Guild Wars 2

After watching this topic expand over numerous threads and countless posts, I feel a strong urge to comment. This post contains two separate sections. It is also long, so if you want to jump to the data, head to the next post.

To the Community:

As fans and players of Guild Wars 2, we have a strong desire to see the game we’re playing be the best it can be. We expect a solid experience – not a perfect one – but one that is not marred by bugs creating unplayable, non-challenging, or no-fun scenarios. As a whole, I believe that the game and ANet have delivered on this. However, we as a fan base – just like this game – are not perfect, and frankly a lot of posters seem to have the illusion that we are.

Throughout this thread (and the previous one), we have expressed perspectives regarding the drop rate of items. We’ve had lively discussion about the topic, produced theories to explain it, and collected some data to help prove it. But we have also spent a LOT of time whining, playing the blame game, and most importantly, generalizing the issue.

This presents a problem. In the previous thread, there were some posts that did an amazing job of proving exactly what had happened with the drop rate – specifically, these posts included percentages and math to help show a distinctive problem. However, these posts were few and far between, and in a thread that long, they got lost in the deluge. In this thread, there have been many references to “we already have all the data you need in the other thread,” but I (and I’m certain none of you), feel like sifting through that entire thread for the relevant information that will actually help solve this problem.

This is why this thread was created. It is a space for us, as a community, to post SPECIFICS of what we are experiencing. However, all too quickly, this thread is becoming much like the other: 90% of this so far is generalizations about the drop rate. “We’ve noticed a decline” and “I’ve played XX hours and gotten no rares” isn’t going to help. Those who have provided specifics (numbers) in this thread – good for you and keep it up.

Should there be more input from ANet regarding the issue? More transparency? Clearer communication about how we can help? The answer to all three is probably. But there is only so much that the ANet team can do, based on the resources (both people and data) available. Should we be responsible for helping? For addressing a problem such as this? Probably not. But we’re here now, so let’s do something about it.
This is why, as a community, we need to step up and help, and I believe we have enough of a love of this game to help it succeed. Instead of providing more generalization about the issue (we’ve established there’s a problem and it’s annoying – time to move on), let’s get some data to prove it.

The following is a simple test scenario. It gives hard data based on play experience. It is easily reproducible in any area in the world, and takes very little time to collect this information. I think, if we all took some time to put this together, we could provide some compelling evidence to show a good example of what the drop rate is like across the game. If we do that, then we’ve done as ANet has asked. This thread has done its job. Whether we see a resolution to the problem, we’ll just have to wait and see. But at least we can say we did our best, and that ANet can count on us to lend them a hand and not simply blame them when everything goes wrong.

NOTE: The following scenario deals with simply fighting enemies in the world. Easiest way to do this is to strip it down to the basics. If you want to provide info on chest drop rates, champions, or dungeons/fractals, a different test scenario may be warranted.

Ath.2531:

All joking aside, Whether the thread dies or not is irrelevant at this point. A 20+ page topic is something Anet staff discusses most likely every day in the office.

Unless they mod the office

We thank you for you feedback however we feel there are better ways to express your point more in keeping with office policy you have recived one infraction point, further infractions may limit you acess to the coffee machine.
Your desk will now be merged with the fire escape.

Ath.2531:

Mala.3861:

Well, it isnt very comforting that Mr Whiteside can take time to communicate about communicating but we can’t get ANYthing about this issue which has been going on since mid-November.

I don’t know what else we have to do to at least get a response about this problem. I am not wanting another AMA. I am still waiting for further information which the last one seemed to imply would be forthcoming.

We’ve gotten a response that they are listening and that that there is an AMA on the way. I am confident that It is quite expected by them by now that half the AMA will be about loot.

There is doubtfully any way for them to dodge a question like this. I think we can rest assured that there will me more light on this issue soon.

The problem is that anyone who’s not a “hardcore gamer” or has never played enough, or started the game after the loot nerf will never know about this.

So if they keep ignoring it, eventually we’ll shut up, and the new players will never know how it used to be, and will just consider the low drops as “normal”.

Don’t let this thread die, the info needs to be known and we want to know!

Moderator.1462:

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to inform you that your concerns have been noticed and forwarded to the team. Please, keep your feedback and opinions coming, anything you can provide us is welcome.

Thanks for your understanding

Thank you for inviting us to submit feedback, Moderators.

One of the feedback I would like to leave is to improve communications with your players, especially in large threads such as the one at

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Change-in-loot-parameters-or-a-bug-Merged/

Please don’t delete this message as “off topic” like my earlier message, this is fully on topic as far as communication goes, and it is a feedback, as the moderators asked for.

There seems to be some long-term DR active in the game. If you log out for long enough to trigger it, or there is a server reset, you go into “loot god mode” and drop all kinds of awseome stuff.

After that, the more you play, the worse your loot gets.

They want to reward us for not playing. Let’s oblige.

Pinch.4273:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Every time I hear about Spy Kits and Portal Guns, I cringe.

You should really get them out of dungeons, they’re doing a lot of harm to the game.

Are you bloody joking? That’s like saying consets shouldn’t be used in GW1. They were there for a purpose: to make things less tedious. In GW2, consumables are here to make things less tedious and a bit more entertaining. Same principle. They exist to inspire player ingenuity in getting around tough situations, rather than being railroaded into a certain playstyle. If a content designer believes that there should be only one way to get through an obstacle(his way), then he’s not doing a very good job at being a content designer. Doing so makes the content have zero entertainment and is a sign that the person in question is not particularly innovative. Tedium does not equal fun.

In the end, these models are completely integrated into the game and I don’t think they can be changed, so it’s best to understand how they work so that you don’t go rage online when you spend 100 dollars on chests and get nothing, or when a small group or single person corners the market on precursors for a while and drives their prices up. That is how the game works, and if you don’t like those systems, the best thing you can do is not to play them.

I don’t know if Anet will ever change the Trading Post, but I believe the cash shop is something players can affect: if you don’t like the degressive random chance style, then all you have to do is never buy anything related to that. Don’t ever buy keys or chests or minis or dye packs or any of that stuff that is just random. DO buy specific skins and specific items and specific things that you know what you are getting. Only if Anet loses money on random stuff will they stop doing it, but I swear every time someone comes and rants about how they blew 100 bucks, they later post “so now I blew 20 more!” If you don’t like the system, you have to stop participating. If absolutely zero random-style items sold while all the static items went like hot cakes, they would change their model.

Fuz.5621:

Most of the posters here just plainly lied.
YES, MF helps you get better loot. It doesn’t work with chests but only with loot from mobs.
The difference in “kill speed” between a MF set and a dps set is very low, and you will likely never notice it.
You need more than 78%, btw.

That’s garbage and spoken like a true MF wearer defending his actions. MF is barely noticeable, if at all. I’ve run full MF sets and broke them down for ectos because of the little to no difference.

Also claiming you are just as effective is laughable. I can tell you right off the bat, my defense and offense were both hindered by wearing MF. Anyone that says otherwise obviously uses it and wants to justify it.

Never have bought chest keys, never will. I don’t buy gambles, I buy products.

Nah, I won’t purchase keys/chests from Anet ever again.

With all of the speed buffs that every other class has, I as a mesmer an a detriment to any dungeon group that wants to move fast. I’m tired of everyone zooming ahead, and either I have to equip a subpar weapon or drag behind.

And get yelled at.

Heck, the same goes for WvW. If I’m no longer allowed to keep up with my friends, then please make it so I can play without my friends. I’m tired of being yelled at for being slow. I don’t feel like being yelled at anymore. This is not fun anymore.

My roomie is having issues, too. They are my and my sweetie’s aide. If someone has an emergency, or even just a basic physical need, they have to stop, help us, and come back. This was not an issue in GW1, but in GW2, they get to be made to feel like a jerk for just doing their job.

I realise that fundamentally the issue is with players, but most players don’t want to pause or to go slow. And I don’t think that we should have to put up with nastiness just because we play classes with suboptimal speed or occasionally inconvenient real lives. What GW1 did so well was allow folks like us to access the content without the abuse. Please somehow bring it back.

I waited since the announcement that Eye of the North was going to be the last expansion for GW1 and that GW2 was in the works. I waited patiently as ANET and NCSoft released bits and pieces of game news and progress.
I watched diligently as game-play video was released and the professions were introduced, even the April Fools commando. I watched the manifesto with high hopes. I thought to myself, "Finally an MMO I would be able to get into and not have to worry about
gear grinding, loot ninjas, finding a group for a dungeon or to play alongside when events popped up.
I pre-purchased the game and when the Beta became available, I jumped in with the happiness of a kid on Christmas day. I loved it, even though thee were obvious problems. Pre-purchase live day came. I logged in and proceeded on my merry little way. I was a little dismayed at the trade being down but I got over it. I put up with the disconnects, the glitches and other minor things knowing that they would be fixed. I told all my friends how great the game was to play. Sadly, most of them will never listen to me again.
I did not rush through the content, I explored and found things. I finally made it to Orr where huge groups of players were taking down the temples and destroying the risen. I was overjoyed. Like all games, there were those that rushed through the content and started griping about how there was nothing to do now. I merely laughed at them, unaware that some idiot content writer at Anet and NCSoft was paying attention to them and not to the players as a whole and that the accountants were plotting their next move in the corporate office.
Fractals came along. It was fun at first, huge amounts of people fighting against impossible odds. I loved it. Then the dungeon came along and brought gear grind with it. LFG spam for fractals invaded my peaceful chat. Orr became silent as players disappeared. I have no idea where they went, some went to the new dungeon to grind away for the new gear; others just went away disappointed at the manifesto being abandoned.
I tried paying in Orr, I would look for people but they were few and far between. I would attack a risen only to have four more yell “death good!” and attack along with my original target. By the time I killed the first three and am working on the fourth, numbers one and two are rezzed and back in the fray. I was overwhelmed and killed. After a week of this I logged out constantly. I looked around for people to do things with but for the most part they just weren’t there.
I was and am completely dismayed that Anet and NCsoft took a great game and screwed it up in one fell swoop. maybe had they placed the dungeon portal in Orr, it may not have been so bad. People would have had to fight to get to it but no they placed it in the easiest of places to get to; Lion’s Arch.
On top of this they started nerfing the players ability to make gold in the game. I am not ignorant mind you, I know that some of the nerfing was to deal with the bot problem but a lot of it, in my opinion, was devised in a plot hatched by the corporate accountants to force the sell of gems.
Plinx being nerfed is an excuse some players used to leave Orr but to tell the truth when ever I saw him out and about, easily 50% of the players there were afk or bots just hanging out there to rake in the gold. That could have easily been dealt with by placing a GM in the area to auto ban.
I miss the game I played at first and that has disappeared. I log in from time to time to see if anything has changed but almost immediately leave as I see the same old crap. I hope someday that someone in the offices of Anet and NCSoft will open their eyes and see how bad they screwed up and do something to fix it. Until then I will play other games and occasionally log in to GW2 to see if the game I love is being made into what it was promised to be.

Take care all.

I’ve heard Tetris is more rewarding than this lately.

Rhukong.9547:

I’d love to be able to get Lodestones with the tokens from that dungeon. Ex: CoE tokens can be used to get a Charged Lodestone.
I think with the right token price it could work well. It would encourage more people to do dungeons also. Right now I never get a group for a dungeon that is solely from people within my own home world server.

Also, it would drop some of the prices for them on the TP, especially the ridiculous Charged Lodestone and give people a way to obtain them rather then simply buying them or hoping for the RNG to favor them that day. It would make the progression of actually getting all the lodestones you need actually feel like your progressing towards your goal as you would KNOW that you will get another lodestone by getting enough tokens rather than hoping for it to drop randomly.

This please. Please please please. I have ran CoF and SE so many times to not get cores or lodestones.

just want the patch to hit already so i can read the balance changes and test new builds. couldnt care less about this Winterday stuff.

It doesn’t start at 2am est, you’re making that time up. You should also just leave and stop posting in multiple threads about how your leaving for your other MMO you just picked up. Ive seen you posting the same exact threat mulitple times. Just leave, no one will miss you.

Think i heard they had a new build because there was a copper node that gave an extra piece or two

I want henchies.

I also haven’t found more than 1 green item after hours of open world exploring and my motivation for playing this game is almost gone. I don’t say this to be mean because up to this point I was really enjoying the over 600 hours I had put into this game. The “sell junk” button seems to make me more money than anything else I find for my time spent playing these days.

I mainly do open world because I am not often able to block off a large section of time where I can focus on a dungeon(2 small kids). So open world really works well for me, but not so much lately. I stopped playing diablo 3 because it was horribly unrewarding and monotonous. I was really happy at first when gw2 seemed so much different than d3. But these days I’d swear anet hired jay wilson or something because this game is as unrewarding to me as any I have ever played in 30 years. At least d3 tried to trick me into to thinking I would get something good by dropping tons of worthless rares, but with gw2 it’s like I’m lucky if I get a porous bone or a chunk of crab meat. Hey everyone have you heard about the new gw2 game??? It’s got crab meat! I can see them running to the stores now.

I talked to support and they explained to me how support doesn’t write the code and that I should express my feedback in the forums and thats the best way to be heard. And I told them I don’t want the form letter response which they replied

“Again I get that it can be less than ideal to simply post feedback on the forums without getting much in the way of a response from the developers. Unfortunately this is really the only way they take any kind of feedback right now, so it’s pretty much the best and only option for getting your feedback heard. That said not every suggestion will be implemented, it’s really up to them on what they choose to do and not do. However if if they do decide to change something it often can take quite a long time to implement as they have a lot of other stuff to work on ahead of anything new coming in.”

Between that response and the complete silence here from anet I don’t hold out much hope for this game. I think that if you can’t offer monthly content without altering the normal content of the game than you should stop offering monthly content. But if all this is intentional on your part than I feel truly sorry for you.

Man up and give the people who are responsible for you still having jobs a response.

Funny, you couldn’t be bothered to fix the teleporting grawl bug though huh?

ColinJohanson.2394:

We are at least a week and a half away on a fix for this, possibly longer depending on how long it takes to test it properly, we wouldn’t want to deploy anything that makes the issue worse!

That would be the first time then….

In my opinion each patch have so far created more problems than fixes.

And wouldn’t it be nice if they fixed that invulnerability issue with mobs including some skill point bosses underwater, like that winged creature in Mt Maelstorm or Timberline Falls, not sure which. I had that boss down to 1/3 of HP no less than 3 times and each time he would run away fully heal then come back at me till he finally killed me. The thing is, its not even a big area, a small lava cave underwater and I basically stayed in one spot where I first challenged him, but he still kept running away from me far enough to go invulnerable fully heal and only when he was full health would come back to attack me again. I was only able to complete the skill point on the next day, when another person came along and we basically pinned him to the wall.
But I see this all the time u/water and Orr is notorious for it. It often happens on land too but not as frequently as u/water. Put it this way, u/water combat was one the tings I really looked forward to in gw2 and at the beginning, I actually loved it. Then came the Invulnerability thing and it spoiled it for me to a point where i now dread going underwater. So hopefully they’ll fix this soon, so I can enjoy u/water exploration once again.

I haven’t broken 30k yet on anything significant, but I’m using pwr/vit/tgh armour and berserker jewellery. Mind even then that’s with 20-25 might stacks. I don’t think I’d want to set up to hit 40k with hundred blades, and then stand close enough to something to use hundred blades. It might look at me sternly, and I’m not sure I’d survive.