Guild Wars 2

I haven’t been doing much of overworld mosnter drop loot farming recently, but I did throw 400 minor sigils into the MF.

100 transmutations later I had 16 major sigils and rest minors.

Transmuting the rest I got 19 major total

This from the Nov15 patch

The drop rarity of Rare and Exotic weapons from certain places in the world (champions, veterans, and players in WvW) has been increased. Rares and Exotics should be much more likely to drop and every champion should be guaranteed to drop loot. This was to ensure that world loot drops were not a significantly worse way of acquiring rare and exotic items than crafting and running dungeons.

Is obviously bugged. Rare and exotic drops in open world got “significantly worse” not better after this patch.

And this

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.

Is obviously negatively effecting loot drops in general.

Level 80 mesmer, no magic find. 3 to 4 hours in Frostgourge Sound (early third of the map). Completed 10 to 15 events, half by myself. Took down a champion and an event boss. These were the drops:

4 White
9 Blue
0 Green
1 Yellow

3 Salvage Items
20 Junk

The champion (corrupted quaggen) and event boss (Imp Boss) both dropped a blue valued at less than one silver. The rare was dropped by a normal mob I think, though there is a chance it came from a veteran, hard to tell due to so many mobs being close together in some events.

Is this loot rate really expected? If I want to get decent equipment do I have to run fractals over and over again?

Making note of this sort of data is tedious and can be difficult – I hope this thread isn’t just Anet trying to look like they care when they won’t even investigate. The wording of the title is condescending as it is…

Did around 4-5 hours of Cursed Shore events the other. I took breaks of course, it wasn’t 5 hours straight. Got a tons of Whites, some blues and greens, and ZERO yellows. I ran with full MF gear, Omnom bars, and MF banners whenever I found one.

When I get the time to play some more I’ll post more data, however by now I just don’t expect it to be better.

Ok. Before the lost shores patch, I received about an average of 4 rares an hour, consistently. For about one hundred hours straight. After the patch, I receive an average of 1 rare per 2 hours. For about 100 hours straight.

The crux, as many have seen, appears to emanate from a change in the diminishing returns system. Please allow me to quote a player who wrote this down even more elaborately than I have:

Pattern one – “The Classic”
Consider a possible farming scenario for 1 player farming in a single High Level Location:
First 30 min: Normal loot drop rate
1 hour in: Normal loot drop rate
1 hour 15 min in: Loot drop rate reduced so drastically that i cant give it a percentage, but almost surely by more than 75%
*Remark – The time this happens is not constant. And it literally shuts your loot down with an on/off switch.

Pattern Two – “The Lucky Guy/Girl”
Consider a Scenario for 5 players farming in a single High Level Location.
Players 1-5 kill the same mobs, dealing approximately the same damage, both with the same % of MF. We can assume they are either solo or in a good damage dealing group.
Player 1 gets 10 rares in 2 hours. Players 2-5 gets 1 rare in 4 hours.
*Remark: It is statistically near impossible to have such a scenario occur when probabilistic formulas are not tampered with. This is the lucky day scenario when your luck is ON or OFF for several hours at a time. It happens consistently in inconsistent time intervals.

Pattern Three – “A Timely Reset”
Server restarts…Players farm for 1-2 hours and experience drop rates, equal than or better than the pre november 15 patch. After that, Pattern One kicks in.
*Remark: This is an observation for now, one that i would rather gather more data before i cal it a scenario.

Pattern Four – “Taking a Break”
Assume Pattern 1 occurs. A player may decide to take a break to supposedly clear the DR timer. Player returns back to the same area after 1-2 hours. Rather inconsistently, the drop rates may or may not improve.
*Remark: None

Pattern Five – “Moving around”
Assume Pattern 1 occurs. A player may decide to switch to a zone to supposedly clear the DR timer. Player experiences absolutely no change. DR is present and well and there is still an influx of gray quality drops, just like before moving around.
*Remark: None.

wildcode.5403:

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.

They need to choose a random sample of 1000, with the specific intent of getting the widest range of played time and times online, and track those 1000 individuals for 2 weeks.

This will tell them a great deal about the drop rates. It will probably bear out that:

1 – they are not random (one subset receives substantially less than the other for some reason)

2 – for those on the losing end of 1, they really are overly-penalized.

I did notice something strange. On my warrior, I had clerics and healing equipment for the longest time and kept getting some pretty bad loot in mobs/dungeons. Switched to berserker’s just recently and BAM, loads of rares. Seems to have died down now since I switched (a few days ago), but why the sudden switch in rarity after changing armor?

Thank you for talking to us about this issue.

There is only one thing we can give something approaching concrete evidence about, and that is the drop rate from champions. This is the only aspect of loot drops where we have clear and concrete information about what is considered “working as intended”. The rest will not be concrete evidence, because it can all be dismissed as being unlucky due to rng. However, I understand that champions should always drop loot post-patch, so if they don’t we know it’s not working as intended.

These are my findings: I have fought the champion risen abomination and the champion risen broodmother outside Caer Shadowfain in Cursed Shore numerous times. I have only once had a drop from these, which was a blue drop.

Vet and Champs should give good loot

… if it’s a bug, bug report it.

OK, that’s my data as I see it. I tried to pay close attention since I came accross few topics about DR and strange loot.

I play 4-5 hours every day, do my daily mostly in Orr/Frostgorge/Malchor’s Leap with a visit to some low level zones to finish kill variety.
I usually do from 10 to 20 events (all in Orr) first and my drops tend to follow same pattern every day:
- first hour – 1-2 rare drops (armor/weapons), 5-10 greens, some T6 mats and about 20 heavy moldy bags.
- second to fourth hour – lots of porous bones, no rares of any kind, less than 10 heavy modly bags, 1-2 T6 mats and very few green drops.

At this point I must underline that reduction in drops is really visible after 1 hour of playing. Does not matter if I change zones or not.

In addition, since Lost Shores patch, I dropped total of 3 lodestones in open world and I spent around 20 hours strictly trying to farm them. Also since mentioned patch I dropped 1 exotic piece of gear (gloves).

I usually do DEs in party of 5, using peach tart, guild MF banner and full stack of Luck from sigil + some MF gear. I must be killing a lot because I usually make at least 2 level ups during my “farming” session (including XP from DEs). My usual income in gold from selling junk to NPC and some crests/dyes to TP is around 1.5g (80% of it comes in FIRST hour of play, checked). Also, before LS patch I had my bags CONSTANTLY filled with drops after 1 bigger event (like Plinx chain), now I feel lucky if I fill 2 15 slot bags with anything after Plinx.

Oh and I never ever got ANY loot from Champion monster be it during event or open world or dungeon.

Not logged in for over 4 hours.
Solo farming.

Gear:
5 Superior Rune of the Pirate
1 Superior Rune of the Traveler
+4% MF on back piece
0-25 stacks of Superior Sigil of Luck (started farming with 0 stacks)
guild +10% MF buff

Killed 156 earth elementals in Malchors Leap.
Killed the veteran 8 times during this period.
34 Stones
7 whites
15 blues
7 greens
1 rare (not from the vet)

3 Giant Wintersday Gifts
10 Piles of Incandescent Dust
16 Emerald Shards
15 Emerald Crystals
1 unidentified dye
As shown here, a good portion dropped nothing at all.

It would also be nice to get the same drop rate as a solo (and when you’re the only one damaging the mob) to get the same drop rate as when in a full party.

Champions are bugged — most times they drop nothing at all.

I have been running ascalonian catacombs and killing various enemies (mostly standard and veteran) in frostgorge sound, malchor’s leap and strait of devastation: I havent found a rare item for three weeks.

So.. if you wante data, here it is :

So.. if you wante data, here it is :- I have two level 80 (elem/guardian) and one level 68 (ranger), for 583hours since the release i’ve got only ONE exotic during tixx event and it was a lvl78 (very useful..)
- Other fun fact, with all three characters and excluding Jormag chest (but including dungeons and open world), i looted 13 rares, without mf and without farming (i enjoy playing the game, i don’t farm). I let you do the math..

So.. if you wante data, here it is :- I have two level 80 (elem/guardian) and one level 68 (ranger), for 583hours since the release i’ve got only ONE exotic during tixx event and it was a lvl78 (very useful..)
- Other fun fact, with all three characters and excluding Jormag chest (but including dungeons and open world), i looted 13 rares, without mf and without farming (i enjoy playing the game, i don’t farm). I let you do the math..In the meantime could you give us YOUR drop rates ? (its nice to ask about our perception, but we want facts)

Note : sorry to double post, but despite editing my previous post, i still see what i wrote two times, if its only me i’m sorry otherwise i would appreciat if a moderator do something about it.

Not sure if this is normal or not but I got 2 Badges of Honor from Twilight Arbor Story Mode. It was off one of the ghost enemies (Rytlok, Eir, etc) that spawn.

Yesterday, I set out to prove a point. Went to Malchor’s Leap and soloed all 4 parts of the Dwayna event chain. Took almost 2 hours.

And the loot?
The Risen Priestess of Dwayna, a blue and some coppers.
The possessed statue of Dwayna? A blue and some coppers.
The chest? 3 blues.

3 champions in the whole chain and a chest for opening the cathedral, nothing better than blues.

And the cherry on top. Because I soloed the whole chain, when I went to farm sparks, I kept killing the veteran risen knight event that spawns within the ruins. What did I get for this level 79 event with a gold ranking? 884 xp and 19 karma. That’s DR rubbing salt in my wounds.

Btw, 37 shocking crystals, not much else. Quite a lot of giant winters day gifts.

Well so far the only thing i can complain about would be the chest system and champion killings. I farm daily for about 3hours( with a 10 minute break so the DR does not hurt me) or so in Orr and i do not have an issue with the regular mobs drop. I am sporting 140% magic find and while killing regular mobs i always get at least 3-5 rares per farm. I usually complete Grenth and Arah for the Chest twice a day but for the last month of doing so i have never gotten an exotic, but i do get loads of Putrid Essence…. and The champions always drop blues for me.. At this rate i truely hope the chest can drop at least 1 guaranteed rare. I understand that precursors cannot be easy to gain but it has come to the point where opening chest in GW2 is a nightmare. I hope an alternative can be found as many of my friends are starting to be discouraged about playing the Game. Keep up the good work Anet

Used to farm Jofast/shelter/pent regulary with full magic find gear, pirate&1 travler rune + omnomberry bar for about an hour and usually got 3-4 rares and around 24+ greens and countless blues and whites. Now if i farm pent/shelter/jofast i maybe get 1 rare and 5-8 greens with the same magic find. got to the point where i just salavegd my mf gear for globs + to get the runes back to sell em.
Also, did 8 dragons (2 shatterer, 4 claw, 2 tequila sunrise… i mean teqitl the sunless) and from the chests got 1 rare!!!! piece of gear (and around 3 crests of solider/magi or whatever the rare crests are called)and the guildies ive been doing this with report similar results. The drops in dungeons arent that much better, and if it wasnt for the chance to drop an onxy core/loadstone from a certain dungeon I wouldnt even be doing them.
Fractals on the other hand have insanly high drop chances compared to other dungeons and the open world. Usually every 2nd chest contains a rare and per run i nearly always get 1-2 rares from mobs + the jade maw chest usually has at least 1-2 rares and a pretty good chance at containing a random core/loadstone.

Prior to 11/15

I have started playing on my main. In first 10 levels I got enough different weapons in drops to open all possible weapon skills (guardian). I also got enough drops to outfit my character in level appropriate gear. This situation was consistent from the start till 80lvl. At times I even replaced gear on my character because dropped gear had stats more fitting for my playstyle.

At 80lvl I started doing dungeons, wvw, orr runs. I started farming Plinx, I did it a lot, and I know precisely what kinds of rewards were to be expected on average run. I also know that with each new MF item my chances to get a rare or green were rising. It was quite tangible and measurable. With end-MF of 125% I was consistently getting an average of 2 rares per run (0 or 4 rares runs happened extremely rarely and I had about the same number of zero-rare runs and 4-rare runs). I also needed to vendor after each run because my bags overflowed (sometimes I had to “Deposit” in last couple of waves to free up some extra space).

My screenshot folder is full with scenery views and my main. I certainly never thought i`d ever need to screenshot my drops to prove anything to anyone.

Post 11/15

Playing on alt, he is 17lvl, and yet to have something level-appropriate to drop for him, though he is killing level-appropriate enemies. Outfitted in storyline gear. Certainly won`t have enough money to buy training manuals if I won`t transfer some money from main.

After DR announcement and Plinx nerf I changed what I do every day to not hit a DR. I alternate between dungeons, wvw, levelling my alt, different locations on my main. I try not to stay anywhere longer than half an hour. I still go to Orr to make one Plinx run to check if you fixed the drops. Here is the entirety of Plinx run post-patch (it is just one sample but it was the same picture since patch nerf):
Done with 115% MF.
http://i49.tinypic.com/2ijop37.jpg
http://i46.tinypic.com/15pk8b4.jpg
3 greens, 5 blues. Some mats. 27 porous bones.

Same, with zero MF.
http://i46.tinypic.com/29awbps.jpg
http://i46.tinypic.com/20i8j6t.jpg
1 green, 7 blues. Some mats. Two dyes (opened into common). 41 porous bone.

Post-patch, I`m having an average of two rares PER WEEK.

Now, here is the interesting part.
Being at the end of my patience, I filed the support ticket in-game, describing all the lack of drops in a MONTH of active play. Day after, I started getting pre-patch drops. Meaning, a rare in Plinx run, 2-3 rares in Grenth. It`s been two days now.

Return of drops ‘coincided’ with my ticket to support, Chris Whiteside`s post on new AMA, and your post above.

This post after so much time got me really kitten
I really wonder what kind of numbers you guys are looking at…? But I’ll stop here ‘coze if I continue I’ll get my self infraction or ban.
So here are some screenshots before drops got nerfed. I made them ’coze some of my guildys were having trouble getting exotic armors while I already had 2 sets.
Every screenshot represents drops from single wave of mobs (10-15 mobs), last one is money after selling greens and blues from single wave. 2 are from Grenth DE and 1 is Shelter DE.
I farmed this with my ranger using shortbow and that is far from what better AOE classes can tag in events so take that also into consideration. Also you will notice that coze of delay while taking SS in 2 screenshots loot table already started disappearing.
If I got them in time that would be >10 drops from each wave of mobs.

I would fill 4 15 slot bags in 1 or 2 events with blue/green/yellow drops while salvaging all whites. Today if I go were to do same events it would take me more then 3h of farming to maybe fill all my bags and that is only if I don’t get hit by DR, salvage whites and if I don’t store my mats to bank.

ok ok wait a min i see some people talking about 160 hours of game play and whining about not getting any good drops ok heres mine !!

My warrior that also my first character that i created in the first day of this game got 389 hours of game play with only 2-exotic drops and like no any other and overall my whole characters thief80 / ele 80 and //41 engi/25ranger/ i got 785 hours of gameplay and also i tried to beat the story that was bugged like hell, when all other peep farmed WvW trains and instances all i get was notthing till you guys decided to send pact tokens like 3 weeks after my 2nd character finished the story, and i get only exotic drops from map completions that usually give either non-usable by my character or low level than it suppose to be

Ty again for failing me in ever aspect that game offers !!!

But dont worry i already kinda solved the problem its all because i dont buy gems with real money right ? because it unlocks a limitter on magic find and luck right ? thats what i will believe till i think every player in this game is equal but they are not and never be …

I did 230 fractals, and got 7exotics. Yes, totally worth my time.

I don’t think I will play fractals, or any other dungeon until drops are so ridiculously bad.

Cheers!

This obvious Troll thread from staff should be locked and deleted just because it is obviously a Troll thread. The employee should be personally infracted and banned from the forum for a day.

No more cupcakes.

Errtu.8276:

ok ok wait a min i see some people talking about 160 hours of game play and whining about not getting any good drops ok heres mine !!

In the last 6 weeks I have gotten about 528 hours game play in (yes I play way too much). Compared to the previous 9 weeks the amount of “equipment” I have received has reduced. I used to make 4G in about 5 hours just by selling “equipment” drops to the merchant. Before the “bug/nerf” of Nov15 you could easily make 80s per hour in Cursed Shore, now it takes you over two and a half times longer to make the same amount, and thats on a good day.

I’ve been farming penitent path events (shelter’s gate and penitent camp) both before and after the change and I’ve noticed shift in the nature of drops as well. I do not do much farming but enough to notice the difference.

I still do get rares but they are almost always crafting rares. I’ve gotten only two rare items from all farming after the change where as previously I got anything from 1-3 within an hour.

There’s also the question of what developers consider “worthwhile” and what players consider worthwhile. For example when defeating a champion mob I’d expect there to be a really good chance for a rare item because anything below rare level is junk for me. Most of the crafting rares are junk too unless they contribute to actually creating some legendary item or are used in mystic forge recipes.

Even dragon fights tend to drop a lot junk nowadays. It’s not nice to loot a dragon chest and get only blues on a level 80 character. That’s right. Not even a green. I’d rather get a single rare item than multiples of junk for which I’ve no use.

Last night I killed 3 different Champions durring my play time (in Cursed Shore) and not one of them dropped loot like they are supposed to be garanteed to

I would like to also point out that harvesting is a much greater reward than “playing the game”. I am getting over 2G for about 45mins of harvesting where with killing foes I wouldn’t get 1/10th of that in the same time. This is evident by the supply of high end harvested material increasing in the last 6 weeks.

Like many of the others have said the easiest way to see something is amiss is to go kill some champs or vets. It won’t take much time, it’s easy to do, and it’ll show you w/o question that the 15th update is not working as intended. It really is that easy. Ya’ll don’t need screen shots from all the forum posters and such. It’ll only take maybe 30 mins. to get the proof yourselves.

With that out of the way…..open world drops aside from champs/vets are lil bit harder to prove. I don’t know how often things are supposed to drop, but in 1,303 hours of play I have had only 1 exotic drop in open world. That seems pretty off to me to have such low chance, not to mention it was lvl 78 medium shoulder for a lvl 80 heavy character. So in essence it was a yay moment that quickly turned into a ??? moment. I can’t really give any other data b/c like others have said it’s in the past and we didn’t know we would be asked for it.

TL;DR data that I do have

1,303 hours : 1 exotic drop

Data: Little over 800 hours played, not a single exotic drop.

20 mystery wintersday boxes opened, turrets, few tonics, and a whole lot of useless ugly socks (this especially hits hard, because I spend real life money on gems, and I feel like I might as well have thrown it out the window). Edit here: also just an FYI to the team that decides lottery gem items and their drops – despite what they might believe, after this unfortunate purchase and “rewards”, I will not buy another lottery item for my money. Yes, it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, and no, I will not be tempted to take another bite.

During the past week’s playing (this includes clearing Straits of Devastation, doing CoF a few times, playing maps while leveling), I have received ONE single rare/yellow drop while in CoF, it was a trident if I remember correctly. One single yellow drop throughout the week. This, for playing about 5 hours every day in that week.

No drops from champions or veterans.

Like someone mentioned on first page: I am losing a sense of accomplishment, of being rewarded. And that’s a very bad feeling in a game. Any game.

As others have stated the term “concrete data” is somewhat open to interpretation, however, I will give an approximation of how it effected my farming character. In frostforge sound the day of the patch I had just done a troll run consisting of apx 40-50 trolls along with the champ and after this I go and sell. This before the patch usually guaranteed usually one rare, a number of greens, and quite the few blues and whites along with the inevitable few salvage and mats. After the patch (the same day) after the exact same run, that I have done many times since, I never get rares, only a few greens but mostly just blues whites and TONS of junk, salvageable and mats.

Although this may not meet your criteria of being “concrete” it sure feels to this player that I am now in perpetual DR hell. Thanks for reading.

In regards to drop rates: There was an article brought up in the gw2 subreddit that referenced Wi-Flagging. For those unaware of what it is, it is the idea that your character or account is somehow being targeted by the game via RNG or aggro ( or any really) algorithms. In the Asheron’s Call case, it was true based on the simple fact that the game tracked the CharacterID in such a way that it influenced the aggro ranges improperly.
Article referanced: http://asheron.wikia.com/wiki/Wi_Flag

My husband and I (without know how the code is actually built) have formed these suppositions:
1.) That GW2 does track characters (or accounts) via the DR system.
2.) That certain characters or accounts are either “unlucky” in the fact that a IDhash is made and will NOT reset properly at the end of the duration of the DR. (Cases that result with no alleviation of DR via logging off, switching areas , etc.)
3.) That DR itself is not reset properly until server reset.

These seem to explain why certain characters who always remain unlucky in drops remain that way, and the mid-Nov patch would only exacerbate the issue, highlighting to the “normal” or “lucky” players that something is wrong with the drop rate. It may very well be that Anet increased the drop rates, but a stacking, almost punitive, DR algorithm is screwing the character over. This would also explain why the drop rates return to “normal” for about an hour after server reset.
Feedback?

I got my thief to level 80 before Nov. 15 and was always able to equip him with green or blue armor and weapons that were within ~5 levels of his current level, just from mob drops while levelling. I started trying to level a guardian some time during mid November and found that I had a very hard time staying well-equipped after level 20, I had to take up armorsmithing and weaponsmithing, early on just to help fill in the gap. As of right now my guardian still isn’t level 80.

I have not noticed any significant difference in dye drop rates while playing on both my thief and guardian, or a difference in ecto salvage rates. However, recently my collectible items have actually been hitting the 250 mark in the collectibles tab, while playing on my guardian, and I’ve had to TP spare crafting resources. That never happened while I was playing on my thief, which barely hit 80 or so in any of the collectibles.

I’m going to be completly honest.

This is all caused in part majority of DR system working really bad, and the droprate you increased for low level areas (which doesn’t work at all 100%).

Since November 15th Karka update, many people in my guild stopped playing till now christmas cause the DR system got to intrusive into player, till the limit that killing mobs is not as worth as harvesting (a guy pointed it out here before) or people having just normal drops like 5-8 rares a day playing normally and 1 exotic, and others porous bones and rarely 1 rare or any exotic at all.

You said this systems will be here till you had deal with the bots, and sincerily you did already in a large quantity till point I barely see them and you just need to ban tose underwater now. So please, can you tell us when this systems are going to disappear? First weeks of the game was really nice to do any kind of activity, we got this system, it was still alright, but every single patch me myself and my guildmates are getting less, is less fun to do any activity and doesn’t feel rewarding, as well as the DR on Dungeons, we run dungeons normally with our group, and on the 4th or 5th dungeon we already get less tokens.

Hope you come to your senses and stop restricting the playerbase, hope the bots was not an excuse for you to monitor our drops till this point.

Im starting to think why they even implemented magic find gear…. what is the use of it? everything has been nerfed when it comes to the devs attention, I remember a guildy putting a post on T6 materials and then the devs said it was never intended that those mobs are dropping T6 ….like WTH…..if T6 dont drop in 80 zones then where are they dropping? How on earth can you get a legendary then?

I get why legendaries are a long term quest, investment but its just rediculous as it is right now.

in short there are no rewards anymore in GW2 if you are a farmer, all they want us to do is to go to the TP or gem store or fractuals (fractuals is a maybe because for some of my guildies they got one rare during a full run)

so I can only ask please make the DR and loot as it was

Kind regards

Darkdanjal

I’m someone who farmed Orr several hours every day since release. I can not provide you with concrete data, but I can share my own experience.

Until the November patch I’d farm Orr daily with full MF and food etc. I’d get approximately 30 rare items per day (6-8 hours) and this number of rares always stayed steady for the 2-3 months I farmed there.

After the patch the difference is highly substantial and literally everyone who farmed there regularly says the same. Now I am lucky to get 2-3 rare for a 6 hour period. It’s like I’m on permanent diminished returns. The difference is so great It’s not even much of a viable farm anymore.

I have well over 1000 hours played and well over half has been Orr. But since this patch I’ve found the only way to make gold effectively now is Fractals. Sometimes I;d rather farm alone, but there’s nowhere giving good return at the moment in the open pve world.

The difference every other map is barely noticeable to me. It’s highly noticable on Orr maps, especially Cursed Shore where the spawns for events are high.

The data you’re looking for is no doubt on my loot history, the difference before and after the patch is major.

Don’t you have your own data ? I am pretty sure you do.
It is from the same index that you can pick out bot patterns and eventually go on to neutralize them.

Any MMO has numerous loot indexes of how many players entered a zone, how many mobs where killed in the zone, how many drops were dropped, how much gold was dropped, how many times the same mobs have been killed, which exact type of mob, etc…

Just saying.

Sigh… Although I know this will absolutely suck any remaining semblence of fun out of what is left of the game since the Nov15 patch, I am certainly not above leaving open an instance of google docs spreadsheet and recording every. single. mob.

Honestly, the drop rate outside fractals is so bad that this level of obsessive compulsive behavior seems reasonable.

If we could assure that people wouldn’t sabotage it, it would be a great idea to crowdsource.

Errtu.8276:

But dont worry i already kinda solved the problem its all because i dont buy gems with real money right ? because it unlocks a limitter on magic find and luck right ? thats what i will believe till i think every player in this game is equal but they are not and never be …

that’s paranoia.

I got gems for money and I still have terrible drop rates in Orr

There is definitely something wrong with the loot.Before the patch I used to farm shelter-penitent in Cursed shore every day for a couple of hours every day with full magic find gear and after each event I had all of my bags full of loot with a reasonable amount of rares.After the patch when I try to do the same Im not even getting half of the loot and once in a blue moon I will get a rare or I wont get at all after severals hours of farming, and of course I wont talk about exotics since its easier to win the lottery than drop one.

Previously:
Plinx with full magic find set + food nets about 2 or 3 yellows. Averaged on more than 100 runs.

Now:
Plinx with full magic find set + food nets 0 or 1 yellow. Averaged on 20+ runs. Its just not worth it anymore now.

The issue with champions not dropping loot can also easily be verified. Just let testers run Plinx + Broodmother once or twice.

There’s a 26 page thread full of data, including statistical analyses, on this topic already you know.

To summarize the main points of that thread:

1) For a subset of people, equipment drops got significantly worse after the Nov 15th patch. It’s hard to predict who those people will be.
2) Many people report champions dropping nothing. I’ve experienced this myself.
3) Magic Find is making the situation harder to pin down – for some people it seems to have no effect, for others it does.
4) Loot drops change dramatically after a short period of farming, which suggests people are being hit by diminishing returns, anti-bot/anti-farm code.
5) New patches seem to increase people’s loot temporarily to the old levels. I think this has happened to me, but haven’t tracked it since I’m playing a game, not doing QA.

I think the problem here may well be that your developers underestimated how long a real player is willing to farm something, so the DR code is triggering on real players. Then the player increases the farming to try and get decent loot, and the DR keeps hitting them until a patch launches.

I have to say, you should have enough data to track down a player’s loot yourself and do comparisons. Also, running data through simulations is not a great way to test for issues in Live.

Good luck figuring out what’s going on.

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!

I’ll make you a deal-

You POST the expected base drop tables by rarity of standard, veteran, and champion mobs and I’ll tell you if that in any way confroms to my experience killing those things in verious loadouts of magic find.

I’m not doing your QA’s job for free without a little transparency from your side. Especially when they can do a database query at the touch of a button.

Today, me, roughly 90% MF from equipment + 26% Food + 50% MF booster.

2 Rares (edit:) in 1 hour with the MF boost.

DR noticeably kicked in after 30 minutes or so but I had been farming there previously – quantity and quality of loot just became awful. Switch areas, had 10 minutes of decent loot followed by garbage (whites, occasional blue) then boost ran out and I logged off in disgust.

@Anet. To come back to my original point (a few posts back), WE need to be told how MF/DR SHOULD be working, and then we can report whether this is what we are experiencing. As things are now, something is seriously wrong and it is not fun.

EVENT: “Pact troops, move out!”

Not logged in for ~9 hours.
Solo the whole time (ya, solo the whole time on this event).

Gear:
5 Superior Rune of the Pirate
1 Superior Rune of the Traveler
+4% MF on back piece
0-25 stacks of Superior Sigil of Luck (started farming with 0 stacks)
NO guild +10% MF buff (this was on in my last data post but off this time)

3 Porus Bones
2 white
2 blue
1 green
1 rare (!)

3 large bones
1 heavy moldy bag
1 discarded garment
2 giant wintersday gifts
2 piles of vile essence (!)

Even with the +10% MF guild buff OFF, I got much better drops and something from nearly ALL mobs.

I’m convinced I’m getting hit hard with DR. I’m not a bot. So shouldn’t hit it. And I’m farming for my legendary, and on vacation, so am going to farm 10+ hrs a day. But no matter where I go, it doesn’t reset my DR. I can’t say if it does or does not reset on a regular basis after me being logged out after this large of a time period.

EVEN if DR is “by design”, imo, it is bad design. As I’ve said earlier, letting the “tail wag the dog” is bad. If your ‘commerce team’ dictates drop rates and they do not understand fun, your game will not be fun. No matter how amazing they are with economics.

I like to illustrate with the example of an overly powerful, but not fun (don’t understand what makes fun), art team. If they make ‘realistic’ towns with windy and scenic roads, the game is not fun (it’s tedious and frustrating). Someone who understands fun needs to come in and temper the art team. (Granted, your art team gets it – using wagon wheels/spokes in all your cities.)

Same goes for programmers – you’ll end up with an Eve Online (in-space spreadsheet simulator). Some LOVE it, but look at their numbers, and if you’re not going for a niche market, you don’t want to follow their example.

Your ‘commerce team’ might be brilliant with economics and be builing a nearly perfect economic simulation within GW2. BUT if that is NOT FUN, it does not matter. A FUN, but ‘broken’ economy is better than an un-fun but ‘perfect’ economy.

They aren’t Greenspan or Bernanke, and inflation might be bad in real life, but, in a game, horrible drop rates are worse.

plasmacutter.2709:

They need to choose a random sample of 1000, with the specific intent of getting the widest range of played time and times online, and track those 1000 individuals for 2 weeks.

They could easily increase drop rates for those 2 weeks, maybe even for those 1000 individuals, and say “see everything is fine!”. How are supposed to trust them when they are patronizing us in the OP, ignoring us for a month, and stealth nerfing loot rates. It’s sad that many of us have the mentality about Anet that we’d have with a known conman.

It would have been better to sticky this theread than to lock it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Change-in-loot-parameters-or-a-bug-Merged/

Was this thread made so that they could lock that one without backlash?

was such good info and posts really is a shame that thread was locked

Every time I do the fractal dungeons I can go a whole level without getting a single rare drop, I’m lucky if I get 2 rares throughout the whole level. However, 1 of my guild members seems to get a rare nearly every single fractal and we don’t have that much difference in magic find. I get so little rares it is literally becoming a joke with my guild members how unlucky I am.

PowerCat.5738:

It would have been better to sticky this theread than to lock it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Change-in-loot-parameters-or-a-bug-Merged/