Guild Wars 2

John Smith.4610:

You’re right, that response isn’t necessary. I’ve gotten a bit frustrated sometimes when I spend time to come here and talk to people and get a lot of baseless accusations, but that’s not an excuse for having a short fuse. I apologize and will be more tolerant in the future.

We (or at least some of us) totally understand and can relate. Don’t let that prevent you from posting more however, your posts are always insightful and entertaining!

Nah, it’s good to let off some steam now and then. We appreciate that you take the time to visit us here and comment on stuff

I think it’d be more valuable if, instead of talking about data you have that we don’t in moments like that, you created weekly announcements in this forum with interesting data. They wouldn’t even need to be formatted into blog posts or have pretty graphs, just some raw numbers for us to crunch on. Something like how the WvW people put out weekly tables of points.

EliteZ.1682:

does exotics have a higher chance of returning ecto’s when salvaged then rares?

As far as I know you cannot get more than 3 ectos from any salvage, however, the rate of getting 3 may go up with Exotics. I don’t think it’s been tested.

Forgive me for veering off topic, but personally instead of numbers I’d love to read blogposts by you discussing design challenges you face when designing economies in an MMO. What are the factors you have to consider, what are the design goals, etc. That will be really educational and fascinating to read, for sure!

Didn’t bother reading the thread, just going to respond to the topic. Doubtful considering the 50 ectos per ascended accessory.

YTY.4712:

The drop rate still seems abysmal…

During the last few days, I ran 5 Fractal runs, levels 10, 11, 12, 12 and 14. I got a whooping total of 1 rare. Yes. 5 runs, no mob skipping in maw, and 1 rare. In addition, I got a exotic which is account bound and wrong armor class for my character, also got 3 cores from the jade maw chests (between 6-20s each which is unimportant). So 6 hours of playtime netted me 1 ecto.

I don’t think they are gonna drop anytime soon.

>Last few days
>Patch was yesterday
>Missing the point entirely.

John Smith.4610:

Ensign.2189:

and it’s hard to tell which one Mr. Smith is referring to, since he drops into troll mode when the conversation veers towards private information only he has.

You’re right, that response isn’t necessary. I’ve gotten a bit frustrated sometimes when I spend time to come here and talk to people and get a lot of accusations, but that’s not an excuse for having a short fuse. I apologize and will be more tolerant in the future.

Just remember, the plural of “anecdote” is “data.”

That’s disappointing. I always get a good laugh when John veers a bit to the trollish side.

Well lets see. I sold 50 Globs of ectoplasm 4 days before the patch at 38s for about 17 gold and now there are buy orders on the trading post for 31s31c. Id say there going down. But Im going to buy my ectos back tomorrow cause I doubt it will go lower than 30.

Remember John also has said that when people see they actually have a chance at making something they didnt before they go for it (im looking at you abysmal scepter) . So my money is on the fact that demand for ectos will fall but not by much.

John Smith.4610:

Ensign.2189:

and it’s hard to tell which one Mr. Smith is referring to, since he drops into troll mode when the conversation veers towards private information only he has.

You’re right, that response isn’t necessary. I’ve gotten a bit frustrated sometimes when I spend time to come here and talk to people and get a lot of accusations, but that’s not an excuse for having a short fuse. I apologize and will be more tolerant in the future.

The fact that you come in and share information, even with a touch of sarcasm, is much appreciated. Plus, it makes you more connectable to us players when you don’t talk like a corporate robot. Troll on, my friend!

Side note – I do miss the “Post Here to say how awesome John Smith is” thread.

Off topic slightly and just an early observation, but Heavy Moldy Bags seem to be dropping much less now. The price is shooting up. T6 mats are shooting up.

I wonder if John might be willing to confirm/deny any adjustment?

Svarty.8019:

Off topic slightly and just an early observation, but Heavy Moldy Bags seem to be dropping much less now. The price is shooting up. T6 mats are shooting up.

I wonder if John might be willing to confirm/deny any adjustment?

Though I haven’t visited Orr myself, I’ve read several posts complaining that there are a lot more Champions in the Orr events leading to less loot. Perhaps that is the reason?

Ursan.7846:

Svarty.8019:

Off topic slightly and just an early observation, but Heavy Moldy Bags seem to be dropping much less now. The price is shooting up. T6 mats are shooting up.

I wonder if John might be willing to confirm/deny any adjustment?

Though I haven’t visited Orr myself, I’ve read several posts complaining that there are a lot more Champions in the Orr events leading to less loot. Perhaps that is the reason?

I was doing Plinx runs last nite, and noticed less bags, but a lot more T6 drops. But that might just be individual luck.

John Smith.4610:

I think it’s hilarious when I’m looking at a million post patch salvage results and you tell me I’m wrong.

Do the numbers show you whether half the players averaged 75% success and the other half averaged 10% success?

Not everybody had the kill credit bug, but if you looked at just the numbers across the board, you would see that people looted tons of rares/exotics (appears to be fine), you wouldn’t see that some people regularly loot rares/exotics and other people rarely ever looted them.

I suffered from the kill count/dr bug and have always perceived a reduction in loot/loot quality when I used magic find gear, but many people report the opposite. Is it possible the +salvage % from the kits is only working for some players, like it seems the + magic find % is only working for some players?

and thanks for communicating with us

While this thread seems to have veered OT, and it seems clear ectos were not nerfed, and RNG is RNG, etc, I’d like to add to the QQ here by saying:

8 rares salvaged today, 1 ecto.

5 were done with a masters, 3 with a black lion kit.

QQ

The Ecto God clearly has me in his black book.

Yes OP ectos will soon be worthless with all the rares being handed out now. I’m guessing soon rares and ectos won’t be worth much more than what you can sell them to merchants. I alone must have gotten 30-50 rares since patch along with a few exotics. Basically the hardcore are going to get very rich from this and further leave the casuals behind. Gold for gems will probably become crazy also I’d imagine.

tbh I doubt ectos were ever ment to be as rare as they are, the ecto prices is part of why precursors etc are as overpriced as they are.

Another thing to makes me thing ectos wernt ment to be THAT rare is the amount you needed for ascended backpack etc, not to mention new accessory.

Btw John smith if you are behind the laurel economy, DOOM on you! dosn’t take a genius to realise those prices are way out of wack :P

John Smith.4610:

It changes pretty drastically relative to a couple of different factors (like time of day), but it doesn’t take long.

~blink~ so if i salvage at which time of day do i get the best results

I would like to point out that if anything I have obtained more ectos since this patch then ever before.. More proof that RNG is RNG.

I obtained 121 ectos from 75 BLK and rares 72-80.
A ratio of 1.61 ecots to salvage kit.

Needless to say I am stoked

Clouded Judgement.7834:

I would like to point out that if anything I have obtained more ectos since this patch then ever before.. More proof that RNG is RNG.

I obtained 121 ectos from 75 BLK and rares 72-80.
A ratio of 1.61 ecots to salvage kit.

Needless to say I am stoked

No, that’s proof that you’re not affected in a negative way by the patch. What do your results prove for me? Right because players haven’t been effected by bugs while other players weren’t, we haven’t had this conversation a thousand times about the loot drop bug already, Rng is Rng, I’m so sick of hearing that. Was Rng Rng when people were getting shafted with loot drops? because a lot of people that weren’t effected sure seemed to think so.

Olfinbedwere.5049:

No, that’s proof that you’re not affected in a negative way by the patch. What do your results prove for me? Right because players haven’t been effected by bugs while other players weren’t, we haven’t had this conversation a thousand times about the loot drop bug already, Rng is Rng, I’m so sick of hearing that. Was Rng Rng when people were getting shafted with loot drops? because a lot of people that weren’t effected sure seemed to think so.

You seem to be quite convinced that something’s specifically affecting your ecto salvage rates.

The loot drops, in the end, wasn’t a problem of the random change of loot tables, but rather a problem of players being able to tag mobs. Because you have to tag mobs properly to get that loot. It had nothing to do with the chances on the loot table itself. RNG was still RNG, just the tagging mechanism was bugged.

When you salvage things, there’s absolutely nothing like that. You don’t have to “tag” anything nor is there any DR effect.

So your salvage results are just RNG then. It doesn’t matter if you believe it or not. Humans tend to try to find patterns in randomness, but random is random.

Also, confirmation bias. Which plays a huge role when people “think” they are being shafted.

http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/old%20physics%2010/chapters%20(old)/4-Randomneskittenm

Illustrates how people tend to look for patterns in randomness wonderfully!

wow this topic really blew up. I was just hoping to get some economical insight for dumping ectos since I would rather be safe than sorry. Luckily I dumped my ectos for 36s, and now they are ~31s. We will see how low they go, I’m looking forward to seeing them for ~26s again during Christmas. It will also be interesting to see how crafted armor prices adjust to this as well as rare armor.

Ursan.7846:

The loot drops, in the end, wasn’t a problem of the random change of loot tables, but rather a problem of players being able to tag mobs. Because you have to tag mobs properly to get that loot. It had nothing to do with the chances on the loot table itself. RNG was still RNG, just the tagging mechanism was bugged.

When you salvage things, there’s absolutely nothing like that. You don’t have to “tag” anything nor is there any DR effect.

So your salvage results are just RNG then. It doesn’t matter if you believe it or not. Humans tend to try to find patterns in randomness, but random is random.

Also, confirmation bias. Which plays a huge role when people “think” they are being shafted.

http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/old%20physics%2010/chapters%20(old)/4-Randomneskittenm

Illustrates how people tend to look for patterns in randomness wonderfully!

Right, I’m familiar with the psychology behind perception. Neither of us know the mechanics behind salvaging, or magic find, or DR, or the mystic forge probability, or quality of loot, or the rng.

The rng in this game is broken for a lot of people, less now than before, because most of those people stopped playing. It’s not just the tagging, when we were getting tags we were getting garbage for loot.

Magic find is broken, the rng is broken, maybe not for you but that doesn’t mean it isn’t for others and because it’s working for you doesn’t mean the rest of us are just imagining it. And you’re telling me it’s just my perception, that’s great because that’s what they said before they turned around and said oh wait, it is broken, thanks for helping us find that bug.

You do realize that right? You’re responding to this issue the exact same way Anet and unaffected players responded to the other issue, wow. And all the shafted players got is a “we fixed it, thanks for helping find that bug.” After three months of it.

Edit, I’m still not always getting loot from Champions btw, but that’s probably just my perception.

elderan.2638:

Yes, with the guaranteed rares from Orr temple events, globs are going to drop by a lot, if I had to guess I’d say back to 25s or less. I think that’s a good thing.

Not guaranteed. I got blues and greens from Grenth yesterday. But yes, more rares overall. RIP globs.

Olfinbedwere.5049:

Right, I’m familiar with the psychology behind perception. Neither of us know the mechanics behind salvaging, or magic find, or DR, or the mystic forge probability, or quality of loot, or the rng.

No we don’t, which is why I’m surprised you don’t trust in people who do (John Smith.)

Olfinbedwere.5049:

The rng in this game is broken for a lot of people, less now than before, because most of those people stopped playing. It’s not just the tagging, when we were getting tags we were getting garbage for loot.

Magic find is broken, the rng is broken, maybe not for you but that doesn’t mean it isn’t for others and because it’s working for you doesn’t mean the rest of us are just imagining it. And you’re telling me it’s just my perception, that’s great because that’s what they said before they turned around and said oh wait, it is broken, thanks for helping us find that bug.

So you keep on saying RNG is “broken.” I’m assuming you mean that the probabilities on loot tables isn’t properly applied to a player for whatever reason.

Which isn’t what happened. For the loot bug, the bug was simply players failing to tag mobs/events properly. Nothing to do with the actual probabilities of the loot table itself.

When you salvage things, there’s no DR, there’s no tagging mobs. So when person A and person B salvages things, there’s absolutely no difference in conditions, unlike the loot drop bug. Anet has stated multiple times that accounts aren’t marked for “luck” or anything. So it’s much harder to believe something going wrong with salvages.

Olfinbedwere.5049:

You do realize that right? You’re responding to this issue the exact same way Anet and unaffected players responded to the other issue, wow. And all the shafted players got is a “we fixed it, thanks for helping find that bug.” After three months of it.

Well yes of course I’ll trust what Anet says. They have all the data, and they made the game. It doesn’t mean they’re infallible, but most of the time they will be right about. If I were a betting man I’d bet on Anet every single time.

On the flipside it doesn’t mean the playerbase is always wrong. However, it’s incredibly hard to take a player’s complaint on loot seriously when the only evidence he offers is a very small sample size.

And really, that’s my original point. Your original posts asks them to “look at it.” They did. You’re still convinced there’s a problem? THEN COMPILE DATA. You may very well be correct, but until you have a substantial amount of data points to support your hypothesis, no one will take your claims seriously.

thehipone.6812:

Read how I defined a success, click on the salvage study that I linked, click the results tab and let me know what you find. I’m using the best data that I could find, which indicates that the probability is closer to 75%. If you have better data, please provide.

The sample size is too small for BLSKs to get anything resembling a correct drop rate. In absence of at least a thousand data points, I’m going to trust that the stated 50% on the tool tip is in fact accurate, unless a dev says otherwise.

ZudetGambeous.9573

I have a run of 1 ecto from 25 uses of BLK’s… that has a chance of:

0.000003% chance of happening.

0.000003 is incorrect, it is way lower. 0.000003 would actually be acceptable. It would mean that out of one 100 million tries, 3 would have this result. There are 3 million games sold, so this could certainly happen. But in reality, the odds are waaaaaaay lower.

Assuming that…

- the salvages are independent from each other
- a BLK has an equal change of giving 0, 1, 2 or 3 ectos.

… then he odds of having 0 ectos for…

- 1 salvage is 25% (1 in 4)
- 2 salvages is 6.25% (1 in 16)
- 3 salvages is 1.5625% (1 in 64)
- …
- 24 salvages is +/- 0.000000000000355271% (1 in +/- 281.000.000.000.000)
- 25 salvages is +/- 0.0000000000000881784197% (1 in +/- 1.125.000.000.000.000)

… and the odds of getting ectos out of exactly one salage in…
- 1 salvage is 75% (3 in 4)
- 2 salvages is 37.50% (6 in 16)
- 3 salvages is 14.0625% (9 in 64)
- …
- 24 salvages is +/- 0.000000000000255795% (72 in +/- 281.000.000.000.000)
- 25 salvages is +/- 0.0000000000000661338% (75 in +/- 1.126.000.000.000.000)

Sure, you can say ‘hey, that’s possibile’.

But if I were Anet, I would…
a) see if it’s true what this person says and that he did indeed get 1 ecto in 25 (personally, I consider this claim dubious, sorry to say)
b) agree that this is statistically next-to-impossible: this is less than 1 in 1 million million, so unless a million people did a million times 25 salvages this is extremely unlickely
c) fix the RND

I would certainly not do what Anet did here: basically telling their customer that they are wrong.

And even if Anet still claims that their RND is perfect, then agree that this type of bad luck (1 out of 25) should not happen and fix it, by tinkering with the odds and put some mechanism in place where you can’t have a string of bad luck.

Now… I understand that GW2 is a pure lottery. If you loot a cursor, BOOM, you are rich. If you do one lucky forge, BOOM, you are rich.

But certainly Anet has to see that these kind of odds are very, very, very unfair.

John Smith.4610:

I think it’s hilarious when I’m looking at a million post patch salvage results and you tell me I’m wrong.

Unless you do not look at results one-on-one but per person, your numbers don’t mean anything. It is not because you see that in 1.000.000 salvages people get ectos from 3 in 4 tries, that the results are random. You would need to check all sorts of factors.

Unless you have ran numeric analysis to confirm that (say) people standing in LA have the same odds than people elsewhere or that people who salvage slower have the same odds than people who salavage faster, you can not conclude that there is nothing wrong.

John Smith.4610:

Gahzirra.8639:

I always think it’s hilarious when a dev/mod comes out and makes such a fallacious comment as to rule out with almost 100% certainty a bug could have been introduced with the patch….like their track record is perfect.

I think it’s hilarious when I’m looking at a million post patch salvage results and you tell me I’m wrong.

BOOM HEADSHOT!

@Mr Smith: (btw is that an alias? John Smith sounds like it would be one of those very common names you hear in a movie!) Anyways, Im sure you and arenanet have a team of reporting analysts to query data and compile it into a presentable way, however, this is a shameful plug for myself…if you are looking for such a person with experience, let me know! I would probably move my family across the country to work for a game dev and get out of reporting metrics for pharma companies.
:)

Resume and references available upon request!

John Smith nowadays in GW2 Alias Adam Smith IRL in the past XD

This is me being greedy but I wish Exotics were guaranteed 1 Ecto. Rares offering 0-3 is fine by me but Exotics need to offer something. It pains me to salvage an exotic and I get nothing even with a BLS Kit.

Tanking but not for long after the panic selling is over. Anyone notice how tough it is to farm at penitent shelter now? lots of veterans and champions popping up and everyone’s dying.

Eolirin.1830:

thehipone.6812:

Read how I defined a success, click on the salvage study that I linked, click the results tab and let me know what you find. I’m using the best data that I could find, which indicates that the probability is closer to 75%. If you have better data, please provide.

The sample size is too small for BLSKs to get anything resembling a correct drop rate. In absence of at least a thousand data points, I’m going to trust that the stated 50% on the tool tip is in fact accurate, unless a dev says otherwise.

Aaah, it’s the old “you need a bajillion trials to get an answer” misunderstanding.

Let’s do it this way
Null hypothesis – The true salvage rate is 50%.
Taking 0.001% as our level of rejection – i.e. we reject the null hypothesis if the observed result would happen only 0.001% of the time if the null hypothesis were true.
Probability of achieving the observed result 77 or more successes out of 103 trials at a 50% success rate =
0.000025%
Result – reject the hypothesis that the true rate is 50%.

I would think that the fact that all of the other kits have observed success rates well above the tooltip rare mats % would be a pretty good indicator that the stated tooltipnumber is not the ecto salvage rate. In fact, the crude kit which has a 0% rare mat rate still produces ectos.

See also here: http://de.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10d69g/salvaging_for_ectoplasm_an_analysis/

Beyond this, believe what you want. I’m not turning into this guy any more.

http://xkcd.com/386/ Although even our red posters seem susceptible to it now and then…

Ursan.7846:

No we don’t, which is why I’m surprised you don’t trust in people who do (John Smith.)

You march to the sound of the guns, Ursan. I’ll give you that.

Tallis.5607:

John Smith.4610:

I think it’s hilarious when I’m looking at a million post patch salvage results and you tell me I’m wrong.

Unless you do not look at results one-on-one but per person, your numbers don’t mean anything. It is not because you see that in 1.000.000 salvages people get ectos from 3 in 4 tries, that the results are random. You would need to check all sorts of factors.

Unless you have ran numeric analysis to confirm that (say) people standing in LA have the same odds than people elsewhere or that people who salvage slower have the same odds than people who salavage faster, you can not conclude that there is nothing wrong.

What would ever lead you to think that the location of where a salvage takes place is a factor in the resulting outcome?

I suppose there could be a mystical place, that when the baby quaggan “foos”, and the bald norn burps, and at the moment when all three dragons are slain in the same moment, and if you face towards the Mystic Forge, you could be gauranteed three ectos from a rare….. but I have nothing to prove this, just a hunch.

Mourningcry.9428:

What would ever lead you to think that the location of where a salvage takes place is a factor in the resulting outcome?

Could be an old UO player but I’ve seen no evidence that the old UO grid type system exists in this game.

Pedra.4381:

Mourningcry.9428:

What would ever lead you to think that the location of where a salvage takes place is a factor in the resulting outcome?

Could be an old UO player but I’ve seen no evidence that the old UO grid type system exists in this game.

Fair enough… however, like you mentioned, without any evidence, or at least something beyond speculation, claims like that, especially when used to refute, are just a bit ridiculous.

I’m sorry that my bad luck streak completely derailed this thread… That was not my original intent…

I’m going to feebly attempt to get this thread back on track:

Ectos seem to be coming down pretty fast at this point. Since John kindly pointed out that the average salvage rate for ectos (would love to know if this rate is the kit rate or some completely separate rate) is on average over millions of salvages then we can assume that ectos will keep dropping for a while.

As a side note I sat on the TP and watched ecto sales for about 10 minutes. I’m pretty sure the number traded is in the 100’s per second. It was ridiculous.

If I had to make a final guess I would say ectos will bottom out at around 25s. Anything below 29s would be profitable for me though so hopefully we reach that point at least.

Bad salvage rate or not, dragon chest rares will bring the price down a bit.

Darxio.5672:

Bad salvage rate or not, dragon chest rares will bring the price down a bit.

I think there is still a good chance that Arenanet makes a change to prevent chests from being farmed across all guest servers.

They can even make it limited to account bound in the future.

It’s just a matter of determining what value they want Ectos to be at.

Just so there’s some statistical basis going on here on the randomness of ectoplasm’s from salvaging.

Last night, I salvaged 7 rares, got 1 ectoplasm in total.
This morning my girlfriend salvaged 3 and got 7 ectoplasm.
This evening I salvaged 4 rares, and got 4 ectoplasm.
This evening my girlfriend salvaged 6 rares and got no ectoplasm.

I’m not going to go saying I’m a statistical genius, but you get the idea of what they can be like. It doesn’t seem to have changed at all since pre patch, in my experience. Of course, these are small numbers Im working with, so they aren’t the best representation!

Cymatoperior.5942:

Tanking but not for long after the panic selling is over. Anyone notice how tough it is to farm at penitent shelter now? lots of veterans and champions popping up and everyone’s dying.

Actually farming there is a lot better for many people…well me at least. The changes to loot and the mobs mean glass cannon warriors dont melt groups of mobs 0.005 seconds after they spawn so rather than one person geting loot 4 or 5 do and we get our dailies on warriors that cant adapt to change

People talk about chest drops but i think the bigger change could be from all the people that for months have been crying out that loot drops were nerfed into oblivion.
Now there has been the fine print admission that people were not getting loot credit for things they killed and this has been fixed expect that to cause market changes in a lot of items.

Even if you dont die from the powerful mobs, you spend most of the time trying to take them down. Plus new mobs don’t spawn until you kill the champion and veterans. So people tend to leave and stop farming totally after a while.

What’s been most interesting to me is how the prices of T5 fine mats have held their prices so well; they haven’t moved at all in the face of plummeting ecto prices.

Those markets are totally dominated by precursor forging, not crafting rates for salvage.

o freedom o.9028:

i love when a dev comes in with the cold hard facts and is like BOOM

Problem is now im stuck with this as the image of Mr Smith owning some on in the forum

cargan.5689:

o freedom o.9028:

i love when a dev comes in with the cold hard facts and is like BOOM

Problem is now im stuck with this as the image of Mr Smith owning some on in the forum

Haha wow.