Guild Wars 2

Could this be something similar to the when the dungeon DR system was implemented and certain people were getting permanently DR’d? I see a few post in this thread where people say “after a new build” it seem to get fixed for awhile, then maybe they get flagged for DR and never get unflagged.

Just a thought. I will be doing some testing this weekend with general drops and with magic find. I know RNG is RNG but there was a 2 week time period where exo’s were falling like candy in fractals and now my group is lucky to come out of there with rares.

My 2 cents.

Dungeons:

Exotic armor/weapons – none
Rare armor/weapons – barely (MAYBE 1 in 30-40 runs).
Rare crafting mats (like molten lodestone/core in CoF) – about 1-2 every 1-5 runs
Blues and greens – equal, about 5 per run
White armor/weapon – about 5 per run

Loot from Champions, bosses and event chests:

Blues and greens only. Never gotten any rare or exotic. Bosses and champions often empty.

Ecto Salvage rate:

You can tell me, what you will, but it is down. I used to get at least 1, mostly 2 and often 3 out of 1 rare. Now I get often 0, mostly 1, sometimes 2 and barely ever 3. I salvage ectos daily, I used to buy rares of the TP and salvage for ectos for profit – I don’t do that anymore, since the salvage rate IS lower and it is not profitable anymore.

Magic Find:

Magic find definitely does NOT increase droprate. I have tested this plenty in my long farming hours. It often happens, that JUST after taking of all my MF gear, I get a rare drop >.> Since droprates on rares/exotics, rare mats etc. are so super low though, this is really a bummer – without MF I still barely EVER get rares as drops.

I have played about 630 hrs now (2 month break since launch) and have mentally given up on getting rares/exotics from actually playing the game aka drops being viable. Which makes me sad

My final thought:

At least bosses, champions and event chests/chests in dungeons should give viable loot, that makes you go “Yai!” for having participated and successfully beaten the content! It takes time, team effort and skill – so where’s the reward??

I am okay with the other droprates – of course everyone wishes for them to be higher But the ones above are the ones that actually anger me. I have gone over to ditching an event before it ends, because I know I won’t get anything anyway. It makes me sad, that I don’t care about the dungeon chests anymore, because I know I’ll only get blues and greens anyway. Might as well skip bosses, that you don’t have to kill, right?
I don’t feel like that’s right. Thanks for reading <3

Bartas.4908:

If that is true why ANET designed THE ONLY TRUE lvl80 zone with same type of mob? If I do a lot of events in Orr I maybe do 4 kill types of enemies for my daily. That’s if I come accrosssome event that spawns mobs other than Risen. Usually after 1-2 hours spent in Orr I have 1 type of enemy killed.

I should say that I get that idea from my own experience and the comments of others. It does seem to be true. I have done “Branded” for extended periods and it also seems to be true there but in the Dragonbrand, there are Ascolonian ghosts mixed in so it doesn’t seem to be as severe. Also you can get regular mobs on the borders of the Dragonbrand which also switches it up.

Bartas.4908:

I do try to jump to different events whenever I see in chat someone is saying that Event X has popped and I must say I cannot cry about the amount of drops (including rares/exotics/mats). So your assumption that ANet designed the game to reward us when we try to explore whole content might be true. Still when I happen to hit DR (or some mysteriousbad luck) there is no hope for hours if not days. PorousBones and Junk till server reset.

Many people are saying that DR needs some bug fix. As I said before since my account has never gotten great loot, I never really notice if I have hit the Diminishing Returns ceiling unless I am paying attention to it. And now I can’t really play much at all because of a medical condition – but I am going to try to do as much as I can.

Bartas.4908:

Now, I do dungeons every couple of days and must say I drop the usual stuff which varies from junk to rares so no problem here. Again, I do not farm dungeons. If I decide to do a run I usually do 1 to 3 paths and that’s it. Again, it might be true to do dungeons every couple of days to maximise the loot.

Dungeons seem to be better; but again, I can’t usually sit at my computer long enough to take advantage of dungeon runs. I can’t commit to joining a group for these runs because I don’t want to have to leave before it’s complete. Not fair for the rest of the group.

Bartas.4908:

So here, you got your testing. At this point I have to say I did it all on purpose and with the intent of testing if I can maximise my drops. I have some experience in testing. Was Core Tester in Warhammer for almost 2 years before + did some other titles betas and provided detailed reports. Not saying this to brab or anything just to point out that I can understand what I am doing and for what purpose.

Still few things are annoying as kitten. First, VERY POOR rewards for doing hard open world contentand this includes Champs, Dragons, long events, temples. Except Grenth (where you not getting anything of value from chest but trash mobs drop a lot) event I usually get less coin/loot than it costs me to WP there and pay repair fees.

Now, let’s discuss the possibilities for average lvl 80 to get loot in PvE. We have Cursed Shore Frostgorge, Malchor’s Leap and Karka island. Last one can be only used to farm mats, get karka shells (poor drop rate) and that’s basically it. Few events, insanely hard Champs that drop NOTHING. The other 3 zones (except Cursed Shore) are used only for Ori/Ancient Wood/Omnom runs and Lodestone farm. Oh yeah, temples there and dragon but the loot is terrible there! ANet nerfed trash mob drop rate from most temples and dragon events so I already see less and less people doing them.
That leaves most people with the only option to farm events in Cursed Shore and that inevitably makes them prone to be hit by DR sooner or later.

Thanks for your input! We all appreciate it.

Yes, ANet did nerf summoned trash mobs reportedly to not drop anything. O.o Unfortunately, the trash mobs appear to be where there is the best chance to get rares – at least for me.

As far as avoiding DR – I think Fractals are the only place that you can escape DR based on reports. I can do some Fractals and like them, but even there, it is very hard for me to finish 3 in a row. So I can only realistically join a FotM group if they are okay with just doing 1 or 2 fractals.

Cynical.2097:

Ecto salvage rate is WAY down.

I guess that the snowflake jewelry salvage issue caused ANet to also nerf ecto salvage rates. Ecto prices are going to go up.

Aproposs Of Fire I am in the same boat when it comes to Fractals. I barely have time for a full run and since I am only lvl 2 or 3 it is even harder to find a group. Well, at least it was my choice not to grind FotM when they appeared so no hard feelings here.

As additional point of interest, I was following same rules for days and I must say that without serious grind of 2 most popular DEs (Peni/Shelter) I can make no less than 5g per 2 hours just from selling junk and getting DE reward. Dunno if Putrid Essence is considered a rare drop but among other rares/exotics (yes I am dropping exotics) I do drop quite a lot of those too. (it is worthless anyway) Few days ago I got exotic in lvl 1-15 zone when I was finishing my daily kill variety. If I remember correctly I killed some Bear Vet.

When I was grinding hard 2 DEs in Cursed Shore I was under impression that Salvage mat is the best drop I can get. Now it changed.

Point is that maybe there is some mechanism that checks if you stay/farm/kill a lot in one place. I mean, we all remember bots “doing” Plinx event over and over, right? I cannot say that I see bots doing Penni/Shelter DEs. I am almost sure that 99% of people are real persons just because it is easy to get group there and people res each other a lot.

Personally, I have a feeling that we are close to solving this mystery. Only thing left is to determine how to get rid of DR hammer once you got it. In my own experience it is either server restart or longer time out of the game. Changing zones is not helping imo.

Firefly.5982:

My 2 cents.

Dungeons:

Exotic armor/weapons – none
Rare armor/weapons – barely (MAYBE 1 in 30-40 runs).
Rare crafting mats (like molten lodestone/core in CoF) – about 1-2 every 1-5 runs
Blues and greens – equal, about 5 per run
White armor/weapon – about 5 per run

Loot from Champions, bosses and event chests:

Blues and greens only. Never gotten any rare or exotic. Bosses and champions often empty.

Ecto Salvage rate:

You can tell me, what you will, but it is down. I used to get at least 1, mostly 2 and often 3 out of 1 rare. Now I get often 0, mostly 1, sometimes 2 and barely ever 3. I salvage ectos daily, I used to buy rares of the TP and salvage for ectos for profit – I don’t do that anymore, since the salvage rate IS lower and it is not profitable anymore.

Magic Find:

Magic find definitely does NOT increase droprate. I have tested this plenty in my long farming hours. It often happens, that JUST after taking of all my MF gear, I get a rare drop >.> Since droprates on rares/exotics, rare mats etc. are so super low though, this is really a bummer – without MF I still barely EVER get rares as drops.

I have played about 630 hrs now (2 month break since launch) and have mentally given up on getting rares/exotics from actually playing the game aka drops being viable. Which makes me sad

My final thought:

At least bosses, champions and event chests/chests in dungeons should give viable loot, that makes you go “Yai!” for having participated and successfully beaten the content! It takes time, team effort and skill – so where’s the reward??

I am okay with the other droprates – of course everyone wishes for them to be higher But the ones above are the ones that actually anger me. I have gone over to ditching an event before it ends, because I know I won’t get anything anyway. It makes me sad, that I don’t care about the dungeon chests anymore, because I know I’ll only get blues and greens anyway. Might as well skip bosses, that you don’t have to kill, right?
I don’t feel like that’s right. Thanks for reading <3

Thanks for your comments.

Unfortunately, it appears that these issues don’t affect everyone (including the testers at the ANet studio). I shouldn’t say “unfortunately” because I am happy for those that this has not affected.

It’s unfortunate because without “widespread” problems ANet cannot fix it.

Ectos are going to be rarer I guess because of the Wintersday recipe that caused that problem. We just need to be very careful with any new content in January because what might be acceptable in normal circumstances might be considered exploitative with any new content.

We still aren’t sure what magic find does but it appears to cause crafting mats to be more likely to drop than armor and weapons. This is just a guess, however. I’ll be taking my MF gear off completely – while I like getting the mats for crafting, I want to test this supposition about mats instead of armor.

Fractals do seem to be unaffected, so don’t do open world stuff exclusively — take a break occasionally to get some good drops in FotM.

Oh since someone mentioned MF. Didn’t do hard testing about it yet but it seems that MF value of less than 100% and over 200% is the most effective. Anything between 100 and 200% seems to make drope rate actually worse.

Maybe I make myself some MF exotic armor (just to be almost as efficient with killing stuff) and test it further but when I used some MF gear, sigil, food, banner AND MF booster I felt like a drop god.
Another interesting thing mentioned in quite few threads is that MF booster (the one you buy from BLTC or get as a daily reward or drop from BL chests) increases drop rate significantly. It may be because people using it got above 200% which would support my theory about 100-200% dead zone. Now, I am usually running with about 70-90% MF.

Bartas.4908:

Aproposs Of Fire I am in the same boat when it comes to Fractals. I barely have time for a full run and since I am only lvl 2 or 3 it is even harder to find a group. Well, at least it was my choice not to grind FotM when they appeared so no hard feelings here.

As additional point of interest, I was following same rules for days and I must say that without serious grind of 2 most popular DEs (Peni/Shelter) I can make no less than 5g per 2 hours just from selling junk and getting DE reward. Dunno if Putrid Essence is considered a rare drop but among other rares/exotics (yes I am dropping exotics) I do drop quite a lot of those too. (it is worthless anyway) Few days ago I got exotic in lvl 1-15 zone when I was finishing my daily kill variety. If I remember correctly I killed some Bear Vet.

When I was grinding hard 2 DEs in Cursed Shore I was under impression that Salvage mat is the best drop I can get. Now it changed.

Point is that maybe there is some mechanism that checks if you stay/farm/kill a lot in one place. I mean, we all remember bots “doing” Plinx event over and over, right? I cannot say that I see bots doing Penni/Shelter DEs. I am almost sure that 99% of people are real persons just because it is easy to get group there and people res each other a lot.

Personally, I have a feeling that we are close to solving this mystery. Only thing left is to determine how to get rid of DR hammer once you got it. In my own experience it is either server restart or longer time out of the game. Changing zones is not helping imo.

I must get off here soon, but I am sincerely glad you are getting good loot including exotics.

Other than the exotic I got from the Karka event, I can’t remember if I have ever gotten an exotic drop. It might have happened a long time ago though.

Yes, DR is harassing quite a few players and it is hard to think of a solution that ANet can take that won’t also benefit bots. Another game I played a long time ago used random events and mini-boss pop-ups on all players to test whether there is a real person playing. You could expect at least one random per hour sometimes and none other times and it seemed to work pretty well. And those randoms dropped pretty good loot too (not awesome loot, but it was worth being sidetracked from what you were doing). These randoms did not occur during instanced dungeons (that would puppy) only in the open world. Those pop-ups would often pull you into an instance where intelligent decisions had to be made to prove you are a real person. I’ve never seen another game do that but it seems like a clever way to automatically screen for bots.

I haven’t read every post so I don’t know if someone had brought up this point, but I was reading an interview the programmers did a few months ago and they kept talking about how the game is on a cloud server with load balancing so it leads me to my first question:

1. Is the reason that the tests they are running can’t find anything “suspicious” or wrong is that the game is working the way it is supposed to?

I pose this because the one of the Major changes I have seen since November is that the Bot population is almost been completely wiped out. So could there be some relation to the bots and the drop rates. So my second Question:

2. Could the Bots have affected the drop rates or “environment” of the areas?

If the game is built on a load balancing system, it leads me to think that so many bots removed, that it would have some “effect” to that land since it is a dynamic system. That the drop rates have dropped because there are not so many Bots raising it etc….

So Anet please consider this as part of your tests the cause and effects of a truly dynamic world.

Over the past month:

close to 100 fractals runs (this includes mob drops as well as chests):
- 0 exotics
-2 rares
-aprox 20 greens
-aprox. 20 blues
-untold amounts of junk

Aprox. 30 Dungeons (mob drops as well as chests):
-0 exotics
-0 rares (unless you count tonics, then about 3)
-Aprox. 30 greens
-Countless junk

Open World (across all zones @ roughly 7 hours per day gameplay):
-0 exotics
-5 rares
-50 greens
-Countless junk

Champions (roughly 15 total):
-0 exotics
-0 rares
-0 greens
-2 blues
-1 junk

Veterans (roughly 50 total)
-0 exotics
-0 rares
-0 greens
-2 blues
-10 junks

To this date have been playing the game since the first public beta and have never gotten a single exotic as a drop, only as zone completion reward. Most of my overall number of champions and vets may be conservative, I’m sure I’ve done more, but I can only clearly recount that many and the drops from them so I’ve omitted the “guessing” ones.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Over the past month:

close to 100 fractals runs (this includes mob drops as well as chests):
- 0 exotics
-2 rares
-aprox 20 greens
-aprox. 20 blues
-untold amounts of junk

Aprox. 30 Dungeons (mob drops as well as chests):
-0 exotics
-0 rares (unless you count tonics, then about 3)
-Aprox. 30 greens
-Countless junk

Open World (across all zones @ roughly 7 hours per day gameplay):
-0 exotics
-5 rares
-50 greens
-Countless junk

Champions (roughly 15 total):
-0 exotics
-0 rares
-0 greens
-2 blues
-1 junk

Veterans (roughly 50 total)
-0 exotics
-0 rares
-0 greens
-2 blues
-10 junks

To this date have been playing the game since the first public beta and have never gotten a single exotic as a drop, only as zone completion reward. Most of my overall number of champions and vets may be conservative, I’m sure I’ve done more, but I can only clearly recount that many and the drops from them so I’ve omitted the “guessing” ones.

Worst RPG in terms of loot I’ve ever played, and I’ve played a massive boatload of RPGs in the 20 years I’ve been playing games.

So, still no communication.

Drop rate is horrible, reward for time invested is horrible, Champions/Veterans drop nothing or garbage, inflation and market manipulation is putting items out of reach, many bugs still present, Magic Find works opposite of intended purpose…

If it continues as it is currently setup, lots of folks will eventually migrate OUT of the game. I for one, do not appreciate having my drop rates disappear just because of a limiting issue that can actually be fixed to work better.

Most folks I know enjoy the game but are irritated because the cost of wp and repairs outweighs drops received overall. Many are just deciding to move on to another game since there appears to be no end in sight for this problem. After all, folks like to get rewarded for their efforts but if no reward is offered often enough, they move on.

Infernia.9847:

Add me to the list of the “never seen an exotic drop”. After 600hours with WvW and 97% map completion… nadda. I can actually say rares are a rare for me since release. My account with alts running around doing DE’s, changing maps, hearts and exploring are all the same. After 1hour the loot is non-existant/trash. I made my exotic set by breaking the ones I got from map completion.
I had the inkling to try the last 4 races/classes combo I wanted but wasn’t sure whether to spend the money in the gem store 800gems per slot, or just get a new game/account.
Amazon had GW2 on sale for Christmas Day Only at 29.99. I went for it.
Funny how this new account with only one single character can hit the DR doing the personal story and completing maps etc. …. but if I change maps I start getting loot greens and blues and bags again. (it’s only a lvl30 atm).
Which is much better than my first account’s little level 30 alt can get by changing maps after that hour is up. And at 24g split between characters and trying to max the last 4 crafts… the old account is just flat broke. Forget crafting a second exotic set for the level 80. At least I have a good amount of mats.
I can’t say this is a large enough sample size to prove anything. However that new account has a working DR implementation whereas the account I have had since pre-release is simply depressing to log on to.
You guys can say it’s working as intended, but I really do think it could be an account or possibly a server based issue. The new account is on a different server. So much for a control to help narrow the issue down. I wanted to try a highly populated server for the new one.

I was lazy and just quoted myself from another thread. My main is a lvl80 Ranger and the armor I crafted was beserker all with pirate runes. So the runes are maxxed and add to that two rare mithril accessories with MF that I crafted. The rest of the accessories are karka + ruby rare. Just adding this in since it’s the only armor I have and it does have MF on it.
As I said the fact that the new account acts like it should and the moment DR hits if I move to another location the loot comes back. I actually made 2g on it so far and I’m levelling two crafts at the same time.
Whereas the old account (which I’m going to give to my four girls when the new one hits lvl80) I couldn’t make that much gold at level 30 no matter how hard I tried.
-only dungeon entered was to run 1 path of AC for blues a green and low level loot
-killed claw of Jormag 2 times for terrible drops of blue and green
-karka event chest and map completion only exotics ever been awarded
-have never seen a lodestone drop

Infernia.9847:

Infernia.9847:

Add me to the list of the “never seen an exotic drop”. After 600hours with WvW and 97% map completion… nadda. I can actually say rares are a rare for me since release. My account with alts running around doing DE’s, changing maps, hearts and exploring are all the same. After 1hour the loot is non-existant/trash. I made my exotic set by breaking the ones I got from map completion.
I had the inkling to try the last 4 races/classes combo I wanted but wasn’t sure whether to spend the money in the gem store 800gems per slot, or just get a new game/account.
Amazon had GW2 on sale for Christmas Day Only at 29.99. I went for it.
Funny how this new account with only one single character can hit the DR doing the personal story and completing maps etc. …. but if I change maps I start getting loot greens and blues and bags again. (it’s only a lvl30 atm).
Which is much better than my first account’s little level 30 alt can get by changing maps after that hour is up. And at 24g split between characters and trying to max the last 4 crafts… the old account is just flat broke. Forget crafting a second exotic set for the level 80. At least I have a good amount of mats.
I can’t say this is a large enough sample size to prove anything. However that new account has a working DR implementation whereas the account I have had since pre-release is simply depressing to log on to.
You guys can say it’s working as intended, but I really do think it could be an account or possibly a server based issue. The new account is on a different server. So much for a control to help narrow the issue down. I wanted to try a highly populated server for the new one.

I was lazy and just quoted myself from another thread. My main is a lvl80 Ranger and the armor I crafted was beserker all with pirate runes. So the runes are maxxed and add to that two rare mithril accessories with MF that I crafted. The rest of the accessories are karka + ruby rare. Just adding this in since it’s the only armor I have and it does have MF on it.
As I said the fact that the new account acts like it should and the moment DR hits if I move to another location the loot comes back. I actually made 2g on it so far and I’m levelling two crafts at the same time.
Whereas the old account (which I’m going to give to my four girls when the new one hits lvl80) I couldn’t make that much gold at level 30 no matter how hard I tried.
-only dungeon entered was to run 1 path of AC for blues a green and low level loot
-killed claw of Jormag 2 times for terrible drops of blue and green
-karka event chest and map completion only exotics ever been awarded
-have never seen a lodestone drop

Grats on the new account. We have been seeing that some accounts (actually the way the devs are treating this issue, most accounts) are working fine. You can see in this thread and in others here and at outside forums that people will report pretty much exactly what the drops should be. I think that you have just proven with a 2nd account that it’s not the play-styles we are using because I assume you play a fairly similar style on both accounts.

Thanks for reporting your experiences.

Bartas.4908:

Oh since someone mentioned MF. Didn’t do hard testing about it yet but it seems that MF value of less than 100% and over 200% is the most effective. Anything between 100 and 200% seems to make drope rate actually worse.

Maybe I make myself some MF exotic armor (just to be almost as efficient with killing stuff) and test it further but when I used some MF gear, sigil, food, banner AND MF booster I felt like a drop god.
Another interesting thing mentioned in quite few threads is that MF booster (the one you buy from BLTC or get as a daily reward or drop from BL chests) increases drop rate significantly. It may be because people using it got above 200% which would support my theory about 100-200% dead zone. Now, I am usually running with about 70-90% MF.

Interesting theory Bartas – and it’s certainly one we can test.

ChairGraveyard.2967:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Over the past month:

close to 100 fractals runs (this includes mob drops as well as chests):
- 0 exotics
-2 rares
-aprox 20 greens
-aprox. 20 blues
-untold amounts of junk

Aprox. 30 Dungeons (mob drops as well as chests):
-0 exotics
-0 rares (unless you count tonics, then about 3)
-Aprox. 30 greens
-Countless junk

Open World (across all zones @ roughly 7 hours per day gameplay):
-0 exotics
-5 rares
-50 greens
-Countless junk

Champions (roughly 15 total):
-0 exotics
-0 rares
-0 greens
-2 blues
-1 junk

Veterans (roughly 50 total)
-0 exotics
-0 rares
-0 greens
-2 blues
-10 junks

To this date have been playing the game since the first public beta and have never gotten a single exotic as a drop, only as zone completion reward. Most of my overall number of champions and vets may be conservative, I’m sure I’ve done more, but I can only clearly recount that many and the drops from them so I’ve omitted the “guessing” ones.

Worst RPG in terms of loot I’ve ever played, and I’ve played a massive boatload of RPGs in the 20 years I’ve been playing games.

Chair and Nay – The really frustrating part of this is that many, if not most, players are getting normal loot which means it could be an account-bound issue. These forum threads on this issue would explode if most accounts are affected.

Denokiller.4395:

I haven’t read every post so I don’t know if someone had brought up this point, but I was reading an interview the programmers did a few months ago and they kept talking about how the game is on a cloud server with load balancing so it leads me to my first question:

1. Is the reason that the tests they are running can’t find anything “suspicious” or wrong is that the game is working the way it is supposed to?

I pose this because the one of the Major changes I have seen since November is that the Bot population is almost been completely wiped out. So could there be some relation to the bots and the drop rates. So my second Question:

2. Could the Bots have affected the drop rates or “environment” of the areas?

If the game is built on a load balancing system, it leads me to think that so many bots removed, that it would have some “effect” to that land since it is a dynamic system. That the drop rates have dropped because there are not so many Bots raising it etc….

So Anet please consider this as part of your tests the cause and effects of a truly dynamic world.

Deno – This also is a very interesting theory. We know, for example, that this exact mechanic is in the game for Dynamic Events. So your questions are plausible.

WarMacheen.7124:

So, still no communication.

Drop rate is horrible, reward for time invested is horrible, Champions/Veterans drop nothing or garbage, inflation and market manipulation is putting items out of reach, many bugs still present, Magic Find works opposite of intended purpose…

lynspottery.6529:

If it continues as it is currently setup, lots of folks will eventually migrate OUT of the game. I for one, do not appreciate having my drop rates disappear just because of a limiting issue that can actually be fixed to work better.

Most folks I know enjoy the game but are irritated because the cost of wp and repairs outweighs drops received overall. Many are just deciding to move on to another game since there appears to be no end in sight for this problem. After all, folks like to get rewarded for their efforts but if no reward is offered often enough, they move on.

I truly thought we’d get some feedback. I suspect there just aren’t enough people having these issues for them to delay their work on the January and February updates.

Yes there are a lot of people experiencing this – but compared to hundreds of thousands of players it’s a small fraction.

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

The really frustrating part of this is that many, if not most, players are getting normal loot which means it could be an account-bound issue. These forum threads on this issue would explode if most accounts are affected.

Gamers are fickle, and typically lazy and it’s a competitive market. I’d wager for every person who has complained on the forums, there’s 100+ who can’t be bothered to complain or have simply left the game. I bought 20ish games on the steam sale over Xmas…all vying for my attention. When a game becomes work, or boring, it’s all too easy to move on to something else. I stay involved in this issue because GW2 did hit a sweet spot with me, but the lack of appropriate drops is a serious issue and constantly reminds me why I’ve avoided MMOs all these years.

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

Hence my reply to Lopez:

Since apparently ANet’s response to this issue is to stick to their assertion that they did not nerf drops; for the sake of discussion, a possible cause for this issue that grants ANet’s assertion might be a coincidental cause has occurred to me.

Lopez – Considering this all happened in November, when the free trial weekend also occurred, do the statistics possibly support a dilution effect?

What I mean is that since we don’t know player population and how it is ebbing and flowing – is it possible that the game acquired so many new players due to the free trial weekend that loot totals per player have been diluted to appear to be an overall reduction in drops?

I think much the same lines but not player population.

I am not sure if they are trolls or serious but one thing keeps poping up in the threads are the:

“I run 17 fractals a day while watching TV and get heaps of loot LTP noobs "

To maintain a stable economy Anet wants x drops say for rares thats 10,000 a day game wide.
Come November that Rare “pool” is now shared with fractals as well as the previous areas to allow for the rares/ectos etc dropping in the fractals the loot in the other areas of the game must be reduced to maintain the same level.

Anet sees 10,000 rares dropping pre november and post november and says there is no problem nothing has changed.

People who dont run the fotm gravy train see a change from a rare a day to a rare a month and are justafiably saying WTK.

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

Grats on the new account. We have been seeing that some accounts (actually the way the devs are treating this issue, most accounts) are working fine. You can see in this thread and in others here and at outside forums that people will report pretty much exactly what the drops should be. I think that you have just proven with a 2nd account that it’s not the play-styles we are using because I assume you play a fairly similar style on both accounts.

Thanks for reporting your experiences.

Yes I do play both accounts exactly the same manner.
-never kill the same things over and over
-move around a lot and use waypoints very infrequently (except during personal story)
-try to complete a map before moving on to the next while waiting to continue personal story(get to appropriate level)
-participate in any and every DE that I find while running around.

The old account is still cursed while the new one works properly. I have run into DR while running DE’s on the new account, I move and it’s gone. Whereas on the old account it just doesn’t ever seem to go away.
Like I said the old account is depressing so I play it less now. I’ve gone two weeks without logging in and still have bad loot coming back. Unfortunately it has maxxed bag slots and maxxed bank slots… Not paying to do that a second time.

Differences btwn accounts:
Old account – magic find from superior pirate runes + two rare mithril accessories w/ MF (main only) but the alts have no MF and they have same issue as main.
-playtime greater than 1 hour = horrible loot(moving or switching to alt does nothing)
-rare to get rares, never an exotic
-server that is moderately populated
New account – single character only and no MF
-server that is highly populated.

This is my first post on these forums, and I have been an active player since pre-launch.

I have noticed a substantial decrease in drop rates over the last few months. I have never been much of a farmer, but on occassion I will travel to Cursed Shore to try to pick up a bit of karma. Pre-November update I would consistently find 2-3 rares per event chain. I have not seen a rare drop at all (in open world) in the past few weeks. In fact, I am lucky to even see greens drop. It is mostly porous bones and white trash. I have never spent more than 30-45 minutes in the area, so I can’t imagine that I should be hitting the diminishing return system.

The only exotics I have ever found have come from the Karka event chest, completing maps, and 1 from fractals of the mist (which occurred on the first day the dungeon was live and nothing since). Rares on the other hand still consistently drop for me in fotm, with at least 3-4 in a complete fractal level.

I do not believe that this problem is only for a handful of players. I just feel that most players (like myself until right now) just don’t post their concerns to the forums. They just deal with it, or leave the game entirely.

I just wanted to point out, I went back to GW1 today and played 5 dungeons. Out of those 5, 3 of them dropped what everyone in that game considered to be “rare” (which in this game equates to exotic). That game has no MF, no DR, yet the rare items remain rare but as my simple experiment showed, they are obtainable. I want my GW1 loot system back. There were plenty of complaints about the game, but loot drop was rarely one of them.

Went in for about 30 minutes today, did penitent/sheltered a couple times got mostly garbage…then removed the remainder of my MF gear (2x exquisite opal jewels now replaced with exquisite chrysocola jewels.), so now all I have is the 3% from the Karka trinket. When next I test, I’ll be testing with essentially no MF. I don’t expect to see any noticeable change.

Hardest part for ArenaNet in reading some of these numbers is some people are counting white items as junk, when they are not junk only perceived as junk. Makes it harder for the rest of us who counted properly.

I’ve been running dungeons regularly with my friends since the start of October, and average between 4 and 8 dungeon paths a night. Drop rates were decent for a good while (about 3+ rares a night), but seemed to fall off around mid November. Recently the drop rate seems to have gone down the toilet, however. Over the past couple weeks, my guild group and I have been lucky to see 1 rare per night, even with magic find food/banner/guild buff. I’m not sure exactly what the deal is, but it is kind of insane going from 1 rare per path to not even 1 rare in 4+ paths, across a group of 5 people.

I’ve gotten used to just expecting a bundle of blues from the chests in dungeons. It’s supremely disappointing when you don’t even get so much as a green from an entire dungeon’s worth of chests.

If the assumptions are correct and any loot drop discrepancy might be “account related,” that worries me. I cannot afford to purchase another game for a new account just to fix my loot drop problems. If this is an account related issue, I am not happy and want it fixed.

wildcode.5403:

Hardest part for ArenaNet in reading some of these numbers is some people are counting white items as junk, when they are not junk only perceived as junk. Makes it harder for the rest of us who counted properly.

I find it hard to believe that ArenaNet cannot pull the data relevant to loot drops on any player in the game. Only they know what the drops should be. If they can confirm what is claimed, why do we have to justify it? Why do we have to provide granular data? If they cannot confirm what is claimed in this thread then all the data collected here is useless conjecture, unsubstantiated claims and nothing more than stalling.

Perhaps collectively calling whites “junk” is poorly worded by some as junk has a specific meaning in the game, but I feel perfectly fine calling all junk, whites and blues collectively “garbage”, especially when some of the whites sell at the vendors for less than the “junk” and with crafting in the state it’s in, salvaging isn’t a much better option.

I used a full Black Lion harvesting sickle looking for passion flowers today. Got 15 fruit, but no flowers….disappointing.

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

Chair and Nay – The really frustrating part of this is that many, if not most, players are getting normal loot which means it could be an account-bound issue. These forum threads on this issue would explode if most accounts are affected.

The forums did explode right after the patch. In typical fashion, “They” merged all threads into the megathread, then “They” just locked the megathread without a response and created this one in order to make it seem like it’s not an issue (gotta fill that rug up, I think there’s a quota).

Firefly.5982:

My 2 cents.

Dungeons:

Exotic armor/weapons – none
Rare armor/weapons – barely (MAYBE 1 in 30-40 runs).
Rare crafting mats (like molten lodestone/core in CoF) – about 1-2 every 1-5 runs
Blues and greens – equal, about 5 per run
White armor/weapon – about 5 per run

Loot from Champions, bosses and event chests:

Blues and greens only. Never gotten any rare or exotic. Bosses and champions often empty.

Ecto Salvage rate:

You can tell me, what you will, but it is down. I used to get at least 1, mostly 2 and often 3 out of 1 rare. Now I get often 0, mostly 1, sometimes 2 and barely ever 3. I salvage ectos daily, I used to buy rares of the TP and salvage for ectos for profit – I don’t do that anymore, since the salvage rate IS lower and it is not profitable anymore.

Magic Find:

Magic find definitely does NOT increase droprate. I have tested this plenty in my long farming hours. It often happens, that JUST after taking of all my MF gear, I get a rare drop >.> Since droprates on rares/exotics, rare mats etc. are so super low though, this is really a bummer – without MF I still barely EVER get rares as drops.

I have played about 630 hrs now (2 month break since launch) and have mentally given up on getting rares/exotics from actually playing the game aka drops being viable. Which makes me sad

My final thought:

At least bosses, champions and event chests/chests in dungeons should give viable loot, that makes you go “Yai!” for having participated and successfully beaten the content! It takes time, team effort and skill – so where’s the reward??

I am okay with the other droprates – of course everyone wishes for them to be higher But the ones above are the ones that actually anger me. I have gone over to ditching an event before it ends, because I know I won’t get anything anyway. It makes me sad, that I don’t care about the dungeon chests anymore, because I know I’ll only get blues and greens anyway. Might as well skip bosses, that you don’t have to kill, right?
I don’t feel like that’s right. Thanks for reading <3

I’ll agree that the Ecto drop rate feels nerfed… I used to average probably 2 ecto per salvage of a rare.

Now it’s probably an average of 1 or so. Yes, I do occasionally get 2 or 3 ecto still but this is counteracted by a more often salvage of 0. (Which was very rare in the past.)

I feel like the lower drop rate is to blame for the drastic increase in ecto prices.

You could say that the increase in ecto cost is primarily due to infusions/ascended, but keep in mind that people wanting Ascended gear are also farming the Fractals (which are supposed to have higher drop rates of rares).

If you ask me, ecto salvage rates were dropped due to the Fractals increasing the drop rate of rare items.

A drop from an average of 2 ecto per salvage to 1 ecto per rare may seem insignificant… Until you realize that that’s HALF of what it used to be.

wildcode.5403:

Hardest part for ArenaNet in reading some of these numbers is some people are counting white items as junk, when they are not junk only perceived as junk. Makes it harder for the rest of us who counted properly.

Strangely enough, I rarely get actual “white” items, it usually is just the vendor junk.

Leamas.5803:

wildcode.5403:

Hardest part for ArenaNet in reading some of these numbers is some people are counting white items as junk, when they are not junk only perceived as junk. Makes it harder for the rest of us who counted properly.

I find it hard to believe that ArenaNet cannot pull the data relevant to loot drops on any player in the game. Only they know what the drops should be. If they can confirm what is claimed, why do we have to justify it? Why do we have to provide granular data? If they cannot confirm what is claimed in this thread then all the data collected here is useless conjecture, unsubstantiated claims and nothing more than stalling.

Perhaps collectively calling whites “junk” is poorly worded by some as junk has a specific meaning in the game, but I feel perfectly fine calling all junk, whites and blues collectively “garbage”, especially when some of the whites sell at the vendors for less than the “junk” and with crafting in the state it’s in, salvaging isn’t a much better option.

I used a full Black Lion harvesting sickle looking for passion flowers today. Got 15 fruit, but no flowers….disappointing.

And consider that they increased the drop rate of flowers in that recent patch…
That’s kind of sad, really, as they’re required for infusions.

I think the real argument is that drop rates have been nerfed.
ArenaNet is stating that “drops are working as expected.”

The two statements aren’t contradictory.

If ArenaNet purposefully nerfed drop rates (like ecto salvage rates, dye drop rates, etc.) in order to make said items more valuable (and likely increase Gem to Gold purchases), then drop rates are, indeed, working exactly as expected.

Yes, I know dye drops were temporarily “too high” but drop rates are now much lower than they were at launch.

Some people may have unlocked all dyes on all their characters, but most haven’t…

YouTube is full of proof of how loot used to drop, just need someone to record these events again now and show the difference.

I remember farming for my t3 cultural pieces (52g worth), took me two days @ pent/shelter, but now it takes an hour, or so to hit 75s. Running 6-10 events without having to sell off items is pathetic.

I don’t understand how they found and fixed the dye drop “bug” so fast and yet they need more proof than we can even fathom to produce, to acknowledge this one.

I have an idea. I did more testing yesteerday and I think I know exactly how to replicate when DR hits you. So I thought I could fraps my typical “farming” session with added counters for loot/coin.
It could serve as a reference for those who suffer from perma DR. I think my drop rate, when playing carefully, is quite OK or at least normal.

I am leaving for a few days trip tomorrow so I can fraps it today and proccess it when I come back.

Over the past weeks i use both my Ele and my guardian to farm in Orr and fractals,
In Fractals my Guardian can get at least 1 rare per fractals with 0-10% MF only BUT
3 Fractals… My ele has nothing , No Rare, no exotic not even the ones from the chest
And my team in Fractals every other class has a ascended Item from Maw… but Me… seriously…. Is something wrong ? does any1’s else Ele has this problem ? because my guild has this problem

I’ve never been able to get an ecto out of salvaging exotics.

I will now finally post here as well.
Since the pre-start of GW2 i used to play together with my friend and guild mate. We started to create our own guild, working on it, because we wanted the freedom of not belonging to a bigger group with requirements.
While i always and still say that MF doesn´t make a big difference, my friend used a lot of MF gear on the first character.
The point is, that it did make a difference in the first 2 months of the game. While i had to struggle on the first 2 level 80 characters to get any useful gear, that wasn´t crafted, my friend used to get exotic equipment drops farily regularly.
But someting changed. For nearly 6 weeks, so the time since the November update, We got only a handful rares and not a single exotic drop anymore.
And the most significant change is, that now i am the one who gets the better drops. I get nearly 3 times more rare drops than my friend, which makes me wonder why. It could be that my account isn´t one of the unlucky accounts. And still i can now tell, that the amount of equipment drops are getting worse. A few days ago i created a new character, while my friend supports on a level 30 mesmer. While we´re playing our way through the Norn starter area, the best equipment i got so far, is a crafted set. I only made it to level 10 so far, but still. We managed to complete Wayfarer Foothills, as we wanted to rewards for map completion.
It´s not that someone could say, we´re grinding only one map for all of the time. Together we got 6 characters to level 80. And we didn´t level them all at the same time, so we did change the maps from time to time.
We have never been farming a lot, even if it may be needed to do so, to get the legendary weapons we want.
But within the first month my friend and me collected enough money to purchase the 2000 gems in the ingame store for the deluxe edition upgrade. We only got this upgrade for my account, as i was unable to find a retailer that sold me one, but that´s another story. Fact is, we collected more than 18g in the first month after the game release.
But i witness that the amount of drops and especially income is getting lower with each update. I will have to try it with todays update, but i´m pretty sure that it will follow this “tradition”.
It may be a nice thing if you can get nice amount of drops in Dungeons and especially in FotM. But for players, like me and my mate, who usually aren´t invited to dungeon groups, it´s getting fairly hard to obtain any real valuable drops at all nowadays.
But it´s hard enough for the two of us, as we´re playing together with having a 9 hours time difference in RL. So most of the time either one of us is fairly tired and not necessarily able to concentrate enough for a Dungeon. That´s why we only got two Dungeons done until today.
Yesterday we completed the Story mode of the Arah Dungeon. Both of us haven´t had any MF gear equipped anymore.
In total we got:
Exotic equipment: none
Rare equipment: 1 drop from a chest
Green equipment: 11 drops from lootable monsters, no champions or chests
Blue euqipment: 31 from lootable monsters, champions and chests.
White equipment: 17 from lootable monsters, no champions or chests
Grey items (junk) : 248 from lootable monsters and champions
Money from drops: 17s56c in total
Money in total after merch: 31s21c
The money we earned was shared by both of us.

I agree with all the players that say it´s not fair if someone leaves a dungeon group before finishing it. It´s neither fair for the player that has to leave, as he doesn´t get rewarded for his hard work, nor is it fair for the group, that has to struggle even moe afterwards. That´s the reason why we usually don´t join bigger groups. But most of the dungeons aren´t really enjoyable for only us, as the repair fees are definitely higher than the dropped income.
I was waiting for the release of GW2 from the very first moment of it´s announcement and i was really excited when it was released. But from the first steps of our characters to now, the excitement had to make room for the disappointment. We´re also currently looking for a new game, which we could enjoy together, and as soon as we found one, we´ll sadly leave GW2 behind. As it gets to hard to get enough money to enjoy the game fully.
And from the players we knew in GW1, only 3 are remaining in GW2. about 90% of them already left the game, which makes it even harder to take part in the content, that requires bigger groups.
If i have to worry if i can pay the repair fees and the costs for the Waypoint mapping then it´s no fun anymore. At that point the game became work and lost a lot of the enjoyable abilities.

DR code will eventually break the game like PvP matchmaking did for CoD/Modern Warfare series.

Poor code implementation that is trying to work effectively in a chaotic system – COMPUTER SAYS NO!

In my opinion ANet will deny this was a bad idea, just like the comparative developers have over several CoD series.

Thousands of players cannot be wrong ANet. DO DA MAF.

P.S. How many replies/threads does it take for ANet to finally agree that DR needs to go?!

Death Reincarnated.3570:

DR code will eventually break the game like PvP matchmaking did for CoD/Modern Warfare series.
…

P.S. How many replies/threads does it take for ANet to finally agree that DR needs to go?!

Oh I remember many games where wrong code, not corrected in time, ruined the fun for many gamers. In said games did little to nothing to fix things in time and those, otherwise great titles, are forgotten by now or went F2P. Problem is that with such complicated code as MMO requires it sometimes very hard to find a bug, especially so not clear one, but it seems not be be the case here.

To answer your question. It is common for developers of any game not to admit their mistakes. If DR will go or another fix is implemented we most probably never hear about it.

Bartas.4908:

To answer your question. It is common for developers of any game not to admit their mistakes. If DR will go or another fix is implemented we most probably never hear about it.

If it ever gets fixed we will definitely know of it. A rush of posts from players stating they are not feared by the DR boogeyman will make it as obvious as the ammount of complaints currently floating around the forum.

ANet has, on several occasions, written that they need to take care of their “economy”; therefore, DR is certainly part of the economy (i.e. TP). Simply removing DR at this point will most likely break the economy, the problem however is similar to that of ‘thermal runaway’; the longer this continues the worse it will get.

I will point out one thing that making raw money by doing dungeons (providing I have a skilled team and few wipes/repair costs) does actually work for me off of the sole function of the wonderous bags. I get them on about 75% of the bosses and the money from that along with the end reward usually makes me a profit, albeit a small one, it is a profit nonetheless. I think the addition of the wonderous bags to dungeons was the single best update yet. In one day I can turn over 1-5g. Not a huge profit by anyone’s standards, but it’s definitely possible. I just wanted to share that to show that at least some parts of loot drops works for me.

If it was only about making gold, I’d agree its a good solution.. IF anet hadnt said that they didnt want the open world to be a significantly worse source of drops, which it obviously is. Its horribly worse.

I dont care much for gold, I’d much prefer to equip my chars with stuff I make/find, and not having to run dungeons a bazgillion times and its much more fun to find the gear than buying/crafting it anyway.

Blackwolfe.5649:

If it was only about making gold, I’d agree its a good solution.. IF anet hadnt said that they didnt want the open world to be a significantly worse source of drops, which it obviously is. Its horribly worse.

I dont care much for gold, I’d much prefer to equip my chars with stuff I make/find, and not having to run dungeons a bazgillion times and its much more fun to find the gear than buying/crafting it anyway.

I agree, I just thought it fair to include my experiences with the money drops too.

Hey all and thanks for all the feedback.

With “an expansion’s worth of content” coming in January/February and with Colin Johanson’s info that new WvW maps are coming in February and with the Korean stock analyst who has proven pretty correct in forecasting upcoming news for GW2 announcing an Expansion in the 2nd half of 2013 on top of all these free monthly content updates there is obviously a lot going on at the dev studio.

Add to this upcoming sPvP updates such as eSport and spectator integration I suspect that there’s a lot coming up.

Colin J also mentioned game engine and deployment upgrades. (I am getting this information from the latest GuildCast episode where many of these quotes apparently are coming from the Support Ticket section of these forums. It would take me time to find the links to these quotes.)

Is it possible that, in true ANet fashion, that the “fix” for these drop issues may be part of the upcoming updates and that they aren’t saying anything because “It’s not ready” yet? I know this is a reach and is really not supported by Customer Service actions. It’s really just speculation.

I really hope that all of this new back-end stuff is going to also resolve the drop issues and that all this new content is not going to be dropped in on top of the problems.

I have some new run information (complete with mob ID) to compile and report. I went to a new zone and specifically tested Bartas suggestion about magic find – 0% MF vs. 84% MF. I will get this posted as soon as I can – however, I’m preparing for an appointment with the surgeon today so I don’t know when my run report will be available.

Looking overall at the notes, it appears that I did indeed see benefits from MF using Bartas’ suggestion. Now we need to work out a way to test Diminishing Returns and find out what it takes to stop bumping heads with it in open-world play. (Hopefully we can figure out something that doesn’t involve a server reset. :/ )

Looking at my notes, I might have mistakenly totaled my MF wrong — I’ll have to log in-game and check my armor but I might have only been running with 69% MF which technically falls out of the sweet spot. I can work on that.

I lost track of my farming but the curious thing is that I got a lot of drops between my first “only drops essences” and today’s farming which is back to “only drops essences”.

Penitent path farming + Grenth event/pre-events
Duration: 45 min + 30 min
Results: 3 essences
Notes: I had 38% / 28% Magic Find from equipment, omnomberry bar, and major sigil of luck. All essences dropped from penitent path events. I did not use banner and I ran out of bars so used a strawberry ghost which is just 10% of magic find under a boon. I had a boon running full time though.

Dragon events

Tequatl and Shatterer. Shatterer dropped a yellow item.

A few things of note: I did some farming yesterday which I did not record and got plenty of yellow items. Today seems to be bad “rng day”. I have been very good at “tagging” enemies today and there have been tons of drops. They are just junk items.

I have been running MF all day, roughly 68%, and gotten massive amounts of drops, all junk/whites/ few blues. Did Jormag early this morning and just a few mins ago and got 1 green rarity crafting jewel, the rest blues. I’ve been trying to bounce around zones and not actually “farm” anything but it doesn’t seem to be resetting the DR at all, in fact it seems to be getting worse. From early this morning until now my rate of blues has dropped significantly.

I am about to login now and I try to count how much exactly MF I have. Few days in a row I got plenty of rares/exotics from usual DEs + average 5g per hour from selling trash (greys/whites/blues/greens).

@Aproposs Of Fire
I suggested that anything below 100% and over 200% MF seems to be most beneficial so you using 6X% MF should “feel” better drops.

So, I spend the morning in Frostgorge, appropriate level for my 80 war, several events (which ofc I had to run solo), several Veterans taken down, spent 2 hours and got One blue.. a bow. Very few drops at all, off anything.

Got sick of it, decided to run back to Hoelbrek and avoid the waypoint cost. One shotted a level 6 Svanir and pulled a level 75 rare Norn Dagger.

Risk v Reward. Yah. Missing in Action in GW2.

Ok new update, not sure what changed other than my character. Swapped to my ranger in MF gear and some food, ran AC path 1 (MF % was aprox 46-ish), 3 golds, 2 greens, 4 or 5 blues, and wonderous bags off the 2 bosses we actually did since it was a speedclear.

This was the only time so far today I got good drops was in the dungeon. I left the dungeon, went screwing around through a few zones on my way to my farming spot in frostgorge (using same character, same buffs, same gear) got to my farming spot, drops went lower and lower the farther I went until reaching my farming spot my drops were back to DR. Just to make sure it wasn’t that specific spot or zone I went elsewhere and drops remained in DR.