Guild Wars 2

Drop rates are all over the place, and the economy is off-balance. I’m all for supply keeping the prices low. Avoid inflation.

But when we clear the zones and end up with 250 Copper (or other Ore types) and 5 trophies of Blood, and 70 something butter, and 3 cloth scraps and 5 leather pieces, and 20-something blue drops….. something is not right.

Gear upgrades drop so frequently that they are listed on the Trade Post for 1 bronze more than they vendor for. What!? That means thousands of players are placing items on the Trade Post, paying 15% of the sale value, and making less than they would if they vendor sold them…. We have that much supply of gear. It is insane the drop rate and cheap.

The flip side is crafting. It is worthless. It’s only value is if we want to transmute the set. It costs 20-30 times (or more) to craft a set than it does to buy a set. We need large amounts of expensive trophies (those Claws, Blood, Fangs, Totems, etc) to make armor pieces that are worse than the cheap greens on the Trade Post. We need to discover a few different combos to efficiently level crafting, and they are just vendor trash. We lose money, so much money, just to have a chance at making something useful for our character. But the material cost to make is so great, crafting falls waaaay behind the natural curve of our leveling.

Crafting is a chore.

I’d expect crafting to be a grindy chore if it was rewarding in some fashion. Looks. Stats. Resale. But we have none of those. We have a shot in the dark at making a set we like (which we have no idea what it looks like as we can’t preview it and the wiki has no pictures). It’s just sad.

The drop rate on gear in the world, if nerfed, would allow crafted gear to be in demand. But is that fair? Only ArenaNet data can tell. Hopefully they’ll look it over.

Or, increase the trophy drop rate so we can make our insignias and inscriptions without breaking the bank. It isn’t imbalanced since we can buy an entire set of greens off the Trade Post for cheaper than it costs to make 1 green inscription/insignia. That is insane. 8 trophies, to make just 1 weapon or piece of armor, costs more than an entire set of armor (6 pieces) of greater value (that dropped armor comes with runes/sigils while crafted is still blank). WoW…. the imbalance is glaring.

There is too much randomness with us having to farm materials like Leather and Cloth (from humanoid bag drops and salvage items and salvaging white gear). But even more randomness with getting those Trophies. An animal has teeth (plural) but we get 1 tooth every 10-20 kills? And tons of butter! Where are all those teeth, fangs, totems, blood hiding?

Raw materials are always going to be more valuable than crafted components. If they drop too much, everyone can craft so no need to buy the “made” items. If they drop too little, they cost tons for all the crafters fighting each other to buy—the case we have now. The end product could make up for that—if it was valuable—but our current crafting is worth nothing except what it vendors for, since we craft mainly blues (useless), yet greens drop like candy.

Please look over the data, and adjust the rates as needed. I suspect the new drop rates of butter and such are pushing out the old drop rates and making it even harder. Or make the crafted items have more value to the players to increase the demand slightly, so it isn’t purely vendor trash.

Well written thread, I completely agree.

I should also add that Diminishing Returns have been added to drop rates, the longer you are in a zone and the more monsters you kill, the smaller chance of getting a material drop. This system does not work, I need loads of fine materials to make inscriptions and such, but when the drop rate decreases I am forced to move to another area, which is what you originally wanted, right? But that doesn’t work either, with the incredibly high WP costs, buying the mats from the TP would be more profitable than farming the materials yourself. Once everyone understands that, no one will be farming anymore. Then what will happen? The only materials that will be on the TP will be the ones that people acquire while lvling, which again isn’t much and they will probably keep the mats to themselves.

Diminishing returns is, blutnly put, stupid. If I want to farm my own materials, I very well should have the choice to, without loosing more money than I would have if I bought the mats from the TP.

A good solution IMO would be to make trophies able to salvaged out of gear, crafted or dropped. This way a large portion of the blues would be salvaged out of the system AND crafters would have an easier time getting materials, either by salvaging their blues or from cheaper trophies (due to increased supply).

Very well written thread and all are very good points. I rarely post on game forums, but recent changes to GW2 have really bothered me. I have left other MMOs because of the kinds of changes ANet has made affecting drop rates, crafting, and the GW2 economy in general. Due to the complexity of the crafting recipes, the diminishing returns method of curving drop rates is just ludicrous. If you’re going to require 15 Large Claws for the recipe I need to make, then tell me you’re going to make them drop less the longer I try to get them from mobs, then I’m going to go play something else that doesn’t waste my time.

The cooking changes are also crazy. While I can understand, and appreciate, making the materials for the craft more reliant on the world map, taking something like peppercorn (needed at a very low level for crafting) away from the vendor and putting it in gathering nodes that seem to drop it less than 10% of the time makes no sense at all. Instead, it would be more effective to have more desirable recipes require those more-difficult-to-attain materials. Furthermore, simply cutting over from the vendor availability to gathering requirement in a single update was also frustrating. Such a big change would have been better implemented by adding the materials to the nodes and drops WHILE still available at the vendor for a brief period of time. Then removing them from the vendor lists.

ANet, please think about these solutions before implementing them. There are clear cases in other MMOs where they’ve adversely affected the player base. You created a spectacular game, but a good game is easy to kill in the eyes of us gamers with these kinds of unthoughtful alterations.

Definitely agree. I believe that gear should really come more from crafters rather than random drops from mobs.

Treize.4615:

A good solution IMO would be to make trophies able to salvaged out of gear, crafted or dropped. This way a large portion of the blues would be salvaged out of the system AND crafters would have an easier time getting materials, either by salvaging their blues or from cheaper trophies (due to increased supply).

Great point.

Forum ate my Edit…..

But yes, I found there is an Anti-Farm Code in place that punishes normal players. If we decide to take our time to get our own materials, we are covertly punished for doing so. Nothing tells us that we’re wasting our time, it simply stops dropping.

We must use gold, to buy low level crafting materials, to craft low level armor. Gold. Not silver or bronze, but gold. And there isn’t a wealth of gold to get since drops are vendor trash and we need our crafting materials….

I found the anti-farming code when I was clearing mobs near a Renown Heart. That Heart made all mobs in the area drop at 100% a quest-only item (even when the Heart was complete). It kept track of my kill rate.

For 130 kills, I received 20 crafting trophy materials, and a bunch of whites to salvage, greens and blues, coinage, and gray vendor trash. I casually kept track of the other drops and only wanted to follow the Trophy drops. The drop rate was 15% for the Trophies. And about 50% for getting anything at all (including gray vendor trash).

After 130, the drop rate was Zero for 40 kills straight. Not a large sample size, but very telling when a near 50% drop rate becomes nothing for 40 kills. That included not even getting the gray vendor trash. Nothing except the worthless 100% drop of the Heart in the area.

That is like flipping a coin and getting heads 40 times in a row. Highly improbable, unless outside interference is punishing us for choosing to get our own materials and not waste our gold (which we need for the money sinks and Trait Books).

I wanted to continue testing to 100%, but I died. Death seems to reset the area/code. Also, leaving the area to waste our time doing something else, and returning later seems to reset the code as well. So I must consciously be aware that I need to do something I don’t want to do (leave and waste time) to do something I wanted to do (begrudgingly grind away my time so I can craft).

I don’t mind grinding when I can see the light. But when I see a series of hurdles that are poor coding, that we need to jump through like hoops, I see grinding as a monster that we didn’t ask for.

Last point, the Anti-Farm Code is easy to avoid once you know what series of stupid steps to do to keep it flagging you. Obviously, the actual Gold Farmer will know this and just do it. The casual player is the only one punished. A horrible system.

I’ll waste my time yet again at some point and try to get a 500-1000 test sample. I’ll test the natural drop rate and the point it changes. Then I’ll test how long a steak I can get with zero drops. Then I’ll test how long a steak I can maintain of drops by exploiting the holes in the code (that a farmer already would do, but makes us normal players have to jump through hoops).

I don’t want to Fraps it, but if I do, don’t expect quality footage lol. I’ll be on lowest settings to handle Fraps. Otherwise, I might just use Screen Shots every 25 kills. Wish me luck, since this is a test of love I really wasn’t expecting to have to do. (I need more Trophies anyway)

If I really did get hit with a bad luck streak in probability, this should show it. So come back if you end up upset at ArenaNet about an Anti-Farm Code that might not exist. I suspect there is one affecting us, but I don’t want to be used as a source to go off half-kittened about. I could be wrong (I suspect I’m not).

verified. At the 116 mark, the drop rate plummeted to 1 out of 40 kills. Took it out to 325 kills to be sure. Rezoning did not help. Doing a new Heart did not help. Killing things in a new area did not help. *Once I was hit by the anti-farm code, I was not getting any drops (besides trash once in a blue moon).

Uploading screen shots and a new post about this related but separate issue. Will link here for any interested.

Highly disappointing.

The drop rates for special crafting items (totems, claws, blood etc.) are fine, maybe in fact too high. They are probably set so as to prevent people from easily levelling two crafting disciplines at the same time – which would, of course, further increase supply. I have been able to keep armor smithing in sync with my toon’s level with minimal TP purchases – but, you wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) be able to do that if you are a rusher. In any case increasing the drop rate would just make them worthless on the TP and exacerbate the problem of over supply of crafted items.

Requests for increased drop rates are just another example of people wanting to get everything easily without putting any effort into actually playing the game. But remember, if you get everything easily so will everyone else and that just devalues the things you can craft. What Arenanet need to be looking at is not increasing drop rates, but finding some way to make Armor & weapon items of more value than 1c above vendor prices. With the incredible over supply that exists currently that isn’t so easy.