Guild Wars 2

let’s start with Champions not droping anything at all…when it was stated in the patch notes from 15th november that they should ALWAYS drop something….but yeah…anything suspicious… -_-"

Quotes from other thread showing numbers …

wildcode.5403:

Well, did the pent/shelter/jofast events tonight for a little over 3 hours. Majority of the loot was porous bones (54), next was all the salvagable, bags, and crafting materials, out of the remaining there was only 38 items, 0 yellows, hardly any greens. Selling the items to merchant didn’t even get me 1G … for 3 hours event running …

wildcode.5403:

This issue still exists, did the entire event chain from Caer to Arah, did not fill 30 slots, got more crafting mats/bag/savagable, next was junk, then 8 whites, 12 blues, 1 green. And I had crit numbers going all over the screen with my grenade spamming.

Champs and vets still rarely drop anything.

wildcode.5403:

In one hour, I made 38s … so much for my estimate of 50s/hour … I just was not getting enough drops, nor enough equipment to merch.

I give up for tonight. This bug has won this round, only made 3g63s in about 10 hours of game play in Cursed Shore, but I will fight it again tomorrow.

And finally the solid proof

wildcode.5403:

The Numbers are in, ok, lets look at some numbers from just before the drop rate bug from15 simular event

*Added: From just prior to Nov15 patch
*Added: Events were pent/shelter/jofast events including the escort fia and dolyaks.

total drops = 365
% white drops = 19%
% blue drops = 18%
% green drops = 7%
% yellow drops = 1% (Note: I was having issues with yellow drops when this was done)
% junk = 34%
% fines/salvagable/bags = 21%

Now simular 15 events today
total drops = 307
% white drops = 9%
% blue drops = 5%
% green drops = 6%
% yellow drops = 1%
% junk = 20%
% fines/salvagable/bags = 59%

Analisys:
- 16% decrease in total number of drops
(When comparing % of drops)
- 10% decrease in white drops
- 13% decrease in blue drops
- 1% decrease in green drops
- 0% change in yellow drops
- 14% decrease in junk drops
- 38% increase in fines/salvagable/bags drops

Conclusion:
Drops have definitely declined since just before the Nov 15 patch, with their make up also changing. The numbers dont lie. On the up side, we are getting more crafting materials now. This is why inv is taking longer to fill, because you are getting alot more stackable items than before, and alot less of the non-stackable ones. Because people tend to bank crafting mats and only merch junk/white/blue/green items, you also end up with a much lower income from these drops.

Also note I put in a ticket and submitted an in game bug report with screen shot and quoting same ticket number. 121211-001013

Also wanted to add that yellow drops have changed too, you used to be almost guaranteed 1 per event, no you are lucky if you get 1 a day, in cursed shore.

Prior to the Nov 15 patch, it was not unheard of to make 1+ Gold an hour running events, now it can take you 3 hours to make 1G from selling same type of loot “equipment”.

Really ? it was not my badluck but some crazy ratio problem that occurs to everyone ?

first of all i can start with the Karka ending reward chest while many recieved precursors or lvl 80 exotics i with my magic find set and lotus bonus recieved 2 rares and 2 exotics that 1 is for 80 and named !(first exotic ever drop for me with a name "tahlkora’s band or visor) and second is lvl 78 exotic it made me take my character into that lava pit and let him lie there for 3-4 days …

also while many around me recieve 2-3 times of exotic i get from any chest around the world and dungeons i get like 1-per month … but its not a steady ratio … well what ever i dont even believe anything good will happen from now on but just wanted to let you know with this long text that im typing at 3am in the morning to let you know my dissappointment from the whole drop and magic find stuff … gn …

20 days
272 Fractals
7 exotics
180 MF
No, I would say that this is not working right at all, I play a lot, this is ONLY counting fractals, I have not at all gotten exotics in world events or drops. This runs around 160hours of play, (I figure a bit more to be honest), if a player puts in 160 hours and comes up with almost nothing at all over 20 days and partakes in everything the game has to offer, no it is not working right at all, or you’re setup the game to force us into paying you in order to earn things on our own and not be pushed into the trade post to play the market or buy the gold from you.

I just want to share my experience. I had 150% mf set prior 15 nov patch and after. Before patch i had minimum 1 yellow item per 2-3 all known farm events in Orr. Sometimes 1-2 from one. My best record was 4 from one event (if i can remember right)! After the patch i rarely get 1 from 5-6. Also i see significant decrease overall drop after a couple events. Just like DR hits me too fast. After first ~3 events i have ~50 slots of loot, but next 3 events give me may be 10-15.

When I ran the plinx chain I use to get 3-4 rares per run. Now I get 0.
Yes full magic find and onm bar as well.

I just got the 200 fractal achievement. Out of all those 200 ones, ive gotten only 10 vials and 4 globs.

Between that, i could safely say ive done 15 fractal dailies on the 10-18 tier and only gotten 2 rings from the daily.

Killed sparks in Malchors Leap over the past week for almost 6 hours total. with anywhere from 175-195 magic find.

1 Charged Lodestone drop
no exotics
2 rares

You know something is broke when you hit sell junk and 95% of your bag is gone.

I ran around 140ish fractals and reached level 21 before I got my first vial of mists essence to drop. Since the first vial dropped I have completed about 20 more fractals and reached level 23 and found 3 additional vials in this time.

Edit: Note this was before the changes to when the vial of mists dropped in the patch.

Stephane, thank you for bringing this discussion forward. I will post some information I have from memory and also sum up the issues that are reported below for your convenience. The first thing that really needs to be clarified, before you start getting data, is what should be expect? The 15th of November patch states the following:

“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.”

Champions are not always dropping loot. Most of the time, it is just a single blue item, if that. This isn’t just my experience, there is a thread with over 1000 replies and 40 000 views stating from a large number of users they have the same issue. Veterans are even worse, they seem to 50% of the time, and that is just junk. I can’t recall ever pulling a rare or exotic off either. I won’t comment on WvW as the dynamics change so much depending on team size and objectives. I haven’t seen any post or user comment, either on this forums, other communities or general map chat, that they have received better loot since this patch (which states this should be expected). Now people feel like they are expected to run dungeons to get gear (understandable for ascended items while you work in better methods for open world development, but for everything else this is not cool).

If you want evidence of this, log in, find a champion and solo it. Rinse and repeat, record drops. Get a team together and repeat. For the amount of time you put in to do that, do you think the loot drop was acceptable? Especially taking into waypoint and repair costs…

I got map completion in Straits of Devastation the weekend before last. Total drop, after completing the entire map and over 30 events was around 5 greens, 20 blues and a lot of junk. No rares, no exotics (ignoring completion rewards obviously as these are not random). Is that what you would expect? Or even fair to a player who has to spend so much time for so little? My ele in this case was level 75-80 during this adventure so I don’t think that would have had a huge impact as it isn’t too far from the expected level of the area.

So far this week I have played, for 2-3 hours every day (barring today – Saturday morning in AU). I have received 4 rare drops the entire week, 2 weapons and two crafting materials. Around 10-12 greens. Enough junk to open a cheep import business within Lions Arc.

Also there are countless reports of MF not doing anything, or at most increasing the drop rates of whites/junk.

Can you please clarify, as this is creating a lot of negative feedback:

1) Should all champions drop loot? What is the expected drop rate of atleast rare loot from champions?

2) Should all veterans drop loot? What is the expected drop rate of atleast rare loot from veterans?

3) Should all event bosses (non vets/champions, like the Risen Drake Broodmother in Malchor’s Leap) drop loot? What is the expected drop rate of atleast rare loot from event bosses?

4) How often do you actually expect rares do drop in open world? I know this is based on a huge number of dynamics, but please be as forthcoming as possible. Do you expect a player, fighting mobs in a higher level map to get atleast one rare per hour? More/less?

5) What dynamics actually effect drops. MF? Damage done to mobs? Number of players around? etc

6) What impact does DR actually have on loot? Should someone be expected to change maps every 10 minutes? People have noticed, with enough evidence to back this up, that their drops rates are dramatically better after a server reset, for an hour or so. Why?

I apologies for the long post, I am trying to sum up the problems people have been mentioning for a long time now though I expect this post will be ignored by Anet. A little bit of clarity would be welcome, as you can tell, this is causing frustration for a large number of users. This is not just in these forums, check Reddit, check other forums, check map chat, check people discussing things in LA. Even people who don’t read these forums have noticed oddities. Even stranger is some people don’t seem affected at all, while others have a horrible experience…

And worse off all, possibly the one of the worst things you can have in any game – players are loosing a sense of accomplishment. Why should I spend 15 minutes to solo a champion in an area where there are no other players in sight and the normal mob respawn rate is so high it slows everything else down dramatically, when you get nothing in return.

Seriously, whats the point?

Cheers, and thanks for taking the time to read this.

Can you possibly explain how we can provide the data to you and compare it to prior to November 15th since we could not possibly predict there would be a change?
And if that isn’t possible, what precisely do you mean by “Concrete Data”? Please explain the “EXACT” process we should follow to provide this data you are looking for so it is no longer “PERCEIVED”! Let me be perfectly clear, there is nothing perceived about this issue!

Je suis complètement déçu par la rédaction de ce post et votre considère qu’il est extrêmement insultant et décevant compte tenu des efforts que j’ai mis pour identifier et porter cette question à votre attention. Permettez-moi d’être parfaitement clair, il n’y a rien perçu à ce sujet!

The vast majority of players, including myself, have noticed an extreme decrease in drop quality. Far beyond the scope of luck. Asking us to show you our “concrete data” about “perceived drop behavior” is confusingly worded and probably impossible. This is a video game, when I am playing it I do not take notes and partake in mathematical calculations.

What I and many other players do know is that drops have substantially decreased, such a large consensus does not come from “bad luck”.

It seems to have a connection with magic find gear in my experience. Whenever I equip it, NOTHING drops. Not less than I would expect from magic find, but nearly nothing. The only possible way I can even find golds is by exchanging dungeon tokens for them at this point, I used to find multiple daily just by roaming and killing mobs.

• 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.

This is from the November path notes. This is the most solid evidence for the entire issue. If this isn’t enough “data” I don’t know what is.

I spent $20 dollars for 20 mystery boxes and got absolutely nothing but ugly sweaters and a couple worthless tonics. $20 dollars lol, thats 1/3 of the entire price of the game. Thanks Anet.

Since 15. of November i did NOT get a single exotic item (or something better)! I only got exotics from map completion or champion chests. But i never got a exotic item (or something better) from a kill and I’m using MF 30% most of my time! That is VERY frustrating!

Today I farmed Orr for about 45 minutes. In the first two events, I got around three rares. Afterwards, I played another 4-5 events with nothing but a lot of porous bone and very little crafting materials.

I have definitely noticed changes in loot since the patch. I do not know how to describe it except that it is unrewarding.

As others have noted, it’s not particularly easy to keep a detailed log of every drop from every foe during every game session, so I’ll provide a single instance that has been representative of my gaming experience recently.

I just completed an event in Cursed Shore, the one where a Champion Undead Abomination spawns just outside of Caer Shadowfain. One would expect high quality drops from a challenging Chmapion fight. Instead, I got a blue Cleric Spear. There has also been issues with farming Sparks and not getting drops, but I could understand that active farming might cause issues. However, a Champion event should not. And it does.

It’s not a good system where I feel zero compulsion to fight a Champion because the rewards I get are equivalent, or worse than, what I get from a basic enemy standing nearby.

Stephanie,

Champions not dropping loot as has been recorded in the huge thread is not perceived.

In 247 hours and 19 minutes played on my level 80 warrior out of 273 hours across all characters since launch I have had exactly ONE exotic item drop. I got that from the Penitent event in Orr. One exotic drop in almost 250 hours of playtime doesn’t seem to be right, but maybe I’m missing something?

After being logged out for almost 24 hours I went to do the Penitent event in Orr. 3 cycles of the two events and I did not receive a yellow item. No dye. No exotic. I got one green, one blue, some whites, and a lot of the porous bones.

Could there be an issue with the DR system? From the long thread and other posts, it seems like some people are in some sort of DR limbo that they can’t get out of.

Feel free to clarify, but after being logged out for 20 hours, should my first 5 drops from mobs in one of the Penitent events be porous bones? They were the first mobs I killed. Wearing no magic find gear.

Leaving there I went to Timberline Falls. I killed the angry veteran crab as part of the world event. I got no drop.

I hope this helps. My theory is that there is something in the DR system that is messing up.

Also noticed, when salvaging rares i rarely get any ectos lately. I used to get atleast 5 ectos if salvaged 10 rares, now i feel lucky when i get one.

One Month’s worth of data – boiled down to percentages:

A Great Divide:

The contrast i’m outlining below has been happening to me and about a 30% sub-set of my guild. The rest still receive the pre-11/15 drop rates, and take home 2-3 ectos per major event or dungeon. The makeup of these two groups never changes, the same people get garbage drops post-11/15, the same people have been unchanged
The magic find distribution is equal between both sides of this gaping divide.

pre-11/15 patch. (assuming your target was lootable)

• Dragon Events (provided you waited a day for each dragon):
  rare rate – roughly 80% chance of getting at least 1
  exotic rate – roughly 2% chance of getting 1

• Zone Leveling:
  0-40 zones:
  white rate – roughly 30%
  blue rate – roughly 50%
  green rate – roughly 5%
  40-60 zones:
  white rate – roughly 10%
  blue rate – roughly 40%
  green rate – roughly 15%
  rare rate – roughly 0.5% (one per 3 hour session or so if there’s a lot of killing)
  60+ zones:
  white rate – roughly 10%
  green rate – roughly 15%
  blue rate – roughly 40%
  rare rate – roughly 1 per hour (perhaps 1.8% – rates in orr were always higher)

(balance is made up with bags +/- the random junk item)

• Dynamic Events: (Note, Dungeons have the same loot tables)
  Champions:
  -nothing
  Chests:
  white rate – 10%
  blue rate – 50%
  green rate – 30%
  rare rate – 12% (about 1 in 8 event chests)
  exotic rate – 2% (i’d see one every couple days)

post-11/15 patch:

• Dragon Events (provided you waited a day for each dragon):
  rare rate – roughly 2% chance of getting at least 1
  exotic rate – not 1 seen in a month of play from the dragons

• Zone Leveling:
  0-40 zones:
  white rate – roughly 30%
  blue rate – roughly 10%
  green rate – roughly 1%
  40-60 zones:
  white rate – roughly 20%
  blue rate – roughly 20%
  green rate – roughly 10%
  rare rate – roughly 0.01% (i’ve only seen maybe 1 since the patch?)
  60+ zones:
  white rate – roughly 15%
  green rate – roughly 10%
  blue rate – roughly 25%
  rare rate – roughly 0.01% (i’ve only seen maybe 1 since the patch?)

(balance is made up with bags +/- the random junk item)

• Dynamic Events: (Note, Dungeons have the same loot tables)
  Champions:
  white rate – 60%
  blue rate – 20%
  green rate – 1%
  Chests:
  white rate – 15%
  blue rate – 50%
  green rate – rare rate – 2%
  signet rate (the non-set-bonus runes) – 10%
  rare rate – 2%
  exotic rate – 0.01% (only seen one in a single DE chest the entire month since the patch)

* Thoughts :

I think i (and those 30% of my guildies) am triggering some sort of anti-bot flag and don’t know why. This is evidenced by the apparently massive cliff between one specific subset of the guild and the other, and the fact that the first hour after a new build seems to “temporarily fix” droprates until they plummet once again into the basement.

I’m not trying to “farm”, just play the dynamic events, do explorables, and 100% out zones with my alt. (2 hours leveling alt in a zone, followed by 20 minutes in 2 different paths back to back) That said, If I did not funnel an average amount equivalent to what I used to pay blizzard to ANet, I’d have run completely out of gold by now, given up, and asked for a refund. I’m still considering it because I consider my chance at gear progression or even covering transportation with this level of income futile.

The standard blue gear in lowbie zones is ridiculously rare compared to launch day. At launch I geared my toons in the 1-10 range when i was trying them out in items picked off dead mobs. Now i have to buy them on the TP because they’ve “juuuust crossed” a threshold where you don’t find enough to equip your toon the normal way.

I can only share about Charged Lodestone farming – sparks don’t drop kitten. It was fun watching price slowly climb up while offloading what I’ve stockpiled, but supply is dry and we’ve got steady climb over last month from 2 to 4 gold.

At same time was running CoE explorable. At least 11 full runs total, 33 paths, no cores and no lodestones.

@Stephane : Actually, can we turn this around please?

Can Anet provide some data on what players should EXPECT in terms of the drop rate of rares/exotics items on a per hour played basis at level 80?

I ask this because many of us believe that there was a significant reduction in rare/exotic drop rate at various levels of Magic Find (%) after the Nov 15th patch and it would be easier if we could tell you NOW if our experiences match your expectations, otherwise you are not going to get data, just anecdotal evidence.

P.S. Please take a look at the prices on exotic items as evidence. They are now dropping so seldomly that soon new players will just look at the game and quit frustrated that they will never be able to purchase even the most simple of exotic dropped items. You should also be able to analyze your own data to see if the drop rate has significantly changed.

Are you really asking for concrete evidence over one month after the controversial patch in question? That’s absurd. I farm Cursed Shore at least 5 hours a day, every day – something I’ve been doing for the past 4 weeks, and something I did for at least three weeks prior to the November 15th patch. I would GLADLY provide the data on rare drop rates in Cursed Shore, HAD I KNOWN YOU WOULD SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE THE RATES. I’ve even controlled for things like Magic Find and attempts to reduce diminishing returns on loot.

This is really a gigantic slap in the face. The Cursed Shore farmers are a community – it’s the same people day in and day out, as it’s been for weeks. EVERY one of them will tell you that the rates of rare drops has significantly dropped. At the same time, I’m sure almost none of them have concrete data considering nobody expected a patch that promised “loot should not be a significantly worse way of acquiring rare drops” to actually DECREASE the rate at which they appear.

It really says wonders about the kinds of statistics you’re collecting that you have thousands of players farming Cursed Shore for hours a day – a ridiculously large sample size – and you’re detecting nothing wrong, when all of them are telling you what’s up. You should KNOW something is up by virtue of the fact that there are champions still that do not drop loot, despite the patch making it explicitly clear that they should ALWAYS drop loot when properly tagged.

But, as much of a slap in the face as this is, I’ll still do what I can to provide evidence. While I do not have recorded the number of rares per event or per hour that I receive farming Cursed Shore, I can say with 100% certainty that in the past 4 weeks since the patch I have never received more than two rares in drop from a single “Shelter’s Gate” or “Defend Penitent Camp” event. Prior to the November 15th patch, getting at least three rares was a very common occurrence and, in fact, I very often received 4 rares from a single aforementioned event (where “rare” is a rare level armor or weapon).

Give me a little bit, and I’ll try to reasonably ballpark the number of instances where I got at least 3 rares from a single event before the Nov. 15th patch, and I’ll construct a hypothesis test to determine if there is insufficient evidence that the number of instances of 3+ rares from a single event has decreased. While this won’t tell you anything about the explicit drop rate of rares, it WILL tell you that the overall abundance of rares has had a statistically significant decline – which is about as close to a concrete fact I can give you under your ridiculous assumption that players would have weeks of data dating before the patch in question.

Please also take into consideration the priority of the complaints. This thread is going to have many players trying to assert that a certain instance of an item is incredibly rare or nerfed, which do not have universal support in conclusion. A popular one is that “ecto salvage rates have been nerfed” where there is something like a 50/50 split on players who believe it’s true or not. There are also no patch notes regarding this subject. The main points of contention are rare and exotic drop rates and the fact that champions are not dropping loot, which are nearly universal in observance AND are explicitly mentioned has being changed by a set of patch notes – meaning there is legitimate concern over the validity of the changes. While the other instances may have some form of backing to them, they are not supported by an explicitly mentioned change in the patch notes – which provide reasonable concern that something may have been wrong with the patch in question.

I’ve experienced a drastic decrease in rare drops across all maps, but particularly in Orr. MF ranges from 0 to 150, as it seems to make little difference for my drop rates currently. If a rare drops it is consistently within my first 15 minutes of logging on, even if I switch maps and types of instances (e.g., Orr to Malchor to WvW). I haven’t received a rare from a chest in at least my last 15 PVE events. Dungeons seem a little better.

Previously I could receive from 1 to 4 rares in one event in Orr. I have not seen a rare in a single Orr event since Nov. 15th, and I’ve run hundreds.

EDIT: Champs/vets rarely drop loot, never rares. The loot situation has had a major impact on my enjoyment of the game.

I have to agree with everyone here, running through the world and doing massive events like the dragons hardly even rewards Greens now. It is really disappointing when you go through an epic event like the dragons and you receive blues. Only once have I received an Exotic from something other than map completion and that was from the last Karka event. I hardly ever get green drops now let alone rares. Not only this but the new chest from the holiday Tixx dungeons don’t give me anything at all the first run though (no armour that is). I will get 3 Presents and that’s it, and if I choose to do this event a second time I sometimes get items from this chest.

I have also noticed a severe drop in Corrupted Lodestones. I used to farm for how ever long it took to get 2 lodestones and recently that has started to end up taking me 3-4 hours before I even see 1. I have 150+ MF and it really feels like it is doing nothing beneficial.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi,

So we’ve created this thread so that players can share with us their concrete data about any perceived strange drop behavior they encounter. Please be as accurate as possible, reporting only concrete data that you’ve experienced first hand. Among the information we’re interested in: map where you played, creatures you fought that dropped items, recipes from the Mystic Forge that you used.

Thanks for your understanding and help!

Do you realize how condescending this comes across as? First, putting the words ‘concrete data’ in this comment… Concrete? what do you consider concrete? The fact that I can farm in Orr, and not get a single drop in over a dozen of my first kills? When I haven’t played that toon in 3-4 days? Or the fact that once I put MF food on, it changed to one in about 6 kills? How is it concrete?

And when you add the words you put in quote marks to the word ‘perceived’, you just sound like you are slapping all of us in the face. The fact that you say concrete tells me that you can dismiss any PERCEIVED data of ours by calling it ‘inconclusive’.

The FACT that so many of us are discovering the same things, over and over, all over the map (Like just taking on the Claw of Jormag and getting 4 blues and 2 greens (one gem and one Medallion of the Rabid. The most common medallion in the game. On a dragon. But you can dismiss it as not concrete, and that I only perceive that is all I got.

morphemass.2850:

@Stephane : Actually, can we turn this around please?

Can Anet provide some data on what players should EXPECT in terms of the drop rate of rares/exotics items on a per hour played basis at level 80?

I ask this because many of us believe that there was a significant reduction in rare/exotic drop rate at various levels of Magic Find (%) after the Nov 15th patch and it would be easier if we could tell you NOW if our experiences match your expectations, otherwise you are not going to get data, just anecdotal evidence.

P.S. Please take a look at the prices on exotic items as evidence. They are now dropping so seldomly that soon new players will just look at the game and quit frustrated that they will never be able to purchase even the most simple of exotic dropped items. You should also be able to analyze your own data to see if the drop rate has significantly changed.

I have to agree on this one.

I’ve seen exotics climb from an average of 1.5g each for the useful ones to 4-6g each over the past month.

The not-so-useful ones are now 3g

Some rares are now far-exceeding the price of the far-more-flexible ectos they may salvage into, further indicating a considerable impact there.

This is pretty stiff evidence of drop rates rapidly tanking.

Then you can look at guild chats following an event:
the same accounts linking rares, and the same accounts complaining about blues and whites from dragon chests.

There is a significant subset of the playerbase who receives a worse rate than others.

The guy up there who gets 2 rares per undead zerg event in orr and considers that low.. I spent 3 hours in orr last night traveling up and down the zone and received not one rare, and that is standard for me since the 11/15 patch, before which I used to get 3 an hour just like him.

Concrete data.
Perceived strange drop behavior.

If the glove don’t fit …

1) How are we supposed to collected concrete data, when we do not have the adequate tools to do so.

2) If we had the adequate tools to collect the data then what would be the expected drop behavior?

3) Perception is reality.

4) Sometimes perception is not reality. Sometimes reality is … reality. I farmed a group of mobs, they dropped nothing. Nothing is not perception. It’s reality. Is nothing the actual drop behavior you expect? How would I prove that nothing dropped?

I’m really a pretty new player to GW2 so my ‘data’ would be even less ‘concrete’ than some of the veterans posting here.

I just had to say that this:

America.9437:

Concrete data.
Perceived strange drop behavior.

If the glove don’t fit …

1) How are we supposed to collected concrete data, when we do not have the adequate tools to do so.

2) If we had the adequate tools to collect the data then what would be the expected drop behavior?

3) Perception is reality.

4) Sometimes perception is not reality. Sometimes reality is … reality. I farmed a group of mobs, they dropped nothing. Nothing is not perception. It’s reality. Is nothing the actual drop behavior you expect? How would I prove that nothing dropped?

….is one of the most funny, entertaining, and intelligent posts I’ve seen in a while.

I’m currently polishing off my 4th lvl 80 character, only the first had any success with drops while leveling up. Using moderate MF gear only. Since upgrading to a full set of magic find armor, runes, and accessories i’ve seen at most 10 rare level drops, this is also true across all of my alt characters. Despite taking them all through map completion and into Orr for the Exotic armor from karma vendors. I’ve seen zero exotic item drops. I’ve killed many champions after long 1v1 and 2+v1 kite battles that drop at best a blue weapon. My armor while leveling up is only coming from three sources, Crafting, Map completion rewards from Alts, and chests from completing every single jumping puzzle in game. The only time i’ve seen armor drop with any frequency in my level and armor class is in wvwvw, and then typically when my character is low level and geared like a homeless person.

I spent over 10k hours in Gw1 grinding the tutorial in Presearing Ascalon for only a few potential rewards in titles and mob drops. Somehow this game has much more to do, and yet less to really enjoy.

My goal of leveling the first 5 character slots to level 80 won’t net enough gold in game to purchase the gems to buy a 6th slot to continue the adventure.

So what you’re asking is for us to go back in time to a month before this issue started, and start keeping tabs on thing no person should ever be expected to keep track of when playing a game, so that we can come here and show you data that your team already has access to because you track it yourselves?

Drop rates are screwed up. Drop systems are broken as hell to begin with. A skritt can give me an exotic while a champion will drop two whites. This is broken. Fix it. Do not act like it’s not broken and say “Prove it, losers!” as if that’s solving a problem.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi,

We’ve seen reports from players questioning the randomness of the drop mechanisms in GW2 and in particular asking if it’s been changed recently. This is not the case and we don’t think that the randomness mechanism is misbehaving, but we’re running some data to be sure there isn’t anything unexpected going on. So far nothing shows anything suspicious but we’ll keep gathering data and analyzing it.

So we’ve created this thread so that players can share with us their concrete data about any perceived strange drop behavior they encounter. Please be as accurate as possible, reporting only concrete data that you’ve experienced first hand. Among the information we’re interested in: map where you played, creatures you fought that dropped items, recipes from the Mystic Forge that you used.

Thanks for your understanding and help!

Is this about rare loot or are you interested in any strange RNG behaviour?

I ask because yesterday I received three Unidentified Dyes from three corpses in a row (killed the mobs first then looted all three at once). I then received another one about 30 seconds later.

Obviously in a random system this isn’t impossible, but the odds must be crazy with the current dye drop rate. I took a screenshot if proof is needed.

I was going to write a rather lengthy report but please do answer this:

What happened with that post about Champions almost guaranteed to drop loot?

Please, be sensitive with your answer. There is a fine line between honesty and business

I don’t keep data with me all the time either, am a player between casual and hardcore levels. I can just give you sample info though. Pls check all areas of Orr on Tarnished Coast, which used to be crowded before Lost Shores patch. It’s a wasteland in true sense right now. In Cursed Shore, Champion Risen Abomination that spawns after Plinx is just trolling around waiting for players to kill him, it was the same situation 3 days back when I checked out. People are not doing events over there since there’s no point with zero drops, even with MF gear into which many of us have invested lots of real money to buy gems to gold.

Character: Dual Axe warrior using rare Traveler’s axes (1 sup sigil of luck, 1 sup sigil of fire), rare Traveler’s armor, masterwork Traveler’s jewelry, 5 Pirate runes, 1 Traveler rune, with constant 1 omnomberry bar and intermittent guild buffs for around 170 magic find.

Location: Cursed Shore, doing primarily Penitent Camp, Shelter’s Gate, and Jofast Camp defense events, intermixed with Plinx events to fill time gaps.

Data Gathered: The number of rares obtained over 1 hour, the duration of two omnomberry bars. I would typically farm 1 or 2 hours a day and check the rare counts as a farming efficiency benchmark. This was over the course of approximately two to three weeks on this character.

Late October/Early November: 5-9 rares an hour, with 9 being the record and 7 being typical. These primarily came from Shelter’s Gate events (primary focus on spider spawns), with 2 rares dropped in a typical event and the event repeating multiple times per hour. This is over about 20-25 hours of farming.

Late November: Plinx events are ignored by players, so only Penitent/Shelters/Jofast events done. 1-2 rares gathered per hour, with a typical Shelter’s Gate event dropping 0-1 rares. This is over about 4 hours of farming.

Other data: I would occasionally check how much money was gained by selling to a merchant the drops from a single Shelter’s gate event, not including rares, materials, or salvage items, as a secondary benchmark of my farming performance. In late October/early November, across ~6 such checks, anywhere from 30s to 50s was gained by selling these drops. In late November across 2 such checks, only ~10s was gained per event.

Some less concrete observations:
-Porous bones are drastically more likely to drop after the mid November updates instead of normal weapons and armor.
-Material drop rates seem to be unaffected.
-Total number of drops seems to be unaffected.
-No exotic items dropped before the mid November patch for any of my characters anywhere; two dropped after the patch in Cursed Shore, both during the Protect Historian Fia event that takes place between Shelter’s and Jofast and applies an additional magic find buff.

I’m afraid the drop rate affects player to player in a buggy way, I’ve gotten a nice amount of yellows at the fractals. World drops, though, are horrible no matter how much time I spend.

“Perceived” and “questioning” were patronizing. “Experienced” and “noticing” should have been the words chosen.

Personally, in the last day or so my drop rates have been better.
The fact that this message saying “please start taking notes about your loot drops and post them to prove us wrong” is given after 5 weeks just as my rates have started increasing again… Shady.

I feel so disrespected by every “move” this company makes in the game they’re playing with us.

To add to my earlier post, did the following events in Orr: Shelter’s Gate x2, Jofast Chain, Plinx Chain, Final 2 events of Grenth Chain (including chest), Champ Risen Abomination, Explorer Chain from shelter. In all maybe 15 events. One rare drop. A traveller’s dagger of air (always drops, if anything).

In my party, one person had no rare drops for about the same group of events. Another had one rare and, right before I left, an exotic.

My MF was 104 and 114, with another buff. Rare came after about 45 minutes (despite my original post) off a regular mob.

My issue is not with no drops, but I think that the DR Flagging is bugged and DR is not reset properly. After an update I usually get 5-8 Yellows per level 28+ Fractal run together with a good amount of t6 materials and other assortet blues and greens. Then the next day after 24 hours passed I do the next level 28+ Fractal run and all I would get is max 1-2 yellows and a lot of porous bones and maybe 1-2 t6 materials.

The same pattern repeats until a new build is there when I get alot of yellows again the first run and then nothing again the next day.

I will note down my Fractal chests so I can provide some better data. But usually a run of level 30 will net me 1-2 gold which I feel for the difficulty and 1-2 hours it takes to run it feels very bad in terms of rewards.

We don’t really know what we should be expecting for drops, so it’s kind of hard to tell if something is out of the ordinary.

When will you people realize that they want low drop rates and TP prices to rise to an extreme to force everyone to buy gems to get gold.

So to give you some perspective, after launch, While farming at level 80 I would get 2-3 rares per hour from regular mobs, every chest in the world (nonevent) would drop 1-2 rares, every dragon chest i got would drop 1-2 exotics and at least 2 rares, every champion i fought dropped at least 1 rare. Mobs that i would farm would never need magic find to get basic needs like powerful blood or powerful venom sacs to drop. I didn’t use magic find at all in the beginning to get anything to drop. After the first nerf, I had to use magic find to get anything to drop like it used to, after then it went downhill.

So logged in just after the mini patch tonight. The drop rates haven’t changed. Defeated four vets and 2 champs across 3 zones all 55+ my totals are below. I tried to farm across multiple zones, with and without MF, with mf on i only got the resources like blood claws fangs, mostly whites and greys. without magic find i get 4-5 blues before DR set in and porous bones dropped there on out. My magic find was 30% as members of my guild got all kinds of rares this evening using nothing but the guild buffs (both the three day and the banner), accept the one member who got the most was the guild master and he was using the store bought 50% magic find and received a total of 9 rares this evening by running Fotm. He didn’t get a thing from open world either.

My totals for tonight were this:

15 whites
11 blues
2 greens
14 body parts (4 of which were T5)
0 rares
0 exotics
I fought a total of 4 veterans and 2 champions across three level 55+ zones as a level 80 player over a three hour period.

Not only did he get the most because it was most likely the store bought mf boon (i
suspect) But it was solely doing Fotm. None of my guildies are getting anything from open world anymore, that’s all they do is this one dungeon over and over again to get anything to drop. The system is not working I cannot believe people are running numbers this late after we’ve been complaining for a month now. This should have been checked the first day we started the 1100k+ thread and the three other threads we posted about the same thing in subforums. Only one of which was answered before today. This isn’t an illusion or a misconception. While you are running the numbers be sure and separate how many drops are from open world PVE and how many drop from Fotm, and how many drop from WvW. Include whether the person has DR turned on on their account (because it seriously does not turn off for some of us). So we can actually see the real results because I suspect, the numbers will show a large negative in the open world vs the dungeons notably strongly lower then the Fotm compared to the older dungeons.

Edited: to add the real numbers and to include the way this game would play before the first drop nerf almost three months ago occurred.

I’m going to add my comments here – and I stress, they are only comments, as I have no hard data to back this up.

That said, I am finding considerably less rares than I used to, and my gear/magic find has not changed. It was a rare occasion, prior to the 15th November update for me to play for an evening and find NO rare items. Today, this is the rule, rather than the exception – I consider it to be unusual to find a rare item now.

Additionally to this, I use a hard-and-fast rule – salvage all white items, vendor the rest (or TP them). This directly feeds into the gathering of Gossamer and Leather (T6 crafting mats). Previous to the update, I would obtain a few pieces per night, and there was rarely a night where some were not gained. Again, this is now reversed, drops of T6 cloth and leather are outstanding exceptions to the rule.

I do understand that there must be a limit on the number of rares, and salvagable items a player can reasonably obtain in a playing session – it makes it so that not everything achievable in game (Exotic gear, etc) can be obtained instantly – and I support that wholeheartedly.

I will say though, that since the Nov 15 patch, the rate at which a player can obtain these things by just normally playing the game has turned from “reasonable” to “abysmal” in my view.

To be honest, I thought we were still awaiting a fix for this as per the AMA with Chris Whiteside: http://dulfy.net/2012/11/26/gw2-chris-whiteside-ama-on-reddit/

Q (49): Magic find and just drops in general (with or without MF gear) seems to have been greatly altered to a minimum. Also, in the most recent patch it was noted that Veterans/Champions should always drop something at least, irregardless of what quality. Is the system working as you intended since the update or are there most definitely problems with it as it stands? Also, if it is ‘working as planned’ why the huge change in drops? Coupled with diminishing rewards it is hard to farm legitly and almost points the player to the Cash Shop instead of relying on self-reliance. Thanks in advance!

A: So yep you are right this is the question i have been likely dodging the most? The reason being is that it requires investigation. Vet and Champs should give good loot and there are a number of reports on perceived decrease in the frequency of drops. I will be discussing this in depth with the Production and Design team tomorrow and we will hopefully have more info soon

I have been patiently waiting for the results of this investigation – and I will admit, I may have missed the answer to it, but to find this thread here, now, raising the very same question that was raised in the AMA nearly 4 weeks ago, suggesting that there is no problem (and completely failing to reference the original issue as raised in the AMA), causes me some level of concern that either I’ve missed some crucial information somewhere, or that this issue was forgotten about despite assurances it would be looked at.

If I’ve missed some investigation results somewhere, could someone please kindly direct me to them?

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

We’ve seen reports from players questioning the randomness of the drop mechanisms in GW2 and in particular asking if it’s been changed recently.

Not sure we are questioning the randomness, but we are questioning the likelyhood of “equipment” drops. Since the Nov15 patch there has been a reduction of “equipment” drops, with an increase in “crafting” drops (fines/bags/salvageable) making up some (but not all) of the difference. You are also more likely to get more “junk” drops than any other drops (by volume) over an extended playing period.

“Rare” drops used to occur atleast once per event, now “rare” drops have become extremely rare and are lucky to occur once per day. This is evident in the price of “globs of ectoplasm” increasing along with the price of all “rares” above lvl 70. This isn’t because of “bot removal” but because of a shortage or “rares” in the system.

Patch notes say champions are guaranteed to drop, but more often than not, they drop nothing. Veterans were also meant to have loot adjustment done but they very rarely drop anything and when they do it is usually junk or a white.

To mimmic the effect, take a lvl 80 character, go to cursed shore, team up with a group doing pent/shelter/jofast … and play for several hours. Track your drops and you will see what we are talking about.

Hm as much as I appreciate the developer’s effort in collaborating with players to fix this issue, I don’t think you can get reliable “concrete” evidence from us players.

You have no way of knowing what other circumstances influenced player’s experiences of drop rate pre/post patch. What were the mobs killed/hr in the instances they have provided statistics for? How much did they farm/how long were players on DR prior to the period they collected data for? How accurate is their data collection and counting, what was their methodology? You have no way of verifying this for each player, so a quantitative analysis shouldn’t provide any meaningful conclusion.

I support the idea raised by previous posters that Anet could give us an idea of the kind of rewards/rate “we should expect” from farming. Let us make our own comparisons. Perhaps this could lead a reevaluation of how loot mechanics work, and it could be adjusted to better satisfy the player base. For example:

Anet’s expectation: An average player could expect to receive up to 3 rare per day (1hr of non-DR gameplay), 1 exotic per month (60 hrs of non-DR gameplay)
*Majority of experiences from a sample of players: Players are receiving 1 rare per day, 1 exotic per 2 months
*SOLUTION: Investigate the activity logs from a controlled sample of players, adjust mechanics to help players achieve Anet’s expectations (scale up rate of loot acquisition).

A few days ago I went to the Cursed Shore to gather nodes and kill stuff. I used a peach tart on-top of the magic find gear I have, and in the time the buff showed I recived 1 yellow drop. Shortly after, 4 yellow items seemed to drop 1 after the other. Does this count as strange?

But to put it in context I don’t think I’d seen a rare in a few days before that.

It seems that I go through really dry periods with the odd rare crafting mat if I’m lucky, to getting an exotic drop (very very rare), or a couple of rares in a short space of time.

Nothing conclusive or really all that helpfull. But I, like a few people here, sometimes wonder if our magic find is really doing anything for us, or even if it is somehow working against itself lowering the quality/frequency of dropped items. Though without knowing how you want your games loot to function, who are we to tell you what is strange, when all we can do is relay our point of view, given the lack of information or knowledge on how the loot system is supposed to work.

About a good 3-4 weeks ago, after many incidents of champions dropping absolutely nothing after the patch stating they would always drop something, I got tired of wondering and decided to hard test it. I spent a good 4 hours farming trolls in frostgorge sound, killing the Champion troll each time it spawned. It dropped loot for me ONE time, and it was some blue weapon of uselessness. Idk what the respawn timer is on him but I was killing him in about 60-90 seconds each time for what its worth.

The point is, I killed that fool a ridiculous amount of times and received loot ONE time. From something that is “Guaranteed to drop loot,” that sounds a lot like bullkitten to me.

What ever data ANet has looked it, it is obviously not showing the make up of the loot, other wise they would see something fishy, compared to say 6 weeks ago. Compare the data, look for the changes, and then tell us nothing is wrong.