Guild Wars 2

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I think the most useful discussion is how we can change the system for the better, instead of arguing over the obvious account luck factor.

Overhaul the loot system to be semi-random. There should be streak breakers in place to prevent extreme outcomes. No one should get 5 precursor drops in a week, and no one should go 3 years of heavy play without a single drop. Games are supposed to be balanced and fun, true RNG is neither balanced nor fun.

These threads will never stop until the loot system is overhauled to be semi-random.

I agree with this. We had the thread on RNG that was sorta guided (see my posts on survey bias), but ultimately lead no where. It is in Anets best interest that players are happy. One of the major aspects of this game that is almost universally considered poor is the loot system. It just makes sense that they would want to address it. On an individual employee level it is in their best interest that nothing happens. Nothing happens means less work, less stress, and higher comfort zone. (note I am not calling anyone out this is just a reality of working life).

Zackie.8923:

Aguri.2896:

I think what people are perceiving as unlucky accounts and lucky accounts is just a massive case of diminished returns.

I used to be a really active farmer, I would farm frostgorge and dungeons for hours daily back when it was the thing (and I would alternate between 8 characters to do so) and got no ascended chest for months, and months of regular playing. Now, I hardly do any dungeons and have only farmed a tiny bit in the silverwastes (only using about 4 characters now) and in the same amount of months I have gotten four ascended chests drop.

I’ve also noticed that my friends who are less active are always the ones who get better loot. So, basically play less = more loot. Which makes sense. If people will play your game because they want to farm for money and items, why give them any? Keep them farming, keep them playing.

yep, this is what i noticed too after 2.5 years.

If true this is totally unfair, all players need rewarding, and if you play more you shouldn’t be punished, and newer accounts should not be rewarded better, just to keep them playing.

Really annoyed as I have not gotten anything loot wise hardly in the game, certainly no precursors or beta keys

FYI, I just got another Dusk to drop on my alt account from a TA run.

That makes 4 Dusk drops on an account with less than 1k achievement points.

Someone want to explain that one to me? My main account has yet to get a precursor to drop. It’s not a broken system though, you’re right. :p

JackSpacer.4320:

FYI, I just got another Dusk to drop on my alt account from a TA run.

That makes 4 Dusk drops on an account with less than 1k achievement points.

Someone want to explain that one to me? My main account has yet to get a precursor to drop. It’s not a broken system though, you’re right. :p

Give me one!! T.T Thats just insane though, im really jealous, ive wanted that thing forever or dawn but it wont happen till HOT hits… But that is the topic of this thread! Grats on the FOURTH dusk drop…whatever you do with it >.<

Dante.1763:

JackSpacer.4320:

FYI, I just got another Dusk to drop on my alt account from a TA run.

That makes 4 Dusk drops on an account with less than 1k achievement points.

Someone want to explain that one to me? My main account has yet to get a precursor to drop. It’s not a broken system though, you’re right. :p

Give me one!! T.T Thats just insane though, im really jealous, ive wanted that thing forever or dawn but it wont happen till HOT hits… But that is the topic of this thread! Grats on the FOURTH dusk drop…whatever you do with it >.<

I made one Twilight, sold the other precursors and turned Twilight into a Greatsaw. Now I just link it in map chat to watch people rage.

Oh the funniness.

JackSpacer.4320:

I made one Twilight, sold the other precursors and turned Twilight into a Greatsaw. Now I just link it in map chat to watch people rage.

Oh the funniness.

Oooo thats mean! I imagine people rage alot i just say congrats and go off and rant to myself about the terrible RNG my account seems to have! xD if i had anywhere near the amount of money it goes for id offer to buy it off ya, i still cant believe(Well i can) that youve gotten 4 of them…

as a veteran player his thread saddens me a lot.

JackSpacer.4320:

FYI, I just got another Dusk to drop on my alt account from a TA run.

That makes 4 Dusk drops on an account with less than 1k achievement points.

Someone want to explain that one to me? My main account has yet to get a precursor to drop. It’s not a broken system though, you’re right. :p

Let me know when you get spark. Could really use it right now…just saying

Everyone saying that no one is providing factual evidence please enlighten me how you would go about obtaining this evidence. There are so many factors that play into DR and there’s no reliable way to say that your DR has “worn off.” There is no way for us to test this.

DR is real. Certain events such as leaving a character in Sparkfly to farm Teq over and over will result in loss of chests because of DR. Here we can see a specific example. But random things like simply zoning can reset DR for some people. But others have to do more than that and go do some events or dungeons as well to reset this DR for this event. What we don’t know, and never will know, and can’t test, is how DR works for other events or on mobs. Are there different types of DR? Such as an overall mob DR where you kill X amount of things in a X amount of time and you are reaching DR that carries through zones and takes 24 hours to reset (which in some cases may never reset for people who play daily). Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t, but there’s no way to test this as other factors might also affect DR (maybe salvaging for ectos affects DR from drops from mobs, or getting obi shards from bandit chest affects this DR). There’s too many confounding variables to actually test this. But that doesn’t mean we should give up and ignore it or say it isn’t real when it very well could be.

Essence Snow.3194:

It is in Anets best interest that players are happy. One of the major aspects of this game that is almost universally considered poor is the loot system. It just makes sense that they would want to address it. On an individual employee level it is in their best interest that nothing happens. Nothing happens means less work, less stress, and higher comfort zone. (note I am not calling anyone out this is just a reality of working life).

Two things:

1. This poster assumes that it is in ANet’s best interest to make players happy. This is false. ANet’s best interest is served by producing profits. This goal is best obtained by keeping players playing. MMO’s are about loot. Players will only be happy when they get the loot they want as fast as possible. They will then demand more loot, and the content to go with it. MMO developers need to find a balance between making loot seem so bad that players quit and game longevity, which is served by keeping carrots in front of players.
2. The backhanded slap to the professionals who are on staff is unwarranted. If there is a problem with the GW2 loot system, those problems are the result of design decisions that are rooted in the philosophy behind the game, and reinforced by management decisions.

Andraus.3874:

Everyone saying that no one is providing factual evidence please enlighten me how you would go about obtaining this evidence. There are so many factors that play into DR and there’s no reliable way to say that your DR has “worn off.” There is no way for us to test this.

DR is real. Certain events such as leaving a character in Sparkfly to farm Teq over and over will result in loss of chests because of DR. Here we can see a specific example. But random things like simply zoning can reset DR for some people. But others have to do more than that and go do some events or dungeons as well to reset this DR for this event. What we don’t know, and never will know, and can’t test, is how DR works for other events or on mobs. Are there different types of DR? Such as an overall mob DR where you kill X amount of things in a X amount of time and you are reaching DR that carries through zones and takes 24 hours to reset (which in some cases may never reset for people who play daily). Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t, but there’s no way to test this as other factors might also affect DR (maybe salvaging for ectos affects DR from drops from mobs, or getting obi shards from bandit chest affects this DR). There’s too many confounding variables to actually test this. But that doesn’t mean we should give up and ignore it or say it isn’t real when it very well could be.

This exactly.

IndigoSundown.5419:

1. The backhanded slap to the professionals who are on staff is unwarranted. If there is a problem with the GW2 loot system, those problems are the result of design decisions that are rooted in the philosophy behind the game, and reinforced by management decisions.

If there’s a problem with the loot system that could mean a bug. If there is some type of DR/unlucky accounts that a player can’t get rid of because they play consistently, there’s no way you know for certain it’s a design choice. It very well could be a bug unless you know the code or work for Anet. Though I agree we don’t need to be attacking the devs here and that doesn’t add anything constructive to this thread.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Essence Snow.3194:

It is in Anets best interest that players are happy. One of the major aspects of this game that is almost universally considered poor is the loot system. It just makes sense that they would want to address it. On an individual employee level it is in their best interest that nothing happens. Nothing happens means less work, less stress, and higher comfort zone. (note I am not calling anyone out this is just a reality of working life).

Two things:

1. This poster assumes that it is in ANet’s best interest to make players happy. This is false. ANet’s best interest is served by producing profits. This goal is best obtained by keeping players playing. MMO’s are about loot. Players will only be happy when they get the loot they want as fast as possible. They will then demand more loot, and the content to go with it. MMO developers need to find a balance between making loot seem so bad that players quit and game longevity, which is served by keeping carrots in front of players.
2. The backhanded slap to the professionals who are on staff is unwarranted. If there is a problem with the GW2 loot system, those problems are the result of design decisions that are rooted in the philosophy behind the game, and reinforced by management decisions.

You are suggesting that games are not meant to be fun. That fun is not the basis of game sales and therefor profits?

As to your second comment I specifically added the note to address that assumption. It’s just a reality of working. Kinda like saying it’s dangerous in Australia . I’m not trying to insult Australia….I’m simply saying that it is indeed dangerous there as there are numerous dangerous animals there.. It reminds me of a quote from Sean Bean from Troy “It’s not an insult to say that a dead king is dead.” I know the truth hurts, but I am not intending to hurt anyone, I am simply stating the truth.

Hmmm….. that is way too many coincidences. That’s for sure. My guess is that from a new player’s perspective, if they get good loot early on, they may be even more incentivized to play. With that said, I don’t know why even bother with magic find increases at all if more experienced accounts are just not going to see it actually bear good results. It’s just the same old greens and blues waiting to be melted.

Essence Snow.3194:

Garth Thurgen.1380:

snip.

Thanks for taking the time to write that out. I’ll make my response rather simple for the sake of brevity.

Why must there be a burden of proof? Is it not enough that the game is known for poor loot? That so many players have issue? I think that requiring those in a game that feel there is an issue such as this that impacts the “fun” they might be having to meticulously gather data (which is most likely not fun) is sort of absurd. Anet is in the business of fun. They should be concerned when there is something that is such magnitude effecting that business. Making players who feel their fun is diminished, diminish it further to address their concerns……sounds strange to me.

That aside…The other things I wanted to quickly note is that most of my and other players with the same concerns “observational data” has been over long periods of time. This is not one week. These are consistencies, that have become predictable. Sort of like house odds. Do they know they will win all the time? Nope. But, they do know they will win over time…and boy do they.

The reason there’s a need for “burden of proof” is that it’s what gives your claims any merit, and moves them beyond just being you saying things for the sake of saying them. If you have no proof, then the people saying “RNG will be RNG” have more truth in what they say. While RNG is random, and by that nature you cannot just easily decipher it in short term scenarios, saying the RNG is borked is a quantifiable statement that can be proven or disproved, and a statement of such must actually proven to hold any weight what-so-ever.

Similarly, this game is known for its “poor loot” not because of RNG, but because of how crazy easy it is to obtain through non-RNG methods. Exotics in other games would take weeks, if not months to obtain. Here, on the other hand, you can make them in seconds through easily obtainable materials, you can buy them with gold that it takes less than an hour to accrue, or you can farm boss bags at an extreme rate and obtain them in a couple of hours. This has lead to the bar being completely different across many different things. Something like Bonetti’s Rapier would have been considered absolutely amazing loot during the early portions of 2014, but because of the advent of the Silverwastes the prices on the weapon have been absolutely crushed. Now a nearly perfect weapon that has both a unique skin, has a story reference, and has the best possible stats + a good Sigil for its rarity (things that would make this an amazingly desired weapon that would be worth crazy amounts in any other game) is just barely worth anything and anyone can buy it for practically nothing. The same could be said for rares, which are thrown at you with a complete passion. That is, they’re thrown at you in extreme numbers, and in extremely predictable patterns that anyone could figure out.

And to “feel fun” is a completely subjective thing that should not be changed strictly because of a vocal minority. Especially when this “fun” doesn’t have anything to do with reality, and is strictly the vocal minority complaining about something as trivial as someone else having better luck than them (and without any proof on the matter, that’s exactly what it is: only a complaint about someone being more lucky than them). This isn’t a gameplay thing, this isn’t a quality of life thing, and this most definitely isn’t a substantial thing until proven. “Feeling fun” is your personal take on a situation, and can completely change at the drop of a hat based on completely trivial things. Such as the concept of “RNG is biased based on account, regardless of magic find.”

Finally, your “observational data” is nice, but is irrelevant if you’ve never put them down on paper. If you’ve not written down your exact amounts, or even approximate amounts, as you’re doing them, then having such data is irrelevant. As an easy way to put it: if you have your “approximate observational data,” and there’s supposed to be an exact opposite account for drops based entirely on this conspiracy, then the overall net account luck hasn’t changed. So either write down your numbers, or understand that your claims don’t go past claims and that literally anything can “disprove” your statements (in the exact same way that your statement was made in the first place).

Garth Thurgen.1380:

The reason there’s a need for “burden of proof” is that it’s what gives your claims any merit, and moves them beyond just being you saying things for the sake of saying them. If you have no proof, then the people saying “RNG will be RNG” have more truth in what they say. While RNG is random, and by that nature you cannot just easily decipher it in short term scenarios, saying the RNG is borked is a quantifiable statement that can be proven or disproved, and a statement of such must actually proven to hold any weight what-so-ever.

Similarly, this game is known for its “poor loot” not because of RNG, but because of how crazy easy it is to obtain through non-RNG methods. Exotics in other games would take weeks, if not months to obtain. Here, on the other hand, you can make them in seconds through easily obtainable materials, you can buy them with gold that it takes less than an hour to accrue, or you can farm boss bags at an extreme rate and obtain them in a couple of hours. This has lead to the bar being completely different across many different things. Something like Bonetti’s Rapier would have been considered absolutely amazing loot during the early portions of 2014, but because of the advent of the Silverwastes the prices on the weapon have been absolutely crushed. Now a nearly perfect weapon that has both a unique skin, has a story reference, and has the best possible stats + a good Sigil for its rarity (things that would make this an amazingly desired weapon that would be worth crazy amounts in any other game) is just barely worth anything and anyone can buy it for practically nothing. The same could be said for rares, which are thrown at you with a complete passion. That is, they’re thrown at you in extreme numbers, and in extremely predictable patterns that anyone could figure out.

And to “feel fun” is a completely subjective thing that should not be changed strictly because of a vocal minority. Especially when this “fun” doesn’t have anything to do with reality, and is strictly the vocal minority complaining about something as trivial as someone else having better luck than them (and without any proof on the matter, that’s exactly what it is: only a complaint about someone being more lucky than them). This isn’t a gameplay thing, this isn’t a quality of life thing, and this most definitely isn’t a substantial thing until proven. “Feeling fun” is your personal take on a situation, and can completely change at the drop of a hat based on completely trivial things. Such as the concept of “RNG is biased based on account, regardless of magic find.”

Finally, your “observational data” is nice, but is irrelevant if you’ve never put them down on paper. If you’ve not written down your exact amounts, or even approximate amounts, as you’re doing them, then having such data is irrelevant. As an easy way to put it: if you have your “approximate observational data,” and there’s supposed to be an exact opposite account for drops based entirely on this conspiracy, then the overall net account luck hasn’t changed. So either write down your numbers, or understand that your claims don’t go past claims and that literally anything can “disprove” your statements (in the exact same way that your statement was made in the first place).

Please explain to me how DR works, how long it lasts, why it lasts longer for some people than others doing the same events, how it applies to mobs, does salvaging or crafting to obtain exotic ectos or rare armor affect DR? Do bandit chest and looting obi shards affect mob drop DR? Does having 500 or 600 or 900+ gold make your DR kick in faster and last longer? How exactly would you go about testing this given all these confounding variables.

Again, just because it’s pretty impossible to test doesn’t mean we shouldn’t address it.

Here are some ideas that seem to be somewhat consistent about how DR works. But our information is very limited:
- zoning and/or playing in WvW does not reset DR.
- DR is character bound
- DR sticks to some people longer than other people. A majority of people can zone to reset TT or Teq DR but some people need to zone and do some dungeons or events to reset it.
- DR does not reset every 24 hours. If you play one character for to kill Teq in Sparkfly daily, and leave that character parked there for doing this daily, you will get DR and loos chests.

The sheer number of players who share this concern gives it merit alone imo.

I’m fairly certain most players would be pretty happy with Bonetti’s Rapier. It’s 10 fold better than what we typically get. (ignoring it’s acquisition of bags)

A vocal minority didn’t give this game a stigma of poor loot. It’s goes beyond them.

Anet has all the data. They can do the exact same thing it would take us as players years to do in a matter of minutes. I think it’s rather pretentious to expect us to do such.

A-net have already made a statement saying that accounts are all equal/there’s no cursed accounts.

The problem is, a lot of players don’t believe them.

People truly, whole-heartedly believe their experiences… even if they have been influenced by cognitive bias. They won’t be told otherwise. People are expecting a “Fixed a bug whereby some accounts are affected more by magic find than others” or something, and won’t be happy until they get it.

I strongly doubt that there is a bug (or intentional disparity). I will only properly consider this if I see some good data (and a lot of it).

It’d be really handy if there was an overlay that registered kills/mob level along with loot quality/quantity. That way we’d get a lot of data very easily and finally be able to put this thing to bed and find out more about how MF and DR works.

tigirius.9014:

It always amazes me the level of denial people deal with. If in fact in real life you were only taking home $200 a month for a job you worked 60 hours a week to try to reach your goal, some of these people’s arguments would be the equivalent of being told that “the burden of proof that you only get $200 a month is on you” “you should have learned how to work better and then maybe just maybe you might get noticed or something” and my personal favorite “you’re $200 is all in your imagination and you need to go check your wallet again because what you’re saying you’re getting and what you’re really getting isn’t the same because I saw a penny”.

This analogy really does not apply to the situation. As usual, when MMO posters use analogies from RL, they devise completely unrealistic situations that are ludicrous when examined. Inequity in drop rate is a perceived issue. A given wage is not a perceived issue, it’s a readily demonstrated fact. Postulating a statement that, “You actually make more than $200/month.” is nothing but creating a straw man.

The arguments against the OP’s claims are (generally) not suggesting that players aren’t getting crap drops. What they are suggesting is that the OP presents nowhere near enough information to prove anything, especially given ANet statements about the issue. There are too many unreported variables. The OP is appealing to “common knowledge” and presenting anecdotal evidence, rather than demonstrating something.

A while ago, someone posted the results of opening a lot of loot bags.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-just-opened-13985-bags/first

This is the sort of data needed to establish anything about loot in GW2. Why? Because there are millions of rolls for loot daily. Some players get hundreds, others get thousands. There are also a plethora of options for drops, which means huge loot tables.

I’m certainly not saying that the reward system is fun, however I believe that the reasons for that are embedded in the philosophy of the game. There are too many gear tiers. The loot tables are too big, resulting in exceptionally small chances at any given item. There are very few items that are valued, and thus worth anything. With huge tables, the best way to generate a representative average is to do a study with a very large sample size.

Come back with that, and we’ll talk.

People there is no possible way for us to collect data to test this because of multiple confounding variables. So stop suggesting that. It’s not possible and any data we would get would not be valid nor reliable to actually draw any conclusions. Please read my other posts on this page (pg 3) if you don’t understand how this is impossible to test. If you seriously figure out a way to test this with taking into account every variable please let me know.

Andraus.3874:

Please explain to me how DR works, how long it lasts, why it lasts longer for some people than others doing the same events, how it applies to mobs, does salvaging or crafting to obtain exotic ectos or rare armor affect DR? Do bandit chest and looting obi shards affect mob drop DR? How exactly would you go about testing this given all these confounding variables.

Again, just because it’s pretty impossible to test doesn’t mean we shouldn’t address it.

There are two kinds of diminishing returns I’ve found in the game: Event-based, or drop-based. The latter one is extremely hard to actually get to as a player, and pretty much only possible to obtain it if you bot. It requires an extremely high amount of time in the same area where you’re just killing enemies (doing it with the same type of enemy greatly increases the speed of DR, but is still so slow as to be almost impossible to obtain outside of the Karka farm… and only after several hours at that). Event-based, on the other hand, is a simple reduction of event rewards based on the event over some amount of time. For dungeons, doing the dungeon more than once will give DR. For open world events, doing the exact same event(s) over and over will eventually cause DR (though, the amount of time taken to do it as a “normal” player, and not one just chain spamming the same couple of events, would be utterly astronomical). Nothing else interacts with DR in any perceivable manner. Salvaging doesn’t get worse when you salvage tens of thousands of times at the same time. Bandit Chests don’t really change their loot % even after spending hours in the Silverwastes. Boss bags continue to give the same loot even after opening an entire inventory’s worth.

As for testing it… the only easy way to do so for the two that have been shown in the game would just be to do the Karka farm. After about an hour has passed you will start to see drastic reduction on the event that the farm finishes (importantly, it’s the only event being finished), and the overall amount of loot will start to decrease in a notable manner (it will be a bit over time, but there’s a point where you can really point and go “this is definitely less loot” at around the hour mark). Doing it in other locations is possible, but extremely hard to get near the numbers needed to quickly enough to reasonably point to DR (ie. sub four hours). As an example, I farmed Centaurs for well over an hour yet never had any notable drop decrease. This leads to the belief that the amount of enemies killed is extremely relevant, not just the time taken in a small area. For the rest, I’ve done way too much of them/other people have done way too much of them, and never seen even close to anything resembling DR. If opening chests for 12+ hours in one sitting isn’t good enough, there’s no DR. If Salvaging thousands of things at once isn’t good enough, there’s no DR. If opening tens of thousands of boss bags at once isn’t good enough, there’s no DR. Though there’s always the argument that “DR could be just beyond the tested amount,” but the amounts done are so far beyond the realm of reasonable that it just wouldn’t matter even if there was DR somewhere down the extremely long road.

Yes but How do you know your DR from farming Karkas doesn’t carry through with you onto your dungeon run? How can you tell if you have reached DR for exotic armor or weapon drops? Does that DR reset after a certain amount of time or after a certain number of events. Does your amount of time doing nothing on that charater affect DR? Maybe taking a break for a month affects your DR for exotics or having a new account or only playing for X amount of hours or minutes a day. You’ve pointed out two ways you have observed DR which most people would agree with but how do you know there aren’t more?

Essence Snow.3194:

You are suggesting that games are not meant to be fun. That fun is not the basis of game sales and therefor profits?

MMO’s are not the same as most other games.

The MMO audience demand both longevity and lengthy play sessions. The psychological experience of fun is generally achieved when people lose themselves in the game. This generally happens via experiencing a new challenge that one overcomes. Programming limitations mean that new challenges cannot be put into the game fast enough to provide new challenges for those who play a lot. So, MMO developers replace new challenges with anticipation and fulfillment experiences. Thus, someone can be playing content by rote — which means no challenge and no sense of accomplishment — but still get a “rush” when the chance for a desired reward happens and another rush when the actual item is gained.

Most other games that get played repeatedly compensate for repetition differently. In sports, for instance, victory is a powerful motivator. The same is true with PvP games (or PvP modes in MMO’s — but even there, lack of variety in game modes is an issue). Also, games with high skill thresholds generate fun by presenting constant challenge. Sports are again a good example. Anyone can play, but even the best players do not maintain the highest levels of performance perpetually. Thus, the game is challenging over time.

This is not to say MMO’s don’t offer fun. There can be challenges in MMO’s, but they generally don’t stand the test of time very well. Making MMO’s more generally accessible (and thus more profitable) tends to reduce the life expectancy of content, because making the game more accessible means making it easier.

Sure, MMO’s can be about fun initially. However, the ongoing MMO experience is based around creating an ongoing addiction to reward systems.

Essence Snow.3194:

Sorin.4310:

Essence Snow.3194:

I know others will say" RNG is RNG"….sorry I’m just not buying it. There are too many coincidences for that to fly anymore. I also know others will say…“we are programed to find patterns when there aren’t any”…sorry not buying that as the patterns emerge on their own accord.

If you are unwilling to listen to the reasons why this happens, then what possible discussion were you hoping to have? “Agree with me or don’t post”?

Not in the slightest. I am more than willing to discuss the matter when valid points are made. No one making the claim that “rng is rng” has given any decent reasoning to why that is a valid counter point as of yet. If you would like to, I’d be more than happy to read though it and consider how it applies.

So to expand on this a little bit more. The conversation of it typically goes:

a)“I think our loot system is borked”
b)“Nope, rng is rng”
a)“Huh?”
b)“Rng will have some lucky and some unlucky by default”
a)“So, what does that have to do with the loot system being borked?”
b)“Any outcome can be explained as random”
a)“That might explain outcomes, but it doesn’t address whether the system is borked”
b)“It makes evidence redundant, therefor denies the possibility of a broken system”
a)“Uhmm ya, that sounds more like a cop out”
b)“Nope rng is rng”

Yes but all evidence that the system is borked is completely anecdotal and perceived imbalances. You having two accounts with two different loot experiences is completely normal. Is it bad design? Maybe. Is it broken though? No statistical evidence says it is. If I can be bothered, I’ll put some actual stats stuff to show just how wildly different outcomes can be, even over a long period, with randomness.

Essence Snow.3194:

The sheer number of players who share this concern gives it merit alone imo.

I’m fairly certain most players would be pretty happy with Bonetti’s Rapier. It’s 10 fold better than what we typically get. (ignoring it’s acquisition of bags)

A vocal minority didn’t give this game a stigma of poor loot. It’s goes beyond them.

Anet has all the data. They can do the exact same thing it would take us as players years to do in a matter of minutes. I think it’s rather pretentious to expect us to do such.

Whether or not they can do it in seconds means nothing when your stance explicitly requires that you say “They’re lying! They have all the data, and they can find this out in seconds, but they’re lying!” Either you put up with the fact that your statement holds literally no merit, or you put out some data to put substance into your claims. Yes it would take work, but so would them creating a non-RNG system to make drops “feel more random” (ie. give people more rare stuff at given intervals). Similarly, the total % of people that feel this way is absolutely minuscule, and it doesn’t mean anything by their sheer existence.

The Bonetti’s Rapier was also an example, not an all encompassing thing. The easier example to make the point would be the Twister in a Jar from the Silverwastes/Dry Top, but the fact you can go with the concept of “It’s 10x better than what we normally get” leads me to believe that you’re finding no problem to the drops at large. The Exotics still feel exotic, even if they aren’t actually 10x better than what you’re getting. If the Bonatti’s Rapier, which based on price is only ~6x better than Powerful Blood (based on price, which is an adequate measure of desire for this game due to its extremely open market), draws higher interest than its actual value would entail, then the loot in this game must hold the intrinsic value that would be desired by any standard rare-drop from an MMO (Powerful Blood being a generic example in this case, in which the T6 mats have become increasingly easy to obtain with it included).

Andraus.3874:

People there is no possible way for us to collect data to test this because of multiple confounding variables. So stop suggesting that. It’s not possible and any data we would get would not be valid nor reliable to actually draw any conclusions. Please read my other posts on this page (pg 3) if you don’t understand how this is impossible to test. If you seriously figure out a way to test this with taking into account every variable please let me know.

This has already been addressed back in the old Black Lion forum, and Essence knows this because he was around when John Smith said “give me enough information to theoretically indicate something is wrong and I’ll investigate.” It’s happened at least twice before on the forums, players were posting “something is wrong with X” and the devs weren’t concerned until someone said “here’s some numbers…” and they investigated the issue and fixed the problems.

Track every drop and record the contents of every loot bag for a month. Get a handful of other players to go around with you, doing the same content at the same time, and record their drops too. If you can show that “the guildie who trips over a Dusk every three steps” really does get proportionally more loot than seems normal, or that you get hit with DR faster/longer than other players doing the same content, then you have an argument.

That won’t happen, though, because the devs can check the game logs and see what you were really doing during those times and what loot actually dropped. If you giving them kitten data they will know it.

The same threads have been going on for years, with many of the same names behind them, and never once have they produced any real data more meaningful than “this feels wrong.” Twice, someone stepped forward and produced data and the reaction of the devs was immediate and meaningful.

Until you produce some data more concrete than feelings and second- and third-hand loot bragging (guildie can buy a precursor or even just post the chat code and pretend he just got it, that doesn’t mean anything unless he has video of opening the loot chest) then nothing is going to happen.

MrWubzy.3587:

This makes no sense to me. Why would they put in something like this that makes older accounts LESS lucky?

- They need to hook the new players. Older players are already playing, duh!

Garth Thurgen.1380:

Essence Snow.3194:

The sheer number of players who share this concern gives it merit alone imo.

I’m fairly certain most players would be pretty happy with Bonetti’s Rapier. It’s 10 fold better than what we typically get. (ignoring it’s acquisition of bags)

A vocal minority didn’t give this game a stigma of poor loot. It’s goes beyond them.

Anet has all the data. They can do the exact same thing it would take us as players years to do in a matter of minutes. I think it’s rather pretentious to expect us to do such.

Whether or not they can do it in seconds means nothing when your stance explicitly requires that you say “They’re lying! They have all the data, and they can find this out in seconds, but they’re lying!” Either you put up with the fact that your statement holds literally no merit, or you put out some data to put substance into your claims. Yes it would take work, but so would them creating a non-RNG system to make drops “feel more random” (ie. give people more rare stuff at given intervals). Similarly, the total % of people that feel this way is absolutely minuscule, and it doesn’t mean anything by their sheer existence.

I never said “they’re lying”. Not at all. Possibly unaware of an issue, yes. Possibly unwilling to check for an issue maybe, but not lying.

tolunart.2095:

Andraus.3874:

People there is no possible way for us to collect data to test this because of multiple confounding variables. So stop suggesting that. It’s not possible and any data we would get would not be valid nor reliable to actually draw any conclusions. Please read my other posts on this page (pg 3) if you don’t understand how this is impossible to test. If you seriously figure out a way to test this with taking into account every variable please let me know.

This has already been addressed back in the old Black Lion forum, and Essence knows this because he was around when John Smith said “give me enough information to theoretically indicate something is wrong and I’ll investigate.” It’s happened at least twice before on the forums, players were posting “something is wrong with X” and the devs weren’t concerned until someone said “here’s some numbers…” and they investigated the issue and fixed the problems.

Track every drop and record the contents of every loot bag for a month. Get a handful of other players to go around with you, doing the same content at the same time, and record their drops too. If you can show that “the guildie who trips over a Dusk every three steps” really does get proportionally more loot than seems normal, or that you get hit with DR faster/longer than other players doing the same content, then you have an argument.

That won’t happen, though, because the devs can check the game logs and see what you were really doing during those times and what loot actually dropped. If you giving them kitten data they will know it.

The same threads have been going on for years, with many of the same names behind them, and never once have they produced any real data more meaningful than “this feels wrong.” Twice, someone stepped forward and produced data and the reaction of the devs was immediate and meaningful.

Until you produce some data more concrete than feelings and second- and third-hand loot bragging (guildie can buy a precursor or even just post the chat code and pretend he just got it, that doesn’t mean anything unless he has video of opening the loot chest) then nothing is going to happen.

See that is the problem. Who is going to run around and do the same exact things with you. You’re going to have to use the same class, do the same damage, kill the same number of mobs and do this for months and months. Who seriously is going to do that. Otherwise your results have no validity. It was easy to do this when fractal drop rates were messed up. Everyone gets an end chest regardless of damage delt, their class, their time spent in the game etc, how many things they killed etc. this would be much much harder to test to the point it would be a chore/job and even then you still have varibles that could possibly come into play that most people aren’t going to account for like your amount of gold you have on you or your karma or maybe already having one or more legendaries. We don’t know what affects this phenomenon and to take into account for everything is on the verge of impossible.

Maybe you could call it laziness then on the advocates of this thread and that’s why we won’t ever get an answer. But seriously you can’t expect for a large group of people to test this and try to take into account every variable. If one person can’t log in one day out of the couple months you plan to do it then no one can log in or you already borked your experiment. That’s rather unrealistic.

Essence Snow.3194:

Garth Thurgen.1380:

Essence Snow.3194:

The sheer number of players who share this concern gives it merit alone imo.

I’m fairly certain most players would be pretty happy with Bonetti’s Rapier. It’s 10 fold better than what we typically get. (ignoring it’s acquisition of bags)

A vocal minority didn’t give this game a stigma of poor loot. It’s goes beyond them.

Anet has all the data. They can do the exact same thing it would take us as players years to do in a matter of minutes. I think it’s rather pretentious to expect us to do such.

Whether or not they can do it in seconds means nothing when your stance explicitly requires that you say “They’re lying! They have all the data, and they can find this out in seconds, but they’re lying!” Either you put up with the fact that your statement holds literally no merit, or you put out some data to put substance into your claims. Yes it would take work, but so would them creating a non-RNG system to make drops “feel more random” (ie. give people more rare stuff at given intervals). Similarly, the total % of people that feel this way is absolutely minuscule, and it doesn’t mean anything by their sheer existence.

I never said “they’re lying”. Not at all. Possibly unaware of an issue, yes. Possibly unwilling to check for an issue maybe, but not lying.

No, you’ve only implied it. That, however, changes nothing. When your entire stance hinges on them doing a bunch of work for something that hasn’t been shown to ever exist (because finding bugs in code is extremely difficult, even for very simple problems), and yet you have nothing at all that you’re willing to do for such a stance other than voice it over and over, then there’s no difference between you saying that they’re lying. Either put out with your own investigation, just like how people in the past have done to prove that their problem actually existed, or understand that your claims are that of a small child yelling at its parents. They hold no weight, they hold no validity, and they aren’t something worth looking into (ignoring the fact that they already have been looked into).

Nitpicking only goes so far on the Internet, and doesn’t hold any major weight in the real world outside of law (Though, the fact that not one person has pointed out that my calculations on drop chance were actually from 400% Magic Find, not 500%, makes me sad. Such an easy calculation, yet even the Internet didn’t nitpick about it. ). At this point, either put something substantial on the table, or I’m not even going to bother with replying. Put out, or pack it up.

I agree, I too believe rng is extremely broken, but those of us who believe this HAVE to give and show proof. This means snapping a pic after every kill/world boss BEFORE actually taking the loot into inventory.

What we should do is conduct a small experiment. For example 5-10 people will record their experiences fighting the same world boss. Will do this for a week everyday at the same time. And just do a small comparison between accounts. Of coarse we would need the participation of 5 “young” accounts and 5 “old” ones. All data will need to be recorded and time stamped. If anyone’s down to try this, I suggest you get a team together to help prove or disprove RNGs flaws.

Recorded and taking a small dip of info from this can shine some light on what direction this is truly going. Will it conclude anything? No. But it IS a start in finding out what’s going on.

Garth Thurgen.1380:

Essence Snow.3194:

Garth Thurgen.1380:

Essence Snow.3194:

The sheer number of players who share this concern gives it merit alone imo.

I’m fairly certain most players would be pretty happy with Bonetti’s Rapier. It’s 10 fold better than what we typically get. (ignoring it’s acquisition of bags)

A vocal minority didn’t give this game a stigma of poor loot. It’s goes beyond them.

Anet has all the data. They can do the exact same thing it would take us as players years to do in a matter of minutes. I think it’s rather pretentious to expect us to do such.

Whether or not they can do it in seconds means nothing when your stance explicitly requires that you say “They’re lying! They have all the data, and they can find this out in seconds, but they’re lying!” Either you put up with the fact that your statement holds literally no merit, or you put out some data to put substance into your claims. Yes it would take work, but so would them creating a non-RNG system to make drops “feel more random” (ie. give people more rare stuff at given intervals). Similarly, the total % of people that feel this way is absolutely minuscule, and it doesn’t mean anything by their sheer existence.

I never said “they’re lying”. Not at all. Possibly unaware of an issue, yes. Possibly unwilling to check for an issue maybe, but not lying.

No, you’ve only implied it. That, however, changes nothing. When your entire stance hinges on them doing a bunch of work for something that hasn’t been shown to ever exist (because finding bugs in code is extremely difficult, even for very simple problems), and yet you have nothing at all that you’re willing to do for such a stance other than voice it over and over, then there’s no difference between you saying that they’re lying. Either put out with your own investigation, just like how people in the past have done to prove that their problem actually existed, or understand that your claims are that of a small child yelling at its parents. They hold no weight, they hold no validity, and they aren’t something worth looking into (ignoring the fact that they already have been looked into).

Nitpicking only goes so far on the Internet, and doesn’t hold any major weight in the real world outside of law (Though, the fact that not one person has pointed out that my calculations on drop chance were actually from 400% Magic Find, not 500%, makes me sad. Such an easy calculation, yet even the Internet didn’t nitpick about it. ). At this point, either put something substantial on the table, or I’m not even going to bother with replying. Put out, or pack it up.

They could take the data that they have vastly easier access to (the very same if not better that you want us to get) to see if there is something warranted. Then worry about the need to look for a bug in coding.

It’s like asking someone to go find a pay phone when you have a cell phone in your pocket. Just use the cell phone. Saying that the other person isn’t worthy of making the phone call when they don’t necessarily want to wander around looking for a pay phone when they know you have one in your pocket is……..well just think about it for a second.

And religion was born.

This reminds me of the Horseshoe religion in Lord of the Rings Online, some people were convinced it had special powers even after the devs confirmed it did nothing.

FearSeven.6357:

And religion was born.

This reminds me of the Horseshoe religion in Lord of the Rings Online, some people were convinced it had special powers even after the devs confirmed it did nothing.

Seriously. They’ve already confirmed nothing is wrong (WTB working search function… I guess), yet people still refuse to believe it. The allure of the sheer fact that it’s technically possible to happen, and that the organization that says it’s not a thing also has information that cannot be directly viewed means that there’s something there. After all, the fact that someone somewhere has had something happen means that there’s something there to substantiate the claim in the first place.

Garth Thurgen.1380:

FearSeven.6357:

And religion was born.

This reminds me of the Horseshoe religion in Lord of the Rings Online, some people were convinced it had special powers even after the devs confirmed it did nothing.

Seriously. They’ve already confirmed nothing is wrong (WTB working search function… I guess), yet people still refuse to believe it. The allure of the sheer fact that it’s technically possible to happen, and that the organization that says it’s not a thing also has information that cannot be directly viewed means that there’s something there. After all, the fact that someone somewhere has had something happen means that there’s something there to substantiate the claim in the first place.

They never said they even investigated the possibility. That’s saying “There’s nothing wrong…..we didn’t look…but there’s nothing wrong.”

There have been examples even in this game where they have said nothing was wrong only to find out later that there were indeed issues.

TheFool.4589:

I agree, I too believe rng is extremely broken, but those of us who believe this HAVE to give and show proof. This means snapping a pic after every kill/world boss BEFORE actually taking the loot into inventory.

What we should do is conduct a small experiment. For example 5-10 people will record their experiences fighting the same world boss. Will do this for a week everyday at the same time. And just do a small comparison between accounts. Of coarse we would need the participation of 5 “young” accounts and 5 “old” ones. All data will need to be recorded and time stamped. If anyone’s down to try this, I suggest you get a team together to help prove or disprove RNGs flaws.

Recorded and taking a small dip of info from this can shine some light on what direction this is truly going. Will it conclude anything? No. But it IS a start in finding out what’s going on.

This is what I meant. It doesn’t have to be 100 level 53 warriors each carrying exactly 12g 15s with the same equipment and traits killing the same creatures in unison like some insane multiboxer… just get records of drops from 10-20 accounts over a period of time and see if one or two accounts consistently get the same results that set that account apart from the others.

Of course, I believe that the truth behind this “bug” hunt is a combination of poor memory, human nature and opportunistic trolling. In those cases I can understand why one would be reluctant to attempt such a project: fear that you’ll look foolish if it turns out your drops are pretty consistently average after all, or in the case of trolling the posters already know they’re just making this stuff up and don’t want to admit it.

This sounds similar to the theorised code that gives returning players monster drops. Both sound like something Anet would do, to get people to play.

All Essence Snow needs to do is to show that his assertion is correct. He is claiming that his two accounts get markedly different loot when played as he normally plays.

So, he plays as he normally plays but keeps a record of the drops. One day he plays one account and the next day the other. What he can do is keep a record for the same amount of time, let’s say one hour each day and play do the same general things 2 days in a row. Say, 2 days of doing Silverwastes or 2 days of dungeon running.

It doesn’t need to be exact because his claim isn’t exact. His claim is only ‘I get more/better loot when playing on one than the other’. All he needs to show is a marked disparity of loot drops doing his normal play.

CookieMonster.5869:

Andraus.3874:

Everyone saying that no one is providing factual evidence please enlighten me how you would go about obtaining this evidence. There are so many factors that play into DR and there’s no reliable way to say that your DR has “worn off.” There is no way for us to test this.

DR is real. Certain events such as leaving a character in Sparkfly to farm Teq over and over will result in loss of chests because of DR. Here we can see a specific example. But random things like simply zoning can reset DR for some people. But others have to do more than that and go do some events or dungeons as well to reset this DR for this event. What we don’t know, and never will know, and can’t test, is how DR works for other events or on mobs. Are there different types of DR? Such as an overall mob DR where you kill X amount of things in a X amount of time and you are reaching DR that carries through zones and takes 24 hours to reset (which in some cases may never reset for people who play daily). Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t, but there’s no way to test this as other factors might also affect DR (maybe salvaging for ectos affects DR from drops from mobs, or getting obi shards from bandit chest affects this DR). There’s too many confounding variables to actually test this. But that doesn’t mean we should give up and ignore it or say it isn’t real when it very well could be.

This exactly.

It very much is real. They keep using the argument that this is the same for other games, it’s not there’s a reason why all of the MMOs have left DR behind and this is the reason. They cannot effectively remove bots without harming the players this way, that’s always been the problem.

Oh and to those who keep saying that you can’t test the results you can test the results you can look in your bags and see all of the grey skulls you received.

dietzero.3514:

This sounds similar to the theorised code that gives returning players monster drops. Both sound like something Anet would do, to get people to play.

They might indeed have done that – the problem is, it is impossible to get the effects they might have wanted without, at the same time, making the manipulation obvious.

Astralporing.1957:

…

It doesn’t need to be exact because his claim isn’t exact. His claim is only ‘I get more/better loot when playing on one than the other’. All he needs to show is a marked disparity of loot drops doing his normal play.

Gaussian distribution again. Him getting exactly the same drop rate on both accounts would actually be more suspicious.

Just to be devil’s advocate here, this is his claim:

“Here’s my issue: My newer account gets drastically better loot. My main account hardly ever gets exotics while my new account gets them frequently. I had always had suspicion that certain players had better drops on average than other. In my guild and ally guilds we know which players will consistently get better drops. It’s so predictable it’s not funny. But, as all that was second hand I couldn’t ever really experience it for myself. Well, now I have.”

So if we establish some basic threshold for “drastically better” such as, Account B gets 2x as many exotics over a month than Account A, then actually documenting the drops via video capture or screenshot would easily establish his claim is plausible, at least to the point where it could convince JS or another dev to run some simulations and see if there is anything going on.

Of course, if “twice as many” means two exotic drops in one month, it just means that Essence is prone to hyperbolic bragging.

Just an idea, but Diablo has a system where if you don’t get a legendary (equivalent of exotics in this game) for a long time it will progressively buff the drop rate, so that RNG never gets too far into the negative. I personally love this system. It would take a lot of work to add something like this no doubt, but it’s just an idea. And before people blast me for bringing up another game

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-Give-Good-Feedback/first#post3383470

specifically the part where it says “Consider: How have you seen this particular problem solved in other games?”

tolunart.2095:

Just to be devil’s advocate here, this is his claim:

“Here’s my issue: My newer account gets drastically better loot. My main account hardly ever gets exotics while my new account gets them frequently. I had always had suspicion that certain players had better drops on average than other. In my guild and ally guilds we know which players will consistently get better drops. It’s so predictable it’s not funny. But, as all that was second hand I couldn’t ever really experience it for myself. Well, now I have.”

So if we establish some basic threshold for “drastically better” such as, Account B gets 2x as many exotics over a month than Account A, then actually documenting the drops via video capture or screenshot would easily establish his claim is plausible, at least to the point where it could convince JS or another dev to run some simulations and see if there is anything going on.

Of course, if “twice as many” means two exotic drops in one month, it just means that Essence is prone to hyperbolic bragging.

No, i actually mean that such difference is quite probable within a probabilistic system. Even assuming he plays both accounts equally (which i bet he isn’t).

Astralporing.1957:

No, i actually mean that such difference is quite probable within a probabilistic system. Even assuming he plays both accounts equally (which i bet he isn’t).

Not saying that I agree with the assertion – quite the opposite, I don’t recall seeing any numbers, despite the claim that loot is “drastically better” and easy to predict. I just mean that JS once said he would investigate similar claims if a plausible argument were made to show some kind of evidence of a problem. Despite repeated protests by several individuals, no such evidence was ever submitted.

So if someone wants to post verifiable numbers instead of feelings and “this guy in my guild gets soooo many precursor drops” stories, the discussion can move forward. Evasions and protests that it’s too hard to come up with the numbers is just noise.

This possible issue isn’t outside the realm of possibility. With that being said, some responses in this thread are on the verge of being rude. Dissenters of this thread have nothing to lose if this issue would be investigated. Well nothing to lose besides their ego trip by “proving” everyone else is wrong.

Andraus.3874:

This possible issue isn’t outside the realm of possibility. With that being said, some responses in this thread are on the verge of being rude. Dissenters of this thread have nothing to lose if this issue would be investigated. Well nothing to lose besides their ego trip by “proving” everyone else is wrong.

Definitely……15 chars

Andraus.3874:

This possible issue isn’t outside the realm of possibility. With that being said, some responses in this thread are on the verge of being rude. Dissenters of this thread have nothing to lose if this issue would be investigated. Well nothing to lose besides their ego trip by “proving” everyone else is wrong.

It doesn’t matter what any player thinks, if Essence or anyone else wants the devs to investigate then he has to demonstrate there is a problem… not prove his case like it was a murder trial but just post convincing enough numbers to make someone say “okay, that seems too consistent for a sufficiently random system, we’ll look into it.”

What has been posted so far is a repeat of many, many threads that have already been dismissed by the devs as being insufficient evidence of a problem. Someone needs to go beyond what has already been said in order to reach that point where they will consider action.

Otherwise, it’s just a small child saying “gimme a piece of candy… gimme a piece of candy… gimme a piece of candy…” out of the belief that Mama will eventually give in just to shut him up.

tolunart.2095:

Andraus.3874:

This possible issue isn’t outside the realm of possibility. With that being said, some responses in this thread are on the verge of being rude. Dissenters of this thread have nothing to lose if this issue would be investigated. Well nothing to lose besides their ego trip by “proving” everyone else is wrong.

Otherwise, it’s just a small child saying “gimme a piece of candy… gimme a piece of candy… gimme a piece of candy…” out of the belief that Mama will eventually give in just to shut him up.

This is a perfect example of what the person you quoted was referring to.

I wonder what theories these people conjure if they play a game of dice.

“No, it’s not fair, I’m from the 90’s and gravity works different on 90’s kids, therefore my changes of throwing sixes are lower. I have a friend from the 90’s who has the same experiences and his dad is from the 60’s and he always throws six. No you can’t disprove it, and it’s in the realm of possibilities, therefore I’m right.”

FearSeven.6357:

I wonder what kinds of theories these people conjure if they play a game of dice.

“No, it’s not fair, I’m from the 90’s and gravity works different on 90’s kids, therefore my changes of throwing sixes are lower. I have a friend from the 90’s who has the same experiences and his dad is from the 60’s and he always throws six. No you can’t disprove it, and it’s in the realm of possibilities, therefore I’m right.”

To be fair I have access to the odds of craps. If I am allowed to play as the house, that is exactly what I’ll do. It’s how casinos make money. They lose a lot of time but ultimately in the long run they win.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craps