Guild Wars 2

If there is no Grind in this game why did/does it take me 3 hours + to get three Powerful Bloods… no DR just an insanely limited drop rate designed for me to farm for hours…

No game should be like that, its not fun and its frustrating..

The problem with DR is that it is basically hypocritical.

You don’t want people to grind for things (sounds great so far) so you want to discourage it as much as possible. But….you make having large amounts of money (gold/karma/tokens/badges) required for most anything desirable.

So you don’t want people to grind, but you force people to do so to get what they want.

I believe the concept was that it would slow people down and take them months to get their things and keep them playing for longer. The problem with that, is there is just not enough content to do to keep people playing for that long without a grind. Making alts or doing hearts can be a grind in itself.

You could also argue that they put DR into place so that more people would buy gems and turn them into gold to get what they want. Which could also be the case.

I am sure no player wants to grind an area or event to get what they want, it is never fun. But they have to basically to get what they want, so that is why they do it. If you don’t want people to grind just lower the prices on everything by 90%, it would be much more effective then a DR. In fact DR just encourages more grinding by making people do more to get what they want.

In this thread i would like to present several observations i have made throughout the time i have played farming for materials and drops in order to acquire goods, solely for personal use. The topic will focus on the current DR which has been introduced early in the game. Whether this is currently a bug or intentional, i have not heard any official updates in over a month, thus i feel the obligation to present my findings through several observations.

Pattern one – “The Classic”
Consider a possible farming scenario for 1 player farming in a single High Level Location:
First 30 min: Normal loot drop rate
1 hour in: Normal loot drop rate
1 hour 15 min in: Loot drop rate reduced so drastically that i cant give it a percentage, but almost surely by more than 75%

*Remark – The time this happens is not constant. And it literally shuts your loot down with an on/off switch.

Pattern Two – “The Lucky Guy/Girl”
Consider a Scenario for 5 players farming in a single High Level Location.
Players 1-5 kill the same mobs, dealing approximately the same damage, both with the same % of MF. We can assume they are either solo or in a good damage dealing group.
Player 1 gets 10 rares in 2 hours. Players 2-5 gets 1 rare in 4 hours.

*Remark: It is statistically near impossible to have such a scenario occur when probabilistic formulas are not tampered with. This is the lucky day scenario when your luck is ON or OFF for several hours at a time. It happens consistently in inconsistent time intervals.

Pattern Three – “A Timely Reset”
Server restarts…Players farm for 1-2 hours and experience drop rates, equal than or better than the pre november 15 patch. After that, Pattern One kicks in.

*Remark: This is an observation for now, one that i would rather gather more data before i cal it a scenario.

Pattern Four – “Taking a Break”
Assume Pattern 1 occurs. A player may decide to take a break to supposedly clear the DR timer. Player returns back to the same area after 1-2 hours. Rather inconsistently, the drop rates may or may not improve.
*Remark: None

Pattern Five – “Moving around”
Assume Pattern 1 occurs. A player may decide to switch to a zone to supposedly clear the DR timer. Player experiences absolutely no change. DR is present and well and there is still an influx of gray quality drops, just like before moving around.
*Remark: None

General Notes:
- Drop rates for Materials seems unaffected.
- Loot bags seem unaffected.
-The DR in its core is implemented in much a way that it is statistically near impossible to understand. There are multiple patterns that explain when it is present but they just don’t add up to be a feature. Its behavior is in fact and in my opinion like a BUG.

Please add more observations under this post, which i can add to this one.

Post Constructively

I think the OP makes some valid points, but I also think some people are so conditioned to grinding in an MMO they will never stop, no matter how difficult the game makes it, they will find a way.

Even the designers of Guild Wars 2 themselves don’t seem to understand the “no-grind” philosophy.

If they did, Legendaries would not be the ridiculous grind that they are, and nor would Ascended.

Yet it seem to bug on materials, as frankly, I can farm barracudas for hours in timberline falls, yet when I farm raptors in iron marches, I hardly get that many of the equivalent tier 4 materials (sharp claws) in the same time frame.

Might be something to look into.

Pattern Two —
People’s perception of the occurrence of rare events is naturally misguided.

The number of rare items in a period of farming should follow a Poisson process. The math behind it ensures that you will see clusters, that some people will be much richer than others.

It’s natural to be superstitious. The brain creates patterns when there are none, cuz that’s what brains do.

Thanks for the thoughtful post. My observation essentially encapsulates yours in that I notice there is DR, and I know there shouldn’t be. Players play games to experience reward of some kind. Part of this comes through the gameplay itself and some comes from the loot you find. In most games you need gold to maintain and evolve your characters and you should be experiencing the reward that comes from finding loot; that’s why games have loot systems.

The more basic problem here, and DR is a just a symptom, is the lack of relative reward players experience through playing the game. That’s why you see threads like yours over and over. The answer is simple: tune the loot system so that players feel rewarded for playing the game. Given the way the game is monetized, tuning the loot system will not be simple as there are countervailing forces at play, but tune it they must as people play games to have fun and experiencing reward is the bedrock of having fun.

As I wrote in another thread Pattern 1 seems to apply to me perfectly. I play about 5 hours/day and noticed that only during first hour or so I get drops better than white/blue junk and OFC infamous Porous Bones in bulk (parked myself in Orr).

Problem is, that if for some reason, I do not start “farming” straight away after login my drop rate is a disaster for the whole game time. Statistically if I farm various events for 5 hours and have decent MF I should drop something of interest, right? I am not talking about exotics or lodestones, as they have obviously nerfed drop rate, but “normal” rares. Not long ago I had over 100 globs in my bags (used them for clovers) and tried to build a new stack for more Mystic Forge lottery. Imagine my frustration when after a week of “farming” I found out that I only have 12 of them. At this point I must say I remember getting 2-3 globs from single salvage 3 times. That means I dropped so lil rares during 35 hours of play.

I do not want to sound negative but ANet messed up with either DR mechanics or deliberately tuned down drop rates for whatever reason.

mulch.2586:

Pattern Two —
People’s perception of the occurrence of rare events is naturally misguided.

The number of rare items in a period of farming should follow a Poisson process. The math behind it ensures that you will see clusters, that some people will be much richer than others.

It’s natural to be superstitious. The brain creates patterns when there are none, cuz that’s what brains do.

If indeed the number of rares over time follows a poisson distribution with an extremely low lambda in a Probability mass function, doesn’t that constitute of an easy-to-compute DR mechanism? If so, is there a possibility that the lambda was much higher before november 15th?

I might like to try if you allow it to be posted here, a farming of one set of enemies for a whole hour. I’m thinking moas in a certain area or the barracudas and see what turns up.

Ath.2531:

mulch.2586:

Pattern Two —
People’s perception of the occurrence of rare events is naturally misguided.

The number of rare items in a period of farming should follow a Poisson process. The math behind it ensures that you will see clusters, that some people will be much richer than others.

It’s natural to be superstitious. The brain creates patterns when there are none, cuz that’s what brains do.

If indeed the number of rares over time follows a poisson distribution with an extremely low lambda in a Probability mass function, doesn’t that constitute of an easy-to-compute DR mechanism? If so, is there a possibility that the lambda was much higher before november 15th?

This assumption of a pattern really doesn’t explain how prior to nov 16th everyone was getting rares and exotics from dragon events, and now when one does them we only get blues and greens. That’s not pattern assumption that’s direct manipulation on the part of the devs. That’s another thing that brains do, brains manipulate whatever they can when they can.

Also, your statement doesn’t take into account that they admitted to using DR and that it’s not functioning like its supposed to, that they are slowly bringing it down so that it doesn’t affect farmers but only affects bots. They made this statement in the same paragraph as the one that suggested moving around from zone to zone to try to offset the DR from hitting farmers.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

I might like to try if you allow it to be posted here, a farming of one set of enemies for a whole hour. I’m thinking moas in a certain area or the barracudas and see what turns up.

As i am not a moderator, its not up to me to “allow” your post:)
Feel free to share your findings but 1 hour of farming doesn’t really constitute a good time sample size. Try 3-4 hours in a preferably lvl 80 zone if you can

Thanks

I have been finding the moving around tactic is the most reliable though I haven’t kept a tally yet to be exact.

I usually find a very steep decline after an hour or more in the same place, though I think it’s more a # of kills in the same place because if I’m not killing quickly it seems longer before that drop off happens.

Ath.2531:

mulch.2586:

Pattern Two —
People’s perception of the occurrence of rare events is naturally misguided.

The number of rare items in a period of farming should follow a Poisson process. The math behind it ensures that you will see clusters, that some people will be much richer than others.

It’s natural to be superstitious. The brain creates patterns when there are none, cuz that’s what brains do.

If indeed the number of rares over time follows a poisson distribution with an extremely low lambda, doesn’t that constitute of an easy-to-compute DR mechanism? If so, is there a possibility that the lambda was much higher before november 15th?

They wouldn’t be adjusting the Poisson parameter, because drops happen on individual events — drawing from an urn, so to speak.

Did they change the contents of the urn? Lots more “no-prize” and “porous bone” events in there? Seems like. And it does seem like as you hunt they keep tossing in more “no-prize” chips into the urn.

But regardless of how the parameters may have changed, under any system you’re going to see what look like clusters and non-randomness, even if the underlying process is independent random.

TabMorte.5297:

I usually find a very steep decline after an hour or more in the same place, though I think it’s more a # of kills in the same place because if I’m not killing quickly it seems longer before that drop off happens.

This is exactly what I’ve been thinking about. The number of kills. For farming purposes I set up my char to hit as many mobs as it can (traits/sigils/AoE weapon) and if I happen to start my farming day with Plinx chain or other “full’o’mobs” event my luck with drops seems to wear of much much quicker.

And yeah, my whole thread which attempts to explain the issues behind the mechanics of DR is merged in a thread titled: “Why the current DR is a good thing”

Are the moderators even serious anymore?

I just thought that, too. The other thread wasn’t about how good and nice DR to us is. ^^

But yes, they kept the “better looking” name. I will report that and request a name change.

DR should be removed altogether, or either the player should be informed while they are currently under it. Also they should have a chance to reset it’s misbehavior by doing a specifc random DE.

kanikani.2430:

The problem with DR is that it is basically hypocritical.

You don’t want people to grind for things (sounds great so far) so you want to discourage it as much as possible. But….you make having large amounts of money (gold/karma/tokens/badges) required for most anything desirable.

So you don’t want people to grind, but you force people to do so to get what they want.

I believe the concept was that it would slow people down and take them months to get their things and keep them playing for longer. The problem with that, is there is just not enough content to do to keep people playing for that long without a grind. Making alts or doing hearts can be a grind in itself.

You could also argue that they put DR into place so that more people would buy gems and turn them into gold to get what they want. Which could also be the case.

I am sure no player wants to grind an area or event to get what they want, it is never fun. But they have to basically to get what they want, so that is why they do it. If you don’t want people to grind just lower the prices on everything by 90%, it would be much more effective then a DR. In fact DR just encourages more grinding by making people do more to get what they want.

Its not contradictory, they dont want you to grind, they want you to BUY!! go buy some gems. See, no grind! Man… I wont be recommending this game to anyone I went out of my way to bring people into GW1 but this just … no comment. Im gonna keep my mouth shut.

Chamone.6890:

Even the designers of Guild Wars 2 themselves don’t seem to understand the “no-grind” philosophy.

If they did, Legendaries would not be the ridiculous grind that they are, and nor would Ascended.

This! So much this.

And then they confirm this by reducing the requirements of Ascended items.
They reduce the SP cost from 50 to 5 and leave 250 ecto and 250 t6 mats requirement. LMFAO
And they call it reduction. Which I suppose, technically is.

And yeah, my whole thread which attempts to explain the issues behind the mechanics of DR is merged in a thread titled: “Why the current DR is a good thing”

Are the moderators even serious anymore?

It went beyond ridiculous quite some time ago, yes.

As for my experience, I can`t pattern DR because it is ALWAYS ON for my account. No matter which alt I play, what zone, what activity type, for how long etc.
I have a solid ground in my assumption it is not just a flux. It has been happening for a month and started right with 11/15 patch.
I started farming Plinx long before that, I did it a lot, and I know precisely what kinds of rewards were to be expected on average run. I also know that with each new MF item my chances to get a rare or green were rising. It was quite tangible and measurable. With end-MF of 125% I was consistently getting an average of 2 rares per run (0 or 4 rares runs happened extremely rarely and I had about the same number of zero-rare runs and 4-rare runs).

All this just stopped at 11/15. At most I am getting 3 greens per Plinx (I try to do one Plinx run every day to see if something has changed; why Plinx – because I know precisely what is a normal amount of drops for that event). I am getting 2 rares per week if I am lucky. And I play at least 4 hours a day, every day. Nothing I tried helps to remove the DR. It does not “kick in”, it`s just always there.

By the way I strongly suggest we abandon this thread. If something with such a name is being pushed to top… you get the idea, right? Troll topic.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Change-in-loot-parameters-or-a-bug-Merged/ – here is a 23-page discussion on the same issue.

It is there and it is following us since 15th November. We can’t escape. (And yessss, I am serious.)

OMG! I’ve been playing since launch and last night got my first Black Lion key in 6 weeks! I was seriously thinking they completely removed BL keys from drops and map completions but there it is. So I now have to ‘grind’ 6 weeks for every BL key? Thanks ANet on a job well done… :P

Edit: FYI, I play 3-6 hours per night every night. I used to get 2-3 BL key drops per week and used to get several from map completions.

FrizzFreston.5290:

DR is in place so that players don’t find ( or do) shortcuts to stacks of materials by spamming mobs over and over. If DR wasn’t there people would simply pick one spot and exploit it to death to get loads of materials and screwing over the entire game economy.

Prices on those items would drop so if that counts as screwing over the economy……………

TabMorte.5297:

I have been finding the moving around tactic is the most reliable though I haven’t kept a tally yet to be exact.

I usually find a very steep decline after an hour or more in the same place, though I think it’s more a # of kills in the same place because if I’m not killing quickly it seems longer before that drop off happens.

And this would seem to be the way ANet wants you to play this game. One of the game designers even said that.

The way I see it ATM is that the more you move around the better the average loot you will get. Farming is OK, however, NOT IN THE SAME SPOT OVER AND OVER.

This is the way I understand what ANet is trying to do.

Raine.1394:

The answer is simple: tune the loot system so that players feel rewarded for playing the game. Given the way the game is monetized, tuning the loot system will not be simple as there are countervailing forces at play, but tune it they must as people play games to have fun and experiencing reward is the bedrock of having fun.

This, so much this. Its definitely skewed to much away from this.

Death Reincarnated.3570:

And this would seem to be the way ANet wants you to play this game. One of the game designers even said that.

The way I see it ATM is that the more you move around the better the average loot you will get. Farming is OK, however, NOT IN THE SAME SPOT OVER AND OVER.

This is the way I understand what ANet is trying to do.

This is what they originally said but with eg. the nerfs to plinx and jormag its not how its working now.

How about reinstating open world loot again? Stop handing everything to the dungeon runners.
They force you to play the way they want you to -not the way you want and have fun. You do it their way or you get nothing in return.
I am sorry but the dungeon grinders have it awesome right now with the loot. I get Jack kitten for all my time and they come away with gold? right ok this is going to work.

Or what I have done now is stop playing the game for fun and play the TP. Just to make money and stay ahead! Think that is fun spending hours on end spread sheeting everything out and trying to make margin just to get ahead.

It is beyond idiotic that 1 type of player is rewarded significantly more than me even tho we are spending the equivalent time in game.

This game is in serious trouble with the pop drop off (50%) and squeezing for gems that Anet cant afford this. (pun).I have come to the conclusion that they either all run warriors and do dungeons as that is the only thing that explains the state of the game.
The other is incompetence. Which is it?

Death Reincarnated.3570:

And this would seem to be the way ANet wants you to play this game. One of the game designers even said that.

The way I see it ATM is that the more you move around the better the average loot you will get. Farming is OK, however, NOT IN THE SAME SPOT OVER AND OVER.

This is the way I understand what ANet is trying to do.

This is what I am doing (changing characters, changing zones, etc.) and I am affected.

And trying is simply not enough as soon as it affects the normal legit player, who wants to proceed in pve content, and punishes him for playing a game. We are not really talking about “serious” farming at this point (doing one event twice shouldn’t trigger the DR, should it?)

(I have to admit that I had some lucky streaks over the last days and I will observe it, if there was a change for me or not.)

1st time in 3 days decided to make CoF runs. Did it on my thief, 2 paths, got 60 token for every path. 15 mins later, after being unable to find a team for FotM decided to make CoF on ele, my ele got 30 tokens for every path. This is just bad, the whole system is faulty, i barely even farm anything ever, it punishes me for what exactly? For running some kittening dungeon few times a week? What now, i MUST w8 before doing this dungeon on another toon? Such a horse kitten imo.

wasted.6817:

What now, i MUST w8 before doing this dungeon on another toon? Such a horse kitten imo.

A good bunch of other MMOs (new and old ones alike) have lockout timers on dungeons, so you can do them only once every x hours. It adds to the “exclusivity” of the dungeons, makes you appreciate them more. It also encourages you to do switch up farming spots.

ASB.4295:

wasted.6817:

What now, i MUST w8 before doing this dungeon on another toon? Such a horse kitten imo.

A good bunch of other MMOs (new and old ones alike) have lockout timers on dungeons, so you can do them only once every x hours. It adds to the “exclusivity” of the dungeons, makes you appreciate them more. It also encourages you to do switch up farming spots.

I don’t recall other MMOs which would lockout your whole account from a dungeon if u’ve completed it on 1 of your toons, they would only lockout this exact toon, the one who alrdy been in a dungeon, but u’re free to go on another if u want to. And then, there’s another problem, current system is not transparent, unlike the lockout one. How the kitten i’m supposed to know if this idiocy (DR) is over for me or still in place? I’ve mentioned how i play, i’m essentially a casual player, i don’t farm, i could use some CoF tokens, but i don’t do daily runs there, coz i don’t want to, don’t feel like it, i’m getting bored. So now, when i want to make few runs on more than one toon, i will get punished if i don’t dance around this stupid system, like w8ing, going doing something else, even if i don’t want to etc. In it’s essence this system is just wasting my time here. I don’t know if it prevents some exploiters or botters from anything, but it surely does taints my gaming experience.

It just got into my mind.. they could have done it way more pleasant for the player who need to “farm” these dungeons due to the high token costs of the desired armor.

So how they could have handled it:
Whenever and how many times you want to run a dungeon you can do that until you can get one full armor set. Say the limit is 1200 tokens. So when you’ve done the dungeon that many times to reach that amount of tokens it will have a countdown, DR or whatever.

Why did they made the armor pieces where you have to farm for a lot of tokens, when you are restricted in when and how you can achieve that?
It doesn’t make any sense.

Navi.7142:

It just got into my mind.. they could have done it way more pleasant for the player who need to “farm” these dungeons due to the high token costs of the desired armor.

So how they could have handled it:
Whenever and how many times you want to run a dungeon you can do that until you can get one full armor set. Say the limit is 1200 tokens. So when you’ve done the dungeon that many times to reach that amount of tokens it will have a countdown, DR or whatever.

Why did they made the armor pieces where you have to farm for a lot of tokens, when you are restricted in when and how you can achieve that?
It doesn’t make any sense.

Spot on!

If you make something require 100 tokens and it takes you 2 hours to get 1 token then you have to wait 24 hours for DR cool-down before you can farm again, guess what. You have a MINIMUM of 100 days to get said tokens, that’s if you are regimented enough to do it.

But does the cool-down start at the end of the farming? If so that would blow the equation out to 108.3 days and you can’t play at the same time each day because you have to start farming 2 hours later each day!!!!

This whole thing is doing my head in.

Scenario 6 – Permanent “bad luck”

since the 11/15 patch, the ONLY time I’ve had loot drops that are in parity with everyone else is after a new build.

I only play a few hours a day about 2 days a week.

I don’t actively “farm”, I do dynamic events, dungeons, seasonals, and level alts (trying to 100% zones)

I get squat while others receive 2-3 ectos an event, I lose money on waypoint costs, I watch as the dev-stated “end-goal” of legendaries (precursors) skyrocket faster daily than my income is monthly.

I’m seeing zero feedback on this.

If I don’t see an update soon, i’m beyond done, i’ll have them liquidate my account, refund my money, and I’ll go buy a couple other game titles.

I will also never come back to MMO.

I posted this in another thread but since this is specific DR discussion I deleted and post here.

DR was NEVER aimed at botters. It’s ANets version of a “raid lock” except it extends to every single pve activity in the game. It’s meant as a ‘you can only play for this long’ kinda thing, unless of course you don’t care about getting any drops.

I guess they thought it would pace people and keep them playing longer but for me it does the opposite, it’s currently the #1 reason I don’t log in at all anymore. I refuse to believe ANet is stupid enough to think DR would stop bots.

I saw something very similar in Diablo 2. Blizz implemented the Realm Down feature, which would limit you to 20 games per hour or something like that, and each game had to be at least 3 minutes long. This of course didn’t effect the botters in the slightest, all they did was design the bots around the system and it only hurt legit players.

DR needs to be removed ASAP and I am not playing until it’s gone. If I don’t have the freedom to actually play the game without being punished for it, then I will not play. It’s pointless. Just think, really think, how ridiculous this system is.

ANet design baffles me on so many levels, one of these days I’ll break my face from palming so hard. Bots are not on a time schedule, they don’t care if they hit DR. Players DO care.

Rukia.4802:

ANet design baffles me on so many levels, one of these days I’ll break my face from palming so hard. Bots are not on a time schedule, they don’t care if they hit DR. Players DO care.

Bots DONT buy gems. Players DO. That should clear up why they have this system.

Lutharr.1035:

Rukia.4802:

ANet design baffles me on so many levels, one of these days I’ll break my face from palming so hard. Bots are not on a time schedule, they don’t care if they hit DR. Players DO care.

Bots DONT buy gems. Players DO. That should clear up why they have this system.

Truer words have never been spoken :/

I’m another of those ‘unlucky’ souls that seems to have perma-DR. I have over 500 hrs since launch. I have NEVER seen a single exotic drop.

Disclaimer: I did get two level 70’s exotic staffs in the Lost Shores Chest. I got plenty of exotic stuff from map completion rewards but none that my ranger could use and certainly none suitable for lvl 80 even after finishing Cursed Shores.

I have run a single dungeon ‘AC’ and got some lvl 35 blues and greens for my lvl 80. I helped kill the Claw of Jormag and got blues, greens and junk.
I never stay in one place, I move across maps a lot to save on WP costs. I don’t understand why it is that I have only seen 3 rares drop since Nov 15.
One hour is all I get and that is if I’m lucky. I can go to WvW and have the same bad drops, run across two or three maps doing DE’s as I go. It doesn’t matter the loot is bad and it gets worse after that hour is up.
I am beginning to wonder if MF has something to do with it. I have crafted Beserker gear with 6 pirate runes and two pieces of MF jewelry but my percentage isn’t much over 100% at best (including the omnom bars I craft & eat).
I want to make a new set of gear to be more productive in groups but it’s becoming far too cost prohibitive to craft anything. I still need to level 2 more crafts to make gear for alts and yet I am wondering if I can afford to do that.

I will never see a legendary, ascended or even possibly a 2nd set of crafted exotic armor if it keeps up like this.
Well maybe in a couple of years when the kids get older I can run dungeons and make up the difference…