Guild Wars 2

IF YOU DO NOT HAVE LOGICAL DATA TO PROVIDE, PLEASE REFRAIN FROM POSTING IN THIS THREAD. DO NOT POST WITH “RANDOM IS RANDOM”. THIS THREAD GOES DEEPER THAN THAT

I don’t farm Orr myself, but I’ve been reading people talking about it on the forums. Some people say they get 5g an hour easily, or 25g in one playing session just casually doing events in Orr. Then on the flip side, we have other people complaining that they are getting “hit by DR” after 6-8 kills, and only receive junk items for hours. Why and how does this difference exist?

I understand the concepts of random generation and un/lucky streaks, but I’m talking about repeated and reliable patterns of different people having completely different experiences. How could one person consistently fail and another succeed, at the same activities? Are some people farming incorrectly? Does the RNG use your player name to produce its random seed, and that’s why people see such consistent levels of good/bad drops? Are people lying about being able to make good profit?

I suspect it’s a bit of everything. However I’d like some knowledgeable input from:

1) people that do farm and know exactly how and why they get what they get
2) people that have tried proven tactics and failed
3) programmers or developers, ANet or anyone else, that may have an explanation

Before you post saying “random is random, people get different drops”, please re-read my post, especially the part about consistency. I just don’t understand how one camp says “I could make 1000g in a week if I wanted”, and another says “I play my butt off, but get crappy drops every single time, after being in a zone for 5 min”. People have described reliable, consistent results which they can reproduce at will. This is NOT an issue of randomness.

Curo.2483:

Before you post saying “random is random, people get different drops”, please re-read my post, especially the part about consistency. I just don’t understand how one camp says “I could make 1000g in a week if I wanted”, and another says “I play my butt off, but get crappy drops every single time, after being in a zone for 5 min”. People have described reliable, consistent results which they can reproduce at will. This is NOT an issue of randomness.

Here’s to hoping they don’t derail your post. I’m in the “I play my butt off, but get crappy drops every single time, after being in a zone for 5 min” camp. They’ve told me I need to teleport but not after 6-8 kills I don’t think so that’s simply ridiculous. I suspect there’s some foul play but any mention of such against the precious brings out the crazies that want to derail threads and keep honest open conversations about the problems those of us on the down side face completely quiet so they can go back to their “everything’s perfectly fine here” fantasy in the forums.

I do hope some good explanations come up tho because it’s definitely not random.

I have a guild mate, we’ve both been playing since release. We’ve consistently pretty much farmed Orr the same about the whole time. He regularly gets 3-4 yellows for every one I get, and I have gotten 1 exotic in the past 5 months while he has gotten 20+.

Same Magic find, same overall time in Orr, same DEs, only difference is I play a staff ele and he’s on a ranger. The same difference with world boss chests, he consistently gets yellows form them, and I very very rarely get them

ajm.2931:

I have a guild mate, we’ve both been playing since release. We’ve consistently pretty much farmed Orr the same about the whole time. He regularly gets 3-4 yellows for every one I get, and I have gotten 1 exotic in the past 5 months while he has gotten 20+.

Same Magic find, same overall time in Orr, same DEs, only difference is I play a staff ele and he’s on a ranger. The same difference with world boss chests, he consistently gets yellows form them, and I very very rarely get them

This is the perfect example of what I mean, thank you! 2 people doing the same things over a long period of time, yet getting different results. We have a large sample size and no other variables.

So what’s happening? Is the code flawed? Is his friend doing something differently but not telling him? Or is this guy lying?

Rng is rng. Everyone will get their bad and good streaks, you just remember the bad ones more. I once combined 104 masterwork items into the forge (26 attempts) without getting a single rare. Currently on a streak of 14 failed attempts to upgrade. Then I remember a period where I got 3 upgrades in a row. Sometimes I farm and get a lodestone on second kill, other times I farmed for 10 hours on separate days and never got one. We all hate rng because it doesn’t reward effort equally and when you do get a reward, you don’t appreciate it (unless it is a precursor) because you feel like you deserved it.

Curo.2483:

ajm.2931:

I have a guild mate, we’ve both been playing since release. We’ve consistently pretty much farmed Orr the same about the whole time. He regularly gets 3-4 yellows for every one I get, and I have gotten 1 exotic in the past 5 months while he has gotten 20+.

Same Magic find, same overall time in Orr, same DEs, only difference is I play a staff ele and he’s on a ranger. The same difference with world boss chests, he consistently gets yellows form them, and I very very rarely get them

This is the perfect example of what I mean, thank you! 2 people doing the same things over a long period of time, yet getting different results. We have a large sample size and no other variables.

So what’s happening? Is the code flawed? Is his friend doing something differently but not telling him? Or is this guy lying?

Happened to me too, tho my friend left the game months ago due to other issues with the devs.

We did everything together and after the november patch with DR addition, suddenly he was getting everything I was getting nothing, even in five mans. I left because I thought maybe it was DR and I wanted it to bleed away. Started playing last week had a couple of rares from unlikely sources in multiple locations no less (prelevel 30) and now nothing for days. It’s the same old story with this game.

Indoles.1467:

Rng is rng. Everyone will get their bad and good streaks, you just remember the bad ones more. I once combined 104 masterwork items into the forge (26 attempts) without getting a single rare. Currently on a streak of 14 failed attempts to upgrade. Then I remember a period where I got 3 upgrades in a row. Sometimes I farm and get a lodestone on second kill, other times I farmed for 10 hours on separate days and never got one. We all hate rng because it doesn’t reward effort equally and when you do get a reward, you don’t appreciate it (unless it is a precursor) because you feel like you deserved it.

was that before or after the nerfed what rares you could get in the mystic toilet? because originally you could throw greens in there ad nauseum and get rares back 80% of the time. I remember doing that clearly.

He also asked for something a bit more substantial than RNG is RNG.

Indoles.1467:

Rng is rng. Everyone will get their bad and good streaks, you just remember the bad ones more. I once combined 104 masterwork items into the forge (26 attempts) without getting a single rare. Currently on a streak of 14 failed attempts to upgrade. Then I remember a period where I got 3 upgrades in a row. Sometimes I farm and get a lodestone on second kill, other times I farmed for 10 hours on separate days and never got one. We all hate rng because it doesn’t reward effort equally and when you do get a reward, you don’t appreciate it (unless it is a precursor) because you feel like you deserved it.

Please re-read my post. I’m talking about people ALWAYS getting the same thing. You make a good point about memory bias, however I believe there is more to work here than just that. I specifically asked people to refrain from “rng is rng” posts. You clearly didn’t read my post thoroughly.

I just want to point out that there are actually some valid points in this post. However they are overshadowed by the “rng is rng” comment. You had something good to say, but countered it by going against my initial request. I’ll look past it, but please, let’s just stick to the logic and data here. You mention yourself getting good streaks, and bad. I understand that. I even said in my post that I understand that. But I’m not talking about variation in your personal experiences, I’m talking about variation between different people’s experiences.

For starters, people exaggerate too much and are bad at estimation.

Other things which can effect farming efficiency is where you farm, how crowded the area is, and what class you pick.

I’m wondering if it’s not something quite simple.

There are two criteria to get a drop. First you have to hit targets, and second you have to do an minimum amount of damage to targets to qualify for drops. Now, I realize this has nothing to do with chests, but…

if someone is specced more for support, or they’re more single target and don’t hit as many targets, or they’re hitting targets but not high enough damage to be hitting that threshold, that might be a problem in some of the cases.

Also, my wife used to complain that she got less/worse drops from me, until I watched her play for a while. Seems she was running around a lot, but she didn’t pick up a lot of the bags that dropped for her. In the heat of battle she didn’t see them and moved on. She started getting much closer to the drops I was getting when she started noticing bags more.

Again, a couple of suggestions that might explain the problem in some instances.

Thanks to the above posters. I’m eventually going to compile the information you’ve given me, and hope we can get a sticky to once and for all end the whole loot debate.

Curo.2483:

Thanks to the above posters. I’m eventually going to compile the information you’ve given me, and hope we can get a sticky to once and for all end the whole loot debate.

I hope you don’t consider posts like ajm.2931’s useful. It’s completely anecdotal with no reliable data.

ya that’s why I say it depend on what class you play. A guardian auto attack with 1 staff get far more drop than other class.

How crowded the area is matters too since if there’s too many people it is hard to tag target. If there is too few people monster die too slow.

And quite honestly, all the people who say they can’t even get an gold an hour or can’t even get 20 items to drop in an hour are just farming at the wrong place. You have to follow the popular events where all the people are grinding the mob.

Biohazard.4196:

Curo.2483:

Thanks to the above posters. I’m eventually going to compile the information you’ve given me, and hope we can get a sticky to once and for all end the whole loot debate.

I hope you don’t consider posts like ajm.2931’s useful. It’s completely anecdotal with no reliable data.

I like ajm’s post because it details the scenario I am trying to communicate. This whole topic is based on people’s experiences. I saw people like ajm saying “I see a difference”. Now I want to find out why that difference exists. Ajm’s post is useful because it outlines one of my claims: that people say they are getting different results. Now no, I’m not going to say “this exists because ajm said so”. Rather I’m saying “ajm and dozens others said this, is there any truth to it? Give me data”. Hope this is clear enough for you

Yeah I wouldn’t expect a response.

My post is 100% anecdotal, but anecdotes are all we have. Only A.net has hard data. I’m aware of selection bias, and I chalked my experience versus others to that for a long time. But after months without an exotic, guild-mates getting precursors and yellows seemingly from the sky, I’m not sure anymore.

…additional note: I did seem to have the same overall drop rate in SAB as guild-mates.

^ I think that probabaly better explained as personality. Some people complain way more than other.

You know there’s probably like 500 guildmates and only a few have gotten precursor. That don’t exactly mean precursor fall from the sky.

One thing I’ve come to realize is that its significantly easier and more lucrative to farm on a physical damage dealing class. Part of the problem with farming as a magical class beyond the obvious differences in stats is the delay in the initial attack. An Ele has to wait for his fireball to land, a mesmer has to wait for his illusion to attack, a necro has to wait for his mark to trigger, an engy has to wait for his nades to explode. Many of the small cannon fodder creatures die before they get that tap in.

Iknow some will flame me for saying this and say its just RNG etc etc. BUT.
Up until the last patch (not the most recent one last week, the one before that put the Roxand Brahm story in) I was pretty happy farming Orr and in (maybe) 2 months I saved up about 500g. Primary source of acquisition was Heavy Moldy Bags and I always opened them and sold the T6 Mats. Out of 250 bags I was making maybe 8-9 g…depending on how many bloods dropped….I even got a fair few Giant Eyes. On a typical Penitent event I would get about 20 bags.

NOW, on a typical Penitent I get 5-6. Opening these bags gives me T5 Mats just about all the time. I haven’t seen a Giant Eye drop from these since the patch.

With the cost of the desirable items being what they are I would expect it to be possible to grind / farm/ or just play about 10g an hour (Dawn and Dusk would require 60-70 hours of play to get…not unreasonable I dont think)….would be a reasonable expectation. Last time I actually bothered playing Orr for an hour I got less than 1g.

I don’t know what happened, whether was loot nerf or whetehr it was just I have hit this mystical DR everyone talks about, but its not just me that has noticed….many in guild are having the same problems.

Either way, I will nto continue playing unless something gets done. I have bought gems in the past, but that was when I considered loot gathering fair…..now it is totally and unforgivably unfair.

pricer.5091:

Iknow some will flame me for saying this and say its just RNG etc etc. BUT.
Up until the last patch (not the most recent one last week, the one before that put the Roxand Brahm story in) I was pretty happy farming Orr and in (maybe) 2 months I saved up about 500g. Primary source of acquisition was Heavy Moldy Bags and I always opened them and sold the T6 Mats. Out of 250 bags I was making maybe 8-9 g…depending on how many bloods dropped….I even got a fair few Giant Eyes. On a typical Penitent event I would get about 20 bags.

NOW, on a typical Penitent I get 5-6. Opening these bags gives me T5 Mats just about all the time. I haven’t seen a Giant Eye drop from these since the patch.

With the cost of the desirable items being what they are I would expect it to be possible to grind / farm/ or just play about 10g an hour….would be a reasonable expectation. Last time I actually bothered playing Orr for an hour I got less than 1g.

I don’t know what happened, whether was loot nerf or whetehr it was just I have hit this mystical DR everyone talks about, but its not just me that has noticed….many in guild are having the same problems.

Either way, I will nto continue playing unless something gets done. I have bought gems in the past, but that was when I considered loot gathering fair…..now it is totally and unforgivably unfair.

If the farming isn’t there in Orr, look for alternatives. There are people who have had better luck farming in other places, like Southsun Cove and Frostgorge Sound. Naturally you have to figure out where to farm to get better, but because powerful blood is quite costly now in terms of the market, a lot of people are farming it.

I’m surprised more people aren’t trying to farm armored scales now, considering how much they cost.