Guild Wars 2

Sooo…detecting people making gold from karma is quickly fixed, quickly spotting bug with unidentify dyes drop rates is fixed, noticing people using a recipe for unlimited ectos and fixing that, something just doesnt seem right here.

Plus, someone just linked an interview with colin, and now he says they are going to make vets and champs more rewarding! Wasnt that suppose to have been done in nov?

kuroioni.3147:

The post you so eagerly are thanking for is nothing more than a glorified “yeeeah… we’re ‘looking into’ this”. Which, by the way, at this time is simply ridiculous.

I know what his post was about – I did read it. My post was about the new posters in this thread adding their experiences. I believe it’s important to encourage players to report their bad loot observations and show that this is a problem affecting more than just a few players.

I post to urge people to add their voices and not be intimidated into silence (and by the way, too bad, I’m not intimidated by poster I quoted above).

Now – This Zam interview [“ZAM speaks to ArenaNet’s Game Director on the future of GW2” dated today] addresses the time vs. reward issue of Vets and Champs among other things:

taken from http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=31615&storypage=3

Zam Interviewer Jarimor:
Along with a need for increasing the fun of fighting non-standard mobs, Johanson was also clear that more incentive is needed to get players leaping on creatures, such as veterans or champions, rather than sneaking around them to hit nodes. This is good news for those who have repeatedly slammed against high HP mobs, only to get a Dark Stained Claw.

Colin Johanson:
“A lot of what we’re looking at this year is how do we ensure that our reward systems are strong enough across all of these creatures in the game and all the things you do to make it worthwhile. One of the things we want to do is to make sure we’re not forcing you to go play one specific part of the game as the best way to be rewarded. We want you to pick the parts of the game that you’re excited about and you want to play and ensure that you’re being rewarded for doing that. Making these creatures more exciting is one thing but we have to make sure you’re rewarded for the time you put into them as well.”

It’s very nice that Jarimor and Zam (perhaps following this thread) thought it important to probe for a response about time vs. reward from Champions. “This is good news for those who have repeatedly slammed against high HP mobs, only to get a Dark Stained Claw.” Thanks!

Serophous.9085:

Sooo…detecting people making gold from karma is quickly fixed, quickly spotting bug with unidentify dyes drop rates is fixed, noticing people using a recipe for unlimited ectos and fixing that, something just doesnt seem right here.

Plus, someone just linked an interview with colin, and now he says they are going to make vets and champs more rewarding! Wasnt that suppose to have been done in nov?

From the November 15th patch notes:
“The drop rarity of Rare and Exotic weapons from certain places in the world (champions, veterans, and players in WvW) has been increased. Rares and Exotics should be much more likely to drop and every champion should be guaranteed to drop loot. This was to ensure that world loot drops were not a significantly worse way of acquiring rare and exotic items than crafting and running dungeons.”
And:
“The amount of loot that drops for downscaled players has been increased. You should now be able to receive level-equivalent loot until you are fighting at a downscaled level that is less than 2/3 of your actual level. You should also receive loot a greater percentage of the time as well as receiving a greater percentage of experience, gold, and karma. For level 80 characters, this means level 55+ areas will be able to drop level 80 gear and give about 75% or so of the other rewards. Previously, these areas would give level 77 gear at best and closer to 60% or so of your rewards.”

just ran grenth with buncha people, my gf got 2 gold worth of drops, i got 30 silver + 2 whites, one blue and 2 greens and bunch of bones. She got 26 large claws along with a rare and a 1g worth lodestone, i got 4 large claws. Same MF gear and i tried on my engineer which can dps and aoe quite well.. anyways there goes my 4th rant..

The sad part about this bug is I’m about to get another character to 80, and they’ll just sit waiting till I have the 75 ecto’s needed to fully upgrade them into lvl 80 exotic equipment/jewels/weapons

I’ve played Guildwars 2 for nearly 1500 hours i have 8 characters, six are level 80 one is level 70 one is level 51..

Never had a Rare or Exotic drop in wvw.
Never had a level 62-80 Exotic drop in open world ever.
Never seen a Lodestone drop ever. (even farmed proper locations for hours).
Never had Pink items of any type drop in FotM (but others regularly get them).

I have Magic Find Gears on my Warrior up to 140% and i actually see worse drop rates than 0% Magic Find..

rant #5, another grent run and some more playing. she now has 7 gold worth of loot, i have 1.2g. this has been going on for weeks.. maybe anet will listen at some point.
this time i used my 3rd character, which is a necro.

can anet at least tell us if switching characters would change loot chances? I just hate trying to cycle through characters at the hope of catching a moment of nice loot, it’s been weeks so i guess not?

bartem.2731:

can anet at least tell us if switching characters would change loot chances? I just hate trying to cycle through characters at the hope of catching a moment of nice loot, it’s been weeks so i guess not?

If DR is the problem then no, otherwise it is just a guess as others including myself have experienced loot issues across the account.

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

I know what his post was about – I did read it. My post was about the new posters in this thread adding their experiences. I believe it’s important to encourage players to report their bad loot observations

Yes, just please don’t put into that dev’s mouth words he clearly did not say.
Furthermore, I’d like to point out that while I do agree it’s important to show us (the players) that our feedback is valued, it is really not your place to do so. You are neither Anet employee nor a playerbase representative (other than self-claimed that is) now are you?

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

and show that this is a problem affecting more than just a few players.

I believe that the sheer size of this thread (not to mention the old one), as well as its undying activity during the past two months, can really speak for itself.

Colin Johanson:
“A lot of what we’re looking at this year is how do we ensure that our reward systems are strong enough across all of these creatures in the game and all the things you do to make it worthwhile. One of the things we want to do is to make sure we’re not forcing you to go play one specific part of the game as the best way to be rewarded. We want you to pick the parts of the game that you’re excited about and you want to play and ensure that you’re being rewarded for doing that. Making these creatures more exciting is one thing but we have to make sure you’re rewarded for the time you put into them as well.”

This is not acknowledgement that something is wrong, it’s nothing more than more doubletalk that’s not really telling us anything. Even IF, they fix veterans and champions which, don’t get me wrong, will make me very happy, it’s only a small part of the problem for those of us who seemingly have DR stuck on permanently. What will end up happening is that open world will get even less populated as people stand around waiting for champs to pop since it will be by far the fastest way to make money. They need to fix both in order to any fix to champions/veterans to be successful in the long run.

Personally, I still think the open marketplace should be closed to player sellers, having the vendors as the only way to sell things. This would fix so many things. With DR and the war on bots, the marketplace is in shambles with many items costing many times what they’re actually worth. I’m not going to talk about the legendaries which I think should be account (Not soul) bound on acquire, but just look at precursors and what the loot nerf to to the cost of those. After the much needed influx of precursors the karka event provided one could buy The Legend for a meager 168G, if you go back as far as September, you could get one for 60G…now, you’re looking at around 600G. Other high end, highly sought after items follow the same pattern. With the way drops are today, I figure 600G would take me over a year to collect. Essentially, the marketplace is priced for those who play hours and hours a day every day and that squeezes those who who and those who’ve gotten hit with DR…some of us are both…with little option but to use the cash shop or run gear many levels below the character level.

Now I might do better making money with the 60+ times I’d have to run Arah to get the dungeon tokens…no grind there…ANet says so…or the endless feeding of rares in to the MF in the hope of getting a precursor…I was reading on another forum that one tends to average 1000 rare items in to the forge before ever receiving a precursor. Perhaps that’s a hard coded number in some way where the closer you get the higher your probability, ANet does like the number 250 and with 1000 items you’d have to feed the forge 250 times…but no grind there either.

I’m just ranting.

Some of you seem really down.. I am sorry you guys are having such bad luck.

I also weren’t too happy with the drops while leveling my main from 1 – 80.
Constant paranoia about DR almost made me put down the game for good. Then one of my friends purchased the game so I decided to run around with him while he levels.

Since I was going to lower level zones, I made sure I got nice magic find accessories, magic find runes (Traveler/Noble), magic find sigil and magic find food. And so came the most fun I had in this game.

I spent only two nights running around with him. I realized the frequency of greens and bags were much better than when I first visited the area, so I wanted to go test it around the world.

It was incredible, for the first time I saw Lodestones and Exotics drop. I even had one Exotic (level 80) drop from a Moa that I accidentally pulled with my AoE damage in a level 35 zone (yet I’ve seen claims they don’t drop in lower areas). I also bag the odd Exotic from dungeons, which I never had before changing my gear.

One very important note though: Drops are noticeably worse without the MF food. It is so bad, that after killing a couple of mobs and checking the drops I can actually tell that the effect from the food has worn off (should I forget to keep an eye on the buffs).

Tajmo.1836:

Some of you seem really down.. I am sorry you guys are having such bad luck.

I also weren’t too happy with the drops while leveling my main from 1 – 80.
Constant paranoia about DR almost made me put down the game for good. Then one of my friends purchased the game so I decided to run around with him while he levels.

Since I was going to lower level zones, I made sure I got nice magic find accessories, magic find runes (Traveler/Noble), magic find sigil and magic find food. And so came the most fun I had in this game.

I spent only two nights running around with him. I realized the frequency of greens and bags were much better than when I first visited the area, so I wanted to go test it around the world.

It was incredible, for the first time I saw Lodestones and Exotics drop. I even had one Exotic (level 80) drop from a Moa that I accidentally pulled with my AoE damage in a level 35 zone (yet I’ve seen claims they don’t drop in lower areas). I also bag the odd Exotic from dungeons, which I never had before changing my gear.

One very important note though: Drops are noticeably worse without the MF food. It is so bad, that after killing a couple of mobs and checking the drops I can actually tell that the effect from the food has worn off (should I forget to keep an eye on the buffs).

Did that too, saw no difference.

please note that pre-11/15, I would get 3 rares an hour in orr without magic find.

Magic find itself needs to be removed and the numbers rebalanced around its absence.

It’s the most assanine stat in the game. Anti-group anti-character-progression. Self-gimping.

Tajmo.1836:

Some of you seem really down.. I am sorry you guys are having such bad luck.

I also weren’t too happy with the drops while leveling my main from 1 – 80.
Constant paranoia about DR almost made me put down the game for good. Then one of my friends purchased the game so I decided to run around with him while he levels.

Since I was going to lower level zones, I made sure I got nice magic find accessories, magic find runes (Traveler/Noble), magic find sigil and magic find food. And so came the most fun I had in this game.

I spent only two nights running around with him. I realized the frequency of greens and bags were much better than when I first visited the area, so I wanted to go test it around the world.

It was incredible, for the first time I saw Lodestones and Exotics drop. I even had one Exotic (level 80) drop from a Moa that I accidentally pulled with my AoE damage in a level 35 zone (yet I’ve seen claims they don’t drop in lower areas). I also bag the odd Exotic from dungeons, which I never had before changing my gear.

One very important note though: Drops are noticeably worse without the MF food. It is so bad, that after killing a couple of mobs and checking the drops I can actually tell that the effect from the food has worn off (should I forget to keep an eye on the buffs).

I’m happy for you, but this also illustrates how hard it is for us players to report what we see. I’ve tried playing in a somewhat similar way as you, and not seen nearly that level of loot. Is it because of DR? Is it a bug? If so, is the bug that you got that much or that I didn’t? What should we be getting? Is it just luck? Or maybe it’s all as intended? We don’t know anything really. Except that champs should always drop loot but don’t, and that many of us just don’t feel the loot is enough to be rewarding.

Tajmo.1836:

Some of you seem really down.. I am sorry you guys are having such bad luck.

I also weren’t too happy with the drops while leveling my main from 1 – 80.
Constant paranoia about DR almost made me put down the game for good. Then one of my friends purchased the game so I decided to run around with him while he levels.

Since I was going to lower level zones, I made sure I got nice magic find accessories, magic find runes (Traveler/Noble), magic find sigil and magic find food. And so came the most fun I had in this game.

I spent only two nights running around with him. I realized the frequency of greens and bags were much better than when I first visited the area, so I wanted to go test it around the world.

It was incredible, for the first time I saw Lodestones and Exotics drop. I even had one Exotic (level 80) drop from a Moa that I accidentally pulled with my AoE damage in a level 35 zone (yet I’ve seen claims they don’t drop in lower areas). I also bag the odd Exotic from dungeons, which I never had before changing my gear.

One very important note though: Drops are noticeably worse without the MF food. It is so bad, that after killing a couple of mobs and checking the drops I can actually tell that the effect from the food has worn off (should I forget to keep an eye on the buffs).

You were very lucky then.Not so long ago I was trying to get some lodestones from high lvl destroyers with almost 150 % magic find.It took me 3 hours to get one rare armor piece,some t5 mats(around 25-30) and grey trash.No lodestones, no cores.I play GW2 since head start and I haven’t seen even one piece of exotic gear nor lodestone on any of my lvl 80 characters.Only exotic gear I got was for high lvl zone completion.

So here it is a month later with multiple reports. Total reply count between two threads 2000 replies (1200 for the closed one and 800 on this one) and still no serious take on it. No interview dealing with this topic at all. The silence imo speaks volumes about what’s going to happen with this problem. I could be wrong but I doubt it. Oh well there’s other titles that appreciate legit farmer players that are due out this year if something’s not done in this one.

@plasmacutter ; @Mercypsy ; @Rezo

Could be that I am just lucky, but I have been seeing these drops for consecutive weeks now. The crafting material I get from bags has been sufficient enough for me to level all crafting professions without the need to buy anything (except for Chef).

Only twice have I truly felt like something is wrong:
*When I salvaged about a dozen rares one after the other – From the seventh salvage I stopped getting ectos. Not a single one.
*When I stayed at the entrance of CoF for a week, logging in every night, do path 1 and 2 and then quit. After about three or so days I got nothing but greys, even from the event outside.

Assuming it to be DR, I started to explore some already done zones while I wait for my guild to get ready for a dungeon run, this fixed the assumed DR and drops went back to ‘lucky’.

A couple of things I tend to do that seems to increase droprates:
*If I am looking for rares rather than dungeon tokens, I do dungeons in story mode.
*Use Magic Find food, even if it is only 10%.
*Change zones every now and then, I realized this when I was in Orr and got frustrated at mobs somehow finding me when I afk to get something to drink or visit the bathroom, so instead of going to a safe spot I would travel to Lion’s Arch and then quickly do some TP stuff while there. Then when I travel back I would usually get one or two rares within 30 minutes of playing.
*Group up within the guild, even if you’re in different zones.
*If you’re in an area where you can pull 5+ mobs at a time and are able to kill them, do it.
*Best drops are usually within the first few mobs you kill when logging in, zoning or crafting (or just afk for a bit).
*Events in lower level zones often drop rares. There’s this one event in Bloodtide Coast that I have stumbled upon three times, and I got a rare at the final part of the event all three times.
*Certain mobs drop quality items more often than others.

In my experience, mobs that drop quality items more often would be:
Centaur, Dredge, Ettin, Skritt, Grawl, Harpy, Moa, Goat, Insects (dyes), All Human Enemies (not ghosts) and Krait & Spiders (only when they’re in groups).

tigirius.9014:

So here it is a month later with multiple reports. Total reply count between two threads 2000 replies (1200 for the closed one and 800 on this one) and still no serious take on it. No interview dealing with this topic at all. The silence imo speaks volumes about what’s going to happen with this problem. I could be wrong but I doubt it. Oh well there’s other titles that appreciate legit farmer players that are due out this year if something’s not done in this one.

Every day I am gobsmacked that it is literally more fun to play FTL than haul my jaded backside through another series of Scrooge mobs, and barren, reward-free events.
Can you even begin to imagine how much more successful the monetisation team would have been if they had simply applied the concept of putting desirable, fun items in the gem store, instead of gutting the game, and forcing their way into people’s wallets?

another 10 levels and 0 upgrades from drops, I did get 1 upgrade from a dragon chest

So that now makes 43 levels, 7 upgrades from drops, rest of the upgrades were done via TP at levels 32, 45, 65. I am trying to hold out for 5 more levels so I can make basic level 80 gear for my toon while I save for the exotic gear.

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

kuroioni.3147:

The post you so eagerly are thanking for is nothing more than a glorified “yeeeah… we’re ‘looking into’ this”. Which, by the way, at this time is simply ridiculous.

I know what his post was about – I did read it. My post was about the new posters in this thread adding their experiences. I believe it’s important to encourage players to report their bad loot observations and show that this is a problem affecting more than just a few players.

I post to urge people to add their voices and not be intimidated into silence (and by the way, too bad, I’m not intimidated by poster I quoted above).

Now – This Zam interview [“ZAM speaks to ArenaNet’s Game Director on the future of GW2” dated today] addresses the time vs. reward issue of Vets and Champs among other things:

taken from http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=31615&storypage=3

Zam Interviewer Jarimor:
Along with a need for increasing the fun of fighting non-standard mobs, Johanson was also clear that more incentive is needed to get players leaping on creatures, such as veterans or champions, rather than sneaking around them to hit nodes. This is good news for those who have repeatedly slammed against high HP mobs, only to get a Dark Stained Claw.

Colin Johanson:
“A lot of what we’re looking at this year is how do we ensure that our reward systems are strong enough across all of these creatures in the game and all the things you do to make it worthwhile. One of the things we want to do is to make sure we’re not forcing you to go play one specific part of the game as the best way to be rewarded. We want you to pick the parts of the game that you’re excited about and you want to play and ensure that you’re being rewarded for doing that. Making these creatures more exciting is one thing but we have to make sure you’re rewarded for the time you put into them as well.”

It’s very nice that Jarimor and Zam (perhaps following this thread) thought it important to probe for a response about time vs. reward from Champions. “This is good news for those who have repeatedly slammed against high HP mobs, only to get a Dark Stained Claw.” Thanks!

We will have 0*2^10000 drop rate from champs? Yay!

So someone mentioned getting into fractals might help with the curse problem. After seeing my gf take loot that’s worth 5-6x mine for the 30th day, I decided to give it a shot with my most cursed character. We both ran all 4 subsections of fractal lvl 2 with a pug in overflow, and guess what, I got two rares and an exot amulet, she got three rares and some nice mats. The amulet was a chest find and couldn’t be sold for some reason so I salvaged it into 0 ecto. It still was nice to see though. It’s not like I haven’t done fractal runs before but somehow this one gave me more rares than I would see in a week, 5+ hours/day play.
At the end of yesterday, her loot was worth about 12g, without a single homerun item, mine was 4-5g, thanks to the fractal run. I got 2-3x more bones and other useless stuff than her, but still, I felt less frustrated.
PS: as a reminder for those who haven’t seen my other posts, I do everything from JP to wvwvw to regular dungeons, just not spvp, and change farming areas once in a while. and at least once a day.

If they don’t look into the drop rate on regular mobs; they are going to see some massive Veteran and Champion mob ‘camping’.
Even that 0*2^10000 drop rate chance is better than some of us are getting off any mobs. EDIT: <—- Total Sarcasm intended. My math is rusty but not THAT rusty. And the camping concern is ‘if’ and ‘only if’ they fix the drop from Vets and Champs and don’t touch the regular mob loot drop.

My gaming computer is ‘dead’ so I will have a few weeks off from playing the game. When I return I will do some major testing since there is no way the DR beast will be able to find me after that kind of a break. I hope…

Another day, another chance to give the community an actual answer

I wager a stack of 250 porous bone, that this thread continues to be ignored.

0*anything == 0

Patch notes clearly state “champions drop something”. In-game – they don’t drop anything sometimes (most of times tbh). No need to build special tools to prove it.

New tools… It sounds like one man created a crypt algorithm and declered 1000 years to break it. Instead of analysing it, they decide to make a tool that will try to bruteforce it. I am sure, they will find solution a day before end of time.

Since they don’t plan to investigate the issue and build strange tools instead, i think they will not repair it until someone in arena.net will say “Stop this kitten and fix it NAO!”.

puffintoast.6501:

tigirius.9014:

So here it is a month later with multiple reports. Total reply count between two threads 2000 replies (1200 for the closed one and 800 on this one) and still no serious take on it. No interview dealing with this topic at all. The silence imo speaks volumes about what’s going to happen with this problem. I could be wrong but I doubt it. Oh well there’s other titles that appreciate legit farmer players that are due out this year if something’s not done in this one.

Every day I am gobsmacked that it is literally more fun to play FTL than haul my jaded backside through another series of Scrooge mobs, and barren, reward-free events.
Can you even begin to imagine how much more successful the monetisation team would have been if they had simply applied the concept of putting desirable, fun items in the gem store, instead of gutting the game, and forcing their way into people’s wallets?

I can yes. I play STO right now and they have better rewards in their guild system (fleet) then they do as drops from dungeons or from crafting. They pretty much eliminated bots by making the game easier to gather currency. They placed ships that matter in the store it wasn’t all cosmetic but you can have plenty of fun AND get many of these ships via the in game currency. They converted many a lifetime currency into the in game currency, and allowed people to play without a sub but will generally great but not game breaking advancement with a monthly fee. It’s a great balance imo. I became a lifetime member of that game when it first launched and I’m so glad i did.

They didn’t kill loot for people, they didn’t choke the currency out of you so you were forced to convert Zen points just to do normal things like gear your newly max leveled toon, they designed their newest season to make it beneficial to be in a guild (fleet) by making the best gear in the game not an RNG but a bought item for each piece with the ability to gather loads of the currency in game to achieve this gear. For example, consoles are very important for space combat and kits are for ground, they’d be the equivolent of the runes for armor on this game, one could purchase those for very little in game currency for play doing regular difficulty missions which is what most people do. There’s also the exchange however the exchange doesn’t use the currency that one can buy from the store.

So essentially they could follow this model and make a killing without gouging people’s wallets. the TP could use karma instead of gold, change the karma vendors to items needed in the game for all crafting like T6 mats, make racial armor exotics 80 put those in the store, make the ascended gear only available from special guild vendors that use a portion of karma and gold to buy these pieces…. and they’d balance the game currency right there. Also they could balance the zones by making all events give the same Karma across Tyria, that would prevent people from just hanging out only in one zone all the time and help return people to the world and make all dailies across the board give gold in a certain quantity to eliminate farming for currency.

Tigirius, thanks for the rundown on STO’s system – I have never ventured into that game, so it was very interesting to hear their approach; and that last paragraph you wrote contained some fantastic ideas that would clearly benefit the open world reward system, not to mention incentivising people to traverse more of the maps.

so I am now level 79, picked up only 2 items in 14 levels to upgrade my equipment, so I am still running around with mostly lvl65 gear … so, except for the gear I bought off TP as I levelled up, since level 32 I have only picked up 9 … NINE … items that I could upgrade to.

To recap
32 -> 45 … picked up 5 items I could upgrade to
45 -> 65 … picked up 2 items I could upgrade to
65 -> 79 … picked up 2 items I could upgrade to

Upgraded armour and weapons via TP at levels 32, 45 & 65.

Prior to Nov15, I was able to upgrade characters I was levelling solely from drops. Since Nov15 I am forced to use TP to upgrade characters because they are just not getting the much needed drops.

This is NOT fun.

WarMacheen.7124:

Another day, another chance to give the community an actual answer

I wager a stack of 250 porous bone, that this thread continues to be ignored.

The simple fact is that its in their best interest to give you the least amount of reward they can and have you continue playing. As long as most people are playing then there is no problem with the drops.

Also, if they say anything at all about it, they only fan the flames. The OP clearly stated that they don’t see any problem with the drop rate. But they never stated what the expected drop rate should be.

Just to keep on topic. In the last two weeks I have run the level 1 fractals 3 times (couldn’t find a level 2 group) and received a total of 2 rare items. During one run, a party member received 7 rares.

Infernia.9847:

My gaming computer is ‘dead’ so I will have a few weeks off from playing the game. When I return I will do some major testing since there is no way the DR beast will be able to find me after that kind of a break. I hope…

@Infernia
i hate to dissapoint you, but i have stopped playing GW2 before X-mas because i wanted to spend my time with my family, and since droprate for almost everything was very poor for me i didn´t see the sense in spending time. So i played some older games the past weeks til on monday i felt like taking a look into the game again. So i logged in to play some WvsW and later i went do orr and the karka island to test my luck. what should i tell you about the story…

- in WvW i made a whole lot of Karma running with the Zerg, but just a hand full of Bags (got like 5 badges and 2 blues rest not worth mentioning)
- in Orr i ran the Plinx-event twice => 2 or 3 Greens 4 blues 3 tier 5 crafting-bones lvl 375…. NOT from the Verterans or champions. They missed to drop any loot to me
- later on Karka-island with two buddies heading for that one orenode killed a bunch of Karkas and Karka-Vets (even 2 with adding a third plus some younger ones) just whites and other garbage.

I don’t know how i triggert the DR in 3-4 Hours of play after almost one month of absence, but something ist not right here. I was even doing WvW and openworldgaming with two diffrent chars. Playing the game is not fun like that.
Just hope for the better when the next two patches come.

Greetz Arrclyde

p.s.: please excuse my bad english (if so, what do i know ;-) ) but english is not my native language

This whole DR thing escapes my understanding. Two days ago I just did my usual routine with Peni/Shelter/Plinx/Grenth and I was shouting on TS how awesome my drops are. Basically every mob dropped something of value. That day I dropped total of 7 rares, bunch of T6 mats (few more from Moldy Bags), Corrupted Lodestone (during Grenth), dyes and made over 7g from TP sells of extra T5/T6 mats I got. On top of that almost every node I harvested gave something extra. And that was under 3 HOURS of play! Fun part is that previous day I salvaged all my MF gear and was running only with Peach Tart, Sigil of Luck and 3% on Karka ring (around 58% MF total)

The next day I obviously hit DR while I was killing random mobs around Shelter WP just to stack up my sigi of luck… Porous bones and trash for the rest of the evening, about 4 hours.

Now the only difference between those 2 day was me teleporting all around via WPs to catch events on the first day and being more or less stationary during the second. Maybe that’s what counts and triggers anti-bot stuff.

wildcode.5403:

Prior to Nov15, I was able to upgrade characters I was levelling solely from drops. Since Nov15 I am forced to use TP to upgrade characters because they are just not getting the much needed drops.

This is NOT fun.

Yeah, and THIS is exactly why i refuse to level my alt at all. I know i will only get frustration out of it.

Arrclyde.6358:

I don’t know how i triggert the DR in 3-4 Hours of play after almost one month of absence, but something ist not right here.

The other day i entered the game, after being out of it for almost a month.
Intentionally farmed ( without MF ) for about 2 hours to make money on Malchor’s Leap. The first hour or so, the drops were almost constant and good quality, even got a rare weapon! And then suddenly the drops transformed to kitten AND were more scarce, having to kill a bunch of enemies to get something at all.
Yep, one hour. After a whole month. Great huh?

I’ll say it again, the DR needs to be removed before it sucks away the life from the game. It’s like a leecher.

Claw of Jormag twice. Night before last, came in about 1/2 way…blues and a couple greens. Today, did all the pre-events and the main Claw event…wait for it…blues and a couple greens. I didn’t see anyone linking anything in to world chat, so there certainly weren’t a great many rares or exotics going around. What’s the point? I do the event because I like it, but that will only take me so far if I constantly feel disappointment/resentment at the end of it. Luckily, I only went down once, not defeated, so I won’t have any repair bills, and might make a few silver out of it, but it will surely be less than 10. It’s one of the few boss events I’m still willing to do, again, mostly because I like this event AND in that I can revive so many people, probably 30+ per event. I almost have the No One Left Behind achievement completed (815 of 1000 revives completed).

Easily just had the best hour and a half of farming I’ve had in a long time,tons of greens, 10 rares (12 ectos), two dyes, and lots of t5/t6 mats. Did the usual 3 events in Orr in a full farming group, full MF. FYI I also got over 100 porous bones, but kept on going. Everyone in my group was getting rares.

Just hope this helps anyone who is have poor loot

John Peters, Game Designer (October 5th 2012)
(http://www.guildwars2junkies.com/tag/diminishing-returns/)

Quote 1 - “Guild Wars 2 is a game about freedom. We want you to be able to explore the world and engage in a huge variety of activities, focusing on whatever best suits your tastes.”

Quote 1 rebuttal - Right now and since October 5 2012, many players cannot do this!

Quote 2 - “Some players have run into “diminishing returns” thresholds we put into the game…”

Quote 2 rebuttal - ‘Some’ is currently a serious understatement.

Quote 3 - “…it’s not our intention that normal players should ever run into them.”

Quote 3 rebuttal - Many players are running into them, very often and very early during their gameplay.

Quote 4 - “…we’ll fix those (bugs/imbalances).”

Quote 4 rebuttal - It has been well over 3 months now since you commented on this John. How much more time do you need?

Quote 5 - “It’s important to have a safety net in place. It would be bad for everyone if, for example, a group of players learned how to speed-clear a dungeon in 5 minutes, with full rewards each time, and then repeated that continuously.”

Quote 5 rebuttal - Players do this anyhow – FotM. Currently the only reasonable reward system within this game (in their opinion). Also, it sounds like those players would be getting all of the rewards which are projected globally (i.e. to everyone within an area/map/zone/server). Players will do things within the game that makes them feel they are rewarded accordingly, and in many situations it has caused ANet to nerf it.

Quote 6 - “When one activity emerges that’s order of magnitudes more profitable than anything else in the game, it forces everyone to either engage in that activity or get priced out of the economy.”

Quote 6 rebuttal - So the best way is to nerf the rewards for that activity? Rubbish, in the end this will make all of the activities unrewarding and cause its reward/goal to be pushed further back in relation to time spent. Also, it sounds like the other reason for DR is to have the reward system more balanced – which, apparently, is not what DR was functioned to do. “Two birds with one stone.” as the saying goes.

Quote 7 - “…we have no desire to stop farming. Farmers are a part every online economy and when they are doing normal game activity they do not cause any harm. If a player finds a normal game activity fun and would like to keep doing it, that’s fine with us.”

Quote 7 rebuttal - This (DR) has effectively done the opposite to what you are saying. I want to farm lodestones. I effectively can’t. I want to farm karka shell. I effectively can’t. I want to farm "X’ item. I EFFECTIVELY CAN’T, BECAUSE OF DR! These are all reasonable normal game activities within an MMO, and one cannot effectively do it because of this AND the fact that RNG is involved.

Quote 8 - “Initially we have to rely on smaller data sets, instinct and some guesswork to find the correct cut-off. What this means is that some players are going to bump into the edges of these systems for a while as we get them sorted out. Please bear with us while we gather more data and lower the safety net until it’s only providing critical economy protection.”

Quote 8 rebuttal - I would presume that “time” is one of the cut-off variables. Bumping into the edges of this system is what players continuously do. Furthermore how long are we to ‘bear with you’ on this issue? I really hope that the upcoming update fixes this, otherwise you can say goodbye to a large portion of the player-base.

Quote 9 - “I hope this helps to explain why a game like this needs systems such as this to protect its economy. I also hope it gives some insight into our philosophy about botters (BAD) and exploiters (BAD) vs. farmers (GOOD). Thanks for your support and we will see you in game.”

Quote 9 rebuttal - It sure does help explain why you have employed DR into this game, but, it does not help the games cause, and it has not for over 3 months.

Am I the only one who thinks that ANet is using DR for more than just against botters? Within Johns post there are some clear indications how DR works and why its there – which correlates to how loot drops (should) occur and how this helps the TP work as ANet intends it to.

Furthermore, ANet’s motto ““Guild Wars 2 is a game about freedom. We want you to be able to explore the world and engage in a huge variety of activities, focusing on whatever best suits your tastes.”, clearly falls apart whilst DR has been implemented. The sheer number of complaints about this issue and lack of adequate resolve for over lengthy period clearly indicates, to me, that ANet is incapable of tackling this issue.

GG ANet.

I’ve run AC a lot, all paths.
I know what my gold count is supposed to be after selling blues and greens.
When I switched to a full magic find exotic set, end gold remained the same — meaning blues and greens were most likely unaffected.
Rares and exotics disappeared entirely.
Anything beyond Omnom bars seems to make your drop rates decrease.

Oh, and I just solo’d a level 79 champion and got a blue shield worth 63 copper as a reward.

Death Reincarnated.3570:

John Peters, Game Designer (October 5th 2012)
(http://www.guildwars2junkies.com/tag/diminishing-returns/)

Quote 1 - “Guild Wars 2 is a game about freedom. We want you to be able to explore the world and engage in a huge variety of activities, focusing on whatever best suits your tastes.”

Quote 1 rebuttal - Right now and since October 5 2012, many players cannot do this!

Quote 2 - “Some players have run into “diminishing returns” thresholds we put into the game…”

Quote 2 rebuttal - ‘Some’ is currently a serious understatement.

Quote 3 - “…it’s not our intention that normal players should ever run into them.”

Quote 3 rebuttal - Many players are running into them, very often and very early during their gameplay.

Quote 4 - “…we’ll fix those (bugs/imbalances).”

Quote 4 rebuttal - It has been well over 3 months now since you commented on this John. How much more time do you need?

Quote 5 - “It’s important to have a safety net in place. It would be bad for everyone if, for example, a group of players learned how to speed-clear a dungeon in 5 minutes, with full rewards each time, and then repeated that continuously.”

Quote 5 rebuttal - Players do this anyhow – FotM. Currently the only reasonable reward system within this game (in their opinion). Also, it sounds like those players would be getting all of the rewards which are projected globally (i.e. to everyone within an area/map/zone/server). Players will do things within the game that makes them feel they are rewarded accordingly, and in many situations it has caused ANet to nerf it.

Quote 6 - “When one activity emerges that’s order of magnitudes more profitable than anything else in the game, it forces everyone to either engage in that activity or get priced out of the economy.”

Quote 6 rebuttal - So the best way is to nerf the rewards for that activity? Rubbish, in the end this will make all of the activities unrewarding and cause its reward/goal to be pushed further back in relation to time spent. Also, it sounds like the other reason for DR is to have the reward system more balanced – which, apparently, is not what DR was functioned to do. “Two birds with one stone.” as the saying goes.

Quote 7 - “…we have no desire to stop farming. Farmers are a part every online economy and when they are doing normal game activity they do not cause any harm. If a player finds a normal game activity fun and would like to keep doing it, that’s fine with us.”

Quote 7 rebuttal - This (DR) has effectively done the opposite to what you are saying. I want to farm lodestones. I effectively can’t. I want to farm karka shell. I effectively can’t. I want to farm "X’ item. I EFFECTIVELY CAN’T, BECAUSE OF DR! These are all reasonable normal game activities within an MMO, and one cannot effectively do it because of this AND the fact that RNG is involved.

Quote 8 - “Initially we have to rely on smaller data sets, instinct and some guesswork to find the correct cut-off. What this means is that some players are going to bump into the edges of these systems for a while as we get them sorted out. Please bear with us while we gather more data and lower the safety net until it’s only providing critical economy protection.”

Quote 8 rebuttal - I would presume that “time” is one of the cut-off variables. Bumping into the edges of this system is what players continuously do. Furthermore how long are we to ‘bear with you’ on this issue? I really hope that the upcoming update fixes this, otherwise you can say goodbye to a large portion of the player-base.

Quote 9 - “I hope this helps to explain why a game like this needs systems such as this to protect its economy. I also hope it gives some insight into our philosophy about botters (BAD) and exploiters (BAD) vs. farmers (GOOD). Thanks for your support and we will see you in game.”

Quote 9 rebuttal - It sure does help explain why you have employed DR into this game, but, it does not help the games cause, and it has not for over 3 months.

Am I the only one who thinks that ANet is using DR for more than just against botters? Within Johns post there are some clear indications how DR works and why its there – which correlates to how loot drops (should) occur and how this helps the TP work as ANet intends it to.

Furthermore, ANet’s motto ““Guild Wars 2 is a game about freedom. We want you to be able to explore the world and engage in a huge variety of activities, focusing on whatever best suits your tastes.”, clearly falls apart whilst DR has been implemented. The sheer number of complaints about this issue and lack of adequate resolve for over lengthy period clearly indicates, to me, that ANet is incapable of tackling this issue.

GG ANet.

Customer base have done their part these last 2 and a half months….what have you done?

Jaqalope.6175:

I’ve run AC a lot, all paths.
I know what my gold count is supposed to be after selling blues and greens.
When I switched to a full magic find exotic set, end gold remained the same — meaning blues and greens were most likely unaffected.
Rares and exotics disappeared entirely.
Anything beyond Omnom bars seems to make your drop rates decrease.

Oh, and I just solo’d a level 79 champion and got a blue shield worth 63 copper as a reward.

And again we see evidence that rewards have not been fixed.

I have stopped thinking of GW2 as my game for the next few years. I can see the carrot on the string, but it is rotten.

In about 700 hours played since release, over 8 characters (7 at 80, last one at 43), I’ve noticed a distinctly lower quality of drops after 11/15, and in the past month it has been even worse. Before 11/15 I made enough money to support leveling those characters mainly from dungeon loot and rewards and loot from DEs. Drops were slightly better around christmas in dungeons and large-scale events (got all 6 of the exotics I’ve ever received outside of completion rewards during wintersday), but since then I’m lucky to see a green in a blitz of multiple dungeon paths. Running MF boosters and omnom bars seems to have increased my green drop rate, but rares and exotics have become non-existent since after wintersday. My usual profit from a full clear of AC has dropped from almost 4g with an omnom bar to less than 3g in the past 2 weeks due to receiving less overall drops and drops of worse quality, along with less silver received on average for champ kills despite use of omnom bars.

The usual CS farm routes before 11/15 netted me at least 1 rare per hour. I have yet to see a rare in CS since 11/15. I usually run with 0% MF during both time periods.

I usually run my daily through wayfarer foothills, killing many veterans and 2 or 3 champs as part of events. Rarely do these champs drop loot, the worst offender being the svanir’s dome event champion, from whom I receive loot maybe once a week. The frozen maw champion I receive loot from (not including chest) about 3 times a week. I understand this is a low-level zone, but as it is my most common zone to kill stuff in open world content, it is easiest for me to track. Other champions in other zones I’ve seen no increase in drop rate despite statements to the change, and when I do the quality of drop is usually blue. The first champion mob in CoE path 1 (the icebrood wolf) rarely drops anything for me, and when it does it is usually a junk item.

Dragon event chests I consider to have a good drop if I get a yellow seal. Normally I get 2 green seals and the rest of the loot is blue, and very rarely (maybe once a week) I get a rare weapon.

Conclusion is that drop rates are worse than before 11/15 and not working as intended.

tl;dr: I don’t have any specific data or numbers to show other than what I distinctly notice. And I have noticed that, despite a slight increase in drops during wintersday, drops have been generally of worse quality since the end of wintersday, and overall worse (including the bonus I received during wintersday) since 11/15. In ~700 hours I have never seen a lodestone drop, not received a precursor in over 1100 GS into the forge and 600 hammers, and outside of wintersday I have never seen an exotic drop.

Played since BWE1, just recently started getting the WvWvW Bonuses, never seen an Exotic drop. Get loot from normal mobs my level about 1 in 15 kills. Always junk. Rarely get loot from champions or vets, when I do it is crap Trophy / White / Blue. Went on several dungeon runs, all my grp mates got Rares / Exotics from chests. I got White / Blue / 1 or 2 Green. Went into fractals even though I have been avoiding it. Recieved 1 green, all blues. While groupmates got rares and exotics again. They were not running MF and this was from chests, so MF doesn’t effect it.

I feel like my account is flagged for Permanent DR. As everything I try to farm = low loot / low gold. Taken me a week to farm about 6 – 8g playing hours a day now.

Tried getting MF gear, but it made no difference and only gimped my character. Leveling my 3rd char now, and finding the same situation.

Otaur.9268:

Played since BWE1, just recently started getting the WvWvW Bonuses, never seen an Exotic drop. Get loot from normal mobs my level about 1 in 15 kills. Always junk. Rarely get loot from champions or vets, when I do it is crap Trophy / White / Blue. Went on several dungeon runs, all my grp mates got Rares / Exotics from chests. I got White / Blue / 1 or 2 Green. Went into fractals even though I have been avoiding it. Recieved 1 green, all blues. While groupmates got rares and exotics again. They were not running MF and this was from chests, so MF doesn’t effect it.

I feel like my account is flagged for Permanent DR. As everything I try to farm = low loot / low gold. Taken me a week to farm about 6 – 8g playing hours a day now.

Tried getting MF gear, but it made no difference and only gimped my character. Leveling my 3rd char now, and finding the same situation.

This mirrors my experiences.

The guy above citing worse drops making roughly 1g per AC path is making 3 times what I make per AC peth.

If I play a lot in a week, i’ll be lucky to see 6g in revenues, and I sell EVERYTHING.

Otaur.9268:

Played since BWE1, just recently started getting the WvWvW Bonuses, never seen an Exotic drop. Get loot from normal mobs my level about 1 in 15 kills. Always junk. Rarely get loot from champions or vets, when I do it is crap Trophy / White / Blue. Went on several dungeon runs, all my grp mates got Rares / Exotics from chests. I got White / Blue / 1 or 2 Green. Went into fractals even though I have been avoiding it. Recieved 1 green, all blues. While groupmates got rares and exotics again. They were not running MF and this was from chests, so MF doesn’t effect it.

I feel like my account is flagged for Permanent DR. As everything I try to farm = low loot / low gold. Taken me a week to farm about 6 – 8g playing hours a day now.

Tried getting MF gear, but it made no difference and only gimped my character. Leveling my 3rd char now, and finding the same situation.

I have the exact same problem. DR from login and only getting worse to toe point that all I get are crap thropies. Group and guild are getting drops tho.. something is off, big time.

It’s quite clear that Anet doesn’t give a kitten about this issue, doesn’t give a kitten about this thread, and has no intention of actually communicating with the player base other than “look we got more tokens and backpacks, come buy gems, lulz”

3 months and still no “actual” response, disguting.

Maybe if we start overloading the boards with the problem instead of being pidgeon holed into this crappy kitten thread

But hey, at least we have more stuff coming to buy on the gem store, and even more tokens to gather, well done skirting the single biggest problem with this game Anet.

kuroioni.3147:

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

…

…

So my input is not valuable and I should stop posting now? lol

Vlad Morbius.1759:

Customer base have done their part these last 2 and a half months….what have you done?

They’ve done nothing visible yet. They have had time to work on these issues and we’ll see how it is addressed in the updates.

DR, MF and Vet/Champ drops —-- I really expect to see obvious progress on these issues in the upcoming patch(es). I wouldn’t have stuck around if I didn’t.

I have relied on them updating the game to keep their word on the ideals of the manifesto. But of course, my reliance is based on the company that published the MMO Manifesto.

If it turns out to not be the same company then I will have been silenced (sadly) and kuroioni above will get his wish.

And I will owe Vlad and others my apology for being naive. (If I am wrong I’ll freely make that apology in this thread.) Hopefully that won’t be necessary though which is why I’m still here.

WarMacheen.7124:

It’s quite clear that Anet doesn’t give a kitten about this issue.

3 months and still no “actual” response, disguting.

Maybe if we start overloading the boards with the problem instead of being pidgeon holed into this crappy kitten thread

But hey, at least we have more stuff coming to buy on the gem store, and even more tokens to gather, well done skirting the single biggest problem with this game Anet.

Ya….I have no interest in grinding for tokens for anything. Beside the issue of actually acquiring the desired precursor, the token requirement is the biggest issue with acquiring a legendary. I don’t like WvW and don’t like constantly grinding dungeons.

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

And I will owe Vlad and others my apology for being naive. (If I am wrong I’ll freely make that apology in this thread.) Hopefully that won’t be necessary though which is why I’m still here.

You’re input is valuable and your opinions your own. While we often do not see eye to eye, you should never have to apologize for stating your opinion nor should one be expected. What you might get is the occasional “I told you so”, however, if you’re correct about the content of the patches, that right then falls to you.

As has been clearly stated in this interview (http://www.guildwars2junkies.com/tag/diminishing-returns/) ANet allows us to “farm” but what they mean by “farming” is totally different what the majority of playerbase considers it to be. Point is, that if anyone wants to farm X stuff it is basically not possible. First because quite large loot tables, second because 70% if those consist of trash (like Porous Bones) and third because you hit DR as soon as game decides you killed 1 too many mob in a single place/period of time.

As I wrote earlier if I do not focus on what I am doing I can hit DR in less than 10 mins. If I do pay attention I might avoid it for some time but I will be hit by it sooner or later during my typical 3 hour/day session. IMO 3 hours per day, no matter how intense, can hardly be called hardcore grinding/farming yet ANet thinks otherwise. Now, I don’t even try to “farm” one typical material, just want to loot enough of stuff to be able to gear my alts just because “normal” play with my second and third char is not rewarding enough to gear properly to their level. This was not the case before Nov 15 patch!

plasmacutter.2709:

The guy above citing worse drops making roughly 1g per AC path is making 3 times what I make per AC peth.

to clarify, that was for a full clear of all AC paths, not 1 path. With omnom bars used, I used to pull around 4g for completing all paths, since wintersday I’m lucky to break 2.5g for completing all paths.

Bartas.4908:

As has been clearly stated in this interview (http://www.guildwars2junkies.com/tag/diminishing-returns/) ANet allows us to “farm” but what they mean by “farming” is totally different what the majority of playerbase considers it to be. Point is, that if anyone wants to farm X stuff it is basically not possible. First because quite large loot tables, second because 70% if those consist of trash (like Porous Bones) and third because you hit DR as soon as game decides you killed 1 too many mob in a single place/period of time.

As I wrote earlier if I do not focus on what I am doing I can hit DR in less than 10 mins. If I do pay attention I might avoid it for some time but I will be hit by it sooner or later during my typical 3 hour/day session. IMO 3 hours per day, no matter how intense, can hardly be called hardcore grinding/farming yet ANet thinks otherwise. Now, I don’t even try to “farm” one typical material, just want to loot enough of stuff to be able to gear my alts just because “normal” play with my second and third char is not rewarding enough to gear properly to their level. This was not the case before Nov 15 patch!

To get the most from the game, you have to farm mats – it’s why there’s a crafting system. (Not that crafting is much of an advantage – but that’s a whole other topic.)

The problem with diminishing returns is that it does not solve the botting problem. If a bot gets 1000 rares then it’s in business; however, if a bot gets 10000 porous bones it’s still in business. The merchants pay currency for those bones which the bots can sell.

I’m not smart enough to figure out a way for DR to effectively stop botting. If there’s a fix – it’s beyond me.

Not only that, but the teleporting bots are getting 100’s of thousands of copper, iron and etc ores which as far as I know is not affected by DR.

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

And I will owe Vlad and others my apology for being naive. (If I am wrong I’ll freely make that apology in this thread.) Hopefully that won’t be necessary though which is why I’m still here.

I’m not looking for an apology from you, what I want is Anet to fill in the blanks regarding these critical issues. They called this a “perceived” issue putting the blame back on us for what was obviously a result of their actions (intentional or not), they locked the original post with no information which was tantamount to calling us all delusional, they implemented DR as a control for botting which has negatively impacted their honest player base, they have manipulated the economy steering people towards the gem store for gold and they have chosen to be mostly silent on the subject for two and half months. So frankly if anyone owes us an apology…..

Hello, posting some QQ here again that loot.. well, sucks. Nothing but x3 blues from chests and tons of gray trash stuff. Last time I posted I shortly after got an exotic so I’m hoping it might work again. My acc is perma DR bugged!

EXOTICS RAIN PLZ.

LOL I haven’t logged since last christmas and just remembered about this thread (got burnt out a bit so taking a well deserved break :p ).

Honestly, after a month I’m surprised it hasn’t been addressed properly by someone more than a CC or moderator.
Even if the issue is small or we are just terribly unlucky, somebody should be answering us.

Is it in our heads ? Then say so.
Please.

To be honest I should be a good experiment. Haven’t played in a month. DR must have reset by now xD.
I could see if my luck has changed. Will try to arrange some time to play the game and will keep you updated when I do on my results.