Curse

Speerit Abrams Tank · Jul 29, 2010, 06:49 PM // 18:49

Its time someone finally stopped speculating and offering their own opinions regarding the drop rates, how and who and what. I have heard countless arguments spanning four farming scenarios.

> Farming solo (w/ drunken master, no hayda)
> Farming w/Hayda only
> Farming w/party of heroes/hench, max 8.
> Farming with a party of leechers, 6/w hayda
> Farming with 7 leechers.

I have my opinions on this matter. If you care to know them, PM me, because for the purpose of neutrality, i will not express any views on this topic, until replies have poured in. Good old EXPERIMENTATION and HARD DATA is much more helpful to this cause than speculation, he said/she said, and OH BUT I HEARD THIS GW DEVELOPER SAY _______.

I will farm 10 times under each condition, take Screenshots of each time, including my party list and everything, as well as the drops on the ground. Once this data is gathered, i will present it here. I expect this will be done this evening.

All farming will begin 2 PM Utah mountain time, and im sure many of you will have a lot to say about how "b-b-b-b buuutt the drop rate differs at different times! Your sample is not accurate!" Cry me a river, i cant do anything about that. Ill release a second study taking place on a busy saturday, and perhaps a third study at the buttcrack of dawn on a Wednesday, not during summer vacation. THIS WILL TAKE TIME, so be content with this study for now!

If anyone has any input as to how this process could be improved, please, im listening.

and keep your negativity to yourself, i dont care if you have a strong opinion on this topic, I am going to present hard data, pure FACT, and leave you to decide for YOURSELF. I am here to inspire, not convince.

CagedinSanity · Jul 29, 2010, 07:05 PM // 19:05

Remember the Control in this experiment. Not sure how Drunken Master effects anything though.

Speerit Abrams Tank · Jul 29, 2010, 07:32 PM // 19:32

Which control? I will assure that the conditions are the same throughout. The only variable is the time of day, and therefore the volume of farmers. So im electing the afternoon due to a high volume. And drunken master is for achieving speed without hayda. Though it is inefficient due to the need for dwarven ale.

CE Devilman · Jul 29, 2010, 07:38 PM // 19:38

do U flag heros to away..!

Haggis of Doom · Jul 29, 2010, 07:47 PM // 19:47

Statistics with 10 samples, eh...

Skyy High · Jul 29, 2010, 07:50 PM // 19:50

10 runs are not statistically significant. Not trying to be a downer here, just saying, the data won't be useful for statistical purposes.

Further, you're assuming that all trials are separate and have no cross-correlations. It's very likely that the order of your trials will matter (ie, your first runs will get more drops than your later runs).

Voodoo Rage · Jul 29, 2010, 08:08 PM // 20:08

I hate to say it, but 10 runs isn't going to tell you anything. I did about 500 runs solo and about a hundred runs with parties of varying sizes. My overall income did not vary at all.

Most farming myths have to do with what's called confirmation bias. If you have it in your head that doing a specific thing will net you better drops, you will "remember" those events that confirm your beliefs and "forget" about those that don't. Most of the time when I talk up farmers in Rata Sum looking for leechers they are usually talk in terms of specific events ("I did 5 solo runs in a row with no good drops", "I once got 5 golds with a full party", "I got 2 black dyes today taking leechers", etc...) but never really track any sort of overall accumulation of data.

Speerit Abrams Tank · Jul 29, 2010, 08:09 PM // 20:09

Fair enough, i will leave this to someone with reliable video capture software. I would just do screenshots but that wouldnt provide any reliable proof. And my camtasia is acting up, just wasted a lot of time.

This topic can be further discussed, or closed, at the Mods discretion.

I do acknowledge the sample size would have been small anyways. And i dont want to invest a day into providing 100 samples per control.

My opinion, as it were, is that there is no difference with leechers or heroes, though i do prefer my solo build with drunken master. Its cleaner and faster, no hayda worries, and it creates a placebo effect that makes me feel im getting more, since im solo. Only drawback is without endure pain, all broodmother must do is twisting jaws twice, magically. Which she sometimes does, and im squat.

Johny bravo · Jul 29, 2010, 08:11 PM // 20:11

10 Runs each will not give you any solid data to go on.
For example, I do chest runs at 30 chests a day. If I was to take the 30 chests and compile drop rates based on that it would give me not one bit of solid data to go off of.
As an example after doing this for a few weeks I had not received many elite tomes, 2-3 tomes and I always run in HM. In the course of 1 day, 30 chests, I got 5 elite tomes. If I used just one day or even 1 week it would look like elite tomes are a relatively common drop (5/30 ~15%, 5/210 ~2.3%). To get any decent numbers you will have to do enough runs that one run will not have a significant effect on the results.

I applaud you efforts but you will have to do a lot more research before you can put out any solid numbers to make any sort of conclusion on. Even then people will disagree with you.

Good luck though

Speerit Abrams Tank · Jul 29, 2010, 08:16 PM // 20:16

Yes sir, we have established that.

domaspiragas · Jul 29, 2010, 08:48 PM // 20:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skyy High

Further, you're assuming that all trials are separate and have no cross-correlations. It's very likely that the order of your trials will matter (ie, your first runs will get more drops than your later runs).

I'm assuming that you're talking about the anti-farm code. Which is no longer in affect. " Repeated map entry does not reduce loot."

source:http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Anti-farm_code

Chrissie Quickdraw · Jul 29, 2010, 09:02 PM // 21:02

While my experiences don't come from raptor farming, I have done allot of N/A farming outside Rilohn Passage. I think due to the fact that you kill 10+ enemies at once, the drops are about equal. Ofc the overal gain would be more with raptors due to the simple fact that it's a faster run.

What I however did notice was : (and this was observed after farming for several hours in a row)
There are "bad runs" and there are "good runs". In a "bad run" I would get 1 gold or white item drop, in a "good run" I would get 2-3 gold items/elite tome/gold scroll/green from boss. Overall the runs where "average" netting me about 2-3 white/gold coin drops + the random grapes.
If I had mapped these good vs bad runs out in a statistic there would have been a definite "wave pattern" (I sadly didn't keep track of it, and I won't do such a long farm for a while ... it's boring).

What this would indicate in the long run I leave up to you. I don't farm daily or that long normally, only did it once during an event weekend to "have done it".

(dang that where allot of ""s ... :/)

Spiritz · Jul 29, 2010, 09:51 PM // 21:51

Ok im amazed - utterly amazed.
why ?
Because raptors always and i mean always gets me waiting for a post with the Famous words - "OMG THEY NERFED THE DROPS".
I recall ages ago the amount of posts with that title and UW in it - ppl got "dry" runs and suddenly there was an outcry and the posts of it being nerfed.

1 person doing 10 runs proves bugger all - i showed a guildie vaetire farming and tbh - no change in drops even tho we were 2 man.
Anet aint gonna tell us and there isnt a 100% foolproof way of proving anything.
Are we gonna get 1000 players with exact timing , ppl , conditions etc etc and judge 1000 runs to see if data matches - i doubt it.
You only really see ppl brag of good drops and very rarely do you get ppl saying - damn ive had 20 crap runs in a row now at raptors , you only see the ones with - wow x black dyes and loads of golds etc.
I bet anet staff have a gd roflmao at these posts and probably the biggest joke in gw is "us players who cant prove or disprove" what this is all about.Even scarier - do anet staff know themselves ?
How would a programmer test code that produces random events - random is random and to a computer random between 1 and 1 million will be different to asking humans as sadly its been proven we cant be 100% random as we favor some numbers.
This topic will be here till the end of gw with no 100% proven proof being given - maybe on the day just before anet/ncsoft turns off the gw universe they may tell us all and lol at us.

Fusylum · Jul 30, 2010, 01:46 AM // 01:46

Nobody really knows about the drop rate...
Its like a role of the dice, people have their hoaxes.

Voodoo Rage · Jul 30, 2010, 03:36 AM // 03:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fusylum

Nobody really knows about the drop rate...
Its like a role of the dice, people have their hoaxes.

I did some pretty accurate tabulations (sorry, you'll have to take my word for it since it's just a bunch of numbers I'm reporting). This was about a year ago using an Ele/Mes. The method I used was to do ten runs in a row and then sell off everything I farmed. All items were identified and merched (cost of ident kits was accounted for). Tomes were given a value of 100g and 3k (that was the value at the time, I realize it's not worth as much now). Elemental swords were given a nominal value too (again, I realize they aren't worth anything anymore). I merched dyes at the time for fairly low money, so I probably could have made more by trading them. I also could have made more money by SALVAGING conch shells into glittering dust. Also my Ele/Mes build probably averaged about 29-30 kills, not a full clear.

As a solo farmer:

500 runs: 265 gold weapon drops (that's about a drop rate of 1.75% per raptor killed). In terms of unid gold value, this represents about 190k in income. Most importantly this also represents a MINORITY of the amount of money made. OVERALL income which included all merched items too came to about 432k (the real money is all those whites, blues, purples, dyes, etc...). So I was making roughly 860 gold PER raptor run.

I then tabulated some data for taking leechers (a minimum of 3, up to a full party). This proved a bit more cumbersome, so I limited my data to 100 runs instead of 500.

100 runs: 52 gold weapon drops (again about the same drop rate). Overall value of all items merched and unid golds came to 87k. This is 870 gold per raptor run (not statistically significant for this sample size).

Not to turn this into a dissertation like that water snare elementalist guy did but basically about a year ago, and using a now nerfed build, it really made no different in overall drops or income if you took along leechers or not. I don't doubt that drop rates might be tweaked a bit from a year ago, so current numbers may vary. I don't really have the energy to do this again with a necro or warrior build, but I'm comfortable enough to say that solo farming is the way to go unless you really feel the need to help people get Asuran points.

Enko · Jul 30, 2010, 07:29 AM // 07:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voodoo Rage

I did some pretty accurate tabulations (sorry, you'll have to take my word for it since it's just a bunch of numbers I'm reporting). This was about a year ago using an Ele/Mes. The method I used was to do ten runs in a row and then sell off everything I farmed. All items were identified and merched (cost of ident kits was accounted for). Tomes were given a value of 100g and 3k (that was the value at the time, I realize it's not worth as much now). Elemental swords were given a nominal value too (again, I realize they aren't worth anything anymore). I merched dyes at the time for fairly low money, so I probably could have made more by trading them. I also could have made more money by SALVAGING conch shells into glittering dust. Also my Ele/Mes build probably averaged about 29-30 kills, not a full clear.

As a solo farmer:

500 runs: 265 gold weapon drops (that's about a drop rate of 1.75% per raptor killed). In terms of unid gold value, this represents about 190k in income. Most importantly this also represents a MINORITY of the amount of money made. OVERALL income which included all merched items too came to about 432k (the real money is all those whites, blues, purples, dyes, etc...). So I was making roughly 860 gold PER raptor run.

I then tabulated some data for taking leechers (a minimum of 3, up to a full party). This proved a bit more cumbersome, so I limited my data to 100 runs instead of 500.

100 runs: 52 gold weapon drops (again about the same drop rate). Overall value of all items merched and unid golds came to 87k. This is 870 gold per raptor run (not statistically significant for this sample size).

Not to turn this into a dissertation like that water snare elementalist guy did but basically about a year ago, and using a now nerfed build, it really made no different in overall drops or income if you took along leechers or not. I don't doubt that drop rates might be tweaked a bit from a year ago, so current numbers may vary. I don't really have the energy to do this again with a necro or warrior build, but I'm comfortable enough to say that solo farming is the way to go unless you really feel the need to help people get Asuran points.

500 runs is still a very small sample set. statistics really don't become relevant until you get into much higher numbers

Voodoo Rage · Jul 30, 2010, 03:29 PM // 15:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Enko

500 runs is still a very small sample set. statistics really don't become relevant until you get into much higher numbers

But I think it is large enough to conclude that if there is indeed some sort of advantage to taking along leechers while raptor farming that it isn't a very SIGNIFICANT difference. So standing around in Rata Sum spamming "PRO HM RAPTOR FARMER NEEDS LEECHERS!" for 10 minutes is probably costing you money in the end.