Guild Wars 2

Geotherma.2395:

But I’m just some nobody in a game, what do I know..

You and me both, but we both apparently like to argue. ;-) The reality for me is that I gave up on loot drops long ago since it’s essentially been hopeless for so long. While I enjoy the game more after giving up, I’ll never look at GW2 with the same grandeur as I did in the pre-November days. I now class it in the same category as L4D2…fun, but no “real” point to it, just mindless killing for the sake of it, a game I can just jump on and not have to commit any substantial time. There is the social aspect I enjoy, but I’m not a social beast by nature, so even that will wane with time.

If loot is actually fixed in the next patch, perhaps in time this view will change, but it will certainly take a lot to get that sour taste out of my mouth.

Leamas.5803:

Geotherma.2395:

But I’m just some nobody in a game, what do I know..

You and me both, but we both apparently like to argue. ;-) The reality for me is that I gave up on loot drops long ago since they’ve essentially been hopeless for so long. While I enjoy the game more after giving up, I’ll never look at GW2 with the same grandeur as I did in the pre-November days. I now class it in the same category as L4D2…no “real” point to it, just mindless killing for the sake of it, a game I can just jump on and not have to commit any substantial time. There is the social aspect I enjoy, but I’m not a social beast by nature, so even that will wane with time.

If loot is actually fixed in the next patch, perhaps in time this view will change, but it will certainly take a lot to get that sour taste out of my mouth.

There’s always TESO and FFXIV, and Destiny looks interesting. I’ve been 80 a while, unfortunately I’m not much into dungeons/fotm. So I don’t do much of the game that most do. I feel like there could be so much more stuff coming, and wish i could have tried harder not to level. Even though I tried my best not to speed through the game its like.. here I am in Orr. I can make a ton of money, but for what.. Or maybe the forums just depress me to the point where I don’t want to play because I feel like the only person enjoying the game. Kind of takes the fun out of the game.

Geotherma.2395:

ezd.6359:

Geotherma.2395:

Good post

http://eggbaron.blogspot.ca/2013/02/colin-johanson-on-loot-drop.html

Hmm… before 11/15 patch (or earlier nobody knows) we had 2-3 rares per event. It was not 1 day. It was many hours and many days in a row, then 11/15 patch boom – less rares (patch promised more rares). Now 3+ months in a row we have 2-3 rare / hour.

It is not randomness when many people see same image for long time.

May be it is because we had more loot (in numbers) and from them more rares (because big numbers give more chances). I don’t know. We will see if the february patch will solve this problem.

P.S. They fight against exploits too aggressively imho.

I get about 1 rare per 2 events, this sounds like less but I did not play back then so I cannot be sure. Either way this thread has become increasingly irritating.. No offense to people who posted constructively.

I got 3-4 per event and I wasn’t even in a build that worked properly. Also it continued after the first nerf of the engineer class. right up until the Nov fiasco. And I believe it was JonPeters that made it clear that something was turned up too high on DR I think it was Wiki where this and the statement that they liked farmer players and didn’t want DR to affect us. I Just can’t imagine why someone would think that it’s the right move this many months later not to take the issues of DR seriously as well, or that the statement that DR was affecting loot for players is somehow NOT a change in loot that started in November.

It is here, not in wiki

Geotherma.2395:

There’s always TESO and FFXIV, and Destiny looks interesting. I’ve been 80 a while, unfortunately I’m not much into dungeons/fotm. So I don’t do much of the game that most do. I feel like there could be so much more stuff coming, and wish i could have tried harder not to level. Even though I tried my best not to speed through the game its like.. here I am in Orr. I can make a ton of money, but for what.. Or maybe the forums just depress me to the point where I don’t want to play because I feel like the only person enjoying the game. Kind of takes the fun out of the game.

I too have been 80 for a while, since October. I planned to level an alt, but the gear drops went to hell and I shelved that idea. While I had the money banked, about 200g after the karka event, I didn’t really want to buy my alt. I still enjoy the game, and play most days, if even to do dailies, I just play it in a limited fashion. I’ve been considering taking a long break from it. Still have the two Skyrim expansions to play and countless other games I bought on steam XMas sales over the last two years I’ve been neglecting, last year in favor of Skyrim, this year in favor of GW2.

Still doesn’t address why passion flowers have a god awful drop rate.

TexZero.7910:

Still doesn’t address why passion flowers have a god awful drop rate.

And sadly, it probably won’t. We need a support group.

Hello, my name is Leamas, and I get bad drop rates.
I’ve learned to deal with it and find inner peace. Now I accept it as part of the game and find other ways to enjoy it.

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.

My latest 80 happens to be the ultimate farmer and tags basically everything in front of me. Tagging may be an issue for some relative to loot, but it will not solve the common problem which is really more about quality. Funny, after posting earlier today on loot, and after the maintenance patch today I logged in and within an hour had 4-5 rares and a precursor. That’s never happened before in well over 1k hours played. Sadly, the precursor was Venom, an aquatic weapon. But, it has dramatically upped my gold per hour for the week. So, in deference to my good fortune, and not wishing to offend whichever gods control the Tyrian loot system (don’t think it’s Lakshmi here) I am going to cease noting the loot problems for the remainder of the day.

Star Ace.5207:

Tinboy.7954:

…get into a group so that you at least do the minimum damage to qualify for loot.

I do not understand the logic to this statement (no offense meant at all), since big farming groups will probably kill enemy creatures too fast for some builds out there to register enough damage. They may even die before any were even tagged. Unless you mean higher HP enemies, in which case your offensive output benefits from group debuffs such as vulnerability, etc.

Which brings me to the following-I feel there must be a chance for all players that collaborated to receive loot, even if a low chance, because not all characters have maximum condition/power builds out there. MF gear, for instance, tends to go on the weaker side of things. Perhaps I am just misinterpreting how the damage% system works at all, but I do feel all players should be rewarded if they got an XP award, given that they helped in some way towards the kill, however minimal that help was.

To my understanding, this is how the system works. If you solo, you need to say do damage equivalent to around 10% of the mobs health to be qualified for loot. If you are in a group, you need your GROUP to do at least 10% damage to be qualified for loot but you need to hit the mob at least once or twice.

Now if there are a bunch of people farming shelter/pentient, we have a problem. If no one groups up, most people will say do like 5% of the damage thus most people does not get loot at all. Also, the mobs which you killed that didn’t give loot is also contributing towards DR. So basically, you get no loot AND you are screwing yourself over by killing so many mobs making you hit the ‘limit’ faster.

Btw, the numbers are made up but you get my idea.

You get a loot drop!

You get a loot drop!!

Everyone gets a loot drop!

jwburks.9735:

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

Except:
1) They never denied a problem with Champion drops.
2) The only thing they denied was a purposeful lowering for drop rates
3) They only found an issue with Champions which has almost nothing to do with all the whining.

Dunno what all these babies are “vindicated” about. I guess whatever makes yall feel important.

[cut]
The economy was better for players before they removed the bots. The bots were bad, yes, and no one will argue that. How they dealt with them was worse. The bots were responsible for a huge amount stock on the TP which kept prices reasonable from a player perspective, especially high end mats and uber high end items like named exotics and precursors. Now remove the bots and all that is instantly gone…compound that with nerfed drop rates and things become increasingly rare and expensive in the TP…as we’ve seen.

Yes – botting is good for the economy, Leamas you have finally put that in a way that makes all evidence to the counter (including the destruction of MMOs due to inflation, etc) completely moot.

Seriously – go do just the smallest amount of research into economics and MMORPG economics in particular, I’ll point you initially towards SWG as the most detailed I can recall was in that system.

Now lets get more cheap bots grinding in your back yard and tell me everything in your ’hood gets cheaper hahahahahaha.

Well I dont know if anyone said this.

How is a bunker guardian going to register enough damage to get drops off champs? Other toughness and low damage classes will still suffer.

It should be scaled off overall enemy health along with you’re potential damage output.

My guardian can whack a champ 5 times and do the same amount of damage as a good crit on my warrior.

Sorry guardians no love for support still.

DanteZero.9736:

You get a loot drop!

You get a loot drop!!

Everyone gets a loot drop!

Honestly that’s what they promised. I’ve read a many a pre-launch interviews on what they were telling their potential customers to expect. We were all supposed to get our loot drops we were supposed to be able to help in DE’s in multiple ways (not solely with dps) and still get credit and we were all supposed to get class specific drops from dungeon boss chests each person on equal playing field. Since Nov that has not been happening, not even close. In fact in the beginning I used to find rares and exotics in the secretly found chests in the open world and with the chests heavily protected by veterans and champions. The first month i can’t tell you the number of rares I found in those chests every time i found one until the nerf.

These changes will not make any differences for me I guess… The problem is not that I don’t tag and don’t get anything, the problem is that I get white trash most of the time,and maybe 3 greens per hour in Orr :/

thisolderhead.5127:

Yes – botting is good for the economy, Leamas you have finally put that in a way that makes all evidence to the counter (including the destruction of MMOs due to inflation, etc) completely moot.

Seriously – go do just the smallest amount of research into economics and MMORPG economics in particular, I’ll point you initially towards SWG as the most detailed I can recall was in that system.

Now lets get more cheap bots grinding in your back yard and tell me everything in your ’hood gets cheaper hahahahahaha.

I don’t have to do research, I know what I said, I know the basics of market dynamics and supply chain management. Now, go back and read what I wrote, I didn’t say botting was good for the economy, what I said is that botting keep stock high and prices low, which is good for players. Now the sudden removal of 35000 accounts constantly feeding stuff in to the TP paired with drastic loot nerfs, broke the supply chain that was feeding the TP and destabilized the economy. This is not rocket science.

This is basic supply-chain economics oh thou who is all knowing. By reducing the supply, the demand increases. Prices increases logically follow. Now one could argue, the bots kept the prices lower than they should have been and that removing the bots stabilized prices to where they should be. Unfortunately, now the general perception is that the prices in the TP are over inflated. In reality, most bots were also gold-sellers, so while they helped keep stock high they were also feeding money in to the economy to help consume that stock. Here’s the kicker…they were mostly feeding money back in that they had made on the TP, so things remained relatively stable overall.

Let’s go in to a little more detail about the overall economy. Now to further aggravate the issue, players can sell to in-game vendors….where does this money come from? Nowhere!! Every time someone sells to an in game vendor it adds potential money to the economy, slowly causing inflation. Buying gems with real money and converting it to gold has the same affect, it’s just a lot faster. Infinite potential money means infinite potential value for goods. This is why countries don’t just print more money to cover their debts. The more money they print, the less it’s worth and more inflation it causes.

Now, to take money out of the economy, they’ve created money sinks, waypoint fees are one, hefty repair costs are another, but the most infamous being the Mystic Toilet. Now, unless you’re financing it through the gem store, this thing is crazy and it amazes me anyone uses it, especially after November. I couldn’t even comprehend getting enough drops to even start using it. Unfortunately, financing through the gem store does not help the inflation situation…it’s still putting new money in, taking away existing stock without taking old money out. Again, this causes prices to rise. You can also convert gold to gems, which it’s beyond me what anyone would unless you’re simply day-trading to make more magic gold out of thin air, but the option is there.

Bots are bad for the economy overall, but generally still have to work within the confines of the game; the gem store how it’s implemented is WAY worse. If they wanted a micro-payment store, they should never have allowed it to interfere with in-game economy other than mailing already soul/account bound items to their buyers. Perhaps MMOs have a more forgiving economy, but if this were the real world, this economy, with its built in infinite money machine, it would collapse very quickly.

Leamas.5803:

• The mighty Zommoros has slightly increased the drop rate on Legendary precursor weapons from the Mystic Forge from both Rares and Exotics. WRONG
  .

not so wrong…I had a Dusk and Chosen last month from the forge.

Now I just fear that they will “fix” it for 3 days and reverse it again because it was not as intented.
I’ve played some other mmorpgs but this one is by far the hardest to gain some loot. Not impossible, no; but the time you spend to receive some loot is just absolutly nonsense.

I get the fact that they have a cash shop, but if they just add some decent items in the cash shop that people actually want to buy (think about the BL keys, who buys that?) than the ingame drops could be something totally seperated. Which in my opinion would be the correct way to handle things, just like it was in GW1.

Geotherma.2395:

acklag.7203:

geotherma are u being paid by anet? Loot drops did change after Nov 15th, even Anet said so after 3 months of pr bs. Your complete disregard to evidence does not change that fact and your comprehension skills could use improvement before you gallivant your biased opinions.

They said nothing changed nov 15th its in the post that I’m really tired of copying and pasting…

They also said (in November patch notes) that it did change. Now, what should we believe?

zlatna bosna.4178:

Medazolam.3058:

zlatna bosna.4178:

Geotherma.2395:

zlatna bosna.4178:

Geotherma.2395:

zlatna bosna.4178:

Avatar.1923:

probably because this game is not designed to be farmed.

What about when you need to craft something but you can’t ever get the items requied because of horrible drop rates? Just buy it right, well have fun doing that every time you need to do something. This brings up another issue, DR. Have fun farming for endless hours. You say it’s not designed to be farmed, but thats probably 80% of this game.

80% grind lol……….. Aion is 80%, FFXI is 250%. Everyone says mats, but which mats specifically are people looking for.

I realize other games are grind orientated, but this game was touted as a non-grind type, yet look at the achievements for WvW and some of the legendary requirements, these are two minor examples because there are many more.

But there needs to be something keeping people playing. You can’t just have everyone “beating” the game in a month. Its an MMO after all and requires consistent material to keep it interesting. These things are time sinks, optional at that. And they may require what some consider grind, but barely anything in this game is “essential” and the best things in game that aren’t about looks take very little time to achieve.

What will keep people playing is more content not weapons and skins which pretty much composes the end game now. They are time sinks however GW2 was never supposed to be that, maybe it was just viral marketing and they were being unhonest when they said it was a game for casuals. The last time PvE got real content was the lost shores event.

GW2 was always about weapons and skins, i.e legendary weapons.

this game is very casual friendly, please provide examples for what a casual player is resstrict from participating in and maybe people can directly address your concerns.

for PvE content, expansions will come in time, very likely one this year (in the fall)

Drop rates/tables, like has been addressed before, in many threads. Most of my casual playing friends quite this game a long time ago because of the previous stated issue. It’s very hard to play a game when you don’t even have money to teleport.

If you have no money and die, teleporting is free.

Haha, even though they locked the topic Colin replied to, there’s still this one to reply to!

Well, all I can say is “we told you so”.

It seems like they’re wriggling away from ALL loot in the game being bugged and instead focussing on “some people” not getting drops from “Champions”. Yeah OK guys, just Champions…

We will see in the Feb patch, if I suddenly start dropping rares again (had about 3 since the November patch), then the selective RNG hell will finally be over

SEE Stephanie? We weren’t just making it up!!!

The “loot” or lack of, will continue to be a problem because there are not enough items in the game to play for.

lisamee.2408:

The “loot” or lack of, will continue to be a problem because there are not enough items in the game to play for.

I’m sure they will add more items over time, the issue most of us are having since November is that we can’t make any money playing the game to buy the lovely new items, because rares are too rare, and Exotics never drop.

Some people seem to be unaffected by this, and continue to drop rares and exos like they’re candy

With any luck, the Feb patch will put us all back onto an even playing field again

Astralporing.1957:

Geotherma.2395:

acklag.7203:

geotherma are u being paid by anet? Loot drops did change after Nov 15th, even Anet said so after 3 months of pr bs. Your complete disregard to evidence does not change that fact and your comprehension skills could use improvement before you gallivant your biased opinions.

They said nothing changed nov 15th its in the post that I’m really tired of copying and pasting…

They also said (in November patch notes) that it did change. Now, what should we believe?

Yes, the increased everything.. not the opposite.

Added new crafting materials as part of the Lost Shores update.
Crafted Halloween potions are no longer account bound.
The mighty Zommoros has slightly increased the drop rate on Legendary precursor weapons from the Mystic Forge from both Rares and Exotics.
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.
The amount of loot that drops for downscaled players has been increased. You should now be able to receive level-equivalent loot until you are fighting at a downscaled level that is less than 2/3 of your actual level. You should also receive loot a greater percentage of the time as well as receiving a greater percentage of experience, gold, and karma. For level 80 characters, this means level 55+ areas will be able to drop level 80 gear and give about 75% or so of the other rewards. Previously, these areas would give level 77 gear at best and closer to 60% or so of your rewards.

“After reading reports in this thread, we spent more time investigating our rewards system. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we verified that all loot tables are indeed working correctly in the game. Since then, we continued receiving reports that there seemed to be an issue, so we extended our search to all systems that created opportunities for you to get items from loot tables. Here we found an issue that we were able to verify was consistent across everyone who reported problems:
The rules by which you qualify for credit for an event or for experience when killing a mob are different rules than those used to help determine if you qualify for loot. Some of these were set up to be unintentionally restrictive, and as such you could kill a creature with a lot of health (this was most noticeable on champions) and not qualify for loot, despite qualifying for all other credit.
For the February Flame & Frost: The Gathering Storm release we will be repairing this issue to ensure more players are capable of earning loot credit for kills. This should fix the issue such that you got credit for killing a champion, but received no loot from it. Once fixed, all champion mobs will correctly always drop 1 blue or better loot item, and all veterans will have a chance of dropping loot better than regular mobs as outlined in the November release. Please note, it is still possible to kill a creature and not do enough damage to qualify for loot (which is the only way you won’t get loot for a champion), it is also still possible for veterans to not drop loot at all, since they simply have better odds of dropping loot than normal creatures but no guaranteed drops.
On top of this, we’re also updating some of the loot in various areas of the game for the February release that should make specific areas more rewarding. We’ll cover this is in detail with the February release notes.
Thanks very much for all your feedback and reports, that information has proved incredibly useful!”

http://eggbaron.blogspot.ca/2013/02/colin-johanson-on-loot-drop.html

“It’s worth noting, the X-files conspiracy comment was directly responding to the theory something changed in the November release that made it all suddenly worse that has been perpetuated since Lost Shores. _We confirmed nothing what so ever changed in November,_ as we posted after a complete investigation into all parts of that release, thus the comment. Probably not worded the best on my part, but please take the time to read the actual comment in context and don’t apply it to other situations that had nothing to do with the remark.
As posted within the loot discussion thread, we did exactly what we said we would do: we completed our investigation of the November release and all loot tables and found no issues what so ever, we immediately let the community know no issues were discovered from the changes in the November release.
We then expanded the search to other parts of the game, here we found issues that had existed since launch and have both let you know about them, and will be correcting them.
To those who theorized there were issues since launch with qualifying for loot, you were indeed correct and your tinfoil hat is justified, thanks very much for helping us find this issue! November however, remains an X-files level conspiracy that has been debunked. There ya go”

Spleen.7836:

These changes will not make any differences for me I guess… The problem is not that I don’t tag and don’t get anything, the problem is that I get white trash most of the time,and maybe 3 greens per hour in Orr :/

3 greens per hour in Orr on average? Sounds better than what I see on one character. Try 1 blue and two heavy bags, and very few bones. This is running around solo.

Halanna.3927:

You can’t buy ecto’s with laurels. Or orichalcum ore. If the game is not about loot, then how shall I obtain the items I require to do what I wish? Shall raspberries just appear at log in? Omnomberries just be plucked from the air?

Yes, farming for items is a part of the game. Is is both needed and necessary. The problem is all the anti-farming protocols in place make trying to do anything for yourself impossible.

I don’t want to buy earrnings from the TP. I leveled jeweling so I can make these things for myself and my alts. Same with tailoring. So I can make bags. But if I can’t farm cloth, how is that supposed to happen?

Exactly! I want to be able to gather the mats myself, i enjoy doing that so i should be able to ( play the way you want, remember? ).
I had to give up and buy all the yellow equipment i have on my main char ( guardian with armorsmithing ), because it was just too mind-numbingly boring to try and get the fine mats myself. It felt like someone was pulling the rug from beneath my feet so i couldn’t advance.

About farming for money, i have chosen to go for some human cultural armor pieces for my guardian because i love the skins, and they will cost me 40+ gold.
I have been farming this last 3 days, but not staying in one place, i move around the zones. I can make about 2g in a 3 hour session, it’s not bad but not exactly amazing either. And that 2g is in a big part because of the high prices that mats sell for in the TP, if there weren’t this inflation i wold be making much less. Example, yesterday big moldy bags were selling for 3+ silver O.o It gets annoying to me having to rely so much in the TP to make decent money ( as merchants give kitten for everything ).
Last night i had to exchange 4g for 200 gems, to get 5 yellow transmute stones. Blowing the gains of 2 days for just 5 stones did hurt.

In my opinion, you make poor money in a game that is supposedly “casual-friendly”. If you don’t want to do a lot of dungeon runs you have to grind quite a bit…

My guardian is “healer/tank” ( mace+shield, love support roles ), if dps is the issue i shouldn’t be forced to switch to dps to solo farm, it’s asinine.

Chamone.6890:

lisamee.2408:

The “loot” or lack of, will continue to be a problem because there are not enough items in the game to play for.

I’m sure they will add more items over time, the issue most of us are having since November is that we can’t make any money playing the game to buy the lovely new items, because rares are too rare, and Exotics never drop.

Some people seem to be unaffected by this, and continue to drop rares and exos like they’re candy

With any luck, the Feb patch will put us all back onto an even playing field again

I made alot of gold just by selling t5-t6 matts farming orr mobs in the open world. But there is nothing i want, or need to buy with it. The only item offered that i did not get through leveling to 80 is the Legendary. And i do not want it because i don’t like the steps required.

Geotherma.2395:

Astralporing.1957:

Geotherma.2395:

acklag.7203:

geotherma are u being paid by anet? Loot drops did change after Nov 15th, even Anet said so after 3 months of pr bs. Your complete disregard to evidence does not change that fact and your comprehension skills could use improvement before you gallivant your biased opinions.

They said nothing changed nov 15th its in the post that I’m really tired of copying and pasting…

They also said (in November patch notes) that it did change. Now, what should we believe?

Yes, the increased everything.. not the opposite.

Yes, exactly.

Geotherma.2395:

“_We confirmed nothing what so ever changed in November,_ as we posted after a complete investigation into all parts of that release”

And yet they confirmed that nothing changed, when they claimed before that something did.

So… either the confirmation is mistaken, and something did change (in which case it would not be impossible that some code glitch turned the positive change into a negative one), or the confirmation is right, and the patch notes were misleading.

I would personally like to at least see them phrasing threads more carefully in future, stephanie’s thread did just seem condescending, but still, this could be something that is a great giant step in the right direction for GW2. I’ll however remain cautiously optimistic, the market however, is still in a horrid state.

Guaranteed a blue for a champ. Oh joy. So something a baby step above white trash that I’ll decon for parts. Yeah. As that talking celery stalk, Trehearne says all the time, when I see Champs, I’ll say “Moving on”

I’d guess that what he meant was that nothing unintended changed in November. Given the dye incident (sorry, at this point based on my own observation of drops I’ll never believe the drop rate was put back exactly where it was) we know that unintended changes can happen, and that’s what they were looking for.
I personally leaned towards DR being the culprit, because what a lot of people described fit perfectly. (Many people giving numbers showed that # of drops was pretty consistent but the quality of said drops suffered horribly, which is basically how I understand DR to work in that regard).

I’m glad they found an issue, and doff my tin-foil cap to whoever found it.
That still leaves the question, if this issue has been around since day 1, why would we only start to see it’s effects in Nov?
I’m not questioning whether it’s been around that long, but people clearly saw something different in Nov specifically.
The 1-2 rares per event I hear people mention from pre Nov sounds far more reasonable than what I’ve been getting, but I run toughness/survivability builds so maybe my drops will actually improve (I do frequently see entire waves where I’m pretty sure I tagged 80-90% of the wave, judging by the flood of exp #s, only to get no drops) when this gets fixed, or maybe not who knows.
Only a six day wait to find out, in the mean time I have some story steps that require attention.

Sleel.8365:

Guaranteed a blue for a champ. Oh joy. So something a baby step above white trash that I’ll decon for parts. Yeah. As that talking celery stalk, Trehearne says all the time, when I see Champs, I’ll say “Moving on”

“Just a reminder, blue is the absolute minimum champs can drop, they have much better odds of dropping good loot than regular mobs, and once you’re properly getting kill credit for them hopefully this becomes more visible.”

Geotherma.2395:

Sleel.8365:

Guaranteed a blue for a champ. Oh joy. So something a baby step above white trash that I’ll decon for parts. Yeah. As that talking celery stalk, Trehearne says all the time, when I see Champs, I’ll say “Moving on”

“Just a reminder, blue is the absolute minimum champs can drop, they have much better odds of dropping good loot than regular mobs, and once you’re properly getting kill credit for them hopefully this becomes more visible.”

Until they make all champions drop chests, rather than loot the body.

^^^

Personally I have never liked the way Champions are in this game. They need to be something that players want to kill instead of what they currently are… event credit (well sometimes) Make them a longer spawn/ tougher to kill/ anything… but make them interesting (and drop better loot)

I know they’re not champions but I used to care about killing the dragons… but then I learned that all I get are 2 upgrades that sell for a ~ 1 silver and maybe 1 green(1.5 silver) and a couple of blues (1 silver total). After waypoint costs I net less than 2 silver. Kinda pointless.

geotherma u have been a busy busy little writer oh yes u have, yes u have, here’s a cookie.

Geotherma.2395:

Sleel.8365:

Guaranteed a blue for a champ. Oh joy. So something a baby step above white trash that I’ll decon for parts. Yeah. As that talking celery stalk, Trehearne says all the time, when I see Champs, I’ll say “Moving on”

“Just a reminder, blue is the absolute minimum champs can drop, they have much better odds of dropping good loot than regular mobs, and once you’re properly getting kill credit for them hopefully this becomes more visible.”

Yeah. Believe it when I see it. I solo champs, and get nothing, for days now, could say over a week if I bothered with them anymore

This is why the first rule of customer service is you never admit nor deny something is wrong you just say we’ll investigate the issue and thank you for playing because now what AN has done is opened the proverbial Pandora’s Box.

This statement alone tells me all I need to know about how this issue was handled.

After reading reports in the loot issues thread, we spent more time investigating our rewards system. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we verified that all loot tables are indeed working correctly in the game. Since then, we continued receiving reports that there seemed to be an issue, so we extended our search to all systems that created opportunities for you to get items from loot tables. Here we found an issue that we were able to verify was consistent across everyone who reported problems.

1) After reading reports in the loot issue thread we spent MORE time investigating.

More time investigating is the predetermining factor here it defacto states they had already spent time investigating the loot issue BEFORE they read the thread.

2) Verified that ALL loot tables are working correctly in game.

Now this was all happening before the forum post about the broken loot system. Now to me ALL means everything but to AN it must mean something different because now they re-investigate something they just confirmed as working as intended but now its broke.

I know some will say loot tables and the so-called opportunity system are separate but I challenge anyone on this premise since one without the other is like a light without a switch and in this case the loot table being the light and the switch being the opportunity you could stand there all day and wish the light to come on but without physically flipping the switch you would be wishing in the dark and the ALL claim they made when they posted the loot tables working as intended was baseless.

Getting back to the first rule of customer service statement I made what AN has done in this situation is put more doubt on their corporate integrity by making baseless claims of investigating issue’s with their product, shown incompetence in handling such issues or flat out lying about it any any scenario it’s not good for their customers or their company.

acklag.7203:

geotherma u have been a busy busy little writer oh yes u have, yes u have, here’s a cookie.

I need something to do when not grinding my 30g a day :P

@Asglarek
“More time investigating is the predetermining factor here it defacto states they had already spent time investigating the loot issue BEFORE they read the thread.”

Um, there have been multiple threads over the last few months concerning this issue, he could easily (and most likely) be referring to a later thread that had enough people in it to convince them to take a >second<, deeper look at the loot tables.
Like this:
First thread, lots of complaints about X problem
They go over the tables and don’t see anything wrong, say sorry we didn’t see anything wrong
New thread, even more complaints about issue X, tons of people posting
They decide it warrants further inspection and a take a longer more careful look at the loot tables, still find nothing wrong, say so and ask for more information concerning the “perceived” issue (the wording of which some did find…condescending? insulting?)

“2) Verified that ALL loot tables are working correctly in game.

Now this was all happening before the forum post about the broken loot system. Now to me ALL means everything but to AN it must mean something different because now they re-investigate something they just confirmed as working as intended but now its broke."

Again, before the “current” forum thread. He said they checked them all, now whether every single one got checked the first time or if the total check only happened on the deeper investigation is irrelevant. They checked them all and guess what, no problems.
And your light-switch analogy….are you familiar with the old saying “hoist on one’s own petard”? It’s an olde timey saying that basically means to get stabbed with your own weapon, or in this case argument.
So lets take a look at that light-switch example of yours shall we?
The loot tables are the light, and the opportunity system the switch, it actually makes a pretty good analogy. Lets say you’re a light repairman, and someone tells you, hey this light is broken. You show up to fix it…and find the light is on.
Now, you’ve been told this light is broken, but all of the evidence says otherwise, in fact you can quite clearly see for yourself that there is not one thing wrong with the light.
It’s on! It’s clearly working, therefore the person who told you it was broken must be nuts.
But you’re a good repairman so you take the light apart, check all the internal workings, swap out the bulb, put it back together, still working, you can’t find anything wrong with it.
But since you’re a really good repairman, and despite the fact that the report is that the light is broken, you expand your troubleshooting to systems external to the light. Systems that are separate yet interact with it. And bingo, there’s the problem, the switch that controls the light is loose and doesn’t always work.

And that is basically. what. happened.
While some people said DR was to blame, and some said kill credit, I’d say the majority of people pointed at the loot tables, so that’s where they looked.
They looked at the tables and couldn’t find anything wrong, but after expanding the search to the “switch” system they found a problem.
In the light-switch analogy the user sees the switch and light as a single entity he thinks of as “the light”, not realizing they are separate systems, he didn’t know “the switch is broken” would have been far more helpful. And for many of us it was basically “loot no happen, loot broken” because we aren’t familiar with how the system is built.
In our case there’s no way to be sure whether the information provided by the community was really helpful or if our collective complaints on the matter drove them to search wider in desperation.

And as for your last bit, there isn’t anything baseless about saying they didn’t find anything wrong with the loot tables if they checked them…and…found nothing wrong.
“Baseless” means, well, to not be based on anything, like, me thinks, your accusation that they lied.
Where did they lie? You certainly didn’t include any bases for that particular accusation.
Can you back it up? Substantiate it? Prove they did in fact lie about something?
If not then your accusation is, in fact, baseless.

Incompetent handling? They investigated a system we said was broken.
While I might have handled things a bit differently in a couple spots I can’t really fairly fault the handling. If you have knowledge the rest of us don’t please share, I’d honestly love to know what you’re talking about.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

While some people said DR was to blame, and some said kill credit, I’d say the majority of people pointed at the loot tables, so that’s where they looked.
They looked at the tables and couldn’t find anything wrong, but after expanding the search to the “switch” system they found a problem.
In the light-switch analogy the user sees the switch and light as a single entity he thinks of as “the light”, not realizing they are separate systems, he didn’t know “the switch is broken” would have been far more helpful. And for many of us it was basically “loot no happen, loot broken” because we aren’t familiar with how the system is built.
In our case there’s no way to be sure whether the information provided by the community was really helpful or if our collective complaints on the matter drove them to search wider in desperation.

Personally, I never thought it was DR or loot tables. DR, being generally hated by most players, was just a scapegoat that was latched on to. It only seems to affect certain people and if it were DR or loot tables, then it would affect everyone. I’ve always leaned towards a bug in the RNG causing certain accounts under whatever conditions to always roll low and this would be terribly difficult to track down. Kill credit/DPS I could be see causing issues for certain builds, such as my condition damage build, which doesn’t have great burst damage, but it should only affect low vitality mobs in big groups…not when I’m running around solo killing things. On a mob with tons of life, such as a champion, I’ll cause just as much damage as any other class, since I’m constantly sapping life away, provided the mobs does not have a lot of condition damage resistance. However, it was not a problem until after November…at least not as noticeable.

• It doesn’t explain why it seems to only affect certain accounts. Yes entire accounts, not toons.
• It doesn’t explain why loot for those same accounts would, in general, get better for a short time after a major patch release, then quickly degrade back in to nothingness.
• It doesn’t explain why on those exceptionally rare occasions you do get multiple rare drops in a short period it’s VERY (WAY beyond random chance) common for them to be of the same type (Berserker…of the Air, for instance). More than once, I’ve even heard of people getting two of the exact same item drop within minutes. This doesn’t sound very random.
• For these accounts, it just seems like something is getting stuck, causing loot rolls to always be low and/or not as random as one might think.

So, while I’m hoping this patch improves things, personally, unless ANet left something out in their described fix, I don’t think it’s going to fix those accounts who have perpetually bad luck as there’s nothing described in the fix that would address the above conditions. I see this as only a fix for champions/veterans, and perhaps only for those who have accounts not affected by the issues described in the previous threads. We’ll have to wait and see next week.

It also does not explain why loot from dragon/boss/dungeon chests and most chests in general has gone to hell and this seems to be a global thing affecting most everyone, but this is a different issue.

@Leamas..thank you. Its a pretty good summary of what happens to both of my accounts.

A-Net just stated a fact that everyone could test very easily (just solo a few champs/bosses). I’m sharing the thoughts with Leamas.. it seems not to touch the “Account-Drop” issue. Hopefully i’m wrong..the next patch will tell.

Another thing i noticed, was talking with two of my friends. They had never “problems” with their loot (except the champ/boss drop). Both claimed the new implementet chest-box works perfectly for them. That means they get always green or better out of it. Obviously i’m not in the position to test that staement.

For me, that’s definetly not the case.

Kinda sad to see some people took this thread as a “free-for-all bash-on-Anet royal rumble tournament of complaining” and didn’t waste this opportunity to bash on them.
The coder who did this mistake is probably sailing in bad seas in the office, while the maker of 0/10 kill ten rats dailies is taking a coffee at the Anet machine planning more 0/10 stuff nobody dared to say anything because hey – there was a pink item for reward
.
Meh… You know when they say politicians aren’t actually that far from their people…

Well i really hope that the ‘tag = no loot’ will be fixed int he upcoming patch. Yesterday I spent about an hour in Orr and a fair portion of my kills resulted in either nothing or porous bones!

Got one yellow dagger and one yellow putrid dust.

Well I went to do a dungeon today and really hope the no loot, bad loot, DR etc. issue will be fixed…

Geotherma.2395:

http://eggbaron.blogspot.ca/2013/02/colin-johanson-on-loot-drop.html

“It’s worth noting, the X-files conspiracy comment was directly responding to the theory something changed in the November release that made it all suddenly worse that has been perpetuated since Lost Shores. _We confirmed nothing what so ever changed in November,_ as we posted after a complete investigation into all parts of that release, thus the comment. Probably not worded the best on my part, but please take the time to read the actual comment in context and don’t apply it to other situations that had nothing to do with the remark.
As posted within the loot discussion thread, we did exactly what we said we would do: we completed our investigation of the November release and all loot tables and found no issues what so ever, we immediately let the community know no issues were discovered from the changes in the November release.
We then expanded the search to other parts of the game, here we found issues that had existed since launch and have both let you know about them, and will be correcting them.
To those who theorized there were issues since launch with qualifying for loot, you were indeed correct and your tinfoil hat is justified, thanks very much for helping us find this issue! November however, remains an X-files level conspiracy that has been debunked. There ya go”

That should settle it. Thank you for posting this, +1.

Got an exotic from the Claw of Jormag chest for the first time ever yesterday, salvaged it for 3 ecto and a superior rune of rage.

Want more of this.

Whatever you’ve done recently, don’t change it.

I am curious if the up coming fix will also fix the loot distribution that changed with the November patch. Yes they found a bug to qualify for loot, but those of us who were playing before November and were getting a rare an event and alot less junk, but now get alot of junk and might get a rare every couple of days still question if the real cause has been found or if they just decided to stop looking because they found 1 bug relating to loot.

@wildcode, i personally don’t think they will fix this issue. They don’t know where or what to look for. First bug was found because they had obvious criteria – drop from champions yes/no.

I still see dragon chests, but i dont think it will be long. I have almost always greens/blues from them for a month now, may be it will take another month to lose chests completely. And we will see another whine wave. Then 2 months of silence, then x-files posts, then may be arena start to search for another problem.

He starts talking about the loot system at 15:05min: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TBeXr9iC4qU

Didn’t finish it yet, but thought you might be interested.. (not sure if he is telling us anything new)