Guild Wars 2

Okay so having played a few more days since my last thread I am now 100% convinced the drop rate of spirit shard was nerfed (intentionally or unintentionally) and mentioned nowhere.

A week ago: about 1 in 6 champion bags gave a spirit shard, based on opening thousands of bags.
Right now: about 1 in 30-35 champion bags gives a spirit shard, based on opening a couple thousand bags.

I would like a dev response explaining this if possible. Was this intended or is it a bug. If intended, what is the reasoning behind it? Spirit Shards were already hard to come by, only reason people have so many is because many might have had lots of skill points stacked up before conversion or generally don’t make alot of legendaries/ascended gear. For those of us that use these spirit shards daily, it’s a real pain to get them. Especially now. With raids out now and the necessity to maybe change the gear of your build between fights or simply the meta changing, its going to cost 80 spirit shards each time you conver your gear to different stats. This does not promote ‘on the fly’ adaptability between raids and fights which I thought was something you wanted to promote. Not one gear set or build for everything but rather adapting your character to every challenge it has to take. I would understand it if spirit shards were buyable in the gemstore or something. Get people to spend gems rather than farm bags for free. I’d get that. But they’re not. You have to farm champ bags to get them. Why nerf it? It makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

Without proof of those thousands of bags, I’m wary to say you’ve not just exaggerated the number of bags you’ve opened. And exaggeration hurts any case where you’re saying the probability changed. I’m not saying you’re lying that the drop rate has changed, just that you’ve exaggerated the number of bags you’ve opened so I can’t really say if you’ve got a good sample size or not.

If you really think there is a problem you should get 100-200 bags, clear out your inventory short of the bags. Note down the number of shards you have (since shards will consume themselves immediately). Then open up all of the bags at once. Then take note of what you got. Take a picture of your inventory and spirit shard count before and then a picture of the spirit shard count afterward. Then post the pictures. Then it’s not just anecdotal evidence. Then you’ve got concrete proof and can provide an exact amount of shards/bag. Or however many bags you want to do. As bag contents aren’t affected by magic find, it won’t matter if your magic find over the days to collect the bags varies.

That’s exactly what I have done but have not video taped it or screenshot it.

I’ve opened over 100k bags over the past year or so. This is an estimate but I opened at least 2000+ bags a week, almost all champ bags are from farming chests in SW.

About a week ago I made a post about this too where I opened shy of 100 bags to complain about this. Then someone in the thread told me I should open more. So I did. Went full farm mode and farmed almost 3000 bags and the drop rate seems about 1:32-33.

And as for being anectodal evidence. It doesn’t matter if it is. If it’s intended they can respond here and admit to it right away. If they say it’s not the case, all they have to do is check their coding and see if it’s indeed changed accidentally or still the same and I’m an outlier. Either way, only point for this thread is to get attention on the subject from the devs. Just want them to see this thread and quickly check their code to verify drop rate is lowered or I’m an outlier.

If you think its a bug, post it in the bug forum.

Wanze.8410:

If you think its a bug, post it in the bug forum.

The OP clearly stated that they feel this might be intentional and not a bug. It was posted in the appropriate forum.

Neural.1824:

Wanze.8410:

If you think its a bug, post it in the bug forum.

The OP clearly stated that they feel this might be intentional and not a bug. It was posted in the appropriate forum.

Verificus.4320:

Was this intended or is it a bug?

Wanze.8410:

Neural.1824:

Wanze.8410:

If you think its a bug, post it in the bug forum.

The OP clearly stated that they feel this might be intentional and not a bug. It was posted in the appropriate forum.

Verificus.4320:

Was this intended or is it a bug?

Dude seriously, you just prove his point!
“I am now 100% convinced the drop rate of spirit shard was nerfed (intentionally or unintentionally) and mentioned nowhere.” shows that he thinks it might be intentional.
“Was this intended or is it a bug?” shows that he thinks it might be intentional.

And here it is in the Bug Forum; I guess QA will have a look, if they feel it is warranted.

Verificus.4320:

That’s exactly what I have done but have not video taped it or screenshot it.

I’ve opened over 100k bags over the past year or so. This is an estimate but I opened at least 2000+ bags a week, almost all champ bags are from farming chests in SW.

About a week ago I made a post about this too where I opened shy of 100 bags to complain about this. Then someone in the thread told me I should open more. So I did. Went full farm mode and farmed almost 3000 bags and the drop rate seems about 1:32-33.

And as for being anectodal evidence. It doesn’t matter if it is. If it’s intended they can respond here and admit to it right away. If they say it’s not the case, all they have to do is check their coding and see if it’s indeed changed accidentally or still the same and I’m an outlier. Either way, only point for this thread is to get attention on the subject from the devs. Just want them to see this thread and quickly check their code to verify drop rate is lowered or I’m an outlier.

It does matter if it is anecdotal. Humans have a bias towards remembering bad things that happen to them. Not good things. One of our survival traits. Which is why having concrete numbers and proof you’re memory isn’t affected by the bias makes your data much more reasonable. Especially when you claim you’ve opened thousands of bags. I don’t know about the devs, but without proof, I personally would read that without any proof as you’ve just opened a large number of bags and you don’t know the exact number. Which means your probability number is off. Not saying you’re lying, just telling you how I would interpret your first post.