Guild Wars 2

This is my findings in Frostgorge Sound. I entered with my Mesmer at lvl 75 and kept track of just the Veteran mobs there. This does not include any mobs from the Claw of Jormag event. And for the most part all of these were solo’d by myself. There were 2-3 that I had some help, but I didn’t keep track of which ones. (also, I’m not positive on some of the names, since in battle I didn’t have time to right it down. And once the mob is dead, the name is gone)

Veteran Tribal Berserker – nothing
Veteran IceBrood Berserker – nothing
Veteran Dredge Oscillator – nothing
Veteran Dredge Reverbiator – white claws
Veteran Dredge Reverbiator – nothing
Veteran Eagle Griffon – nothing
Veteran Dredge Diving Suit – nothing
Veteran Blue Ooze – white leather strap
Veteran Troll – nothing
Veteran Corrupted Quaggan – 2 white trophys
Veteran Icebrood seer – nothing
Veteran Icebrood Claymore – nothing
Veteran Icebrood Claymore – nothing
Veteran Dredge – blue armor piece
Veteran Alpine Skelk – nothing.

15 is not a large “sample”. But after SO many of “nothing”, why even bother. Those last 3-4, I had to force myself to fight simply for the tracking purposes. And thats when the 1 blue showed up. But there were several Veterans I just avoided because I didn’t want to waste my time.

Joe.5018:

Now, because of what THIS thread is about, players seem to have become inwardly focussed (can’t blame them), leaving lowly (and new) players to fight their way through a very difficult, unrewarding world where the only way to advance, is to power level a toon and then live off dungeon-running to acquire whatever items they desire.

Cutting right to the basics, life before 80 is about levelling, you explore and hit as many hearts and events as possible to help you level. But once you hit 80, the game becomes about accumulation of wealth. You need tokens, money, and other odds and ends for the top of the line weapon and armour skin. You also need to keep up an income to play for daily expenses of traveling around and doing a variety of things at times to break the monotony.

Yes everybody starts off playing to 80, but once at 80 you start playing for wealth and any change to the mechanics that assist us is felt. Unfortunately because at 80 people start playing for wealth, they avoid areas that will not help them towards that goal so you end up with areas that appear deserted.

This bug, plus a number of other factors, is making the game less community focused because it is not in anyones best interest to hang around in an area when they are getting low quality/quantity drops. For instance, I am not going to hang around a series of events making as low as 38 copper an hour (which has happened at times, DR maybe?) when I can go do my gathering runs and make 2.5 gold in about the same time. And then there is the running around killing stuff, whether it be farming for fines, or just out right blood lust, with this loot bug it is easier to go gathering high end resources and sell it on TP using the profit to buy the fines you need.

Elana.2584:

Now, out of 99 monsters (sorry, thought I’d kept track of 100..):

• 51 (FIFTY-ONE) gave NOTHING. Absolutely Nothing.
• 11 gave armor/weapons ( 6 WHITE, 5 BLUES)
• 0 greens
• 0 rares (didn’t expect to get any anyways…)
• 0 exotics (what are those again??)

Can I play on your account, you almost had a 2:1 kill:drop ratio, where most times I have a 6:1 kill:drop ratio, or sometimes even worse

Infernia.9847:

I was wondering if your database speculation was about the total drop number from each item rarity tier. Amount of exotic that drops = X , amount of rares = Y, etc…
I was thinking about this and it seems plausible that these amounts are reached but the disparity is ‘where’ the items are going. Say the highest percentage goes to those in the FoTM dungeon, then other dungeons, dragons, and on down the line until open world players are left with a very small amount of the original X items to be distributed among a large population.
Combine that low loot pool with DR and the result is what seems to be a permanent DR situation.
Just a wild guess with no numbers to back it up. It was the one thing that stuck in my mind when trying to figure out why the devs see no issue while the players do.

There’s merit in this theory, but we have to remember dungeons and the like are instanced areas, so one would have to guess there’s a loot table for dungeons, whereas the world that people spawn out into has it’s own loot table. Considering there’s many more people out in the live world in any area at any given time, you’d think that there would be a much larger loot pool depending on where they were, level, etc. but I see a disparity between what drops in a dungeon for instance, and what people seem to be getting in the live world. I believe this is where the “permanent DR” scenario is coming in.

Dragons are still a live world feature, and even though the drops are generally crap from the end chest, it doesn’t stop people going after the adds that the dragon spawns mid-battle.. which I’ve often found have MUCH better loot than the end chest will typically offer. This is something that needs a fix as well, because the numbers I’m seeing turning up for dragon events aren’t that great anymore.

After I didn’t farm for a week i farmed Cursed Shore events for like an hour and something today. I know it isnt that long but i thought i’d share.

I was using a MF banner, a MF bar, MF gear and a MF booster ( lol that’s a lot of MF in one sentence) and for all the events I did, I did not receive a SINGLE rare. Nothing, nada!

Fix your game anet please, this is getting beyond frustrating

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

Infernia.9847:

Say the highest percentage goes to those in the FoTM dungeon, then other dungeons, dragons, and on down the line until open world players are left with a very small amount of the original X items to be distributed among a large population.

(ran out of room – see above for Valandil’s post)

I agree with both Infernia and Valandil

What about this: Imagine there is a Master Loot Table from which no drops are directly taken. Instead, each general loot table draws on the Master table.

Now for the Master table let’s say that each lootable item has a classification something like this:

• A: Named or highest class Exotic
• B: Normal exotic
• C: (Named?) or highest class Rare
• D: Normal rare
• E: Master with highest value rune or sigils

Also there are classifications for T-level mats and trophies and even tokens or whatever.

So assume that there is also a “reset” or “timer” schedule for the Master table … maximum # of each item. As time moves forward less of each item is available for the general loot tables to draw upon.

Just a note here – we don’t know if the “timer” is reset for all items after 24 hours or if there are individual timers for each lootable item class.

So at the moment when the mob HP = 0, an algorithm is evaluated to find out what to drop and from which of the various general loot tables. I suppose this algorithm is where DR is included.

The algorithm will ask: Based on what level the player is and what level the mob is and other things and what % of DR is applied, can I drop a class A item? No, 0%; Class B? No, 0%; Class C? Yes, roll (RNG) to find which item in Class C and multiply by .0x% chance, x=result, is that item available in Master table? Yes so drop it and subtract 1 from the Master table; Do we drop a 2nd item? Yes, what classes can we draw on? {classes left to draw on depending on that first evaluation that includes DR}; then start asking again for each allowable class and we get to: Can I drop a Class R item? Yes, (do the above calcs) x=result, is that item available in the Master table? No, are there any other classes to try to drop from? No. End Algorithm and stop dropping items.

But now we also have chests and other circumstances that might require that there MUST be more than one item dropped in that case, so instead of “End Algorithm and stop dropping items” at the end above, the evaluation starts at the top again and continues looping as long as there is a MUST DROP ANOTHER ITEM requirement.

continued due to space

continued from above:

Since this is all speculation I really don’t want to take this farther but this is kind of what I imagine the database looks like.

IF this is the case, then we might assume that at the reset time of the Master Table there might be insufficient quantities of some classes of items so of course they wouldn’t get dropped when they run out. This might be because there are more drops being issued than should be because of bots. Or because there are more players making more kills or loot table requests than was expected.

DR I think wouldn’t be directly dependent on the number of items available – it would be dependent on what classes of items are allowed to drop in that circumstance.

Let’s say that DR is an ever increasing number from 0 – 100. As the player advances the DR # advances. In this example, lets say the player has a DR # of 48 and that still allows them to draw on ALL classes of loot – that is the primary variable for DR. The player has the chance of getting items from classes A, B, C and so on.

But lets say that classes “A”, “B”, thru class “I” have all been issued and are now empty in the Master table. NOW the secondary variable is directly affecting the drop. So the player gets mid-lvl mats and/or grey trophies. It feels like the player has at or near 100 DR because the high end loot pool is depleted even though they only have a DR of 48.

What we might be asking is: “What is causing the higher end items to be depleted”? “Should there be a higher quantity of those items so that they don’t get depleted as quickly”?

At this point you can wonder what other questions to ask – BUT remember that this is just speculation and is almost certainly not how the database is set up. This is just an example.

rant: But I’m going to let my pet peeve show here a bit and say that there might be too many bots which is depleting the loot pool.

So the questions I am asking are: “What #@$^^#& players are keeping the bots in business ?!?!!1” “Don’t they understand it doesn’t matter how much gold they have if they can’t get anything good to drop because they are encouraging the bots to continue to steal the drops from them?”

Illegal gold buyers who have a 12 DR are getting drops like they have a 89 DR because of the bots they are buying from. But that also goes for the rest of us… we don’t have a 100 DR but we sure as puppy puppy are getting drops like we do because of the puppy puppy puppy PUPPY illegal gold buyers. /rant

Edit to add more puppies.

I can’t help but laugh. The lack of official response is typical of ANet at this point.

The frustration from the playerbase is palpable… I wonder how long it will take, how many players will be lost, how much revenue will be sacrificed, before ANet realizes their mistake.

Ah, well. My scores on Medal of Honor Warfighter have never looked better. I’ll keep checking in here for a (continued lack of) official response regarding the single largest factor in many players quitting the game.

edit: Props on much of the data submitted by the players here. Maybe ANet should hire you guys, seeing as how they clearly lack the ability to compile the data they needed themselves.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

There’s merit in this theory, but we have to remember dungeons and the like are instanced areas, so one would have to guess there’s a loot table for dungeons, whereas the world that people spawn out into has it’s own loot table. Considering there’s many more people out in the live world in any area at any given time, you’d think that there would be a much larger loot pool depending on where they were, level, etc. but I see a disparity between what drops in a dungeon for instance, and what people seem to be getting in the live world. I believe this is where the “permanent DR” scenario is coming in.

If this is the case why don’t they just say so? I personally don’t like such a system because its designed purely around the economy of the game and as players increase the number of exotics found per player would decrease thereby creating more demand and rising prices.

You are correct, in that the total number of items should increase as the player count increases which would make the economy more static.

Let’s refocus this thread please, we’ve been getting some pretty decent info coming in and I’d like for it to stay as focused as possible so they can get data and not have to wade through all the other posts.

Today’s results: 66% MF
Edit: adding in total playtime so it gives a more detailed view. Aprox 5 hours

Only done open world events and 2 AC runs so far, but had some info and figured I’d pass it along-

Open World-

3 Champions- 1 blue drop
10 Veterans- 0 drops
regular mobs-
2 rares
17 greens
30 blues
5 whites
over 50 vendor trash
Roughly 20 crafting mats regular rarity & 10 fine crafting mats, no rares

AC path 1&2
Champions- all but 1 dropped a wonderous bag, and all but 1 bag had tears in it
0 rares
1 green
2 blues
0 whites
0 vendor trash
1 crafting mat of regular rarity

Dungeon mobs
0 rares
6 greens
8 blues
lost count of whites and vendor trash
Various appropriate level crafting mats (none rare or fine)

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

rant: But I’m going to let my pet peeve show here a bit and say that there might be too many bots which is depleting the loot pool.

So the questions I am asking are: “What #@$^^#& players are keeping the bots in business ?!?!!1” “Don’t they understand it doesn’t matter how much gold they have if they can’t get anything good to drop because they are encouraging the bots to continue to steal the drops from them?”

Illegal gold buyers who have a 12 DR are getting drops like they have a 89 DR because of the bots they are buying from. But that also goes for the rest of us… we don’t have a 100 DR but we sure as puppy puppy are getting drops like we do because of the puppy puppy puppy PUPPY illegal gold buyers. /rant

Edit to add more puppies.

But there HAS to be a better way of dealing with the bots and gold sellers. Bots can run 24/7 and while they get hit with DR, through sheer volume of time they still get stuff much faster than regular players. Perhaps a better way to put the bots out of business is to monitor user gold and investigate those users who suddenly have a huge influx of gold that didn’t come from the TP or gem store…instantly lock such accounts, then give one warning plus loss of the gold for first infraction, banned account for the second. It won’t take long for the gold sellers to wither and die, while at the same time it won’t affect the vast majority of users, won’t kill morale and won’t have a huge affect on prices in the TP.

My worry is that the gold sellers aren’t truly Anet’s concern and it’s just more smoke and mirrors.

I have, over thelast month, sue to time restrictions been relegated to doing the daily in Kessex Hills event chain and a few dragon events every day. I was under the reduced drop rate for a long time. Then something interesting happened.
After 2 days off on vacation, i returned to level up a warrior in Dredgehaunt Cliffs, starting at level 36. 2 Guild mates accompanied me. We completed the area over 2 hours. I received no junk materials, 2 gold drops (level 39 & 42), one of them from a Veteran in the southern grawl fort with the cages filled with chests. One exotic drop from a stag in the central area. Every CHampion and veteran dropped something. It seemed my DR was ended.
Then i went to Harathi to level to 46 (from 45.3) before upgrading my armor and weapons to continue with the storyline quests. normal drops until the last wave of Harathi to attack the southern point. after that my drops went back to below average. No, i dont have exact details, but the drop in quality was immediately apparent. after the event chain ended i went to Frostgorge for Claw event. Mined the first Ori node, and whala, the rest dissappeared as they did before my time off break occured.
I think you need to stop continuous farming any particular enemy, and move around a map instead of parking in one area or doing the same event chains over and over.
I have tried to pay attention to this parameter, and guess what, my drops are back to what they were before i started my daily grind run of the daily and dragons.
I think the dissappearing node sites are directly related to the DR mechanism, and the DR mechanism tracks your movement and enemy type kills. I have no idea what the parameters are, but i think for a casual player like me relegated to short times online, and trying to be as productive as possible during that time, it was what started me on the DR radar. So move around, dont repeat event chains more than once per day, and try to put another type of enemy kill in a mob scene after about 35-40 kills of one type. That has been working for me.
I think the DR set up to discourage bots has inadvertantly been set at a too low tip point that is reeling in the casual player along with the bots of the world.
IMHO, play the game instead of farming the hell out of one area, you will be rewarded.

Sligh.2789:

So move around, dont repeat event chains more than once per day, and try to put another type of enemy kill in a mob scene after about 35-40 kills of one type. That has been working for me.
I think the DR set up to discourage bots has inadvertantly been set at a too low tip point that is reeling in the casual player along with the bots of the world.
IMHO, play the game instead of farming the hell out of one area, you will be rewarded.

This seems to help some, but not others. I’ve never been much of a farmer as I don’t do well with a great deal of repetition. However, even moving around zones, doing random events, killing everything, deer, spiders, rats, rabbits, etc, I still get mostly vendor junk. Other than a few events I like, which I might do a couple times if I happen to be in the area, the only time I usually repeat events is if the event failed, which should not trigger DR IMO. I’ve said this a number of times…I’ll take the bots back any day over the current state of the loot system/TP.

So a thought occurred to me today (yeah yeah I know crazy huh) anyway there was talk in the other thread about how this might be a bug. I saw it mentioned a couple of times now until a friend mentioned to me the most recent nerf, Dragon event loot. Jormag I believe it was, suddenly people were getting nothing after a recent patch, nothing but blues and greens. It occurs to be that this couldn’t possibly be a bug and them not noticed is with their data collection software. It has to be that they are doing this on purpose for whatever reason (bots or store sales or whatever). I’d love to see an answer about this isn’t there an AMA coming up?

tigirius.9014:

So a thought occurred to me today (yeah yeah I know crazy huh) anyway there was talk in the other thread about how this might be a bug. I saw it mentioned a couple of times now until a friend mentioned to me the most recent nerf, Dragon event loot. Jormag I believe it was, suddenly people were getting nothing after a recent patch, nothing but blues and greens. It occurs to be that this couldn’t possibly be a bug and them not noticed is with their data collection software. It has to be that they are doing this on purpose for whatever reason (bots or store sales or whatever). I’d love to see an answer about this isn’t there an AMA coming up?

On the day after i returned, I did Claw, Teq and Shatterer , 2 golds from Claw, 2 golds from Teq, 1 gold and 3 greens from Shatterer. DR is clearly in place on the chests or anything else you do once you activate it by farming
just my humble opinion, as i can verify it.

Sligh.2789:

IMHO, play the game instead of farming the hell out of one area, you will be rewarded.

If only.

Leamas.5803:

This seems to help some, but not others. I’ve never been much of a farmer as I don’t do well with a great deal of repetition. However, even moving around zones, doing random events, killing everything, deer, spiders, rats, rabbits, etc, I still get mostly vendor junk. Other than a few events I like, which I might do a couple times if I happen to be in the area, the only time I usually repeat events is if the event failed, which should not trigger DR IMO. I’ve said this a number of times…I’ll take the bots back any day over the current state of the loot system/TP.

Exactly. For the past two and a half months, I have done nothing but map completion on several characters. I clear a map, and move on to the next. No dawdling, no farming. Since I’m usually solo, I get a good amount of kills doing hearts, de’s, vets, champs, whatever. My drops are abysmal, all the time. Across three 80’s and one almost 80, and about 900+ hours since bwe1, I have yet to see an exotic or lodestone drop. Hell, I’ve only had one core drop. I’m lucky if I see 2 dyes a week. Seeing a green drop these days gets me excited. I wish I was kidding.

When I was leveling my 80’s, my bags would need to be emptied multiple times while on the same map. Now, I can get through several maps without needing to see a vendor. The difference is huge. My spouse, also doing map completion the past two months, has noticed a loot nerf in general, but still receives drops better and more often than I. He can’t even believe how awful my drops have been for so long. In fact, when I first noticed & mentioned this issue to him back in November, he had no idea what I was talking about. So whatever the problem ( and there IS a problem) it’s affecting everyone differently. And it makes no sense.

I’ve dealt with it all this time, but I grow weary. Knowing that while I’m playing and getting not much of anything, plenty of people have no issue and are raking in the mats, the exotics, and gold. And I fall further and further behind. It makes me sad, I wanted this game to be all that.

Right now I feel like I can ignore the game as long as they ignore there’s a problem. The steam sale was awesome.

Sligh.2789:

On the day after i returned, I did Claw, Teq and Shatterer , 2 golds from Claw, 2 golds from Teq, 1 gold and 3 greens from Shatterer. DR is clearly in place on the chests or anything else you do once you activate it by farming
just my humble opinion, as i can verify it.

I don’t farm much (mainly do WvW, dungeons and fractals) so DR of that type shouldn’t hit me, however when I do decide to do one of the dragons I get mainly blues, if I get a yellow its usually one of those useless crests. The whole jormag chain every time I do it I get virtually nothing apart from the chest now.

Ok this is totally messed up. There has to be several world scaled variables involved here. Just yesterday in a period of 5minutes I received 1 exotic and 2 rares! Then it all went to the kitten.

Some of the variables, that IMO, are affecting this:

- Length of stay in a particular zone/area
- Repetion regarding killing the same type of mob
- Player concentration in a particular zone
- What you do, i.e. just gather resource nodes, kill only mobs etc.

I have a feeling DR tracks everything you do. If you repeat something too often it loweres your loot quality. This affect is based on what is surrounding you, time spent int he area, what mobs you killed and how many of the same in a row.

May I suggest that players randomize their tasks? The moment you see a influx of garbage, change what you are doing (zone, craft, gather something else etc etc etc.)

I think the only way to beat DR is to make your gameplay as random as possible.

morrolan.9608:

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

There’s merit in this theory, but we have to remember dungeons and the like are instanced areas, so one would have to guess there’s a loot table for dungeons, whereas the world that people spawn out into has it’s own loot table. Considering there’s many more people out in the live world in any area at any given time, you’d think that there would be a much larger loot pool depending on where they were, level, etc. but I see a disparity between what drops in a dungeon for instance, and what people seem to be getting in the live world. I believe this is where the “permanent DR” scenario is coming in.

If this is the case why don’t they just say so? I personally don’t like such a system because its designed purely around the economy of the game and as players increase the number of exotics found per player would decrease thereby creating more demand and rising prices.

You are correct, in that the total number of items should increase as the player count increases which would make the economy more static.

When was the last time you saw someone knowingly grab a shotgun, load it, point it at their foot and pull the trigger? This analogy is tantamount to what Anet would be doing if they revealed just what went on with their loot table system and it’s inner-workings. All we can do really is just guess and ‘stab in the dark’ at what goes on, while the programmers/coders sit back and watch this thread with their beer and popcorn. And all the while, no one is talking to us about what’s going on, there’s no input from the dev’s about any of this, regardless of whom it was started by… and this topic is festering away at the loot drops of this highly-coveted game.

@Sligh: I think you need to stop continuous farming any particular enemy

Let’s think about this for a minute. Now what happens to all the people who are diligently on here, daily, hourly, farming away for the precious loot (read: lodes) for their legendaries? Do we have to consider another loot table for specific farming areas, ones created by the players, that are not Dynamic Event-related? Ok so they already addressed the T6 nodes and patched that up last year… but lodestones are a very different story.

Wait, what you are saying is that the theory of which you are talking about is that there is a loot pool that is shared between all players in an area and that bots/farmers are emtpying the pool of rares/exotics and if I go there there will be little good for me to loot since its already taken?

Not that I think that there is any merit to the theory. If it was true I’d be seriously kitten and question the sanity of whatever coder/dev that came up with it.

Here is concrete data. I have 140+ magic find w/out food buff. Typically Dwayna is uncontested for 2 hours at a time, my farming sparks being 1-1 1/2 hours tops at a time.
The last 6 times I’ve been there, killing every mob type in an attempt to not hit diminishing returns, ZERO lodestones. ZERO. Approx. 9 hours of killing a temporary spawn mob. NOT ONE. Why is a lodestone harder to get than an exotic? There is a DISTINCT lack of drops from the sparks spawned from Dwayna as opposed to other mobs in the area. A-Net you don’t think so? Go farm them. See how fun it is for you. Extremely frustrating.

Well Wyatt you’re gonna love this… from spark farming in Cursed Shores with 0% MF, I managed to pull in 2 from 30mins of farming. I did better than other people who were there and were MF’d up to the teeth. What does that say about MF as a stat? I know there’s other topics about this on here, but I know what my luck is like in this game and it isn’t that great. For me to pull more loot than those other players with MF is testament to normal gear working just fine and MF being bugged.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

Well Wyatt you’re gonna love this… from spark farming in Cursed Shores with 0% MF, I managed to pull in 2 from 30mins of farming. I did better than other people who were there and were MF’d up to the teeth. What does that say about MF as a stat? I know there’s other topics about this on here, but I know what my luck is like in this game and it isn’t that great. For me to pull more loot than those other players with MF is testament to normal gear working just fine and MF being bugged.

There is a theory that I think some, not me, are testing that MF between 100 and 200 is something of a “dead zone”. Under 100 and over 200 seems to be more effective. I’ve never found it made a difference and have removed/replaced/salvaged all my MF gear/upgrades. Maxed out, before food and/or boosters, I was running about 45. I’m now running 3, don’t use and food or boosters and getting essentially the same drops as before. If anything, I’ve noticed a slight increase in dye drops. I think I had 2 drop last night in about 1.5 hours. First time I’ve had more than a single dye drop in one session since probably when they “fixed” the dye drop rate. Lately, with casual play, I’ve been getting about one a week, so that’s about about 7-10 hours of play.

A problem that I’m seeing with all this recorded data (I can’t believe I’m going to say this) is the lack of scientific method. People are farming all over, using different levels of MF, different characters, different farming methods… there’s no specificity.

A great way to test this, in my mind, would be to get 5 or 10 players together, and make them as similar as possible: same levels of magic find, no foods or boosters to help keep things simple, etc. Then, have them all go to the same map, for a set time, for a set number of days, and relay ALL that drop data.

The sad thing is, ANet should (again, in my mind) have the ability to run this kind of simulation themselves and see exactly what it is we’re describing as a “perceived loot issue”. Relying on the playerbase to do this is going to result in, well, odd results.

Not to mention, this whole thing feels like it was done just to make us all chase our tails. I think the lack of official response attests to that. Requests for things like “what kind of data do you need” left unanswered also make me think this was done as a stalling tactic on ANet’s part.

Blackwolfe.5649:

Wait, what you are saying is that the theory of which you are talking about is that there is a loot pool that is shared between all players in an area and that bots/farmers are emtpying the pool of rares/exotics and if I go there there will be little good for me to loot since its already taken?

Not that I think that there is any merit to the theory. If it was true I’d be seriously kitten and question the sanity of whatever coder/dev that came up with it.

I can totally see this.

How easy would it be to “balance” the economy if you could just open a spreadsheet and plunk in how many of each item is available for dropping each day? Sooo easy.

• “Ok, lets see, today the price of blood is a bit too low, so lets make it so only 10,000 blood drops today.”
• bots eat up 9,900 of those
• you, me and the rest of the players get to split the remainder.

Hawkmoon.5849:

Not to mention, this whole thing feels like it was done just to make us all chase our tails. I think the lack of official response attests to that. Requests for things like “what kind of data do you need” left unanswered also make me think this was done as a stalling tactic on ANet’s part.

Of course it was…they opened up this “official” discussion, outside of the more widely visited bugs forum, closed the related bug and the 26 page discussion which already existed that also already had mounds of data in it….why not just make the previous discussion sticky? An unresponded-to bug and a HUGE thread also unresponded-to, simply looks bad…and they didn’t really want to look bad right before Xmas. It was all a cleverly crafted cover-up. Creating a new thread and closing the highly visible bug thread as well as the old discussion thread buries the old threads behind many other threads and makes the issue look lesser than it is and not as old as it is. They’re hoping the “complainers” just go away, and many will and have, just not the way they would like it I’d wager.

To make matters worse, 11 pages in, they’ve NEVER come back to this so called “official” thread to post updates or even comment on it.

My hope is now that the Xmas spending season is over, they loosen up the loot tables a bit.

I caught myself the other day writing a snarky reply to an map-wide message requesting for help on the giant in Diessa Plateau. The reply went something like, “I’ll pass, why waste the effort for a lousy blue, or worse?” I then continued on my merry map clear way. This is what the current state of loot has reduced me to. I’ve been reduced to avoiding challenging events, unless the event spawns lots of regular mops, simply because the reward is not there.

But why would I fight it…even if I get a green from the giant, which happens EXTREMELY RARELY since champions mostly drop nothing, if I go down ONCE my repair cost, typically 1s65c, will be higher than the reward received. I was doing the chain event “Seraph Assault on Centaur Camps” (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Seraph_Assault_on_Centaur_Camps), this event I truly enjoy, which is why I do it, but the other night, with a group that was too small, I incurred almost 12s in repairs plus another probably 15-20s in waypoint fees, I didn’t get nearly that in rewards…not even close.

Leamas.5803:

But why would I fight it…even if I get a green from the giant, which happens EXTREMELY RARELY since champions mostly drop nothing, if I go down ONCE my repair cost, typically 1s65c, will be higher than the reward received. I was doing the chain event “Seraph Assault on Centaur Camps” (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Seraph_Assault_on_Centaur_Camps), this event I truly enjoy, which is why I do it, but the other night, with a group that was too small, I incurred almost 12s in repairs plus another probably 15-20s in waypoint fees, I didn’t get nearly that in rewards…not even close.

Mmm, not quite right… if you go down, you won’t have to repair any armour; if you are defeated however, then you will.

I do understand where you’re coming from on the Dynamic Event side of things however. Shatterer, Tequatl and Claw of Jormag quite often (but not always) spawn almost at the same time. And I’m sorry but I can’t justify the waypoint travel cost and potential armour damage/repairs against event rewards and crappy loot from end chests. One doesn’t weigh up the other, and going by the lack of response from Anet, it probably never will. My feeling is if you play this game, you’re not playing it to win, because Anet says so. If you are winning (ie. making WAY more cash than you spend) then chances are you are a bot or a very bored TP-player. It’s become abundantly clear they didn’t design this game for you to get ahead, but to grind to stay afloat.

Did all 5 starter zones with my thief to try to get them upgraded equipment, now doing lvl15-25 zone as lvl30 and paying huge repair bills cause my armour and weapons still bad for the zone level:(

How ever I did pick up some level appropriate stuff, just not for my class

Level appropriate gear but not useable by my current profession. This is more often than not, exactly what I get when I do get gear. It is never useful for my character.

It seems to change. My drops are getting better now.

Not for me. Been getting only blue drops from chests for the past two days.

We are about due for a half page long post, then quadruple posts, from Aproposs.

Anyway you guys are barking up the wrong tree with this shared loot table non-sense. And out of all the places for the alleged economy lead “John Smith” (seriously?) to post, he doesn’t post here?

wildcode.5403:

Did all 5 starter zones with my thief to try to get them upgraded equipment, now doing lvl15-25 zone as lvl30 and paying huge repair bills cause my armour and weapons still bad for the zone level:(

How ever I did pick up some level appropriate stuff, just not for my class

if I level characters of this level I don’t repair. I just wait until I drop something to replace the broken piece. Also invest first in good jewelry & weapons, these don’t break.

whipplerama.3692:

Sligh.2789:

IMHO, play the game instead of farming the hell out of one area, you will be rewarded.

If only.

Leamas.5803:

This seems to help some, but not others. I’ve never been much of a farmer as I don’t do well with a great deal of repetition. However, even moving around zones, doing random events, killing everything, deer, spiders, rats, rabbits, etc, I still get mostly vendor junk. Other than a few events I like, which I might do a couple times if I happen to be in the area, the only time I usually repeat events is if the event failed, which should not trigger DR IMO. I’ve said this a number of times…I’ll take the bots back any day over the current state of the loot system/TP.

Exactly. For the past two and a half months, I have done nothing but map completion on several characters. I clear a map, and move on to the next. No dawdling, no farming. Since I’m usually solo, I get a good amount of kills doing hearts, de’s, vets, champs, whatever. My drops are abysmal, all the time. Across three 80’s and one almost 80, and about 900+ hours since bwe1, I have yet to see an exotic or lodestone drop. Hell, I’ve only had one core drop. I’m lucky if I see 2 dyes a week. Seeing a green drop these days gets me excited. I wish I was kidding.

When I was leveling my 80’s, my bags would need to be emptied multiple times while on the same map. Now, I can get through several maps without needing to see a vendor. The difference is huge. My spouse, also doing map completion the past two months, has noticed a loot nerf in general, but still receives drops better and more often than I. He can’t even believe how awful my drops have been for so long. In fact, when I first noticed & mentioned this issue to him back in November, he had no idea what I was talking about. So whatever the problem ( and there IS a problem) it’s affecting everyone differently. And it makes no sense.

I’ve dealt with it all this time, but I grow weary. Knowing that while I’m playing and getting not much of anything, plenty of people have no issue and are raking in the mats, the exotics, and gold. And I fall further and further behind. It makes me sad, I wanted this game to be all that.

Right now I feel like I can ignore the game as long as they ignore there’s a problem. The steam sale was awesome.

This. This is EXACTLY the experience of myself and my spouse. We are fairly frequent gamers logging at least 2-6 hours per day in the game. She has 6 level 80 characters by now. I have 4 and nearly a 5th. We rotate our characters, we roll through different zones. We don’t spend too much time in any one zone or any one area within a zone. Maybe we’ll linger for about 20 minutes at the Hyleks in Cursed Shore because we’re always low on Powerful Venom Sacs, but seriously, that’s the longest we stay in any one spot. Mostly we’re just combining the landscape looking for Oricalchum and Ancient Wood nodes, killing EVERYTHING in our path, and stopping to join every nearby dynamic event.

Which is exactly how randomly you want us to play, correct? This is not farming: this is just running around the world, constantly moving, and playing the game as designed.

And we get total kitten for yellow drops. Seriously, we can run for 3 hours straight and not get one single yellow drop. Exotic drops? Please: it never happens. Our bags will not fill completely, not even close to it, with even vendor trash.

It doesn’t matter whether we run around in Cursed Shore or Frostgorge or some lower level zone. There is some DR code affecting us globally, across all characters, regardless of where we are. It’s obvious. The drop rate has been especially kitten for us like this in a hugely noticeable fashion for at least the past 6-8 weeks. Before that it was MUCH better.

One other thing I’ve noticed as a distinct drop in just the past 4 weeks: I used to be able to salvage 10 yellow level 80 items with a BLACK LION salvage kit and average 2 ectos per item. That means I’d get, on average, 20 ectos per 10 items salvaged.

Lately? The return rate is more like 11-12 ectos. That’s making me want to stop buying Black Lion salvage kits.

Honestly, if you want to keep the demand for Chinese gold sellers down, you need to increase the drop rate both of yellows and of ectos when salvaged. The temptation to pay $20 for roughly 100 gold is pretty kitten high when the best exchange rate you can get in the honest way is 1.5 gold per 100 gems, and when the effectively drop rate on sellable ectos is so kitten low these past two months.

Here’s what I wonder: Does your DR code somehow flag multiple accounts playing from the same source IP address as potential farming bots? And therefore kick in some DR code against those accounts?

A pattern I see in these threads is that spouses who play GW2 together or households with multiple accounts seem to be the ones reporting a noticable decrease in drop rates across the board.

Avitarus.1865:

We are about due for a half page long post, then quadruple posts, from Aproposs.

What – you don’t like my posts?

My last word here; I didn’t have a cow; didn’t even have cattle — I had a herd.

When I wonder if and even how many of the people on the forum I interact with are illegal gold buyers I start getting ticked all over again.

Edit: BTW shaktiboi; that does sound plausible. I hope ANet reads your post.

My wife and I both play, she about an hour or two avg. per day, where I avg. sadly about 6-8 hours a day (would be more but work and such…lol) If you exclude the exotics gotten from zone completions and the karka chest, I have gotten 5 exotics (only 1 lvl 80) in the nearly 1000 hours I have logged. The lvl 80 exotic was in Eternal Battleground off a dredge and I about crapped myself. My wife has gotten 1. Same could be said of rares for the most part, as I get maybe one every second or third week, usually from a fractal. I get tons of trophies and crafting mats have increased some, but the drops are horrid.

shaktiboi.5194:

Here’s what I wonder: Does your DR code somehow flag multiple accounts playing from the same source IP address as potential farming bots? And therefore kick in some DR code against those accounts?

A pattern I see in these threads is that spouses who play GW2 together or households with multiple accounts seem to be the ones reporting a noticable decrease in drop rates across the board.

This is actually plausible. I should try doing this from my spouse’s account and see what happens with his drops. He plays a ranger so I should try running around killing stuff on that toon and see how the drops fair compared to my toons who all seem to have permanent DR on all the time. I never get rares anymore unless it’s a weird fluke where I’m in a level 15 zones and I kill a non-aggressive creature, like a Doe or Mosquito or something then eeeeeevery once in a while something drops from these things.

Ran through several areas late yesterday, did all three dragon events then changed toons to finish up my daily for the chest.

Never got anything beyond a couple of low level greens, some mid-level blues and 1 gold doubloon for all that. I don’t craft so someone in my guild will get that doubloon, but I certainly have been getting my share of the “trophy bones, trophy scrap metal, trophy flowers, etc.”

I am logging on less frequently than I used to back before mid-November. At least back then I got excited because I was always eager to see what drops I would get that would be useful for any of my toons or that I could salvage for ectos.

That has all changed. I am not having as much fun as Anet said I would because of the bugs, loot drop issues, no one else in higher areas to run with, etc. The world seems much less populated with players and more populated with mobs, who incidentally do not drop squat any more.

It seems to me that 6 days shy of two months since Anet pushed the ignore button on this; the question asked should be "ANET, why don’t you share your data about “perceived” strange loot behavior"?

You people need a reality check, take a look at the main page on these forums, 5 of the 8 topics are related to money making, coincidence, I think not!

Any game developer would clearly have the information they claim to be looking for, and they are completely aware of the consequences their changes have made, the truth of the matter is they just don’t care enough to answer us. That and the fun factor of the game does not trump the money card, trust me the proof has been in the pudding since November 15th.

Several guild mates and I ran through Cursed Shores late this afternoon/evening opening up the map, getting way points, poi’s and vistas. We also did a lot of harvesting and plowed through a lot of undead.

None of the drops from the mobs amounted to much for any of us. Two of us were wearing high MF on gear and jewelery, and the rest of us did not have much if any MF equipped. It did not seem to matter…we all got crappy drops. There were a couple times we died and had to repair, which of course required way point charges. The total coins we got from selling all the whites, a few blues and junk did not pay for the total cost.

We came to the conclusion that it is not worth our time and trouble to do this again. I may go back for map completion if my guild runs a zerg through the area so I can get the completion without dying, but I don’t really care any longer.

Game is now becoming a total waste of time. I have 2 – 80 level characters, two around level 20 and one at level 41. I can’t even get excited about leveling the lower ones now.

This response from Jeffrey Vaughn was in response to a query on the Ice Shield bug for Claw of Jormag event.

Sligh.2789:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Sligh.2789:

To hear you say you cant replicate it means that what you are doing has no relation to what the players at large are doing.

Exactly my point. It’s not showing up on any of our test servers, it’s only showing up on a Live server, with varying populations/unpredictable players, et al. So we haven’t been able to determine what’s causing the bug. Like I said, I added some failsafe measures so it will fix itself if it ends up in a bad state, but I’m not sure WHY it’s ending up in a bad state.

I am sorry of this is off topic, but maybe the reason that developers see no reduction in drop rates from veterans and champions, and the drastic drop in “drop rates” in general discussed in many other forums be related to the fact that they are looking at test servers instead of live servers? Definate Food for Thought. Clearly the test servers are not operating on the same playing field as the live servers, and it would make sense according to your observations.

We are all spinning our wheels here. Especially since Anet has not responded to the issues brought up. I’ve listened to the videos where the Anet folks talk a great talk, but come away from them feeling like I just got the run around. I did take critical thinking in college and it is amazing what folks DO NOT say and make it sound like they have said something profound.

Silence is in itself a thought; open to many different interpretations. In my personal view, silence is an effective method of avoiding commentary.

Strangeness…
Last night I finished Diessa Plateau and waypointed on to Snowden Drift, did a single event to finish dailies and shut down. Tonight, I had just started Snowden Drift when I realized I forgot to look at the jumping puzzle(s) in Diessa Plateau. I had missed the Grawl Jumping Puzzle. So I waypointed back to Diessa to do it the puzzle and within 10 minutes had two rare gear (Great sword and speargun)…both dropped from regular level cliff bats. Drops like this are unheard of lately since my account seems generally cursed. Then I waypointed back to Snowden Drift and within 10 minutes got an unidentified dye that opened up to an Illumination Dye. After that, drops fell off to more-or-less normal, sub-par for the remainder of the time I played…about an hour.

Only got three crappy greens from the JP chest though and nothing from the veteran grawl shaman guarding the chest. :P

There was no reset and I was not farming. Hell, I barely killed anything while in Diessa. The loot system is SO messed up in this game.

Honestly, the only thing I do these days is WvW, although I do want to explore and level up alts, I simply don’t find any use in it with the crappy drop rates. Did FoTM just a couple of times, nothing significant both times. I turn down any dungeon run request from guildies at times as it makes no sense with all the repair costs and stuff, while drops are kitten. Pls don’t tell me dungeons are fine, they are not. I don’t find any useful drops there other than normal tokens and greens. Only one exotic drop in my entire GW2 life. I want to play and enjoy and love the game – solo or with guildies. Pls give me a reason to do all that.

I’ve farmed pretty much every day and I believe following statements are true:

1. Quantity is much more important than quality.
2. People like me who can “tag” all enemies in a group are much better off than people who can tag only a few enemies from the group
3. Champion and Veteran mobs often don’t drop anything and the quality is often low >> time vs reward is not worth of it.
4. Luck is a major factor: for example I haven’t gotten any exos from enemies since around October but then suddenly got two within an hour or so

You have much better chance to get a good drop from 10 regular mobs than 1 veteran mob. Champions drop exactly same loot as veterans do. This also means that most veterans and champions drop nothing.

This is why I see more pronounced drops in Orr than for example in Frostgorge Sound. Orr has events with swarms of enemies so within 5 minute timer I’ve killed usually 5-10 groups which each have ~10 enemies. Frostforge sound has fewer event groups, the groups are smaller, and summoned enemies are plagued by “no drop” syndrome regularly (unlike in Orr).

Also I’ve usually killed at least three groups of enemies before the single veteran enemy that spawns for example in penitent camp dies. Even under focused fire. I tend to skip that vet anyway just damaging it enough that I get the potential loot.

Finally there are events like the Melandru high priest event in Orr that regularly fail completely because of the idiotic “turn into animals” mechanic which means you need massive amount of players to be able to kill the healing acolytes (or whatever).

If it fails there’s no reward. If it succeeds the priest never drops anything and the chest gear is likely to be blues or greens. Even in optimal situation it is not worth to fight that priest because within that time I could have run through multiple other events with regular mobs that actually drop something.

Even worse is that champions spawning during the event don’t drop anything – or rather I suspect they have the standard chance to drop something which means that I can’t recall them ever dropping anything for me.

Tale of Two days and the difference between the two.

Day 1 – I went back to Cursed Shore after staying away for at least a month. I didn’t even know where the Penitent event was or the Shelter event but I assumed it would be pretty easy to find. When I did map completion in this map originally I just ran around doing everything and not really paying attention to where I was or what event until I came to the entrance to the Arah dungeon.
Ran through the events 3 times each without grouping/partying. 10 blues – 3 greens -1 ancient bone – and the rest whites & porous bones. Nothing from the veterans in the event except one time a blue dropped.
After this I went on to find some resources to mine/gather/chop and then logged off.
Day 2 – I logged off in Cursed Shore so I started right back up. The results were as bleak as the day before and I was about to leave when I got a party invite. I took it and all of a sudden I was getting greens then a risen chicken dropped the first rare I have seen since November. Total of running the event 3 times each… 3 rares, 12 greens, 25 blues, 5 ancient bones, and inumerable whites plus about 80 porous bones. I have never had that many rares drop for me since I started. I didn’t want to stop playing for fear I wouldn’t see it again.
This makes no sense to me other than kill rate is extremely fast with 5 people staying relatively close to one another and targeting the same enemies. At one point we were spread apart and the drops were much less in quantity and quality. As soon as we fought next to one another the drop rates went right back up. Again how can this make such a big difference when a person solos they do all the damage and still get lousy drops. Unless the time it takes to kill a mob also factors into the equation; I just can’t put my head around how this would make a difference. The only difference it should make is whether or not you have done enough damage to the mob to get loot at all, not effect the quality of the loot.
Oh and on Day 2 the veterans still only gave out blues at best and most gave nothing.
Sorry I didn’t do a spreadsheet or pay more attention to the whites that I got because I didn’t really think there would be any difference at all. For the first time since pre-November I had issue with bag space.

BTW. I think i noticed overall drop rate decrease first time after patch fixing drop rate of unidentified dyes (~6 november).

I just looted a named exotic off a mob at shelters in Orr during the event, also seeing a fair amount of dyes dropping.