Guild Wars 2

sooo .. you all know how “rare” the chance is to get light armor drops on a guard/war?

Castrin.8972:

Morsus.5106:

@Castrin.8972 I’ll say it a second time. Find me where they said it won’t affect level 80 players and I’ll personally ask a moderator to close this thread and issue an apology to everyone I have mislead. All you’ve proven is that it will affect leveling players, you have not proven it won’t affect level 80 players..

You nor I can “prove” anything, it’s all what we think they are saying.

You believe that a “new player” and/or “leveling player” includes those with characters at level 80.

I do not.

Time will tell which is the correct translation but either way I wish you luck.

Peace.

The post only talks about “newer players” and “leveling players” as the rationale for the change. It doesn’t say that the change is limited to them.

Concerned with this. I don’t have trouble gearing my characters currently, all unusable gear helps fund the specific things I want.
I see what they’re trying to do but playing a class (or avoiding one) for money seems against the spirit of the whole game.

Zygomaticus.7469:

profession loot is probably ok, only if the mats needed to craft your weapon/armor are

heavy – iron and stuff
med – leather and stuff
light – cloth and stuff

i think it would be ok.

lol leather is so dirt cheap it’s not even funny.
T5 leather rarely even has buyers listed and T6 leather is approaching merch value.

If this affects armor then I’m glad I didn’t waste gems on the salavgeomatic since I’ll likely be doing much less salvaging in the future on my ranger.

phys.7689:

Piogre.2164:

~snip~

weapon wise, its all pretty close except for engi.

And non-weapon-wise, we’re bottom tier anyway, because leather is worthless. We engies get the shaft once again.

Prices will normalize shortly after the release for anyone concerned about an advantage.

Ravion Hawk.4736:

I am all for this idea of profession loot.

It doesn’t matter what weight class I’m playing, I get 80% medium armor (leathers), 15% heavy armor (metals) and 5% light armor (cloth).

And in order to make ALL armors you need cloth which drops the LEAST.

This will be good. Maybe not for the TP flippers when it comes to cloth, but good for everyone else.

Drops the least? lulwut? I get plenty of cloth armor and cloth salvage items as drops.

Cloth isn’t expensive because it’s rare. It’s expensive because it can’t be farmed from nodes like metal and it is in much higher demand than leather. It’s no big mystery why t5 leather is the toilet paper of Tyria and silk is actually worth something.

Shockwave.1230:

Prices will normalize shortly after the release for anyone concerned about an advantage.

Don’t you think that this will depend heavily on the ratio of cloth drop reduction for non light armor wearer vs cloth drop increase for light armor wearers ?

In theory there may be no change in supply of cloth for the market as a whole. If the supply does not go up but the demand remains there really isnt any reason for prices to change.

There are three classes (Ele, Mes, Necro) who will have their rate of cloth drops increase.

There are five classes (Rang, War, Engi, Thief, Guard) who will have their cloth drops. reduced. It seems likely, especially concerning the popularity of Warriors and Guardians, that more of the playerbase will see a reduction than an increase.

Of course the reduction may very well be a smaller number than the increase. Until we have more information its difficult to say for certain what the final result will be.

I’m someone who has noted before that I’ve slotted drops I’ve gotten on my characters, pretty much almost never. You’d think, then, that I’d be enthused about this change. While I am waiting to see it before I judge, I do have two concerns based on what little the announcement actually says.

1. I share the concerns about the disparity between the value of leather, cloth and metal. If this drop weighting system stops once one reaches 80, then I believe this concern will be OK.
2. More importantly to me; it’s not so much that drops I get are not for my profession. Honestly, I get drops that my profession can use with about the same frequency as in other games. My main concern is that the item prefix (which determines which stats the piece provides) on drops in GW2 are almost never those I am interested in. I see zero indication that this will change, and thus see no reason to believe that my use of drops will in any way increase.

the easiest solution i think would be to have this effect come to an end once a player reaches level 80. this way it would provide all the benefits as a player is leveling but then once they are on level 80 they have equal chances at all loot as all the other professions.

Substance E.4852:

Zygomaticus.7469:

profession loot is probably ok, only if the mats needed to craft your weapon/armor are

heavy – iron and stuff
med – leather and stuff
light – cloth and stuff

i think it would be ok.

lol leather is so dirt cheap it’s not even funny.
T5 leather rarely even has buyers listed and T6 leather is approaching merch value.

If this affects armor then I’m glad I didn’t waste gems on the salavgeomatic since I’ll likely be doing much less salvaging in the future on my ranger.

all i wanted is for them to take off cloth on the req. for making ascended armors for heavies haha esp. now that it would be a prof loot system.

For me this is ok. Should have been in place from start ofc. Its a fair logic. And now it will somehow change market price….and this is bad. What we have here are just a bunch of 11111guardian(ofc before was an advantage,i made a zerg staff guardian just to farm) crying because now they are almost on the same levels of other in term of drops reward/gold gain.

my real concern is about precursors…i guess making them account bound/soulbound will solve the problem.

edit: i play all class

Call it extra convenience. When I levelled my character, most of the drops I get are weapons that my class is not compatible with making the buying of the item I need in the TP the more viable option.

Yeah, but when you’re leveling, there’s no need to keep your gear up to date. I got some of my later characters up to 80 while wearing mostly level 55-60 greens. If the goal of this is to make it easier for leveling characters to get the gear they need without having to shop for it, then it’s like moving deck chairs on the Titanic.

Prices will normalize shortly after the release for anyone concerned about an advantage.

Not so long as Damask takes double the silk of other ascended mats.

I could see the prices on the TP remaining more or less what they are today, I see no reason why leather and cloth would balance out to roughly the same value though.

If they’ll implement this to all levels, I sure hope to god they’ll also change the crafting recipes for everything. If you’re going to make me get only class specific items then you better make those items require only certain types of materials. If cloth isn’t going to drop for me then my items shouldn’t require cloth to be crafted.

Fasalina.6571:

If they’ll implement this to all levels, I sure hope to god they’ll also change the crafting recipes for everything. If you’re going to make me get only class specific items then you better make those items require only certain types of materials. If cloth isn’t going to drop for me then my items shouldn’t require cloth to be crafted.

The article only says it will increase the type of drops you can use. It does not say it will eliminate all nonusable drops. You will still get drops that can salvage for cloth. I doubt any recipes will be changed either.

“It’s still possible for a warrior to get a new staff to sell or for mesmers to find a rare rifle, but it’ll be a bit less common than it was before.”

Im sorry, but I don’t see how that is a negative feature. I for one look forward to it.

mtpelion.4562:

This is a good change people… it will allow people to SPECIFICALLY TARGET CLOTH as a drop now.

Being able to SPECIFICALLY TARGET CLOTH will cause overall supply to INCREASE.

An overall INCREASE in supply will result in LOWER PRICES.

LOWER PRICES means that even though the number of silk scraps you get on your Guardian is less, you are now able to afford to BUY LOTS MORE SILK than before (or play on an ALT).

I don’t think it is possible to explain this any more clearly.

You may continue complaining after this point, just be aware that it only makes you look silly.

As already stated, only 3 out of 8 classes are cloth-wearers which would result in less cloth from players who simply play the game and don´t farm it. So farmers would at first have to overcome that loss from ordinary players before we would see an increase in supply – and that doesn´t look like an easy challenge to me.

And there´s atleast one part of the game where switching to an Alt might not be a valid option – or good luck running a WvW-hammertrain without guards and warriors.

Castrin.8972:

Morsus.5106:

@Castrin.8972 I’ll say it a second time. Find me where they said it won’t affect level 80 players and I’ll personally ask a moderator to close this thread and issue an apology to everyone I have mislead. All you’ve proven is that it will affect leveling players, you have not proven it won’t affect level 80 players..

You nor I can “prove” anything, it’s all what we think they are saying.

You believe that a “new player” and/or “leveling player” includes those with characters at level 80.

I do not.

Time will tell which is the correct translation but either way I wish you luck.

Peace.

Please don’t wish me luck. I really, really, really want to be wrong on this.

I think I see where some of you are having issues with the “level 1-79.”

If you had paid attention, leveling characters (1-79) will get special loot that is account bound and slightly better than non-account bound gear of the same level and same rarity. This means there will be gear across the rarity spectrum up to exotic and between levels 1-79 that will be account bound that will be obtained only by characters under level 80.

The profession loot is for all levels and to help characters obtain gear for their profession easier. We will still get loot for other professions, just not as often.

Light class professions get strong armed on the TP for their armor since it gets dropped less. Medium classes get a break on the TP for their armor since it drops the most.

Add in that salvaging light armor is the most reliable way to get cloth and now you can plainly see how the light classes are suffering.

I think so long as they don’t nerf further whats there then this will be a good thing especially for those of us who seem to have DR turned on permanently.

Ashen.2907:

Shockwave.1230:

Prices will normalize shortly after the release for anyone concerned about an advantage.

Don’t you think that this will depend heavily on the ratio of cloth drop reduction for non light armor wearer vs cloth drop increase for light armor wearers ?

…

Of course the reduction may very well be a smaller number than the increase. Until we have more information its difficult to say for certain what the final result will be.

That’s it, we don’t know how this will affect the drops we get, so please calm down.

eyestrain.3056:

…
I see what they’re trying to do but playing a class (or avoiding one) for money seems against the spirit of the whole game.

The Devs probably didn’t make this decision because of gold and if your only concern is how much money you can make with a certain class .. you should worry about something else.

Ok, lets say class specific drops increase drastically, while other are significant lower.
Well you know what to do and if you really need it … start a light armor class, in this case you can farm cloth after the feature patch arrives.

Need a class for tagging? Wellmancer with staff .. lots of aoe’s. Done.

This is a great example of where a red post could ‘really’ help the discussion.

Anthony jumped in the ‘repeating hearts’ suggestion, and it ends up focusing the discussion another way, and giving an indication as to something that feel won’t work, and why. And that was awesome (thanks Anthony).

This thread needs something similar. Something to direct the discussion, clear up any misconceptions as to what it meant, and in cases where we haven’t misunderstood, explain ‘why’ it was done, exactly, and truthfully, and help direct the rest of the conversation.

Mesket.5728:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Mesket.5728:

Branden Gee post only confirms my concerns… they do not have a clue about their game. I’m sorry for Branden but if he is a developer and needs to spend time coding and training then its not his job to think. The game designer (not the developer) should be the person 20 hours a day inside GW2 to understand the game and not let decisions like go through. This is not the first time ANet toss something out that shows their lack of knowledge on the game.

And this shows that you know nothing about development. Good developers are constantly honing their skills. Languages are constantly improving and good devs have to keep up with that to remain relevent. I work for a company that just hit 300 people, of which more than 80% are developers – Java, .Net, PHP, etc. The higher level devs, the seniors and leads, are always working on something, always looking at the new technologies, checking out the advancements in their languages and in others to see how they might be applied to their own projects in a beneficial way.

You post makes no sense and you actually says the same I said… (and I already programmed my first video game and working as a game designer for my second one though I don’t need to give you any info about, just letting you know im not randomly saying this) if he has to do all that, then he should not be the one proposing changes. The game designer should be the one behind the changes, not him. I don’t even know if he is the one who proposed it but in any case, devs to code, designer to design… and this game has very good devs but very bad designers.

You’re saying that he has no right to propose an idea though because “he has no clue about the game”, which is wrong. Anyone has the right to propose an idea or make a suggestion. It gives more options to play around with and choose from. He knows a hell of a lot more than probably the majority of the players making suggestions and proposing ideas. Yet, there seems to be no issue there.

However, most of my rant was to your line “if he is a developer and needs to spend time coding and training then its not his job to think” which is also absolutely bullkitten.

notebene.3190:

This is a great example of where a red post could ‘really’ help the discussion.

Anthony jumped in the ‘repeating hearts’ suggestion, and it ends up focusing the discussion another way, and giving an indication as to something that feel won’t work, and why. And that was awesome (thanks Anthony).

This thread needs something similar. Something to direct the discussion, clear up any misconceptions as to what it meant, and in cases where we haven’t misunderstood, explain ‘why’ it was done, exactly, and truthfully, and help direct the rest of the conversation.

I guess that topic was pretty “harmless” as nothing was planned to be done about hearts. This topic is, however, rather hot and touchy, so maybe the policy says “let them vent and say everything before we announce anything based on the feedback and stir it up even more”. Makes sense to an extent.

Lishtenbird.2814:

notebene.3190:

This is a great example of where a red post could ‘really’ help the discussion.

Anthony jumped in the ‘repeating hearts’ suggestion, and it ends up focusing the discussion another way, and giving an indication as to something that feel won’t work, and why. And that was awesome (thanks Anthony).

This thread needs something similar. Something to direct the discussion, clear up any misconceptions as to what it meant, and in cases where we haven’t misunderstood, explain ‘why’ it was done, exactly, and truthfully, and help direct the rest of the conversation.

I guess that topic was pretty “harmless” as nothing was planned to be done about hearts. This topic is, however, rather hot and touchy, so maybe the policy says “let them vent and say everything before we announce anything based on the feedback and stir it up even more”. Makes sense to an extent.

But that’s the part that confuses me. By letting posts get many pages long and heated and all that, they let the community get angry. Whether it’s collective anger directed in a specific direction or between ourselves. When they could just come into a discussion early, even if it’s to say, “Hey, that’s a reasonable point, and we’re going to go talk among ourselves.”

Now, the answer could be, “Because money”. And maybe they are as frustrated with ‘because money’ as we are, but they aren’t allowed to say anything bad about ‘because money’, so they don’t say anything at all.

I’d honestly rather just know ‘because money’ when that’s the answer. It might not be popular, but if it’s ever truly the case, as it must be at least some of the time, it’s at least the truth.

Regardless, hot topics are precisely the ones that need at least some sort of interaction, because those lead to the most toxic discussions and environment.

But at any rate, if it’s truly not 1-79, I hope there is a switch to flip it on and off in the settings.

As i tend to say in these types of posts. The in game market should not have any influence on gameplay decisions like this. This is 100% the right decision. This game has more then enough ways to make money. I can easily make 10-20 gold a day and i never sell mats unless of course i have maxed out stacks of refined and raw mat.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Mesket.5728:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Mesket.5728:

Branden Gee post only confirms my concerns… they do not have a clue about their game. I’m sorry for Branden but if he is a developer and needs to spend time coding and training then its not his job to think. The game designer (not the developer) should be the person 20 hours a day inside GW2 to understand the game and not let decisions like go through. This is not the first time ANet toss something out that shows their lack of knowledge on the game.

And this shows that you know nothing about development. Good developers are constantly honing their skills. Languages are constantly improving and good devs have to keep up with that to remain relevent. I work for a company that just hit 300 people, of which more than 80% are developers – Java, .Net, PHP, etc. The higher level devs, the seniors and leads, are always working on something, always looking at the new technologies, checking out the advancements in their languages and in others to see how they might be applied to their own projects in a beneficial way.

You post makes no sense and you actually says the same I said… (and I already programmed my first video game and working as a game designer for my second one though I don’t need to give you any info about, just letting you know im not randomly saying this) if he has to do all that, then he should not be the one proposing changes. The game designer should be the one behind the changes, not him. I don’t even know if he is the one who proposed it but in any case, devs to code, designer to design… and this game has very good devs but very bad designers.

You’re saying that he has no right to propose an idea though because “he has no clue about the game”, which is wrong. Anyone has the right to propose an idea or make a suggestion. It gives more options to play around with and choose from. He knows a hell of a lot more than probably the majority of the players making suggestions and proposing ideas. Yet, there seems to be no issue there.

However, most of my rant was to your line “if he is a developer and needs to spend time coding and training then its not his job to think” which is also absolutely bullkitten.

Dude you are making a snowball out of context, its not even the point of the topic. Stop derrailing on such a small detail. I don’t care if he is a programmer, an artist or the game designer himself. Whoever provides such radical changes should know every aspect of the game from a to z. I don’t even know (or care) if he was the one who proposed this but still, it shouldn’t be someone who comes here saying, “I’m sorry, I can’t know enough because I have a life and need time for other things”. That is totally fine! But this kind of changes out of nowhere truly shows lack of knoledge from the dev team (as a whole) and will probably not have the expected impact on the game. There is so much room for improvement that I don’t agree with putting extra effort on drops for leveling characters. Its a waste of resources. That is my opinion. Now, if this will also impact lvl 80 characters, then more than my opinion on their resource management, I’m actually concerned that this game is going in the wrong direction.

Mesket.5728:

There is so much room for improvement that I don’t agree with putting extra effort on drops for leveling characters. Its a waste of resources. That is my opinion. Now, if this will also impact lvl 80 characters, then more than my opinion on their resource management, I’m actually concerned that this game is going in the wrong direction.

Ok skipping over the first part of that as to stay on topic….

So, because they want to adjust drops so that some players (not all obviously) will find them more useful is a waste of resources? I don’t find making the game more “leveling friendly” to be a waste of resources honestly, but we’ll just agree to disagree on that.

We don’t know how many people worked on this change. How many hours it took. Anything beyond that they are making the adjustment. For all we know it could be a simple addition to a table and some automated queries to gather the necessary data. That really wouldn’t take overly long to do.

Still, since you obviously feel they don’t know what they are doing and are “wasting resources” what do you feel they should be focusing on then?

I could see this being an issue if they made 100% of drops profession based, but they have not indicated what percentage would be profession based. 50% seems like a reasonable compromise, but I’m not generally overly greedy and whine whenever any change might effect my current earning potential (not matter how slight it might be).

BTW, from my experience, the amount of raw materials obtained from actual loot equipment DROPS is minimal compared to loot bags and Champ boxes. Now if this “loot drop change” effects Champ Box item generation, then as long as they make it apply to what character OPENS the box, that would allow some player choice in what equipment they want to obtain…..right? That would potentially make it EASIER to obtain cloth (just have your unused light armor toon open all the containers).

These radical, knee-jerk, threads are mostly a lot of speculation until we get some actual details of the actual update results.

Considering how much more light armor classes have to pay for bolts of damask compared to the other armor weight classes, them getting more silk drops is completely justified and will still probably not makeup for the extra expense they must endure for crafting.

I do not realy understand why there is a 5 page thread on something that basically said:
- During levelling
- Higher Chance

A lot of the responses here seem to imply, ‘this will effect my lvl80’ and ‘a higher chance will mean all my loot will be geared to my profession’. Both of which I did not seem to get from the profession geared loot announcement at all?

Anybody else starting to wonder how many more pages of concerns need to be written out before we get some actual clarification on how this will work and/or what steps are being taken to un-screw the poor medium armor classes who’ll get the shortest stick of all in this?

Arghore.8340:

‘a higher chance will mean all my loot will be geared to my profession’.

Let’s look at the Engineer. Say just 50% are tuned to something you could use. Now the drop rates are 33/33/33 split, meaning everyone has a fair chance at Silk, Leather and Mithril. After this the poor Engineer will be getting a split like 50/25/25. That’s an 8% nerf to silk and mithril, which is worth a lot more than silk. Now, let’s look at Necromancer, Elementalist, and Mesmer. If they have a 25/50/25 split, 17% more of their drops will be light armor, making it more profitable for farming. Small adjustments like this can make a big difference.

Stop complaining, learn to adapt. Personally I like the changes. If farming gold is all the game gives to you perhaps you should move on.

Charleston Chew.1209:

Stop complaining, learn to adapt. Personally I like the changes. If farming gold is all the game gives to you perhaps you should move on.

The problem is not that I will no longer be able to farm gold, but the inequality in farming materials that this change will make. You will need an alt of each armor weight to farm materials.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi everyone,

The article about profession system only presented the idea behind this system and we generally don’t give precise details about these systems unless these details are needed to understand the idea. In this case we can’t share details but we want to reassure players that they’re not going to see changes in loot so visible that some components are going to “rain” or they’ll stop seeing loot variety. It’s more complex than that.

The adjustments to the loot system are fairly subtle and the goals are that, after a certain time, your characters will effectively have more components you can use. So it may take some time for you to see a difference, or not, but it’s not going to feel like a very visible change each time you loot a mob. We want players, in particular new ones or those creating alts, to more often be able to use the items they loot directly or get something that is relevant to their profession. It does not mean that you’ll get less varied loot overall. We’ll keep monitoring the changes to kitten its affects.

Thanks for your early feedback!

Does this mean that it will affect level 80s?
EDIT: I hate to derail your post, but I’d really like an answer on this. The initial blog was very vague, and I’d like some clarification. Thanks for responding to our feedback

Morsus.5106:

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi everyone,

The article about profession system only presented the idea behind this system and we generally don’t give precise details about these systems unless these details are needed to understand the idea. In this case we can’t share details but we want to reassure players that they’re not going to see changes in loot so visible that some components are going to “rain” or they’ll stop seeing loot variety. It’s more complex than that.

The adjustments to the loot system are fairly subtle and the goals are that, after a certain time, your characters will effectively have more components you can use. So it may take some time for you to see a difference, or not, but it’s not going to feel like a very visible change each time you loot a mob. We want players, in particular new ones or those creating alts, to more often be able to use the items they loot directly or get something that is relevant to their profession. It does not mean that you’ll get less varied loot overall. We’ll keep monitoring the changes to kitten its affects.

Thanks for your early feedback!

Does this mean that it will affect level 80s?
EDIT: I hate to derail your post, but I’d really like an answer on this. The initial blog was very vague, and I’d like some clarification. Thanks for responding to our feedback

seems so…

so basically the game right now has a ridiculous amount of metal and leather over cloth.. they are making it so 5 out of 8 classes will see less cloth and more leather and metal… good job!

Charleston Chew.1209:

Stop complaining, learn to adapt. Personally I like the changes. If farming gold is all the game gives to you perhaps you should move on.

Exactly the opposite. I hate farming gold and I enjoy simply playing the game. This change will subtletly make heavy and leather farm gold instead of getting what they need just by playing.

Its a nice change on paper and it seems good but its horrible for almost everyone… those low lvls that are going to be benefited with it will have the same issues later on, specially since they would get less materials from lower levels which is even expensier.

Morsus.5106:

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi everyone,

The article about profession system only presented the idea behind this system and we generally don’t give precise details about these systems unless these details are needed to understand the idea. In this case we can’t share details but we want to reassure players that they’re not going to see changes in loot so visible that some components are going to “rain” or they’ll stop seeing loot variety. It’s more complex than that.

The adjustments to the loot system are fairly subtle and the goals are that, after a certain time, your characters will effectively have more components you can use. So it may take some time for you to see a difference, or not, but it’s not going to feel like a very visible change each time you loot a mob. We want players, in particular new ones or those creating alts, to more often be able to use the items they loot directly or get something that is relevant to their profession. It does not mean that you’ll get less varied loot overall. We’ll keep monitoring the changes to kitten its affects.

Thanks for your early feedback!

Does this mean that it will affect level 80s?
EDIT: I hate to derail your post, but I’d really like an answer on this. The initial blog was very vague, and I’d like some clarification. Thanks for responding to our feedback

Let me translate this for you:
It is exactly the way we think it is getting changed, that is it will affect everything including level 80s. But they cannot say it out loud, otherwise there will be an uproar with the community.

So they are going to implement it the same way we all expect it to work, except that they are just telling us it is “not what we think”, so that by the time we get enough research data on new drop rates(by comparing previous drop data with the new ones) to confirm it was exactly as we predicted, it will have been too late for players to uproar and ask for a rollback(because it will have been implemented for a while into the game by then).

Therefore, expect the expected nerf to your drops.
Note: If my post gets deleted, at least we will be able to confirm that I am right on this.

tl;dr
Drop rates are getting nerfed but we are being told they are not.

I appreciate the dev response but it doesn’t help our concerns. You say that the changes are not going to be significant or noticeable but at the same time want to make new players feel like they are getting something useful more often than before – those two points go against one another.

I’ve decided to be a little more constructive in my feedback.
Currently, I am at level 80 and working on my set of heavy Ascended armor. For this I need more Cloth than Metal. In fact, throughout my entire experience with the game I’ve had an abundance of metal and leather. Looking at the trading post it would appear that I’m not the only one, because Leather costs very little to purchase, as does Metal. Cloth however is one of the highest demanded items in the game, and price reflects that. As a heavy armored class, this change would indicate that if armor is affected I will receive more heavy armor. This means I will be receiving more Metal and less Cloth (unless they add to the loot tables instead of adjusting them). This creates an in-balance because some classes will be getting more valuable materials, while other classes will be getting more valuable materials. I propose a few suggestions to help with this:
1. Letting us toggle Profession Loot.
This would allow me to get balanced drops, while also allowing me to turn it on when I’m leveling and would like to keep my items close to my level.
2. Make it only affect weapons.
When weapons are salvaged they either give wood or metal, something that is quite abundant. On top of that, every class has access to enough weapons that they can acquire both metal and wood.
3. Make it only affect sub 80s.
When leveling, I think that having Profession Loot will be worth it. Once you are level 80 though, I feel like it’s not going to help, and actually hinder the acquisition of crafting materials.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

We’ll keep monitoring the changes to kitten its affects.

Excellent

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi everyone,

The article about profession system only presented the idea behind this system and we generally don’t give precise details about these systems unless these details are needed to understand the idea. In this case we can’t share details but we want to reassure players that they’re not going to see changes in loot so visible that some components are going to “rain” or they’ll stop seeing loot variety. It’s more complex than that.

The adjustments to the loot system are fairly subtle and the goals are that, after a certain time, your characters will effectively have more components you can use. So it may take some time for you to see a difference, or not, but it’s not going to feel like a very visible change each time you loot a mob. We want players, in particular new ones or those creating alts, to more often be able to use the items they loot directly or get something that is relevant to their profession. It does not mean that you’ll get less varied loot overall. We’ll keep monitoring the changes to kitten its affects.

Thanks for your early feedback!

I, and many others, don’t really want details. We just want a simple yes or no to one question:

Does this also affect level 80 characters?

That’s pretty much it.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I, and many others, don’t really want details. We just want a simple yes or no to one question:

Does this also affect level 80 characters?

That’s pretty much it.

Aye, ’tis our question.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi everyone,

The article about profession system only presented the idea behind this system and we generally don’t give precise details about these systems unless these details are needed to understand the idea. In this case we can’t share details but we want to reassure players that they’re not going to see changes in loot so visible that some components are going to “rain” or they’ll stop seeing loot variety. It’s more complex than that.

The adjustments to the loot system are fairly subtle and the goals are that, after a certain time, your characters will effectively have more components you can use. So it may take some time for you to see a difference, or not, but it’s not going to feel like a very visible change each time you loot a mob. We want players, in particular new ones or those creating alts, to more often be able to use the items they loot directly or get something that is relevant to their profession. It does not mean that you’ll get less varied loot overall. We’ll keep monitoring the changes to kitten its affects.

Thanks for your early feedback!

If this means I won’t have to buy all new gear for my leveling characters every 10-15 levels because no usable gear has dropped for them in that time, I’m all for it!

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Let me translate this for you:
It is exactly the way we think it is getting changed, that is it will affect everything including level 80s. But they cannot say it out loud, otherwise there will be an uproar with the community.

So they are going to implement it the same way we all expect it to work, except that they are just telling us it is “not what we think”, so that by the time we get enough research data on new drop rates(by comparing previous drop data with the new ones) to confirm it was exactly as we predicted, it will have been too late for players to uproar and ask for a rollback(because it will have been implemented for a while into the game by then).

Unfortunately, my thoughts exactly.
Since that’s the topic where dev decided to pretend giving information, I’ll just copy my opinion on this from an ignored one:
I levelled 10 characters to 80 just so that I can enjoy every part of game in the way that suits me most. My main characters are light armor and really don’t get some incredible amount of drops on roaming. So I have my heavies do PvE events to feed them, so I can make armor for them etc. I do not like roaming on non-light characters. I do not enjoy doing events with other classes than heavy. I do not want anet to decide for me how I should play this game.

Blix.8021:

Baldrick.8967:

Try maining something other than auto tagging guardian or warrior, and those complaining will quickly realise light armor classes get a lot less loot anyway, so there is no advantage gained, just less loss if we get more silk from our far fewer drops.

Uh, maybe you should try playing those other classes? Eles and necros get just as much loot, if not more because they don’t have to run around to spam a 600 range aoe.

I’ve played them all, several times. Necro is good for loot, especially if you use attacking skills, ele doesn’t tag so many if you are playing support and using your skills to keep people alive. Of course, if you play mindless fire spam then yes you get a good amount of loot, but nothing tags better than guardian staff 1 spam- one hit seems to tag the target, whereas for other classes you have to make much more hits/effort to get rewards.

Much depends on how you play and whether you care about keeping your side alive, or whether maximising your own loot is your main aim. Judging by EoTM lately, mindless spam while everyone dies around you seems to be the new meta there, whereas in wvw most of the time players seem to have a better appreciation of synergy.

Others have made the valid point that profession based drops is a bad idea as it forces them to choose between the class they want to play and the class they need to play to maximise their drop chance for the type of mats they want. Wondering around on most light classes in pve solo farming isn’t much fun which is why most of us have heavy classes for map completion, world events, etc as they can destroy targets so much faster whilst taking so much more damage and having a shiny healing signet too.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi everyone,

The article about profession system only presented the idea behind this system and we generally don’t give precise details about these systems unless these details are needed to understand the idea. In this case we can’t share details but we want to reassure players that they’re not going to see changes in loot so visible that some components are going to “rain” or they’ll stop seeing loot variety. It’s more complex than that.

The adjustments to the loot system are fairly subtle and the goals are that, after a certain time, your characters will effectively have more components you can use. So it may take some time for you to see a difference, or not, but it’s not going to feel like a very visible change each time you loot a mob. We want players, in particular new ones or those creating alts, to more often be able to use the items they loot directly or get something that is relevant to their profession. It does not mean that you’ll get less varied loot overall. We’ll keep monitoring the changes to kitten its affects.

Thanks for your early feedback!

So plain English answer, if I am playing on a level 80 engineer who already has all the dropped gear he needs, will I expect to be receiving less of the valuable Greatswords, Staffs, and cloth armor than I would be receiving as a Mesmer, and more of the junky shields and leather armor?

If so, make that not be the case.

On one side this will kill the clothe trade by making those of us who main guardians, thieves and such more likely to get leather and metal armor (because the price of mithril is obviously too high).
On the other side this might kill the over-priced wood as most weapons can be reduced to logs, or have a chance to be. Unfortunately the drop in wood is unlikely to offset the price in cloth, especially since they are never used in conjunction with one another.
I do admire the thought behind the small variation in loot, but that small variation among hundreds of thousands of accounts, and easily a million characters, will definitely alter the market and prices of the TP. Stock up on your silk, wool, and cotton. I doubt it will be an instant spike, but it will be a steady increase for a while.

The way the dev put it, it sounds more likely the usable loot drop rates will be increased slightly, while the unusable loot drops rates will remain the same. So you should be getting more of gear for your character, but not losing out on salvagable gear. In the end more loot for all.