Guild Wars 2

After last days of patching, the ecto drop rate from yellows and exotics have gone way down. I’ve been getting over 50% less ecto drops. It’s heartbreaking to get like 6 ectos from 10 exotics.

Why do this anet?

I highly doubt any nerf was put in place, just bad luck for you. I have only salvaged 2 rares but I got 3 ectos from them. Every couple of weeks someone makes this thread it seems.

Evil.7529:

I highly doubt any nerf was put in place, just bad luck for you. I have only salvaged 2 rares but I got 3 ectos from them. Every couple of weeks someone makes this thread it seems.

The fact that there are multiple threads about this recently, plus many ingame convos in guild chat, LA shouts, etc. say otherwise.

Have you ever heard the phrase “the obvious answer is usually right” ?

I have tons of ecto….. I want money fast…. ECTO DROP RATE GOT NERFED!!!! sell ecto at higher price. 10 i far too small a sample to make this claim anyway. Nice try,but fail.

I too noticed this, if your looking for a bit of consistancy, I did wait until I had 40 rares. Out of the 40 I had 8 ectos and even the rune salvage rate was awful since I had 20 major runes at the end of it. Yes I am using the master salvage kit not the BL one.

To – BlueStoat: Ecto prices are already going up. So there is no need to shout"ECTO DROP RATE GOT NERFED!"

is this a pump and dump thread?

Possible, but more likely just someone who is mistaken. If you wanted to pump and dump convincingly, surely you would back yourself up with better evidence than getting 6 ectos from 10 exotics.

I’ve heard this from several sources now. I haven’t tested it myself but it sounds like there’s DR on salvaging kits. Which would be extremely lame if true. Salvage kits at an advertised effeciency rate (50% for black lion kits for example), and players should be informed of any change to that.

If players can’t trust one statistic on an item, why should we trust any of them?

Anet really needs to step up and explain wtf is going on here.

Xarog.3172:

I’ve heard this from several sources now. I haven’t tested it myself but it sounds like there’s DR on salvaging kits. Which would be extremely lame if true. Salvage kits at an advertised effeciency rate (50% for black lion kits for example), and players should be informed of any change to that.

If players can’t trust one statistic on an item, why should we trust any of them?

Anet really needs to step up and explain wtf is going on here.

I would say any DR in the game should presented up front to the player. This goes for Karma/Loot/Dungeons, and anything else in the game that has DR. Slipping in DR under a players nose is just bad game design and unfun.

Can we get some more data on this please? If anyone has noticed a difference or has noticed no difference at all in the ecto drop rate please post.

I gave up salvaging rares a week ago after 1 or 2 weeks of pathetic results.
I even had 6 or 7 exotic salvages (out of 10 or so) with black lion kits that yielded absolutely no ecto whatsoever – I thought exotics always gave at least one.

I also suspected some form of DR. For what it’s worth, I’ve accumulated well over 300 ectos since launch (sold half) and have 94 points in agent of entropy (gotten the achievement 47 times) – so if anyone would get hit with DR it would have been me

Anyways, I decided to take my chances again last night after the break and started getting a few (maybe averaging a 80-90% return). Check now, that last patch might have fixed it. Or if it was DR, taking a break from salvaging rare/exotics might have corrected it.

ANet specifically denied DR on salvaging.

I haven’t noticed any change in the drop rate in ectos, while I don’t salvage for them specifically; of the 7-8 rares I did salvage I got 8 ectos.

I got 7 ecto’s from 3 rares last night…..so….

Darx.9842:

Evil.7529:

I highly doubt any nerf was put in place, just bad luck for you. I have only salvaged 2 rares but I got 3 ectos from them. Every couple of weeks someone makes this thread it seems.

The fact that there are multiple threads about this recently, plus many ingame convos in guild chat, LA shouts, etc. say otherwise.

Have you ever heard the phrase “the obvious answer is usually right” ?

Occam’s Razor only works if the suppositions you’re basing your “most simple” answer upon are correct as well; in this case, they don’t appear to be correct, and so the maxim does not apply.

Well, all I can say with certainty is that the supposed 100% ecto rate (at least 1) on high level exotics is not true in the slightest – no matter what kit you use.

Hanlons Razor is a better explanation.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

…why would people think its a 100% chance when it would be the rare material a lot of kits mention in their description? And really, even at 50%, there is such thing as a string of bad luck.

Because the 50% rarer material in the description thus far has shown itself not to apply to ectos at all. Same with the other kits.

massive bot bans.
market is no longer getting flooded with supply.
there IS an official post.

Has anyone got some usable data on this?

7-8 rares isn’t even remotely enough to work out the drop rate.

It’d be like me flipping a coin 3 times, getting heads twice, and insisting that the coin has a 66.6% chance of landing on heads and only a 33.3% chance of landing on tails.

I’ve recently suspected a nerf to ecto salvaging aswell, to the point where I’ve quit salvaging altogether. My experience:

I’ve always salvaged any yellows I found and I’ve bought many off tp for the purpose of salvaging. My salvage rate probably lied somewhere between 1.5-2 ectos per salvage. The most ectos I’ve carried at any time is about 150.
This week, for the first time ever, I salvaged 6 yellows in a row and received nothing. Altogether, I salvaged about 20 yellows this week and got about 6, which prompted me to call it quits. Of the ectos I got, they were of 1 quantity, whereas previously, it was quite possible to get 2-3 per salvage.

the current average sits at 1.2 ecto(s) per salvage, it was 1.8 before they nerfed it…

My calculation are based on probability with a sample size of 5000

captaincrunch.6731:

Well, all I can say with certainty is that the supposed 100% ecto rate (at least 1) on high level exotics is not true in the slightest – no matter what kit you use.

You can get anywhere from 0-3 ecto’s from a weapon.

There’s no 100% ecto rate.

Not that I’ve ever seen or heard, anyway.

I don’t even think Ecto’s count as the “rarer materials” either, they’re just a regular material and you can get anywhere from NONE to THREE.

These are small sample sizes that seem to indicate more a string of bad luck than a necessary nerf.

Now I’m not saying there definitely WASN’T a nerf, but these sample sizes are tiny, so it’s impossible to say.

and that 5000 rares dropping 0.6…well, I’m no good at maths or stats so I have no idea if that’s significant.

Zelot.8276:

the current average sits at 1.2 ecto(s) per salvage, it was 1.8 before they nerfed it…

My calculation are based on probability with a sample size of 5000

You salvaged 5000 rares in the last 3 days? Really?

This thread is a fairly transparent attempt to try and bump the price of ectos on the TP. Sadly, it’s working.

Prior to the supposed nerf:

• Rares salvaged by a black lion kit had a return rate of 1.5 ectos per salvage.

• Rares salvaged by mystic/master kits had a return rate of 0.75 ectos per salvage.

• Exotics salvaged by a black lion kit had a return rate of 2.5 ectos per salvage.

• Exotics salvaged by mystic/master kits had a return rate of 1.25 ectos per salvage.

These are calculated values related to the number of possible ectoplasms that can be returned per item and the salvage probability of the kit. These values match up perfectly with my own samples of over 1000 rares salvaged. I’ve only salvaged 50 exotics, and based on my sample size and returned amout, that matches up very closely as well.

Every other large sample size I’ve seen posted has tracked incredibly closely to these numbers as well (0.72, 0.80 being the other 2 largest samples I’ve seen posted over on the guru boards).

Post “nerf”: I’ve salvaged 15 rares and recieved 9 ectos. It’s not a statistically significant sample size, but is actually tracking quite closely to the expected value. I haven’t salvaged any exotics.

Gasoline.2570:

After last days of patching, the ecto drop rate from yellows and exotics have gone way down. I’ve been getting over 50% less ecto drops. It’s heartbreaking to get like 6 ectos from 10 exotics.

Why do this anet?

3 globs in 10 exotic salvages all week… Only 1 item gave me globs

35 ectos over the last 3 days here. Salvaged 25 rares using Mystic Salvage kit.

Rng is Rng, some days you are lucky some days you aren’t. You are however statistically more likely to think you are being cheated (nerfed) and come post about it if you have bad luck then you are if you are on the other side of the statistics.

Interesting to see these responses, but I still feel like there is something else going on rather than just luck. It was never this bad for me and it hasn’t gotten better.

majorkong.9073:

ANet specifically denied DR on salvaging.

Could we get a link to that?

Also, I have a degree in Mathematics with a focus in Prob&Stat. For a sample size to really be significant enough for us to draw any conclusions from it, it has to be about 1500. And if TheRabbit is correct about the 75%ish drop rate and a sample size of 5000 we can Math this real nice. We can actually say that we are over 98% sure that out of 4 salvages we will get 3 ecto.

But YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND this is a random event. Each salvage independent of the last. You can salvage 100 rares and get 0 ecto, you probably murder small children to have that bad of luck, BUT IT IS A POSSIBILITY.

leavert.3719:

But YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND this is a random event. Each salvage independent of the last. You can salvage 100 rares and get 0 ecto, you probably murder small children to have that bad of luck, BUT IT IS A POSSIBILITY.

That’s why I hate statistics & probability. Technically it’s just as possible for the lottery results to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 as it is to be a random combination because each event is independant and the number which was drawn previously has no effect on which number is drawn next.

But you’re absolutely right about the sample size, trying a handful of salvages and saying it “feels” different is crazy. The whole point in RNG is that it’s random. If there’s a 50% chance of something then it won’t happen every other time, it will happen 50% of the time averaged out over many, many events.

Usually in statistics you treat outliers as outliers.

Yes you can salvage 10 rares in a row and get 0 ecto

But if you see this happen it means you already salvaged 200+ rares and if you include the other 190+ the ecto you got evens out.

Its definitely not nerfed, but is it possible that they added a diminishing return to it? If you salvage too many in a short time the chance to get drops might be lower. You should not save up on tons of rares and salvage them all at once. Salvage them as you get them 1 at a time..

It’s highly unlikely that they put in DR on salvaging – there’s no good reason to do it.

IRC rares give 0 (50%),1, 2 or 3 ectos.

Does anyone knows the distribution between the 1, 2 & 3. Do you hve the same chance to get 1 ecto than 3?

Cerise.9045:

Usually in statistics you treat outliers as outliers.

Yes you can salvage 10 rares in a row and get 0 ecto

But if you see this happen it means you already salvaged 200+ rares and if you include the other 190+ the ecto you got evens out.

You have only 1 chance in 1,024 to have 10 failures in a row with 50% odds.

19 new tries of 10 rares would not even out your 1 in 1,024 bad luck, not by a long shot.

I usually salvage 75 items at a time. I use only Black lion salvage kit.
Before the last patch, my average ecto drop was around 120-130 per 75 salvages.
After the latest patch i get 100 ectos at best.
I won’t whine about it, but something did change, and i did 75 items series quite a couple of times so it isn’t one time lucky strike.
I mean, why bother with BLSK when i get almost same amount of ectos if i used mystical kit but i payed twice as much for it?

Pls Anet look into this.

I have been wondering about this myself, so I started a little personal project.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/Ecto-Salvage-Stats-Spreadsheet/first#post693778

I would like to hear your thoughts and feedback.

They reduced something, that’s for sure.

Either the Ectos you get per salvage was nerfed, or the number of rare items dropping randomly.

You don’t need to do any math specific stuff, just check the TP.
Just like the Dye incident, without ever telling anyone, people noticed the large supply of dyes and the demand wasn’t as high, so prices dropped fast.

If ectos prices raised 5~6s in a couple of days it’s pretty sure something was done. Now’s a good time to sell yours if you had some stocked.

John Smith.4610:

There’s no DR on Salvaging.
Also salvages are independent statistical events (which is very much related how you decide to think about probability here).
Lastly, you would need a relatively massive sample size to accurately understand the likelihood of each outcome.

I like this… and that some people still don’t seem to understand it.

Tons of bots are gone so supply shifted. The new equilibrium is at a higher price, people, please read the stickies at the top of the subforum. No changes to the drop rates were needed (unless I’m mistaken it was officially announced that there was a change to dye rates to correct an error).

Sounds like RNG working like it always has to me. Since we’re doing little but piling anecdotal evidence, I’ll add that my salvages this past week have been well above average.

Whether or not your RNG of choice (Mersenne twister hopefully) is working/used correctly is my question there, John.

Darx.9842:

Evil.7529:

I highly doubt any nerf was put in place, just bad luck for you. I have only salvaged 2 rares but I got 3 ectos from them. Every couple of weeks someone makes this thread it seems.

The fact that there are multiple threads about this recently, plus many ingame convos in guild chat, LA shouts, etc. say otherwise.

Have you ever heard the phrase “the obvious answer is usually right” ?

Random is Random is the obvious answer, I would think.

I have a better question:
Why’s there no Streak-breaker code built into any of this stuff? …it probably woulda saved a ton stress and drama when it came to precursors as well.

I got 9 ectos on 3 Rares last night, and then 4 ecto on 6 rares today… Working as intended.

Rajani Isa.6294:

Random is Random is the obvious answer, I would think.

And then you realize you cannot have truly random numbers in a deterministic system such as a computer.

Subjectively I can confirm that I’m seemingly getting less Ectos than before. Rates seem to have gone down since November.