Guild Wars 2

Just wanted to chime in and give kudos to the team as well. I haven’t played GW 2 in about 2 years and came back to this. What a pleasant surprise! My friends and I spent a few hours exploring and figuring it out, getting our achievement and potion. A total blast!

One of the biggest things we loved (along with just the flat-out wonderful exploration) was the fact that it wasn’t a sweaty-palms-halloween-event-twitch-jump “jumping puzzle”. Sure there were some harry parts, but the focus seemed more figuring and exploring than twitching.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the jumping puzzle that STARTS off jumping from pole to pole (sticking out of the side of the wall). That one (wherever it leads?) we quit after falling about 20 times.

Edge.4180:

Shousa.6870:

I for one think that any tactic that involves you having advantage is a good tactic. I can never grasp and probably wont the reasoning behind this invuln thing. They can sugarcoat however they want it, but it in my mind higher ground is the most basic logic behind any tactical warfare. If you can not attack me move away from me but in no way it shoud become invuln

This has been a necessary evil since back in Everquest. Whether it’s mobs becoming invulnerable, summoning you to them, or teleporting on top of you.. the gist of it is simple: players should never be able to attack a mob in a way that it can’t fight back. There is no reward without risk. You are not at risk when you stand on top of a roof and use ranged attacks on a creature being controlled by AI that is not smart enough to reach you or properly respond to the threat you represent.

I definitely see where you’re coming from (and devs through history). But what about having the mob do what a player would do in that case (can’t hit back)? And just run away. And if they can’t run away (blocked in for whatever reason), they die. Same as a player. If you can’t leash, you eat it.

There might be a zillion thing wrong with that idea, so I’m just putting it out as a question for feedback on.

edit: so instead of an “invol” flag getting set, a “turn around and calculate a path within a 45-degree pie slice region away from the attacker” – flag is set.

Rukia.4802:

The best fight in this game is the giant risen in cursed shore that makes himself invulnerable thanks to his own stupid mechanic that he rushes off at light speeds, running too far off from the party making him god until he runs back… he does this quite a few times too, during every fight with him.

Epic design.

Ya that one (and of plinx chain) is hilarious —no sarcasm, but huge rolleyes when it happens.

On the other hand it seems like, when you’re the one he’s got targeted (you know, he really sticks to one person forever — imo, broken threat AI), and you try to leash to save your life, it takes miles to get him to drop aggro.

Ya this is why I don’t tell anyone how to “think out of the box”. There’s no exploits or hacks. It’s just taking what you’ve got and carrying it down a path to a bigger profit than the parts you started with. Those “parts” could be time, mats, places on the map, people you happen to be with, a combo of some or all these things, etc.

But it seems like people who are replying are more anxious to defend their position of: “it’s all grind”, than coming at it from a different angle. (It’s actually kind of interesting to watch.)

Imryn.2879:

Ethics.4519:

Eh, I’m with Vol. Not everybody is meant to have a legendary. You don’t need one, it’s nice to have.

I am sick and tired of people saying this. Everybody who wants a legendary can have one. There is no skill requirement involved, just money.

In fact the most efficient way to get a legendary is to never leave Lions Arch, to play the TP and to buy all of the components.

The devs who designed the “Legendary” aquisition process should be hanging their heads in shame because there is nothing legendary about it.

I disagree — there is skill involved. Tons of it. Just not straight-foward direct gameplay skill. More of: think out of the box…how do I get the things I need?, skill.

I agree with Vol…again.

A kitten is punched every time someone say the best (only?) way to make gold in-game is COF (dungeon/fractal speed runs) or playing the TP. There are plenty of ways to make [good] gold in-game — I’ll leave it up to you to figure it out.

I got my Twilight the first week in Jan (bought my precursor for 550) — without a guild and without any dungeon runs except the required AC ones. And no playing the TP.

Rifter.6591:

CrakittenestAuto.9108:

At least three of the dailies after the patch required you to specifically avoid Orr. It seems the devs want to force people to play in the rest of the world rather than farm a place only level 80s can go. Given they’ve explicitly said this, and they’ve increased the drops in other areas, I don’t know why this would be surprising.

Then they need to fix there horribly broken downleveling system.

If killing a lvl 80 risen in orr can drop me a T6 mat and killing a lvl 10 undead in ashford plains which is just as hard due to downleveling drops a T1 mat you are NEVER going to draw players from the high end zones. No one in there right mind is going to go through the same effort for T1 mats as T6 mats.

I would actually call it pure insanity to expect people to do this.

Fix drops for downleveled areas and maybe but not with the current broken system

EXACTLY. This is something we all saw since beta. O.0

They broke it. They also broke the event that starts the Arah chain so now the NPCs all insta-die in the new red AOE circles the rizen throw down. And I’m betting a lot more are broke that I haven’t seen yet. :/

I’m kind of at a loss as to why they’d make things unenjoyable in order to push you out to do other things. Why not make ALL things enjoyable?

Would the people who made Combat Mode be up to making “Combat Mode Lite”? Where all it did was change your mouse pointer to the big red target reticule? I’d get that for sure.

I bought Dusk for my Twilight and would not suggest grinding for the gold to buy it. I would suggest doing many things. And, all those things intertwined in conjunction with each other to create synergy.

Of course, part of it includes killing mobs for their T6 mat drops. But to say it’s required to grind mob killing for all the gold to get either a precursor or the parts for a legendary — to say that this is what people who have a legendary did, is probably not an accurate statement.

imo, the “legendary” task was a multitude of things, including the overarching idea of having to figure out those tasks.

Syeria.4812:

garraeth.3267:

Syeria.4812:

Fighting mobs at the camp is good for shelter

If you’re having to camp spawn points, it means you’re on a bad server or your server is too full. Camping at Shelter is horrible.

Fighting at the camp is the exact opposite of fighting at the spawn points. Glad you could come in for your little one liner attack based on not reading though.

Sorry my bad. I’m used to “camping” meaning sitting at the spawn points. Not used to “at the camp”.

Syeria.4812:

Fighting mobs at the camp is good for shelter

If you’re having to camp spawn points, it means you’re on a bad server or your server is too full. Camping at Shelter is horrible.

Vol.5241:

jazzllanna.1278:

You are very lucky and honestly I doubt many could claim to make that much from those. I usually get no rares and am lucky to get over 1 gold from this in an hour. I have never gotten an exotic. And yes I am usually in a full party which is suppose to make you rich.. I do get more but not near 6g. You had a lucky day is all I see here.

The majority of players in Orr do not farm correctly or efficiently

The best ways to be efficient in your farming:
-do not waste time on veterans unless there are no other waves present
-always make sure you and your party are in the same area hitting the same mobs
-keep your character moving around a wave so that your attacks keep hitting different mobs
-If there is another wave spawning while you are currently clear one wave, you do not need to wait around to kill it. You can let others kill that first wave and you move to the second
-Fight mobs near the camp so you can easily switch sides. Do not camp the mobs at their spawns (i.e. the risen mobs at the bottom of the stairs or the risen spiders at the bottom of the stairs)

Vol totally knows his/her stuff.

Some more:

—“guest” on servers with lower populations so mobs aren’t culled or melting before you can damage them enough to get credit (ie. get off JQ)
—Shelter is better so if that pops go there
—Jofast is only ok if you’ve got nothing else to do, if Shelter pops, leave Jofast
—Plinx is only good for karma
—if you want to go elsewhere (another zone, offline, another event), be polite/kind and drop group
—Do not camp the mobs like Vol said — oh this so much — it ruins your loot and everyone else’s too.
—If you’re invited to a party, join up. There’s a reason for party invites.
—you’ve got to spec for PVE farming. This includes CC breakers and speed buffs (so you can move to each group of mobs asap). And as much aoe as you can get. And generally a mixed build (this is for melee, mostly) so you can survive as the first person into a group of newly spawned mobs – but also so you’re doing enough damage to get kill credit. Don’t include any group buffs/heals in your build (sry, but ya, this is farming, not dungeons or wvw – group buffs/heals take up important slots that could be used for CC breaking/speed/etc).
—don’t put banners down. Don’t put ele weapons down. And unless you’re trolling, don’t put engineer mortars down in the middle of spawn points. >.<
—you have to keep hitting “f” because loot will despawn (!!! fairly fast too)…hence farmers hatred of banners/ele weapons/mortars/dead anything/environmental weapons/etc
—if you die to chickens no one will hear you scream

poisonedsodapop.9348:

I’ve noticed this as well, but not just with items. I’ve done this while trying to run towards someone to revive them. Imagine how much of a jerk I look like when I actually keep running right past them…

Ya and sometimes rez will root you completely. And not even perform the rez. And you won’t be able to move again unless you use an ability like rush (keyboard/mouse movement or dodging won’t get you moving again).

This is cool for some people, but I definitely prefer the cast on the button-down.

A real huge help, that’s been asked for since beta, would be to make the mouse not disappear while holding down the mouse button(s) and to make the mouse cursor larger — something as “loud” as the ctrl-t targeting image. And as requested before (I’m not assuming OP has seen previous requests, just devs), making these two things optional, and/or only happen while you’re in combat — these caveats would probably alleviate anyone having issues with them.

Windows “mouse trails” doesn’t work (for me, or friends who have tried it) in Win 7 64bit while in-game.

I don’t think there is a “tray”, but Spicy Pumpkin Cookie is, imo, way better than omnomberry bars. It’s what I used while farming world events till I got my Twilight.

If you watch, you’ll see that mobs don’t drop gold hardly at all, so imo, the extra 15 min and 5% exp (you can make tons of gold from your skill points) is totally worth the tradeoff in the loss of the gold boost.

Plus they’re about 1/4 the price of omnomberry bars.

Culzean.8571:

garraeth.3267:

1. “F” key. Split loot from all other interactions. Pretty self-explanatory.

I’m not quite sure what you mean… you mean having a keybind for “loot” and a separate one for “interact”? So splitting loot/interact?

Yes, exactly. Since everything is activated with “f”, and loot despawns before events end, you’re constantly having to hit “f” throughout the event. So you end up picking up banners, rezzing npc’s, talking to npc’s (which also stops looting), grabbing environment items like boulders, etc.

Coupled with the current bugs of interacting with those things (rezzing, environment items, banners, etc) while running, this is a huge issue. Now, not only are we all unable to stop running if we interact while moving, but if you rez while moving, it roots you completely. Full. Stop. Even using your movement keys doesn’t break you out – and you’re not even rezzing at that point, you’re just stuck. The only way out of that root is to use an ability that moves you — such as a leap or charge (as long as it’s not on cooldown, of course).

Personally, I would keep “f” as my loot key, and rebind the rest to something not even close to my left hand since those interactions aren’t used during action gameplay at all (you’re not urgently needing to talk to an npc before dying, for example…rezzing is generally something you know you’re going to be “out of the action” for a while anyhow, picking up boulders/banners/etc. is completely optional and/or for fun).

You ever try buying something off the TP but not having enough gold on-hand at that moment? Talk about a funky, nondescript error message…now THAT needs looking at.

I’m pretty sure it’s not DR, but if it is, is that how it’s supposed to work? On and off again so polarized? And within such a short time period?

Even if it is DR, I’d rather the #1 and #2 be addressed first. They affect every aspect of gameplay, all the time.

Ethics, if I understand your meaning of a “real auto-loot system”, I think you’re talking about something like Rift did with their dynamic events? I don’t know why, but the MMOs I’ve played (WoW, Rift, SWTOR, Vanguard, etc) have never automatically placed regular mob loot into your bags. If that’s a leap ANet is not ready to take, I’d be more than happy with just making loot a separate bind.

I love this game and play 5+ hours/day. These are the biggest issues my friends and I would like addressed. Please read thinking my tone is with the utmost respect for you guys. Because it is! Thx!

In order of our wish list priorities, highest at top:

1. “F” key. Split loot from all other interactions. Pretty self-explanatory.

2. Cursor size. And, hiding it when holding mouse keys. We would like to have an option to make the mouse cursor the targeting reticule and not disappear while we’re moving. Maybe this option only takes effect once in-combat.

3: This is low priority but something we discuss quite a bit since it’s confusing. RNG is odd with loot. I’m not meaning what people are discussing in the Share your data about perceived strange drop behavior here thread. I’m talking about how sometimes when doing the same event, say Shelter, you can hit a group of mobs (you know, how they spawn at specific places every time) and get 10+ drops. During the same event you can do this several times…10+, 10+, 10+…all with the same spawn point. Then suddenly, at that same spawn point, you can get 0 to 1 drop. Several times in a row as well.
tldr: same event, same spawn point, same buffs/abilities, go from 10+, 10+, 10+ drops, to 0-1, 0-1, 0-1, then back to 10+ or some number in between. Almost like there is a cap of the number of “loots” you can do in a time period.

Thanks for listening!

No way! This is awesome!
Thanks ANet!

This ^^, and to add: Please make it so you can rebind all the “f” actions to other keys. Then this wouldn’t be such an issue. Rezzing is basically a full-stop root. Also breaks stuff like Jade Quarry when someone goes down near a shard (rez trumps picking up the shard).

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

garraeth.3267:

You can grind until your fingertips bleed.

Or you can be smart about it and have your legendary…well, last week.

Or, just forget the whole legendary stuff and do something fun instead ^^

On a less flippant note (sorry, I was being flippant in my op), this ^^, very much as well.

If working towards legendary is not fun, or too frustrating, don’t bother.

Also, one of my worries about getting a legendary was: “after I get it, will I still want to play GW2?”. I had no idea. The cool thing is that — so far — the answer for me is “yes”.

You can grind until your fingertips bleed.

Or you can be smart about it and have your legendary…well, last week.

I really only have two “quality of life” issues/questions/hopes:

1. Any hope on getting a larger mouse pointer option? And/or option to have it never hide? It gets lost all the time during intense DEs and you need it most to place AOE, whirlwind, target, etc…and I don’t want to lift up on my mouse buttons and stop moving in order to see it.

2. Any hope for being able to rebind: loot/npc-interation/pick-up-banners/pick-up-world-objects/rez, from “f” to several keys? Rezzing is essentially a massive root. Conversations with NPCs stop looting until you’re out of range or hit [esc] — maybe make it so when you hit “f” and are in a conversation with an NPC, that it’ll still loot.

(Loot despawns by the end of a lot of DEs – so you have to loot during the DE.)

Thanks!

An analog of it for PvE.

Just because I’d like to be able to say in (PVE) map chat things like: “Rally on my icon for Grenth!”.

I don’t WvW much, so don’t want to be disingenuous. (Of course, with the current one, I’d turn it off in all WvW maps…)

Thanks!

Action shot w/ Twilight.

I agree. Thanks for all your hard work!!!

I moan and whine just as much as the next guy, but just because I want to see this gem polished!

LordByron.8369:

Define your legit/non speculative way to save up 500+ G in 1 month….

Lot of obvious things as a base foundation:

• My favorite place to “grind” was Grenth. Pen/Shelter was “ok”. Plinx was also “ok”. Arah was “meh”. Melandru was “bad”.

• Off-hours I’d “grind” for my loadstones or T5/T6 mats elsewhere – mostly solo.

• I’ve seen a lot of posts where people say basically “crafting is worthless” and they couldn’t be more wrong.

• I didn’t spend money on anything but required items (picks/axes, waypoints, MF find food).

• I always vendor blues/whites/greens. Salvaged yellows. TP’d oranges.

Other things I’ll let you figure out. That’s actually part of the fun.

I’m a “legit player” (never bought gold with gems, and got everything myself, no mad rng luck, no speculation/flipping) and just got Dusk today. And since I had the other 3 parts, turned it into Twilight two minutes after.

I saved for about a month for Dusk (after I got the first 3 parts). It really taxed my brain to come up with ways of saving gold, but it’s definitely do-able.

And ya, I’m excited and wanted to post just for that ;p It looks AWESOME.

I agree with the OP.

But someone had (what I thought) was a really good idea about how to get precursors on Reddit. Their idea was to have “normal” and “expert” modes of gameplay. So once you got 100% world completion in “normal” mode, you could (optionally) switch over to get 100% world completion in "expert"mode. Once you got 100% in “expert” mode, you’d get to pick a precursor.

The original idea was to have two distinct instances, but that would fragment the population and might end up with more dead zones than we have now. So, imo, this idea would need some tweaking.

eg. somehow either weaken your toon, or buff mobs — just for you…and make all drops lvl 76-80 (mats included)…so you could still play side-by-side with those in “normal” mode…and since you’d be getting lvl 80 drops, you’d still progress towards your legendary even in low level zones.

Like others have posted, north and north-east Southsun Cove. Tons in the water. A few on land.

I report them every night (around 12am-2am PST). Between 5 and 10 of them over the course of my farming session there.

So if I’m reporting them, and yet you’re asking for me to re-report them here, what are the reports I’m generating actually sending you guys? Wouldn’t it be reasonable that any report send the team x,y,z coords and time in addition to account information? Isn’t there a cool visualization tool showing “hot spots”? With nice click drill-down to show who is in that location at the particular time?

Also, I do development for a living, so can understand some things appear easy but are in actuality very hard. But the fact that bots can teleport pretty much ad-hoc and on a whim as fast as they’d like tells me that there is a gaping hole someplace in the code that could be patched and kill off a whole slew of these underwater bots.

Blackwolfe.5649:

Wait, what you are saying is that the theory of which you are talking about is that there is a loot pool that is shared between all players in an area and that bots/farmers are emtpying the pool of rares/exotics and if I go there there will be little good for me to loot since its already taken?

Not that I think that there is any merit to the theory. If it was true I’d be seriously kitten and question the sanity of whatever coder/dev that came up with it.

I can totally see this.

How easy would it be to “balance” the economy if you could just open a spreadsheet and plunk in how many of each item is available for dropping each day? Sooo easy.

• “Ok, lets see, today the price of blood is a bit too low, so lets make it so only 10,000 blood drops today.”
• bots eat up 9,900 of those
• you, me and the rest of the players get to split the remainder.

Hellkaiser.6025:

lack of comprehension of the term “subjective” much?

Subjectively a non-issue.
/popcorn

Ickorus.4518:

My god, you people will complain about anything.

And I’d bet money that 90%+ of the GW2 population gets ALL their communcations via the little box that appears in the loading screen.

So a gripe about “no communications — then asking for money” is really a non-issue.

But whatever, kitten/moan away…1st world problems. I got popcorn.

Not sure if this was mentioned before, but the one in the north-west part of Frostgorge doesn’t give credit. Even if you finish it, get the chest, use the goggles and jump off into the water.

I strongly dislike WvW but only have 65 left to get. Woot!

Mostly from jumping puzzles like others have said. I found a nice guildie mesmer who sometimes helps – I pay him 5 gold each time through the big one. I take all my toons through each time if possible (sometimes it gets too overwhelmed with other server players). 5 gold is totally worth it to me!

Maybe you can find a nice mesmer in your guild…?

Ansultares.1567:

You mean that’s not normal? This sounds like my drop rate since release. I think you were just lucky to ever experience a better drop rate.

lol, exactly what I was thinking. o.0

moonstarmac.4603:

MF is completely borked beyond belief at this time. For some it works, for others it actually decreases drop rates. I’ve noticed the same on all of my toons that I added MF too.

I agree with this. It’s totally borked. I run Grenth several times each day and swap back and forth between my MF set and normal and can’t see any improvement in drops from MF.

In fact, with my Berserker gear, I see MORE drops — my guess is it’s because I’m able to tag more mobs past the percentage requirement to get it to count. In addition, tonight in my Berserker gear I got a nice exotic. Go figure.

But since I haven’t done any actual tracking, I’m still going back and forth :/

edit: Thinking about it though, I wonder if MF isn’t working just fine, but if you’re doing an event with many people around (not all in your own party), you’re not hitting mobs enough (since your gear is gimped) to get a drop at all. If no drop→no loot roll→MF won’t even come into play.

So maybe it’s more situational. If you’re solo farming, use MF gear since you’re always going to be doing 100% of the dmg on the mob (or if you’re in a party with no one else around outside that party). But if you’re in an area with people outside your party, don’t use MF in order to ensure enough dmg on the mob to get past the percentage requirement (or use MF if you’re confident you’ll still get enough dmg on each mob).

Also, someone mentioned that they got more drops while in a party. Ya, that’s just because the sum of the parties hits is what’s applied to every party member as the percentage contribution of the mobs damage.

Jolene.7316:

The pulsating sound is the fmod audio subsystem telling the user it is out of memory:

“When the FMOD mixer thread does an allocation and it fails, it is almost impossible to recover from this gracefully (because of the threaded nature of the system, there is no function to return an error from), and sounds would start to drop out. Because we think this is fatal, and leads to subtle or not so subtle audio bugs – the mixer now emits a pulsating sine wave noise to tell you it is out of memory.”

http://www.fmod.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=15120

or http://preview.tinyurl.com/fmodbug

Just for the Anet team: I never get this bug ^^, but still get the pet one.

However, if it is some sort of work-around-able issue on our end, please let us know of whatever it is we can do and we will do it (lower our sound quality?, update drivers?, whatever?, ??). Then please sticky it until there’s an in-game fix.

imo just need the ability to cancel the channeling.

Embedded Chrome.

Just like embedded IE. C++ has APIs that enable devs to embed the browser engine within their desktop apps. IE is standard with MSVC++. Chrome is probably easy enough for them to get if they prefer that engine instead of IE.

The TP is a webpage using Ruby/RoR. I’m assuming based on the font issue that they are using Chrome’s engine since embedded IE doesn’t have that problem. When you go to small UI, it just sets the embedded browsers font size to 80% (or thereabouts).

That’s also (probably) the reason for the delay with preview on the TP – they’ve got to replicate the whole preview system using Ruby+JS+CSS so it can be used within their Ruby pages. OR else, use something like JavaBeans (can’t use JavaBeans though since the desktop client is C++ and not Java – and they aren’t using Java on the web side either) to have the embedded browser communicate with the desktop client to have the desktop client render based on data sent to it via the embedded browser. They might be able to use some goofy Flash to save data on the client’s harddrive and the desktop app read it – a bridge if you will – but I doubt it, that’s clunky, — or have the browser save a cookie (or maybe use HTML5’s database API) and the desktop app read the files the browser writes — that’s goofy also since the browser can never “tell” the desktop app when it’s written anything to the client side so the desktop app will have to poll the place where those data files could possibly be written by the browser. What a lot of clunky code. So they’ll probably just stick with in-browser — which also means preview won’t have any of the cool animations or effects unless they go nuts with the preview and use something like Flash to render it – but then they have to translate their whole render engine to Flash and download all the animation and skin data files via the Flash/web each time someone previews — to get them into the preview since the browser can’t read them from the client’s computer. pita.

Best thing to do is take it out of the embedded browser (they can probably use the same JSON behind the scene) and code it into the desktop app.

I’m working on my legendary and know several others who are too. I really hope Anet does not nurf the requirements.

I’ll have mine after probably about six months after launch. I’m doing it all 100% solo.

Requirements are steep, yes, but not impossible.

I see the teleport bots in SouthSun Cove every day. And so, I kinda know which are bots and which are not.

What I do is, click them while they are attacking and invite to my group. That’ll get their little avatar to be “stuck” in my screen. If they teleport away I know they are a bot. If they actually join my group – awesome! Better loot and fun for both of us.

(With their avatar on my screen while my group invite is out, I can right-click that and report as a bot even after they’ve teleported away.)

I have this too.

My guess is they are using embedded Chrome:

• Chrome has known issues with fonts on Windows.
• Anet can’t fix it without huge time/cost (since it’s a Chrome/Win issue).
• Have to wait for Chrome team to fix.
• Chrome team does not look like they care to fix it (google it – they’ve got bug notes on this issue for over a year).

Sad panda

stof.9341:

Funny, I don’t mind the tab targeting much myself but losing track of my mouse cursor happens often and is very very annoying when you use ground targeting skills with the fast cast ground target mode.

Took the words out of my mouth.

And imo, looting should be rebind-able to another key. I’m so sick of hitting “F” only to start chatting with an NPC, get stuck rezzing one, or running off a cliff with the current bug of running+pickup.

I keep saying over and over, with D3 it was also “working as intended” and that was one of the biggest reasons people quit.

Avitarus.1865:

DarkWasp.7291:

Thexremstar.1457:

MF does not work on chest loot so jormag doesnt count!

I should clarify, the numbers of rares mostly came from Cursed Shore farming, not the Jormag chest.

The only reason I mentioned the Claw of Jormag was because of the spawns during the event, not the chest. The chest was not factored into my numbers.

Summoned mobs dont drop loot any longer:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Barracuda-s-bugged-stealthnerfed/first#post1051887

imo, Code it so specific summoned mobs don’t drop loot. Barracuda’s and wolf’s for example. Easily bottable mobs.

But not things like adds from Jormag or summoned mobs that aren’t replicating forever (ice elementals may summon one add, or grawl might summon one worm – that should be fine).

ie. when coding, allow for exceptions. Don’t rely on maths to make fun.

Bots won’t ‘farm’ Jormag even if all summoned mobs drop loot. But I’m done with Jormag now that it’s pretty much pointless (blues/greens from chest, no loot from mobs). And others will probably lose interest once they start noticing the time/payoff/frustration/fun ratio is really low. I’m already seeing people camping out in the tents, avoiding everything until the last phase.

EVENT: “Pact troops, move out!”

Not logged in for ~9 hours.
Solo the whole time (ya, solo the whole time on this event).

Gear:
5 Superior Rune of the Pirate
1 Superior Rune of the Traveler
+4% MF on back piece
0-25 stacks of Superior Sigil of Luck (started farming with 0 stacks)
NO guild +10% MF buff (this was on in my last data post but off this time)

3 Porus Bones
2 white
2 blue
1 green
1 rare (!)

3 large bones
1 heavy moldy bag
1 discarded garment
2 giant wintersday gifts
2 piles of vile essence (!)

Even with the +10% MF guild buff OFF, I got much better drops and something from nearly ALL mobs.

I’m convinced I’m getting hit hard with DR. I’m not a bot. So shouldn’t hit it. And I’m farming for my legendary, and on vacation, so am going to farm 10+ hrs a day. But no matter where I go, it doesn’t reset my DR. I can’t say if it does or does not reset on a regular basis after me being logged out after this large of a time period.

EVEN if DR is “by design”, imo, it is bad design. As I’ve said earlier, letting the “tail wag the dog” is bad. If your ‘commerce team’ dictates drop rates and they do not understand fun, your game will not be fun. No matter how amazing they are with economics.

I like to illustrate with the example of an overly powerful, but not fun (don’t understand what makes fun), art team. If they make ‘realistic’ towns with windy and scenic roads, the game is not fun (it’s tedious and frustrating). Someone who understands fun needs to come in and temper the art team. (Granted, your art team gets it – using wagon wheels/spokes in all your cities.)

Same goes for programmers – you’ll end up with an Eve Online (in-space spreadsheet simulator). Some LOVE it, but look at their numbers, and if you’re not going for a niche market, you don’t want to follow their example.

Your ‘commerce team’ might be brilliant with economics and be builing a nearly perfect economic simulation within GW2. BUT if that is NOT FUN, it does not matter. A FUN, but ‘broken’ economy is better than an un-fun but ‘perfect’ economy.

They aren’t Greenspan or Bernanke, and inflation might be bad in real life, but, in a game, horrible drop rates are worse.

Not logged in for over 4 hours.
Solo farming.

Gear:
5 Superior Rune of the Pirate
1 Superior Rune of the Traveler
+4% MF on back piece
0-25 stacks of Superior Sigil of Luck (started farming with 0 stacks)
guild +10% MF buff

Killed 156 earth elementals in Malchors Leap.
Killed the veteran 8 times during this period.
34 Stones
7 whites
15 blues
7 greens
1 rare (not from the vet)

3 Giant Wintersday Gifts
10 Piles of Incandescent Dust
16 Emerald Shards
15 Emerald Crystals
1 unidentified dye
As shown here, a good portion dropped nothing at all.

It would also be nice to get the same drop rate as a solo (and when you’re the only one damaging the mob) to get the same drop rate as when in a full party.

Champions are bugged — most times they drop nothing at all.