Guild Wars 2

i do ffel like i get at least an item on a regular basis. Not that it is any better then the usual crap but i would say the chance is at 50% (it feels like it i have no evidence to support that statement)

It’s a shame that there’s no reason to fight your way to and slay that Veteran Wolf chilling in that out-of-the-way den with the rest of his pack.

i agree most loot is crap in the same time you kill the champ. you can kill a lot mobs and get more and better loot.

Tbh I never cared a single time to tag a mob for it’s reward. If its a trash-mob it will be dead fast, if it’s a veteran it will die slower. Both have to be killed in an event. That’s it for me.

Wanted to say I agree, there are plenty of champion/veterans in places where the player population is low. Like the Northwest most corner of Frostgorge for example, there are a few champions there are sometimes I want to take one on and see if I can beat it. Assuming I am victorious, I usually get a blue or trophy item and given that it just took 20 mins or half an hour of careful work, it is so disheartening to just get one blue item.

I read somewhere that veterans and champions were going to give better loot, but more often than not the ones I kill don’t even leave a lootable corpse. In my opinions champions, if not veterans, ought to only drop greens and above, and have a higher chance to dropping a related lodestone or core or something valuable.

I also think champions and veterans should be aware of how many players are killing them. If it happens to be 10 or 15 then each player doesn’t have to put in much effort but when it’s a small group of 2 or 3 each player is working really hard. So drops should be adjusted accordingly.

So if someone is coming along to help you will chase them away so they don’t spoil your dropchance? This is what would be happening. (Not saying you actually would)

They should have better drops anyway, maybe they shouldn’t be so aware of how many players are killing them. I was just tyring to find a solution to getting a single blue drop from killing a champion by yourself.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have dailies or “weeklies” like: kill 200 different veterans, kill 50 different champions and some nice rewards, not usual ones?

Just to compensate unlucky RNG.

From November 15th patch:

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.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-November-15-2012

Latest thread by Anet concerning this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Share-your-data-about-perceived-strange-drop-behavior-here/page/27#post1397411

So far there have been about 50 pages of comments (a lot on deleted threads) about this and the general level of open world loot. Most people feel that since the November 15th patch open world loot was nerfed or DR got bugged for a lot of people.

It’s been 3 months and Anet haven’t fixed anything yet, champions are still not guaranteed to drop loot.

I bet Anet won’t even dare to answer … or they will in 2 months..like in the other thread about loots…

IMO, veterans should always drop blues or above and champions should always drop greens or above and 1 silver or more.

I do agree…I should WANT to take down champs and veterans rather than just run past thinking it’s a waste of time and effort.

The risk is no where NEAR the reward.

While in GW1 I was always looking for Bosses cuz they have some nice loots (unique “green” weapons), here I tend to always skip them in the open world. Why should I waste X minutes to kill a champ here if I get an amazing NOTHING in return?

but hey…anet says everything is working as intended…this is just an x-files case…

darkace.8925:

It’s a shame that there’s no reason to fight your way to and slay that Veteran Wolf chilling in that out-of-the-way den with the rest of his pack.

You know there is a chest behind the tree in one of the wolf dens in Queensdale.

Big Boss.7902:

From November 15th patch:

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.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-November-15-2012

Latest thread by Anet concerning this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Share-your-data-about-perceived-strange-drop-behavior-here/page/27#post1397411

So far there have been about 50 pages of comments (a lot on deleted threads) about this and the general level of open world loot. Most people feel that since the November 15th patch open world loot was nerfed or DR got bugged for a lot of people.

It’s been 3 months and Anet haven’t fixed anything yet, champions are still not guaranteed to drop loot.

+1

papryk.6273:

While in GW1 I was always looking for Bosses cuz they have some nice loots (unique “green” weapons), here I tend to always skip them in the open world. Why should I waste X minutes to kill a champ here if I get an amazing NOTHING in return?

Or that in X minutes you can kill risen chicken and get 10 times better rewards.

There is a serious lack of incentive for killing Champions (and Veterans), in my opinion they should give a 100% chance of dropping materials on all Veterans and Champions. Who cares about green gear that you get with some chances from Champions? They should instead have a 100% chance of dropping materials, they are far more important.

Karka Champion: 100% of Armored Scales
Wolf Champion: 100% of Vicious Fang
Bat Champion: 100% of Powerful Blood
Jotun Champion: 100% Loot bag with random crafting material
Eye of Zhaitan: 100% Ancient Bone drop

etc. Also, rare chance of rare materials as well (significantly higher than the drop rate on normal mobs – more than 100 times better chance to be noticable and fair, maybe 1000 times)

papryk.6273:

While in GW1 I was always looking for Bosses cuz they have some nice loots (unique “green” weapons), here I tend to always skip them in the open world. Why should I waste X minutes to kill a champ here if I get an amazing NOTHING in return?

but hey…anet says everything is working as intended…this is just an x-files case…

Plus bosses gave that +2% and has capturable skills.

papryk.6273:

While in GW1 I was always looking for Bosses cuz they have some nice loots (unique “green” weapons)

Now that would be cool. To make greens useable in late game.

Ah yer, bosses were something to be feared in GW1, but they had good loot and you could capture their elie skill.

I do not recall ever running past a world boss in GW1. I always engaged them, on the off chance that I could pick up a green.

I do run past champions in this game, as the chance of them dropping a blue and 4 copper is as rare as a Boss in GW1 dropping a green. I’d rather kill trash, thanks. Trash has a better drop rate, and that is sad.

Plus in GW1 the bosses were nowhere as resilient than champions in GW2. More powerful for sure, but you didn’t need 2 minutes to kill them.

Look at those Abom champs my god ! They take almost as much time to kill than doing the whole Penitent event, and 95% of the time you’ll get 2 blues or less.

I always get something better from champs/vets, though it’s not usually something fancy.

It is quite strange. The NPCs that have the least HP, deal the least damage, provide far more gold per hour.

I’ve said it before and it is unfortunately true:

It’s odd how a cooperative rpg based on instances, has more incentive to hunt down and kill powerful bosses than a real open world MMORPG, it’s really something that had been bothering me since the first month of release…

1) Elite skills. In Guild Wars 1 bosses were the ONLY way to get Elite skills, at least until Nightfall and Hard Mode was available. In order to get those Elites, you first had to see them in action, as bosses and normal mobs were using the exact same skills available to players. The next time your entire party wipes by a Sandstorm you will WANT to capture it
In Guild Wars 2 we have pathetic Elite Skills on most professions, few are really defining the build someone is using, we have a very limited amount of them AND we have those worthless skill challenges. Instead of some random skill challenge that doesn’t make any sense, players should be focusing on doing events, so end bosses spawn, so they can capture their skills. And on a different subject, Elite skills should feel “elite”, currently on lots of the professions they aren’t (for example Elementalist elites have little to no mixing potential with builds/traits/gear etc)
Suggestion: Maybe they could make some World Bosses award a skill point, much like a skill challenge does? It’s a start, until we get better Elites.

2) Gear. Each boss in Guild Wars 1 had a chance of dropping “Green” weapons, those items were top quality gear (like Exotics) with sometimes unique skins and perfect stats for a build using that particular elite. So if you were lucky you could get both an elite and the gear to use it in one go. Elementalist bosses that used Fire magic for example, would drop Fire Magic gear.
Suggestion: Maybe they should make certain, hard to reach, bosses drop equipment packages like those available with Laurels? Of course without any chance for Exotics.

3) Morale boost. All bosses awarded a morale boost, a +2% on health, it was also the only way to refresh the ressurection signet available to all professions. That Morale Boost was reason enough to kill a boss at times (the “easier” ones at least).
Suggestion: certain, hard to reach, bosses could apply a buff to everyone that participated in killing them, similar to the buff seen in Forest of Niflhel sPVP map, when you kill Svanir/Chieftain. The buff could be a stat boost, or, even a magic find boost for a limited time.

4) Difficulty. Bosses in Guild Wars 1 didn’t have insane health pools. Instead they had resistances to debuffs in Prophecies, and from Factions onwards they had DOUBLE damage. This meant that the most important thing everyone remembered about bosses was the damage, not their hit points. Guild Wars 2 bosses are boring, without cool attacks.
Suggestion: rework all champion bosses to make them more interesting and challenging to fight. Reduce hit points (more than 50% reduction) and instead give “group” bosses an actual group, harder to solo, and tougher for groups. Those groups in Arah Explorable with different mix of professions come to mind, they are excellent for a Boss group.

I think in trying to appeal to a wider audience they have to design for the lowest common denominator. I wonder if it would be feasable as a designer to build a game that encourages players to get better at the game rather than to make thier players feel like Charlie at the Chocolate Factory.

I don’t understand ANet in this also. It still worthless and a waste of time killing vet/champ.

For me rarely I see them drop some loot, what more about better loot than normal mobs…

I think GW2 most reminds me of Kingdoms of Alumar gameplay wise. That’s not a compliment.

Fact is, in every MMO that comes out, the leveling world becomes obsolete 2 months after launch because there’s no incentive in going back. gw2 managed to extend a little the time u spend in it but still is not enough. In addition the majority of events are so easy that hardly fail and are a joke, while the group events are so long and boring and no player is interested to stop and help cause they get nothing from it. It doesn’t matter if i would try to kill those champions only for a challenge, i’m gonna be alone cause the majority of players look for a reward.

Ah, the old ever-growing problem with rewards in the game…

That is why most of the time nobody even bothers with them any more, what’s the point.

Many times you don’t even get experience. For example the karka event we killed TONS of vets and champs, but so many people were hitting them it was impossible to tag the things. No tagging, no experience, no drops.

Occasionally completely worthless, certainly no more rewarding than any other mob, especially considering your time and effort. It’s unusual as we are conditioned (by gaming experience) to believe that they would be carrying a bit more loot around on their person. The Abomb at the end of Plinx seems to often carry 1s86c in his wallet and often runs weaponless in terms of loot. I’ve helped people get the skill point on noose rd (CS) many times and can’t recall seeing a drop of any kind from that champ. It’s probably best to follow gaming conventions and up the reward a bit for vets and champs.

I will say that loot, at least in CS, has improved since the 1/28 patch. It’s, of course, not enough, but enough to notice improvement. The price is the worse culling that also came with the patch. I’m not sure I’d call the players winners in that exchange.

agree. i try to avoid them unless they are on the daily. especially when farming an area like the loot corridor between pent and she WPs – wasting time going after the vets for garbage (or no) drop versus killing the mobs and collecting loot bags.

vets/champs are not worth the effort. anet said they were going to fix this but I see no evidence. Seriously – how hard is it to fix loot tables? if the s/w was coded correctly in the first place the loot and %s should be in a database table on in a cube loaded to memory and its a simple lookup.

Raine.1394:

Occasionally completely worthless, certainly no more rewarding than any other mob, especially considering your time and effort. It’s unusual as we are conditioned (by gaming experience) to believe that they would be carrying a bit more loot around on their person. The Abomb at the end of Plinx seems to often carry 1s86c in his wallet and often runs weaponless in terms of loot. I’ve helped people get the skill point on noose rd (CS) many times and can’t recall seeing a drop of any kind from that champ. It’s probably best to follow gaming conventions and up the reward a bit for vets and champs.

I will say that loot, at least in CS, has improved since the 1/28 patch. It’s, of course, not enough, but enough to notice improvement. The price is the worse culling that also came with the patch. I’m not sure I’d call the players winners in that exchange.

It’s not about past gaming experience, it’s about legends and fantasy classics. Sigfried kills the dragon to get the ring of the nibelungs and a ton of gold, not a passing by risen chicken

I don’t even bother with them anymore. Waste of time.

darkace.8925:

It’s a shame that there’s no reason to fight your way to and slay that Veteran Wolf chilling in that out-of-the-way den with the rest of his pack.

Would be cool if they could tie the drops into the same calculator that generates the “bonus” xp from kills. The older (time since it was last killed by someone else) a foe is, the better the chance for a sweet drop.

This would also send people all over the open world hunting for remote low population areas.

Braindrops.6428:

Raine.1394:

Occasionally completely worthless, certainly no more rewarding than any other mob, especially considering your time and effort. It’s unusual as we are conditioned (by gaming experience) to believe that they would be carrying a bit more loot around on their person. The Abomb at the end of Plinx seems to often carry 1s86c in his wallet and often runs weaponless in terms of loot. I’ve helped people get the skill point on noose rd (CS) many times and can’t recall seeing a drop of any kind from that champ. It’s probably best to follow gaming conventions and up the reward a bit for vets and champs.

I will say that loot, at least in CS, has improved since the 1/28 patch. It’s, of course, not enough, but enough to notice improvement. The price is the worse culling that also came with the patch. I’m not sure I’d call the players winners in that exchange.

It’s not about past gaming experience, it’s about legends and fantasy classics. Sigfried kills the dragon to get the ring of the nibelungs and a ton of gold, not a passing by risen chicken

No, it’s about past gaming experience. It’s where games draw from yes, science fiction, fantasy, etc. And, if you were to ask C.S. Lewis there is even a step beyond the literary archetypes: things they draw from and he provides a back story for those. There is little truly novel or original in life; we create, not ex nihilo, but from who we are and the experiences we have had. Gaming just packages that up and feeds it back to us. From our past gaming experience we expect that higher level mobs will give better rewards.

I’m going to go against the popular opinion here and say that it actually doesn’t bother me that veterans and champions don’t have better rewards.

I go after them just for the experience/fun of trying to kill them. Can I solo/duo one with this build, or this character pair, etc. I don’t expect better drops because it has never been like that in this game, so I always felt they were in there just for the challenge. In some ways it seems more realistic: the best fighter isn’t necessarily the richest, but you still might run across one that you need to beat to stay alive.

I wouldn’t want the rewards to be raised TOO high, because then they would be farmed and I like trying to solo them. Right now if I want the challenge, usually I am left alone to try.

I like the idea someone said of having achievements or special awards for killing a certain number of veterans or champions, instead of being rewarded directly by drops.

You know something is wrong when you and everyone else are farming the DE at pentinent’s camp and everyone would rather kill risen chickens than touch the veteran mob.

I often do vets when I pass them, just to see if they can do something. .champs I mostly stay clear, as there are only a few I can solo. it’s a bit annoying killing a champ (or veteran kara, seems about the same) after several minutes and only getting a blue or so in return. all champs should guarantee to drop a yellow, at least then they’d be interesting for the potential ecto-income.. vets should have a high chance (1/3 or so) to drop yellow.. maybe limit it so only a player doing 40% or more of the damage a vet takes (20% for champ) can even get a yellow, so it would encourage to group up in 2-4 groups, but not just zergrush all champs to get cheap yellows… there are possibilities to make them appealing without giving players free stuff.. (yes I know, my idea works against support chars.. sorry, bad luck, at least it does teach you to play dmg with a bit of support instead of the reverse, which is pretty useless)

I think the game should change Champions to Named NPCs, and give those Named NPCs a decent chance at dropping a unique looking skin or even a bundle to pick up and play with around the zone.
Then a lot of players might fight them more often to collect alternative looks for their gear or alternative skills to play with. And it won’t be about dropping ‘better’ loot that can be farmed by the thousands.

Whats the purpose of champ/vets? Delete them already. I have no clue hiw anet came to the conclusion that its a good idea to have high hp mobs drop kitten. All I know is they are wrong and should at least end the boss mobs misery, nobody wants to touch them pffft.

Redfeather.6401:

I think the game should change Champions to Named NPCs, and give those Named NPCs a decent chance at dropping a unique looking skin or even a bundle to pick up and play with around the zone.
Then a lot of players might fight them more often to collect alternative looks for their gear or alternative skills to play with. And it won’t be about dropping ‘better’ loot that can be farmed by the thousands.

I like the bundle idea.. even if its a bit on the strong side, it would only work on the same map but would allow each map to be different. and since downing removes bundles, it could be interesting.
unique skins would be incredible but the effort to create singular art for every champ probably is too much.. but maybe a set for each type of mob (ettin set, icebrood set, etc) but even then its quite a lot of work..I’m absolutely for it, but it seems unlikely due to resource restrictions on ANets part (I wish they had hundreds of worker-bees, but unfortunately it aint so =)

Selebrity.7469:

Whats the purpose of champ/vets? Delete them already. I have no clue hiw anet came to the conclusion that its a good idea to have high hp mobs drop kitten. All I know is they are wrong and should at least end the boss mobs misery, nobody wants to touch them pffft.

thats a bit unfair. I’ve met plenty of vets with special attacks which the normal mobs didn’t have. they’re not just a normal mob with more hp, they ARE different. yes, they could be even more distinguishable, but some are already quite cool (don’t even know which type of mob it was, but the veteran did long-term knockdowns whereas the normal one only crippled.. I was pretty surprised by this move and had to pull a stunbreak – of which I only carry one for general pve – to get back up into the fight)

Still waiting for a response from Anet – A week old ticket submitted the bug that champions were not dropping loot when solo’d (soloing means its 100% kill credit – so should drop loot)

Oranisagu, I thought so too until I saw duffy’s galleries. There are on average 60+ skins to each weapon type. And they increase every month.
Eventually I think it will be possible, especially if reskins are done to create more items.

What I’d really like to see is champions drop anything interesting that can’t be farmed into massive stacks or simply sold to become rich. I love thinking about it, and hope everyone shares some ideas.

Would be very nice if veterans and champions were not such a worthless pain in the kitten

ANet could even look at GW1 for some good ideas → unique items from bosses

Flamenco.3894:

ANet could even look at GW1 for some good ideas -> unique items from bosses

I wasn’t a fan of gw1 and only a fan of gw2 for a few months, but I did read somewhere that a great deal of the gw1 team is no longer part of anet, or don’t work on gw2, so I doubt those ideas will ever see the light of day.

I have a feeling that GW2 has been Jay Wilsoned.

So far it seems it takes an unspecified amount of months to correct things such as this. One would think there would be some type of table one can edit like a DB, meaning a few minutes worth of work changing up drop chances etc, then testing. But it must be something more than that, all changes in GW2 seems like it must be a near herculean code effort to make.

The running joke in our guild is when we drop a champion “I got my chest”, it still funny no matter how many times we do it.

While I applaud the idea that Champions and Vets ought to be worth killing, I have 2 other things to say. 1) Since the purported up to drop rates, I get something from Champs and Vets 95% of the time, versus maybe 20% before. and 2) We ask for better drops, but how many people actually get drops they are going to equip? I can count the times on 1 hand, and all but one of those were greens at low levels.