing on whatever best suits your tastes.

Some players have run into “diminishing returns” thresholds we put into the game to provide a safety net against unanticipated economy-breaking issues. We do have these thresholds in place, but it’s not our intention that normal players should ever run into them. We’ve recently had bugs and imbalances that have caused normal players to hit thresholds, and we’ll fix those.

These systems are put in place to protect the economy from botters and exploiters. We will close exploits as quickly as we can. These thresholds help create a safety net to keep the economy safe when we aren’t there to deal with the offender. It’s important to have a safety net in place. It would be bad for everyone if, for example, a group of players learned how to speed-clear a dungeon in 5 minutes, with full rewards each time, and then repeated that continuously. When one activity emerges that’s order of magnitudes more profitable than anything else in the game, it forces everyone to either engage in that activity or get priced out of the economy.

While we need a safety net to stop unanticipated economy-breaking exploits and botting, we have no desire to stop farming. Farmers are a part every online economy and when they are doing normal game activity they do not cause any harm. If a player finds a normal game activity fun and would like to keep doing it, that’s fine with us.

Initially we have to rely on smaller data sets, instinct and some guesswork to find the correct cutoff. What this means is that some players are going to bump into the edges of these systems for a while as we get them sorted out. Please bear with us while we gather more data and lower the safety net until it’s only providing critical economy protection. Looking at the numbers this morning, we believe some of the threshold systems are just too harsh empirically and we’ll be adjusting those systems within the next few weeks to ensure that fewer legitimate players are being impacted.

I hope this helps to explain why a game like this needs systems such as this to protect its economy. I also hope it gives some insight into our philosophy about botters (BAD) and exploiters (BAD) vs. farmers (GOOD). Thanks for your support and we will see you in game.

For anyone who’s journeyed to a lower level area in order to help friends, complete exploration objectives, or gather crafting materials has noticed that part of the time, loot scales with a character’s level. The rest of the time, players receive loot equal to the area they’re in. This is quite an interesting mechanic in theory, one that attempts to strike a balance that meets the objectives of multiple players. Need Jute Scraps at level 40? No problem– run some starting area DEs. Helping guildmates in Metrica Province? Fear not– you might get some cool upgrades, so it’s still worthwhile to loot.

But what about in practice? Is it better to farm on a low level alt, or farm on a level 80? Also, how about WvW? How does loot scaling work there? Yesterday, Linsey Murdock, Games Designer, answered a couple questions in regards to WvW loot scaling. It seems that ArenaNet still might be working out some of the kinks in the system.

First, this was said:

WvW DOES scale all loot to your level, but PvE does not. I don’t know the exact percentage but it’s not a big number, I am sure. We wanted you to be able to go back to low level PvE maps to farm for low level mats.

Afterwards, it was followed up with:

I dug a little deeper and it seems that the loot system for WvW is a little more nuanced than I initially thought, and doesn’t always scale the loot to YOUR level. Which explains how you were getting lower level mats.

Interesting. So technically players have multiple options when it comes to farming lower level crafting materials. The real question then becomes… what are the percentages we’re looking at?

Some players have been reporting on the official forums that the percentage of lower level drops when farming on a higher level character doesn’t seem nearly high enough, especially since certain crafting materials like cloth and leather are drops only found in bags or by salvaging. Other players report that the percentage in PvE seems to be around 75% for low level items, and 25% for base level items. I’ve personally noticed PvE percentages in this range as well, but I can’t help but think that it would be nice if ArenaNet released some actual numbers.

What do you think about the loot scaling system? Does it work in both theory and practice, or does it need some additional adjustments?

For crafters or salvagers looking for ways to get the most bang from your Guild Wars 2 time, here’s an interesting item to consider: Mystic Salvage Kits. These yellow-quality kits raise the chances of finding rarer materials by 25% and recovering upgrades by 80%. The item recovery stats are the same as the stats on Master’s Salvage Kits, but with an interesting twist– they come in stacks of 250. Yes, 250! Out on a long farming session or WvWvW adventure and often run into bag space issues? Mystic Salvage Kits may be your answer.

There’s a slight catch, naturally. Mystic Salvage Kits must be made at the Mystic Forge, and require the following materials: 1 Fine Salvage Kit, 1 Journeyman’s Salvage Kit, 1 Master’s Salvage Kit, and 3 Mystic Forge Stones. Mystic Forge Stones are available in the Black Lion Trading Company Gem Store, which makes forging these kits a little complicated. Still, it’s an interesting option.

Check out this video, where Dontain talks about Mystic Salvage Kits.

What do you think– worth the Gems, or no?