[GC] Guild's opinion of PoF gold farming

Note:

• Our thread title was forcefully renamed without my permission and in a very condescending PA title, also., this concern that we're sharing is not just that of our community, there are have been loads of people on the forums, in-game and Reddit giving active feedback about the unrewarding playstyle of PoF.
• I mentioned my guild because I am proud to be in such an active community, and to signify that these thoughts are not just my own, but also the collective ideas and feedback given by the players within GC. It was not my intent to come across that we hold more importance over other players.

Hello everyone o/

GC made a statement about how PoF mechanically makes itself impossible to farm profitably. The link is below including the paste of the discussion:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/7ea4o1/statement_from_cg_why_pof_mechanically_cant_be/

Hey all - CG (Grind Coven) wanted to make a statement today about why PoF is near-impossible difficult to make profitable over other farming methods... (Not regarding meta-events per say).

Outlining the issues:

• Bounties: they take too long (with scaling) to make effective for farming, and the rewards are really bad.
  • There are no additional awards for making the effort to physically pick up the bounty contract.
• Chest Farming: CG really tried to make this work. We did around 5 full tests, with 20 people then 50+ people. Summary - the less people you have, the worse it is.
  Why?
  • Bounty chest locations are RNG on item use, which is unique to each player.
  • It requires raid-level attention and efficiency^1 from all squad members. It's simply too much work for a pug or even guild-level organisation.
  • Each map has several 'circles' for spawning chests inside of, each 'circle' has around 7-10 chest spots, and the circles are huge, not small.
• Trade Caches: These in beta were great, they were super cheap and made trade contracts worth farming, however, with their price hike, they become nearly unprofitable.

^1 - Every player in the squad must be aware of: their own chest location, how to reset it, not to make a mistake in picking up someone else's chest before using their item, knowing that they must mark their own chest (giving everyone lieutenant).

How can ArenaNet fix thisI am personally not one for venting frustrations without offering some constructive solutions.

Chest locations: Make them fixed spawn, rather than RNG-on-item-use or allow the item to be refreshed without having to relog/rezone.

• Bounties: Increased rewards for people that physically collect bounties, also increase overall rewards, maybe with the chances of something else along the reward line?
• Trade caches: Make the keys cheaper, make buying them cheaper. Whatever it is to make PoF supersede Silverwastes.

Closing statement:
If Chest Locations remain RNG per character, it is going to be quite difficult to make PoF profitable and replayable. I plea for you to change it - these maps are visually stunning and capturing visually, but for content, they simply aren't capturing enough to leave silverwastes.

TL;DR:PoF cannot mechanically be profitable; rework is needed. Bounties need an overhaul, reward given for physical collection of bounty. Rewards need to be buffed overall.

GC's Discord is now open to the public: https://discord.gg/GrindCoven - if you want to come chat, feel free and ask us questions :)

In my opinion, there is nothing broken and nothing needs to be fixed. In fact, I assume it's the other way round: this all is probably intended and a fix to existing farming. Only my personal opinion.

Who is CG and why is their opinion more important?

@"Silmar Alech.4305" said:In my opinion, there is nothing broken and nothing needs to be fixed. In fact, I assume it's the other way round: this all is probably intended and a fix to existing farming. Only my personal opinion.

I agree. Everything outlined only makes me say "Good job, ArenaNet!"

Also...is it CG or GC? You say CG several times, but noted that it stands for Grind Coven, which is GC. Never heard of whoever it is anyway and am not interested to learn more considering they think the mechanics are broken because they can't farm them instead of working properly so as to prevent farming.

@Silmar Alech.4305 said:In my opinion, there is nothing broken and nothing needs to be fixed. In fact, I assume it's the other way round: this all is probably intended and a fix to existing farming. Only my personal opinion.

Some people seem to like farming simulator.^^

@StinVec.3621 said:

@"Silmar Alech.4305" said:In my opinion, there is nothing broken and nothing needs to be fixed. In fact, I assume it's the other way round: this all is probably intended and a fix to existing farming. Only my personal opinion.

I didn't say the mechanics are broken, I said the mechanics make the farm impossible to be profitable - I am guessing it was added for a reason, but I do feel that it's way too harsh or the loot drops from trade caches were over-nerfed.

I like PoF the way it is. Thank you CG for your statement. It was entertaining.

@Arzurag.7506 said:

@Silmar Alech.4305 said:In my opinion, there is nothing broken and nothing needs to be fixed. In fact, I assume it's the other way round: this all is probably intended and a fix to existing farming. Only my personal opinion.

And what will you do when you already finish admiring this new beautiful world ?! It's an mmo ffs you need all the dailes, farming and repeating content to keep people busy it's not a single player game... And eveything beside metas and material farm are getting boring fast cause you need something profitable to do and PoF offers nothing...

tl;dr: back to the Silverwaste, everyone!

@jinfury.9504 said:

@Arzurag.7506 said:

@Silmar Alech.4305 said:In my opinion, there is nothing broken and nothing needs to be fixed. In fact, I assume it's the other way round: this all is probably intended and a fix to existing farming. Only my personal opinion.

Well back in the days MMORPGs were more about the community and not so much about farming gold 24/7.

I think a major benefit to all players with Treasure Chests would be to make it so that they ALWAYS spawn within the circle you're in, rather than spawning halfway across the map.

@Ohoni.6057 said:I think a major benefit to all players with Treasure Chests would be to make it so that they ALWAYS spawn within the circle you're in, rather than spawning halfway across the map.

I like this idea, as someone that has around 160 treasure hunting kits with no plans to use them as they are currently, but even if they were faster to find the loot is so bad I'm still unsure if I would bother.

I don't think its needed for everything to be profitable. Its ofcourse needed for certain longterm goals, but PoF seems profitable enough to me.

Then again the prospect that random treasure hunts should be fixed by making them not random seems like silliness to me. "Oh no its not profitable enough even when we use this obnoxious way of getting as much loot as possible. Make it so this obnoxious farm method actually works!" Seriously? How about making more fun content more rewarding rather than making the most boring way of playing the game rewarding.

TL;DR:PoF cannot mechanically be profitable

This is factually inaccurate. A complete falsehood actually. If I receive a drop in PoF and sell it, without spending coin in the process, then I have profited in PoF.

Bounties need an overhaul, reward given for physical collection of bounty. Rewards need to be buffed overall.

I would not mind seeing better rewards for PoF content in general.

@Ashen.2907 said:

TL;DR

:PoF cannot mechanically be profitable

That's...that's not how it works. I guess I should park all my characters at starter zone jp chests and profit from the phat loot of medallions. Fact.

@Vavume.8065 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:I think a major benefit to all players with Treasure Chests would be to make it so that they ALWAYS spawn within the circle you're in, rather than spawning halfway across the map.

If I could just casually hop from location to location I think it could be kind of fun. It's just in its current state I think "ugh, it'll be a 3-5 minute flight before I'm even close!"

The only treasure hunting I bothered with was in desolation just long enough to get my ten Ancient Tools. I don't need "farm worthy," but "fun to play" would be plenty.

"Grind Coven". Wow. At least they're honest.

The bullet list in the OP makes me think, "ArenaNet is doing a nice job", like others have said.

@jinfury.9504 said:And what will you do when you already finish admiring this new beautiful world ?! It's an mmo kitten you need all the dailes, farming and repeating content to keep people busy

And? You already have the Silverwastes. If somewhere else were more profitable, the grinders would just move from the Silverwastes to there. If PoF isn't as profitable, that just means the grinders will stay in the Silverwastes. If the grinders were more concerned about having fun than about profit, they would play in PoF regardless of it being less profitable than the Silverwastes.

It's pointless to change this. All ArenaNet would get is moving the grinders from one map to another, and it's nice that the grinders are restricted to the Silverwastes (which isn't good for anything else anyway).

It seems like they went in two opposite directions with many things on the 2 expansions. If you change one to be like the other there will be a lot of both cheers and complaints so best to play the one that fits your style.

BTW, are we supposed to know who CG is?

I do understand that pof needs some improvement.The part I don't share is

Make the keys cheaper, make buying them cheaper. Whatever it is to make PoF supersede Silverwastes.

I would appreciate more if there would be an alternative ( in every expansion ).I don't know how much tsw is better if compared to pof farm, but they could definitely work on pof comparing it to tsw.

@Nick Lentz.6982 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:

TL;DR

:PoF cannot mechanically be profitable

That is exactly how it works.

Now, of course other forms of play may be MORE profitable than starter zone JP rewards or PoF, but that doesn't mean that those game elements are not profitable.

I'm pretty sure the bounty chests were designed for players to find solo - not running around as a huge squad all trying to loot the same chest/s at the same time.

PoF as a whole is designed to be more solo friendly, presumably because so many people said they hated that most of HoT requires playing with a group of some sort (not necessarily an organised group, but you need other people doing the same things on the same map to succeed). If you just want ways to farm gold then there's already plenty of options in the game.

Overall this post reads like people trying to force PoF to be something it's not. Like the people who try to play a guardian as if it's a GW1 monk and then complain that the profession sucks because it's not a monk and they can't force it to be a monk.

@Shirlias.8104 said:I do understand that pof needs some improvement.The part I don't share is

Make the keys cheaper, make buying them cheaper.

Whatever it is to make PoF supersede Silverwastes

.

If I could have it my own way, I'd love to have SW for X farming items, and PoF for X farming items, both equally as profitable if you decide to cash in - that's just me personally, though.

@jinfury.9504 said:

@Arzurag.7506 said:

@Silmar Alech.4305 said:In my opinion, there is nothing broken and nothing needs to be fixed. In fact, I assume it's the other way round: this all is probably intended and a fix to existing farming. Only my personal opinion.

I would move on, like I get to the next book when I´ve finished the previous one, though I always come back to read the book again.

Btw this:

There are no additional awards for making the effort to physically pick up the bounty contract.

Is a good thing.

Can you imagine how painful it would be if you came across a bounty in the world and didn't get rewarded because you didn't go grab the bounty on the board? You go off to try and find it and it's already dead.The system could work differently in how it's presented. Maybe the bounties should be visible on the map and you just click a button to accept them, but i don't really see a big problem with how it works now in that regard.

Maybe the bounties themselves could be a bit more rewarding. But it's fine the way PoF is different from the other maps. HoT maps still have great profitable meta's. If you add more they will all split the playerbase and it will be more difficult to run all of them, or only the most profitable one will be run and the others will be left to dry.

@Nemmar.8491 said:Btw this:

There are no additional awards for making the effort to physically pick up the bounty contract.

Is a good thing.

Can you imagine how painful it would be if you came across a bounty in the world and didn't get rewarded because you didn't go grab the bounty on the board? You go off to try and find it and it's already dead.The system could work differently in how it's presented. Maybe the bounties should be visible on the map and you just click a button to accept them, but i don't really see a big problem with how it works now in that regard.

Key word additional <- I didn't suggest nerfing current rewards, just give MORE rewards for people that make the effort to pick it up - definitely not completely remove rewards from bounties :)