Guild Wars 2

fraklestar.6241:

I did the Plinx run today. Again. I ended up with two porous bones. Now, I’m a necro so I get that I may not get much from the trash along the way, can’t compete with the burst and dps of guardians ans warriors. I can live with that.

What I can’t live with anymore is that I have NEVER gotten a single drop from the Champion Abomination, EVER. Not even a scrap of silk. And I can do a lot of damage. It just seems like the game doesn’t care, it’s burst or nothing.

Right now I’m doing events purely for the dailies, even loaded up with MF I get frak all.

Same. In fact I sold/salvaged most of the MF gear I had. I didn’t find it made any difference whatsoever. Currently, I’m running full exotic carrion/necromancer armor, exotic carrion/corruption weapons with exotic trinkets all built to match, traits blood and corruption are maxed out, again to maximize weapon effectiveness. Then I use minions to add direct damage while conditions are working away. So, I can hold my own damage-wise and in a crowd can probably cause more overall damage than warriors, just don’t have the burst damage. However….I hear they plan to nerf AOE right across the board…their solution to people complaining about AOE spamming in WvW. Mostly it seems like it’s lazy warriors who want to stand in an AOE rings and not die, but ArenaNet is listening to them. That will make necromancers and elementalists essentially useless, harm other classes and make melee classes way over-powered, which they essentially are now. In any case…I digress in to another issue. Back on topic, I’ve done that champion abomination probably 8 times now and it’s only dropped twice, blues both times if I remember right. In the 8 or so times I’ve fought it I’ve never recovered the waypoint/repair expenses incurred the first time I fought this thing…when it locked agro on me every time I approached…didn’t even get a chance to attack it.

Geotherma.2395:

6 Minute grind 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPLK6rwN3a8

6 Minute Grind 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brfy-btpc00

Didn’t post todays but almost 1 yellow per event in orr. More Unidentified dyes than normal acrossed all characters. Not that I’m complaining, just noticed.

Also I’m maybe 75% sure that a loot chests dropped junk. But I can’t say for sure. Overall good day as usual.

I wonder if the speed at which you’re looting affects the drops. Myself, as a necro, range/AOE is my chosen means of imposing damage. While I have tons of life (31000+ at level 80), I’m pretty squishy and don’t usually get right in the mob so I typically collect the drops after the whole mob is down, not as soon as they drop. I wonder if the chance of good drops diminishes slowly the longer they lay on the ground. I also noticed that for most of the videos you were typically under 1/2 life. I wonder if this perceived risk perhaps affects returns. Something like the more danger you’re in the more likely you are to have good drops. I know this stuff is really reaching, but we’re typically at a loss to really explain how this stuff works since ANet is very closed mouth about the details. You’d think it was a CIA secret!!!

Bean.1247:

I have noticed I have started to play less lately and have had to change guild as I was effectively in a one man guild of 36 active MMO playing friends who are all " Taking a break" until things improve.

I’m in the same boat. There are only two of us left playing in my guild of about 20 and I’m the only one putting in any real time, and only in WvW. We’re both essentially working for map completion and he’s been spending most of his time in Fallout: New Vegas. The other guy is a little bit ahead of me for map completion, but not much. We’re both essentially waiting for our world to change to a color other than green. He needs a few points in the red zone and I need most of the blue zone plus a couple red point.

I really can’t be bothered to look for another guild since after I get map completion, I plan to take a LONG break from the game. If I take 6 or 8 months off, perhaps ArenaNet will have gotten a clue and fixed the game by then. OR…perhaps it will end up like TOR or D3 and lose a huge portion of their player base in the first year or so, mostly due to mismanagement, although TOR had other underlying issues.

A game without reward and fraught with disappointment, is truly doomed to a bleak future…deservedly so.

Death Reincarnated.3570:

ANet, why can’t you specify what triggers DR? Are you afraid the general player population will try to exploit it? If this potential exploit is in line with playing the game as you intended us to do so (i.e. go out into the world and explore) then it would not harm the economy.

Do others feel bullied by this? Do the players feel this is ruining their game experience?

The in-game economy is already corrupt and completely screwed, there is little they could do that would harm it worse than it is now, in fact, I think it actually functioned better when we were run amok with bots. Not that I see many with my limited play, but, I wouldn’t bother to report them if I did. I don’t feel bullied, but YES it has completely and utterly ruined the PvE game experience for me!!! I can’t even be bothered to look at the new content because I know the rewards are going to suck.

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

Not only that; but I would not craft one rare for the purpose of salvaging if my life depended on it. I am too scared to be banned for “exploiting”. This sounds extreme and it probably is but there is no proof that it wouldn’t happen.

Why would this be considered an exploit? I’ve salvaged tons of stuff I’ve crafted. On the road to level 400 crafting, you make way more than you can ever use and not all of it is easily saleable, so the logical thing is to salvage them. I’ve salvaged exotics that I’ve made without any issue.

In the last couple days, I completed all 4 WvW jumping puzzles, nothing better than a green. Creature drops…chest drops…crap. Killed over 60 invaders (8-10 executions) in WvW last night…nothing better than a blue and I think I only has 3 or 4 gear items drop, some trash and 5 badges…I wish I could sell the badges. :/ In any case, this completes jumping puzzles for me. They’re lots of fun, but with rewards like this…not really much point in going back. The rewards, typically, won’t even cover the cost of the waypoint fees to get there. If I were working toward a legendary, perhaps, since you get 5 badges of honor for each borderland puzzle and 10 for Obsidian. But…I’ve already explained how outrageously out of reach legendaries are for one affected by this issue.

—Aside—
Jumping puzzles are one of most unique and fun parts of this game IMO and I would suggest anyone not doing them, try them out. You also get an achievement and 10 achievement point per puzzle and at 44 puzzles (46 with Halloween and Christmas puzzles), that adds up.

I was pleasantly surprised how in the WvW puzzles, even in enemy borderlands and the shared Obsidian Sanctum puzzle (Which is one of the better puzzles in the game), there’s kind of a no attack thing going on. Of all the “invaders” I saw, only one attacked me, a big brute of a hammer-wielding char guardian, and the silly fool did so in the dark area, I dropped my torches as he had none and he was easily avoidable using mark reflection to navigate…probably still waiting for me. He might be tough, but the bugger is lucky I was pressed for time and decided to avoid him otherwise I’d have hit him with fear to make him walk off the edge.

TRON.1085:

I invite any dev to look at my account and see the difference in loot drops in fractals since the update.

Before I got anything from 2-10 rares per run, very rarely an exotic and sometimes essence or cores. I hardly ever got any blues or whites…

Now after update I always get a crap ton of whites and blues, almost no rares on most runs, no exotics, no cores, hardly anything except the occasional green, even from chests….

Something is not right…

Something has been changed. This has gone on for days now…same thing…no change from crap crap loot, I have never had this before the patch EVER.

Days, eh? This has been the game for many of us for nearly 3 months. I probably haven’t had many more than10 rare gear drop since the Nov 15th patch and only one exotic that I remember. I’ve never had a core or lodestone drop…ever, not one since I’ve been playing the game.

ColinJohanson.2394:

That being said, we’re trying to offset some of that random chance by implementing systems like our new laurel system (and other additions down the road) to help give players more opportunities to earn specific rewards as well over time. This gives the capacity for those exciting “jackpot” moments of getting a big reward, while also helping provide a more clear long term timeline when you can earn the same reward for those who don’t hit the moment-to-mment jackpot since for those who are extremely unlucky, it can be very frustrating.

This says it all right here. This is the answer they’ve been avoiding all this time. Is there a bug? This is a big loud NO!! You are “extremely unlucky” and should be grinding for tokens while most of the rest of the player base get relatively normal drops, or are at least not complaining about it. :/

This is a load of crap and in hundreds of hours of play “extremely unlucky” should average out. Some accounts seem to be plain cursed and goes beyond sheer luck.

I’m sure this bug will eventually be identified, but may never fully be acknowledged, but I guarantee, this will happen long after I’m gone.

I’m sick of the lies and double-talk and according to this thread they now plan to nerf AOE (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-AoE-actually-a-problem-Discussion-Thread). This will be devastating to my condition damage necro build. This game just keeps getting worse and worse. Drops, as they are, it’s just too much effort to create an alt. I actually have enough gold to float myself through another alt or two, but, really, where’s the fun in buying yourself a character. It defeats the purpose of an RPG in my opinion. I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of this and even with 150G in the bank, would not feel bad walking away. I don’t even have the ambition left to finish my personal story or even look at the new content. All I’m working on now is map completion in the WvW areas and vainly participating in this thread in the hope that I’m wrong about ANet.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

I notice comments made re “grinders” “farmers” and other unflattering terms to imply somehow that ’grinders" are an undesirable subset they compare to “Normal People” and players, going as far as to compare them with “Donkeys chasing a carrot”. (not my words, pardon)

Well. Seems that grinding is “working as intended”. One set of rares on a Character, armor and weapons, 150 fine craft comps, excluding Jewelry. Given the current drop rate, if you intend to gather that many comps, you will grind. If you have 6 chars leveling, you will grind a lot. If you are not grinding for the comps, you will be grinding for the gold to buy them. Since they are level and mob specific drops, you will be grinding on mobs in given areas and levels, more subject to whatever DR threshold there is, and it is unavoidable.

This is not about Legendaries, Shiny Uber gear, “phat lewt”. It is about acquisition of basic materials to accomplish a basic game function. It effects crafting at all levels, it is not about endgame.

I’ve yet to see an informative suggestion as to how to acquire components like this without grinding of some sort.

Yes, they consider grinders a bad thing, but drops on rare mats (Lodestones for example) are so bad that without grinders there would be none in the TP. It’s the grinders and bots that primarily populate high-end items in the TP. The problem is that they’ve nerfed drops so bad that even common items (Say T3-T4 mats) are becoming so uncommon that you have to grind to get them. So they have the whole thing in a vicious circle where materials are worth more than anything you can craft with them and grinding for the materials you need imposes DR, so the TP is broken, crafting is broken, which leaves anyone starting out with the option to grind endlessly for mats, which is considered bad or buy gems…which I think is the ultimate goal…to push people to the gem store.

I have a theory that they don’t fix the bots permanently, which should be easily detected in any number of ways, especially teleporting bots, simply because without the bots, they would have no reason to be so stingy in game. Perhaps they even run some of the bots…who knows. They wouldn’t be the first company to pull such shady tricks. I don’t care what anyone says, DR has done far more damage to this great game than bots ever did.

havoc.6814:

Maybe you should read all of my posts and not assume that I am just rolling a warrior. Lol, just keep crying though, AoE nerf coming anyways.

The only one crying is you man…coming up with ridiculous reasons to nerf AOE…nerf it because AOE users are too easy to take down…really? How does this even make sense? If anything that’s a reason to buff AOE. If you think that only melee users should be allowed in WvW/PvP, then just say that. Why not just make everyone run WvW naked as the same race with no weapons and no magic…then EVERYONE will be on a level playing field and it will be completely skill at that point. I’m sure you’d still find a reason to whine.

In any case, if they break AOE and necromancers by extension, at least what I consider broken, I’ll be done with this game. I will be paying close attention and know exactly what my stats are. Being affected by what seems to be perpetual diminishing returns (After nearly 3 months, quite insultingly being described by Colin Johanson himself as an “X-files level conspiracy”), I’m already pretty fed up with the game. My drops are so bad, that I could not feasibly level an alt without using the gem store, so if they break my necro, and necros already have several known issues/bugs, I’ll not give them another penny and I’ll be done.

Let’s consider something tangible…end-game content…legendary weapons. While these are the living definition of grind for essentially everyone, what’s that mean to the have-nots? Like Wildcode, who’s situation is even worse than mine, unless I run around and harvest nodes, which is really not my thing, I have a problem making 20-30s in a 3 or 4 hour session of doing events. That’s perhaps 1 ecto…you need ~450 to craft a legendary…Using 3 hours, that is 168 days at 8 hours of play per day. Badges of honor in WvW…I’ve only just started, but after about 6 hours and 57 kills, I have 7 badges to show for it. You can get map completion once per map, so that’s a free 40 badges, you still need 460, most of which will come from kills. If that average stays in place, 49 days at 8 hours per day, then there’s dungeon token, which I would need Arah for the Bifrost, I haven’t done Arah yet, but what is it, about 8/speed clear? I don’t think you the 40/path (Or whatever is it) like AC. Again though, we’re talking weeks worth of grinding. At this point, we’re probably near a year worth of grinding, much more for those who have a life and can’t play for many hours a day (No offense) and still don’t have the precursor. I’ve read one will typically drop over 1000 rares in the mystic toilet before getting a precursor. Will that be even more for one affected by this drop problem…who knows. Now the cheapest rare staff you can get on the TP is about 40s, 1000 of those is 400 gold (Realistically slightly less due to what the forge does return). But for simplicity, since the return rate won’t be THAT good, with the above return rate of about 30 silver/3 hour session, that translates in to, about 168 8-hour days…just to buy the staves, then more untold time at the forge. So, now we’re well over a straight year’s worth of 8-hour days (Several years for an average player), we have the precursor, the gift of battle, hopefully the gift of exploration by then and perhaps the dungeon tokens, perhaps the mystic clovers, but we still have much more to collect/buy…

You see where I’m going with this…for the have-nots, the end-game content is not achievable without sinking vast amounts of money in to the gem store…this is NOT reasonable and is a truly scary stat if this is what is actually expected of players!!!!

Jordi.6081:

Since i feel this is getting nowhere, i want to make a proposition to ANet.

We know you want the DR system on place, and we have problems with it. So my proposed solution is this:
Tone down the DR severity a few notches, to a happy medium where it still provides that safety net to the ingame economy, while letting legitimate farming players gain a decent return for their time.

I can’t speak for everyone, but i would be satisfied with that.

Using catpcha, or some other sort of “real-person” check at the point where botting is suspected eliminates the need for DR…I think at this point, most people would welcome such a construct. But, of course, DR no longer has anything to with bots, if it ever did, and everything to do with pushing people in to the gem store.

moose.6973:

These are just a few small examples of what is really the big picture, but you all play the game, and you all know as well as I do some AoEs are better than others. I think all classes should have the ability to have at least some decent AoE. I main a Ranger, Thief, and Warrior, and so far the only class from those 3 that I think needs balancing for AoE is the Ranger. You are forced into a trap build for AoE (if you don’t use an axe/torch, which is sub-par for most things anyways compared to shortbow), which is against how this game is said to be designed. There isn’t much freedom in choices there.

So, I read the official posts, and I agree with what they are saying. They need to rebalance things among every class to open up more weapon choices. Hopefully they don’t make things worse in the process, though.

While I agree some classes need balancing, mostly I consider AOE generally to be underpowered, it sounds as if you’re going on the assumption that every class should be able to go toe to toe and withstand front line battle. This isn’t the case. In general, most casters in most games I’ve played, even buffed with toughness are too squishy for the front line type battle and pose more of a liability than anything. GW2, does not have the equivalent of a battle-mage. Most casters, especially heavy AOE users such as necromancers and elementalists are much more powerful, and useful, staying behind the front line and helping the more heavy hitters by slow down and weakening the zerg. I selected the necromancer, knowing full well it would never be a front-line player.

IndigoSundown.5419:

It’s not that simple. Staff necroes not only AoE, they are built for condition damage. Building for condition damage means you’re likely to be using scepter for your other weapon, because it applies bleed, and the other weapon choices, Axe and Dagger, are just not viable for a high condition damage build because the only conditions applied either don’t do damage or are on long CD’s. If you rebuild the staff for ST damage, are you going to make all 4 skills ST? 2 of 4? What about the situational skills (chill, condition transfer, etc., regeneration)? Does eliminating some of the 4 Mark skills make the Mark cooldown and greater Mark traits worthless? Will you make these ST skills apply conditions, or not? What will this mean for traits and gear? You can’t just change a few skills and call it a day, not without kittening up some other aspect of peoples’ builds.

If the devs are determined to go through with this, they’d better be extremely careful or they are going to break a lot of builds. In order to do it right, they will pretty much have to rebuild some classes.

This!!! Well said!! I am a pure condition damage build (1497 at full strength, not including slot skills and minion-applied conditions, if I use them)…which makes me a very powerful support player but useless on the front-line since I go down way too easily and I’m OK with that. I stand back and make zergs VERY easy for heavier hitters to take down….bleeding, weakness, cripple, poison, fear… This is what my build is made for. Now, the primary means of delivering condition damage, for me, is Staff/Scepter/Dagger. 6 out of 10 weapon attacks are marks. Any nerf to AOE is potentially devastating.

havoc.6814
How is it a “crutch” when more than 1/2 of the attacks are AOE marks, it is a central part of a condition damage build. That’s like saying a warrior is using a sword as crutch since he should be using his hands. It’s ridiculous. If you’re cake-walking through AOE users I would argue most of those don’t know how to use their class effectively….unfortunately a common issue with casters in any game. Nerfing AOE to force people to stop using it is NOT a solution, potentially breaks entire classes/weapons, is not fair to those of us who use it properly and, well, just plain counter-intuitive. Perhaps you cake-walking through them is more of an indication that AOE should be buffed, since you’re saying they’re not strong enough. What you’re really implying is that caster classes using AOE are inferior…to you, again, this is more an argument to buff the classes rather than nerf them.

Turbo Chet.8527:

Colin, either I hope you’re joking or you guys are just afraid to own up about tweaking drop rates. Anybody that has played the game before and after November notices the change in the drop rate. I used to get around 4 rares an hour doing pent / shelter. Nowadays I’m lucky to get even one rare drop an hour. And yes, I am putting the frequency change of events in account as well. It’s like you guys despise the idea of rewarding players. Should of kept the system similar to Guild Wars 1. That system was good for some time.

One rare drop and hour?!?!?! At this point, I’d be ecstatic about this….before I essentially stopped participating in open world, I was lucky if I got one rare drop a week.

Well, I decided to go on good faith and test out Orr…the first time I’d been on Cursed Shore in about a month. Same kitten, different day. Was there for an hour to hour and a half. Did Penetent/Shelter, Jofast, the defense of the Arah waypoint, Champion Risen Abomination, Champion King (The one that looks like an Eye of Zhaitan). Couple greens, rest blues and whites…blues from both champions, about 8 moldy bags (Yes, more than I used to get), about 8 salvageable items, about 30 vendor junk between porous bones, claws and whatever else dropped. One armored scale, a couple T6 venom sacs and perhaps 10 or so misc lower level crafting stuff…that’s it.

It MIGHT be marginally better than it used to be, it might be just due to me not being there in a while, but it’s certainly not good to the point that it will draw me back to Orr. I realize that this a very small sample and perhaps a bit unfair, but I’m a little jaded over this and have no reason to think things will get better…and don’t have a great deal of patience left.

Before I gave up on open world, I once got more than 12s worth of porous bones in less than an hour and a half…not counting anything else that might have dropped. It doesn’t take long for a bot to be profitable. Teleporting bots are farming material nodes, and they are very hard to nail down long enough to report. Mandatory Catpcha when DR is suspected would fix this. A bot is useless if it requires baby sitting.

Another thing that can be done, and quite easily detected by tracking player gold, is to punish/ban players for using gold sellers…the word wouldn’t take long to spread. If a player suddenly has a huge influx of gold that came of suspicious circumstances and if they can’t justify where it came from, warn and remove gold on the first offense, ban them on the second. If no-one is buying, bots will whither and die.

Jeahanne.5209:

I’m wondering if perhaps this diminishing returns problem is less a bug and more an intended consequence (albeit, hopefully, a temporary one) to flush out and starve out bots.

But the bots don’t care if they get 10000 porous bones and DR is ineffective…it’s still money…they need to fix the exploit(s) the bots are using. All DR is doing is screwing up the trading post and, by extension, crafting. As much as I hate to say it, captcha, as others have mentioned is probably the one of the best ways to do this.

Causic.3798:

I completely agree with this, AoE is a crutch that requires no skill.
AoE-ing a door just aiming at the floor requires no skill. They don’t have to decide who to targer and how to CC them to keep them from coming it. Attacking the door already does that.

No, I agree, AOE spamming the floor in front of door requires no skill…unless, of course, that’s where you meant to put it. Where the skill comes in is knowing where to place your marks to maximize the damage and defense. If you’re the invading, identifying the potential spots AOE is likely to be used is where skill comes in…pinch points, doorways, arches…use your brains. Use something to mitigate the damage, something to remove/consume conditions or find another way. AOE is best against the berserker run-in-blindly, blades-swinging mentality type, who then scream foul. Sometimes the front door is not the best way…this is strategy.

If AOE effectiveness is nerfed at all, there will be little use in using the caster classes, unless you build them to deal mostly DD, at which point, it’s just as well to use a warrior.

Evenly matched, my necro will easily take down a berserker mentality warrior and they will of course call foul. I’d have little chance against a smart warrior, one who watches what they’re doing and pays attention.

Danepher.5263:

Leamas that wasn’t for you =.=’ My comment was for havoc.

Apologies…though I still disagree AOE is over-powered…but we can agree to disagree.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Just wanted to give a quick update on this topic. We’ve completed verifying every update from the november release, and there were zero changes to anything what so ever that would have negatively affected loot in any way/shape/form. We can officially confirm this as an X-files level conspiracy at this point.

We’re in the midst of evaluating every loot table in the game and running massive random roll evaluations table by table, as well as evaluating every system game wide that causes a player to qualify for items to determine if any issues exist in those systems from launch.

Will update again when we have another round of concrete information.

Thanks for the update Colin. Is there any specific information that we, as players, can collect/provide to help your investigation?

Danepher.5263:

it is an L2P issue of yours which for some reason you refuse to understand and learn to play with it.

I have a level 80 necro, with full exotics equipped to maximize necro skills carrion/necromancer armor with sigils of corruption on pearl carrion weapons…lots of condition damage, health and power. Traits are also specifically selected to maximize my carrion/necromancer/corruption build. I rarely go down in PvE, even less so in a group, a lot more often in WvW, but that’s the nature of the environment and the known weakness of my build…which I work with and function more as battle support. Playing a necromancer, wearing carrion necromancer armor and carrion corruption weapons…condition damage, hence AOE is a primary attack for me, given that 2/3+ of my attacks and slot skills ARE AOE. This is as per design of the class…maximizing my inherent class strengths… How is this not understanding how to play? Enlighten me.

Also, think about how AOE is implemented in this game…compared to real life…it’s already nerfed. IRL a poison cloud does not have a hit limit and the more poison you’re given the faster you die, a radiation field does not only damage 5 people and stronger the radiation…the faster you die…, a fire hurts everyone in the affected area…I bet you know where I’m going with this…, etc… I miss the old days of gaming, when people had to actually think and plan for such things. In Morrowind for example, yes, I know it’s not MMO, if you became poisoned, or infected with some disease you needed an antidote for it or it would gradually drain your life/stamina indefinitely….this is how such conditions are supposed to work. Gamers these days are far too coddled.

havoc.6814:

This is exactly what I expected. Scream L2P in rediculous defense of your abuse of an OP tactic. If you knew how to play, you wouldn’t need this crutch, so right back at you.

Have you EVER played a caster class in GW2? If you had, you should know that the strategy with them is completely different. While the necro, for instance, has lots of life, it’s still only a light armor user and could never go toe to toe with a warrior in a straight up DD fight. It’s not meant/designed for that kind of battle. If I’m 1:1 against a warrior, I kite/dodge, hit them with DD, while using AOE to keep them weakened/crippled/poisoned/etc. The strongest DD I have, without doing combo fields, is probably Ghastly Claws, axe main hand, but it take 2 1/4 seconds to complete and is nothing compared to what a warrior can inflict. There are summoned minions for DD, which are good in PvE, but they go down far too readily in WvW and their refresh time is far too long to truly make them useful. Casting them also lets others know, an easy-kill necro is about and gives away your position. Granted, I could change my build to deal more DD, but I might as well be a warrior then…at least then if I’m going to play like a warrior, I’d get the armor bonus. While I embrace the weaknesses/strengths of my chosen class, as others have, you choose to whine and complain about it…and that’s fine too.

koldan lonly.4293:

would be easyer to track this stuff if we could record log’s to a file (looted item, killed mob, damage done, ect)

The problem with this is that we’ve NEVER been given ANY direction from ANet about what data they’d like. Then they closed the old thread that had vastly more information it and they tend to quickly merge/kill any bug threads related to the issue. Of course, this points to confusion, delay and cover-up.

With the infamous unidentified dye bug then followed by the quick drop rate adjustment and the more recent (Jan 29th/30th) adjustments to drop rates in Orr to readjust rates that were already adjusted in the 28th patch. We already KNOW they can, AND DO, track live drop rates and posting stats here is a waste of time IMO. I’ve stopped complaining and adjusted my play so that it’s not drop-centric. Unfortunately, with completing 41 of the 44 jumping puzzles and 95% map completion, this game has nearly run it’s course. For me. With these drop rates, I don’t see the point in open world or dungeons any more.

Get used to the drop rates…this is not a bug, this is how it is. Adjust your play to compensate, put up with it, or leave the game. ArenaNet either doesn’t care and doesn’t believe there’s an issue or has their hands tied by their NCSoft/Nexon task masters. Either way, it’s not changing…coming on 3 months later, that’s obvious.

Snowshadow.3105:

What I’m driving at is the necessarity of good (maybe even a bit overpowered) skills. We don’t need another nerf, the game is already hard enough for casual players. I love this game, but I just don’t have time to get new ascended stuff, or at least it’ll take months.
I get more and more the feeling, we really need the new items to get around in this hard and crucial word of Guild Wars 2, but as people start to get these items, they begin to get overpowered and have to get nerfed againt. So it leads to a vicious circle that’s very dangerours for us endangered casual players.

This is very well summarized and I never really understood the danger of adding a new tier of armor/weapons until reading this. For myself, I really have little interest in doing fractals…so ascended gear is out. Now, if they make the new creature strength baseline for ascended gears and nerf everything to match, then I take a permanent hit to my strength…all be cause I play the game the way I want…not the way they want, which is contrary to their stated mission plan.

As many have said there is a disconnect between what the devs think and reality. If anything, AOE is underpowered in most circumstances. Sure, you get 8 or 10 strong necros AOE spamming a pinch point, it’s going to seem overpowered, but that’s good strategy against berserker-mentality zergs. Most AOE users are much less useful in an open-field battle. I know the limitations of my class and tend to hang back to do support, poisons, cripples, fear, etc…anything to slow them down to help big damage dealers make the kill. AOE is too slow for close range, DD is too weak to be effective (Well, on my condition damage build). This all only applies to WvW, perhaps PvP, since I’ve never tried it, and if they think AOE is overpowered in PvE, they’re completely daft!!!!

Do they even play their own game? They should get “real” accounts…not these special privileged accounts I’m sure most of the staff at ANet have.

Kiy.4593:

The following is a quote from the recent update regarding a change to loot drops.

• “In PvE, if a player is awarded loot by killing a creature and the loot is of uncommon rarity or higher, a chest will appear that contains the loot that would previously have been on the corpse. If the rarity of the loot on the creature is lower than uncommon, the loot will remain on the creature’s corpse.”

Why is it then every chest I have gotten contains a trash white item or low level crafting mat

At least you’ve seen chests, I played PvE for two or three days after the patch and have yet to see a chest. However, in keeping with my goal of map completion, I’ve moved mostly to WvW as that’s the only non-dungeon area I have left to discover and the only jumping puzzles I have left. Not sure if you get little chests there, but I have seen the occasional little cloth bag pop, mostly after an execution…same idea?

Aside:
In 40 kills I only received 5 badges though. :/ Badge rewards, usually given for executions, are heavily weighted toward big DD players such as warriors. If you’re an range/AOE user…quite often the kill is already claimed by the time you get to the body. I get credit for lots of kills, but not a lot of executions…hence not a lot of badges. This is more of a game design issue than a loot issue, I digress.

tigirius.9014:

Has anyone else heard about dragon chests disappearing? People are speculating that the DR has gotten so bad that it makes entire dragon chests disappear now.

I don’t know if this is a joke, but boss chests have a rare random bug, or at least used to, where they would not show up or not be lootable by everyone who participated in the event.

Azjenco.9425:

Rewards are supposed to be part of the game, but it’s become a shoddy mess.

[sarcasm]
Rewards are part of the game…you can buy gold through the gem store and buy whatever you want in game….even legendaries… Isn’t this how it’s supposed to be?
[/sarcasm]

So the common theme in these MMOs is to play the kitten out of them as soon as they come out…before the business end makes some really stupid decisions that screw the game up? I get it now. The whole business model is to bait-n-switch. ESO is looking more and more appealing…get in early and play it before it goes to hell.

Tonight is “guild night” for my guild…not a single person signed in other than me…I signed out. It’s really kind of sad…the game is in it’s end cycle for most I play with methinks.

Blackwolfe.5649:

Isnt the “mob drop” chests instant pickup when you press f?

Are they? I haven’t gotten one yet, but assumed they were delay open like every other chest. If this is the case, then I apologize and retract my previous statement.

lynspottery.6529:

Navi.7142:

I got a chest! Hurray!
…. It contained a porous bone…

NOT amused.

I thought chests were supposed to contain “good” loot? Porous bones do not constitute loot, just trash.

Bait -n- switch I think!

Delay and stall, more likely…perhaps a test intended to ultimately to slow down bots. Takes time to open a chest, soon all drops will be like this, that way you won’t be able to quickly go f-f-f-f-f-f-f to pick up a bunch of drops…devastating to bots farming mobs. I hope this isn’t the case, or reason, as this is just more anti-player crap.

DevorianDevil.6037:

We will never see the days again where we did grenth and got loads of rares and the brainwashing has already begun, i’m even starting to see posts about people who applaud the changes in Orr because they have gotten 1 Rare in an evening of playing, 1!! and they think this is normal.

The number of those who were around pre-Nov 15th is starting to dwindle. I said this in the old thread, or maybe early in this thread, that they were simply stalling and trying wait it out until the memory of Pre-Nov 15th drop rates fades away and this becomes the new normal. As you said, this is becoming the obvious outcome when people are praising a single rare. Exotics are essentially grind for money/mats to buy or make them. Legendaries are uber-grind, probably years for a casual player, and with DR, essentially impossible at this point without sinking money into the gem store. I estimate within a year, GW2 will go the same way as so many other gear grinders I’ve read about, and refused to play because I don’t like grind, free to buy/free to play.

Did 5 jumping puzzles last night…nothing better than a green and one yellow mat…pearl orb, I think.

wildcode.5403:

Navi.7142:

I got a chest! Hurray!
…. It contained a porous bone…

NOT amused.

We keep saying there is a problem with loot, and yet here is more proof of our perceived loot issue. We know devs play on live servers so I got to wonder why aren’t they seeing the same issues with loot. What are they doing different as to not be getting loot issues?

Devs and ANet staff in general, like commanders, hold a special status in-game, a status that can coded to ignore things such as DR. You don’t think devs are going to allow themselves to be crippled do you? I certainly wouldn’t.

wildcode.5403:

Um … o k … managed to do the entire pent event and not get a single drop, not 1.

Nothing at all or all porous bones? You truly are cursed…not even I’ve been that unlucky, even when drops are bad, I usually get a few silver worth of porous bones.

That’s not the chest I saw, so mine was more likely already there and I didn’t notice it until after the fight was over.

Iceinux.4738:

I understand what your reasoning is, and on the same note, you not doing events makes the sample size even smaller, so it isn’t really helping them find your bug. … but when you start shutting your sample size down even further it is just drops the odds even futher. Since the odds are already quite low.

Experience tells… I’m a reward driven player. If I get no rewards, my enjoyment level goes down. This wasn’t an issue before Nov 15th. That leaves me with exploration and jumping puzzles that I enjoy. I don’t expect huge returns, especially from regular mobs, but I expect better than I’m getting. I’m not farming, and I’m typically not staying in a single area for more than a few minutes…I shouldn’t be getting hit by DR. Isn’t this how ANet said we should be playing? So, I play the way I still enjoy and read this thread to see if drops improve or if ANet comments.

Iceinux.4738:

If I came across as condescending chances are because part of it was, you say your drop rates are bugged and have been bugged, and then come back with things like you shouldn’t have to try something to try and help fix it. They should just fix it.

If they come out and admit something might be wrong (Perceived is such a BAD word) and give some direction on what data they would actually like collected, I would be more than happy to help and try just about anything they’d ask of me. Until that point, guessing about what they want and posting data they can much more easily be pulled from logs is a waste of valuable time and reeks of stalling. I’m a data man, my entire career is database management and development. I don’t do well with vague.

Iceinux.4738:

Were you looting quickly? When the mob falls down it takes a moment for it to turn into the chest? At least on mine it does, that is buggy as well as I had a chest with nothing but a moldy bag in it.

I think had a chest drop but it only had a blue in it. Don’t know if it was from a regular mob or veteran. There were both going around and it’s hard to tell what drops what when you’re AOEing several mobs at a time.

Iceinux:
If you’ve read all the related threads, then you’ve missed the point. All most want is an acknowledgement that something was changed and whether it’s considered a bug or intended behavior.

I, as well as many others noticed the change shortly after the Nov 15th patch, when drops from veterans and champions got worse, not better, as the patch notes indicated. It became blindingly obvious something changed on the lost shores weekend. Open world drops also got worse, not better, again as the patch notes indicated. You also have to consider this “problem” does not appear to affect everyone…why? Let me guess…it’s just bad luck? Well, I can say I’m sick of bad luck. Because of this issue, I do not fight open world champions unless I have to and now with PvE map completion, I never have to. I typically do not participate in dungeon runs and boss fights. I don’t enjoy constantly seeing people getting rares and exotics while I get greens at best. I’ve done the Claw of Jormag 3 times (good event regardless of drops) and Shatterer twice (Didn’t like the event, the dragon was too easy and drops sucks) in the last week or so…one rare…and it wasn’t a good one. Why participate in huge boss events when I can typically make vastly more money in the same amount of time killing regular mobs and collecting resources? When I do get rares, they are almost always berserker of the air…why?

Same way with the way Grenth was last night, it was fine. I lived for 75% of the fight dpsing and resing people, why? Do I have some amazing build or uber items? No.. However I do understand how to position myself to dodge out of circles and mitigate damage. I also understand that I should res people that are downed and not dead. Come back to reality that you are playing a game, and they don’t / wont ever tell you all of the reasons behind why they change something, and when that something comes along, ADAPT like every other player of every MMO before you has done, and just move on.

No, I don’t know how to circle strafe my necro to avoid AOE. Like every other person in the game, except you of course, I just stand there and take it. LOL Get over yourself and can the condescending tone.

Stop commenting on things you obviously have no idea about or you’ll be reported for trolling.

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

As an aside, ANet has said on multiples of occasions that they don’t want us to be doing one thing over and over (even if we want to do that). So it makes sense what Jason King asked – they are DR’ing and nerfing anything we want to do repeatedly. This is one of the things that I have against ANet. The devs don’t like even the appearance of grind so they nerf it as soon as it manifests. I suppose they think they are doing this for our own good… I don’t like being forced to play a certain way. >^< I am so puppied off right now I am really controlling my desire to just go off!

This is one the thing that really bugs me about this game. They say they don’t want us grinding, and have implemented code, under the weak guise of controlling bots, to punish us for grinding. However, many of the the craftable items in the game, legendaries being the worst, require so much materials, and ultra rare material, that if you don’t grind for it, you’ll never get it. 500 badges of honor? 500 dungeon tokens? 77 mystic clovers? Countless amounts of ecto? No…none of this is grind at all. In all the ~400 casual hours I’ve played this game, I rarely farm…if ever, I have 100% PvE map completion and have NEVER had a lodestone or a core drop of any kind…ever!! Really?

They say they don’t want us to grind, AND punish us for it, while at the same time building extreme grind in to the acquisition of most the desirable items/materials in the game. The hypocrisy of this is just astounding.

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

EDIT: Hmmm – Has anyone who is still having issues guested to another server to see if the issue still follows you? Is it possible that those who are seeing improvement are seeing the better drops on a guested server?

I’m too lazy, and realistically, I shouldn’t have to. They should just fix the problem…plain and simple. That said, they’ve demonstrated, with the patch, then two quick successive patches, that they are quite capable of monitor drop rates. This can only mean drops are functioning as expected/designed and that GW2 is becoming nothing more than a gear grind. OR…they aren’t taking us seriously and can’t be bothered to look in to individual cases. Either way, it is truly unfortunate, but not unexpected. At this point, while I love GW2, I’m working exclusively on personal story, world completion and jumping puzzles, skipping over most events, only killing mobs that get in my way (Which is still quite a lot). I’m frustrated to the point and think I’m simply biding my time until ESO comes out.

About 4 hours of play in Blazeridge Steppes and Fields of Ruin. Few greens, no rares other than the two for area completion of Blazeridge, no little chests. If they improved loot at all, I’m not seeing it.

Tegrof.4598:

I forgot to mention, my wife has the same exact machine as I do. I matched all of her settings, drivers, etc, and I still have the issues. Her install of the game is a direct copy+paste of my install. I’m really not sure why I am having issues at all. This reminds me a lot of when Doom 3 came out, had the new DRM security crap on it, and it wouldn’t even allow certain hardware to run it even though it had the potential to, and was the same hardware my dad was running. That was a $50 waste that I never got to play. Seems to be heading down that road with this game too….

If it’s the exact same everything, right down tot the memory and video card…you might start looking at testing the hardware.

OC Scanner is a good GPU testing utility if you have an eVGA card. FurMark is a good GPU stress test utility otherwise, but read up on how to use it because you CAN literally fry your card with it.

Intel has a tool called IPDT for testing the CPU. Use Memtest to test the memory. Other than that, you might want to contact Dell to see if they have any suggestions, especially if you’re still under warranty.

Out of curiosity, and it shouldn’t make any difference, but try disabling the sound and playing it with no sound, just to rule it out.

I didn’t do a great deal last night, but I can tell you the Shatterer chest only returned the usual blues and greens. Less than 10s worth of loot. Did about 6 heart vendors in Blazeridge Steppes and the associated mobs that entails. Very few drops, no little chests. The veteran at the Wreckage of Serenity that appears when you solve the mysterious stones puzzle dropped either a blue or nothing, don’t remember, but it was completely underwhelming. I remember typing in to chat that it was disappointing. I got better drops from killing the ghosts while I ran around finding the stones.

I think it’s safe to say that, with the exception of perhaps certain elements in Orr, this issue remains unfixed for open world PvE in general, veterans, champions and boss chests. I’ll be interested to hear whether drops in dungeons and the resulting chest(s) has improved.

Still using the 306.97 drivers, I had no issues last night, did the Shatterer and about 6 heart vendors in the region with no issues. ArenaNet really has to dig in to this. It’s a common enough problem that hardware cannot be blamed. I didn’t try the 313.95 drivers for fear of breaking it again.

Sifu.6527:

AOE should not do more damage than single target abiltiies.

Likewise, weapon attacks that cleave (GS, Hammer, etc) should do less damage than non cleave weapon. (Warrior’s GS auto vs Thief’s Dagger auto; damage is similar yet the Warrior’s GS cleave up to 3 targets.)

I disagree, I think it should be situational. A strong poison AOE should cause more damage than a direct attack for those susceptible to poison, while it should have no effect on, say, the undead or robots. You need poison resistance or condition removal to get rid of it if infected. Much like you need armor to stave off direct damage, magic/poison/fire resistance is basic fair in many RPGs. I think GW2 missed the boat a bit on some of this stuff.

For weapons, I also thing GW2 missed the mark at bit. It’s logical that 2-handed weapons should cause more damage than one handed and that a crushing weapon (Mace, Hammer, Maul, morning star, etc) will be more effective against certain enemies just as a blade will be more effective against others. Blades should take a lot of damage and have little effect on, say, skeletons, where a mace will smash right through them. Even the original Diablo had this basic concept.

Tegrof.4598:

So I was able to play for roughly an hour by myself prior to today’s patch with the driver you recommended, 60fps frame limit, and my settings at medium. Immediately after patching I continued to have issues. Now it seems to be even worse. Whenever the game crashes, it doesn’t close the process and won’t allow me to end it (not the task, the process). Then when I go to reboot my computer to clear all of my processes, my computer “shuts down”, but the power won’t turn off. I have to hold down the power button until it shuts off. Then when it boots back up again it’s just like I had done a normal restart (no windows errors from a bad shutdown). It appears that the GW2 process that is hanging is causing my computer to hang as well. I am not a happy player.

kittenty…it sounds like we might have had it resolved. I’ll give it a try tonight and let you know how I make out, but suspect I’ll have similar issues. There is a new beta driver that was released today that you can try, 313.95.

Please post and let us know how you make out.

…a little disappointing….it doesn’t look as though open world drops have been addressed nor the issue of veteran/champion/boss chest returns. The only real mentions of loot that I found in the release notes are:

• In PvE, if a player is awarded loot by killing a creature and the loot is of uncommon rarity or higher, a chest will appear that contains the loot that would previously have been on the corpse. If the rarity of the loot on the creature is lower than uncommon, the loot will remain on the creature’s corpse.
• The item “Heavy Moldy Bag” has been updated to drop more frequently.
• Various Risen creatures have had their loot tables updated to provide more varied crafting materials.
• Melandru Temple Chain – Updated the participation rewards for the event “Defend the Pact interruptor from Risen attacks” to be more consistent with holdout events at other temples in Orr. Players who participate will earn three times the normal event rewards.

Try the 306.97 drivers. I’m running these on a 670. I’ve had issues since the Jan 10th patch and both the 310.70 and 310.90 drivers crashed in GW2, didn’t crashing in anything else, but they crashed in GW2. Don’t install 3D vision or the nVidia HD audio drivers unless you need them. Once in the game, even with the 306.97 drivers installed, I still had to set the frame limiter to 60fps to get it to stop crashing.

Navzar.2938:

Honestly, I think it’s because of the way anet makes their game to be huge hordes of mobs everywhere that aoe seems powerful. Maybe they should just make more areas with less mobs that are farther apart, but stronger. Kind of like southsun cove, but with more things to do besides gathering mats.

Southsun Cove is not solo-able, especially by an AOE user, you end up doing a lot of ninja’ing around mobs. If they moved more toward this model it would contradict ArenaNet’s promise of “Play the way you want”. Really the only place AOE is considered a problem is in WvW, why nerf it in PvE if most people do not consider it problem. They’re fixing ghost problems, minor at worst, while ignoring so many real, and major, problems…I’ll never understand it.