Guild Wars 2

I notice in any facet of the game, be it Exploration, World Bosses, Dungeons, Fractals, WvW or sPvP. the quality of drop rates seem to be extremely poor. Whats worse is the longer or harder you play the worse rewards you get.

Can anyone clarify the mechanics of drop rates and rewards. It’ll really help, sometimes it all seems like a waste of time. Its demoralizing.

Mechanic of drop rates: rng, just plain rng

Welcome to gw2. I play 3 years now, and the best drop i got was around 15g worth.

DR

The exact parameters for gaining/losing DR would be confidential.

The average rate or reward is far lower than you think. Really, its as simple as that. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

Well, Drops really ARE a waste of time. Unless you’re the kind of player that finds multiple precursors despite almost never playing the game, of course (i get that there can be extreme deviations from the expected values – but how the hell can people get serveral precursors over one year from doing almost nothing!? And why are those guys not hit by lightning more often?).

Guild Wars 2 Loot can be summed up in one Word: Green.

• Killed someone and now there is a bag of loot at your feet? well, prepare for some ‘greens’ !
• Hey! It’s a Worldboss-Chest! guess what, prepare for even more ‘greens’!
• Wow, so you got an exotic champion-lootbag? Open it, and marvel at it’s green contents!
• So, you completly explored a Region? Here, take some greens, please!
• I see! You rose by another level in WvW? Awesome! Here is a green surprise for you!
• In the rare case of a Skrit-Thief Event, you may prepare for epic green loot!

Your Inventory will be filled by green loot. And if there isn’t a mercheant nearby, you’re forced to salvage them to make more place for possibly valuable loot (physicists deduced that such loot may theoretically exist, although they have yet to find it. We will have our answers once they finish building the great mystic forge collider). And when you salvage it, green loot has a nice chance to split up into almost-worthless materials and green sigils, leaving you with another piece of green occupying the slot in your inventory that you attempted to free anyway.

Really, Drops suck. I would completly ignore them if it weren’t for the fact that they cover my traveling cost. You can’t get rich from it, though – that requires good loot, and you only get that one from World Bosses, Dungeons (End chests) and Fractals. WvW only yields me greens (or Thorns/Spikes if i get lucky), and while PvE also stuffs my inventory with them, i can at least get some “goldies” there. TBH, whenever i need gold, i have to switch over to PvE and do Instances/WBosses for it. And the loot still sucks.

Where is RNGesus when you need him….

I don’t know if it is a thing or just my personal pure luck, but hear this:

Whenever I happen to play with one of my buddies that only play very rarely, to help them level their cute tiny lowbie toons, i always walk away with some rares and often even an exotic or otherwise curious loot from just normal lowbie area mobs…
No idea if the rumored anti-farm function just un-locks when you go to a lowbie area and group up with some cute little noob or if it is just coincidence, I don’t know, but it surprisingly happens a lot to me.

Welcome to GW 2, a game notoriously known for its poor drop rates and rewards. In case you don’t know, you can buy gems for real money and exchange them for gold, so you can buy what you want, just like ANet wants you to

All drop except for precursors and few collection skins is trash. 99.9% of the time you automatically salvage and/or sell all your loot. There is no hidden mechanics. Just terrible system.

You are being unfair here OP. Every content you stated, have RNG Factors that may, or may not add in your final reward, but all of then have guaranteed rewards.

• Fractals : You may get ascended drops in final, or exotic/rares on the course of the run, pure RNG. Bt you will guaranteed get 1,5g on the end run, plus all the fractal relics adjusted witih your level, with this token you can grab a choice of ascended rings, backpiece, 20-slots bags and more.

• Dungeons: Same situation as Fractals, run reward may add in your loot exotics/rares, but you will guaranteed get The final reward cache (1,5g~ 3g) plus dungeons specific tokens that can be used to buy lv80 exotic armor.

• World Bosses : Finah Chest have a RNG based rewards that may add in your total rewards, but you will guaranteed receive a daily chest with a guaranteed rare or 2 depending on the boss.

• WxW : On the course of playing, you will get Badges of honor and drops. Drops are RNG, Badges of honor are a currency you can use to buy exotig gear or cheaper ascended amulets without any RNG involved.

• PvP : Each reward track gives very straight rewards on final cache without any RNG involved (It even allow you to CHOOSE what weapon/armor you want on dungeons tracks).

TL;DR – Every aspect of the game have guaranteed rewards and currency, and all of then have RNG aspects that may or may not add in your total end reward.

Thats how any game works Btw, and helps to keep economy fine, its sad if you have bad luck, but thats don’t mean that the game is not rewarding you.

phirefox.2568:

Where is RNGesus when you need him….

Most of the time It doesn’t work for me last night however, purchased 1000 trick-or-treat bags and the 94th one gave me the ghost wolf pet.

So no complaints about RNG from me, lol.

Don’t forget about the Magic Find account buff that you can raise by salvaging and consuming the essence of luck that has a chance of dropping.

“Mayeth Zommoros’ grace shine upon thee my pupils.
Praiseth the loot, for it is good !”

- Brother Arr En Gesus – Public Mass at Divinity’s Reach Upper City – 1328 AE

I am a returning player and have been enjoying the game so far getting a few characters to 80. The last few weeks I have been doing PvP and noticed the PvP reward tracks to getting loot chests. Great, I thought alternative ways to achieve loot. Now, I didn’t know what was in these chests but noticed that the Maguma track gave me an insect which a quick google search showed that this allowed me to craft a very nice Ambrite weapon skin (so thats where they came from). I little more research and I’m off to Dry Top and working on getting some of these weapon skins. For me, the combination of PvP and Events is effort = reward.

I then decided to look in the wardrobe and see what other skins were available and came across the weapons of the sunless. Very nice! and goes really well with my necromancer. So off I go and start researching what I need to do…. I have to say I was a little amazed.

In another post I read that this is an end game event that normally fills out an hour before the allotted time. You have to kill the boss (understandably) and are then faced with RNG. The RNG drop rate however in this case is evidently abysmal. As one person noted at current rates it was estimated that it could take just over 5 years spending 3hrs a day to get all the weapon skins (thats 5475 hours). see: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Tequatl-and-Wurm-box-drop-rates
(i have also read that some people have fears that with raiding coming to GW2 that these events may die, though not sure about that one)

So while I don’t mind grind and yes do believe that there should be some effort required, I think it should be balanced and this does not sound balanced?

Some background, I have played a lot of different MMO’s and have enjoyed them all for one reason or another, but it was essentially to enjoy the world and character development. However when presented with “the choice” of whether I want to spend 5475 hours of my time grinding for nice weapon skins does not spring to mind.

Now some of you will respond with comments such as it makes the achievement that much more rewarding, people who spend the time should be rewarded and those that don’t should not etc etc. However I have to admit this thinking is a little lost on me.
Why should a player that is unable or unwilling to spend 3 hours of their day in game grinding these events for 5yrs be penalised?

I don’t mind some grind, but there should be some balance. Someone who can spend that time should be able to earn it quicker, but I don’t quite get why the drop rates are so abysmal that it requires that much effort that it becomes a non starter (Just as attaining a Legendary is seen as a non starter for many players, however the fact that you can buy them on the TP makes up for it to a certain degree imo).

Effort should = Reward and not RNG or at least if RNG is especially unkind then there is a limit placed on how long it should take to earn said item, skin, thin. An RNG system that for a lot of players essentially rules out even attempting such end game content.

Don’t get me wrong, I think GW2 is a very good MMO that provides a great choice of things to do. However, I am left wondering that if certain content and or desirable items are so gated, what is the effort to reward ratio and is it something I want to invest in?

TLDR: Grind is OK, providing it is balanced with a time limit on achievement. I think the game would benefit more by adding some sort of currency in addition to the RNG that guarantees a time limit on gaining said item, skin, thing.

The game reward isn’t base around loots, bug gold. You rarely loots what you want, you get gold and a bunch of loots that you can sell for a profit. That way everybody only need to grind enough gold to get exactly what they want and don’t need to grind until they get the loot they want. I personally, far prefer the GW2 system. Several places allow you a higher amount of Gold per hours in the game, and these place are highly rewarding.

GW2 Reward system still have some issue. There is a complete lack of a good time vs difficulty vs reward ratio. A place like SW is super easy, but yield more reward than pug dungeon, while Fractal have an even lesser rewards. There is also a lot of place where the reward is just lacking that nobody really take the time to complete that content. The best example is dynamic event. Outside of world boss and some specific events, most of them yield almost no rewards. And lastly, some content only provide specific content and once you get those specific reward that content isn’t worth doing anymore. The best exemple is dry top. After you get the ambrite weapons and mawdrey there isn’t really any reason to stay at Dry Top even if it’s a nice map.

It just make no sense to value the reward system of GW2 on loots.

if drop rates were high the items wouldnt worth the same

Varrg.2704:

Welcome to GW 2, a game notoriously known for its poor drop rates and rewards. In case you don’t know, you can buy gems for real money and exchange them for gold, so you can buy what you want, just like ANet wants you to

The drop rates are pretty good actually: everything you get is worth something.

What people are complaining about is the drop rate of super valuable items. Here’s the thing: if the drop rate were to increase, then those items wouldn’t be super valuable any longer. Look at how quickly the price of Sam dropped after they updated the mechanics of Ogre Wars. Look at the price changes for the various enameled dyes that drop from Scarlet Memory boxes during the just-ended event.

Looks like this game only has 1-2 loot tables and the RNG picks 1-2 out of the 50k items stacked in those tables.

Sephas.8793:

Don’t forget about the Magic Find account buff that you can raise by salvaging and consuming the essence of luck that has a chance of dropping.

On the other hand the devs seem fond of adding more systems that completely ignore MF …