Originally Posted by RodentRuler

Seeing several threads dedicated solely to complaint after complaint of "not getting any drops" when farming the new Sorrow's Furnace area with a party of henchmen has prompted me to address this issue.

My main criticism is that these players are committing the false cause fallacy in their reasoning by stating, "I get almost no drops, and I farm Sorrow's Furnace with henchmen. Therefore, I get almost no drops because I farm Sorrow's Furnace with henchmen."

Almost certainly, there is no correlation between whether you farm with the same number of henchmen or human players on the probability of item drops assigned to your character.

All of you complaining about getting no drops with henchmen aren't even considering that, by even that 5th time you've re-entered Sorrow's Furnace in a single day (more likely, 50th time for you crazy addicts), Guild Wars will have nerfed your chance of item drops to close to zero!

The reduced drops with repeated runs of an area is a factor that makes everyone's "proof" that "no items are dropping for me, and I have the thirty-five trials to prove it" is clearly a load of unbased crap (forgive my lapse into crude language).

It's remarkable that people who have played many hundreds of hours to have gotten to Sorrow's Furnace on their fourth character still have no grasp of the game mechanics of Guild Wars and have the audacity to incessantly complain about a subject on which they have a laughable understanding of but claim otherwise.

Well, that denseness may be attributed to a general flaw independent of any game.

First of all, you should see if there is, in fact, a problem, which in this case concerning the alleged hypothesis of "If you farm with henchman, you will receive observably fewer drops than with the same number of human players," has absolutely no evidence of confirmation at this point.

Second, note also the random nature of the "dependent variable," hence its name, which entails that all results from trials are subject to incredibly random factors, and any derived conclusions are at best inductive, or based solely on the observation of patterns.

If you would truly like to conduct a valid experiment on the effect of a party of henchmen vs. human players on the amount of item drops assigned to your character ("quality" of items drops is a completely different issue, plus you cannot "measure" an item's quality), here are the two characteristics that any good experiment must include (which you hopefully learned, assuming you didn't drop out before the sixth or seventh grade): a controlled scenario and repeated trials.

In my opinion, the former aspect is the larger obstacle because it would require the highest possibility of ceteris paribus--holding all factors constant--in order to conduct a respectable experiment, but some things to consider are to farm in the same area (duh?), to farm the same number of monsters and bosses, to farm the same types of monsters and bosses, to perform the same number of trials with henchmen in a given day and human players on another day, and to perform separate sets of trials spaced at least a day apart for each human player in the party in order to reset the item drop nerf for repeats of an area.

Does the list of factors look daunting enough?

That's not all, seeing as how even with hundreds of repeated trials that are necessary to merely support the hypothesis, it is not possible to indefinitely prove any hypothesis, and it is only possible to disprove a hypothesis.

So, have any of you attempted to do any of these things at all before announcing your so-called conclusion?

In short, what I'd like to say is: you can complain all you want, but nothing's going to happen if you don't offer a solution.

Instead of shouting post after post of the same, trivial complaints, why don't you think of an actual, practical suggestion?

You just might get your point across a little better.

Originally Posted by a-kyle

I read the first bit of it and decided to state this:

Run it alone?
or flag your henchys to stay behind you?

Originally Posted by N1ghtstalker

one thing i don't completely understand
the more you farm a specific area, the lower your droprate will be on items there? makes kinda sence for all those hours farming for that one elite tome drop

Originally Posted by DarkFlame

Again, out of date info referring to the old anti-farm code that was removed when loot scaling was introduced. Nothing before Flea's post is relevant anymore and while Flea's post may be refreshing, it would have been better if he started a new thread rather then bring this one up from the archives and confuse some folks(ie if N1ght doesn't come back and read this, he'll go around thinking the anti-farm code still exists). Nothing against Flea, he's new and yet to learn the ropes, but I don't have to pat him on the back either.

Originally Posted by free_fall

There's a new area in Sorrow's Furnace? Why wasn't I told of this?

Originally Posted by llsektorll

maybe its just me but when i'm with heros and henchmen i see the drops from to hero/hench and they just disappear when they hit the ground...

for example when something drops there is a little flip in the air animation then the hit the ground and you pick it up.... well i can see the flip in the air animation and when it drops it disappears.... if anyone else notices this then it should be a clear giveaway to when heros get items..

Originally Posted by llsektorll

for example when something drops there is a little flip in the air animation then the hit the ground and you pick it up.... well i can see the flip in the air animation and when it drops it disappears.... if anyone else notices this then it should be a clear giveaway to when heros get items..