Guild Wars 2

I have been noticing some odd occurrences with drops and magic find.
My friend has the same magic find as me, same profession, etc.

But what I notice is he gets Exotics all the time, but I haven’t gotten an exotic drop in a month…

We both go out and kill the same enemies, at the same time and get drops on all mobs killed. But still he gets weapon tickets, exotics, mini’s, t6 mats, 3 precursors, etc. while I end up being left way way way behind.

My question is simply: Does your account have anything to do with what drops you get, or give you a higher ratio for better drops on the RNG system?

If they are using a pseudo rng which entails using a seed number to determine the final outcome then it could very well be account bound. The major problem that could arise is if they use a FIXED seed number and if that number is tied to your account. If that is the case the rng will return a repeating pattern of numbers. So it is possible that your account could return a lousy set of numbers for wont of a better term while someone elses, with a different seed, could be seen as luckier.

Its best you don’t ask this question as it opens up a can of worms. Seriously, RNG is a mofo.

It’s all rng…. So you’re either lucky or you’re not…… If you’re the unlucky one… WELCOME to my boat… It’s a boat full of sorrow and frustration… If not then I hate you!

Still I need to know. If I need to get a new account then I will.

Only a month? Lucky. I haven’t gotten an exotic drop since GW came out. I have over 3000 hours spent on this game, yet I haven’t received any exotics. I run at least 4 dungeons daily with massive magic find, yet, nothing. Count yourself lucky that you actually got to see an exotic in your lifetime. I have NEVER played an mmorpg where the last armor was this difficult to find. Anet needs to fix the drop rates on exotic gear before I quit within the next few days.

According to the devs, and posted in this very forum, absolutely not.

But, to answer your question, no. The account has nothing to do with what drops you get. At least, that’s what Anet says. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if they came out and told us the chance for exo’s is different for different accounts

See me and a few guild mates have been thinking about not playing GW2 anymore. But its so dang pretty. I agree if a new system is not implemented I would rather quit. But, on the other hand I still need to know if it’s account specific for your RNG roll chances. Because it really does seem that way.

It would be nice for Anet to give us some tangible proof of the drop rates, other than us “just having to trust them” which I don’t.

Anet would sooner donate all the money they made to Blizzard Entertainment than tell us the drop rates. Another post a friend of mine made was asking Anet to post drop rates and chances of receiving things, and a mod came on and infracted his post.

Does anyone have a few accounts that prove account based RNG stats? The numbers and math would be very nice. Another group that I would like to hear from are botters (even though I hate the ever livin dog doody out of them) They are a very viable group for posting statistics across multiple accounts RNG stats.

Edit: I guess I should’ve posted that I was looking for Numbers and math vs. verbal answers.

Try a different character and see. It can’t hurt.

I’ve tried different toons. It seems account specific to me.

I have a hunch this game has a similar problem to what AC1 had for a while… Some algorithm is seriously fubar that makes some characters or accounts literally not get anything. For instance I have only gotten 3 Exo’s in 2 months. Meanwhile, some guy in my guild gets that nearly every day.

thats my exact same hunch LOL

Aeonblade.8709:

I have a hunch this game has a similar problem to what AC1 had for a while… Some algorithm is seriously fubar that makes some characters or accounts literally not get anything. For instance I have only gotten 3 Exo’s in 2 months. Meanwhile, some guy in my guild gets that nearly every day.

My same hunch. Wi Flag algorithms are bad. WoW had this very same issue in dungeons in TBC those dungeons were the worst because people could literally run them hundreds of times and never get a single drop for their class meanwhile others would get all of the spectrum of these drops. They changed their system the next expansion because of this as I recall to allow for a subset of equal gear for most slots people run these dungeons for to get the gear to drop to gear their toons to be ready for raids.

Now I know this system of gearing isn’t the same however it shows that these types of algorithms that handle loot cannot be trusted and the acquisition of loot for the purposes of crafting or advancement needs to be adjusted so players have a more direct route to the resources they need. ie a vendor of some sort.

People will argue that we already have that but I’ve opened many of each one of these bags hundreds in some cases and never have I ever seen a lodestone or a charged lodestone drop in these things (much less dust but they patched that which helps).

There’s still the problem of not receiving enough rares or exotics to even salvage for ectos and some salvages still produce 0 ectos. I tried it this week, they dropped nothing twice when I did it from gear I didn’t need because I decided not to level my ranger.

There’s also a problem with getting these bags to drop at all. It’s weird that we have to use magic find to get bags to drop off anything. It should just happen, saying humanoids don’t have currency or loot is like saying animals don’t have leather or meat. MF should not be required to get heavy or large bags.

I tried recently to farm large bones to make something for one of my toons, i ended up buying them because there’s no direct way of getting T5 mats either. Spend hours trying to get something to drop for T5 mats in a high level zone and you’ll see what I’m saying.

I swear it feels like being active throughout the day puts you into permanent DR.

Couple of things…

Let me start off I don’t rule out the Wi Flag issue, but there are things that need to be taken into consideration:

• Human psyche: we are a lot more likely to remember bad things than good things. Let’s say you’re driving somewhere, and you pass 8 green lights, but all of a sudden you’re stuck behind 3 red lights in a row. Most people will not realize at all they just passed 8 green lights and just curse about how bad their luck is with the red lights. Extrapolate this to GW2 and you’ll have people complaining about not getting anything ever.

• Statistics: anyone that knows anything about how statistics and RNG works knows that: RNG is a kitten. Especially if you’re working with very small numbers. Nothing to change about it.

• Anecdotal evidence: “My friend has gotten 3 precursors, therefor RNG is broken.” doesn’t prove anything. It proves there is 1 lucky guy out there. I know people that have gotten 5 and 7 precursors from the Mystic Forge already. Both of them are super rich because they crafted the Legendaries and sold them. For this phenomena, I’d like to refer you to the point above.

• We have absolutely no far-reaching data. All we get is anecdotal data from people that bother posting on these forums, reddit, GW2guru, etc. Basing your conclusions off of that is always going to be wrong, because you only get a specific subset of the population.

For example: I have the feeling my RNG is always terrible. I rarely get exotics, and my rare to ecto rates usually dwell around 0.7 rather than 0.9. But I once opened 30 miner bags from Fractals and got 3 lodestones for example. I once did an Arah p3 and got 4 rares. Etc. It’s a mixture of good luck and bad luck. Some people just seem to have more good luck streaks and you remember them for it.

I wouldn’t mind someone looking into the Wi Flag stuff though, because stuff like that usually has a big chance of spelling disaster.

I’d like to chime in and add my experiences to the discussion.

I had my suspicions there might be something like this going on a few months ago.
First of all let me be clear on this: Most of the complaints are going to be anecdotal evidence and not worth looking at, but I have no doubt in my mind there’s something at least not quite right.

I know of individuals within the game that don’t just get good stuff every now and then, they get it consistently. Here’s an example.
I introduced someone to the game, his first drop ever from a mob was abyss dye.

Christmas came, he opened one of the RNG boxes and got a permanent hair kit – As a result of this I jokingly told him to try his luck in the forge; He then got dusk on his first attempt in the forge simply by throwing in 4 random exotics (not greatswords)

2 days later he got Storm from the forge by throwing in the rares left over from leveling artificing.

This pattern of luck has persisted with his account since these events happened; rares from 90% of dungeon chests, at least 1 exotic per day, and every RNG box that’s been released has yielded a ticket for him. In fact the new dragon coffers have given him 3 tickets in under 300 boxes. (Conversely I’ve opened over 2000 and have nothing to show for it, as have many others)

Now, you’ll tell me he’s an outlier to the rule, which I would normally wholeheartedly agree with if it weren’t for the fact we consistently see individuals with persistent, continuous, odds beating luck. There are always certain people whose drops do not reflect the vast average.

Based on my experiences playing GW2 yes! 100% certain RNG is based on account, either you have a good account and get stuff, an ok account where you get some stuff sometimes, or a bad account which no matter how much or how long you play you get nothing but garbage loot.

My latest fractal run, there was a player who not only died constantly but everytime we rezzed him and he looted he always got either a rare or exotic, he even got a dusk and legend from this run! We all sat there in disbelief as he was raking in the loot while the rest of us who were not only carrying this player through but were only rewarded with blues and grey items. Many of us decided to do a few more runs with this player just to see if this was a 1 time lottery win or a consistent thing and sure enough it was a consistent thing, the next 3 levels of fractals was all rares and exotics for this player, the rest of us junk.

All RNG is based off a continuing pattern, this has been studied in statistics for decades. In all cases, there are times where someone is always more lucky than someone else. This would give the same results you are describing.

Bright.9160:

• Anecdotal evidence: “My friend has gotten 3 precursors, therefor RNG is broken.” doesn’t prove anything. It proves there is 1 lucky guy out there. I know people that have gotten 5 and 7 precursors from the Mystic Forge already. Both of them are super rich because they crafted the Legendaries and sold them. For this phenomena, I’d like to refer you to the point above.

Heh … there are people in real life who have won the lottery something like 7 times. Perhaps that is proof that “real life” is just a game running in some other entities’ computer with a badly implement RNG algorithm too.

Bright.9160:

Couple of things…

I wouldn’t mind someone looking into the Wi Flag stuff though, because stuff like that usually has a big chance of spelling disaster.

There was only anecdotal evidence for the killcredit bug as well as the anecdotal evidence for the ecto salvage bug both were found to be true. 8 months of evidence of not only a negative side to looting and permaDR as well as never ever hitting DR and winning the lottery, yeah I’d say there’s a problem here.

I’d like to see a real check into a possible Wi Flag style bug with the loot algorithm too because in other games my luck is never been this bad, ever.

tigirius.9014:

Bright.9160:

Couple of things…

I wouldn’t mind someone looking into the Wi Flag stuff though, because stuff like that usually has a big chance of spelling disaster.

There was only anecdotal evidence for the killcredit bug as well as the anecdotal evidence for the ecto salvage bug both were found to be true. 8 months of evidence of not only a negative side to looting and permaDR as well as never ever hitting DR and winning the lottery, yeah I’d say there’s a problem here.

I’d like to see a real check into a possible Wi Flag style bug with the loot algorithm too because in other games my luck is never been this bad, ever.

The evidence for the salvage bug was not anecdotal, several individuals salvaged a sufficiently large number of items to demonstrate that they were not getting the expected results and this prompted the devs to look into it.

The killcredit bug was originally dismissed as conspiracy theory BECAUSE the evidence was anecdotal, it was only when enough complaints had been made that someone at Anet took a deeper look at the system that they found there was a problem.

Neither situation applies here. Given these other two bugs that were found by the players before the devs, what makes you think they would continue to ignore clear evidence or overwhelming complaints that there is a problem? Or, just maybe, they already looked into the situation and discovered that some people just have unreasonable expectations about what they will get for loot.

There are three things to know about the RNG. The RNG thinks, the RNG feels, and the RNG hates.

Specifically, the RNG thinks you are undeserving, feels you shouldn’t win anything, and hates you and you alone.

Now, I haven’t had the best luck with the RNG on my end. I can count on one hand all of the exotics I’ve obtained from drops. I have been playing since launch, too. I can’t say that the drops are account based, though, for two very simple reasons:

#1: It has been like this for pretty much every game I’ve ever played with an RNG loot system.
#2: It is like this for the majority of players.

Funny thing how the lucky players are always a whole lot rarer than the unlucky player. This generally lends to the idea that the RNG system is working fine: the rare drops happen rarely, and so the players who get those rare drops are rare themselves. If the game was counter to this nature, with 75% of the population getting l33t l00t and the other 25% in inexplicable poverty, then this would serve as evidence to the idea that loot seems to discriminate against accounts for no discernible reason.

Let me ask you this; do you farm more often than he does?

If so it could be the anti-farm code. That being Arena Net’s little insurance policy to keep people from ruining the economy by farming too much. There is reason to believe that it will actually nerf the drop rate of everything for your entire account, permanently, if you farm too much.

Im Also think the RNG is account base, and is sad that others people have better stuff then you only based on they luck and no for they skill.