Guild Wars 2

First an idea that occurred to me that you might look into and then my anecdotal experience.

It seems from comments by players over many forums that a server reset appears to temporarily make drops better or reset DR or something. I have noticed this as well and since it is something that apparently many agree on that might be a good place to start — even if it can only be used as a control to measure other data.

I was thinking about how these server resets affect the meta-economy:

• Is there an algorithm that attempts to make allowances for server resets:
• if so, does such an algorithm address characters, accounts, loot tables or some combination to try to balance the economy?
• if so, does the algorithm after server resets inappropriately weight a players better drops so that they seem to be more valuable or higher quantity of drops than they actually are?
• if so, then it kind of makes sense that after a server reset where players feel like they at first get better drops and then the bottom falls out that some improper calculation is being unintentionally, but automatically made.
• in that case, if it’s not loot-table focused, is it possible that drops after a server reset being improperly weighted might be triggering a diminishing returns flag?
• if so, then it would be interesting to get some reports from players who don’t play for “x” period of time after a server reset to find out if their drops seem to not tank as drastically as those who play immediately following a server reset.
• If there is not a specific algorithm to try to control for server resets, is there some other portion in the game code that deals directly with the meta-economy that is unintentionally affecting game drops after a server reset?

As for my own experience, I don’t keep track of my drops like others seem to. However, I have been playing scared silly of the Diminishing Returns function pretty much since it was implemented. I slip up sometimes and catch myself “farming” but I try to stay aware of my actions in-game. I do everything I can to “anti-farm” – meaning I never stay in one place for very long especially if it seems I am getting good drops. I’ll leave almost immediately so as to not be sensed a bot. I also extremely limit my dealings with the trading post for the same reasons.

Obviously, except for one very lucky drop in the Karka event, (which I used to level crafting and get extra bank slots and share with guildies) I don’t accumulate much in-game wealth. I really regret that, but since I’m also not real-life wealthy it’s better to not get banned as a “bot” and have to fork over another $60 bucks for a new account.

So my drops aren’t going to be very good but for a completely different reason – I don’t want to be mistakenly marked a bot.

I hope that my humble suggestions have some merit and lead to a resolution of this issue and wish ANet good luck in addressing this.

Only data I have
Two toons leveled to 80—not one exotic drop, blue and green only.

Last night I ran dungeons, we did CoF 1-2, SE 3, Arah 1 and CoE 1 and 2

Notable drops: A charged core and a level 78 yellow item that salvaged for 1 ecto.

5 hours of dungeoning rewarded with a charged core, one ecto and 3 gold worth of blues/greens and the 26s per path.

Clark Skinner.4902:

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

Yep, glad to see I’m not the only one to see it.

I’m very disapointed about it as well. It tells volume.

PowerCat.5738:

Clark Skinner.4902:

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

Yep, glad to see I’m not the only one to see it.

I’m very disapointed about it as well. It tells volume.

My main toon has been level 80 for just over a month.

Every day I do my daily events and crafting material gathering, swapping between cursed shore, malkor’s and frostgorge.

This character has never found an exotic item. I have taken part in temple clearances multiple times. I’ve opened many high level chests. When I use food to increase magic find, I only get whites and porous bones. As soon as the food runs out, I start getting blues and greens.

I’ve acquired over 2000 relics from FotM and received one ascended ring. Meanwhile, friends in the guild who’ve ran FotM half as much as myself, have multiple rings – one as much as seven, and two people receiving three in a row. Do I believe there is something wrong with the RNG system? Absolutely.

Given the 1st response in the now locked thread, followed up by the final response and subsequent locking therin I realize I don’t need transparency in this when it’s so clearly obvious.

Hello, i’m a spanish player but i want to give my opinion on this, as it’s a very important issue to me and a big flaw on an otherwise excellent game.

I do not have “concrete data”, which is ridiculous to ask us for. Don’t you have full access to test your own freaking game?

But i know for sure that world drops are terrible currently.
Today i arrived at Malchor’s Leap and have been exploring, killing mobs and doing events, and in about 3 hours only got one green and maybe 4-5 blues, all the rest whites ( on endgame mobs, yeah… ) and junk. I’m not saying rares should drop left and right, they are “rare” after all. I’m talking about even blues being rare.
In over 250 hours total played with my main i have got about 10 or so rare gear drops from world mobs including champions, i find it quite horrible, considering that gear is not very important. I won’t bother talking about mat drops, other than saying it’s utter crap.

Supposedly in GW2 you could choose what activities to do and feel rewarded for doing them, but i am not seeing it. As a PvE player that has no interest in PvP or running dungeons an absurd amount of times and loves crafting, i find the rewards for killing world mobs terrible. Adding to that the diminishing returns, I’m feeling punished for doing what i want to do in the game, and being forced to run dungeons if i want something worthwile. I find it unacceptable, and i’m thinking about leaving the game until the loot system is fixed.

I’m quickly loosing faith in this company. Was locking the other big thread really needed? Seems like a smokescreen.

Hey all im back again .. well after posting here yesterday ive noticed a real increase on my DR its like anet bribing me to make me stop complaining really … got 1 exotic with a name and like 8 rares from dungeon runs in a single day ! its like a joke because i really cant feel secure now its like all those luck had drained from my allover luck that i ever get and no more good drops from now on .. i hope it wont end like it … well cya tomorrow .. i will be here to report any changes that will happen ..

~270 Fractals of the Mists runs and only 1 ascendend ring drop (today).

~ 1.200 hours played the game, including about 1/2 – 3/4 of them farming events, dungeons and mobs with about +200% magic find, received about 2 exotics, not one drop / item received fromt he mystic forge was worth more then 6g since I play the game.

~ 500 trys in the mystic forge to get a precursor. Didn’t got any yet.

~ 50 – 100 kills of Jormag, Shatterer and Tequatl. Not one exotic item received yet.

Also I finished every event Guild Wars 2 has to offer, including for example the karka event. I received the chest(s). Nothing worth in it.

The enormous luck factor in the game is extremely disappointing, especially for players who play more then others and still not even get the same things other players do.

All other data aside, I have only one question as far as drops go:

Does the staff called “FINAL REST” even exist in the game!?!? :-(

Please clarify this soon.

I play almost daily. I am the fractals coordinator for my guild, and as such I run fractals 4-5 times a day for guild members who need it. Since November 15 for all of my fractal running, and regular farming (In which I do use MF gear) I have pulled exactly 1 Exotic. It was a light armor boot worth roughly 59s on the TP. I get maybe a rare drop, or 2 every other fractal run. Usually an unnamed weapon of some kind. “Dagger”, or “Spear” out of the chests, but almost never from a mob. I cannot say that this is how it should be, or not. I have seen others get different results, but that’s how it has been for me. Since the Wintersday event started my results have been skewed by recieving “gifts” in place of normal drops. What I can say is that I have gotten literally hundreds of Ugly sweaters, and nothing else of note. I would much rather have the T-5, T-6 mats I was getting previously before the event instead of pointless gifts. For as ground breaking as this MMO is I cannot believe ANET could not think of something better than RnG to distribute items. I don’t believe the drops rates are correct right now. I know the event is messing with them. I will wait until the event ends before drawing any more conclusions.

Special crafting materials such as lodestones seem to have been significantly reduced in drop rates.
I used to get them in Frostgorge Sound from Colossi prior to the Lost Shores patch, at least a good 3 for each session, but after that, having an over 120%+ magic find set equipped I can’t seem to obtain any in a 3 hours long farming session.
Given the importance lodestones have, this is no casual friendly.
To prove there was some change in drop rates are the current and rising prices for lodestones and anything connected to them such as runes and sigils.

Interesting…. buddy and I were just discussing that it sure seems that no matter what character you play you get majority of drops for other classes. I

I don’t have a lot to add to the contribution of concrete data unfortunately, but I can add my experience at least.

I not saying I need exotics to rain from the sky, but I’ve worn nothing but magic find armor and jewelry since I hit 80 back in the beginning of November. Once I saw the patch notes on the 15th I was like,“YEAH, THIS ARMOR WAS WOOOOOORTH IT!”. Combined with my mf gear and food, I had like 170%ish mf or something, so I was pretty stoked.

3 days ago I finally took it all off and said screw it. I have gotten jack crap for ALL my drops and it just pisses me off. I gut my character of so many needed stats in favor of magic find, yet I get the exact same drops when I don’t wear it. I’m not even exaggerating either. The only difference I noticed going from full mf gear set to full beserker (with some toughness and vit) is that I kill a LOT faster and my gameplay is completely changed now.

tldr; wore full mf gear for the longest time, finally took it off, no difference in drops

On a sidenote, I’ve gotten 1 exotic drop in all my gameplay of GW2.

I guess a thread with 1256 posts and 43k views staying on the front page with no response for over 1000 of those posts WAS a bit embarrassing. Best to lock that one and divert all of us over here. On the bright side, I had promised myself I would not post on that one again until next week.

All concrete evidence that should be necessary is here:

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

The only exotics I have received since Nov 15 were chest rewards, or picked up during personal story quests. I have gotten NONE from any open world dynamic event, veteran or champion. I have killed many veterans in many zones from beginning levels to Orr and gotten bones, blues, greens and just as often nothing. That makes it about 38 days now. Does that sound like a “perceived” issue?

1000 post ignored for a month the reply " we dont belive you prove it" thread locked kitten that for a response.
Data: in over a month the only yellow drops i can remember are from
A: map completion
B: the kaka Chest
C: one random elite wand for trash mob in Orr
dates 16th november to 25th of december including events dragons
thats one repeat one elite from a repeatable source in a month, chance of obtaining legendary before they put me in the dementia ward nil.

Seeing you asked us for data ill return the favor, can you recomend a MMO wher they dont kitten over the customers?

Am i angry yes will this be moded into oblivion probably if half the resorces were spent fixing things rather than shooting the messenger we might be happier.
Sad thing is its reached the point that i no longer give a kitten about being banned.

As with everybody else, I don’t keep any real record of what I get in a given day’s play, but I will agree that something has happened to the loot. That said, I’ve had some really lucky drops here very recently in one FotM dungeon run, which consisted of 4 or 5 rare crafting materials (lodestones and the like) varying from 300-400 level. Previous to this, the last time I felt that my time was being spent well trying to run a dungeon or “farm” anything was before the timer adjustments to the Plinx event line. My main thing was that I expected there to be some level 80 “zerg” type farms going on constantly from day one and planned my endgame gear grinds around this… issue being that (at least on the Maguuma server) all of Orr, yes all three zones, are almost always nearly devoid of other players. The largest group I’ve run across in Orr was while trying to farm nodes for lack of a group, they looked to be about 5-7 strong for a while, and things felt good, but it didn’t last, and they have not been back as far as I can find since. A part of the drop rates off Plinx was from being in a group, and since those groups don’t appear to exist anymore, those bonuses are lost, thus: Less loot.

This I ran head first into when the FotM dungeon came out, and things have been getting steadily worse for me, who prefers world event types of farms to dungeons (frankly, I’m only really in a guild to get groups for dungeon tokens to buy gear to salvage for ectos since gear and cash both are so hard to come by otherwise anymore.)

And I assume all this is a response to the “botting problem,” which has not gone away, only morphed the behaviors of the bots (I don’t see mobile ranger zergs and such anymore, now they remain stationary in secluded areas of Orr where the mobs respawn nearly instantly). But then there is the trade post too, where prices have skyrocketed on everything of any value… There are two concrete examples I can give:
Number 1 is all the exotic level 80 armor sets that were named for Guild Wars 1 NPCs… The prices have not really moved an inch on any of these since September, as most are still in in the 5-7 gold per piece range… but I seem to recall 5 gold wasn’t such an awful chore to make 6 times to gear a character out.
Number 2 being the costs of other stuff like crafted exotic armor and weapons who’s prices have soared through the roof with the cost of ectoplasm especially… but do not appear to have come down by much considering the major price fixes that came from the drop rate adjustment to things like powerful blood or armored scales.

To conclude: I don’t have any numbers because I never expected this would become such a serious headache, but I offer to players in the Cursed Shores that some of our woes may be the lack of regular and large scale activity in those zones, but otherwise I do see an overall lack of appreciable loot in the fact that it feels like so much more of a chore to make the same amounts of money as before, and those “money making” events going from all day plinx runs to the dragon-hop or being forced into the LFGroup-a-loop for dungeons that I don’t really like as much anyway, and the fact that the vast majority of much more fun and beautiful zones (basically everything except starter zones and high end zones except for a very few specific events like dragons) are almost always empty, and have events that sit for days on end with some champion that nobody will ever go kill since he isn’t worth the 10 minutes and 6+ silver spent on waypoints at 80 (3 if you cheat it) to zone over there and back to whatever… Something is clearly very, very wrong.

over 600 hours played, one lvl 80 char, two alts who are 75 and 58, and not one exotic. less than 20 rares. most of what i get, regardless of what i’m doing (dungeons, killing dragons, personal story or area completion) is “sell junk” items.

A stain is a very hard thing to remove, especially one that has been there for a very long time. A ton of evidence was given during this thread to clearly point out it was not a perceived issue. If this is the stance you chose, fine, there is nothing we can do to change your minds if they are already made up, however there are others within the gaming and financial community with louder voices then we have here and the entire 26 pages will be made available to those with interest.
We as a community voiced all the evidence a company would care to have when honestly trying to correct an issue, so we’ll begin again of course the results may be very different when the real evidence gets out. One tin soldier. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qswm7lHp7oY

I would like to add one extra thought to this: It dawned on me to think back to something I tried to do earlier at the trade post, which was to see if it was feasible to buy up cheap, junk items and either forge the green ones for yellows (to salvage for ecto) or buy cheap yellow gear outright to salvage for ecto… I only gained about 1g (and lost 100k karma) from what had to have been 500+ greens and 8-10 yellows bought at about 25s per from the auction house: There are mind numbing numbers of yellow items, and even more insane numbers of green items out there, all level 80, and all absolute junk, sitting on the AH uselessly awaiting buyers who I really don’t see coming for them…

Two issues here: These things are junk, ugly skins, unwanted stats, but also too expensive for someone like to risk trying to buy up portions for ecto salvaging (This is a gamble that fools might take in a game, or the truly insane in real life) since the cheapest of these pieces are typically right over the cost of 1 ectoplasm, and using the easily available master salvage kits, a 25% chance of any are poor odds on the start, and even getting as many as 3 of any individual salvage attempt can’t make up for the 75% failure rate since you are receiving an item that costs less than the original one.

Second issue is that if this is where ArenaNet derives any kind of automatic drop rate adjustments, then it’s no wonder the drops are falling through the floor, as the system would read it and say, “010001010111101001110101….” or in human terms, “Hey, look at all this stuff that’s crowding the markets! Time to hit those drop rates.”
Somebody once mentioned that they had items on the AH that had been sitting there for months, and if the above holds any truth, then there’s a possible problem source, yes?

So I am to provide data that only Anet has access to, instead of just playing the game?

There will be future mmo’s which provide the best features of GW2 without the grind that the game has now become. I will even pay a subscription for them.

It is a win win for me, I get to play for free till then.

Put that in your data pipe and smoke it!

Cheers.

Count me down as another who’ll be looking somewhere else, and will give my money to someone else.

This thread and the locking of the other one is just like being spat in the face.

Count me down too. I just want an MMO that isn’t arrogant and listens to their community. The entire point behind MMO is community. I’m going to look and see what else is out or whats due to come out.

Oh and concrete logs of drops etc.. didn’t know I had to write down time, zone, what i got from each and every kill. What a joke.

Oh and I expect there will be some kinda msg about how everything will be fixed, but it won’t be.. it never gets fixed, all we get is just a msg about it and everything calms down until people realise its been 2 months and they did nothing about it other than talk to calm us for a bit. Seriously, I feel like I’ve just wasted my time with this MMO.

What gets me is they are asking for proof, yet if they read the other thread it had all the numbers, all the facts, all the proof they needed to show that something was wrong.

Changes have been made somewhere that effect players drops in a way where they get more fines/bags/salvageable than before, but also less “equipment” than before. This “change” also has meant players get less yellow(rare) drops than before.

You state that you’ve been looking at the data and do not see anything strange, but have you compared the data to that of before Nov15 to see any differences? Clearly people are saying that they notice a change, and it would be more accurate to do a comparison than just to monitor the current data.

Why did we need another thread on the exact same subject with the exact same data as the previous thread that was 26 pages of hard data? Also, I thought I was playing an MMO. Not a RnG data simulator. Since when does a company demand hard data from it’s fan base? Isn’t someone in the company getting paid to do that? I don’t spend all of my time farming mats when I play, but to the untrained eye it would certainly seem that way. Prior to hitting 80 I had plenty to keep me busy, but I have been 80 for quite some time now. Whether its farming for mats in Orr, or rerunning the same dungeon every day for more tokens everything I do in the game anymore feels a bit like a grind. I don’t complain about it. I set goals for myself and work to achieve those goals. Between the huge spike of inflation on the TP, DR, and the seemingly inexplicable decline of non trash drops I cannot keep up anymore. Now we see an influx of people throwing legendary weapons onto the TP. I personally do not like the direction the game is headed. I also do not feel that ANET is taking this issue as seriously as they should. I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet, but there needs to be a drastic change to the RnG system, and it needs to happen sooner than later.

Tonight played again for 3 hours.

15 crafting items resources (none of which were T6 btw despite most of these items coming from bags)
4 greens
7 blues
9 gifts
16 whites
11 greys
1 yellow (rare)

This was done in a mid level zone, one which should have definitely dropped rares more often. In the process of the gaming session i killed 6 veterans only two dropped anything 1 was a blue.

Every time I went to actually farm mobs for drops, I would kill four each one dropped an item for crafting (bloods claws) after the fifth one I started to get porous bones. Tried to switch to a new area, started again the same thing happened.

Ascalonian Catacombs Storymode tonight

4 white armor or weapons
14 Blue armor or weapons lvl 78 and lvl 80.
1 Green Light armor hood lvl 78
2 Medium Wintersday Gifts
5 Crystalline Dust
2 Piles of Metal Scrap

OK yesterday I started to play with my lvl 18 toon for about 2 hours then moved to my 80 thief to farm in Orr.
Result of doing 7 events in Orr for about 1.5 hour with MF food, banner and full stack of LUCK + MF gear:
24 porous bones
7 blue items
2 greens
0 rares
1 T6 mat (dust)
8 T5 mats
5 salvage items
6 moldy bags
some junk

little less that 50s gain from selling trash to NPC + event rewards + dropped coins

Attachment shows typical loot from wave of event mobs.

I’ve read through the whole thread till here and most of my concerns have been mentioned already.

Nearly all dungeon chests contains plain 3 blues, sometimes 1-2 greens instead. I mainly run AC, CoF and some Fractals. Here’s what it looks like:

Usual dungeon runs: 3 AC paths, 2 CoF paths.

1st chest: 3 blues
2nd chest 2 blues 1 green
3rd chest 3 blues
4th chest 3 blues
5th chest 1 blue 2 greens
6th chest 3 blues 1 green sigil
7th chest 3 blues
8th chest 2 blues 1 green 1 green sigil

Yeah, you get the pattern. Someone else in my group recieved Shield of Wings (~5g) and a named armor piece (~4g…) in 1 path and he spent most of his time downed. It’s hard to suppress the frustration while you’re getting blues yourself.

I never seem to get any rares, perhaps once A DAY from world drops and I’m 100% sure about that. Been playing since launch and gotten 2 world exotic drops. I’ve pretty much stopped doing events, except for one dragon fight/day since all of that only yields blues, greens and dragon chests might drop 1 rare in every 3 fights.

About DR, yes it’s like my account is glitched and I’m only getting trash all the time. Some people likes farming or hanging out in a few spot and smash monsters together. DR and low drop rates is seriously making people quit, it’s simply not rewarding/worth the time to play that way.

I’ve almost considered buying gems but you simply don’t deserve my money. I try to enjoy the game but I always find something disappointing, mainly in the amount of porous bones I get.

The way I see it, the best way to make money is AC with +gold amount drop buffs (don’t nerf that btw), mining with multiple alts or playing the TP.

I wanted a seperate thread but this complaint is one in many and would probably get modded/deleted. Hope this contributed to the cause for better drops and fixes.

Grenth before nov 15th : more then full bags that i even had to salvage cause my bags are full. Atleast a couple of rares (4-8).
Grenth after nov 15th: bags 3/4-4/5 full, no need to salvage. get 1, if im every lucky 2 rares

You got a 25+ page thread with all the details you need, don’t insult our intelligence by saying you havent done/noticed anything

To be honest… after 11/15 patch i do mostly dugeons and event around dugeons – mostly CoF- in around all days after patch i get 2 exo from CoF – do it almost every day few times.
From event around CoF i sometimes get rare – never egzotic. With full MF set i get worst drop than normal set. All junk bags droped in 90% craft materials rank T5 very very rare is to get T6 mats from bags. TO get some globs i make CoF and buy items from NPC because nothing droped from chest and mobs;/

I stoped farm event in Orr because on 20 mob per wave i get loot from 1-2 mobs die faster than my skills start dealing any dmg.
I start lvl my new char – 51 lvl atm – i droped around 3-5 dyes.. and …. 2 rare. Done alot of events… killed many champions what droped junk and blue…

I dont know what happen with all loot – maybe all because farming bots – but now i dont see any sense for using MF set.

“Perceived strange drop behavior” is offensive language to those of us who’ve been dealing with this train wreck of a DR shift for months. I am not speculating I am telling you that since the devs changed the loot rates on Unid Dyes shortly after they allowed them to drop too easily I have seen maybe 1 a week since. That is not perception it easily verifiable by pulling up my accounts logs.

The change in title from the last thread to this seems like a poor attempt to hide the problem from those who have yet to buy the game.

Before 15nov patch :
Farming events in orr gave me around 1g/h (selling white/blue/green to the npc, keeping eveything else)
My wealth was growing, slowly, but was growing, even with TP / repairs costs.

After 15 nov patch :
Same farming conditions : Now, I’m LOSING money in the long term (losing ~50s a day with TP / repairs).

Conclusion : the drop quality has been hardly nerfed, as I couldn’t stabilize my wealth anymore since 15 nov., when I doing the same things before and after. True, this is a perception of things…

On a side notes :
- I never had a rare / exo drop from a vet / champ, and I’ve over 1000 hours of play. My exceptional yellow drops come from trash mobs.
- Since 2 months, I do ~2 dongeons runs a day with my guild, and NEVER had a rare / exo drop. The best drop I had was a SINGLE lvl 400 lodestone. And I’ve 2 exo dongeons full armours, and over 3000 spare dungeons tokens in my bank. Please do the maths to find the total number of runs.

Is it REALLY working has intended ? nothing suspicious, REALLY ?
Finally, could you please tell me how to provide accurate observations, when the drop mecanics is unknown to us, and can only be seen with a perception ? YOU are the one owning the databases, game code and scripts, not US.
Please stop making fun with your customers, this is really insulting. Especially when some of your customers are professional game developers themselves.

Spent two and half hours killing Snow Trolls and Arcodus in Frostgorge Sound and received 3 powerful bloods for my effort, i got about 15 potent bloods, that is unacceptable..most of my drops were garbage dark claws or nothing at all.. i had no Magic find on..

I spent as much time (2 hours) trying to get Corrupted Lodestones at Shattered Ice Floe in the same map from Icebrood, i’ve never ever seen one drop..ever..

Here is my farming experiences, been farming pre nov 15 patch for 2 weeks vs post nov 15 patch for 2 weeks.

I farm in Frostgorge Sound, and guess what I do? Not the icebroods, but the Veterans at Arundon Vale wp. Why there? Five veteran oakhearts, 1 vet crab, 2 vet grawls, 1 vet raptor, 1 broodmother all within a circle. This is done on a 45 min MF food run.

Before the patch, 8/10 times I would get a drop, any drop. I’ve been lucky many times to even get 2 rares from 1 drop and/or exotics.

Pre nov 15 Patch : Average time of 45 mins for 2 weeks and only counting drops from the veterans, so 10 vets in about 10 mins in a full run, averaging 3 runs/circles in 40 mins. I also start with 65 free inventory slots. With the drops from the reg mobs, and the vets, I have to vendor every 25 mins.

Por bones (just for general drops) : 10
Salvage items : 6
White gear : 9
Blue gear : 12
Green gear : 9
Rare gear : 4
Exotics : 0

That’s an average of 30 kills for 50 drops.

Post Nov 15 patch : Same path, same time frame of 2 weeks for 45 min spans.

Por bones (just for general drops) : 4
Salvage items : 1
White gear : 3
Blue gear : 3
Green gear : 2
Rare gear : 0-1
Exotics : 0

Count that, 30 kills for a total of 14 drops.

I cant even fill my bags to vendor after the MF food wears off. Problem detected. Before patch, I was pretty much insured to get a blue/green item from a veteran, now I can’t even get a single trash drop from killing over 5.

Then lets not even talk about the DR for DEs. After you relaxed the DR for DEs, it was fine, but after December patch, it got worse so did you guys revert it back to pre relaxed?

One hour of killing icebrood creatures in Frostgorge Sound. Also two veteran corrupted quaggan killed four times each. Almost all creatures killed solo. Had farmed in area yesterday. Had not been logged in for approx 20 hours:

Icestones (junk): 29
Salvagable pelts and metal: 5
Large bones, claws and fangs: 31
Ancient bones and vicious fangs: 6
Whites: 5
Blues: 5
Greens: 0
Rares: 0
Exotics: 0
Corrupted lodestones or dyes: 0

Edit: Wearing 5x superior runes of the pirate, 1 major rune of the traveller and 16% magic find on jewlery.

Run through multiple event chains in the Harathi Hinterlands, killed around 10 champions. Half dropped loot, all was blue gear each worth less than a silver. No MF, I don’t think DR was relevant as not playing before starting this. Level 80 mesmer.

I… I really don’t know how to reply in a manner that isn’t as condescending as the question was.

At some point, widely reported as 15 Nov., adjustments were made to loot tables, ostensibly to increase rewards for Open World Vets and Champs. There was also a doinked Dye drop bit in there, but we’ll let that pass as dyes are 95% cosmetic. Granted, the other 5% is Bifrost…

Instead of having the intended effect, players widely reported – far in excess that could be explained by mere RNG – that rewards actually decreased after the ‘increase’. Players also reported that DR – also ostensibly there to combat ‘botters’ and ‘farmers’ (We’ll leave the fact that many recipies instituted in the game require hundreds of mats of a particular type, and then punish players who actually try to gather these mats themselves with DR, for another discussion.) follows players from mob type to mob type, from map to map, and in some cases from day to day – all such actions at odds with the ‘as reported’ DR mechanic.

Time goes by, with an AMA that could have charitably been described as in the running for ‘Best Waltz Around A Subject’ for the World Ballroom Dance Championships, with ArenaNet admitting they’re trying to dodge the issue, with a halfhearted ‘promise’ to check logs, and assorted other handwavery and oralgami.

More time goes by, hundreds more posts added to a thread – which, despite merges and moves, became a clearance house for data regarding this problem.

All of a sudden, after a month of being ignored, there’s a Red Response (The fact that said response occured on the Fri Afternoon just before an extended Holiday Weekend shall be left for conspiracy speculators to ponder.) calling into question the ‘perceptions’ of hundreds of posters, requesting players collect data that ArenaNet already has in their logs, purporting a lack of problem regardless of the hundreds of reports otherwise, and pointing to a ‘New’, stickied thread, complete with a newly spun title. Shortly thereafter, that thread, with over 1200 replies, many containing the ‘data’ requested, gets locked, coincidentally causing it to drop off the front page.

tl;dr: It appears that after a month of trying to kick a problem under a rug, complainers are given a makework assignment to duplicate existing data, in the hopes they’ll just shut up and accept the new Status Quo. Meanwhile, Dragons rarely drop Green+, Champs and Vets rarely drop anything, Orr’s Temples will remain (At least on SF, which given it’s low WvW rank and ‘High Population’ should be a PvE Powerhouse.) contested (uncorrected event bugs and quick recontesting aside), and dungeons will be completed more for the coin & the tokens than the drops. But, hey, at least LA is almost always on overflow, and the ringing refrains of ‘LF2G Frac 16’ can be heard throughout the land.

I’ll chime in here as well. I don’t know whether the fix for the dye drop rate broke this or the something to do with Lost Shores or something to do with bot control gone crazy…affecting a subset of normal players. The general consensus seems to be that something in the Nov 15th patch broke loot drops for at least some people. Not all people appear to be affected. I first noticed it during Lost Shores when veteran/champion karka were dropping nothing at all. Someone entered this as a bug at the time, I remember seeing the thread. There have been a number of threads detailing the issue, including a bug that was submitted 24 days ago, which still has no reply.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Loot-Drop-Rate-Bug/first

This is a serious issue!! As one has been heavily affected by this, I haven’t gotten anything better than a green piece of gear from a boss chest in I don’t know how long. I have gotten the very rare yellow upgrade comp…oooooo. I can’t constantly grind dungeons as I work, have 2 small children and finding large chunks of contiguous time is challenging sometimes. Quoted from the other thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Change-in-loot-parameters-or-a-bug-Merged/first), this sums up how I feel about this. I apologize if this sounds a little harsh, but keep in mind this is already after a month of suffering with this issue with no reply….a month’s worth of 1200+ posts of people speculating about ArenaNet’s motives. This storm could have been avoided if someone had replied long ago.

Leamas.5803:

Now they should be even more worried about people leaving because there is no reward for effort. Many, many players, such as myself, are reward driven much more so than goal driven, which was a big draw for me in GW2. I don’t have time to grind and didn’t have to to feel as though I accomplished something. After Nov 15th, everything is about grind. I get off on finishing a tough event/fight and reaping the rewards…well now there is essentially no reward. As a casual player, while I do enjoy dungeons and long chain events, I don’t always have time for such things. Mind you with the rewards as they are, there seems little point in doing such things since regular mobs usually drop better loot than veterans/champions/bosses.

Unfortunately much of the open world seems to be dying, as people funnel in to specific areas such as FotM, dungeons and Orr. Why? It they seem the only places where one can make any decent coin or get good drops. Orr, while it is part of the open world, it is a different story, many are there to farm T5-T6 materials needed for making legendary weapons. I pity those people who aspire to make a legendary. Under these new loot scheme getting all the required material by farming alone will take at least 10-20 times longer (And probably longer than that) than pre-Nov 15th.

Back to open world adventuring…even in Orr, where people do tend to congregate, although I understand there is less congregation since the loot changes, it’s hard to find a group who is willing to help with menial things like skill points…it’s all about about events and farming. I find myself often trying to hit-n-run skill points using pets/minions to distract mobs hopefully long enough to get the point. Unfortunately, this is not possible in all cases.

The areas I find most affected by population problems are the 40-60 level areas, especially now. Many simply leave the game before ever reaching level 40 and that number will only increase with the increased difficulty in leveling, heavy focus on the gem store, lack of rewards and the sheer frustration that causes.

The entire crafting, loot system, gem store and trading post is broken and corrupt. Artificially manipulating the marketplace like this would be considered fraud in the real world. Crafting is essentially dead as a result because T5-T6 mats are now so scarce and expensive that crafting is a waste of time. If they want a pure micro-payment-type economy common in some of the free MMOs…$2 for this piece of armor, $8 for this weapon, or even just straight gold for money…which seems the direction they’re pushing, then just do it and tell everyone. Then in this case, IMO ALL listings should be returned to the respective sellers, the TP should be shut down for player trading so that players can ONLY sell to in-game vendors, which in turn increases TP stock and prices are controlled from skyrocketing. GW2 should also be free to play in a pure micro-payment system. At $60 to buy, I didn’t sign up for a money sink. At least, then people would know where they stand.

Continued from previous post.

Leamas.5803:

Crafting is still broken as you can typically buy crafted items for less than you can make them. T5-T6 mats drop so rarely now that one has little option but to grind relentlessly or buy them. If you have the mats already sure, but even then for really high end stuff often you’re better off to just sell the mats and buy the item you want…broken due to the drop rate.

Also, any hope of achieving legendary weapon is gone unless you grind indefinitely. I wouldn’t even want to fathom a guess how long it would take with these drop rates. Of course, you could just drop a pile of money in the gem store and buy much of the require materials. The precursor for Twilight, Dusk, is going to run you a mere $443 through the gem store. I estimate Twilight would cost over $1000 worth of gems to craft…and that’s just for the things you don’t HAVE to grind relentlessly for. OR you could buy one pre-made. One was just recently posted on the TP for 9500G, that’s about $8400 if you were to buy that solely through the gem store. It cost the guy 475G just to post it. I wish I had that kind of gold to throw around. Does this sound even remotely reasonable? You can buy a REAL hand-make Japanese sword made out of hand smelted tamahagane (Pronounced “tom-a-hog-an-A”) steel for that.

It should be noted, that this issue is solely responsible for me turning to play another game. I had a good bit of free time last night and I played Darksiders 2 rather than GW2…the first time I’ve really dedicated to a new game since starting with GW2. I LOVE GW2 and have committed more time to it than any other game I’ve ever played other than perhaps the original Quake and Diablo games, but the drop rate for me is so abysmal that it’s sucked all the fun out of the game. It’s becoming a game solely about killing, not about character building and there are far better killing games out there if that’s all I want to do. People are saying they still get good drops in dungeons…the few dungeon runs I’ve done over the last month or so…greens at best from the boss chest.

Again, to echo what someone else has stated, we post these things because we do love the game and we’re not trying to simply get stuff for free. Legendaries, for instance, were already extremely difficult to get for the average player before the Nov 15th patch, but attainable with a lot of dedication, now they’ve essentially become impossible to get…again…9500G($8400) on the TP…REALLY? There was no need nor justification to make these more difficult to get.

Everything I have said, or could say on this subject has been echoed repeatedly over the last month on several merged threads. I accept that either A. ANET get’s it and just doesn’t care, or B. They simply don’t get it, and need it explained to them like a 2 year old. Either way I am taking a break from fighting the “good fight” Instead I am going to focus on what has been working for me in game. Fractals runs have been somewhat of a positive for me as of late. I don’t get great drops every run, but every once in awhile I will have a run that nets me 4-5g in sellable mats, globs, and cores/lodestones. This by no means is going to make me rich playing the game, but it does a good job of keeping me afloat. I know a lot of people spend their time flipping the TP for profit, but I signed up to play GW2, not Market simulator 2012. I have dabbled in flipping the TP and I have determined that I do not have the time, nor patience to spend all day on that task. I have spent a considerable amount of time running popular farming spots for T5-T6 mats, but the holiday events have made this less of an option as I just get ugly sweaters now instead of mats. (On a personal note 1 week is long enough to run an event ANET. After that it just gets obnoxious.) Before the event I was getting about 4-5 T-6 mats and 10-20 T-5 mats a day farming these spots. Best case scenario if I’m looking at getting a 250 stack of a T-6 mat strictly through farming I can expect it to take a little over a month and a half. That is if I am farming for a minimum of 3-4 hours a day every day during that time. Now taking into consideration random Fractal run drops, and the random loot bag T-6 mat you could shave that down to about 35-40 days of nonstop farming 3 to 4 hours a day. Still not great numbers. Bare in mind this is for just one stack. Any meaningful recipe in the game is going to take much, much more than that. Then factoring in things that don’t come as easily (Mystic coins, skill points) and you have a lot more work ahead of you. Some people feel that the work pays off. I have a harder time justifying it. GW2 feels more like a hamster treadmill with a shiny object dangled in front of it. We just keep running endlessly trying to get an object that will always be just out of reach. Then, if we are so lucky as to break the cycle and get the item they just introduce some new shiny thing that’s a bit better than the first one starting that cycle all over again. Yet, we sign up for this, and commit ourselves to it, because it’s addicting, and we tell ourselves its fun. I guess the bottom line is we pick and choose our battles. We choose to play GW2 instead of another MMO. If we don’t like the way it’s set up we can play other games. I guess some of us stick it out, because we have foolish hope that it will get better. Maybe it will. In the meantime I guess I will just keep farming for ugly sweaters.

Consumers are statistics. Customers are people.
-Stanley Marcus

Dear Stéphane,

Don’t confuse those data on your screen with the people on this forum. Condescending is the word that keeps coming back. Why do you think this is?

If you think that you’re right, despite the unparalleled sample size telling you you’re dead wrong, consider the following quote as well:

“The void created by the failure to communicate is soon filled with poison, drivel and misrepresentation.”
— C. Northcote Parkinson

No, I’m not trying to be a wise guy. I’m trying to get through. Like Red aptly explained as well. Because I care.

Buttercup.5871:

“The void created by the failure to communicate is soon filled with poison, drivel and misrepresentation.”
— C. Northcote Parkinson

This is an awesome quote and so very applicable under the circumstances. So many people have drawn their own conclusions, myself included, as to what has transpired and what/who is to blame that the entire topic has become toxic. ArenaNet’s complete lack of communication is solely to blame for allowing the situation to escalate to this level of discontent.

Alpine Skelks in Northmost Forstgorge Sound
Farming time: 1hr30m

Coordinated with guildmate of equipping similar MF gear half way through farming.

Target item: Vial of Powerful Blood

His result: 11 Powerful Blood
My result: 1 Powerful Blood

During this time I received consistently grey and white items and ‘salvageable hides’ and t5 claws. A paltry amount of blues and one single green.

To note: I received my single Vial during the portion which we were neither wearing MF gear. 9_9

I was somewhat willing to give the redname the benifit of the doubt, after all she’s the French community manager, maybe her English isn’t so great. But then I noticed that she phrased it in italics, she knew full well how snide, unproffesional and down right insulting she was being with that post.

Frankly this whole debacle has been disgusting, there was a massive thread full of data, and what? They couldn’t be bothered to read it? Have they even bothered to check what people are telling them, or has some jobworth at Anet said ‘Nah its fine’ and gone back to drawing a salary for doing nothing?

Cactus Brawler.7415:

I was somewhat willing to give the redname the benifit of the doubt, after all she’s the French community manager, maybe her English isn’t so great. But then I noticed that she phrased it in italics, she knew full well how snide, unproffesional and down right insulting she was being with that post.

Frankly this whole debacle has been disgusting, there was a massive thread full of data, and what? They couldn’t be bothered to read it? Have they even bothered to check what people are telling them, or has some jobworth at Anet said ‘Nah its fine’ and gone back to drawing a salary for doing nothing?

Insulting HIS language, yes, Stephane is a male name, and culture achieves nothing and where he’s from has no bearing on anything. Let’s keep on topic. I do agree that how they’ve dealt with the situation is abhorrent, but please lets keep on topic and focused. It’s the only way we’ll be taken seriously. Attack ArenaNet all you want as they deserve it, but please keep personal attacks against the one person who has replied where they belong…in your head. It’s a good way to get moderated and/or have the thread closed. Keep in mind, he’s probably just the designated messenger and the reply was probably crafted in some committee that he may or may not have been involved.

Ladies and gentleman let me return with my paranoid messages …

For last 2 days, approx the morning of the forum topics release ive written some stuff about not recieving any good drop/not getting any exotic (except map reward&karka chest) after that; my luck suddenly increased i mean yesterday i run all 3 paths on AC/TA and 2 paths on CoF and i recieved like 8-10 rare and 1 “named” exotic …

And again im telling you i guess Anet just find people who are typing here and increase their drop rate for few days or so or maybe its like a bribe … and will end soon … but today after 4 dungeon runs AC 3paths and Cof 1-2 i recieved 2 rares

That means ive recieved nearlly the total rare count ive farmed till yesterday in 1 day // and i got 1.5k TA tokens / 1.9k CoF tokens think about it am i wrong ? or that just happened to me by a “Coincidence” ?

Leamas.5803:

Cactus Brawler.7415:

I was somewhat willing to give the redname the benifit of the doubt, after all she’s the French community manager, maybe her English isn’t so great. But then I noticed that she phrased it in italics, she knew full well how snide, unproffesional and down right insulting she was being with that post.

Frankly this whole debacle has been disgusting, there was a massive thread full of data, and what? They couldn’t be bothered to read it? Have they even bothered to check what people are telling them, or has some jobworth at Anet said ‘Nah its fine’ and gone back to drawing a salary for doing nothing?

Insulting HIS language, yes, Stephane is a male name, and culture achieves nothing and where he’s from has no bearing on anything. Let’s keep on topic. I do agree that how they’ve dealt with the situation is abhorrent, but please lets keep on topic and focused. It’s the only way we’ll be taken seriously. Attack ArenaNet all you want as they deserve it, but please keep personal attacks against the one person who has replied where they belong…in your head. It’s a good way to get moderated and/or have the thread closed. Keep in mind, he’s probably just the designated messenger and the reply was probably crafted in some committee that he may or may not have been involved.

You know I’ve been mentally inserting an I, into his name.

I am however looking for a reason why anyone who has made it to a posistion of community manager would post something so inflamitory, unless of course they are secretly Stanley Woo in disguise.

The committee idea is an answer, but surely he’d of been able to point out that this would make people angry?
~~~~~~~

As for feedback, pre November 15th, as I leveled two characters they were able to keep up in terms of gear, either through drops of greens and the like, or drops of fine materials to either sell and buy the next tier up, or use to craft gear.

Post November 15th, I’ve been unable to get enough Karka shells to craft gear, despite going out specificly to farm said items for several hours at a time, I’ve also been unable to get enough tier f or 6 mats to craft other gear sets.

Likewise leveling several alts, the drop drought impacts these preventing them from upgrading their gear as often as my first two characters did.