Guild Wars 2

I think another issue of RNG having gone in a bad direction in this game is the forging of weapons in the Mystic Forge now. I just threw in 12 named exotics all level 80 and got weapons back that were sub-level 80. That is the wrong direction.

No one should spend gold trying to get a precursor and get leveled items that are less leveled than what they threw in. That’s the type of decision that is bad for players and sours them on the experience.

Start fixing the un-fun RNG mechanics in this game by making it so you only get items back that are equal to or greater than the level of item you put in the Mystic Forge.

I look at it this way. I have frankly lost count of the in game money I’ve “lost” while salvaging items for essences, to increase a stat that is utterly meaningless. I should not have a MF rating well above someone else that I play with semi-regularly and they get precursor drops like they were candy and I am “happy” if I get some random non-level 80 rare amidst a sea of greens and blues. About once every other month I might get an exotic piece of medium armor which I already had since I had to buy it originally for my ranger.

Magic find is a joke, and RNG is a bigger joke. Actually no, if it were a joke I’d be laughing. Its insulting as a system since it basically says that it doesn’t matter the hours you log or the effort you put in. Imagine if every tennis match was played and then ultimately decided with a roll of some dice and there you have the RNG in this game.

Ayrilana.1396:

Would bringing back the collector NPC’s from Guild Wars help resolve the issue? It’ll still cause an increase in supply but perhaps it would be easier to manage than trying to track which players haven’t received a particular drop.

There’s a lot of junk items that really have no use other than to sell to vendor. If players needed to farm 15 shocking crystals to exchange for a charged lodestone, perhaps that would be an acceptable alternative? There’s still RNG involved but at least your efforts won’t go entirely wasted.

This actually would be a logic option for my mind. There is a ton of junk that drops and you already have in-game junk collectors. So have some skritt that will exchange some junk for something useful. Things like shocking crystals and icestones could be exchanged for relevant lodestones and everything else could be changed for tickets towards specific exotics or drops.

The token system makes sense and is preferred. In my mind, straight reward though could potentially create a large inflationary factor since you’ve now added another currency for presumably guaranteed results.

What I suggest (numbers given below are just to illustrate and should be adjusted accordingly) is that the use a tokens could “curb the bet” such that each token provides a +1% chance of the desired result.

Example, mystic forge, you accumulate and are allowed to use from 1 to 100? of these tokens to increase the odds of the desired item. Think of it as another box in the mystic forge that could be empty (base chance of success) and filled with up to 100? tokens to provide a additional or incremental chance percentage of the desired result.

Now here’s my wild idea … instead of random tokens being given for this and that from chance, use karma as the token.

I call it Option 2.51

I don’t need DR, my RNG is giving me a bare minimum at any given time, anyway.

Thanks John for starting this thread!

It’s been mentioned a few times, but I think I prefer PvP Reward Track-style tracking as opposed to tokens because determining “success” is highly subjective. Also note, this idea won’t really work for precursors; I’ll leave that kettle of fish to someone else to dream up.

Maybe we could have a few different tracks: “world bosses,” “x variety champ bag,” “teq,” “triple trouble,” “ambrite fossils,” “fractal weapons,” etc. Each one would tick up based on completing/opening something that has a specific unique reward.

In order to keep some of the grind down and to help people who have fewer alts, I’m suggesting a generic “World Boss” track where any boss that has the potential to drop a unique Exotic item would get lumped into one huge track; then when the track is the full the next boss that you defeat would be guaranteed to drop its item. I know for items like the Commissar’s Manifesto and the Pendant of Arah, it would cause prices to plummet, but would that really be so bad? It would also allow more free play of a specific caliber than just grinding the same event over and over again. Especially helpful since some of these events are perpetually bugged or misunderstood…

“X Variety Champ Bags” would reward you with a special loot bag that would drop your choice of possible named exotic. For example, if I open a ton of Shell Pouches, after filling up the track I would have my choice of Bonetti’s Rapier, Arthropoda, or Rockweed Spire. Right now I count 12 tracks that would be good, but those could be reduced by associating a weapon with only one track.

I just want magic find to make a difference.

I like the tokens suggestion and still having the RNG as it is too is ok. Just as long as I and others that don’t play lotto and farm gold have the possibility to craft or use tokens to get at least ONE precursor I don’t mind if the lucky lotto’ers get 5

John Smith.4610:

Cakemeister.5792:

I just want magic find to make a difference.

Magic find makes a huge difference.

I think he meant a meaningful difference. I’m sure across the board there are noticeable differences, but as a single player I don’t notice anything.
It sucks when you use magic find booster, birthday booster and food etc. to boost your magic find and not run into a single exotic.
I’ve ran down entire 24 hour birthday boosters without a single exotic drop.

I’m curious, what’s the reasoning behind MF only applying to monster drops?

Fernling.1729:

John Smith.4610:

Cakemeister.5792:

I just want magic find to make a difference.

Magic find makes a huge difference.

I think he meant a meaningful difference. I’m sure across the board there are noticeable differences, but as a single player I don’t notice anything.
It sucks when you use magic find booster, birthday booster and food etc. to boost your magic find and not run into a single exotic.
I’ve ran down entire 24 hour birthday boosters without a single exotic drop.

Thats the way I feel. The amount of times where I have recently had a magic find booster and a 40% MF food running and not gotten a single rare doing the same event and then done it without that extra 90% MF only to get ten or so rares just makes me wonder why I bother with magic find at all. And just to point out this has been happening to me alot the last couple of days.

Not to mention the fact that alot of the significant drops these days are from chests that are not effected by magic find when you open them (IE champ bags, boss chests).

Labjax.2465:

I’m curious, what’s the reasoning behind MF only applying to monster drops?

me too, why does it apply to champion boxes in sPvP but not to boxes in PvE?

It may make a huge difference in numbers when you look at statistics, but it hardly feels like that for single players (at least for me)… imho.

nirvana.8245:

Fernling.1729:

John Smith.4610:

Cakemeister.5792:

I just want magic find to make a difference.

Magic find makes a huge difference.

I think he meant a meaningful difference. I’m sure across the board there are noticeable differences, but as a single player I don’t notice anything.
It sucks when you use magic find booster, birthday booster and food etc. to boost your magic find and not run into a single exotic.
I’ve ran down entire 24 hour birthday boosters without a single exotic drop.

Thats the way I feel. The amount of times where I have recently had a magic find booster and a 40% MF food running and not gotten a single rare doing the same event and then done it without that extra 90% MF only to get ten or so rares just makes me wonder why I bother with magic find at all. And just to point out this has been happening to me alot the last couple of days.

Not to mention the fact that alot of the significant drops these days are from chests that are not effected by magic find when you open them (IE champ bags, boss chests).

I feel the same a lot too. I think that having this discussion is good. I don’t think there is a single player in here that is like, “No guys, I want to leave the system 100% as is. It’s great!”

It stinks when you use in game rewards like Birthday boosters, laurel MF boosters, food, and gem purchased MF boosters for an “advantage” and nothing comes of it. I think that is why if you don’t get a drop for a long time, a different system needs to kick in and give you something nice.

Skill based play needs to be rewarded more as well. There’s a reason Liadri is my favorite mini.

(Off topic detour)

In another post about rewards John, you said that you thought the rewards could be better. How about we drop the meta reward backpieces for a season? Maybe throw in a few new sets of armor we can earn in PvE as well? Why isn’t Fractal Armor in the game yet?

Fractals need a token system. The Mystic Forge needs to kick out items that are equal to or above the level of the items you put in. Rewards in temporary content need to be reverted to their original rewards(Halloween 2012, 1st Pavilion) while keeping the refinements done to game play systems(Pavilion 2 was better in terms of content, but NOT reward).

You know, you all had a gold sink in the second pavilion that was supposed to be going to rebuild LA. Guess what? LA hasn’t had a face lift since.

Zero Day.2594:

Rhomulos.2089:

….

Isn’t that what they attempted to do with daily achievements and Laurel currency?
(It’s just a little thinner version than what you explained.)

It’s sort of like that, except it’s a clear-cut task with a clear cut reward presented by the game world rather than a magical text at the side of the screen. Rewards don’t necessarily need to be so flat as our daily system. And we need to ask ourselves ‘what do i need this reward for’ as it’s tied to where we do a task or not, rather than ‘should i get my daily laurel or not’ because theres no real choice there, you choose to be lazy or not and get a laurel that goes to a vendor.

Quests are open world content in themselves, they direct you based on what you want. Daily achievements as they are, they just tell us what map to go to in order to get our laurel. Think of each of those daily requirements, fluff them up a bit and add a little difficulty, and make the rewards less flat and boring, but more precise to what we’re after.

Less UI, more interactive open world. Both can exist together, and even feed off each other too. As well as add flavor to our game world.

I think RNG as a concept is not bad, but right now it feels like it’s also the only option.

If I kill Tequatl why do I get a random (and very low) chance to get a Weapon of the Sunless, followed by a random salvage result, and finally a random flush down the Mystic Forge (again with very low odds)?

At some point the RNG needs to leave the equation so that if my battle with Teq failed to immediately pay off, it still contributed towards a cumulative goal. I don’t feel like I’m wasting time, and I also feel compelled to seek variety and not grind. Once I complete Tequatl’s weapon set I’ll just start work on dungeon sets or PvP. There’s enough content here to keep people occupied – I don’t understand why some MMOs think that players are only going to keep playing if they make everything take forever during the endgame. Even if it took an average of an hour per weapon skin it would still take me a year to get a full set for even a single character.

Why is the endgame always obsessed with pleasing the nolifers?

Yes, I got money from killing Teq – but I don’t care; psychologically most players don’t feel money is a reward due to it’s pervasiveness; every enemy drops money, and this was not a significant amount. But only Teq drops Weapons of the Sunless, so why is it that I only get one randomly? It would still take me what, 20 kills to get a full set?

I feel like there’s so much fear that things will be farmed that everything in GW2 is either ultra common or ultra rare, so there is no middle ground, and there is no progression;

There is only random

John Smith.4610:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

I’ve not read this whole thread so forgive me if this is answered elsewhere. I want to ask a few questions.

1. Is the loot system currently set up so people who play less are more likely to get an awesome RNG drop? There have been numerous posts like, “my friend logged on after 5 months and got X, Y, Z drop while I’ve been playing every day and got nothing!” I want to know if the way it works currently is that those who play lots get decreasing loot in proportion to playtime. Why would ANET do this? To keep people chasing the carrot.

John answered that question in a different thread, there arent any account modifiers.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/I-have-a-question-about-the-economy/page/15#post4487484

what he is speaking of wouldnt be an account modifier, and it probably does exist, mildy. There is Diminishing returns on drops and it decays pretty slowly. You will in fact see more drops in your first few hours after not having played for awhile.

They will never tell us exactly what is happening, but your friend who plays rarely will basically have no DR for almost all of their playtime.

Still catching up, but I wanted to stop to be clear. No to this. This doesn’t happen, it’s a cognitive bias. There’s virtually no DR active on any given day.

hmm, first im hearing that DR has no effect. This would probably get into a side issue though, so i wont speak more on it.

But to relate it back to the discussion at hand, i strongly suggest in any systems designed to deal with the effects of random systems, i suggest it be very clear exactly what is happening, with visible, direct, predictable and understandable systems at work.
DR is mostly unknowable and unprovable (except when you directly see your karma/exp/gold effected)
dont replicate these systems going forward

Or to put this another way – the RNG means that psychologically, GW2 is an experience filled with “wins” and “losses” and most of the time it’s “losses”.

When I open a chest and don’t get an exotic, I “lost”, when I salvage those items and don’t get an ecto I “lost”, when I put those salvaged mats into the MF and don’t get a rune/sigil upgrade I “lost”.

Thus, even though I “won” the dungeon, ultimately it was a “loss”. This happens a lot more than it should.

IMO a good game has the player always “win” and somtimes “win big”. I should always get an exotic gear drop (win). I might not be able to use it (loss) but I can then salvage it for a guaranteed ecto (win).

Yes, this example could lead to ecto farming, but you guys can control that pretty easily, my point is that you need to make sure the player has a guarantee of success without randomness, so that they always feel like they’re having fun, and everything else on top of that such as random rewards above and beyond the base level of reward are just the icing on the cake.

There’s a right place and wrong place to use RNG. The modified RNG method sounds intriguing, but it may not be the correct solution for everything. Here is a repost about RNG I previously had made on the gw2guru site which seem applicable toward this discussion:

There isn’t necessarily a one size fits all approach for this. The main issue with RNG often relates to it’s magnitude and frequency. For example, depending on the nature of the game, here are situations where RNG might be ok versus ones that are definitely not ok (ranges are intended as examples):

A ) Check occurs often, chance of success is relatively high (30% or more) = perfect place to use normal RNG
B ) Check occurs often, chance of success is moderate (10% to 30%) = RNG is probably ok, but alternative approach could be considered for fairness.
C ) Check occurs often, chance is low (1% to 10%) = RNG might be ok, but an alternative approach is likely better.
D ) Check occurs often, chance is miniscule (below 1%) = RNG should not be considered. An alternative method should be used instead.

E ) Check occurs infrequently, chance of success is relatively high (30% or more) = RNG is probably ok, but alternative approach should be considered if check occurs only at very long intervals.
F ) Check occurs infrequently, chance of success is moderate (10% to 30%) = RNG might be ok, but an alternative approach should probably be used instead for fairness.
G ) Check occurs infrequently, chance is low (1% to 10%) = RNG should not be considered, and an alternative method should be used instead
H ) Check occurs infrequently, chance is miniscule (below 1%) = This combination should be avoided entirely! For fairness, the game mechanics should not permit combinations where a chance is too low with infrequent checks.

Note – my definition here of often vs. infrequent are intentionally vague. For a general idea, “often” would be a check that occurs many times per hour in the course of normal gameplay. Infrequent would be something that occurs very rarely, or requires significant time or resource expenditure by the player to make it occur.

How do those relate to GW2? The following are intended as examples and the exact percentages may not fit the example ranges listed above:
A ) Chance of landing a critical hit (depending on build of course). Perfect place for RNG
B ) Chance of a mob dropping a random item (of any type). Other RNG could determine the specific type of item.
C ) Chance of a node producing a special item when harvested. For example, getting a gem while mining an ore node.
D ) Chance of a lockpick from piles of silky sand (often category might be a stretch here – is based on a player participating continually in DryTop events)
E ) Chance of getting at least 1 ecto while salvaging a rare with a mystic kit.
F ) Chance of a Black Lion Chest producing a scrap
G ) Chance of Mystic Forge producing something useful (exotic with rare skin, valuable rune/sigil)
H ) Chance of Mystic Forge producing a precursor

Fernling.1729:

John Smith.4610:

Cakemeister.5792:

I just want magic find to make a difference.

Magic find makes a huge difference.

I think he meant a meaningful difference. I’m sure across the board there are noticeable differences, but as a single player I don’t notice anything.
It sucks when you use magic find booster, birthday booster and food etc. to boost your magic find and not run into a single exotic.
I’ve ran down entire 24 hour birthday boosters without a single exotic drop.

That’d be one of those outliers. I switched characters halfway through playing last night to one running a WvW dolyak boost plus birthday booster (something like +150% MF on top of my existing ~130%) and suddenly had a lot more rares drop. Just one exotic though.

With any luck that wasn’t an outlier. It’s all a matter of perception but that did seem like roughly double the MF.

The system that the discussions are tending to support are starting to look more and more like SWTOR commendations … farm your comms, purchase WHATEVER loot you want with them. If such a thing were implemented in GW2, I fear it would just turn into another ’Plix karma farm" event chain that would eventually need nerfing.

Fernling.1729:

John Smith.4610:

Cakemeister.5792:

I just want magic find to make a difference.

Magic find makes a huge difference.

I think he meant a meaningful difference. I’m sure across the board there are noticeable differences, but as a single player I don’t notice anything.
It sucks when you use magic find booster, birthday booster and food etc. to boost your magic find and not run into a single exotic.
I’ve ran down entire 24 hour birthday boosters without a single exotic drop.

That’s simply a perception issue … that only a player can change. Birthday booster didn’t guarantee exotic drops. It’s the same argument that JS referred to as this clustering phenomenon. Based on other players experiences AND the confirmation from JS, MF does work.

Obtena.7952:

The system that the discussions are tending to support are starting to look more and more like SWTOR commendations … farm your comms, purchase WHATEVER loot you want with them. If such a thing were implemented in GW2, I fear it would just turn into another ’Plix karma farm" event chain that would eventually need nerfing.

The biggest challenge with a token system is determining how wide or narrow the use of the token is.

Too wide, and you’ve got the SWTOR issue.

Too narrow, and you’ve got 300 different currencies to earn.

John Smith.4610:

We do need to be very careful about ideas that flatten the experience entirely as that quickly becomes not fun at all.

You say this as if it’s obvious, but I don’t see it.

Am I just wired weird? I get a lot of satisfaction out of seeing the steps toward a reward and working through them to get it. When I get a lucky drop that’ll sell for a few gold it’s more like, “Huh, cool” post it to the TP and forget about it a day later.

If everyone ends up with the same rewards for the same level of play, how does that diminish anyone’s experience?

I think my point is: we already HAD that situation with Karma. Frankly, a token situation that isn’t the ‘SWTOR’ situation is almost not even worth the effort to implement. Specialized currencies = grind in general. I think that’s what the RNG attempts to circumvent: Getting lucky = less grinding. I think the trick is to make it so that if you gamble with RNG, the payback is better than simply grinding out currency. Unfortunately, somehow, that doesn’t appear to be the way it works in GW2, unless I’m perceptively challenged on that observation.

Obtena.7952:

Fernling.1729:

John Smith.4610:

Cakemeister.5792:

I just want magic find to make a difference.

Magic find makes a huge difference.

I think he meant a meaningful difference. I’m sure across the board there are noticeable differences, but as a single player I don’t notice anything.
It sucks when you use magic find booster, birthday booster and food etc. to boost your magic find and not run into a single exotic.
I’ve ran down entire 24 hour birthday boosters without a single exotic drop.

That’s simply a perception issue … that only a player can change. Birthday booster didn’t guarantee exotic drops. It’s the same argument that JS referred to as this clustering phenomenon. Based on other players experiences AND the confirmation from JS, MF does work.

He only said it does makes a huge difference. But how does it make a huge difference? Most of the farming these days involves opening guaranteed chests from participation in a specific event where magic find has no bearing on what comes out of said chest. Magic find used to make a huge difference, I have no doubt about that. But I really have to disagree that it makes a huge difference these days because of the simple fact that your getting most of your loot from champion bags, dungeon chests, boss chests etc. So yeah, it still makes a difference. But I disagree that it makes “a huge difference” because of the way the game has been evolved with champion farming when thats not how the game used to work.

mtpelion.4562:

The biggest challenge with a token system is determining how wide or narrow the use of the token is.

Too wide, and you’ve got the SWTOR issue.

Too narrow, and you’ve got 300 different currencies to earn.

One of their initial design goals ArenaNet stated for the game was the ability to play whatever portion of the game you want, and still get to the top tier rewards. Having a nice wide use for the token and a wide variety of activities that reward them would return to this design goal.

Obtena.7952:

Fernling.1729:

John Smith.4610:

Cakemeister.5792:

I just want magic find to make a difference.

Magic find makes a huge difference.

I think he meant a meaningful difference. I’m sure across the board there are noticeable differences, but as a single player I don’t notice anything.
It sucks when you use magic find booster, birthday booster and food etc. to boost your magic find and not run into a single exotic.
I’ve ran down entire 24 hour birthday boosters without a single exotic drop.

That’s simply a perception issue … that only a player can change. Birthday booster didn’t guarantee exotic drops. It’s the same argument that JS referred to as this clustering phenomenon. Based on other players experiences AND the confirmation from JS, MF does work.

I realize it’s a perception issue, but that really is the biggest issue here. They need to find a way for us as individuals to perceive that we are being rewarded fairly for our time. Whether we are really being rewarded or not, it doesn’t matter as long as we feel like we are.
I doubt many people can currently say they feel like the rewards are appropriate.

My point is that MF find might be technically working, but it doesn’t appear to make a difference as an individual, which is the real problem with it.

Just a small follow-up on my post from last page. We have a TON of currencies. Just look at the wallet and you will see just how much we have. If you are going to do something token based please use existing currencies. Half the currencies I don’t even use.

Thiefz.3695:

Just a small follow-up on my post from last page. We have a TON of currencies. Just look at the wallet and you will see just how much we have. If you are going to do something token based please use existing currencies. Half the currencies I don’t even use.

Well, the only problem with that is that so many of those currencies are for dungeons. I mean, almost exclusively all of them are.

There might not really be a good way to adopt dungeon currencies to other areas. You could open them up and make them a “global currency” for a zone (Ascalonain Tears being the Ascalon/Charr currency, for example), but then you’ll have an issue with people NOT running dungeons for the currencies anymore (since they can buy dungeon gear from doing “regular content”), so dungeons will become almost empty and obsolete.

Though, I suppose a way around that would be to make dungeons drop significantly more tokens, but you’d also have to jack up the token prices on dungeon gear to accommodate that, which some players might not be happy about…

Ben K.6238:

That’d be one of those outliers. I switched characters halfway through playing last night to one running a WvW dolyak boost plus birthday booster (something like +150% MF on top of my existing ~130%) and suddenly had a lot more rares drop. Just one exotic though.

With any luck that wasn’t an outlier. It’s all a matter of perception but that did seem like roughly double the MF.

I’m pretty sure, that the variance on drop rng is big enough, to offset any visible short-term changes to drops due to MF bonuses.

And as for significant effect of MF, i’m pretty sure it has one. Long-term, and on large scale. Doesn’t really help with individual perception, unless you are massfarming.

For example, let’s say that we doubled the chance of getting a precursor from drops. Gamewide, that would have a massive effect… but for individual players, it would mean exactly nothing – they’d be unlikely to even notice it. When we’re talking about RNG, we don’t really talk about fixing it’s effect on game economy (as i am pretty sure the drop rates are exactly where Anet want them, so there’s nothing really to fix here). What we want to improve are problems that come from impact that RNG has on individual perception of how rewarding the game is. And here i’m pretty sure that as far as Magic Find goes, seeing the huge +mf bonus in stat panel has way, way bigger impact than actual drop chance improvement that bonus grants. Because the bonus is so low, that most players will never be able to perceive it.

@Astralporing – The MF stat hard caps at 300%, correct? But you can still pump it higher with food buffs?

That 300% means you have 3x the normal chance for any given item to drop. However, for something like a precursor with an estimated drop rate of only 0.0001, that only increases the drop rate to 0.0003, which is still infinitesimally small.

As you said, magic find overall has an incredibly small change on a per-drop basis. 3x higher is still a HUGE increase though, so I highly recommend people up that as much as possible if they’re going to be doing drop farming of any kind.

But my absolute favourite drop system is in the JRPG The World Ends With You. Each enemy drops one item depending on difficulty level, with a percentage chance of either dropping the item, or rolling for an item on the next level down. (Players are shown the drop table for every enemy.)

Yes, TWEWY’s drop system is the gold standard.

More importantly, what happens after the player gets what s/he wants? The tokens would become meaningless, unless there were secondary rewards that could also be purchased. Just about every item we receive should have multiple uses, especially if it isn’t tradeable.

There should always be “junk” uses for tokens. With Unidentified Fossils, for example, you can trade them in for loot bags after you’d got all the cool stuff you want. Same here, If they started giving out Teq tokens, and you already got all the cool Teq loot you wanted, there should always be some sort of small loot bag or something that would be worth picking up as long as you have tokens, but nothing spectacular or unique.

Why not just make everything available through laurels? Laurels already exist as a token, it is related to length of play, but isn’t detrimental to casual versus hardcore, they can’t really be farmed, and purchases can be account-bound on acquire.

I personally would not have a problem with this, as I’m a bit of a hoarder and still have most of the Laurels I’ve earned over two years of maxed out dailies, but I could see riots from people who have been spending their steadily instead. I think that to be fair, if they introduced a way of getting them via “daily currency” they might have to make a whole new currency that starts everyone fresh at zero.

Still catching up, but I wanted to stop to be clear. No to this. This doesn’t happen, it’s a cognitive bias. There’s virtually no DR active on any given day.

It would be nice for clarity’s sake if players could actually see the level of DR active on their character in the stats menu.

“magicfind makes a huge difference”

I’d like to add that the feeling of being rewarded by a higher MF depends. Open world drops are rarely interesting imho. You get blues/greens/yellows which are mostly salvage-fodder for lv.80 players and exotics are quite rare and not that interesting for a long-time lv.80 player who has his crafted exotic-set since week 2 of being lv.80. The interesting drops are ascended boxes (too rare) and precursors. Both you’ll probably never see in your first year playing GW2 casually, even with 300+ MF.

The more interesting drops – interesting skins like the champion box weapons etc. aren’t open world drops. These drop from champion boxes which don’t work with magic find. (and I don’t count crafting mats to “interesting drops”)

TL;DR: better MagicFind won’t make players feel more rewarded. That’s my honest opinion, but others migth feel very different.

Fernling.1729:

John Smith.4610:

Cakemeister.5792:

I just want magic find to make a difference.

Magic find makes a huge difference.

I think he meant a meaningful difference. I’m sure across the board there are noticeable differences, but as a single player I don’t notice anything.
It sucks when you use magic find booster, birthday booster and food etc. to boost your magic find and not run into a single exotic.
I’ve ran down entire 24 hour birthday boosters without a single exotic drop.

My MF is up at 160% plus 30% from an amulet, and I have certainly seen more rares drop than last year before the MF rework. Exotics I can’t say that I have noticed a difference, but they drop so infrequently it’s hard to tell. I have been playing causally since beta and not a single precursor. A friend of mine has gotten a handful, but he is a turbo powered hoover up in the top 100 achievers.

John Smith.4610:

Cakemeister.5792:

I just want magic find to make a difference.

Magic find makes a huge difference.

Hmm….. the account-based magic find, was that a previous attempt to try and solve the problem we’re discussing right now?

Regardless, as it stands, as my account magic find has increased, I find myself getting rares quite often, but exotics drop at roughly the same rate they always did for me. So I always assumed that the exotic drop rate was not tied directly to the drop rate for other items. Perhaps I’m very wrong about that.

sometimes I wish there would be exotics with stats between exotic- and ascended level, which drop exclusively in the world/wvw and are untradeable and accountbound. Not with standardised stats but more varied stats-distribution – and of course new skins. This small vertical progression would make loot much more interesting if you ask me, and the loot-table would be significantly bigger.

Alternatively there could be exotics with standardised lv.80 stats but exclusive characteristics (like salvageable weapon-effects that can be applied to other weapons, like dripping water, a bit smoke,…) which are untradeable and only drop from world-drops. Something that makes you look forward to get an exotic via world-drop, instead of selling it for 1-2gold.

Why? Because I think there needs to be more relevant loot for long-time lv.80 players who are working on their ascended gear/legendary. Almost everything I get as drop equals a bit of more silver for me…

when I’m thinking about new rewards, I don’t want anything that adds a bit of coin to my wallet. I want something I can use on myself.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Why? Because I think there needs to be more relevant loot for long-time lv.80 players who are working on their ascended gear/legendary. Almost everything I get as drop equals a bit of more silver for me…

Ascended gear already is your “relevant loot for long-time lvl 80s”. Adding an additional step between Exotic and Ascended would be asinine. What good would it really do? The step up from Exotic to Ascended is already small enough as it is (in terms of stats).

John Smith.4610:

Cakemeister.5792:

I just want magic find to make a difference.

Magic find makes a huge difference.

Not in the way players see it.

Magic Find makes a difference in mob drops only.

It does not affect drops from chests, it does not affect drops from champ bags, it does not affect rates at getting upgraded items from the mystic forge, it does not affect drop rates of scraps/tickets from black lion chests.

It affects the least important means of acquiring good loot. Corpse drops.

That’s it.

That’s not really making a difference where it counts.

Unless you care to correct me and tell us that magic find DOES affect things like chests, champ bags, and the mystic forge.

The only real use I’ve ever had for magic find? Farming Tier 5 and Tier 6 fine crafting mats.

Because that’s where you expect to get those mats, from mob drops.

People don’t run around killing random trash mobs hunting legendary precursors. They kill meta event bosses that reward chests, and they throw rares/exotics in the mystic forge. In fact, most people don’t even try to get precursors from those boss chests. They only hunt them via the mystic forge, or just buy them. Magic Find doesn’t affect that.

daft inquisitor.1605:

What good would it really do?

Much more frequent exciting and relevant drops compared to ascended drops.
Also it adds a small progression for people who care. You can work on something that doesn’t take ages or tons of money.

I have an idea for a token system that is nearly universal, lets you obtain most items you want and is easy to implement…… GOLD!
Honestly nobody uses white, blue, or green gear once they are level 80. Rare items are only useful for the rare mats they salvage into, and exotics (which we established generally drop bi-monthly for the average player) are usable but generally don’t drop items you could use or that are level 80.
To me the biggest flaw with the drops is that 95% are unusable at the time of dropping. Perhaps we assume the “character” would ignore a white set of bandit’s armor and only loot useful items. Why the frack would I pick up 10000 piles of dust? What motivation does my character have when she sees porous bones “oh yay a pile of crap, at least it sells for 2 copper”, I agree the GW1 style “token” vendors would alleviate the pain of receiving “trash” even the Devs admit that it’s garbage. Drop me Tx mats, tokens or just a handful of gold. I love the option 2, buff my luck as I continue to get crap, but I would rather just not get crap.
Any major loot change will shock the economy speculators will get kittened, Trading Post Wars 2 moguls will rant, rave and gnash their teeth but the economy will even out and the majority of players will be happier. Bosses should have specific tables with a % chance to drop certain items. I would be much happier to run a dungeon or do an event chain if I know that there a is a 25-50% chance of getting a unique or useful item from the boss. Creatures need specific tables as well, let’s tone down the junk drops and focus on giving me a 50% chance that creature X will drop blood or creature Y will drop axes with a 1% chance of a unique exotic axe and a 5% chance of a specific rare item.

I agree with the above statement that exotics are no longer top tier items and the drop rate should be adjusted to reflect it.

I really like the idea of PvE reward tracks!
Are there other proposals of how those PvE tracks would work?
Are there other threads discussing this idea?

The way I would envision it, PvE reward tracks would be fed by level-80 level ups. Each time you got a level up with a level 80, it would feed the track.

At the level up moment, it would show a reward side chest thet would give the usuall skill point and also would give 1 “roll” for the ultimate prize of the track – depending on the track, could be a precursor, or a Teq weapon, or any other valuable things. If the roll failed, it would give a less valuable reward, like a rare item or a tome of knowledge.

If the person gets to the end of the track, he/she gets the ultimate prize (precursor, ascended weapon, fractal weapon). If a roll awards the ultimate prize, the reward track is also considered completed.
Some tracks would not be able to be repeated, at least for a long time (for example, the Precursor track could only be done once a year).

What do you guys think?

I like the “reward tracks” we got with DryTop: Geodes from zone-wide events that unlock new vendor-stuff.

daft inquisitor.1605:

@Astralporing – The MF stat hard caps at 300%, correct? But you can still pump it higher with food buffs?

That 300% means you have 3x the normal chance for any given item to drop. However, for something like a precursor with an estimated drop rate of only 0.0001, that only increases the drop rate to 0.0003, which is still infinitesimally small.

As you said, magic find overall has an incredibly small change on a per-drop basis. 3x higher is still a HUGE increase though, so I highly recommend people up that as much as possible if they’re going to be doing drop farming of any kind.

Luck only allows up to 300%. Achievement points: + 22% for 36k AP so far. food/boosters/wvw/guild buffs goes over the 300% mark from your luck (up to 265%).

Also magic find is additive to original rates not multiplicative. + 5% MF for a 3% drop is 8%.

At 0% magic find on a brand new account, your modifier for loot is 100% initial drop rate before diminishing returns. If it drop says 3%, it will always drop at 3%.

So when accounting for magic find and my above example, its like effectively 1.05x the drop for 5% and 200% will be effectively 3x and so on.

DDCarvalho.2071:

I really like the idea of PvE reward tracks!
Are there other proposals of how those PvE tracks would work?
Are there other threads discussing this idea?

The way I would envision it, PvE reward tracks would be fed by level-80 level ups. Each time you got a level up with a level 80, it would feed the track.

How awesome would it be to have the sPvP reward tracks earn-able (and repeatable!) in PvE? (after all, they contain ALL PvE stuff) I like open world stuff…I don’t really care for dungeons unless they are solo/duoable – reward tracks for doing open world PvE/WvW stuff would be awesome as the current “rewards” are… garbage (sorry, I must be blunt – 99.9% of the time I spend in open world stuff it is not really rewarding due to the extreme RNG of anything remotely exciting- over 3k hours on 2 accounts and 0 precursors, 0 ascended boxes) Also, allow MF to work with chests/champ boxes already – what is the reasoning behind not allowing it?

John Smith.4610:

2. Implement measures that counteract low-end outlier behavior inside of game design. This would be a system that is something like: If player hasn’t received a rare drop in X time send them Y tickets for random drops.

WoW has something similar to this for questing that increases the chances of quest loot dropping each time the player receives no quest related loot, then resets when they do, and the implementation of that system helped to stem quite a lot of player frustration.

Tickets for random drops seems like a good idea in theory, but the problem with that system is that you’ll still eventually get at least a few very unlucky people who never get anything good, even from the tickets. While this would be an improvement over the current state of RNG, I have an idea for a slightly better system.
This system could say that if a player hasn’t received, lets say an exotic drop, in the past 100 loot attempts that their likelihood to receive an exotic drop is increased by a set amount until one is obtained. This could stack up to a certain amount, even 100% if the player goes an extremely long time without seeing rare drops. This way players will almost never become completely loot starved, and will keep players on the low end of the RNG odds from losing hope completely.

This sort of thing would also be pretty fair and difficult to game, because the loot table would only get better when no decent loot was acquired for a significant amount of time.

John Smith.4610:

We do need to be very careful about ideas that flatten the experience entirely as that quickly becomes not fun at all.

…

2. Implement measures that counteract low-end outlier behavior inside of game design. This would be a system that is something like: If player hasn’t received a rare drop in X time send them Y tickets for random drops.

2.5: “Add secondary reward mechanisms (ie. token based system) alongside the primary RNG system; allow progress to be made even when you don’t get the result you want.”

John Smith.4610:

munkiman.3068:

My take on RNG, isn’t that it exist or it’s broken, it’s just that it’s practically everywhere. Neither of those solutions would work anyway, since the game would have to predict what you’re after in the first place, then reward you for failure of what exactly? Do we put a merchant in the game that carries everything a player might want in exchange for a loser token?

This was the first problem I thought of as well. It’s simple to say failure and success, but that’s not an easily definable concept in real life.

First of all John thank you for making this thread. Your communication with the community means far more than you can ever know. It is appreciated.

I like John’s ideas 2 and 2.5. Eliminating low-end outlier behavior is important. I’ve been coming up with some ideas on this for a while now.*

It doesn’t necessarily have to be tickets or tokens, though. That’s so specific, and like people have said here, it’s hard to tell a “success” from a “failure” when it’s too specific.

I’m a fan of using an invisible background system where “failures” slightly increment a hidden modifier that makes “success” ever-so-slightly more likely each time. (In a way that makes it like Magic Find). That counter resets to +0% once a “success” is achieved and then starts incrementing again with each trial.

Each trial need not increment by much. In fact, it should be a trivial increase each trial. The goal isn’t to introduce a ton of rarer loot into the economy, but just to make sure that Bob Outlier gets a bone thrown to him after a particularly long and depressing dry spell.

The advantage is that this prevents the case of “the guy who played for 8 hour a day for a month straight and did not get a single Exotic drop.” For people who get loot regularly, the incrementing counter constantly resetting means they see no appreciable difference in drops.

But like we said, it is hard to define “success” versus “failure.” Few are looking for whites/blues/greens and those are common enough to not need such a system (although I suppose the “incrementing counter system” could be introduced across the board, it certainly wouldn’t change much at that level of loot.). A general solution would be to have multiple separate +% counters all running at once across separate categories:

EXAMPLES:

1. Counter for +% chance to get a rare weapon drop
2. Counter for +% chance to get a rare armor drop
3. Counter for +% chance to get a rare trinket drop
4. Counter for +% chance to get an exotic weapon drop
5. Counter for +% chance to get an exotic armor drop
6. Counter for +% chance to get an exotic trinket drop
7. Counter for +% chance to get an ascended weapon drop
8. Counter for +% chance to get an ascended armor drop
9? Counter for +% chance to get an ascended trinket drop

Every mob kill could add a tiny fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent toward these modifiers to make it that much more (again: super-tiny each increment!) likely to get those things (read: miniscule +% chance each time).

Why separate counters? Because everyone is looking for something different. Example #4 being separate is particularly important because “Exotic Weapons” is the category precursors fall under/roll in, and no one wants that yellow ring they looted to reset a bonus that might move them ever-so-slightly closer toward their chance at a precursor.

*the thread where I describe this in more detail is here for those interested. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Exotic-drop-rate-problem/ Related to that, and as a final note, make sure that swapping armor sets or other items from inventory isn’t resetting these counters. What do people think of this suggested system to help low-end outliers get more normalized loot?

Devildoc.6721:

John Smith.4610:

Cakemeister.5792:

I just want magic find to make a difference.

Magic find makes a huge difference.

Not in the way players see it.

Magic Find makes a difference in mob drops only.

It does not affect drops from chests, it does not affect drops from champ bags, it does not affect rates at getting upgraded items from the mystic forge, it does not affect drop rates of scraps/tickets from black lion chests.

It affects the least important means of acquiring good loot. Corpse drops.

That’s it.

That’s not really making a difference where it counts.

Unless you care to correct me and tell us that magic find DOES affect things like chests, champ bags, and the mystic forge.

The only real use I’ve ever had for magic find? Farming Tier 5 and Tier 6 fine crafting mats.

Because that’s where you expect to get those mats, from mob drops.

People don’t run around killing random trash mobs hunting legendary precursors. They kill meta event bosses that reward chests, and they throw rares/exotics in the mystic forge. In fact, most people don’t even try to get precursors from those boss chests. They only hunt them via the mystic forge, or just buy them. Magic Find doesn’t affect that.

^This is so true. From my perspective I was actually kind of ticked when the Champ Box system was implemented because it meant the loot table was even more in favor of “The House” like they say in Vegas. At least in Vegas they tell you what your odds are. That may be a huge step(of hopefully many huge steps) in loosening the reins of the RNG system: Letting MF work on all that stuff.

Would setting up a system like the PvP Reward Track for PvE be a way to do it? Let us set the reward we would like to get and then seeing actual progression toward it? I always liked the GW1 system where certain weapons would drop in certain dungeons. The Bone Dragon Staff dropped in Shards of Orr. The Silverwing Recurve Bow dropped in the Frostmaw dungeon and the Voltaic Spear dropped in the high level dungeon that I forget the name of. Maybe there would be a way to tie certain desirable skins into a reward track and the weapons could be account bound. I really see that as the only reason we haven’t gotten a way to earn non-RNG precursors: It would hurt gem sales.

I haven’t parsed through the middle pages, and I apologize if this is redundant, but I’d like to shine some light on the area where RNG disappointed me most in recent days: The Treasure Hunter Achievement.

Plainly put, RNG strongly detracts from the spirit of a treasure hunt.

Honestly, who would get excited of a festive Easter egg hunt if participants were told that certain eggs appear only randomly, and that they will need to repeatedly check nearly half of the hiding spots several dozens of times in order to get lucky enough for the egg to spontaneously manifest. Even more frustrating is that the event staff fully supports going to the store and just buying eggs as a perfectly viable alternative to searching, even though some eggs cost well beyond what many participants earn in a month. Moreover, those participants who are chiefly concerned with the prize awarded for a complete egg collection have only a cheap goodie bag to look forward to, something befitting of an 8-year-old’s birthday party.

Ridiculous.

I understand the struggles of decoupling existing systems (namely things like precursors) from RNG, as their acquisition is largely tied to economic stability on many levels. Further, I think its totally fine that mobs drop trash loot with a touch of RNG to keep players income somewhat somewhat normalized. These systems are not fun for the player, but they exist so that everyone can work within a relatively stable and healthy trade environment, and I’m jaded by cool with all that.

However, the heavy-handed RNG added to the treasure hunt achievements is extremely out of touch with the spirit of the event. This is a brand new system that had its cheerful intent mutilated in name of making some otherwise unvisited events “more rewarding.”

Summarily, it appears that in the case of the Treasure Hunter Achievements, Anet decided that gold circulation and acquisition trump engaging content. A slot machine titled “Treasure Hunter” is still a slot machine.