Guild Wars 2

Crystal Desert is high up in regards to player base and WvW strength. I didn’t want to go for the no.1 server (at the time it was Sea of Sorrows) because it would be overcrowded.

It really is up to you in the end but a general consensus is that Sea of Sorrows, Isle of Janthir and Crystal Desert are three good ones for AUSSIES!

Bank space or black lion keys.

Crystal Desert IMO.

Based on the choice of server I would assume that the OP is somewhere in Oceana – Aus/Sing?

If so then ‘Crystal Desert’ is a decent one.

The problem is many players like to solo and it is kind of hard to get into a group.

Astralporing.1957:

Xenth.2408:

If each try gives a 33% chance, out of 8 tries, there’s roughly a 11% chance of getting none.

Check your math. It’s about 4%, actually.

3.9018442310623380582228318853833% to be more exact lol.

This is an ‘Independant Probability’ relationship.

darkace.8925:

I have a challenge to anyone who thinks one doesn’t have an advantage over the other. See how long it takes to farm (not buy)100 ore of any given tier. Then see how long it takes to farm (not buy) 100 leather or cloth of the same tier.

For some reason I had the tendency to get more tier 1-3 leather than cloth for my Tailor. I do agree that gathering stone/wood/food is easier because the nodes are throughout the zones, while leahter/cloth is part of the RNG loot drop – which adds a hint of DR spice.

Increase drop rate! Bots won’t farm because won’t make as much profit, while players happy because less grinding.

FIXED

Catisa.6507:

I’ve 100%’ed the map and not had a spawn issue ever, anywhere.

Your a statistical outlier then :P JK

However the timer works it is not consistant. I still get these weird situations and it is hard to pinpoint it because it is random. Whatever the variables involved with this, it makes gameplay slightly unpredictable.

After being on the blue for 3 weeks our server got finally switched to green. 5 POI’s and 3 Vistas to go – all on the red side lol!!!

Welcome newcomers.

@all I been doing some dungeon and running WvW to get 100% map completion. Had some nice mini group situations – tackling DE’s and Champs. If you want to do some dungeons, message me when I’m online – hoepfully the guesting feature works lol.

I am on Crystal Desert server BTW.

How about dying while falling of a cliff during a battle against a risen chicken?

EPICLY EMBARRASING

So I thought I re-read the OP’s post. Here are our anwsers (bolded).

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi,

We’ve seen reports from players questioning the randomness of the drop mechanisms in GW2 and in particular asking if it’s been changed recently. This is not the case and we don’t think that the randomness mechanism is misbehaving, but we’re running some data to be sure there isn’t anything unexpected going on. So far nothing shows anything suspicious but we’ll keep gathering data and analyzing it.

Well that about anwsers our questions. Nothing is wrong. Countless porous bones is a naturall occurrence. They do not need to respond back because everything is working as intended. What the kitten do we know about DR, right? Random drops equates to getting junk more often than not. Yep, it all makes sense now. They are right, we are wrong.

Case closed.

Juast as bad as Asura gates being similar to the Stargates…

Point is, certain aspects will be copied because the people working on those things are, maybe, just maybe, fans or like the way it looks. However due to copy right issues they need to slighlty differ.

There is the other side of the coin – where companies copy each other blatantly because its all about $$$.

IMO, Asura gates are Stargate rippofs. The only thing missing is the 7th Chevron so that I can travel to unexplored zones.

I have seen several things within this game that are mimicking other games…and it’s sad.

Ummm, theoreticaly speaking, wouldn’t the scavenger hunt make players explore more of the world? This is what ANet wants players to do after all.

Toxyn.9608:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

for any one who may not know, this is a Easter egg based on. THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: ocarina of time.

You didn’t play the older LoZ games?

0_o

…I know ey?

Albeit, it was most known in LoZ:OoT.

Ummm 1/3 (33%) is still a statistical value, therefore any multiple of tries, should statistically, give 1/3 (33%). However, the larger your pool number (i.e. tries), the closer you should get to this statistical value.

It is the same as the coin flip experiment which has a 50/50 statistical chance – the more tests you run the closer you will get to this.

The problem may be that statistics is purely theoretical. The environment, in this case game code, may not be perfect – RNG are never perfect therefore to obtain 33% you would need much more than the result of 70 clovers you are looking for. Perhaps 1000 tries would suffice, however, if by then it was not getting close to 333 clovers then the code needs to be adjusted.

I got over 350 now and unlocked only the necessary skills. Completing the world map will give enough.

I can just imagine a large portion of players like yourself steam rolling low level zones. Yes, yes the picture is clear and full of win….FOR YOU ONLY.

You get scaled so that lower level players have a chance to do anything. Your gear and better stats make you stronger than those players anyways.

I use defense/condition/power on my Ele. Currently at 1100 power and 920 condition – forgot what defense but it’s fair because 5% of gets converted to condition damage using full set of undead runes. I am still working on getting full set of exotic trinkets though.

What makes me laugh the most about this Ascended stuff is that players are complaining about it’s implementation, yet majority run the dungeon (Fractals of the Mist, a.k.a. FotM) to get it.

This is such an oxymoron.

People are annoyed at it and IMO this has inadvertently caused other problems (DR, RNG, etc.). Many players are frustrated and the longer this goes on the worse ANet image will become.

IMHO, by now, ANet should have responded back to this debacle. They should act with honour and respond back – even just towards their loyal fans.

I understand that there is the possibility that the moment they respond, players will jump all over their comment, and perhaps, turn it against them. However, any response a this stage will be more beneficial than negative – especially in the long term.

I am still having difficulties pinpointing when DR kicks in. Honestly, neither I or any other players should be using up their time to run “tests” with regards to this issue. We have given enough evidence that this issue needs addressing (ASAP) and it’s been way over a month since this issue first surfaced.

Please ANet, be the better man and do this the right way.

@van You would have done it because the incentive was there. You would feel that it was the better method – otherwise you would either have to go back to the tedious work of salvaging and/or buying at high price. THIS WAS THE BETTER ALTERNATIVE.

ANet introduced this alternative and people used it. IMO, it was their fault that this did not go through QA thoroughly enough.

Ok this is totally messed up. There has to be several world scaled variables involved here. Just yesterday in a period of 5minutes I received 1 exotic and 2 rares! Then it all went to the kitten.

Some of the variables, that IMO, are affecting this:

- Length of stay in a particular zone/area
- Repetion regarding killing the same type of mob
- Player concentration in a particular zone
- What you do, i.e. just gather resource nodes, kill only mobs etc.

I have a feeling DR tracks everything you do. If you repeat something too often it loweres your loot quality. This affect is based on what is surrounding you, time spent int he area, what mobs you killed and how many of the same in a row.

May I suggest that players randomize their tasks? The moment you see a influx of garbage, change what you are doing (zone, craft, gather something else etc etc etc.)

I think the only way to beat DR is to make your gameplay as random as possible.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Unfortunatelly, I doubt we will know. ANet will not risk it because it would surely deter players from this game.

I had to stop myself from lauging at this comment.

They have already done this themselves. Anet’s refusal to communicate thoroughly with it’s players (who make up the game and keep them in a job) is making players leave… in droves… daily. The failure to communicate and fix what is quite obviously broken is further impetus for the exodus to continue.

But not to worry, I’m sure that WoW or some FPS game that they’ve abandonned will welcome them back with open arms.

Well yes and no. Many players still have hope, however, any sub-par response by ANet at this stage would just fume the players more. I have seen it happen before.

Their credibility lies in the next response – if they don’t get it right then surely the player number will deteriorate drastically. Perhaps they are waiting for the right moment.

This is why i doubt we will see any response from them – well at this stage anyways.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I just don’t get how they went from getting rewards right in GW1 to getting them wrong in GW2.

Money.

PowerCat.5738:

You guys will be happy to hear that the champion loot drop problem has been resolved as of November 15th!

The drop rarity of Rare and Exotic weapons from certain places in the world (champions, veterans, and players in WvW) has been increased. Rares and Exotics should be much more likely to drop and every champion should be guaranteed to drop loot. This was to ensure that world loot drops were not a significantly worse way of acquiring rare and exotic items than crafting and running dungeons.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-November-15-2012/first

See? Champions are guaranteed to drop loot.

If you kill a champion and he does not drop loot, type /bug and report it.

I love this part but specificaly the bolded word within the quote “… every champion should be guaranteed to drop loot.” That word means that it can but doesn’t necesseraly always have to. In other words they have not fixed it entirely.

RvLeshrac.2673:

You’re missing the point. ABSOLUTELY NO REASON WHATSOEVER FOR CHEATING EXCUSES THE CHEATER, NOR DOES IT HAVE ANY IMPACT ON WHETHER OR NOT THEY SHOULD BE BANNED.

There are NO VALID REASONS EVER FOR CHEATING IN ANY GAME’S ONLINE MULTIPLAYER COMPONENT.

RvLeshrac.2673:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

I beg to differ. There is always a reason why players are enticed to cheat. I agree that cheating is cheating however the reasons are not always the usuall ones. You are forgetting that the higher the incentive the more likely a player will be willing to risk it to gain the reward quicker. Remove or lower the incentive and less likely will players tread the path of cheating.

Also, it would seem that you a person who believes in a black and white world with regards to decisions and results. If that is the case then any player found exploiting/cheating in any aspect of the game should be banned because cheating/hacking/glitching/etc is not condoned and a ban hammer is the resolve.

Also, not every player was banned in this case – yet by your presumed definition they should have.

The sole reason players who were not banned were simply suspended is that they did not appear to be intentionally exploiting. The punishment fit the crime – there was no indication they knew what they were doing was exploiting, but they WERE exploiting and hence were punished for it.

The people who were banned clearly KNEW they were exploiting, hence their rush to exploit as much as possible.

We use precisely the same standard in the real world – crimes which are committed with intent are punished much more harshly than those without.

Ummmm, didn’t you say that a cheater is a cheater and should be banned for it? (see bolded part from your first quote at the top). This definitely sounds like a contradiction to me (compare bolded part with italics).

This brings me back to my point. There were players who thought this was normal and took advantage of it and others who probably knew it was a glitch and took the opportunity. If ectos were more easily accesible then, in the gernal sense, players would not be as inclined to try and use this method for their own benefit.

Furthermore, within any game there is always a feeling of being the best. This was just another feasible method to get ahead. ANet made the mistake and players got the ugly end of the stick.

Remember: A stick always has two ends.

Xolosheep.1649:

Opened 3 bags and they all dropped greens only. I thought they changed it to drop rares? or is it random?

Don’t feel bad , I got 2 blues and a green.

Surely this being the part of the personal story mode ANet could at least give every player 2 rares and 1 exotic for the story mode – it only happens once per character you know!

WarMacheen.7124:

At this point all I, and many other players want, is to know is…

Is the current drop rate bugged, or is this the intended normal going forward

Doesn’t take very many words to answer, and could have been said weeks ago.

And in reference to this specific thread, I would like to know, as I’m sure many others would too, is Anet’s gw2 database so screwed up as to need players to tell Anet what is dropping instead of actually looking themselves?

Unfortunatelly, I doubt we will know. ANet will not risk it because it would surely deter players from this game. However, like you said, having an “official” thread for this issue sure makes it sound like it is a bug now.

What I, personally, would like to know is: ‘What variables are involved with DR?’ I am certain that at least one of them is tied to the TP/economy.

RvLeshrac.2673:

You’re missing the point. ABSOLUTELY NO REASON WHATSOEVER FOR CHEATING EXCUSES THE CHEATER, NOR DOES IT HAVE ANY IMPACT ON WHETHER OR NOT THEY SHOULD BE BANNED.

There are NO VALID REASONS EVER FOR CHEATING IN ANY GAME’S ONLINE MULTIPLAYER COMPONENT.

I beg to differ. There is always a reason why players are enticed to cheat. I agree that cheating is cheating however the reasons are not always the usuall ones. You are forgetting that the higher the incentive the more likely a player will be willing to risk it to gain the reward quicker. Remove or lower the incentive and less likely will players tread the path of cheating.

Also, it would seem that you a person who believes in a black and white world with regards to decisions and results. If that is the case then any player found exploiting/cheating in any aspect of the game should be banned because cheating/hacking/glitching/etc is not condoned and a ban hammer is the resolve.

Also, not every player was banned in this case – yet by your presumed definition they should have.

Rainu.6871:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

It’s another statistical sales gimmick. The buyer is always meant to lose while the seller is meant to make the profit. The only difference is what the margin is – and this sale just increases it.

Not taking the missuse of the word ‘gimmick’ into account, this is still wrong. The buyer isn’t meant to lose in any other way than that the buyer is meant to buy. Yes, if you now would decide to buy gems with gold and trade those gems for the items on sale then they wouldn’t be much cheaper but there are also people who either buy gems with cash as well as people who have seen the trends of gem prices and that they always go up for a bit during sales and special events. The only person who lose is the one who goes for gold->gems now if the exchange rate would put the pric higher than it normally is. People who have gems from before and people who buy gems with cash win since they can buy the items on sale cheaper or sell off some gems for a higher than normal price.

And how many players do you think will have gems saved up for this, while how many will convert during the sale period? It is a sales gimmick (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/gimmick). Like you said, only those who have bought gems for lower price won’t lose out on this. The focus is to get more peopel to convert gold to gems and not for players to spend their gems – why else would the exchange price go up?

Tarvok.4206:

When you go to the grocery store and buy food, do you believe the store is somehow taking advantage of you?

Hell yeah. Always offering great speacials. The one that has been there for a long time is having milk on side of the store and bread on the other – makes you walk throughout the store and see all those specials.

The point of selling an item is to make money and a company is willing to do pretty much anything to make as much profit as possible when they smell high number of potential customers.

The one that makes me lol is ANet’s special on the game – get the digital deluxe upgrade free. Twice now it was meant to end and it keeps getting extended lol.

I have two questions.

1) When will players consider they have enough gold in their GW2 bank account?

2) What happens in a few years time when the game gets old and players move on? What will the players with lots of $$ do then?

I’m just loling at the stupidity of a humans’ greed. Seriously…its never enough is it?

Esplen.3940:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Firstly, I never said it was 100%. I suggest you re-read my previous post more carefully.

Woah, woah, woah, let me stop you right there…

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Furthermore, you pay 300 gems (roughly 4-5G) for a BL salvage kit with only 25 uses. This should be enough leverage to have a 100% for ecto.

When I wrote “This should be enough leverage to have a 100% for ecto.”, I meant that “theoretically” speaking it should be 100% rate – not the current 75%. Does that makes sense now?

Esplen.3940:

And then let’s continue….

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Now secondly. I’m sorry but how is getting ectos, especially 250, an easy task? There are two ways, salvage or buy, but both are tedious to say the least – the latter would seem the more prefered choice seeing as the prices are quite high. Those who have high number of ectos already are controling a large portion of the market because many of the “end game” achievements require ectos. Hence why the “gap” is currently, IMO, too large.

So then it’s not hard to see why it would be a bannable offense to be able to get 250 ecto’s with 1 ecto and not having to spend anything (relatively).

Exactly my point. You need to spend either too much money or time (or both) with regards to this, and players found a shortcut. Aleviate this and you will have less incetive for players to cheat.

Esplen.3940:

Except people CHEATED [the ecto method] and DID NOT USE THE TP with this offense, which is WHY they were banned.

Hold on, how can you be sure they would not use the TP at some point? Perhaps they were stacking ectos for their use (i.e. 250) and sell the rest? You cannot be certain of this. The reason why people salvage ectos is to either; a) make legendary, b) make profit or c) both. The whole reason why people got banned for this exploit is because it has the potential to manipulate the ECONOMY (i.e. TP).

RvLeshrac.2673:

EXACTLY this.

When people are BREAKING DOWN HIGH-END RECIPES rather than selling them, because BREAKING DOWN THE GOOD IS MORE PROFITABLE, the recipe is clearly broken.

That they continued to do it was cheating.

The reason for cheating (“Oh, it just takes so long to get ectos”) DOES. NOT. MATTER.

Cheating is bannable. There’s nothing in the TOS which says “If you have a good reason for cheating, we might reconsider.”

Afcourse cheating is bad overall and it is (usually) manifested from greed. There can, however, be other reasons why people chose to cheat in this instance. It all goes back to the point I was making – the gap between salvaging ectos and cost of them is too high. Both methods are horendous and it is not suprising that certain players chose to cheat to obtain ectos.

The same could happen with silver doublons – just wait and see.

[quote=1157623;Esplen.3940:]

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

It doesn’t matter how much data we give ANet – this will never be completely fixed.

Why?

There are too many variables involved in determining how and when DR hits. The only fix would be to remove this silly automated anti-bot system and go back to the traditional method.

If ANet is actually trying to fix this, then they are wasting their efforts and money – something that could have been used by having people ban bots and such from the begining.

My understanding is that ANet actually has different teams to work on both of these things simultaneously.

• Coders / Diminishing returns / programming team
• Customer service / player (& also bot) management and Game Master team

They wouldn’t have the programmers dealing directly with the in-game players any more than they would have the GM’s and CS people writing code.

The DR code needs to be removed. It has only caused grief and issues to players.

From the looks of it there are just too many variables involved with it and they fluctuate too often. ANet might fix one aspect of it but it will bug out another. I also think TP/Economy is one of the variables – if it is, then lol at trying to fix DR!

The resources they have could be better spend at something else than DR. This is, IMO, going down the PvP matchmaking system from CoD series – and we all know how that went.

I like the one with the four elements. Big tree in the centre. It’s in Mount Maelstrom.

The issue here is DR as well. It manipulates what you get over certain period of time. If DR were removed then, perhaps, MF might be usefull.

The only feasible solution to this debacle is to NOT have any input from real world currency. Stop having the ability to buy gems for real world money – this is a game for kitten sake!

Furthermore, exchange rate should be standardised and items bought for gems static. The TP is manipulated by both ends (players and ANet) and it’s like a seesaw that is getting out of control. IMO, this market WILL crash…eventually.

ANet manipulates this exchange rate via the sale. Sure it’s 30% of some items, however, when you calcualte the exchange rate before and after it really only gives, perhaps, 5% off – while ANet racks in more money from the increase in exchane numbers.

It’s another statistical sales gimmick. The buyer is always meant to lose while the seller is meant to make the profit. The only difference is what the margin is – and this sale just increases it.

This is a mentality game that runs in circles. It’s the same as cutting through the que. The only problem is anyone can do it.

Esplen.3940:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Esplen.3940:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

The reason why players went that road was because the salvage rate and cost for ectos is beyond a joke. Make these two more appropriate and it will remove the incentive for players to try and “rip off” the economy. IMO, ANet should be perma banned as well.

It’s a joke for a 25% chance to not get an ecto off a rare?

As for the price of ectos, that’s dictated by the market, which means that the more bots you ban, the higher the price of things. We can’t have a utopia where ectos cost 1c and we have no bots, nor require a large amount of ecto to get/make anything useful, that wouldn’t be a fun game.

The gap betweeen ecto price and chance of getting them is too far appart. If it were not as large, people would NOT be inclined as much to use this exploit.

Reduce the gap and you reduce the number of people willing to cheat. Simple.

Furthermore, you pay 300 gems (roughly 4-5G) for a BL salvage kit with only 25 uses. This should be enough leverage to have a 100% for ecto.

BLSK is not 100% chance for ecto, it’s actually 75%. Master Salvage kit is approximately 60%.

Remember, these percentages are to GAIN ecto, not how many ecto you’re getting. It’s ridiculously easy and fast if you’re willing to put in effort, not if you want to sit LA and get everything handed to you.

Firstly, I never said it was 100%. I suggest you re-read my previous post more carefully.

Now secondly. I’m sorry but how is getting ectos, especially 250, an easy task? There are two ways, salvage or buy, but both are tedious to say the least – the latter would seem the more prefered choice seeing as the prices are quite high. Those who have high number of ectos already are controling a large portion of the market because many of the “end game” achievements require ectos. Hence why the “gap” is currently, IMO, too large.

It would seem that players prefer to get gold and trade for ectos – while others make a bucket load of $$$. If the process of getting ectos were less tedious, then players, generally speaking, would be less inclined to use the TP and CHEAT.

Because ANet needs to keep the economy in working order – and, indirectly, make money.

Esplen.3940:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

The reason why players went that road was because the salvage rate and cost for ectos is beyond a joke. Make these two more appropriate and it will remove the incentive for players to try and “rip off” the economy. IMO, ANet should be perma banned as well.

It’s a joke for a 25% chance to not get an ecto off a rare?

As for the price of ectos, that’s dictated by the market, which means that the more bots you ban, the higher the price of things. We can’t have a utopia where ectos cost 1c and we have no bots, nor require a large amount of ecto to get/make anything useful, that wouldn’t be a fun game.

The gap betweeen ecto price and chance of getting them is too far appart. If it were not as large, people would NOT be inclined as much to use this exploit.

Reduce the gap and you reduce the number of people willing to cheat. Simple.

Furthermore, you pay 300 gems (roughly 4-5G) for a BL salvage kit with only 25 uses. This should be enough leverage to have a 100% for ecto.

Azure Prower.8701:

Gabbo.2980:

Hi guys i just bought the game and wanted to know what server was best for oceanic players?

Sea of Sorrows. But good luck getting in it after all the band wagoners swarmed to it after it became the number 1 WvW server.

Hence why Crystal Desert is another good one.

Sea of Sorrows and Crystal Desert.

@Atrophied.8725

I had a search around and it is what you wrote. Thanks.

@Tshakaar.6429

Yes, it makes sense what you wrote. However, based on the coding I would assume it is still a GUI glitch/bug. It is coloured in red when it states 7/6 so maybe it is an intentional one.

These “people” are either super rich and have nothing better to do with their money or are part of ANet. Either way don’t bother biting the tackle – you will end up losing.

The reason why players went that road was because the salvage rate and cost for ectos is beyond a joke. Make these two more appropriate and it will remove the incentive for players to try and “rip off” the economy. IMO, ANet should be perma banned as well.

Use Black Lion Salvage Kits (obtained from Trading Post [normaly 300 gems] or gotten from daily achievement (very rare)) as it offers 100% recovering upgrades and 50% get rarer materials.

Now as for whether to sell or salvage. That depends on the item and whether you wat ectos or $$$ more.