Guild Wars 2

OK, I’ve seen this question asked once before, but it didn’t get a conclusive answer (despite a couple of people in the thread seeming to think it had), so it seems worth asking again. Because it’s bugging both me and a couple of friends no end.

WHY, at every PvE boss event I ever attend, are there people spamming “lfg”? What do they expect to get from grouping?

I don’t mean complex stuff such as Tequatl and the triple worm, mind, where a bit of organisation is actually useful – this is even at all-out DPS-fests such as Maw and Shatterer, where you can pretty much go AFK and get the chest. But as I understand it (and I can’t find anything to say otherwise), parties in GW2 have always been purely social and organisational – you don’t, say, get more XP, or loot, or unique access to buffs – game-mechanics benefits – just by being in a party with someone.

So – am I missing something? Or are these just refugees from Another Game™ making assumptions about how the game works? (And if your answer is that you do get game mechanics benefits such as better loot by being in a party, if you can link to some actual evidence, rather than anecdotal opinion, I’d be very grateful.)

Edit: Based on a comment Xiahou Mao made below, I started gathering data.

I homed in on Maw as an event where one of my characters was sometimes getting a drop when solo, and sometimes not. If there was an effect, there ought to be a damage point at which I’d never get a drop when solo, but get one almost every time grouped (unless I was in a really crappy group, I guess).

Since then, I’ve been running Maw grouped and solo (roughly alternately) when I’ve been able to, spamming auto-attack only, and stopping damage when the boss got down to 50% health (no way would I ever get a drop that way on my own). Same character, same gear, same spec.

Result? After 10 runs: 5 runs in group, 5 drops. 5 runs solo, 0 drops.

A statistician would probably want a lot more data, but, yes, I’m convinced. Thanks for the discussion, guys.

(I’d have to add that I’ve been running other world bosses as well, doing my level best to beat the stuffing out of them, and the data I’ve gathered so far is far less convincing – in most of them, I don’t get a drop either way. But that could be down to any number of factors, I guess.)

Supposedly it’s for easier tagging. I’ve never missed a champ bag at those world boss events even when I afk half the time and just autoattack so I have no idea what people are doing to need a group for tagging (exception is if you’re on a low level character and have low dps). And for mob farm, back when I farmed the angaria arah pre-event i noticed zero difference in the number of bags that I got when grouped vs. ungrouped so who knows really.

There are two major reasons:
1. Anti DC – there are lots of DCs or crashes during big fights. If you’re in team then after reconnect you should join the same map as before. At least if it is not full yet.
2. All AoE effects works on teammates first so it’s a little easier to buff one another.

There are probably some other minor factors but I think those two (especially first one) are much often considered.

The chances to get loot when in a group are a lot higher as alone you often won’t make enough damage to count, although anet lowered that. I’m almost never in a group and I often miss out on loot was even worse when I was on my condi engineer before some patch around april, even events wouldn’t count as I just didn’t do enough damage.

Speaking for myself, I only ever group up with random people at such events to get back after a disconnect.

For farming events like Gates of Arah, Temple of Grenth, Temple of Melandru you can see a very clear difference between not having a party and having a party with classes that have a good AoE tagging ability. Even the difference between a party of rangers and mesmers and a party with guardians, thieves, elementalists and engineers is quite big in terms of mob loot drops.

Many group up for this reason, as the party will share the kill credit:

Participation

Each player who participates in killing a monster will have the opportunity to loot the body. Each monster has a damage table and a threshold value of damage done to it by the player before it will give full credit for the kill. This value is about 5% to 10% of the monster’s health. The loot dropped is unique to the player, and loot received by one player does not affect what another player receives. One monster may drop the same rare item for multiple players.

You can read Eric Flannum’s statement about kill credit here: http://www.incgamers.com/2011/06/interview-designing-guild-wars-2-part-2

why party?
- buff sharing (your party shares buff to you)
- anti DC
- higher chance you get loot (not higher magic find and not ‘more’ loot)

The loot system is very strange.
It seems when you aren’t in a party you have to hit the first few % of the champ his HP to get a champ bag for sure, when you hit later you have a chance you dont get a champ bag.

In a party sometimes it looks like you get loot priority. Or someone else in your party just hit the champ/boss within the first few % of the HP.

Maybe there is a loot Cap? only x-numbers of players gets loot?

At least its not about how much dmg you did. You can do auto attack from 100% Hp and you get loot. And when you do max dmg with full zerk etc. but you started at like 60% sometimes you dont get the loot.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Many group up for this reason, as the party will share the kill credit:

Participation

Each player who participates in killing a monster will have the opportunity to loot the body. Each monster has a damage table and a threshold value of damage done to it by the player before it will give full credit for the kill. This value is about 5% to 10% of the monster’s health. The loot dropped is unique to the player, and loot received by one player does not affect what another player receives. One monster may drop the same rare item for multiple players.

You can read Eric Flannum’s statement about kill credit here: http://www.incgamers.com/2011/06/interview-designing-guild-wars-2-part-2

Not sure about this, example 3 wolves at ulgoth this is what i do:

I do a few hits at wolf in middle immediatly I move to other 2 wolves to hit them in the first few % of his HP ( i get loot from all 3 wolves)

or:

I hit the wolf in middle till he is dead, then move to other 2 wolves which are already at 60% HP, I only got loot from wolf in middle.

Then boss spawns:

I hit the boss as soon his is vulnerable → i get champ loot bag

I hit the boss few sec later → i dont get champ loot bag (neither when i do more dmg as in case above)

Lol. Don’t shoot the messenger; just relaying the official Dev statements on kill credit. And why many players feel the need to party up.

Perhaps it has been changed in the intervening time period. /shrug

they do that for magic find

Jana.6831:

The chances to get loot when in a group are a lot higher as alone you often won’t make enough damage to count, although anet lowered that.

You see – that’s what I meant by evidence versus anecdote. What you’re saying is that you believe that, when you’re in a group, you get a degree of credit for damage that the rest of the group get. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but I’ve never noticed it myself, and I’ve never yet managed to find anything to say that it’s true, either. Can you link to something that actually confirms that’s how the game works?

Doghouse.1562:

Jana.6831:

The chances to get loot when in a group are a lot higher as alone you often won’t make enough damage to count, although anet lowered that.

You see – that’s what I meant by evidence versus anecdote. What you’re saying is that you believe that, when you’re in a group, you get a degree of credit for damage that the rest of the group get. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but I’ve never noticed it myself, and I’ve never yet managed to find anything to say that it’s true, either. Can you link to something that actually confirms that’s how the game works?

I only told what I experienced, someone else stated the facts, should I quote them?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Many group up for this reason, as the party will share the kill credit:
…
You can read Eric Flannum’s statement about kill credit here: http://www.incgamers.com/2011/06/interview-designing-guild-wars-2-part-2

Thanks for that; I hadn’t seen it. I don’t read it the same way as you, though (and to the best of my ability I’m coming to it without an opinion either way).

Eric doesn’t say anything about being in a party affecting kill credit one way or the other – and in context of the question, I’d have thought he would have, if it made a difference. His actual example is about the other situation – someone he describes as “coming along” after a player has done damage, and getting kill credit for helping to the mob off. Later, he even talks about how it’s important to Anet to allow co-op play that isn’t strictly organised, and says that, when his friends aren’t online, he tends to solo. And when he actually talks about partying with other players versus not doing so, the only thing he mentions is “having a co-op experience with them”.

Jana.6831:

Doghouse.1562:

Jana.6831:

The chances to get loot when in a group are a lot higher as alone you often won’t make enough damage to count, although anet lowered that.

You see – that’s what I meant by evidence versus anecdote. What you’re saying is that you believe that, when you’re in a group, you get a degree of credit for damage that the rest of the group get. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but I’ve never noticed it myself, and I’ve never yet managed to find anything to say that it’s true, either. Can you link to something that actually confirms that’s how the game works?

I only told what I experienced, someone else stated the facts, should I quote them?

If they’re something other than the link above to Paul Younger’s article (which I’ve commented on in another reply), please!

(Please don’t you, or anyone, take my scepticism as criticism; it’s not remotely meant as such. But I’m looking for actual evidence, such as a statement from Anet that unambiguously says “players in groups get these game benefits”. I’ve played enough MMOs to know that what everyone believes isn’t always true – and in this case, whilst my mind is open to being wrong – and my ego certainly won’t be bruised if I am! – I’m not convinced.)

Doghouse.1562:

OK, I’ve seen this question asked once before, but it didn’t get a conclusive answer (despite a couple of people in the thread seeming to think it had), so it seems worth asking again. Because it’s bugging both me and a couple of friends no end.

WHY, at every PvE boss event I ever attend, are there people spamming “lfg”? What do they expect to get from grouping?

I don’t mean complex stuff such as Tequatl and the triple worm, mind, where a bit of organisation is actually useful – this is even at all-out DPS-fests such as Maw and Shatterer, where you can pretty much go AFK and get the chest. But as I understand it (and I can’t find anything to say otherwise), parties in GW2 have always been purely social and organisational – you don’t, say, get more XP, or loot, or unique access to buffs – game-mechanics benefits – just by being in a party with someone.

So – am I missing something? Or are these just refugees from Another Game™ making assumptions about how the game works? (And if your answer is that you do get game mechanics benefits such as better loot by being in a party, if you can link to some actual evidence, rather than anecdotal opinion, I’d be very grateful.)

Pretty sure I’ve seen this posted by a dev at some point in the past. It may not be as useful for world bosses, but people are creatures of habit….

“Players can also form parties with other champion farmers, which lowers the threshold of required damage in order to receive credit.”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Champion_farm

GreyWraith came to my help, thanks for that =)

I didn’t read the OP in full, had I I wouldn’t have answered – It’s just that I come from a server which had world boss trains long before megaservers were introduced so it was a150 man zerker zerg each night and not being in a party really meant something.

GreyWraith.8394:

Pretty sure I’ve seen this posted by a dev at some point in the past. It may not be as useful for world bosses, but people are creatures of habit….

“Players can also form parties with other champion farmers, which lowers the threshold of required damage in order to receive credit.”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Champion_farm

Brilliant. Assuming that part of the wiki entry came from someone in Anet, and not simply someone in the wider community repeating the common wisdom, that’s the sort of thing I was looking for. Many thanks.

Edit: Those words were added by userid Psycho Robot.7835 back in January of this year. He’s not a dev, and he doesn’t say where he got the info from – but, given how prevalent the view seems to be, if it were wrong I wouldn’t be surprised not to find anyone correcting it. So I’m still at the “looking for evidence” stage, I guess. If all else fails, I may have to go out and grind it for myself.

Well, personally, I don’t party up, unless I happen to already be in a party with a Guild member. I’ve never noticed a difference, but I’m not the kind of player who would care about that kind of thing, anyway. I was thinking the question was why players advertise LFG at WBs, etc., and the reasons given are most likely why.

Whether it makes a difference or not is a different question, I would think. =)

I assumed it was mainly because they think they have a better chance at getting loot and/or the old rumor that a group increases your magic find. Others may want a group for buffs, priority rezzing, disconnection protection, loneliness or because they’re still stuck in the traditional mindset that a group is needed for group content. It’s usually more efficient to be in a group in other MMOs, but compared to them, it’s like everyone is already in a group in GW2.

Doghouse: I farmed a lot with 7 different classes. Fact is: if you farm with a class or setup (no ZERKER gear) you get less loot, since you contribute less damage. I notied that if I run with my Zerker GS warrior, I don’t need to party up to get a lot of loot from nearly everyone, at least it is very likely to get loot from all ‘tagged’ enemies. If I however run a class with less AoE, less basic DPS and/or with non DPS gear (rarely), I need to party up.

Fact is: if you party up, you get more loot. You don’t need an evidence. It’s true, it is very significant. If you however only run one zerker gear with good overall dps and never tried out something else you don’t ‘know’ this. Simple as that.

One thing that I have not seen mentioned is PreEvents.

Let’s take Maw for example and at peak attendance times

• In the Protect Tor the Tall’s supplies from the grawl, sometimes depending on how many people are there it is tough to get enough shots off solo to get credit but in a party I have always gotten credit.
• Protect Scholar Brogun as he investigates the grawl tribe, is not quite as bad if you know where the grawl spawn but they still die fast
• Destroy the dragon totem, don’t miss the text or verbal key on this one or you may be out of luck
• and so on for the next 2 PreEvents.
• Now as for Kill the Svanir shaman chief, I have tested this a bunch of times with an attempt at duplicating variables as best as I could.
  This applies to Post Boss drop adjustment a few months ago
  When I solo the event I either get no bag drop or white bag from the final boss.
  When I am grouped with 4 others I have always gotten an orange bag drop.

So the Nay-Sayers can say what you will but for me, when the data points me in a positive outcome direction, dats da way I’ma goin

Fowidner.6930:

The loot system is very strange.
It seems when you aren’t in a party you have to hit the first few % of the champ his HP to get a champ bag for sure, when you hit later you have a chance you dont get a champ bag.

In a party sometimes it looks like you get loot priority. Or someone else in your party just hit the champ/boss within the first few % of the HP.

Maybe there is a loot Cap? only x-numbers of players gets loot?

At least its not about how much dmg you did. You can do auto attack from 100% Hp and you get loot. And when you do max dmg with full zerk etc. but you started at like 60% sometimes you dont get the loot.

This post is accurate.

In cases where there’s a lot of players (50+) attacking a single enemy, only the first X number of players who hit the enemy will get credit for the kill and the XP/loot from said enemy. It has nothing to do with how much damage you deal beyond an incredibly small minimum value needed, far less than the 5-10% mentioned in another thread here. It’s purely first-come, first-served.

The benefit of forming a party is that if just one player in that party is able to ‘tag’ the monster in question quickly, then the entire party will share that loot credit as long as everyone else is able to deal at least one hit of damage. That makes partying a way to get around the maximum loot cap. But only if at least one party member is able to hit the enemy fast enough.

People can go in-game and test all of this out, if they don’t mind missing out on champion bags here and there. Go to Frozen Maw and during the pre-events, wait next to the Shaman ungrouped while everyone else closes the portals. Once the Shaman becomes vulnerable to damage, quickly hit him and deal about 1000-2000 damage or so. Five or six auto-attacks should do it with a level 80 Berserker. Then walk away and let everyone else finish him off. You’ll get yourself a Gilded Strongbox from his corpse. Come back tomorrow with your guildmates, a party of five. Have everyone wait a little ways away from the Shaman and not engage him immediately once the event starts. Once he hits 90% health, have everyone jump in and go full burn on him, do as much damage as you can. None of you will get a Gilded Strongbox from his corpse. The next day, bring your party of five back once more, have four of them hang back until the Shaman is at half health, while one stays near him to hit him just once or twice when the event starts. Max DPS once he’s at half health. Everyone will get a Gilded Strongbox from his corpse due purely to that hit at the start.

You can duplicate this test at any champion that lots of players will gather to fight. Avatars of Woe at the Jungle Wurm fight, the Legendary Karka Queen, the Modnir War Beasts/Ulgoth, Taidha Covington. It doesn’t necessarily even have to be a champion, I’ve been locked out of XP and loot from the Veteran Arid Devourer that spawns as part of the Haze event in Dry Top because I didn’t hit it in time, though that’s obviously not as big a concern as missing out on champion loot bags.

I encourage people to test this themselves in the manners I suggested above. The more people who understand how the loot system really works and who can see the flaws in it that make it unfair, the better the chance that it will be fixed. My posts in the Game Bugs forum have gone unnoticed so far. If things stay as they are right now, the people who suffer are the ones who actually do pre-events (closing Mist Portals at Frozen Maw, clearing blighted growth at the Jungle Wurm) while the ones who sit and camp the champ spawns are the ones who get the extra rewards. People shouldn’t be penalized for doing the events needed to progress, but right now they are.

Doghouse.1562:

GreyWraith.8394:

Pretty sure I’ve seen this posted by a dev at some point in the past. It may not be as useful for world bosses, but people are creatures of habit….

“Players can also form parties with other champion farmers, which lowers the threshold of required damage in order to receive credit.”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Champion_farm

Brilliant. Assuming that part of the wiki entry came from someone in Anet, and not simply someone in the wider community repeating the common wisdom, that’s the sort of thing I was looking for. Many thanks.

Edit: Those words were added by userid Psycho Robot.7835 back in January of this year. He’s not a dev, and he doesn’t say where he got the info from – but, given how prevalent the view seems to be, if it were wrong I wouldn’t be surprised not to find anyone correcting it. So I’m still at the “looking for evidence” stage, I guess. If all else fails, I may have to go out and grind it for myself.

You seem rather set on getting a definitive technical answer. The fact of the matter is that there is supporting evidence (as has been linked above), but no sure thing. You are finding holes in the evidence because, frankly there are holes (though this doesn’t prove it wrong, just unable to definitively prove it right).

In the end though, your question is answered. You didn’t ask if the logic was right or wrong, you are simply asking why people do it. People do it for the variety of reasons listed already. Whether their thinking is correct, the perception that drives the behavior is the reason “why”

In the end, it comes down to one of my favorite sayings. “Perception is reality until otherwise proven.” So people perceive (whether right or wrong) that it gives benefits and therefore this drives their behavior in reality. So there is your answer. If you want an answer as to whether these perceptions are actually accurate, a lot of testing that has not been done yet (and some that would require Dev knowledge) will need done.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

Fowidner.6930:

The loot system is very strange.
It seems when you aren’t in a party you have to hit the first few % of the champ his HP to get a champ bag for sure, when you hit later you have a chance you dont get a champ bag.

In a party sometimes it looks like you get loot priority. Or someone else in your party just hit the champ/boss within the first few % of the HP.

Maybe there is a loot Cap? only x-numbers of players gets loot?

At least its not about how much dmg you did. You can do auto attack from 100% Hp and you get loot. And when you do max dmg with full zerk etc. but you started at like 60% sometimes you dont get the loot.

This post is accurate.

In cases where there’s a lot of players (50+) attacking a single enemy, only the first X number of players who hit the enemy will get credit for the kill and the XP/loot from said enemy. It has nothing to do with how much damage you deal beyond an incredibly small minimum value needed, far less than the 5-10% mentioned in another thread here. It’s purely first-come, first-served.

This is flatly wrong. The devs have explicitly stated otherwise repeatedly since launch.

[edit: ^ This is me being flatly wrong, as I’ve noted in a later post in this thread. I still believe the link below is accurate in general, just that there is an unintended issue invalidating it in specific cases.]

One example:
http://www.incgamers.com/2011/06/interview-designing-guild-wars-2-part-2

GreyWraith.8394:

This is flatly wrong. The devs have explicitly stated otherwise since launch.

http://www.incgamers.com/2011/06/interview-designing-guild-wars-2-part-2

The devs can state whatever they want to state. What I stated is how the game currently is. It is a bug, and it needs to be fixed so that it’s in line with what the devs actually have said.

You’re welcome to try the tests I suggested in my post to see for yourself. I, like most players, assumed that I simply wasn’t doing enough DPS to qualify for a champion bag when I occasionally didn’t get one from the Svanir Shaman or similar champions. But the end results didn’t mesh up when I tried actively going for more damage, so I decided to test things out myself, and the post above is what I came up with. I’ve done all those tests I suggest that other people do. If you do them too, rather than posting three year old dev statements, you’ll see that things are currently not working as intended.

Invictus.1503:

In the end though, your question is answered. You didn’t ask if the logic was right or wrong, you are simply asking why people do it. People do it for the variety of reasons listed already. Whether their thinking is correct, the perception that drives the behavior is the reason “why”

You’re technically right, of course – but then, language is often a very unspecific tool. I guess I should have asked, was there any valid reason people did it, because, yes, that’s what I was looking to understand..

Whatever – lots of good ideas up above that I can go try. Thanks, everyone.

All reasons for this are valid and all reasons for this are speculative. No dev has ever explicitly come out and stated exactly how the loot and tagging systems work so all evidence is based on perception.

The 5-10% thing listed in that article for example I find it applies more directly to if you have ‘tagged’ the monster in question DURING that 5-10% of his health, not DONE 5-10% damage to him.

Ulgoth champ dogs for example: If I tag one one time between the first hp and the 5% threshold I will get the champ bag no matter what character I’m playing or if I’m grouped up or not. However, if I happen to not get my first hit in on the champ in time for the 5% threshold then I am completely out of luck on that champ bag.
I have been testing this theory for the last couple months of WB train and find it to be accurate.

Fact about world boss train is that YOU are never going to do between 5 and 10% damage to ANYTHING. If there is 150 people there and everyone hits it, you will do less than 1% damage to it regardless of your mediocre stat improvement from zerker gear. So the 5-10% threshold logic is not on damage done but WHEN you do your initial damage.

Relevant to thread part of post:

I party up to get into familiar shards with others I like to play with. I find that if I party with certain people I can get into the shards with the other people I play with often without having to guild up with those people to do it. So I’ve found a nice easy way to play the sharding system in my favor I’ve only crashed less than a dozen times since the game started so I don’t need the DC insurance. I’ve also found it does help with tagging if my projectiles aren’t fast enough to get into the threshold level of the mob soon enough.

I’ve seen these “Why LFG?” threads before and also in game….

I have a question Why NOT LFG? Do some people have an aversion to being in a group?

I always group when I can because it means a better chance to get loot, its easy and no big deal so why wouldn’t you?

Lil Puppy.5216:

The 5-10% thing listed in that article for example I find it applies more directly to if you have ‘tagged’ the monster in question DURING that 5-10% of his health, not DONE 5-10% damage to him.

Ulgoth champ dogs for example: If I tag one one time between the first hp and the 5% threshold I will get the champ bag no matter what character I’m playing or if I’m grouped up or not. However, if I happen to not get my first hit in on the champ in time for the 5% threshold then I am completely out of luck on that champ bag.
I have been testing this theory for the last couple months of WB train and find it to be accurate.

Your experience meshes up with what I posted above, though the conclusions you drew were a bit different. It’s not that the first 5% of a champion’s health purely determines if you get loot or not, it’s simply due to that “first-come, first-served” restriction when a large number of players are involved. If it’s only the first thirty players who get loot (I’m making that number up because I have no way of knowing the actual number, but it likely falls between 25-50), in a world boss situation there’s going to be thirty people hitting the champion within that first 5% of its health. But against, say, the Champion Spider at Almuten Estate in Gendarran Fields, you can arrive at the fight when it’s at 50% health and still get loot credit, because only 5-10 people might have been fighting it at that point.

The number of players is the key to this. The loot restriction that keeps players beyond the current allowed number from getting drops needs to be lifted.

Technically party can be as simple as linking players together. That is what party is. Why write complicated code. It just means more bugs.

In my opinion Anet has to take a look into this loot system, people are missing pre cursors cause of missing loot from champs and bosses

+ I totaly agree on what Xiahou Mao said in this thread.

1-3 hits at the moment a boss gets vulnerable, I get loot
100+ hits and start to hit at like 60%, I don’t get loot
(this without a party)

Xiahou Mao.9701:

GreyWraith.8394:

This is flatly wrong. The devs have explicitly stated otherwise since launch.

http://www.incgamers.com/2011/06/interview-designing-guild-wars-2-part-2

The devs can state whatever they want to state. What I stated is how the game currently is. It is a bug, and it needs to be fixed so that it’s in line with what the devs actually have said.

You’re welcome to try the tests I suggested in my post to see for yourself. I, like most players, assumed that I simply wasn’t doing enough DPS to qualify for a champion bag when I occasionally didn’t get one from the Svanir Shaman or similar champions. But the end results didn’t mesh up when I tried actively going for more damage, so I decided to test things out myself, and the post above is what I came up with. I’ve done all those tests I suggest that other people do. If you do them too, rather than posting three year old dev statements, you’ll see that things are currently not working as intended.

I have; I just finished leveling 3 alts in EotM in the last couple months. Plenty of champ kills where I’ve gotten credit without a party and arriving late to the fight with a 40-50 man zerg beating on the champ. As long as I got a few thousand damage in I always got a bag.

I’ve also had plenty of fights on uplevels where I didn’t do enough damage to get credit & loot even though I was there from the beginning of the fight.

GreyWraith.8394:

Xiahou Mao.9701:

GreyWraith.8394:

This is flatly wrong. The devs have explicitly stated otherwise since launch.

http://www.incgamers.com/2011/06/interview-designing-guild-wars-2-part-2

The devs can state whatever they want to state. What I stated is how the game currently is. It is a bug, and it needs to be fixed so that it’s in line with what the devs actually have said.

You’re welcome to try the tests I suggested in my post to see for yourself. I, like most players, assumed that I simply wasn’t doing enough DPS to qualify for a champion bag when I occasionally didn’t get one from the Svanir Shaman or similar champions. But the end results didn’t mesh up when I tried actively going for more damage, so I decided to test things out myself, and the post above is what I came up with. I’ve done all those tests I suggest that other people do. If you do them too, rather than posting three year old dev statements, you’ll see that things are currently not working as intended.

I have; I just finished leveling 3 alts in EotM in the last couple months. Plenty of champ kills where I’ve gotten credit without a party and arriving late to the fight with a 40-50 man zerg beating on the champ. As long as I got a few thousand damage in I always got a bag.

I’ve also had plenty of fights on uplevels where I didn’t do enough damage to get credit & loot even though I was there from the beginning of the fight.

How about: You’re both right. The one is PvE, the other “WvW”, I can jump in lords room with the Lord at 20% health and 40 people hitting on him, do some well placed (ahem) heartseekers and get loot but the same doesn’t work at Maw or any other world boss.
Edit: Or maybe it does with some, I just didn’t notice/remember.

The dev posts linked above are from concepts that are over 3 years old, and which also don’t include the recent addition of megaserver.

That info may have rung true at one point in time, and I certainly do remember this (as I’ve stated in many other threads), but with a megaserver, it’s a case of first come first served.

You arrive late at a boss and you throw everything you possibly have at it, dealing a significant portion of the damage, you’ll still walk away lootless. I’ve seen this, firsthand; it’s happened so many times before and I’m at the point where you have to be at the very start of the boss’ HP drop (where they lose the vuln.) to be in with a shot of that loot bag at the end.

There’s enough examples of this listed above that I don’t need to go further with this point. The bottom line is the loot system sucks and needs a drastic overhaul, based on what we’re getting at the moment. Boss loot should come with the participation level (Gold, Silver, Bronze) for being a part of that event. That would solve a lot of issues and competitiveness for champ bags, and start making kills worth something again.

GreyWraith.8394:

I have; I just finished leveling 3 alts in EotM in the last couple months. Plenty of champ kills where I’ve gotten credit without a party and arriving late to the fight with a 40-50 man zerg beating on the champ. As long as I got a few thousand damage in I always got a bag.

I’ve also had plenty of fights on uplevels where I didn’t do enough damage to get credit & loot even though I was there from the beginning of the fight.

As I said, I don’t know exactly where the cutoff for loot is. I suspect it’s somewhere between 25-50 people. The number might be 50. In that case, you being the 50th person in your EotM zerg to hit the champion would still give you loot. Or the number might be 60, or 75. I don’t have any inner access to the system, I just have the tests that I’ve done, tests that you can duplicate as you see fit.

The issue raises its head in situations with really big zergs. Megaserver world bosses, big Orr trains, places where there are a hundred plus players all competing for a handful of champions. If you want to be skeptical, you can be skeptical, but at least try the example I suggested. Go to Frozen Maw, let the Svanir Shaman fall to 80% or 90% health before you start attacking him, and then go all out. You won’t get a Gilded Strongbox from his corpse.

Are World Bosses guaranteed a loot box, anyway? I know the Chests are guaranteed, but are the Champion rewards? They didn’t use to be. So, I’m not sure any tests can be valid without knowing whether Champion loot-bags are guaranteed. /shrug

On further reflection, I guess they are guaranteed, but not the rarity. Gotta love alzheimer’s’ moments. Lol.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

Lil Puppy.5216:

The 5-10% thing listed in that article for example I find it applies more directly to if you have ‘tagged’ the monster in question DURING that 5-10% of his health, not DONE 5-10% damage to him.

Ulgoth champ dogs for example: If I tag one one time between the first hp and the 5% threshold I will get the champ bag no matter what character I’m playing or if I’m grouped up or not. However, if I happen to not get my first hit in on the champ in time for the 5% threshold then I am completely out of luck on that champ bag.
I have been testing this theory for the last couple months of WB train and find it to be accurate.

Your experience meshes up with what I posted above, though the conclusions you drew were a bit different. It’s not that the first 5% of a champion’s health purely determines if you get loot or not, it’s simply due to that “first-come, first-served” restriction when a large number of players are involved. If it’s only the first thirty players who get loot (I’m making that number up because I have no way of knowing the actual number, but it likely falls between 25-50), in a world boss situation there’s going to be thirty people hitting the champion within that first 5% of its health. But against, say, the Champion Spider at Almuten Estate in Gendarran Fields, you can arrive at the fight when it’s at 50% health and still get loot credit, because only 5-10 people might have been fighting it at that point.

The number of players is the key to this. The loot restriction that keeps players beyond the current allowed number from getting drops needs to be lifted.

this is absolutely true.
anyone who has consistently done mega-blob WB events has experienced this. its been this way even before megaserver (once the zerg hit 50-60 players)….but now that most WB events have 100+ players, its far more noticable.

any claim by a dev that the only loot restriction is simply how much damage you do to the champ is false. it may be intended that way, but it isn’t working that way at all.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

GreyWraith.8394:

I have; I just finished leveling 3 alts in EotM in the last couple months. Plenty of champ kills where I’ve gotten credit without a party and arriving late to the fight with a 40-50 man zerg beating on the champ. As long as I got a few thousand damage in I always got a bag.

I’ve also had plenty of fights on uplevels where I didn’t do enough damage to get credit & loot even though I was there from the beginning of the fight.

As I said, I don’t know exactly where the cutoff for loot is. I suspect it’s somewhere between 25-50 people. The number might be 50. In that case, you being the 50th person in your EotM zerg to hit the champion would still give you loot. Or the number might be 60, or 75. I don’t have any inner access to the system, I just have the tests that I’ve done, tests that you can duplicate as you see fit.

The issue raises its head in situations with really big zergs. Megaserver world bosses, big Orr trains, places where there are a hundred plus players all competing for a handful of champions. If you want to be skeptical, you can be skeptical, but at least try the example I suggested. Go to Frozen Maw, let the Svanir Shaman fall to 80% or 90% health before you start attacking him, and then go all out. You won’t get a Gilded Strongbox from his corpse.

I was going to dispute you on this with irrefutable stats, but then I decided why bother because you are just set in your ways and won’t believe any empirical evidence to the contrary, besides the fact that you seem to be forgetting about the extremely massive amounts of HP that those WB’s have. 1000 – 2000 damage is no where near 5 – 10% of the Shaman’s HP pool, so if that is all you are doing, no wonder why you don’t get the Gilded chest.

Zaklex.6308:

I was going to dispute you on this with irrefutable stats, but then I decided why bother because you are just set in your ways and won’t believe any empirical evidence to the contrary, besides the fact that you seem to be forgetting about the extremely massive amounts of HP that those WB’s have. 1000 – 2000 damage is no where near 5 – 10% of the Shaman’s HP pool, so if that is all you are doing, no wonder why you don’t get the Gilded chest.

Then you didn’t read my post properly. That’s the thing, I can get the Gilded Strongbox from the Svanir Shaman while only doing 1000-2000 damage to him, as long as I’m one of the first people to tag him when he becomes vulnerable/the event starts. I can hit him with 5 auto-attacks, then walk off and let everyone else smack him for the next two minutes until he dies. I’ll get the champ bag.

A single auto-attack won’t do it, that’s not enough for kill credit. Five, though? Five is plenty. For a level 80 character in appropriate gear, at least. Someone in blues or greens might need, I don’t know, ten hits?

Since you’re talking about empirical evidence, then I shall beseech you, go and test this yourself. Whichever way you want to do it, I’ve provided several tests. Camp next to the Shaman, hit him once he becomes vulnerable, land 5 attacks or so on him and then wander off, you’ll find that you’ll get a Gilded Strongbox when everyone else kills him for you. Or get your group of five players who are all willing to test this with you, stay away from the Svanir Shaman without any of your group so much as breathing on him until he’s reduced to 80%-90% of his health, then go all-in and use all your biggest damage attacks, your Backstabs and Fire Grabs and Hundred Blades, and watch as the event ends without a lootable corpse for your entire party. See for yourself, because seeing is believing. I was in your boat before, until there were too many inconsistencies and I had to start testing other possibilities. I believe I conclusively narrowed it down to “first-come, first-served” through my tests, and as you can see, others in this thread agree.

So try it yourself. Let me know what you find out. The more people who know about this loot bug, the better the chances that it might be fixed one day. It’s existed in its current form for an awfully long time already…

(edit: I just want to clarify that when I say 80%-90% of the Shaman’s health in the ‘hold back on tagging’ example above, I mean that he has 80%-90% of his health remaining, not to wait until he’s lost 80%-90% of his health and is nearly dead.. you’ll be able to DPS him for the majority of the fight and you’ll miss out on the loot, because you weren’t among the first X number of players to deal damage to him)

Xiahou Mao.9701:

GreyWraith.8394:

I have; I just finished leveling 3 alts in EotM in the last couple months. Plenty of champ kills where I’ve gotten credit without a party and arriving late to the fight with a 40-50 man zerg beating on the champ. As long as I got a few thousand damage in I always got a bag.

I’ve also had plenty of fights on uplevels where I didn’t do enough damage to get credit & loot even though I was there from the beginning of the fight.

As I said, I don’t know exactly where the cutoff for loot is. I suspect it’s somewhere between 25-50 people. The number might be 50. In that case, you being the 50th person in your EotM zerg to hit the champion would still give you loot. Or the number might be 60, or 75. I don’t have any inner access to the system, I just have the tests that I’ve done, tests that you can duplicate as you see fit.

The issue raises its head in situations with really big zergs. Megaserver world bosses, big Orr trains, places where there are a hundred plus players all competing for a handful of champions. If you want to be skeptical, you can be skeptical, but at least try the example I suggested. Go to Frozen Maw, let the Svanir Shaman fall to 80% or 90% health before you start attacking him, and then go all out. You won’t get a Gilded Strongbox from his corpse.

I had that exact situation last night – I was killing the portals on the pre-event and didn’t get back to the shaman till his health was 80%ish. No problem getting credit.

I’ll try it again tonight during NA primetime (biggest zerg time), no party, skip all the pre-events and wait till he gets to 50% before attacking just to see what happens.

If you can try it again, please do!

And were you grouped when you did that? Because as mentioned above, if one party member lands an early tag, then that will carry over to the entire party. That’s how I’ve been getting my Maw credit, one person I travel there with has trouble getting event credit from the Svanir guards event, so she fights the southern shamans event while I do the guards and portals, and she waits to hit the Shaman once he becomes vulnerable and I’m starting to run back.

It definitely does require big zergs for the loot issue to be seen, though. Most of my playtime is during NA prime time, so it’s something I notice a lot. I assume that due to Megaservers that events like Maw are still crowded the rest of the day, just on less total servers, but if there’s a similar number of servers with just less people per server, then it might not wind up being as noticeable.

The number of unique loot tags per critter can’t be too high, though. I’ve missed loot from Veteran Arid Devourers in Dry Top, and I’m pretty sure that map has a lower population cap than other maps due to its smaller size. On that topic, does anyone know how many players can be in one Dry Top map at once? That might help us narrow down exactly when the loot cutoff is, because it can still happen there.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

If you can try it again, please do!

And were you grouped when you did that? Because as mentioned above, if one party member lands an early tag, then that will carry over to the entire party. That’s how I’ve been getting my Maw credit, one person I travel there with has trouble getting event credit from the Svanir guards event, so she fights the southern shamans event while I do the guards and portals, and she waits to hit the Shaman once he becomes vulnerable and I’m starting to run back.

It definitely does require big zergs for the loot issue to be seen, though. Most of my playtime is during NA prime time, so it’s something I notice a lot. I assume that due to Megaservers that events like Maw are still crowded the rest of the day, just on less total servers, but if there’s a similar number of servers with just less people per server, then it might not wind up being as noticeable.

The number of unique loot tags per critter can’t be too high, though. I’ve missed loot from Veteran Arid Devourers in Dry Top, and I’m pretty sure that map has a lower population cap than other maps due to its smaller size. On that topic, does anyone know how many players can be in one Dry Top map at once? That might help us narrow down exactly when the loot cutoff is, because it can still happen there.

For mobs that are actually world bosses, I never have a problem getting loot unless the game bugs and fails to reward the daily bonus chest. I have never not gotten a champ bag from the Svanir Shaman. It doesn’t matter when I start attacking him, how much damage I do, whether I am grouped or not, done pre events, etc. If I can tag him, I get the drop. Yes, I play during NA prime time too. My suspicion is that it isn’t based on numbers.

However, I regularly get denied champ bags from the war dogs during the Modniir Ulgoth event. I’ve found grouping helps that tremendously for whatever reason. I also tend to get exotic bags, rather than rare or masterwork bags when I’m grouped. Maybe it’s because of the 5-10% initial damage window or because of the 5-10% damage you need to inflict to get participation credit, but grouping helps either way.

The only events I group for are ones that have non-boss Champ spawns that drop bags (Ulgoth, some of Jormag, Krait Lab, etc.) or ones that I know have a high chance of DCing me (Teq and Triple Wurm).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Limited-amount-of-people-getting-loot/

loot is limited to a number of people/groups who tag first. I think the limit is about 50

OK – based on a suggestion way back (in one of Xiahou Mao’s posts). I’ve been gathering data. Yes, I agree, there seems to be a genuine tagging effect. I’m going to go back and edit my first post to put in what I’ve done/found so far.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

If you can try it again, please do!

It’s taken me a while to get back to this thread mostly because I wanted to do some repeat testing and RL forced me to miss a lot of shaman spawn times.

First: looks like I was wrong about this – there definitely is an issue with the champion loot bag (gilded strongbox) that spawns from the shaman’s corpse specifically. I’ve never actually gotten that drop before testing this because I always do the pre-events and rarely party. I’ve always gotten the gold medal, screen-side chest and giant chest on the ground, so I never realized I was missing something.

Second, my theory: most things in this game have hard coded limits due to server limitations, like condition stacks. I’m guessing that corpse loot in general has such a limit on the max # of players that can loot a specific corpse. It is probably set so high (50-100) that no dev expected it to be hit during normal open world play (and likely it isn’t). But on world bosses that are also champions and drop corpse loot…. it becomes an issue. It probably isn’t intended to be first-come-first serve, but it has that effect because once enough players hit the loot-damage-threshold** no one else gets the corpse loot.

World boss event credit (gold medal, chest on side of screen, giant chest on ground by boss corpse), as an event specifically designed for massive numbers of players, is coded differently: very few people have trouble getting credit for these rewards.

**loot-damage-threshold: This is extremely low when you are in a party, it literally only requires a few hits. While I don’t think getting credit is calculated based on tagging, strictly speaking, most of the people trying to get the corpse loot are in a party and therefore it works out to be effectively the same thing. Those who ‘tag’ the boss first with a few hits get credit.

GreyWraith.8394:

It’s taken me a while to get back to this thread mostly because I wanted to do some repeat testing and RL forced me to miss a lot of shaman spawn times.

First: looks like I was wrong about this – there definitely is an issue with the champion loot bag (gilded strongbox) that spawns from the shaman’s corpse specifically. I’ve never actually gotten that drop before testing this because I always do the pre-events and rarely party. I’ve always gotten the gold medal, screen-side chest and giant chest on the ground, so I never realized I was missing something.

Glad you were able to make it work! Your posts make a lot more sense now, knowing that you actually weren’t getting the Gilded Strongbox. The problem isn’t with event credit, the big world boss chest or the guaranteed bonus rare in the wiggle chest in the corner. It’s purely to do with the drops from the corpse of the slain champion.

Now it just falls on us to get this to the attention of the folks at Arenanet who can fix it.

I can’t wait for an Anet employee to come in here and tell you fools that grouping up does not affect your loot in any way shape or form, since you refuse to believe other players when they tell you so.

What CAN affect your loot drops is the total amount of dps (or lack thereof).

TheBlackLeech.9360:

I can’t wait for an Anet employee to come in here and tell you fools that grouping up does not affect your loot in any way shape or form, since you refuse to believe other players when they tell you so.

What CAN affect your loot drops is the total amount of dps (or lack thereof).

I… don’t think you actually read the whole thread.

DPS doesn’t affect loot drops beyond a bare minimum required, that can be obtained via two or three auto-attacks barring being underlevelled or underequipped. Grouping does affect loot drops, insofar as the current loot system is bugged when massive amounts of players are involved, as seen in world bosses. Only the first X players (50ish?) who deal any damage to the target creature wind up flagged to get XP and loot from it when it dies. People who are grouped with someone within the first X number of players will also get loot, due to the party system sharing loot rights. That’s how grouping can help, but the real issue here is that someone can show up to a fight a little bit late with a champion like a Modnir War Beast or the Svanir Shaman, deal 20,000 damage in the fight and not get a champion loot bag from the enemy, whereas someone else who was present when the enemy spawned and tags it quickly can do 2,000 damage to the enemy and get the champ bag.

Everyone who meets the minimum damage threshold should get loot. But right now, only the first number players to hit the enemy (and others grouped with them) do so. That should be fixed. But the Bug Reports threads about it have so far been ignored.

I’ve raised quite a few threads based on this very problem. Let’s hope the devs can find these threads and get some kind of fix or an action plan going.

Oh, what’s that? …. oh silly me, the forum’s search function still doesn’t work. -__- Back to the drawing board.