Guild Wars 2

I will make this as short as possible. It is very important to not merge this so that both players and devs can read it. If you feel that i am totally wrong, feel free to delete this thread to oblivion. But please, read it once.

Hypothesis: Drop rates for rare items have been NOT been nerfed but a theory of mine is that another item in the rare loot tables is skewing armor/weapon drop rates in small sessions.

Preface: The rare loot tables are different for each zone. I will be talking about the ones in Orr, especially cursed shore

The problem: Fewer rare drops.
Analysis: Wrong. You get the same rare drops as you always have. Rare is something colored yellow. Not only armor and weapons are colored yellow. There is a material called :Pile of putrid essence. this is also of rare quality and as far i have noticed from hundreds of hours of farming in cursed shore, it has similar drop chances as rares do.
What i have also observed is that if i add up the number of rare mats(such as putrid essence)+weapons/armor i get the percentage of rare drops i would expect pre nov 15.

A theory: Loot tables are dynamically adjusted per day and per character.
Analysis: If each day the loot tables are adjusted, then your luck is predefined for the whole day. This explains the lucky/unlucky for a whole day phenomenon. A lucky day would be defined by a reduction of the drop rate% of yellow mats from each person’s loot table. An unlucky day would mean the exact opposite.

An assumption: Since Nov 15, the loot tables have only changed in the sense of the % of yellow mat drop rates within them.
Analysis: Your rare drop percentages are the same. Add together all yellow mats and your rare weapon/armor drops and notice it is probabilistically concise to pre Nov 15. How do i know? I dont. This is an observation of over 200 hours farming the same area.

A recommendation(for ANet): Reduce the number of rare materials such as Pile of putrid essence from the rare gear loot tables.
Reasoning: You have told us that you havent observed anything odd with your data. That makes sense. By the law of Large Numbers(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers) you are bound to observe no changes by doing analysis on large sample sizes. The analysis is to be done for small farming sessions

A recommendation(for players): Farm in cursed shore, add the number of your rare materials(yellow) such as pile of putrid essense and the number of your rare weapon/armor drops and provide some info on whether my theory stands or not.
Reasoning: Proof by contradiction:(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_contradiction)

TLDR: None. If you don’t read the whole thing you will likely have no idea what the intent of this thread is.

And the nerf drop rate of exotics? Same theory?
Also green and blue drops were nerfed. What is the theory behind it?

RedBaron.6058:

And the nerf drop rate of exotics? Same theory?
Also green and blue drops were nerfed. What is the theory behind it?

I doubt there is a change in exotic/blue/green/drop rates. from my farming sessions i get a bunch of blue/greens and around 1-2 exotics a week

Your comments shills my spine…
Maybe it is better for you to read the thread about the loot drop nerf. There you can read the opinion of many players.

RedBaron.6058:

Your comments shills my spine…
Maybe it is better for you to read the thread about the loot drop nerf. There you can read the opinion of many players.

I doubt that more than 10% out of all those players has ever farmed for more than 30 min at a time.

Regardless of that, my analysis is for cursed shore alone.

small sample size

Ok and what about the precurser so called drop rate, I havent seen anyone getting a precurser by farming in cursed shore, I admit it was very rare drop rate but after the karka one time event there is nothing anymore, again a clear observation that they nerfed things to the ground….again a clear sign that as a player you are pushed to a certain direction….there are no options to farm accept fractuals or TP or gem store.

RedBaron.6058:

And the nerf drop rate of exotics? Same theory?
Also green and blue drops were nerfed. What is the theory behind it?

I haven’t got a random exotic drop in nearly a month, if not longer and that also includes from doing fotm 10 daily too. Drop rates seem lower in general.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

RedBaron.6058:

And the nerf drop rate of exotics? Same theory?
Also green and blue drops were nerfed. What is the theory behind it?

I haven’t got a random exotic drop in nearly a month, if not longer and that also includes from doing fotm 10 daily too. Drop rates seem lower in general.

Have you even read the thread? Ofcourse the drops are lower but that is definitely not the point of the discussion.

I have never gotten an exotic drop, and I have played since Beta. I have gotten a rare drop perhaps once or twice.

I rarely get “greens”. Maybe once a week, almost always wayyyyyyyyyy below my current play level.

I get a lot of “junk” —-I am happy if I get a “bag” with something useful in it, an orange and I am ecstatic!

I think that I am that kid that gets a pound of hamburger for Christmas from their parents and is busy making hamburger sculpture.

This is not a thread to complain why you get low drops but for the reason behing it. Please, either discuss it or not post here. there are other threads for that

Ath.2531:

RedBaron.6058:

Your comments shills my spine…
Maybe it is better for you to read the thread about the loot drop nerf. There you can read the opinion of many players.

I doubt that more than 10% out of all those players has ever farmed for more than 30 min at a time.

Regardless of that, my analysis is for cursed shore alone.

Lol. 30 minutes huh? Regardless, your poorly thought out theory, if true, makes absolutely no sense from a programming perspective.

Ath.2531:

A theory: Loot tables are dynamically adjusted per day and per character.
Analysis: If each day the loot tables are adjusted, then your luck is predefined for the whole day. This explains the lucky/unlucky for a whole day phenomenon. A lucky day would be defined by a reduction of the drop rate% of yellow mats from each person’s loot table. An unlucky day would mean the exact opposite.

Your theory sounds like more trouble than its worth. How many games do you know have a changing loot table per character? Its easier for developers to create worldwide percentages. Also if the loot system was pre defined after farming for an hr and getting nothing one would assume that the next 23hrs were going to be kitten as well. “Pre-Defined RNG” doesn’t make sense.

Grunties.6841:

Ath.2531:

RedBaron.6058:

Your comments shills my spine…
Maybe it is better for you to read the thread about the loot drop nerf. There you can read the opinion of many players.

I doubt that more than 10% out of all those players has ever farmed for more than 30 min at a time.

Regardless of that, my analysis is for cursed shore alone.

Lol. 30 minutes huh? Regardless, your poorly thought out theory, if true, makes absolutely no sense from a programming perspective.

What i am talking about is what i believe is currently in place, not a proposal

I believe you are wrong, that is to say your theorycraft in my opinion is very very flawed. With all due respect.

You are dismissive of other theories based on YOUR experience. If thousands of people are experiencing a problem, it is a real problem. If this person or that person has really good luck, that does not make the thousands go away.

I think your theory is way way off though interesting. I personally farmed cursed shore for 100’s of hours since the Nov 15th patch and found my drop rates have dropped significantly, not one good drop day since. Here has been my experience:

Prior to the 15th I was getting 3-5 rares per hour, and a fair amount of T6 in a wide variety, a lot of T5 and I would get these drops for a few hours. NOW I am lucky to get 1 per hour, if I get more my DR kicks in and I am done for the day, it becomes a complete waste of time and I literally only get junk and white items for the rest of the day. Over the last 2 weeks I get at most 2hrs of farm time a day before DR kicks in. As far as T5 and T6 mats I only get Pile of Crystalline dust and ancient bones, and large bone, T5 dust and potent venom sacs, thats it! No other types! And I only get about 1/2 of what I was getting prior to Nov 15th.

So by your theory ANet hates me and throws me to the bottom of the RnG pile every day hoping I quit the game. Really hoping thats not the case lol

Grunties.6841:

You are dismissive of other theories based on YOUR experience. If thousands of people are experiencing a problem, it is a real problem. If this person or that person has really good luck, that does not make the thousands go away.

Just to make it clear, i am as struck by this issue as anyone else and definitely not dismissing the fact that something is off. What i discuss in my OP is a possible reason behind the bad drops. This is so, because being in a group of 5 and getting 1 drop per hour when they get 10, consistently isn’t really making much sense.

Do this experiment. Farm for 5 hours straight. Count your rare armor/weapon drops and putrid essences. Add them together. Does that seem like the number of rares you used to get pre Nov 15? Yes/No

regardless of what the reason it’s not equal for everyone and not the same as pre-nov 16th ATH is right, it needs fixing.

Ath.2531:

This is not a thread to complain why you get low drops but for the reason behing it. Please, either discuss it or not post here. there are other threads for that

Anet says it is working but still many of us know that something has changed, but making your own thread guessing what the problem is when you know nothing about the system is a waste of time.

My Theory (2c)

i) Based on a brobability roullete you can obtain the following rarity items: white, blue, green, yellow, orange. This means that you technically have a 1 in 5 chance to get any rarity item. Although this ratio is adjusted with the higher the rarity the less % out of 100% of getting it.

ii) However this is further split because each mob has it’s own set of possible items it can give: bag of items, scraps, different crafting items, armor, weapons, and nothing.

iii) Hypothetically speaking based on chance out of 100% you could get the following distribution of items:

- 10% nothing
- 10% scraps
- 20% crafting items
- 20% bag of items
- 30% armor/weapons/items
- 10% others

iv) When hitting on the ‘20% armor/weapons/items’ this is split up based on the rarity. Lets assume that this 20% is now 100% roullete.

- 45% white
- 35% blue
- 15% green
- 4% yellow
- 1% orange

Therefore in effect to get a yellow/orange item you have the following brobability: 5%/100% X 20%/100% = 1/100 = 1% chance

v) When ever getting the ‘20% armor/weapons/items’ this is also split up into the following categories which can have their own percentage probability:

- Trinkets/items
- Weapons
- Armor
- Other

So effectively, as per point iv), getting a weapon is also split up and therefore have a much lower % than say an item. Then we also have the fact that there are differnt items of the same rarity which can be influenced on several factors as described below.

vi) Naturally the distribution percentages can differ and other variables can play a part in this. The above distribution values can be affected by the following:

- player congestion per zone
- zone level currently in
- TP wanted/selling item ratio
- other

Conclusion

IMO, the best way to increase your chance of getting better items is to kill mobs in zones of low traffic and ones that can only drop few different items.