Guild Wars 2

Just completed the Shatterer event around ten minutes ago, but the chest didn’t drop after he was defeated. Did it on a level 59 alt so I probably didn’t miss out on anything good. I know at least one level 80 reported the same problem over local, though, so he could’ve missed out on some good drops or something… which isn’t fun, and also leads me to believe it isn’t an issue with my computer/client side.

Did the event yesterday too but the chest dropped that time, and this is the only time I can ever remember it happening, so it’s fairly recent I think. I believe the 80 reported the glitch happening yesterday as we talked about it but I obviously can’t confirm that.

Not sure if this has happened to anyone else or during any other world boss events, but I figured I would put up the thread since nothing turned up in search.

Same thing for me. Just completed the kill, got credit for it, but no chest appears for me. This is the third day in a row for me that I did not get loot. Four days ago I was getting the chest. I only do this once a day and only on my level 80 Charr Necromancer.

For the OP, I don’t think you can get a ground chest if your actual level is 10 or more levels below that of the event. (And most of the time, you couldn’t even do enough damage to get credit, regardless of any other mechanics in play.)

For the Opie (not the OP), it sounds as if you are experiencing the same sort of event DR that people see with Rhendak. Try doing some other events with your L80 Charrcomancer or bring in a different toon.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

For the OP, I don’t think you can get a ground chest if your actual level is 10 or more levels below that of the event. (And most of the time, you couldn’t even do enough damage to get credit, regardless of any other mechanics in play.)

For the Opie (not the OP), it sounds as if you are experiencing the same sort of event DR that people see with Rhendak. Try doing some other events with your L80 Charrcomancer or bring in a different toon.

Shatterer is a level 50 event, I believe. So, OP wasn’t too low level. But if OP parks his toons at that event and only does that one event, they could have the DR issue like Opie probably has.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Shatterer is a level 50 event, I believe. So, OP wasn’t too low level. But if OP parks his toons at that event and only does that one event, they could have the DR issue like Opie probably has.

Yeah, at the time the toon was level 59, which is 9 levels above Shatterer, so if those kinds of limits are in I don’t think I triggered it.

Quick googlekittentells me DR stands for diminishing returns and, though it technically would be possible, I don’t think I triggered that either. The now-63 is a warrior that I’ve been leveling the “standard” way, by which I mean slowly working towards map completion by doing hearts/vistas/hero points, doing dynamic events when I see them, and occasionally joining an EotM zerg.

Basically, I don’t park the toon on the Shatterer spawn and wait for the dude to come along. When I see it, I join in and pepper the thing with longbow shots from the hill like everyone else does. And on top of that, the day before yesterday was actually the day I came back from a pretty long hiatus and re-installed, and yesterday was the first time I had done the Shatterer event in literally a year.

So if DR really did kick in, it picked a pretty strange time to do it haha!

RoseofGilead.8907:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

For the OP, I don’t think you can get a ground chest if your actual level is 10 or more levels below that of the event. (And most of the time, you couldn’t even do enough damage to get credit, regardless of any other mechanics in play.)

For the Opie (not the OP), it sounds as if you are experiencing the same sort of event DR that people see with Rhendak. Try doing some other events with your L80 Charrcomancer or bring in a different toon.

Shatterer is a level 50 event, I believe. So, OP wasn’t too low level. But if OP parks his toons at that event and only does that one event, they could have the DR issue like Opie probably has.

I was thinking of the wrong dragon, sorry.

However, 9 levels under is far enough below that you would have a lot of difficulty doing enough damage, unless you were in a party (that was doing damage), so I would think that is still a possible cause.

Ok, I get that it might be a DR issue and I will try the boss with another toon.
But what doesn’t make sense though is I don’t leave my Necro “parked” at the boss location, I always return back to the Citadel. I also have several level 80’s that for the moment, all they do is world bosses. For instance, my Ranger IS parked in Mount Maelstrom and all she does is kill Megadestroyer and Golem every day, has done so for a couple of weeks now, and so far I have gotten chests with them. So why wouldn’t DR apply here? The problem has only happened with Shatterer.

opie.5467:

Ok, I get that it might be a DR issue and I will try the boss with another toon.
But what doesn’t make sense though is I don’t leave my Necro “parked” at the boss location, I always return back to the Citadel. I also have several level 80’s that for the moment, all they do is world bosses. For instance, my Ranger IS parked in Mount Maelstrom and all she does is kill Megadestroyer and Golem every day, has done so for a couple of weeks now, and so far I have gotten chests with them. So why wouldn’t DR apply here? The problem has only happened with Shatterer.

Diminishing Returns on events primarily exists to prevent certain types of botting (and less so, to encourage people to ‘play’ the game, rather than farm). So, ANet will never tell us exactly how it works — everything we know is based on player observation (and it’s difficult to get “scientifically useful” observations: controlled testing is impossible & we are primarily concerned with having fun, not rigorous testing). Thus, the following is speculative.

DR doesn’t always trigger. It seems to be a threshold calculation, rather than merely ON|OFF — that is, you build up DR points of some sort and if you have too many, you get diminished returns; some behaviors accumulate more points while others reduce them more quickly.

For example, repeating the same event five times in a row might add say 10 points each while the sixth time adds 50 points or randomly, the fourth time might add 50, so one person might hit DR after 6x, their friend at 5×. Similarly, completing a different event might drop you just below the threshold, not enough to repeat it again twice in a row.

Lower-level characters seem to accumulate DR less quickly, chained events seem to reduce the likelihood of any DR to nearly 0, and so on.

So MegaD, which has you running around (potentially) and doing some of the pre-events might generate DR points very, very slowly, so you might never notice. In contrast, if you hang out at the “nail-polishing” location for Shattererererererer, you might accumulate DR points quickly. Returning to a city or WvW won’t break DR, unless you do events, too.

tl;dr we don’t understand DR very well and your inconsistent symptoms are consistent with what we do know (although other explanations are also plausible).

Thanks Illconceived for your explanation. I understand what you are saying and going by that, there is either a bug with this boss or the rules are inconsistent. Either way, Anet should take a look at this. Thanks for your time. Oh, and by the way, haven’t had a chance to do kitten today on another toon as I’ve been too busy in RL and my “timer” and kitten’s “timer” haven’t lined up. Will post again when I’ve killed him.

*edit – kitten = short name of Shatterer

opie.5467:

Thanks Illconceived for your explanation. I understand what you are saying and going by that, there is either a bug with this boss or the rules are inconsistent. Either way, Anet should take a look at this. Thanks for your time. Oh, and by the way, haven’t had a chance to do kitten today on another toon as I’ve been too busy in RL and my “timer” and kitten’s “timer” haven’t lined up. Will post again when I’ve killed him.

*edit – kitten = short name of Shatterer

GL, Opie — do update the thread. The more we learn about DR, the better. (And may all your drops be better than average )

Well, finally got around to taking on Shatterer with my Thief and took him down. I got my chests. I’m not sure what I learned here. Most likely DR was in effect with my Necro, but I also never got around to fighting him yesterday, so a day went by without a kill. I don’t know. Will do him again on my Necro tomorrow and keep things the same; will see if DR is still in effect as I haven’t done a thing with him since his last Shatterer kill or will I get my chests. Still getting chests on all the other bosses with the “designated” toon assigned to the individual boss, so no DR with them. (sigh)

FYI DR doesn’t disappear because you skip a day — you’d have to move your toon elsewhere and do an event that includes a death (although: completing certain JPs can drop your DR, too — I don’t have good data on whether it works for all situations, I just know it works for commissar).

Okay, last post (tired of this topic and situation). Necro just killed Shatterer after taking the last two days “off”. I did nothing with him, the last time I played him he killed kitten . Got my chests. What did I learn? …………………………Still getting chests on all the other bosses with toons who do nothing but kill their designated boss…………………………….Took a break with my Necro killing kitten and now he’s getting chests…………………………….I guess DR is random. I’m done. I give up with this. The rule is too arbitrary.

edit – kitten = Shatterer

I don’t blame you for being frustrated.

For those reading along, I’d like to clarify that — on a technical basis — DR isn’t “random” (or at least, not very random); there are a set of rules it follows. However, since ANet won’t share the mechanics with us, it certainly feels arbitrary from a player perspective.

Even so, it’s relatively simple to avoid or mitigate DR:

• Don’t farm any one spot for “too long”.
• Keep moving your characters around.

Of course, it would be much easier if we didn’t have to do that. I would prefer being able to leave the same character at Rhendak all year rather than have to port or complete the puzzle every two twenty days.

tl;dr Yes it’s frustrating and it does take effort to deal with DR. However, it can be dealt with.