Guild Wars 2

No, they didn’t. No one person is going to be able to provide a statistically significant sample size required to determine whether ectoplasm rates went up or down.

Flip a coin 10 times, is it going to be tails 5/10 times? There’s a good chance it won’t be 50% tails and 50% heads, it could be 60% heads/40% tails, etc.

Now, flip a coin 1,000,000 times, there’s a good chance that it will be ~50.0 % +/- .1%

Law of large numbers, statistically significance, etc etc.

Sigh at these threads.

No joke, I bought 60,000 at 5 copper expecting the price to go up due to lack of ability to obtain them anymore after Halloween.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqxwmpkEVPSbdHUzcm5LMU0zdlU1SGZiMGlIUFB2UEE#gid=0

Even if they had gone to 10 copper, that would be a 21 gold profit.

However, they didn’t and I think I’ve made a huge mistake

you can turn them into Black Lion Chests though! I’m not entirely sure people even want them though.

Please invite if you get a chance…

LameFox.6349:

There are a lot of precursors, OP. Developing a system of clues and whatnot that isn’t absolute trash won’t just happen overnight.

Yeah, I understand. I’m just upset because for some reason I thought there would be a method to work for based on the post about the scavenger hunt for a precursor. I didn’t read in between the lines as it said ‘plans for..’

I’ve thrown well over 80g into the forge to no avail (read: -80g, not 80 effectively, I’ve thrown way more than I want to think about into the actual forge, I just sell the results) and I’m the type of person where it won’t matter if the odds are 2% (1/50), I wouldn’t get it in 500 with those odds. (It’s still probably much lower than this)

I theorized that the precursor could be a combination of 500 tokens of all 8 dungeons -> 1 gift, X amount of sPVP Glory -> 1 gift, completing all world jumping puzzles -> achievement rewards 1 gift -> kill x3 1000 of type of Y monster types -> 1 precursor specific gift. From those 4 gifts, combine in mystic forge to get your precursor (scavenger hunt, hurray!) also while keeping it extremely hard to get, rare, etc.

Looks like I’ll be waiting one more patch then.

Oh wait, no it didn’t. It just made it so your RNG is slightly better than what it was. So much for any tangible progress towards one or a scavenger hunt for it.

Also, I’m happy to report that all TP precursors are back to where they were at ridiculous levels or in some cases even higher.

in before same conversation of entitlement, should be legendary, etc conversation comes in

mulch.2586:

I think the other sensible thing is to perform all the other tasks before going for the precursor. If you’ve farmed the million + karma, world complete, etc, then 20g worth of rares won’t seem so spendy.

I’m there. 20G? Hah.

20G in Rares is nothing. If you get your precursor in 20G of rares, you are on the upper side of the distribution for Mystic Forge Precursor attempts.

Cynical.2097:

Farm on Diablo 3.
Use RMAH.
Buy gems with D3 earnings.
Convert Gems -> Gold.

Diablo 3 drop rate > GW drop rate/RNG.

It would actually be interesting to systematically take data from D3 RMAH $ rates / 1 hour → gems and convert it against the 1.5/2g Plinx Farm average in Gw2.

Someone do it, for science!

Jestunhi.7429:

TSLlol.4879:

Also kitten you for being so lucky if this is true… I’ve reforged 216 l76-79 exotic shortbows, and only no Lover yet.

It happens.

My brother got a Dusk on his first try.

I’ve likely spent about 50g in there and got nothing of real value.

:edit:

Tower Guard.5263:

For Faux Sake.8457:

Precursor formulas are being released within the month. Keep an eye out.

If this is true I’ll come back to the game.
(yes, I check the forums even if I’m not playing anymore, same with The Secret World and bioware social)

It’s true.

Of course, people need to discover them before they are shared, and they tend to let friends get the item too. Once the recipe becomes public knowledge you can expect the ingredient prices to rocket.

How is this true? Source?

TSLlol.4879:

Taisia.2813:

TSLlol.4879:

Taisia.2813:

TSLlol.4879:

Lorana.2468:

TSLlol.4879:

Yes they did say level 74 rares DO NOT reward precursors, I even PM’d Linsey Murdock about the case, and she confirmed that level 74 and below rares DON’T reward precursors. (I can post evidence)

please do because i already know your reading the reply wrong because a friend of mine got the Spark from using 2 godskull items only a few weeks ago, long after the change.

evidence: http://i.imgur.com/baEGq.png

I think by saying “give or take a couple of levels” Linsey hinted at 74 being a viable alternative. I did get a precursor that way and I have no reason to lie about it.. As I said so many people were asking me for advice and I just wanted to provide it.

I dunno man… I think “Only 75+ Rares” pretty bluntly states it… When did your precursor drop?
I’m not trying to be a prick here, I’m just sceptical, and yes, other than the “toss level 74 rares into the MF”, the other information you gave on the whole precursor business is useful, and thanks.

Last night seeing Legend hit 411 gold on TP, I said “kitten it” and went all out, bought 140 gold worth of lvl 74-76 exotic staves and then mixed them in the 1 lvl 80 exo+ 3lvl 74ish exotic staff formula.. 3rd try I got Legend and I kinda fell off my chair lol xD

YES CAUSE AS I SAID, lvl 71-80 EXOTICS DO DROP IT and lvl 74 RARES DON’T DROP PRECURSORS. You post just confirms my theory now.

Also kitten you for being so lucky if this is true… I’ve reforged 216 l76-79 exotic shortbows, and only no Lover yet.

I’m sitting around 240 Exotic Staffs thrown into forge and no “The Legend” yet. I feel you.

Edit: I wish the GMs were more transparent on the methods to obtain precursors were. There’s contradicting claims here and I personally hate gambling in the dark not knowing at least my odds of obtaining certain items.

Do x4 71 Exotics have the same chance at x4 76 exotics to get a precursor?
Can the OP’s claim of x3 74 rares + x1 80 rare get a precursor?
Do Mystic Forge Stones work as the highest item level/lowest item?

Sigh @ all of this speculation

I don’t know what you are talking about SteepledHat, Everyone knows running the same event because it’s the most effective way to make hourly money for a month straight doing nothing else clearly proves you are a more skilled, talented player than the other people who are logged on.

Also, you forget that brand new 80’s who throw 4 rares into the Mystic Forge and get a precursor are also better at the game than most. I truly believe this is how we should differentiate players.

If you take Plinx/Orr average rates of 1.5g/2g per hour and assume Dusk @ 400 gold it would take 200-266 hours on average to save up that much if you didn’t gamble any of it.

However, as Day said there is no maximum/hour, you can only speculate average rates of gain which is what I just did.

@RedHead – thanks for doing that math, I didn’t know which tools to run to figure out the StDev for attempts. It would be nice to know the actual odds of success for precursor a given 4-exotic 76+ weapons. I always thought it would be more than .1% (1/1000) I thought it would be more in the realms of 1/100-1/120 (.9~1% chance)

From there, the rare attempts are going to be 1/5th of the exotic attempts because we know that the upgrade chance is around 20% from rare→exotic

Xym.9417:

face it, some people are so bad at math they think they can statistically beat a roulette table or slot machine. They truly think they are winning long term.

Sure some people hit the jackpot and some find method to cheat the system. But over all, Anet will need the mystic forge to eat 99% (no this is not an exact number, infact it is probably even closer to 100) of all gathered materials so they retain some sense of value.

Once people are done crafting, to level the last few toons they are interested in, the forge is about the only material sink left.

What has happened is that the market has normalized where if a person crafts any item with buying all components from the TP – the price will be equal to the finished product or a lot of times, they’ll end up losing money. There are people here claiming that it isn’t true, but refuse to provide examples because it doesn’t exist anymore.

The market trend is that anything related to legendaries/precursors has held value because that’s the current ‘end game’ for PVE bound players. Everything else gets closer and closer to NPC-value because the demand just isn’t there.

Because crafting normally is normalized, that leaves the Mystic Forge which long story short is gambling. Some people will profit off of gambling, most will lose. Those claiming to make crazy profit are either lying, or figured something out before the community has. A lot of times people will figure something out and not want it to get out in fear that it will ruin it as people hop on the bandwagon; however until next patch, there aren’t many unknown recipes in either crafting or the Mystic Forge.

Buahaha, complaining about RNG on clovers? It took me 31 “10-attempts” to get 60 clovers and from there I said F it and did 1 combines for the remaining 17. I thought this was incredibly annoying and frustrating. However…

Let me tell you that clovers is a complete joke to the luck required for your precursor weapons. I mean it just feels so legendary and epic, I can barely contain myself when I see a legendary and see how good they are at this game, they knew how to put those four items in the Mystic Forge so skillfully that I don’t think I’ll ever get that good at this game to get my precursor.

When you decide you want to aim for your precursor, google “Plinx Orr GW2” → follow that for X hours → dump proceeds into Mystic Forge, it’s a lot of fun and a lot of people think it’s a good system.

Ritual.6710:

There really should be some way to get the precursors outside of having to rely on RNG, or the incredibly high prices we are seeing now.

My guild threw around the idea of having to put in 250 of each of the dungeon tokens to get 2 types of gifts (hell, even using the gifts from the vendors that are there now for 500 tokens would be fine) – and then a few of the weapon types you wan would result in the precursor.

Yes, it would be one hell of a grind, but I would take that grind any day over having to rely on RNG. It would get me into more varied dungeons, too.

I wouldn’t mind if it was 1000 of each dungeon token as long as I knew that when I ran the dungeons it contributed towards a precursor rather than “I saved up 20g, now let’s lose it all in minutes, hurray!!”

Of course it was exciting and rewarding. According to the current arena-net-can-do-no-wrong crowd on this topic, it’s working as intended for some people to spend months of work for nothing whilst others spend minutes (read: first five attempts of forge) to keep the legendary weapons ‘rare’, ‘prestigious’, and so that only 5% of the population gets it.

Noodles forbid people want to put in hard work and time in a video game meant for fun to obtain a goal that realistically should be obtainable by anyone willing to put forth the effort without dropping months of gold into an RNG system that is punishing to keep the economy strong.

I honestly can’t believe there are people who can’t grasp the idea that RNG is a fine thing to have in game, but not punishing RNG. Non-punishing RNG as an example is killing monsters to obtain X item, it is a “free roll” if you will, you only spent your time to have fun and possibly get a desirable item (Also mutliple people can participate in this, while MF RNG, you are bidding against other people to gain items to throw away) . Mystic Forge RNG is punishing and bad because you could save up let’s say 3 gold to do an 4-exotic roll to only find yourself left with an exotic worth 80 silver – now you’ve wasted the 2 hours you spent getting that 3 gold. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Keep the Mystic Forge in game, add non-punishing methods to obtaining precursors while still keeping them rare. It satisfies both sides of the fence on this issue.

Wish I could recall how to do the poisson distribution for odds, but you guys should look into the law of large numbers. If the odds of an independent event “x” are 1/500 or 0.2%, there is a way to calculate how many attempts it will take to have a 99.00%, 99.9%, 99.99%, etc. chance at a success. Statistics majors, help me out on this one!

Either way, my point is that they need to add an alternative way to get precursors. Mystic Forge is punishing and discouraging for many players based on how many posts we see on the topic. RNG is fine, but it needs to be either ‘free rolls’ such as monster drops added to the obtain method or there needs to be a static recipe for people to work towards or you will see more and more of these posts popping up. The current system is not okay to many players.

penatbater.4710:

The problem with them putting out the percentages is that, assuming say the percentage is indeed 0.2% or 1/500 as you’ve said, people who have put in at most 500 attempts will complain that they didn’t get their precursor. Even more so people who put in 1000 or 1500. And yet, those possibilities still remain.

Right, it was a mere example. I don’t know the correct numbers to use- they may not need to release the odds as they haven’t on any other mechanic in game, but at least it’s a “free” roll at a precursor and would give some people some hope. If people complained at not getting it from a monster, at least it didn’t cost them 800 exotic weapons to do so

On top of it, it could put a few more precursors in the market which would drive down the ever-increasing precursor prices to a more acceptable price in the 80g-200g range let’s say?

If you don’t think this is a big deal and they won’t change anything, I can tell you from playing many, many MMORPG’s that topics don’t become this big of a discussion unless it’s a “big discussion” if that makes sense. It’s not wise to think anything otherwise.

I’m fine with RNG and I understand that RNG is part of all MMORPG’s, but there’s a key difference with the Mystic Forge vs other RNG concepts in games. That difference is that it directly takes away from you with no promise of return. If they said, “Okay, precursors now drop from Jormag, Shatterer, and other world bosses at a 1/500 rate (0.2%)” that would be okay for the community because it’s still super rare and what not, but it doesn’t PUNISH players for using that system (killing said world boss). It also keeps legendary weapons rare. It’s an imbalanced system that doesn’t make sense and your guildmates? I’m happy for them, but two instances of success don’t mean anything in the grand scheme of numbers.

400g isn’t an option because I don’t know what the price will be when I actually reach 400g, will it be 500g? 600g? Will I buy it for 400g and the next day a developer will say ‘price now statically set to 150g’ ? On top of that, do you realize what it takes to get 400+ gold? The people who do have that amount got lucky on predicting market trends (vanilla beans, early precursors, etc), exploited formulas before hotfix without punishment, have turn around bots (determine buy price → calculate if sell price is 15% over buy price → buy → sell rinse repeat). None of those things seem very ‘legendary’ and neither does someone who gambled 4 rares and got it on their 3rd try.

There’s no predictability to it. RNG is already part of the formula with Mystic Clovers. If there was a point to work towards, I could see it – but there isn’t and there’s no developer response which makes it incredibly disheartening.

I’m also a level 80 Elementalist – I have the Gift of Fortune, Gift of Bifrost, and everything except for ~400 WVW marks for Gift of Mastery.

I’ve worked very hard to collect everything, and now I’m just sitting here waiting for the Bifrost. Saving up 400g isn’t an option for the precursor and it seems ridiculous there isn’t something you can statically save for to get the precursor.

Between me and my girlfriend, we’ve put in around 300 (~75 attempts) of Exotic Staves and haven’t got a single precursor. It’s costed us all money we’ve accrued over playing -a lot- and we’re not even closer to the precursor as someone who just hit 80 as far as precursors go. I’m not sure how many more attempts we’re going to try this, the odds are plain ridiculous and who knows if we throw 300 more exotic staves if we’ll get a precursor.

And before you ‘optional’ people come in here and say it’s optional, you have no say until you have multiple level 80’s, 100% world complete, full sets of different dungeon gear/ exotic sets, etc. There isn’t much to do once that is all complete so legendary is what there is to do and it shouldn’t involve luck to this extent (mystic clovers were bad enough).

Dooley is correct, there needs to be a grind of ‘something’ – What will happen to the game if the game stays how it is…is that people will run X or Y dungeon until they get their desirable dungeon looks, buy the dyes they want, and maybe grind out the legendary/rare named weapon of their choice and find out that they are bored.

Play to improve your skill? There isn’t content that challenges any halfway decent group of skilled players in PVE. I’m not going to delve into PVP here, going to try to stick on PVE. I run all pieces of gear in pure MF and guess what? I rarely die as an Elementalist in any dungeon, yes even Arah explore. Ventrilo, a coordinated group of people, and some MMORPG experience shreds through any non-bugged content in GW2 without effort.

Play for what then? Once I have my legendary soon, I already have 100% world complete, all dungeons completed, all the exotics and dungeon gear I could ever imagine, jumping puzzles, WVW experience, list goes on – all done. There was nothing that challenged me as a serious gamer. No ladders, no speed clearing dungeons against other groups, no gear progression, no challenging bosses that GASP – reward something worthwhile?? (3rd boss in Arah – 20 minute fight – your reward? some blues.)

It’s like a single player RPG – you play until your character is awesome looking, the ‘highest’ level, and you’ve done most or all of the achievements that you find entertaining and then you naturally progress to the next thing/game.

GW2 needs to add something that compares players, gives people a competition, gives people a challenge. And hey, guess what naysayers? You can still have everything that is great right now, it has no effect on you if you don’t want to participate in a 8 or 16 man challenging boss that has a chance to drop some unique skin or something (as an example). What about dungeon speed timers that the top 1% of times every month would get a unique dye, or a monthly skin that was really cool? No harm to people who don’t want to participate, yet giving people something to work towards who want to and provide a challenge.

If you think at level 56 there’s a lack of character progression; I’ve got bad news for you when you hit 80.

I’m happy with Jon Peters reply. As long as I can do what I want while playing normally and not get diminishing returns, I’m happy.

I understand that it will take time to fix it, but at least they acknowledged that the thresholds are too low, that’s all I asked for.

Try to keep the discussion focused on Diminished Returns…This is the thread that Arenanet is going to monitor and respond to. They aren’t going to stay silent, just please keep it civil so they can respond with how they feel and not close this thread. It’s not about your disappointment with the product, or how you are going to quit. It’s about DR in the game, and how it positive or negatively affects the game. I’ve done quite a bit of derailing as well, so I’m not completely innocent, but if this is the thread they will read, we should keep it as fluff free as possible.

Either way, if we continue down to personal stuff this thread will be closed like the very, very many other DR topics out there.

I really hope Arenanet states their purpose with Loot DR, as well as Karma DR to fix all of this bickering, myself included.

It’s clear that there are a lot of people upset about the current implementation and clearly there’s a lot of people who think there needs to be more DR or some weird crap. Arenanet, say something on this issue!

ChairGraveyard.2967:

Fayte.1803:

Didn’t they state before that the DR was to diminish bot farmers but normal players were being accidentally effected in the process?

They haven’t said anything about loot or event DR, only dungeon DR.

Edit: @Silencer, sorry but claiming you know “exactly how the event DR” works is absurd. Unless you’re a programmer at ArenaNet and have access to the relevant source code, you DO NOT by any stretch of the imagination know “exactly how it works”.

I AM a programmer and have worked on commercial games, and I would NEVER claim to know “exactly how” any system that I personally do not have source code for works, because I would be categorically wrong.

Based on his posting history, he very well could be a programmer at Arenanet.

silencer.5028:

Edenknight.9284:

I can’t tell if you are accusing me of cheesing events or not. I’m not, let’s just get that out of the way. Let’s also hope that you are correct in that it is a bug, it’s just hard to tell when there’s zero voice/transparency on the issue. The dungeon token DR system is great, I don’t mind it at all. 60 Tokens for the first time I do a run in a day? Great, they were vocal about the issue, clearly stated the intent of dungeons and everyone is happy. Why can’t they just say what people are experiencing is a bug or intended?

I am not accusing anyone of anything. Accusing sounds like its something thats punishable. I am just saying what seems to be the intention of the system, as I deduced by other instances when it kicks in.

Edenknight.9284:

Hoop-jumping is kind of a broad term.

Oh please. Thats just an excuse given by people who don’t want to admit they do it. I’ve yet to see a person who would be ignorant enough to realize something is giving way, way more reward then actual effort put in.

Edenknight.9284:

I find min/maxing rewards to be one of the most fun part in any game. It’s my prerogative and plenty of other people whom are even closer to legendaries/have them already feel the same way. It’s what we chose to do in the game, and completing those goals in a time frame is what gives us the ‘fun’ feeling that we play video games at all. Don’t get me wrong, I love ventrilo, guild chat, pvp, all of those things, It’s just -another- thing that I partake in.

And it is your prerogative to do so, as long as you actually put in effort thats appropriate for the reward you are getting. Finidng a low level grind spot that lets you blaze through multiple events in minutes for 240 karma or more when boosted is not that. Tagging/bunnyhopping events is not that.

Finding an area where you can do an event, finish it, move on for a next one nearby, finish it, move on, etc. and you experience next to no “downtime” event wise on the other hand is just that. But that means moving across the entire map, not picking a “chain sweetspot” and bouncing between two spots. And it is what I have been doing on both Straits of Devastation and Cursed Shore (ML to a lesser extend due to the way the events are spread there). Never had any DR issues.

You can still min/max rewards. You just need to take the DR into consideration and be aware that circling the same stuff will give diminished results over time. In any other circumstance, yes, its probably a bug.

Sigh, I’ve been following your posts for a few days and I do understand that there’s no winning with you, not even a slight budge. I get it, it’s fine – we can agree on one thing – that Anet can only implement one way and we’ll see whom they agree with. I can only assume they are watching these threads and formulating a way to keep the community happy while keeping the system in place, which I am totally fine with if they state their intent so I know whether I want to continue or not.

If they don’t want me to go to level 10 zones and do the Dynamic Events there, reduce the permanent karma down to 10 / gold and guess what, I won’t. People will always take the path of least resistance to a reward whether it is in real life, or in a video game. I guess that’s life for you.

silencer.5028:

Edenknight.9284:

More of this? Why do you care how I play? What if I’m having a “blast” finding out effective ways to farm for my legendary? How do you know? You don’t.

Nobody is saying that you cant. Just the way that triggers the DR, which seems to be mostly cheesing through events is not the way to do so. Agian, not talking about bugs. That seems to be the crux of the issue. You have found a way that is way too easy to be true and the games mechanics reflect that. Mechanics clamp down on you. You get angry at said mechanics. Not much of a fallacy here.

EDIT:

Edenknight.9284:

I don’t, and never will understand the controlling other people’s actions aspect that is so embedded into people’s thought process.

But the game can and will dictate progression rate by a function of time and effort put into getting there.

Who puts in more effort? Someone who does full event completions along with other zone activity and general gameplay or someone who develops a map of cheese event hopping and does that ad-infinitum? I still do not understand why hoop-jumping through general gameplay mechanics within a system should be more rewarding in an MMO when it comes to cosmetic, high-prestige items.

I can’t tell if you are accusing me of cheesing events or not. I’m not, let’s just get that out of the way. Let’s also hope that you are correct in that it is a bug, it’s just hard to tell when there’s zero voice/transparency on the issue. The dungeon token DR system is great, I don’t mind it at all. 60 Tokens for the first time I do a run in a day? Great, they were vocal about the issue, clearly stated the intent of dungeons and everyone is happy. Why can’t they just say what people are experiencing is a bug or intended?

Hoop-jumping is kind of a broad term. I find min/maxing rewards to be one of the most fun part in any game. It’s my prerogative and plenty of other people whom are even closer to legendaries/have them already feel the same way. It’s what we chose to do in the game, and completing those goals in a time frame is what gives us the ‘fun’ feeling that we play video games at all. Don’t get me wrong, I love ventrilo, guild chat, pvp, all of those things, It’s just -another- thing that I partake in.

Vircomore.4586:

Edenknight.9284:

Fozzik.1742:

Margoth

When I hit the DR for the first time I was in no way farming dynamic events. In fact I was exploring the map of Blazeridge Steppes, getting all the POI, Vistas and such. All I did was do each event once when I was nearby.

What I don’t understand with the system is how are players supposed to use DE’s to level to 80? This feels a bit like a penalty to level, let alone gain karma etc.

I’ve leveled to 80, played more than 200 hours, gotten 100% on more than half the zones in the game, along with discovering every nook and cranny, doing every event more than once, and doing all the puzzles. I even talk to most of the NPCs. I have around 10 gold, several exotics including a level 80 exotic weapon, about 60k karma, and I’ve horded a massive amount of crafting materials (overflowed my collections tab with multiple items).

Never, at any point in all of that, have I been affected at all by the DR system. Including my time in the Orr zones over the last week…repeating events and exploring. How do you explain that? What I see happening on these boards…people getting worked up like crazy over hyperbole and a few unsubstantiated anecdotes and screenshots with no context, and nobody making any attempt to provide real proof, makes me very skeptical about the whole thing.

Also, like I mentioned above, I see the DR system as being a very positive and necessary thing for the game. I don’t think it is the evil beast that people are trying to make it out to be, and I don’t think it affects players unless 1) there’s a bug, or 2) they are playing clearly outside what the developers intended.

I have 50 mystic clovers, 100% world map complete, a majority of my 250 stacks of T6 mats, my gift of energy, gift of color (minus arah tokens), my fully decked out exotic gears, and a nice set of TA dungeon gear. I haven’t hit the Karma DR whilst gathering any of that prior to the patch a few days ago. Loot DR? Sure, because you hit it in Orr if you can do anything effectively or decide to participate in chain events. The system is punishing to legitimate play, there’s nothing weird about these scenarios. Unless they seriously expect us to play with major breaks in between of a given hour.

The burden of proof lays on the person who makes the claim (Anti-DR folks) – I provided some proof with some shoddy screenshots as I just took them as a wow, look at this. However, with some approach to detail here, we can probably gather more reliable details on what causes it, why it happens, etc. Once we have that solid data, it can become a discussion of if it appropriate or not. I’m leaning towards not though, just because it is currently affecting legitimate players.

The fact that this game has only been live for five weeks, and you are already more than 50% to a legendary item proves that ArenaNet’s anti-farming system is not strict enough. Legendary weapons should be the accomplishment of a GAMETIME, not something you crank out in two months.

So once you get your legendary weapon, what do you plan on doing? Your only focus in the game has been farming, so what will you do when the farming is complete? Are you just not going to have any more fun, and quit playing?

This right here is the mindset that ANET is trying to defeat. Fun comes before farming, and if the only fun you get in MMOs is earning that new item with that different-color name – then you’re playing the wrong game.

You realize that all you are getting for all this effort and all this crying is a few more stat-points, and an item-model that will tell everyone in WvWvW to kill you first.

Meanwhile there are people like me:

• Still haven’t run every wing of each dungeon.
• 0% towards any legendary weapon.
• Only have one piece of karma exotic.

BUT…

• having a blast.

Please stop trying to make a job out of our video game, just because you don’t know anything but work.

More of this? Why do you care how I play? What if I’m having a “blast” finding out effective ways to farm for my legendary? How do you know? You don’t. Fallacies, fallacies everywhere.

Does me sitting in town with a legendary negatively impact your gaming experience? Nope.

Do you get to tell others how to play, or to quit because it’s not how the game is played? Nope.

Do I have fun playing Guild Wars 2? Yes, and that’s why I’m even on these forums fighting the one system in the game that needs reworking/to get rid of completely.

I don’t, and never will understand the controlling other people’s actions aspect that is so embedded into people’s thought process.

Fozzik.1742:

Margoth

When I hit the DR for the first time I was in no way farming dynamic events. In fact I was exploring the map of Blazeridge Steppes, getting all the POI, Vistas and such. All I did was do each event once when I was nearby.

What I don’t understand with the system is how are players supposed to use DE’s to level to 80? This feels a bit like a penalty to level, let alone gain karma etc.

I’ve leveled to 80, played more than 200 hours, gotten 100% on more than half the zones in the game, along with discovering every nook and cranny, doing every event more than once, and doing all the puzzles. I even talk to most of the NPCs. I have around 10 gold, several exotics including a level 80 exotic weapon, about 60k karma, and I’ve horded a massive amount of crafting materials (overflowed my collections tab with multiple items).

Never, at any point in all of that, have I been affected at all by the DR system. Including my time in the Orr zones over the last week…repeating events and exploring. How do you explain that? What I see happening on these boards…people getting worked up like crazy over hyperbole and a few unsubstantiated anecdotes and screenshots with no context, and nobody making any attempt to provide real proof, makes me very skeptical about the whole thing.

Also, like I mentioned above, I see the DR system as being a very positive and necessary thing for the game. I don’t think it is the evil beast that people are trying to make it out to be, and I don’t think it affects players unless 1) there’s a bug, or 2) they are playing clearly outside what the developers intended.

I have 50 mystic clovers, 100% world map complete, a majority of my 250 stacks of T6 mats, my gift of energy, gift of color (minus arah tokens), my fully decked out exotic gears, and a nice set of TA dungeon gear. I haven’t hit the Karma DR whilst gathering any of that prior to the patch a few days ago. Loot DR? Sure, because you hit it in Orr if you can do anything effectively or decide to participate in chain events. The system is punishing to legitimate play, there’s nothing weird about these scenarios. Unless they seriously expect us to play with major breaks in between of a given hour.

The burden of proof lays on the person who makes the claim (Anti-DR folks) – I provided some proof with some shoddy screenshots as I just took them as a wow, look at this. However, with some approach to detail here, we can probably gather more reliable details on what causes it, why it happens, etc. Once we have that solid data, it can become a discussion of if it appropriate or not. I’m leaning towards not though, just because it is currently affecting legitimate players.

Sparkie.3465:

@Edenknight – I noticed that you’re an 80 doing a level 11 event chain.

Is it possible that karma DR kicks in harder depending on your level? I could see that as a good way to discourage high-level players from farming easier, more dependable low-level events for karma. They do a lot of similar things to encourage (but not force) you to play in zones that are level-appropriate.

Don’t know, no one knows. I could possibly see that as a scenario. Wouldn’t make much sense to me though to punish people going to lower level maps as they have a scaling system. I personally don’t like Orr, but that’s aside from the topic really. It wouldn’t be wise to pigeonhole people into one zone because it’s ‘level appropriate’.

Hlaford.9863:

Edenknight.9284:

Here. Here’s more proof – this is after doing maybe 1 or 2 DE’s prior to this chain.

I hit this DR, was like wtf…went to Orr to see if it was map based – was going well for a while and then DR hit after like the 3rd DE.

http://imgur.com/ltpJ9
http://imgur.com/PSEh4
http://imgur.com/lpKN6
http://imgur.com/traSu

To those saying this is a bug – You are merely speculating as Arenanet has not stated so, and has been ignoring the general topic; therefore you don’t know you are just spewing what you want to be true. To those who are saying “I haven’t experienced it, therefore it doesn’t exist” – You experience doesn’t reign true for everyone. Maybe you are playing ineffectively, maybe you don’t play the game at a speed that others might, maybe you are a special snowflake that is protected against the code, who knows. Arenanet hasn’t said what caused it, hasn’t said their philosophy, or anything on the topic.

I’d be happy to replicate the DR system for those of you thinking it’s some made up fairy tale when I log on for the 3-4 hours a day I get to play.

I personally hope it’s a bug. That would be great to know that when I just run Dynamic Events that I can reap the karma/gold benefits as I assume I should get. Is it a bug? Don’t know, no one knows except for the developers of the game, so stop trying to claim you know otherwise.

From the time stamp in the picture, you did 4 events in 3 minutes. That’s incredibly fast, no wonder you hit the diminishing returns limit.

You are right, since that chain event is 7 events I should definitely only do 2 and leave the map out of respect to our new overlord, DR. God forbid I want to do a chain of events.

Nah, I stick around for the entire DE. I don’t do shady activity or just get gold and move on.. I’m not abusing any system, I’m merely playing the game with my friends and guildmates which happen to track different DE’s across the world map and share the information.

The reason there’s so many within 3 minutes is because it’s a chain event, you complete multiple steps of the entire event in a short period of time. If they don’t want people to participate in these, then they should just have one huge bonus at the end and make it harder to get ‘gold’ status.

Edit to save another post to respond to ^ : I can replicate it when I am home. You can replicate it. All of my screenshots are post-patch, I’ve -never- had this issue prior to the patch a few days ago. I obviously don’t know the EXACT triggers to cause it, but as time goes on, it will become more obvious to what causes it.

Oh and yes, I’ve had the same problem in Orr. I played my alt yesterday so I didn’t have much chance to try to replicate the issue last night. I’ll try to replicate it tonight doing completely normal game activity.

Here. Here’s more proof – this is after doing maybe 1 or 2 DE’s prior to this chain.

I hit this DR, was like wtf…went to Orr to see if it was map based – was going well for a while and then DR hit after like the 3rd DE.

http://imgur.com/ltpJ9
http://imgur.com/PSEh4
http://imgur.com/lpKN6
http://imgur.com/traSu

To those saying this is a bug – You are merely speculating as Arenanet has not stated so, and has been ignoring the general topic; therefore you don’t know you are just spewing what you want to be true. To those who are saying “I haven’t experienced it, therefore it doesn’t exist” – You experience doesn’t reign true for everyone. Maybe you are playing ineffectively, maybe you don’t play the game at a speed that others might, maybe you are a special snowflake that is protected against the code, who knows. Arenanet hasn’t said what caused it, hasn’t said their philosophy, or anything on the topic.

I’d be happy to replicate the DR system for those of you thinking it’s some made up fairy tale when I log on for the 3-4 hours a day I get to play.

I personally hope it’s a bug. That would be great to know that when I just run Dynamic Events that I can reap the karma/gold benefits as I assume I should get. Is it a bug? Don’t know, no one knows except for the developers of the game, so stop trying to claim you know otherwise.

Oh hai, another misconception post.

Your personal experience doesn’t make it true for the rest of the players. The karma DR can kick in if you do like two chain events in a completely regular, play all the way through fashion. Please explain why you think your gaming experience makes it true for the game?

urtv.8791:

unless they changed it,boosters still stay on even after you log out so its not entirely useless

Right, just as a game is supposed to be played. Buy a booster for a time duration, use 50% of it, require it so that person can no longer benefit from it so they are forced to log out for X duration just to use the other 50% of the booster. Makes perfect sense, I’m going to start buying a ton of karma boosters now.

It started from the patch last night. Logging out no longer resets karma debuff, to people who aren’t experiencing it – they either aren’t doing chain events or taking big, big breaks in between DE’s.

Don’t worry good sir Odinson, soon you’ll be at 12 karma / gold

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Patch-made-DR-worse-Explanation/first#post324940

Less than 1 hour of random DE’s across different maps. Karma DR does exist, it’s very real, and it’s affecting people playing legitimately. Take a look at the screenshots, I even had it so bad where it was down to 12 karma/gold medal. No, I was not repeating any DE’s, exploiting, or somehow completing DE’s at an absurd rate.

I’m tired of these threads and posts saying, “Because I experienced the game this way, it’s this way because I said so.” Guess what? Look around the forums, there’s plenty of evidence of DR and overly punitive mechanics.

dimgl.4786:

Lumines.3916:

Not only what you said is true, but it’s plain for the eye to see that the DR system in place is simply TOO harsh that it’s affecting people not trying to farm karma, but trying to progress in a chain.

I got hit with DR just trying to cleanse the Cathedral of Silence because the event failed and had to do it again.

And this is what ArenaNet needs to work on. And it is what they will work on. But people need to be patient.

Patience is fine, but they need to say something about the issue. You aren’t for sure they are going to change it, maybe it’s intended that you can’t do 1 chain event in Orr without hitting both Karma/Loot DR? Since they haven’t said a word on the issue, nobody knows for sure.

Try to do events for a straight hour, doesn’t matter what map, what event, what mob type. If you don’t hit DR and get severely reduced karma/loot, you are doing something wrong. Plenty of legitimate players are experiencing DR in both loot and dynamic event rewards just from playing the game for an hour. Yet we still see pure silence on the issue. I’ve accepted that DR will be part of this game, but it should only affect people farming the exact same place/mob/event/etc, not people who are going around and playing the game like so many people on these forums seem to just disregard…

I also want to note that both of my screenshots are post-patch last night. I wasn’t doing anything exploitative or shady whatsoever. A few guildmates had called out that Dwayna has spawned and I did the chain event there in Orr. This was the first time I’ve been on the map, so the DR is definitely character bound, not map or event bound.

It would appear that you hit the cap after about ~30 minutes of doing karma events if they are chain events and it takes somewhere in the realm of 1 hour to reset. Essentially cutting all game play to only being 50% effective? I don’t really understand why I can’t roam around to different maps, doing different events and not get punished for it.

Arenanet, I -love- this game, it’s a blast to play with friends and guildmates and the game mechanics are really refreshing and new. I have one major griping and it’s with these systems in place – it ruins fun and generally makes me just want to log out for the day when you hit these caps. I think a lot of people feel the exact same way and I don’t want to make it a threatening post or rage post so I say that in the most constructive way possible. Please give us your stance on why these systems are in place, or what we can expect in the future from DR systems in general.

Yeah, first time today I was even on the map where Dwayna spawns and look at attached screenshot…. :\

I’ve been testing, or trying to at least and what it might be now is that Karma DR is shared across any map?

Like for example, once you complete 5 or 10 karma events you get 0 DR for those, but after those are completed, for each additional event you do – you get less and less karma/copper/exp until you are at where I was (lowest karma – 12?)

The only way to get off of the DR, is to not do any more events and let the DR slowly wear off of your character. Because even chain events in different maps were giving me reduced karma near the end. I’m still looking into what is going on here, I’d really like a word from a GM though that’d be good to know if it was intended or not.

Note: I’ve been doing this event for weeks now with not a single aspect of Diminishing Returns on Karma/Silver/EXP rewards.

Now with patch, I run to Orr and do Temple of Balthazar (first time I’ve been there all day) and get reduced Karma. Okay..hmm strange because I haven’t been here all day. Go to Wayfarer Foothills to do a chest event that spawns there and immediately get more DR?

Please, PLEASE tell me this is not intended and a bug that is going to be fixed very soon.

Oh, and the relogging thing in the screenshot does nothing.

Just beat him yesterday. Went with four guildmates, it was such a refreshing change that there was actually something challenging in this game; He’s not going to be puggable which is very nice for people who are looking for a challenge.

The only downside is that the exploit that people have been using for the last 2-3 weeks have made all Arah gear non-prestigious as it’s as common as grass in a field. Secondly, after spending 2 hours clearing the entire dungeon some of our party got 6 badges…>_>

Lysidian.4653:

^This

I am surprised people are not in full riot over the implementation of this. I assume they just said screw it and are playing something else until it changes.

The only reason people aren’t in full riot is because the average gamer hasn’t run into the issue yet. A lot of people are still leveling and enjoying the leveling process, or WvW, etc. You’ll actually see an increase of these posts in the coming weeks as people start to finish their housekeeping items at “fresh 80” status because it’s probably one of the most frustrating game mechanics I’ve ever experienced in an MMORPG.

In fact, most of people defending it are probably not even 80 or have a desire to get a legendary so they just defend it blindly without experiencing the downsides.

Yata.8932:

You all raised very good points to my comment, I suppose I hadn’t thought that through all the way. Perhaps it was meant to keep individual players from farming all together in a short period of time, whether it works or not. Would this in any way benefit the economy? I ask because I"m not an economic wizard in any way.

Yata, yes the farming definitely has an effect on the economy because people can’t farm anything effectively so it kind of limits what legitimate players can obtain while farming. The economy is currently interesting – most, if not all crafted items are going to have near-zero or negative margin if you buy all of the raw materials for any given crafted items. What that means is if crafted item A requires components X, Y, Z, then the sum of (X + Y + Z + Listing Fees + 10% GW2 auction cut) will actually be greater than the amount you will make from selling crafted item A.

What does that mean for economy? Well it just means that the fluctuation you will see in the market will only vary by raw materials. High level items will start to stabilize more and more as the game matures and more people are only farming mostly high level area materials while low level materials will be more than their current prices due to the large amount of people of every level range. Eventually, if the raw material is part of a legendary or cool looking exotic, you can bet that it will be expensive because most people will eventually get to the point where that’s their main goal.

Of course, this is a very simplistic view of economy – the actual details of a full scale economy that GW2 has can get very, very complicated.

You can obtain money by farming ‘expensive’ raw materials by selectively picking monsters or finding good farm spots so the idea behind the anti-farm coding is to force players to run to different zones or areas to get a large variety of different loot and “experience” the game more. The problem with it at a very baseline view is that bots have figured out a way around it and probably will for a long time, while us regular farmers are being punished.

deriver.5381:

No, they said it was a bug that people who were moving between DEs were still having DRs kicking in. The system will ONLY reduce your loot if you do the same DEs over and over…

I legitimately don’t know if you are a troll, a fanboy who just plugs his ears at anything contradicting Arenanet, or just plain idiotic but no, it doesn’t just reduce loot if you do the same DE’s over and over. I hit the darn cap within 15 minutes of farming undead in Orr because of my 170% + MF (forgot exact number). You have no say in what I should be able to do when I want to play this game in a legitimate fashion. Your posts are infuriating to read because you just don’t even listen to reason or logic whatsoever and say “Deal with it, adapt.” Do you really think all of these posts popping up are a coincidence? A bunch of elitist buttheads here just to ruin the forums for everyone? No. It’s a lot of people who are level 80, who ENJOY farming and have a good reason to want to farm for good looking gear. It’s their prerogative to what they enjoy and want to do, why should it be limited? There’s a literal crapton of people who love the heck out of Guild Wars 2 who just want to play the game without being punished for, you know, playing the game.

Edit: And this to everyone – the mechanics don’t even matter, the facts remain the same – you get punished for farming basically most fashions (DE’s, monster picking, etc) unless you are terrible and can only kill monsters at a turtle pace. Oh and fixing kittens..

Does anyone know for sure if Mystic Clovers are soul or account bound? Thanks for any insight.