Guild Wars 2

neoxide.7320:

Doubt it. Yesterday (oct 9th) I was lucky enough to get the shield precursor when throwing in some random rares I’d gotten while working on my explorer achievement.

Unfortunately, being “lucky enough” doesn’t quite help determine the current “odds”. Many have probably gotten an exotic (or exotic pre-cursor) from their first or second forges of the day, but that doesn’t mean the odds aren’t 1:1000.

Anyways, I’m not (or wasn’t) questioning the success-rate of obtaining pre-cursors. With their low rate, several thousand attempts alone would probably only yield a “general idea”. What I was questioning, however, were the success-rates of obtaining exotics in general, which, with an assumed 10-20% rate, is more reasonable to obtain. ;P

Food for thought…

If, in the long-run, one could profit from gambling with the Mystic Forge (weapons specifically), then what’s to prevent one from continuously trying? There would be no risk involved, and also no risk in trying for pre-cursors — one would simply increase their wealth while trying!

Unfortunately, this would (further) saturate the market with exotics (pre-cursors included), but it’s not very visible at this point (with demand still high). How would the market look, however, when more and more players “gamble” without loss, and less and less players demand their exotics? I haven’t thought much on the outcome, but it’d probably generate further economic issues (quick thought: deflation w/ no simple means — aside from new content — to implement disinflation).

So yeah… if they didn’t “tweak” this, then they probably will, and simply respond, if at all, with: “changed it to how it was supposed to be”. What it’s supposed to be is probably along the lines of: dump junk (you don’t want) in there, and maybe you’ll get lucky. It’s just unfortunate we might never know of these changes, or even what it was changed to/from.

Perhaps my reasoning went MIA somewhere up there, so pardon me if I’ve made any outrageous assumptions.

LinseyMurdock.4165:

We have made no changes to this stuff in the 10/7 build. The only changes that went in related to the Mystic Forge are in the patch notes.

Thanks for the response — I’ll have to try gambling the odds again next time I play. :P

I probably should’ve been less precise in my question, however, since any updates to the RNG algorithm probably wouldn’t require a client update (since it’s server-side).

Perhaps we’ll get more input from other gamblers. I’d gamble more myself if I didn’t think I’d consistently lose half my gold in the end. Fortunately, materials were somewhat cheap for my last attempts — I think it cost about 30~ gold to forge 60+ times, but the exotics only covered half of those costs. Prior to that, the exotics eventually multiplied investments by at least 3-4x (excluding pre-cursors).

lackofcheese.5617:

I just asked Linsey about this very issue

This isn’t in relation to the recent patch, however, is it? The rates I experienced pre-patch were fine.

Andykay.5198:

It could just be a string of bad luck, but I did experience this after the patch. I went through about 160 rare daggers (40 combines) and got two exotics. I was in full exotic magic find gear with a magic find booster. Ordinarily, that would have resulted in 6-10 exotics.

Now like I said, there’s obviously RNG involved, but that’s a pretty big deviation from the norm.

Ouch — yes, there’s RNG, but it seems as if it’s been made worse. I used to get 2/3 in a row on occasion — mainly 1:4 <-> 1:8, however — but after so many forges, it was “restricted” not to be lower than 1:10 odds!

My condolences to your gold.

I’ve been gambling with rares (weapons) in the Mystic Forge for some time now, and after the last patch, it seems like the odds of getting an exotic have been reduced in half. Anyone else experiencing something similar?

Prior to the patch, the overall odds seemed 1:5/1:6. Sure, there would be “bad luck” here/there — sometimes 1:10, if not worse — but it’d eventually “even out” (2-3 exotics in a row, for example, and a few days ago I did get Dusk).

After the patch, however, I attempted 65~ forges, and it resulted in maybe 4-5 exotics. My wife later attempted 20~ forges (also weapons), and it resulted in 2 exotics — she used to have 1:5/1:6 odds as well.

Nothing has really changed with the items we’ve used (they’re crafted), and while a recent experiment (for precursor) on here suggested a 10% odds anyways (for exotics), my experiences, and the experiences I’ve read from other sources, suggests a 15/20% instead (eventually.. randomization considered).

At first I thought it was because I removed my MF gear (paranoia), so I bought an entire replacement set (and ate nomnom food) for my last attempt — it didn’t change the odds. I also thought it was due to alternating crafted-weapons (started this to avoid a possible diminishing return), but it didn’t change the odds either.

I’m not sure if it’s just a very large failure-rate (bad luck), or I was just “lucky” for weeks, or if some numbers were tweaked in the patch. All I know now is instead of eventually breaking-even or making profit (long-term), I consistently lost half of my investment (the exotics I got seriously equaled half of my costs!).

If anyone has any pre/post patch experience to share, then that’d be great. I doubt ANet would like to reveal much (less it be exploited), but perhaps a “Yes” or “No” to whether it has changed would be nice. ;P