Guild Wars 2

the dwindling # of players across all servers may tell a different story. i believe those who have remainded are more willing to accept the direction, but a lot of players have already left for this and other reasons so its difficult to draw any real conclusion.

LOL – you are right. The risen chickens and maggots often drop better gear than vets, champs, and dragons

nothing – the rewards available for the # I have (even after doing the monthly) are not worth it

agree. i try to avoid them unless they are on the daily. especially when farming an area like the loot corridor between pent and she WPs – wasting time going after the vets for garbage (or no) drop versus killing the mobs and collecting loot bags.

vets/champs are not worth the effort. anet said they were going to fix this but I see no evidence. Seriously – how hard is it to fix loot tables? if the s/w was coded correctly in the first place the loot and %s should be in a database table on in a cube loaded to memory and its a simple lookup.

they need to look into this more – still bugged. got porous bone from a wooden chest in Orr today

…supposed to contain junk?

I killed a vet and got the little chest drop and thought -cool. Inside was a porous bone. I thought the chest was to signify something worthwhile had dropped versus junk? Did I misinterpret something?

With few good places to farm tier 5 and 6 mats, lvl 80 DEs, etc. due to overall loot drop mechanics and very low drop rates many high level players are forced into farming the “loot corridor” – the pent/she WPs in Cursed Shore. The frequency of the DEs at these 2 spots plus easy access to DEs just SW and a fast run to plinx make these THE place to be.

Problem – classes are very imbalanced in terms of DPS output. The game enforces a tag + % of dmg algorithm to tell if you get loot or get stiffed.

So picture this – 2 or 3 warriors spinning like tops, a couple guardians spinning like tops – and the mobs pretty much all die within about 3 seconds.

Condition based classes – such as ranger and necro – can barely get an attack or 2 in before the mobs are 100% dead – let alone get credit for tagging anything. As a result – the high power build DPS toons get all the loot drops and the condition build toons get a fraction of the loot.

This is getting very old. Anet has not provided enough level 80 zones with sufficient drops, sufficient farming opportunites etc. and this is what the game has become – mass of people in Pent or She whirling like tops and grabbing all the loot.

Can anet please fix the Cove, please fix Orr to offer more farming locations and more equity across classes, please address the loot table issues which are the root cause for this dysfunctional behavior. People are here as they have no better choice for loot-per-time-spent. Anet could address this once and for all by fixing the loot drop rate.

For a few glorious hours the things were actually dropping and it was fun going after them. Then the change was reverted and now we are back to ‘drops in a blue moon if you are standing on one leg hopping up and down singing the russian national anthem’

Cmon anet. Do the right thing.

clearly there is something going on here. either the RNG is really screwed up and/or poorly designed (some threads have commented they feel they have perm DR versus others who seem to get all the drops) OR anet has hidden mechanics in place which further determine drops. For example – each karka having a time stamp based on last time it actually dropped something other than garbage with a CD algorithm to control how much the thing drops per given time period. It would be another way for anet to control farming. 14 karka shells versus my 3…

45 min
MF at 131

Many (majority) of karka dropped nothing
11 chunks of crab meat
6 potent blood
5 spiral shell
3 karka shell
2 rares (lvl 80 sword, lvl 80 axe)

Question – does the above seem reasonable for MF level and time spent? Aside from the 2 rare, which can occur anywhere with this MF, I was disappointed with the run. 6 blood and 3 shells in 45 min – given the amount of these items recipies call for one could spend days farming just to make a single item or two.

3 80s here with near 2000 hrs in game.

In all that time – 2 named exotics have dropped (both in last two weeks and may be due to anet changing loot drop rates a bit) both in exp mode TA. Both are armor and not usable by any of my 80s but would be useful for my lvl 41 guardian so I am now leveling him.

I did get a precursor drop off Teq – unfortunately it was The Bard. I have no toons that would benefit from a focus, and this is probably the least desireable precursor/legendary in the entire game. Precursor was selling for only 10g on my server so its like I won the lottery and the prize was $2. Big deal. If anet tracks who actually gets these and uses the data to influence future drops it actually will hurt me as my chances for another drop might be less.

So all told – in a heck of a lot of game time – 3 exotics have dropped. Pretty bad loot table and drop rate if you ask me.

i don’t see the reason or the point

WVW – gets old and repetitive with same matches and maps each week. A lot of player-vs-wall/gate.

Dungeons – once you have done em all – repeating over and over gets a bit old.

DEs – same as above. Also – vets and champs in DE have a tendency to drop nothing or trash – time investment is a concern since loot is poor.

Fractals – same as dungeons only add agony and a poorly thought out system that impacts ability to find groups readily.

Leveling alts – once you have an 80 with world complete the game experience is not going to differ much with alts. I have 3 80s – repetitive nature of the experience was not that thrilling. World Complete is mainly at fault since my first 80 had to do everything already.

RP – not really a game set up for that, no RP servers etc. but if thats what you like to do it is an option.

World – see notes above. Made especially annoying by requirement to get all the stuff in WVW maps. I had to transfer servers twice to get mine. And now that they charge – going to be more of a pain for people.

s/tPVP – don’t care for how they implemented this with cookie cutter builds and gear rather than let me use the stuff I earned in game.

JPs – do em once and … yeah

Socializing – don’t need an MMO for this but yeah, its an option

Legendary – no thanks. Drop rates on needed mats are a joke and precursor costs are nuts

Achievements – sure, but where is the reward? WOW at least had rewards. When I finished Long Strange Trip after 2 years effort it was nice to get the reward. GW2 has what rewards exactly?

after seeing them listen to the players, raise drop rates in orr a few days back, then suddenly revert it all in the last patch… good luck. I don’t think we will ever see any change to the precursor lottery.

i agree with you. in fact i posted an article “is magic find now mandatory” yesterday after an enjoyable time spent farming for mats and getting porous bones instead.

today I hit the same spot with 130 MF and SHAZAM i got some decent mats.

the game is, in my opinion, broken in that it requires you to gimp your toon (armor, weapon, trinkets all with MF as a stat versus a useful offense or defense stat) just to get a respectable amount of drops to allow you to craft etc.

NinjaEd.3946:

I dont understand OP, you want even better loot? I did 1 short event lasting maybe 5 or 6 minutes. Got 3 moldy bags and various blues with a green here and there. Did the next event in the chain and got a rare and tons of blues/greens with T5/6 mats. Not to mention you can use karma to buy orr chests from the npc’s in Orr for tier 6 mats and other items.

The drop rate has been increased significantly, no need to hand out the key’s to the Tyrian Bank vault and make everyone a millionair.

I have no idea what you are saying, what MF you use, etc. My experience from yesterday <> your experience. I had zero MF, played in Orr for a significant amount of time, got minimal amount of drops, no rares I can recall, few bags etc. AND this was after all DR cool down had been worn off working on my other toons in other zones…

It seems that the difference between an acceptable loot drop rate versus laughable drop rate in places like Orr, the Cove, etc. is high MF (>100 for sure).

Comments?

With the nerf to loot drops in Orr (reverted the change a few days back that actually made the zone playable and farmable) I am convinced that MF is almost mandatory at this point. So this means gimping a build simply to make up for a poor loot table design.

Thoughts?

yes, i go there all the time – i have killed dozens of things and get a small amount of loot bags.

Tell me what MF you have – thats likely the difference. I was getting good amount of drops after the increased drop rates and that was with no MF gear. Then they reverted the change and drop rates stink – again, no MF.

I should not be forced to gimp my toon with heavy MF just to get a decent rate of return for my time.

first time there since patch.

killed 20 young karka
17 dropped nothing
2 dropped some worthless spiral shell grey
1 dropped a karka shell

these are not the droids I am looking for. i feel no incentive to go to the cove – my time has to be worth something.

For a short time it was enjoyable. then you reverted the fix that was needed and now orr has negative utility. overall drop rates are poor, odds of getting a rare are poor, and t6 mats are near impossible to get. many dead drop nothing including vets and champs.

my time has got to be worth more than this – i don’t feel any incentive to go to orr at this point.

yes – anet increased drops a few patches back and then nerfed all and reverted to the old drop rates. apparently there was a belief that more abundant mats were impacting the economy…

You want us to continue to explore the world and go back to lower level zones after we hit 80 (or outlevel the zone in any case).

I get that. And due to the silly DR code we have few options. Fine.

I got a lvl 76 rare in a lower level zone just now. Kudos for making the loot scale in some cases.

Lets talk travel costs. With a level appropriate toon in a lower level zone it may cost a few copper to travel from WP to WP. Why do you charge my lvl 80 1.5 silver for the same travel?

Travel costs discourage players from going into lower level zones for no good reason. I have world complete on 1 toon which was quite enough thanks and no desire to do the same for my other toons. The disincentives to come to lower zones are already there – in my opinion gouging for travel costs is just more fuel for that fire.

Is there any valid reason why you can’t charge a static price for travel from WP to WP in the game regardless of toon level?

make doing these things worthwhile with better rewards – not too hard a concept but sadly its not the one being attempted.

i gave up in orr, went to a lowbie zone, and solo’d the needed vets. Even doing 10s of thousands of dmg in Orr in a group – the kill is too fractured by too many players to get credit.

This was NOT an issue pre-patch as I was able to get exp and occassional loot from the vets even with fracturing. Now – seems doing this in a group is NOT your friend.

i’ve helped groups kill about a dozen now – credit for 3.

This is bogus.

ok – there are so real strange things happening – helped kill more vets, still not seeing any exp show but was able to actually loot one corpse – then all of a sudden my kill total goes from 0-2 for daily.

Is there some serious lag issue here between killing vets and getting credit?

Assisted killing 4 vets in Orr just now – NO CREDIT either exp OR for daily

New mechanic makes it near impossible to kite the guy.

We killed after several minutes. A champ. NO LOOT – AT ALL. PERIOD.

Anet – you said you were fixing this. I see no evidence.

All – you may want to ponder whether investment of time in killing this guy after Plinx fits your needs given the loot issue.

Disclaimer – observation, your mileage may vary

seen this once – after a boss fight in TA Exp. Never seen in world.

my biggest concern is the attitude I am seeing in these types of threads. an elitist mindset is starting to shine through. It was bad enough to see this in the LFG tool and/or LA LFG spam but now it may get that much worse. I can just hear it now “LFG – no noobs, if you get downed you get kicked”

I don’t think thats going to stimulate cooperation.

I disagree with those who feel its just dandy to have this change cause “we all need to learn the fights.” Please do not foist this opinion on the more casual groups who struggle. What is it to you anyway?

Even when you learn the fights you can still go down with only 2 evades depending on what a given boss may do. Instance runs are already time sinks for limited return (drops are not great and gear is not significantly different from gear attainable from other sources). Many teams run these just for cosmetic skins.

Live and let live – no reason to change everything to make it a larger time sink. Much more of this and instances may be ignored to the same extent many DEs are ignored.

They had this system in World of Tanks and finally got rid of it. It was used to grief posters.

unfortunately DR has become a time sink mechanic and anet will never get rid of it

Just spent 30 min with a group opening arah and melandru.

Reward for my time from the 2 chests – 6 greens and 4 worthless sigil/acc items.

Opening temples is not worth anyone’s time with these kinds of rewards – I can get the same loot in about 10 min farming pent/she WPs.

Can you PLEASE make the loot in Orr worth the effort and time?

are you using high MF? I have gotten a total of 8 karka shells in all the time I have spent in that zone

AGREE. MF gimps your build any way you cut it. If you are farming solo in world thats one thing but when you bring this into an instance and put more burden on others thats another thing – especially when you pocket yellows and those who worked hard to kill the boss etc. get stuck with worthless garbage.

Its similar to what happened to paladins in WOW – a player invests time and coin to level their toon, equip their toon based on the stats needed to be effective, etc. and when the developer changes a fundamental tenet upon which the toon is built it devalues the time, energy, and coin invested.

The player must then either revamp their toon (more time, energy, coin), exist in a gimped form, or shelve the toon.

Often these changes appear to have been done to “balance” one aspect of a game, such as wvwvw, without apparent regard for the impact on other aspects of the game such as PVE.

Best option – get rid of DR as it severly limits level 80s who need to farm mats and have only a few places to do so.

Next best option – revert this to character based so those of us with multiple level 80s can rotate through our toons before the DR hammer.

3rd option – add more level 80 zones where mats can be farmed so that we have more options and can avoid DR.

Most of the time karka only drop crab meat. And yet thats mainly what you see on the island. I don’t even go to the island anymore as there is no reward for doing so.

Can you please revise/fix the loot tables associated with the NPCs on the island so that it is a viable level 80 zone? Given DR we have only 2 viable locations to farm as it is (Frost and Cursed) and that tends to get boring.

Awhile back I needed corrupted lodestones. With MF at 191 I was averaging 2 per hour before a string of bad luck and ended up with just 6 in 4 hours of farming.

Given lodestones are needed in qty as high as 250 for some recipies – the drop rate seems broken. Even at 2 per hour thats 125 hrs of farming lodestones. Really? Is that what you intended?

And of course the DR code makes it even harder.

Can you please rethink how this works.

I have noticed that vets and champs which spawn during a DE, be it a dragon or something in Orr, seldom drop loot OR drop inferior loot. These guys take more time to kill and the reward should be comprable.

Its at the point where I see a vet or champ and avoid it and go for the normal NPCs because there is a much better chance of more loot killing them than wasting a minute or two on a vet/champ.

Can you please improve/revise the loot tables and drop %s for vets and champs?

When a “normal” NPC in game is found and attacked it takes damage and can also give damage. This is normal. For some DEs, like those which pop in the Pent/She corridor of Lost Shores, a large # of NPCs will appear but will be invulnerable to attack. In Pent this is not so bad as the NPCs are running to a set spot before they can be engaged. In She this IS an issue because spider spawns in areas which will become attackable seconds after the spawn.

The issue is – if you are close to spawn pt (not camping it) the spiders cannot be attacked but will pull you in and gank you before you can react. On occassion I have been pulled by one spider after another through their pile, used all my evades and escapes, and still end up dead.

Given we have no warning when a pop of this sort is going to pop this seems a bit flawed. I realize you don’t want people to simply camp the spawn pt, but likewise I would prefer not to be dead with a repair bill simply because the mob acts in this way and I happened to be in the area when it spawned.

monthly is not truely optional if you need karma – and we all need karma. 10 jugs of karma is too much to pass on, making the “this is optional” a straw man argument.

Can you please do something about the rendering issues which allow thieves to be nearly 100% invisible at all times in wvw, allowing a single thief to come into a group and kill them all (as happened to me today – in a group of 4 – all of us dead in less than 10 seconds from an invisible thief)???

Seriously – the balance issues are bad enough without having to deal with this as well. This is another disincentive to play wvw at this point.

Requiring players to kill 50 enemy in wvw each month and do 7 FOTM segments each month – gets old and boring. Not everyone loves wvw, especially with the bugs, and FOTM gets very repetitive.

Can you please use some creativity and use a rotating scheme of determining which things are needed for the monthly? Try to keep it a bit fresh? It feels less fun each month and more of a grind at this point.

Please revise the loot table for wvw badges of honor. In 600 kills I have 131 badges – thats a pathetic 21% drop rate. WVW is already a time sink, a silver sink (repairs), and is full of bugs that make thieves near invulnerable. It would be nice to actually be rewarded for playing your “end game” concept. I really don’t see much inventive to play wvw at this point due to rendering issues, thieves invisibility, poor loot. Can you at least improve the drop rate for badges please?

It should not have taken this long to fix the bug with Jormag’s ice shield not being targetable via normal weapons. I must conclude this is intentional and not considered a defect by anet.

Please chage this back the way it was.

Using the charzookas and explosives takes far longer, is not enjoyable, adds no real value to the DE. The charzooka in particular is junk – no auto attack, slow firing, and does less dmg to the ice shield than my normal weapons.

The DE now takes quite a bit longer to finish than in the past – its a time sink. Was that your intent? Should player satisfaction with the event be considered at all when this type of change is made?

Agree.

I have 3 level 80s now.

• 2nd 2 80s I am not bothering to complete the story – the reward for the final story mission even after the anet fix is worthless to a player in full exotics, so whats the point. You beat Z once and you get that “that was meh” feeling so why repeat it?

• Orr has become a lot less populated even on full servers. It was always kind of a drag due to the gank mobs and all the special abilities the enemies have. Basically I run the initial alley between the 2 camps and farm karma, and every so often I will fight at a temple if I need another karma exotic. Otherwise – its not much fun so why bother?

• Dragon farming – do this with much of my time hoping for a precursor.

• Time, effort, gold, etc. needed to otherwise come up with a precursor and a legendary is nothing but grinding – and its boring.

• Fractals – get boring quickly and the way its implemented was poor since now its all “LFG fotm level n” in LA chat with everyone on different levels making it harder to form groups.

• Dungeon runs for token… over and over … for gear no better than what I can build… uh, yeah – keep your skins. Boring grind.

• W3 – still badly broken with rendering issues and thieves running amok and its mostly PVWALL not PVP given we spend all our time bashing gates… yeah thats fun….

Alien has it right. First run I thought “great – its fixed” and I could hit the shield with my normal weapons. Every run since then its back to broken – target point appears to be underground so normal weapons get “obstructed” when trying to hit it and you are forced to either use AOE skills or the very slow firing, no auto-attack charzookas. Its turns the event into a much larger time sink and is very annoying.

Anet – please fix this area. Just spent 15+ min killing stuff and reward was 1 karka shell, 3 powerful blood, 3 blues, and a bunch of junk. Probably 1/2 the thinks killed (mainly young karka) dropped nothing at all.

I am seeking an incentive to play this area and am not finding it. Drops are far inferior to Orr.