Guild Wars 2

Colin just confirmed the “loot bug” and guess what, DR has nothing to do with it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Update-on-Loot-Drops-Investigation/first#post1462956

It took months, but we finally have vindication. Good job Anet, can’t wait for the next patch.

Focus discussion/feedback/tears of joy here.

Ah finaly! Hope we see some good changes

My Feedback:

“Loot! Loot everywhere!”

I deeply hope that update will fix the loot issues.
There are still some questions remaining, but I will wait for the update, see what it does and then draw my conclusions from that.

At least , after hard work and long investigation, they found something.
So until now: thanks for that.

Just read the thread. Now I’m even more excited for the Feb 26th patch!

im just curious as to what he means by “unintentionally restrictive for some”.

i mean, dmg dealer? dmg taker? redheads? asuras?

he probably prefer not to say it so people dont ask for a “payback”, but i m still curious!

Yeah, just noticed/read it.

Thanks for the reply Colin.

It sounds good, but we will have to wait and see the results when it’s live.

I think the main reason why people started the thread was because they didn’t like DR.

Well the solution didn’t specify anything to fix DR, so I predict a massive amount of ensuing complaints.

I kind of like the low loot i do not need all the items nor do i need all the gold in the game i also can see that loot being lower is a great way to counter farm bots. But if its a bug then its a bug that will be fixed.

saw the update, It did not address the utter dearth of rares for many while it rains rares for others, consistently, for months on end

This was not at all addressed.

I’m happy to see some resolution, but this is NOT what is plaguing my account, and the accounts of many, many other players, since 11/15.

I also notice the massive thread is now buried. Nice..

Well from reading Colin’s post that could mean more loot for me, or a lot less loot for me.

Knew I shouldn’t have picked a Ranger as we do less damage than anybody else, means less loot for me.

There were more than a few in that massive thread that posed the question on many occasions about the speed of killing or damage dealt being tied into loot dropping. As one of the many who questioned kill credit, I do feel a bit vindicated.
At the same time no one could dismiss DR because the mechanics of it are so obscure and at times it seemed it refused to let go.
I do hope their patch will fix this issue for good. I look forward to it.
I still say that more communication with the public would have gone a long way and would have kept many people trying to help, if they were given more direction. (Even if their direction was just a placebo).

EDIT: My main is a Ranger and yeah loot has always been bad.

Well, I’m glad they kept digging. However, the response also saddens me a bit. Veterans still can not drop loot and, wait for it, Champions only guarantee you at least getting a BLUE! Gimme a break. Blues are vendor trash and that Veterans only have a somewhat better chance of dropping anything is just sad.

Champions are just pointless to fight, Period.

People should have nearly the same earning potential doing world PvE as doing dungeons. They should also be able to play lower level content via scaling and have nearly the same earning potential as they would have doing level 80 world PvE content. There should be some incentive for tackling the more challenging content, but in the end, the game should reward and encourage any form of game play that keeps players playing and having fun.

So, yeah, it’s nice that the community was vindicated, but there are still much deeper issues here that aren’t being addressed. GW2 wants to create a new paradigm for MMO play, but it continues to be held back by developer resistance to it’s true potential.

As to vets and champions, I get why they might not want a new flood of Masterwork+ items, so maybe it’s time to start considering other rewards for Vets and Champions, in addition to the current loot tables? In any event, vets should always drop something and Champions should always drop the equivalent of a fairly generous chest, i.e. 2-4 rolls on the loot table, plus some guaranteed reward, like maybe something akin to the Orrian Jewelry Box.

plasma, we don’t know yet whether not getting kill credit also causes the problem with other openworld foes or not. ^^ (I really hope it’s the same problem and the update will fix everything at once..)

LOL! I guess they were just waiting for me to decide to take a break before fixing this. Might be back in a couple months to see if the game got any better. Until then, I’m tired of the nothing-but-grind game play. I mean, how bad is it when a Diablo 3 demo is more interesting? Aaanyway. We’ll see how things work out down the road.

this game isnt really based on “loot” anyway…
its there, its useful as a slow progression system, but by no mean you need or should farm tyria…

proof of that are the new laurels; they are not grind based.

Vol.5241:

I think the main reason why people started the thread was because they didn’t like DR.

Well the solution didn’t specify anything to fix DR, so I predict a massive amount of ensuing complaints.

The thing is, I think DR may have been a whipping boy for something it wasn’t doing. If you saw yourself doing damage to targets, getting XP for kills, but getting no loot…. it feels like something is wrong, and that must be DR right?

But Colin’s post seems to indicate it had more to do with how we were flagged as ‘loot eligible’ and less with a notion of DR at all.

I’ll reserve final coments for what we see in the patch notes and what the game play actually feels like, but I think this can’t be anything but a good thing.

Blues in this game are vendor trash. Greens sell so cheaply on the trading post that you can easily keep your character in them throughout the game.

Surely contributing significantly to the defeat of a Champion should at least warrant baseline gear?

CassieGold.7460:

Vol.5241:

I think the main reason why people started the thread was because they didn’t like DR.

Well the solution didn’t specify anything to fix DR, so I predict a massive amount of ensuing complaints.

The thing is, I think DR may have been a whipping boy for something it wasn’t doing. If you saw yourself doing damage to targets, getting XP for kills, but getting no loot…. it feels like something is wrong, and that must be DR right?

But Colin’s post seems to indicate it had more to do with how we were flagged as ‘loot eligible’ and less with a notion of DR at all.

I’ll reserve final coments for what we see in the patch notes and what the game play actually feels like, but I think this can’t be anything but a good thing.

70% of that thread was not about “no loot”, it was about the proportion of vendor trash items to rares compared to the “other half” of the population.

11/15 was when I went from 3 rares an hour in orr to 1-3 rares a month across my entire account in every zone.

I predict a great deal of continued complaints when it becomes clear this issue of “RNG not being so random” is not resolved.

Avatar.1923:

proof of that are the new laurels; they are not grind based.

You made my drink come out my nose.

Avatar.1923:

this game isnt really based on “loot” anyway…
its there, its useful as a slow progression system, but by no mean you need or should farm tyria…

proof of that are the new laurels; they are not grind based.

Blinders on maximum, captain. Fanboy mode activate.

If tagging for loot credit is the only issue, then it may not fix what some of my characters have been experiencing. Was I not getting loot credit for doing all of the damage needed to kill a mob (i.e., I was solo)? Guess I’ll see what happens with the patch.

IndigoSundown.5419:

If tagging for loot credit is the only issue, then it may not fix what some of my characters have been experiencing. Was I not getting loot credit for doing all of the damage needed to kill a mob (i.e., I was solo)? Guess I’ll see what happens with the patch.

This was my issue as well, after 20-30 mins of playing loot would just stop

so… any word on that staff no one has found yet?

Happy about this, but holding back until the patch confirm everything is back on the level again.

Still would like some compensation for 3+ months of an unfair disadvantage.

All I can say is it’s about time.

I’ll give them credit for looking into this a second time after many here kept on telling them something was definitely up.

OMG what a gamebraking issue now the champions gonna allways drop atleast some blue trash
cmon there are far more serious bugs in this game like not working runes (condition duration, missmatched stats…) when will those be fixed ?

Simple response: we told you something was wrong!

Profound response: WE kittenEN TOLD YOU!

Now let’s see if they actually fix it or they just said that to shut people up.

I’m less willing to do anything outside daily achievement until the patch is released due to this confirmation news. Why is it not hot fixed tonight? 0o

Also, why are so many super ultra rare named exotic weapons using the same skin as low level common skins? That is wildly bizarre to me, that it’d be a design decision. (wishing all super ultra rare named exotic weapons get unique skins with the patch too, and an NPC near or at the event says an obvious hint about the super ultra rare named exotic weapon too)

I am wondering if all the people who called us liars are feeling a bit sheepish.

My feedback:
Some Devs need to learn not be so defensive when confronted with issues in their game. If there’s a problem, we only want it resolved. We’re not asking for the moon and stars.

After being told we’re all behind some massive conspiracy, and being told it’s all in our heads, the truth came out, but being so sure that nothing was wrong in the game was just a naive way of thinking when so many contributing facts could have cause a spectrum of issues.

Being openminded from the outset would have caused a lot less ruckus.

I just thought of this. This means an xfile level conspiracy was true!

Anet are really aliens!

The changes they said about Champs/Vets:
- HAY, SUPER HAY, MEGA HAY… I will get rewarded for my effort, Champs and Vets are not only guys with more HP and Damage, but also better rewarding (I hope).

Great, thats one issue down! Cant wait for the 26th!

Then of course there is the decrease in rare drops thing.

Firstly, thank you for the positive feedback.

However, minimum BLUE from Champs? You gotta be kittening kidding me!

For low level champions perhaps, but for mid-to-high level champions it should be minimum GREEEN; same goes for veterans.

I sincerely hope that the rewards are appropriately scaled to the level of the mobs.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

lekyii.9856:

Thats true, but why now? why only after patch ppl start to complain about the loot!?

People have been complaining about bad loot since day 1 of the fractals. It isn’t new, and generally I don’t bother to answer those questions since it is just RNG and speculation. Some people find a precursor in that chest, and others get blues. Just the nature of RNG whenever you open that chest.

I’ll ask around tomorrow to see if anything changed, but looking at it right now I see no changes to the fractal chest loot.

So. if you think this is going to fix the 720 fold drop in rares half of us have experienced you are mistaken.

(the normal rate before 11/15 was 3 rares an hour, it is now consistently for MONTHS 3-6 rares per MONTH – that’s a 310 fold to 720 fold drop in rates for those of us with the “DR Bug”).

As I investigated I became more and more convinced that it had to do with damage done, or some kind of “kill credit” fubar.

I am a support build. It is a sad day for those of us who are support. It is always…always about power and just muscling your way through. Forget finesse, forget tactics, forget all that.

Hooray for glass cannons. You win. Game over.

plasmacutter.2709:

CassieGold.7460:

Vol.5241:

I think the main reason why people started the thread was because they didn’t like DR.

Well the solution didn’t specify anything to fix DR, so I predict a massive amount of ensuing complaints.

The thing is, I think DR may have been a whipping boy for something it wasn’t doing. If you saw yourself doing damage to targets, getting XP for kills, but getting no loot…. it feels like something is wrong, and that must be DR right?

But Colin’s post seems to indicate it had more to do with how we were flagged as ‘loot eligible’ and less with a notion of DR at all.

I’ll reserve final coments for what we see in the patch notes and what the game play actually feels like, but I think this can’t be anything but a good thing.

70% of that thread was not about “no loot”, it was about the proportion of vendor trash items to rares compared to the “other half” of the population.

11/15 was when I went from 3 rares an hour in orr to 1-3 rares a month across my entire account in every zone.

I predict a great deal of continued complaints when it becomes clear this issue of “RNG not being so random” is not resolved.

Btw… I had 3 thoughts…
[speculations]
1) DR for massive reports from bots (i can’t say anything about it, just ideas)
2) Permanent DR for something like participiating in one time karka event (i got 0 loot from them / 3 hours) – DR never reset since that time.
3) They increased damage/mob_hp for the “credit”.

About 3:
I had same MF armor before 11/15 patch and after, i had ~2 rares from each farm event in Orr, after 11/15 – 1-3/hour (nothing changed in my gear).

I started a new character – mesmer. He had much less drop than my thief while leveling (my main, i played him from start). I started to think it is account problem.

I leveled him (mesmer) to 80 some days ago and tried to farm same events. I had not enough time to farm orr events enough, but i did some runs, i receive almost same drop as before 11/15 on my thief. Mesmer has almost 2x burst. With 50% MF on my mesmer i get more rare loot than 120% MF thief.

I think damage dealt to enemies is one of the parameters for determining rarity of loot.
[/speculations]

I hope the problem will be fixed, and two attacks for 1500 damage to enemies in orr will be enough to get kill credit, or i will not be able to farm in orr as thief in MF set.

GG WP, Arena Net!

Straight after they say they will fix an identified bug and reveal some of how they intend for some of it to work and what happens?

Well the loudest sooks in the DR debate (which is not related apparently) are here demanding better loot tables already, prior to the fix…

Hooray for glass cannons. You win. Game over.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Ahem….

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Game over indeed.

ezd.6359:

plasmacutter.2709:

CassieGold.7460:

Vol.5241:

I think the main reason why people started the thread was because they didn’t like DR.

Well the solution didn’t specify anything to fix DR, so I predict a massive amount of ensuing complaints.

The thing is, I think DR may have been a whipping boy for something it wasn’t doing. If you saw yourself doing damage to targets, getting XP for kills, but getting no loot…. it feels like something is wrong, and that must be DR right?

But Colin’s post seems to indicate it had more to do with how we were flagged as ‘loot eligible’ and less with a notion of DR at all.

I’ll reserve final coments for what we see in the patch notes and what the game play actually feels like, but I think this can’t be anything but a good thing.

70% of that thread was not about “no loot”, it was about the proportion of vendor trash items to rares compared to the “other half” of the population.

11/15 was when I went from 3 rares an hour in orr to 1-3 rares a month across my entire account in every zone.

I predict a great deal of continued complaints when it becomes clear this issue of “RNG not being so random” is not resolved.

Btw… I had 3 thoughts…
[speculations]
1) DR for massive reports from bots (i can’t say anything about it, just ideas)
2) Permanent DR for something like participiating in one time karka event (i got 0 loot from them / 3 hours) – DR never reset since that time.
3) They increased damage/mob_hp for the “credit”.

About 3:
I had same MF armor before 11/15 patch and after, i had ~2 rares from each farm event in Orr, after 11/15 – 1-3/hour (nothing changed in my gear).

I started a new character – mesmer. He had much less drop than my thief while leveling (my main, i played him from start). I started to think it is account problem.

I leveled him (mesmer) to 80 some days ago and tried to farm same events. I had not enough time to farm orr events enough, but i did some runs, i receive almost same drop as before 11/15 on my thief. Mesmer has almost 2x burst. With 50% MF on my mesmer i get more rare loot than 120% MF thief.

I think damage dealt to enemies is one of the parameters for determining rarity of loot.
[/speculations]

I hope the problem will be fixed, and two attacks for 1500 damage to enemies in orr will be enough to get kill credit, or i will not be able to farm in orr as thief in MF set.

Tagging in here for a second, from a pure math / code perspective:

If the patch reduces your chances of getting loot by an arbritrary amount, then your chance of getting rare loot is reduced by the same amount.

If: 100 pulls of the slot machine pays out 1 time…. and this stays constant but….
Criteria to be eligible to pull the slot machine changes so taking the same actions (ie, doing the same damage) now only gives you 40 pulls at the slot machine…. you stop seeing rare loot…. you’re not getting enough pulls.

This easily explains why builds focused on ‘tagging’ and characters running high MF (there by trading damage for a better chance of rare loot) are in fact getting less loot.

Example (using squishy numbers that are based on nothing) You have 150% MF, but do 25% less damage than a character with 0% MF. _If- that 25% less damage puts you into a zone where you fall below the eligibility threshhold on mobs then you get less loot…. there by less pulls on the slot machine.

No one is getting completely hosed out of all loot, but the amount of loot that’s piling up is less, and like all sifting operations, fewer nuggets are there to be found.

Just a thought

This is great news!

I have been one of those players that felt “there is no loot dropping at all for me”

One of those that saw all the other 4 players in my Fractal run get 4-6 yellows per run while I went without anything noteworthy and only porous bones.

I have always been playing a Support Guardian. So I do guess that its simply that my character did not qualify for 80% of loot because he did less damage than the pure damage classes.

At last I hope this will be changed so I will not be loot crippled because I like to support my Team porperly.

(I switched to high DPS mesmer for a bit and the Mesmer would get awesome Loot but I would just miss the Utility my Guard brings to my groups)

Good that they finally admit there’s a problem with the way loot is handed out. It was very frustrating hearing so many people (devs and players alike) claiming that nothing was wrong.

Let this be a lesson to the lot of you: The game isn’t perfect and it does have problems. And if we don’t complain about those problems, they can’t get fixed.

Kromica.2831:

IndigoSundown.5419:

If tagging for loot credit is the only issue, then it may not fix what some of my characters have been experiencing. Was I not getting loot credit for doing all of the damage needed to kill a mob (i.e., I was solo)? Guess I’ll see what happens with the patch.

This was my issue as well, after 20-30 mins of playing loot would just stop

Yea, I’m so glad they finally realized that this is a legit issue.

I was doing an event in Malchor’s Leap with another player wherein you need to clear waves of risen, and we managed to clear up 4 waves realizing that there were only 2 or 3 shining corpse for me. And i was absolutely sure i was tagging mobs and doing enough damage to most of them.

Nothing is wrong with “glass cannons”, you must use proper equipment / build for different situations.

Boss fight – bosses do damage, you heal or prevent damage – supports are useful – chests dont count your damage and MF – you receive reward – ok.

Regular farm – no need to heal or def – drop determined by your “support” says “you are useless” – ok, you must change your build.

I think they count amount of heal you apply to people around you and damage you prevent. If mobs are too easy to kill, your overheal gives no credit. Nothing is wrong here. And they will not change it, because people will start to place water fields everywhere even if it is not neccessary and get loot for this stupid behavior.

Again: nothing is wrong here.

My Engineer seemed to suffer from the DR bug, never could I get a decent drop, wonder how much gold I missed out on?

I find the loot system flawed in certain aspects and I’ll explain why I think so:

-) it’s not difficult in this game to get rare or exotic gear. When I got 80 I got to full rare in a couple of days (crafting) and full exotic in 1-2 weeks (trading post, flipping buy-orders).

-) I have to stress this: I like this a lot. No gear grind. You’re fast at the plateau. Good.

-) now what happens: the longer you play the game, the more needless loot gets. Play the game for 3 months means: 16% of your playtime is loot-relevant, the rest is playing with lv.80 exotics.

-) play the game for 5 months means: only 10% of your playtime was spent upgrading your gear.

-) I see this as a dilemma-situation. On the one hand I like the fact that you get to the plateau as fast as it is now, on the other hand… why do we still get loot-drops when all of our gear is exotic.

-) the reality now: we don’t get exotics through drops by playing in the world. We get rares… very rarely. Sometimes greens but most of the time blue and white trash.

so what do we get out of those vendor-trash situation? a few coins. Not that interesting imho. Is this how mmos worked until now? Yes! Does that mean that it’s good? Meh.

CassieGold.7460:

Tagging in here for a second, from a pure math / code perspective:

If the patch reduces your chances of getting loot by an arbritrary amount, then your chance of getting rare loot is reduced by the same amount.

If: 100 pulls of the slot machine pays out 1 time…. and this stays constant but….
Criteria to be eligible to pull the slot machine changes so taking the same actions (ie, doing the same damage) now only gives you 40 pulls at the slot machine…. you stop seeing rare loot…. you’re not getting enough pulls.

This easily explains why builds focused on ‘tagging’ and characters running high MF (there by trading damage for a better chance of rare loot) are in fact getting less loot.

Example (using squishy numbers that are based on nothing) You have 150% MF, but do 25% less damage than a character with 0% MF. _If- that 25% less damage puts you into a zone where you fall below the eligibility threshhold on mobs then you get less loot…. there by less pulls on the slot machine.

No one is getting completely hosed out of all loot, but the amount of loot that’s piling up is less, and like all sifting operations, fewer nuggets are there to be found.

Just a thought

Hmm… looks like they place us in different categories.
1) none group
2) bronze medal (porous bones +)
3) silver medal (blue items, same / low tier mats +)
4) gold medal (greens, higher tier mats +)

…rewards can be increased by MF%…

So having 2-3 loot tables (broze/silver) you still have a chance to get rare loot if you are incredibly lucky, but if you got “gold” loot tables (and increased by MF), you have more chances to get more rare loot.

It is familiar with their words about how MF works (puts you in higher category). And others systems like event medals or tournament chests. Also it sounds logical.

By ‘some’, I think he meant the loot would be worse or nonexistent when some conditions were met, or something like that… could be random stuff they weren’t aware of, but I’m glad they found it!