Guild Wars 2

How doesn’t it? You do know what DR is, right? Diminishing Returns on rewards. It’s a direct counter to farming. The way it works if if you kill one type of an enemy too much you will start to get DR, and it works in other mysterious ways too.

It doesn`t work that way. As of now it is account-wide and world-wide. Meaning a guildmate only logs for half an hour Tixx run and gets rares. I play for 6 hours straight on three alts, never staying in one location or on one activity more than half an hour (openworld, wvw, dungeons, tixx etc) and have ZERO return. No rares, barely any greens. I play around the same time every day, so I guess the 24-hour cooldown on DR just never drops for me.

What are my options? play an hour a day and spend all other free time in another game? because I have nothing to do after work ( it`s -20C outside, not much room for outdoor activity ). I can`t see how it is in any way “better” for me.

I do not enjoy the grind this game came to. I do enjoy exploring the maps, doing hearts and dynamic events. I spend most of my time in open world on lower-level alts, and switch to main to do dungeons or wvw with my guild. I come online earlier then they do, and spend my time on alts, effectively kicking DR into work. But I enjoy playing on alts, why am I punished for this with reduced drops when I switch to my main? I still cannot finish non-MF combat exotic set on my main because it requires too much grind now.

That’s a perfect way to describe how players act towards grind-based MMOs. They lie to themselves into believing they are a good thing, while in reality they are just time sinks keeping them hostage.

How come you decide what I want to do with my time? Leave my time sink alone. Any computer game is a time sink. Making yourself believe you could do something meaningful while you play is plain stupid. In any game.

“Initially we have to rely on smaller data sets, instinct and some guesswork to find the correct cut-off. What this means is that some players are going to bump into the edges of these systems for a while as we get them sorted out”

Wow I must have missed it. So basically they say “you have to play the way we want you to, or you are not having any loot”, and when you give up and ask – ok, how do you want me to play? they say “we are not telling”.

This is going beyond ridiculous. My guildmates log in for like half hour to do Tixx and get rares and greens. I play for over 6 hours on three different toons, do Tixx, WvW, storylines, open-world (never staying in one location for more than half hour food-buff), occasional dungeon etc – and I am lucky if i get enough greens to fill half a fractal bag.

Why am I being penalized for playing MORE than others? should it not be the other way around? am I supposed to buy another account to be able to just play with any kind of rewards? where is the end to this nonsense? where is Arena reply to all this?

By that point I am frustrated beyond belief. I`ve played Lineage 2 for over 6 years, that game was a definition of grind, but GW2 had actually outdone it now in terms of grindiness, absence of rewards and indifference from the dev team.

Still waiting for Arena reply.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Change-in-loot-parameters-or-a-bug-Merged/
DR now kicks in in less than an hour whatever you do, so no matter MF or no MF, you`re not getting any rares. Tried it with both MF and combat gear, if you play the game for more than hour a day, you are screwed in matter of drops.

I was going to spend some money on gems right after karka event. I needed transmute stones, additional space in bank and additional bag to store the second set of armor. Thats when they diminished loot drops. At that point I started making less gold than I spend, so making second set got suspended for undefined amount of time. So I didn`t need transmute and bags any more.

And anyway, with that kind of attitude from Arena I am not going to spend a cent on TP until they fix this situation. I don`t really understand people who buy gems and sell them for gold. They just promote awful behavior of Arena even further.

Bug is still here, and it looks more and more like DR is a culprit behind it. I see people getting normal drop rate if they play an hour or less everyday. If you stay in game longer, no matter what you do, you are getting penalized. Even if you play different alts and alternate between zones a lot, DR will still kick in.

It won`t.

Anyway. I`ve been running some events/wvw/farming with guildies recently and they were getting rares where I were not. They play at most an hour a day, I play a lot more, so while I wait for them to come online, I play on my alts. I alternate between them, and never stay in one location for more than half an hour. The only reason I see my drops are less than my guildmates` is that DR is account bound and worldwide. Meaning, if you play like an hour each day you are fine, if you spend more time in game, no matter if you change locations and alts, you`ll be penalized.

So, say a tester in Anet gets report on poor loot drop, creates a test character on a test account and go play an hour of the game. He gets tons of stuff (because the DR had not kicked in yet) and closes support ticket thinking “those demanding idiots are trying to scam us. ha! to hell with them”.

I found this interesting somewhat: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/arenanet-tracker/topic/248054-introduction-to-the-live-response-team-and-the-bug-fixing-process/

So the more we bugreport it, the bigger chance of them fixing it.. hopefully.

If you followed that post from the start you`d knew they gradually delete all comments that complain of drop rate. Mine got deleted too. Not much hope here.

douceline.2741
Happened to me too, just once for an hour in three weeks I was getting normal drops. Then the patch was installed and I stopped getting drops again. You can notice several people in this thread that had experienced same one-time “spikes of luck”.

Sigil of Frailty 10% / 20% / 30% chance to cause vulnerability for 10 seconds on critical hit. (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Frailty)
Sigil of Strength 10% / 20% / 30% chance to apply might for 5 / 7 / 10 seconds on critical. (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Strength)

Wiki does not state if there are iternal CDs on those sigils. Are there?

Also, if anyone knows: what is the damage on Superior Sigils of Air and Fire procs?

Still no answer from Anet?

Wow I thought Zojja IS bald!

With that many people confirming the bug we really need some responce from dev team.

Non-craftable sigils come from salvaged rares and exotics that drop off of mobs. Since the nerf to loot tables open-world encounters pretty much never drop exo/rares. FoTM provide ample exo/rare drops, but they often (or always, i`m not sure here) come without a sigil attached to them.

Craftable runes and sigils prices going up because of the same problem – not enough higher-tier mats required for crafting them.

tigirius.9014

I am aware of the problem being mostly open-world based. But it did effect WvW too, so when I`ve seen that my friend started to actually getting drops I immediately jumped in. Later I went to Cursed Shore and got like 6 rares in an hour before new build made me restart my client. After I logged in, I played for 2 or 3 hours, done Plinx, Penitent and full Arah chain, from pre-wp liberation to the door opening – as I stated I got nothing. I have no idea what that was or how to reproduce it. Wish I could. Before that lucky streak I played for 3-4 hours every day since the patch and got 4 rares overall (in all this time! like, two weeks?) in open-world and WvW both.

So yes, I did try it in PVE. Extensively so. (As for MF I have 5 sup traveller+1 sup pirate on armor, exo opal jewels, backbrace with mf (don`t remember how much though) and 30% mf food, plus clan banner). Guess you didn`t read my posts in this thread, as I clearly stated that I was hit by that bug and haven`t seen normal drop since the patch.

Even if it is a bug – though I am not sure that this is the case anymore, too – with all the things last patch had broken, I doubt they`ll have time to look into it.

Problem still present in latest build.

Logged after update, made all arah chain events, no rares, lots of porous bones and three green items…
And yes, no loot from any of the champions and vets in Arah chain. Got exp for all of them, but no loot.

I could go without that build a bit longer 8( I just made 6 rares before restart and it is more then I`ve done in three weeks playing 3-4 hours a day roughly..

Guys, make a check. Either I am on a lucky streak (for the first time in several weeks) or they fixed something. It started with my friend getting loot in WvW – of the quantity and quality of “before the patch”. I immediately came along, got one rare and a hearty mix of other drops. I went to Plinx, made it in time to kill the last wave – bam! – a rare. I am going to try again now, wish someone can test it too to exclude it being just an RNG.

Good day to all necromancers out there I come seeking help with my build.

I have been using necro as a storage alt for quite some time when my friend decided to start playing and I joined him on my alt because my main was parked elswhere. I immediately had a blast and felt in love with the class. I have a makeshift build I made mostly on the run and I strongly suspect it is not optimal at all (here it is: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQQQNArdWjMaV7hbKb8bKAJFPf9UhvhekLuOTVAeA;T0AA1Cto+x8j4H7Pufk/sMYAypgXBTDA – Staff, scepter+focus, 30/0/20/10/10).

What I actually want now is a wvw-build (wvw is where my guild mostly resides). My party as of today consists of Guardian Ranger Thief Elementalist. We invade borderlands, taking out guards, camps, occasional towers and small clusters of enemies. To be of any use to party, I need to be mobile (both to escape and catch people), provide a lot of debuffs (and maybe some support? like condition removal) and NOT DIE (i guess long-range weapons are my best bet?). Can you recommend any build that can achieve that and is pretty simple to use? I am sadly lacking in actual skill department =) any tips on how to use the build will be highly appreciated.

Bonus points if the build does not use minions in any shape or form, as they are taking party buffs (we already hate our ranger enough).

Communication (chat) is awful. You hit Enter to type something and you STOP MOVING (thats the point where I tend to die the most).
It is extremely annoying and not worth my time. So I only team with people when we are all on one voicecomm.

They should have taken a page out of Lineage 2 book – if you want to nerf drops you do it GRADUALLY. It is easy to say “bad luck” when you drop rates 10-15% every month. New people come who are not familiar with previous drop rates, and any time you try to say “hey, something is wrong here” you`ll be met with “bad luck” argument. So over a course of months you get the desired drop reduction without many people noticing.

But chopping rates so drop go down several TIMES of what it was before – man, people are bound to notice

facepalm

They might as well look into champs&vets drop tables only – judging by that response. It`s not a clear answer, it`s AMA, it`s been more than a week and there are NO dev responses in this or similar threads.

They actually said that “that was the question they avoided answering the most” and that drop rates decline is “percieved” (ie not real).

Main thread on a bug is 8 pages long already, can we get any sort of response from Anet Team?

If Anet has any testers devoted to testing live servers, they should have already noticed that issue, unless they only do fractals and pvp. I am ready to spend my free time to group with these people and show them the locations I usually farm in. I am prepared to screenshot my progress with timestamp if needed. Only that is a moot point if the company is hellbent on closing their eyes on the issue and the bug was artificially introduced to aquire some gemstore effect for the company. Whatever I do now, however I try to prove that drop rates had gone down, I cannot do it – because I never thought to record my progress before the Nov 15. No comparison – no proof. Just “bad luck”, I guess, eh?

Also, I believe we have to heavily stress that the problem IS NOT tied to rare/exo loot only or the drop from veterans and champions, otherwise they can opt to change it maybe, leaving T6 mats drop in the same sorry state it is now.

The problem concerns ALL the loot types, the only exception is junk which actually drops with higher rate than before, maybe because it drops when the “normal” loot used to drop.

Dear Moderator,

Pray tell, what kind of feedback can possibly exclude “bad luck”? As I see it, “luck” is random so whatever the feedback would be, it can always be attributed to “percieved” “bad luck”.

3hrs of farming, finishing map in Fireheart Rise and Iron Marches. No rares or exotics (excluding those for finishing the map), and I vendored items ONCE. Before nerf, I had to go to vendor at least four times per map to empty my bags. I run with knight set + pirate&traveller runes, opal jewellery, lotus fries. I have no other option – it is my only set and I cannot craft another because of the abysmal drops.

With my amount of MF before the bug I was getting 2-3 rares per half an hour event in Orr. Sometimes just one rare, sometimes up to four, averaging on two I expected it to take me about two months of farming to get 250 ecto I need for a legendary. Now it is one rare per 2-3 hours. Same half an hour used to net me full bags of other loot types (I also had to deposit craftables and salvage frayed fragments etc because my bags overflowed). Now I have to do it maybe once in two hours of farming. Amount of junk pre-bug was like 10 porous bones per half-hour, now its up to 30 in the same timeframe.

All of my guildmates are experiencing the same problems.

The only place where bad luck does not seem to function is fractals, where we manage to have some rare loot. But at the same time MF seems to be detrimental to drops there, as my guildmates without MF tend to have twice the rares I am getting with my amount of MF (see above). Strangely enough, I am consistntly getting Vials of Mist Essence where they are getting none (three vials in two days vs their 0 vials in the same amount of time in the same party) – seems the vials are not in loot tables with other drops but are calculated separately?

We`re not talking about the chests. Open-world loot was diminished in the same time Anet announced new drop-table for champions and vets.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Change-in-loot-parameters-or-a-bug-Merged/ – here is the tread.

Have anyone tried to repost it in Bugs? since now we have AMA answer and all?

Here I am, a guardian in MF gear and always the last man standing in dungeons. I also tank pretty much everything (unless someone manages to draw aggro off of me). Please enlighten me, what difference for the party would it make if I decided to switch to stat gear? Would I fulfill my role any better? I mean, you can`t get more alive than… well, alive?

I am more or less consistently getting blue loot from vets. Still to receive anything from any champ (i`ve done more than a dosen).

Also done AC story and all three AC paths with my friends and got zero rare/exo loot. Don`t know if it is out of ordinary though, I`ve never done any dungeon before (in terms of MF I have 5 pirate + traveller rune, exo opal jewejs and lotus fries).

What puzzles me most is a discrepancy between “real” loot drop rate and junk drop rate. I never ever seen that much junk (like porous bones) dropping before. Either loot and junk are on different drop tables (say, if a player did not get anything in terms of “real” loot, he gets randomly rewarded with a junk item instead?) or i am completely at a loss here.

Two more things in this patch:

1. Severe rare drop reduction in all open-world areas. Which results in traditional areas being abandoned in favor of FotM. Also, patch-notes lied about “every champion now drops rewards”.

2. A lot of defensive spells now only can have 5 targets. Which means that summon-oriented professions (necro, mesmer, ranger etc) are now excluded from the buff-oriented groups. No one wants to share a buff with illusion that will shatter anyway.

It is a bannable offence in some NCSoft games (Aion, Lineage). I dont know if they have their say in the matter as a publisher.

Strang. If it is not targetting russians, then why all the dredge names and places all use transliterated russian words? Post-soviet countries have a lot of languages of their own. Your point is invalid.

“Neither is Russia a race, it´s a nation. No race, no racism.” – Ok, nacism then.

What I am saying is, if stereotypes are ok, jabbing at specific nation is ok, then whats the point in trying to make all players be good to each other? The game clearly encourages inequality and disregard for other people feelings (as in – western people find dredge ok and funny, even if it is offensive for russian players, and no one seems to mind). Maybe we all should take a page out of your book and consider asuran troubles hilarious, laugh and point fingers.

Strang. The last thing I expect in any fantasy MMO game is political satire. If you are so educated in modern life in Russia, you should probably know that Communist party is one of the most influenial forces in russian politics. You should probably also know that a lot of people still belong to it. “Modern Russia is anything like that” – like what? it is not, and more importantly, never WAS the way you and developers seem to imagine it.

“Cold war era” jokes would be fine with me if I could see some cheesburgers spoiling out of the bloated bellies of the Risen I slain. As of now, the “jokes” seem lopsided and one-way. Which certainly spells “racist” in my book.

Oooh, a thread about racism.

I just love these, in a game that has a whole NPC-race to laugh at and discriminate a rather large group of people. I mean of course dredge and all the jabs against Russians they seem to represent (Iron Veil, Molodetc Excavation, Vpered Drill, comrades, well, I`m sure you`ve seen the stuff).

So, with this game developed in a racist streek I don`t see how you can press people playing that game into not being racist.

Also, 2 less opals and filgrees for them so, cheaper than Opal Orichalcum Amulet of the Explorer (for same MF).

Blueroseknight, I`m sorry, i meant Orichalcum amulet. My bad.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Candy_Corn_Orichalcum_Amulet

Slushey, I made a run-down in another thread, enjoy – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/halloween/Why-are-people-complaining-about-the-Mad-King-rewards/574825 .

I planned on dumping all of my corn at the kids in LA (to have a chance at getting themed skin), then I saw updated recipe for platinum orichalcum corn amulet. If what the wiki says is true, its a worthwhile investment.

And I sold all the other mats except corn.

Did it right after event started (was separated from my team, as were a lot of other people). Traits are nice but I havent used any of elites, because they are all dung on guardian anyway.

Would rather done it in a party, faster and less boring (i practically autoattacked him for all of 20+ minutes, i only used one shout through all of the dungeon, that being retreat for faster jumping).

Everything seems to boil down to money, which is sad. I just wanted some non-OP trinket that would remind me of event and be at least useable on my 80lvl. You can keep your rares, really. I doubt that fixing the rewards I mentioned above (20-slot/ account-bound bag, soulbound but upgreadable backbrace) will net me any money at all. But I`ll have my event reward and feel happy for it. If the reward is the same for everyone on server, there won`t be any TP-hype about it.

Let all the other stuff be rare and non-acquirable by a casual player, but let the casual player get at least something from an event.

Well Lineage2 had some extremely kitty rewards as of late. Like buffs you can use for 15min after you get them in town (and it takes 5-10 min to get to any place where you can exp); or a single halloween monster spawn on map where it got swarmed pretty instantly by the army of bots (and that monster dropped the mat that was required in every single event reward).

If I could use it myself (both chainsaws, shield, staff, heavy shoulders) – I`d use them. If not, I`d probably transmute it for an alt. The only thing I`d sell would be something out of a full set that I dont have all items for.

I would have been happy with just a second book backbrace if it was upgradeable (I can`t seem to be able to put embellished jewel on it) or with the slot bag if it had at least the same slot count as the ones I am using OR was account-bound instead of soulbound.

Event itself was hands-down the best event I experienced in my 10 years of playing different MMOs. Event rewards are, well, maybe not THE worst, but definitely somewhere in worst 3.

All I wanted was to get something halloween-related to remind me of the event. I don`t really care for “normal” loot drops, I can always get those from Plinx runs/Jump puzzles/whatever.

What I got so far:
- 1 useless backbrace (low stats)
- 1 backbrace I cannot put an embellished jewel in (worse than storyline one)
- 0 halloween skins (20 BLC, 10 MKC, hours of participating in different events plus MK dungeon runs)
- 10-slot SOULBOUND halloween bag (at 80 I have 18-slot bags on main, I could have used it on a storage alt but it is soulbound, and I can`t waste my limited bank slots on a thing I`ll never use)
- about 1000 candy corns that I will never use to craft food, because food from candy corn is actually more costly than the same-stat food without it, even if you dont equate the price of corn itself (cue: peach tart/glazed peach tart)
- halloween-related mats that are only good if you are prepared to dump enormous amounts of extra money to make something from it (cue: halloween exotic weapons for the price of legendary)
- 70-ish Mad King Slippers with a visual of standard item
- some halloween tonics that`ll be gone after a couple of brawls…

Have I missed anything?

I would take subscription-based any day. At least that was a decent way to motivate developers to respond to community. Also, I don`t know what exactly they are partnering in, but as a long-term L2 player I see a lot of similarities between Anet and NCSoft.

You`re going to be even harder pressed to find that many Guardians for dungeon runs. Or even one. Storages don`t do dungeons often…

I don`t think that ANet desicions are infallable, is all. I think they made a mistake. Now, if they can`t explain what they`ve done, or fix it, staying in the game would mean I`m into a lot of new “surprises” (as in, bad design and gamebreaking desicions) – and there is no reason to stay, or cope with changes, or wait for them to come to senses.

Too bad the game is not subscription-based.

Beefy, like in “lots of HP”?