Guild Wars 2

I am very concerned about the change in loot parameters since the event patch. It seems to me and I’m not the only one that the quality and frequency of loot in open world events has been turned down substantially.
As an example, I did several champions and a dozen events over a 3 hour period and the best piece of loot I received was a green torch with the vast majority being white junk items and a couple blues. Two of the champions failed to drop any loot at all which is completely opposite of the patch notes;
“The drop rarity of Rare and Exotic weapons from certain places in the world (champions, veterans, and players in WvW) has been increased. Rares and Exotics should be much more likely to drop and every champion should be guaranteed to drop loot. This was to ensure that world loot drops were not a significantly worse way of acquiring rare and exotic items than crafting and running dungeons.”

Perhaps it was an unintentional side effect to the adjustments made regardless this is my main concern;

One of the main reasons for my wife and I gleefully jumped into GW2 was because of the freedom which allowed us to play together and tackle a vast majority of content as a duo. The game offered this on virtually all fronts, from making money, crafting and gearing our characters to leveling together all the while remaining competitive.
The current change in loot distribution either purposely or accidentally seems to force us into having to group to do dungeons in order to accomplish these various goals and goes against the very principle of the game’s design and our play style. If we wanted to be pigeon holed into having to run dungeons to be successful we would have stayed with WoW, Rift or every other MMO out there because that is their core design.

This for the most part even goes directly against the comments made by Chris Whiteside’s latest response to the addition of ascended gear as quoted below;

“Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time, and be made available through all sorts of content around the world including existing content. As you know we care very much about your support and opinion and are listening intently to what you say.
Finally we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the upcoming content, and we will ensure we share our thoughts with you on the experiences we share in the Lost Shores."
Chris Whiteside – Studio Design Director”

In the end I guess my question really boils down to this;
Is the downgrading in open world loot whether intended or accidental going to be re-adjusted so those of us who prefer open world content either solo duo or in whatever fashion can continue to remain competitive?

I am interested in knowing the answer to this also. I have noticed a huge difference in the quality of loot I have found in the last few days. I am a lover of open world “hunting” so I have seen the change in random mobs and in dynamic event drops.

Please, please say it is some unintentional bug.

Champions are not dropping for me either. I’m not talking about them only dropping white or blue, i mean they are not dropping anything.

Same here. I noticed the change as well. I was literally just farming karkas, hoping for some powerful blood to drop and I get absolutely nothing worthwhile. Some junk items, a few karka shells and a rare sword. At least I was able to sell karka shells on the TP for a few silver.

Last night I did the Arah event and got 2 masterwork and 1 rare item from the chest. What a waste of time.

xtorma.1283:

Champions are not dropping for me either. I’m not talking about them only dropping white or blue, i mean they are not dropping anything.

Same here. Since Saturday, I have helped to kill several champion level bosses in open world events. I got nothing from them. On some of them, there was nothing to loot (no sparklie effect) for me and on four others the corpses disappeared immediately. On all of these, I know I did damage, plenty enough to get something. I was new to the zones so had to ask each time if there was a chest I was missing. Nope. I didn’t miss a chest.

The drop rate for anything more than vendor trash is awful.
At Level 80, Champs drop whites or nothing, even in FOTM the level end boss gives whites and blues? Really?
I got better loot from the trash mobs on the way to the Boss. The dungeon was good but I’m not about to waste my time with fractals when I get 5 of them and vendor trash.
In fact, I’m not going to waste my time doing anything with these poor loot drops, it just is not worth the effort. I’m level 80 with full exotic gear, armor, weapons and trinkets, I have no need for karma or level 4 vendor trash.
Killing anything in Lost Shores is a waste of time, better to just chop, mine and harvest, at least you get something for your effort that way.

New content would have to be released weekly to keep this game interesting with these kind of rewards.

There’s hardly any loot that I got which remains in my bag after I click the “sell junk” button, open world and in WvW.

Yea seems to have been a major dropoff in rares in particular but also green/blue armor/weps to a lesser degree since Lost shore patch. Thinking someone misplaced a decimal point.

I agree with the less rare drops, but I got an exotic off a random mob in Orr. That was a first for me.

Well i jumped into a level 70 area with my 80 to test things a little further and out of 30 kills i got loot from 6 only with 2 blues and the rest trash. There is no doubt in my mind that loot has changed in both frequency and quality, can we please, please get a confirmation of whether this is a bug?

There was another thread which disappeared yesterday. It contained the same topic and that a lot of players felt loot reduction instead of improvement and drop increase.
I could not read it again (because I was sleeping as the thread disappeared magically), but I was informed that there was an “official” statement saying the loot/ drops were accidentally reduced than increased after the patch.

Well, as there is no option to have a look into the thread and that statement (it is not just closed and neither did I receive a message that it would have been merged into another thread nor can I find my post listed under my message overview in my profile), I am just wondering, if they really messed up with the loot, someone came and said “Yes, we did that.” and wasn’t supposed to do that and so the other thread vanished into thin air..

I’ll add another of my observations, yesterday after I got the exotic drop, I went to go do jormag. First kill, got a loadstone, rest of the loot there was average. Went back to Orr, first kill in an event, rare drop.

Maybe the switching zones resets the DR and ups the odds a bit? Don’t really know but over the course of 3 hours I made over 7 gold which is easily a record for me.

Well i just tried going from one zone to another and saw no change at all. I am going to try the Shatterer in a few minutes to see if that changes things up but on a normal 3 hour evening i am selling repeatedly and at this point i have played an hour and haven’t even filled a half pack with most of the loot being claws with a value of less than a silver.
This is not my imagination and i would really like answer on whether this is a bug and if there is a plan to fix this, and preferably before everyone is gone for the holiday weekend, please and thank you.

How much magic find are you wearing? Although I roll in max magic find, even I am not sure it helps.

Actually i was comparing things with no magic gear to ensure the numbers were original and not affected by the magic find gear. I’m 100% positive this isn’t right and the only things i have not seen affected are chests at this point. I guess we won’t know anything until after the holiday weekend. I am saddened by the lack of information especially something this critical.

I don’t grind stuff repetitively but it’s obvious the rates have been dropped and champs rarely drop a single thing for me despite me definitely doing my share.

It really sucks feeling like you have to doubt and cross-examine what the company is telling you. But we’re forced to. So many experiences in GW2 have made it this way.

I’d echo a lot of what is being said here as well. After the patch I was excited for doing dungeons and the chests/bosses in them for a better chance at loot. I’ve been doing runs of AC for the armor set and in 7-8 runs since the patch I’ve received one rare from a drop in the dungeon and a ton of blues and a few greens. Before the patch a good chunk of the drops where at least green. Now I’m scraping to come out with 2 or 3, and this is after all the mobs, mini-bosses, and the chests. Definitely seems like a drop nerf to me.

I dont get loot from champs half the time either and more often than not they just drop blues and worse. Same with chests in general, tons and tons of blues, sometimes greens but almost never rares.

Either they never implemented the drop rate fix, or its bugged..

I tried to find a specific thread related to drop rates since a patch shortly before the Lost Shore download but could not. Perhaps I missed it but decided to start one up here. The moderator may move this to the appropriate thread as necessary, and I thank you if you do.

I’ve been reading through a lot of threads and it appears there are multiple ones that discuss different issues with drops from Champions/Veterans/WvWvW, etc. But I wanted to actually post the following: no matter where I have been in Tyria lately, I have gotten very poor drops for anything I kill.

Just the other day a few friends and I did a series of fights with Champions, Veterans and regular mobs. The drop rates were abysmal. Mostly whites, some crafting mats (1 pc), greens and blues but not much else.

We were all high level mentored down to the zones but none of us got anything remotely close to our own levels as was indicated in a recent comment from Anet. Mostly 20-30 and some 56 but nothing in the 80 level range. So apparently this is not working as intended.

Another thing I noticed (as was mentioned in other threads), Magic Find apparently is not working at present as it used to. This is annoying as I try to make sure I have sufficient MF on my gear or food to provide a boost. This worked before, but not now.

The new Southsun area drop rates are practically non-existent. A few days ago a guild mate and I ran through that area looking for the new Reef Drake pets. My character is a level 80 Ranger and he was on his mid-level 70 Ranger. We got the pets, but of all the mobs we killed, we had very little to show for it. A few shells and some crab meat.

The harvesting nodes in that new area are few and very far between. I think I found maybe 4 plants, 3 mythril and 1 ori metal nodes. After about 1 1/2 hours of running around, that is a very poor return.

I do not understand why Anet dropped everything down like this when they said they were actually going to increase it. And I have to assume that Magic Find is broken because it has not worked as it used since last month.

It would be greatly appreciated if the developers would look into these issues for us. Thank you.

They probably did increase the drop rates. They added junk to the drop tables which competes with the probability of a decent drop! I heard this is to slow down botting, when it just slows everyone down.

LightningLockey.5938:

They probably did increase the drop rates. They added junk to the drop tables which competes with the probability of a decent drop! I heard this is to slow down botting, when it just slows everyone down.

If that is the case, it missed its mark entirely as it punishes the players and does nothing to stop botting. Although I must say I’ve seen fewer bots recently so whatever hammer they are using to destroy them is working.

Thinning out the drops is obviously not working as intended.

So it is not just the new island that has horrendous loot? Interesting.

something has changed with the loot for sure… I wal always running penitent/shelter events and used to have some blue/green and rare most of the time. Now I have mostly white and blues….if something drop…because most of the time I get nothing now oO

BUT

in fractals the drops are good.

strange how a fish can be hiding a greatsword somewhere on him, but all that can be found on/in an enormous armored champion is a claw or a blue mask.

I can confirm many of the OPs observations. The number of harvesting nodes I am seeing is about the same, but I am seeing several issues related to mob loot drops:

1) The Nov 15th update drastically reduced the number and quality of world mob loot drops. The problem is present across all maps. Specifically, the frequency of blue/green/yellow armor and weapon drops is significantly less than before the update. The rate of crafting material drops seems to be about the same.

2) Magic find seems broken. I have a 144% MF set that I use for farming. Right now, I do not see any significant difference in drops using it versus my DPS set. So, I just use the DPS set since at least the mobs die faster.

3) Champions and veterans seldom drop loot, and when they do, it is the same quality as regular mobs. I am not seeing any increased frequency of rares.

I have made a few assertions and admittedly I have no firm statistics. However, I am an expert farmer and I’ll share an anecdote of exactly what I am seeing. Before the update, I could gather 30-35 rares in a 5 hour farming session of the shelter/penitent/fia/jofast event cycle in Cursed Shore using my MF gear. This was fairly consistent from September right through to the Nov 15th update, regardless of the bot invasion or whether I was grouped or not. Now, that same 5 hour session will net me 1-5 rares and much fewer greens. I still get about the same number of heavy moldy bags and coin. I see much more porous bones. I specifically cited Cursed Shore just now, but I see the same pattern in Frostgorge as well.

I am hoping this is a bug that is easily fixed because I did get a lot of enjoyment playing those events, and I was rewarded for participating in them with very lucrative drops. Dungeons seem unaffected by these problems, but I prefer to play in the world maps. Hopefully by posting here, a member of the dev team will see this and take a peek at the loot code.

I have farmed big time before and after the patch went live with +100-135% MF
Before: at least 4 rares within 2 events, around 6-12 rares within 2-4 hours.
Now: 1-2 rare in 4 hours, if i’m lucky. The occasional extra rare, here and there. I’ve had exotic drops but extremely rarely.

I have noticed an extremely low drop rate since the patch and several of my guildies have confirmed it.

I would definitely want to know whats going on

Yeah, we also noticed that: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Change-in-loot-parameters-or-a-bug/first#post830199

I noticed a change in drop rate as well after the patch. Before the patch, I used to find a couple rares an hour, but now there’s no certainty that even 1 rare would drop an hour. I only find a ton of blues, whites, and porous bones. Now I’m trying to find other methods to making money.

Perfectly true. The last patch reverted the loottable to the day1 , with trash loot everywhere, even using MF set. I still laugh when i read the fractal merchant “Exotic bag”. Like if we was going to even drop 1 exo at all, haha

I too am experiencing such issues, less MF gear i wear the better apparently. My friends are getting so many more drops than me, lets just say for argument sake in exactly the same gear. Should i be increasing my gemstore purchases. I think thats the only different between them and me, I generate my own money throug hfarming, they on the other hand buy gems quite regularly.

Something fishy is going on. During the recent free weekend/lost shores event i was claiming a ton of rares out of fractal and regular dungeon chests, i even so much as had a n exotic lvl 78 bow drop off a trash mob in one of the fractals. Now after end of event and that fatal update that removed the weekends quest and so on, i no longer even get rares in dungeon chests let alone mobs. Mobs in dungeons dont even drop anythign anymore even grey trash loot. IDK what’s going on, i deal suffiecient dmg to bosses and mobs for them to drop something, but nothing comes. any chest or boss loot is now blue at best, occasional green. This wearing approx 180 magic find in total. full explorer armor and opal jewels, wiht the new traveler back with an exo opal gem in it, as well as 25 stacks lluck, and off switch double explorer weapons with opal gem in each. with 30% food buff. PPl wiht half the magic find score or less or none, are getting better loot on a consistant basis.

krookie.6378:

Last night I did the Arah event and got 2 masterwork and 1 rare item from the chest. What a waste of time.

You didnt have fun?

could this be tied to ependiture in gemshop, or lack thereof. Cause i havnt bought any gems in ages.

There is defenitaly something wrong since the the lost shores update. I always farm in cursed shore but since that update i have hardly getting any rares at all. Hopefully this is just a bug because if they have purposely changed something in the loot table to give less chance for loot they did not indicate that in their patch notes.
Commenting here to make sure a Dev reads this and give us an explenation since their have already been new patches where this problem has not been fixed yet.
The only vital way to actually get rares now is the fractals. I don’t want to be forced there just to get decent loot.

DevorianDevil.6037:

The only vital way to actually get rares now is the fractals. I don’t want to be forced there just to get decent loot.

You won’t be getting much, if any, relief there either.
The Dungeons themselves are plenty fun, but grinding for fractals to get the Ascended gear, so you can continue to run FOTM because…umm…you got better gear so you can…run… FOTM…. I don’t don’t think so Tim.

What I gathered from the update notes was that they wanted to give BETTER reward drops in lower areas for downscaled players. I don’t know if they changed the loot drops that drop for non-downscaled players along the way to compensate, though.

I would suggest we all test this out and go a area which is below your level and gets you upscaled to see if that gives better drops. If so, that might be an option instead.

Unless the whole update they did to the loot tables somehow (not unlikely tbh) borked out all the rare drops in legitimate areas.

FrizzFreston.5290:

What I gathered from the update notes was that they wanted to give BETTER reward drops in lower areas for downscaled players. I don’t know if they changed the loot drops that drop for non-downscaled players along the way to compensate, though.

I would suggest we all test this out and go a area which is below your level and gets you upscaled to see if that gives better drops. If so, that might be an option instead.

I thought the same thing and so I tried it, no joy.

I have no issues with the game other than this loot drop thing.
I’m trying to work my way to a legdendary and with these kind of drop rates there is no way. At least not in a couple years or more.

Same, trying to go for my legendary but with the crappy rare drops i can’t get ecto’s so i have to buy ecto’s which cost money so i need to farm but i hardly get loot, ….
Vicious circle if you ask me. All was fine with the drops before the patch, still a grind but doable now it just plain sucks

I’m sorry but this is nothing new…with almost 150% Magic Find pre-November 15th on my Ranger I was getting nothing, I was clearing whole zones and getting 2-5 blues and greens…I stopped wearing magic find gear and that increased to 15-20 blues/greens an hour. There was suppossed to be some sort of bug related to magic find and condition damage whereby mobs dying from DoTs didn’t calculate magic find properly on death (it’s on the forums somewhere), but now it’s even worse?!?

I spent over an hour last night in Frostgorge Sound killing Veterans and Champion Ice Trolls and they drop the same worthless junk as normal mobs. I killed the Champion Ice Troll 5 times with 3 of us kiting it and killing everything else at the same time, and while my friend was getting the lvl400 crafting mats with no MF gear, I was getting the 300/325 lower level junk with almost 150% MF gear…so seriously, what’s the point in Magic Find? It doesn’t work properly, and with the current drop rates it seems like ArenaNet are punishing hard work and instead letting people rely on chance and luck for anything decent..which is just unfair.

Am seriously considering going back to WoW, at least there the mechanics are consistant and they don’t punish people for grinding the mats they need for high level crafting.

I’m sorry but this is nothing new…with almost 150% Magic Find pre-November 15th on my Ranger I was getting nothing, I was clearing whole zones and getting 2-5 blues and greens…I stopped wearing magic find gear and that increased to 15-20 blues/greens an hour. There was suppossed to be some sort of bug related to magic find and condition damage whereby mobs dying from DoTs didn’t calculate magic find properly on death (it’s on the forums somewhere), but now it’s even worse?!?

I spent over an hour last night in Frostgorge Sound killing Veterans and Champion Ice Trolls and they drop the same worthless junk as normal mobs. I killed the Champion Ice Troll 5 times with 3 of us kiting it and killing everything else at the same time, and while my friend was getting the lvl400 crafting mats with no MF gear, I was getting the 300/325 lower level junk with almost 150% MF gear…so seriously, what’s the point in Magic Find? It doesn’t work properly, and with the current drop rates it seems like ArenaNet are punishing hard work and instead letting people rely on chance and luck for anything decent..which is just unfair.

Am seriously considering going back to WoW, at least there the mechanics are consistant and they don’t punish people for grinding the mats they need for high level crafting.

Well I’ve never been impressed with loot drops, in fact I’ve had one yellow drop in about 4 days of extensive veteran and champ hunting,. But then I’ve never bothered with MF gear in the past so I can’t be sure my experience historically is representative.

But I have noticed that I’m not getting many dyes at all. Whereas before I’d expect to get at least a dozen in a week, this week I’ve had maybe 3. Don’t know if that’s illustrative of an overall issue with loot tables or not.

I noticed this last night and came here specifically looking for information on it..

Fractals loot is fine with a full ran tier giving a bagfull of Blues/Greens and the odd rare. I was running these in my exotic gear with no magic find (other than the shell earpiece).

Doing my daily events in Orr I normally get half a dozen rares and a bagfull of Greens I got a few blues and the rest was white or vendor trash. A LOT of mobs dropped nothing at all. I was running this using my full MF set with arounf 150% MF.

Not worth my time doing to be honest.

1.5-ish weeks ago I could drop into the lone post event in straits of devastation and make a gold or so in less than an hour to fund my hilariously failed attempts at WvW but lately it’s as though I’ve already hit DR before I even got there. I have enough porous bones and leather straps, thanks.

xtorma.1283:

Champions are not dropping for me either. I’m not talking about them only dropping white or blue, i mean they are not dropping anything.

Indeed, champions are not dropping anything for me as well. Getting a piece of junk off one would be an improvement a this point, let alone getting something decent. heh.

Well, it seems several of us have come to the same conclusion: Loot quality took a nosedive.

Now, if we could just find out if it was intentional or a bug.

Same here, asked the same, didn’t get answer tough, but for sure something was modify, I was having 3-4 rares per event with all my MF on, now I’m lucky if I get 3 per 5 events.

Further, in the patch notes you can read this….:

The drop rarity of Rare and Exotic weapons from certain places in the world (champions, veterans, and players in WvW) has been increased. Rares and Exotics should be much more likely to drop and every champion should be guaranteed to drop loot. This was to ensure that world loot drops were not a significantly worse way of acquiring rare and exotic items than crafting and running dungeons.

I noticed the change too, and I’m pretty sure it has to be a bug that they just haven’t had time to fix. The actual effects are the total opposite of the patch notes; one of my favorite things to do is farm and I noticed it right away.

I stacked all the magic find I could get my hands on just to see if I was going totally nuts, and it did seem to increase the quality of drops I got, but the overall frequency of drops remained the same. That meant when farming karka I was much more likely to get a powerful/potent blood or karka shell than a vendor trash item if the mob dropped anything, but I had streaks where I’d kill ten to twenty karka and they’d drop nothing. Several of the people I met while farming mentioned it, too.

Actually, me and my wife noticed the vast decrease in drop rates as well. Basically, we have a habit of “farming” Cursed Shores events for about 1-1,5 an hour to get drop that we can sell, especially “hunting” for rares. (both of us have gear with MF for that purpose) Before the Lost Shores we were getting around 4-5 rares per person. But the very first day after the patch we were quite shocked, because we get absolutely nothing at all in terms of rares. I said to myself – let’s not jump to conclusions too quickly, it might be just bad luck on RNG. But the next day she got none again and I collected 3. She got frustrated, I thought that I’m pretty close to my average, so it was bad but not TOO bad. So I’ve said – ok, it’s really not plausible for you to have not a single drop tomorrow, the probability is really low. And guess what happened? The third day she got nothing at all again (I get 2). I’m quite aware that we just might have been extremely unlucky but I wouldn’t rate chances that it actually happened any high. So yes, we’re also waiting for some sort of official response to our concern or at very least clarification of how Magic Find really works, because we have a strange feeling that it has close to none impact on drops at the moment…

Well the further i get into testing each different scenario the more I’m convinced this is a bug because it truly is the exact opposite of the patch notes. I know everyone is away for the holidays but i hope this gets flagged and dealt with Monday. The more detailed the information the better so i encourage others to post their findings and keep this bug visible.

LoomyZA.7041:

I too am experiencing such issues, less MF gear i wear the better apparently. My friends are getting so many more drops than me, lets just say for argument sake in exactly the same gear. Should i be increasing my gemstore purchases. I think thats the only different between them and me, I generate my own money throug hfarming, they on the other hand buy gems quite regularly.

That is a distressing thought. I do hope Anet is not dinging players for NOT purchasing gems…that goes totally against the grain.