Curse

FoxBat · Mar 06, 2009, 06:52 AM // 06:52

It depends alot, actually. Spending 5 minutes to kill a group of 50 foes at once is awful compared to kiling the 1 at a time over 5 minutes. Killing faster is better, but staggering the kills while retaining the same speed is optimal.

Sliver armor is one of the better compromises to this issue.... well as long as you aren't waiting on the last handful to die. And it supposedly only affects crap white drops including gold and collectors items, which isn't always relevant when you are hunting rares and ectos.

Spiritz · Mar 06, 2009, 08:28 AM // 08:28

Ty ragnagard - im glad someone knows roughly what i mean , its hard to explain to ppl specially if like myself you have no coding knollege and try to explain.

Mass killing itself is bad like mentioned - look at keg farming vaettires , you can kill 2 groups within 2 mins and get 2 - 5 drops if lucky.

Anwyn · Mar 06, 2009, 08:53 AM // 08:53

My record is 10 in 1 go Spiritz...

FoxBat, if you can kill those 50, 1 at a tim, in 5 mins, then yeah... would work out much better...

ragnagard · Mar 06, 2009, 12:56 PM // 12:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spiritz

Ty ragnagard - im glad someone knows roughly what i mean , its hard to explain to ppl specially if like myself you have no coding knollege and try to explain.

Np, i am always wondering how this things work even without profit involved :P.

Btw, i dunno if it matches the thread topic, but by some misterious way (maybe someone told me

), i know that there is a counter or something like that, as /age one, in GW that meassures how much time has passed since you or any of your team members receive or does damage from/to any foe.
It resets to 0 each time you hit by attacking skills (i think that spells didnt count) and same when you get hitten (by attacks only). 0damage is treated as damage and reset that counter but under SF you dont reset the counter (you wont get "hit" maybe).
And that counter resets to 30 every time you enter a zone (or town).

Spooooky, isnt it?
Maybe thats the reason you can get more drops... but as a perma can do same runs and wont get hit.. dunno where the randomnes lies.

Some theory about that anyone? :P

PD: No, i am not a hacker who got GW code or something like that, dont think it that way, getting the GW code would be impossible or near :P

Spiritz · Mar 06, 2009, 04:50 PM // 16:50

Hes thinking in code mentally - ppl who do sorts of coding do that , hackers just hack code etc.

I know what you mean by a kill timer - keg bombing is a gr8 example of that.
kill 10 foes individually ( say 1 min max total ) and note drops then do same 10 foes in mass kill (say 10 secs aoe ) and you`d see a big drop in drops.Thats theory before ppl jump in and state you cant base it on that few runs - was an example.
It could be like when foe dies it waits x secs to prime next drop and mass killing screws the routine slightly by adding more time but with uber randomness ( anets fav thing ) to throw us all.

Sliver is a random skill - read its description then watch as it goes fubar -
Eg - perma sliver sin vs scareater = sliver targets boss ignoring foes around
then go to shatterstone ( just round the corner same map ) - scareaters a monk so ar60 , shatterstone is ele ar60
perma sliver vs shatterstone = 9/10 times it targets everyone else.
Now that is weird , does sliver target highest armor , lowest armor first ?
And many if not all of us sliver users doing raptors ( be us sins or eles ) we see it all the time with broodmother - some runs you target her first and others you go down in a blaze of glory as she owns you lol.

@Anwyn - me and the wife did a duo perma keg run , we split up and got all 60 vaettires between us together and blew them in 1 mob - we laughed when all we had was 1 white drop.

Mc Blarg · Mar 07, 2009, 11:53 AM // 11:53

Yeah, I agree on how killing more things at a time gives less drops...
I watch my brother farm uw a lot and I saw that when he agroed 1 group of smites he would get about 2-4 drops depending on how many were in the group. But when he agroed 2 groups of smites he would get less drops than the 1 group...
So there is definately a timer or some sort of limmiter on the drops.

T1Cybernetic · Mar 07, 2009, 12:05 PM // 12:05

The A/Me slowlo farming builds is a perfect way to examine drop rates compared to say (A/E Sliver armor build)

The sliver build kills them fast but 1by1 and the a/me degen build kills them all at one time, the point being i always get less drops farming on the a/me than i do on my a/e and it is a notable difference...

Mr.Kotte · Mar 07, 2009, 12:22 PM // 12:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by T1Cybernetic

The A/Me slowlo farming builds is a perfect way to examine drop rates compared to say (A/E Sliver armor build)

The sliver build kills them fast but 1by1 and the a/me degen build kills them all at one time, the point being i always get less drops farming on the a/me than i do on my a/e and it is a notable difference...

I believe I heard somewhere that if you kill several foes at once, they'll only give you drops for 3 enemies, HOWEVER, this does NOT include items that exempt from loot scaling. So you can easy get (from 10 enemies) 5 golds, 3 whites and 2 event items, no doubt. ( need luck though

)

Coney · Mar 07, 2009, 11:36 PM // 23:36

Very simple test to verify my hypothesis that first couple kills in instance net 0 drops. Can be validated easily by HM boss solo runs (Jishol, Craw/Zarnas, etc)

A. 1-man solo party.

Initial signature seen during solo Craw, then Zarnas. Craw drops nothing ~86%, Zarnas drops nothing ~50%. Do enough runs, you'll accumulate about 3x as many ELE as NEC greens/tomes.

B. 8-man solo party, bringing 7 H/H - 2 different ways:

1. Immediately flag H/H at entrance, then go solo bosses as if you were a 1-man solo party. Drops with 7 H/H flagged at entrance will be IDENTICAL to those you get in 1-man solo party (e.g. about nil). This rules out the loot scaling issue...

2. Go kill some non-boss MOBs (4 behemoths north of Jishol, 10 wardens on way to Craw/Zarnas). After killing non-bosses, flag H/H to entrance, and then solo bosses as normal. Now you will see the bosses drop nothing ~0% of the time - in fact, they almost always drop 1-3 items. Also, Craw/Zarnas now drop greens/tomes in a 1:1 ratio.

Pretty cut and dry verification of no drop phenomena on first couple MOB in instance...

Spiritz · Mar 08, 2009, 02:51 AM // 02:51

Coney - no2 is invalid - h/h counts as 1 person solo , it seems before you could use that method but anet nerfed it.Otherwise all raptor farmers wouldnt need leechers.
Also tomes/greens are exempt from lootscaling so it doesnt matter party size as you get same chance of drop solo as 8 man.

Coney · Mar 08, 2009, 06:33 AM // 06:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spiritz

Coney - no2 is invalid - h/h counts as 1 person solo , it seems before you could use that method but anet nerfed it.Otherwise all raptor farmers wouldnt need leechers.
Also tomes/greens are exempt from lootscaling so it doesnt matter party size as you get same chance of drop solo as 8 man.

So am I right to understand that you farmed bosses using A, B1, and B2, and have come to a different conclusion concerning my hypothesis (e.g. first couple kills in an instance net nil)? I already stated that if you solo Craw and Zarnas in the same run (killing ONLY those 2 bosses), you *WILL* see ~3x more ELE than NEC greens/tomes in the long run.

If not, I don't understand what you're saying. I know what lootscaling is, and can read wiki. As an aside, if you're a lootscale expert, perhaps you can tell me how lockpicks are categorized...

MuC · Mar 08, 2009, 10:25 AM // 10:25

I was overfarming (keg farm) the wintersday. At the start i got like 5-9 snowmans and at the end i got like only 1 then i stopped. My friend said that is anti farm code.

Spiritz · Mar 09, 2009, 11:10 AM // 11:10

Coney - im stating that h/h dont count as being human players , somewhere it was verified by gail a while back.And no2 is actually b1.
Gw see`s the h/h as npcs and loot scales the party as being 1 person/x.
You used to be able to bring 7 h/h ( 8 man zone ) leave them at start and go "solo" and get more drops.Wiki should state about h/h making you appear as a solo chr but alas it doesnt.

Also mentioned was drops are randomized - if you compare killing a boss with no kills and going and killing 10 foes then boss then yes there will probably be a difference as your doing 11 instances where there can be random drops.

Im not sayin im right an your wrong - drops are something that no1 will be able to say "i know how it works 100%" and will always be that way.
Elemental swords - i did over 80 raptor runs before i got 1 and upto now ive had only 2 ever drop - wife goes in on her pc and 3rd run she gets 1 but up to now and probably 300+ runs shes never had claws drop.Everyone can think of times like that as we`ve all been there.Random is random and therefore cant be sussed out.

BrettM · Mar 09, 2009, 11:54 AM // 11:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spiritz

Coney - im stating that h/h dont count as being human players

Really? So, if you're out with a full party of H&H and pick up 100g that is shared among the party you get it all? Nice theory, but it doesn't work that way. H&H get a share of the loot as if they were players.

BlueNovember · Mar 09, 2009, 01:38 PM // 13:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by AntmanA

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fay Vert

Another thing anyone can try to prove for themselves, go into an area you can farm, wipe out 10, 20, 30 etc monsters in a few seconds and you get full loot scaling about 1 drop in 8. Now do exactly the same farm but kill one monster every 30 seconds and you will get a drop from 80-90% of the monsters, ie. no loot scaling at all.

This is true, I tested it back when the Hylcon Job was still a big farm. I 55ed it on my necro and tested with SV and SS... SV netted more gold, but took like 5 times longer to farm the whole group... So, in the end, SS = more golds/time and SV = more golds/foe...

It's still better to kill the whole 30 at once, then 1 at a time...

This is not true. There was an epic research thread where 2 people zoned into Plains of Jarin at exactly the same time. Using different classes they killed things in different orders and different speeds. Their drops were essentially identical.
With this in mind, I assume all the comments about A/Me vs A/E is just placebo/coincidence. (Plus ime with pre-nerf UW ecto farming, killing epic amounts of phantoms simultaneously vs killing them gradually no noticeable difference, but I'm not really a big time farmer).

Spiritz · Mar 09, 2009, 01:43 PM // 13:43

Gold is party shared actually not player assigned.
You dont follow -
h/h gets a share of drops - fact
they cant be regarded as human players - fact
loot scaling is party size - fact
h/h taken into a zone and pinned at start - the 1 human goes out of drop area and solo farms.In theory his drops should include those of h/h but because its h/h the game ignores them and treats as npc so you only get 1 player drops.
This is already in discussion in guru/wiki and probably loads of other sites - im only sayin what others have observed and ive seen myself.

ragnagard · Mar 09, 2009, 05:17 PM // 17:17

Phew been temp banned and ya got a real discussion haha.

I see that fact explaining and want to add some ideas:

For the part about taking heroes as party helpers and/or leechers... I bet there's no difference for the system, i mean, its easier to program something to share loot between party people and if its human, add to his/her invent or send it to trash (and it is not even displayed on screen) if its a hero.
(Code reusability :P)

Ignoring how the receiver of the item is selected cannot be assured (randomness is still cool

) but it shall be effort less for the programmers :P.

And Spiritz, I bet you missunderstood me before. I didnt say that there was a timer-since-kill, and I can even asure that there is no one. I said there is a clock that resets when damage is taken by any of the combat groups. That can happen at the same time of the death (i.e 50 dmg when its life is 25) but that's just coincidence.
Btw, spells targeted like Liquid flame count as resetter but didnt know with a Keg

nor known what happens if a "allied" NPC dies (f.e. Cantha Peasant outside market by Jade Brotherhood Knights).

If keg resets that to 0, then when ya do the boom boom booooooooom, timer shall be 0 in all that deaths, which might be related to drop.

As all deaths happen at same "time" but with difference of milliseconds, maybe the crappy item you get is dropped by the last processed death.

Another of my theories.. which may be true or not.. is really a question:
We only got the foes spawned on the range of our radar bubble, as was demonstrated with ghost running, and more are spawned when they "enter" our bubble (we move that bubble to them, to be more exactly).
Is drop predetermined when we reach them and they are spawned or when we kill them?

If the answer is predet, we can get rid of killing speed and so on, if when killed... then the "load" we may noticed when they spawn is just 3dModel and AI being loaded onto map O.o

Fay Vert · Mar 09, 2009, 09:48 PM // 21:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlueNovember

This is not true. There was an epic research thread where 2 people zoned into Plains of Jarin at exactly the same time. Using different classes they killed things in different orders and different speeds. Their drops were essentially identical.
With this in mind, I assume all the comments about A/Me vs A/E is just placebo/coincidence. (Plus ime with pre-nerf UW ecto farming, killing epic amounts of phantoms simultaneously vs killing them gradually no noticeable difference, but I'm not really a big time farmer).

1) it was first city
2) the two kill builds had a very similar kill rate, just that one was AoE one wasn't.
3) I'm not sure, but has anybody been able to reproduce the effect? I personally tried many times with a friend in different areas with no luck.

So interesting as that thread was, it has no relevence to this discussion here, it did bnot address rate of kill.

Here is a test ANYONE can do. Same build, first killing things all together with an EoE bomb triggered by Spiteful Spirit.

Drops from fast kills

Second is exactly run and the same build but no EoE bomb, killing things at 30 second intervals with Price of Failure.

Drops from slow kills

Don't believe it? Try it, its not down to chance, you will get the same results every single time.

Spiritz · Mar 09, 2009, 09:53 PM // 21:53

ragnagard wb mate - i knew what you meant - in theory there has to be a kill counter effect as keg bombing/other aoe farming would yield better drops.
The exact method i doubt will ever be answered.
I do recall the thread about the 2 ppl doin a run and checking items but problem i see is how exact were they in entering zone.
The only viable way to test this would be in something like a big internet cafe/game zone where say 20 ppl on gw could enter a zone same time but i fear thats not possible and also too small a number.
Also a lot of loose variables - is it same district , what if someone from german dist entered same time , would drops be indentical then.
The variables from there increase - more you deal with - say 10 ppl from each language distict enter same time ...
Thats the problem with randomness - its not simple to predict.
Its also a stalemate debate i fear as another problem is as its random generated would the results be true - you could have been lucky on 10 runs and next 30 runs yield nothing.Took me a yr before i had my first black dye drop then a few months later i got 6 over a normal weekend - love to see the odds on that happening or even happening again.

Another theory was say for eg - raptor running , you died then did the run for better results but this cannot be proved as you cant tell what drops you would have had before dying so unable to judge if the post res drops were better.

To make a study on any theories would take years i reckon and by that time gw2 would be out ( we can hope lol ) and we`ll be too busy theorising about the drops there.

Coney · Mar 10, 2009, 12:45 AM // 00:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spiritz

Random is random and therefore cant be sussed out.

You don't seem to be reading what I've stated, and assume I said something I haven't. FWIW, A general understanding of statistics shows that given a certain distribution and sample size, certain things can be shown to be statistically significant when comparing 2 or more trial cases.

As you noted and I already said, my A case was the same as B1, and was used to rule out loot scaling in my B2 case (B2 is the *KEY* in more ways than one!). I'll try to make my reasoning clear for my hypothesis, and the need for 3 cases.

Let's assume the following trial cases were performed:
A. you 1-player solo run Craw/Zarnas
1. total loop time of ~4 minutes.
2. you made this run 60 times (4 hours worth).
3. NEC Craw drops nothing 85% of the time.
4. ELE Zarnas drops nothing 50% of the time.
5. 1 NEC elite tome dropped.
6. 3 ELE elite tomes dropped.
7. 2 NEC green staffs dropped.
8. 7 ELE green wands dropped.

B1. you 7h/h the same as A above, just flagging h/h at entrance:
1. you see pretty much identical results as A above.

B2. you 7h/h and kill the 10 wardens on the way (why not pick up the Kurzick buff for ~700 rep!):
1. total loop time of ~5 minutes.
2. you made this run 24 times (2 hours worth).
3. NEC Craw drops nothing 15% of the time.
4. ELE Zarnas drops nothing 15% of the time.
5. 2 NEC elite tome dropped.
6. 1 ELE elite tomes dropped.
7. 5 NEC green staffs dropped.
8. 4 ELE green wands dropped.

I don't really want to get into the statistical analysis at this point, but interval testing can be done (T-tests, etc) which can determine the probability that distributions are different.

I've done enough of these sorts of analysis to know simply by looking at the above data, that 60 trials giving 85% change of no drops compared to 24 trials giving 15% chance of no drops is a statistically significant difference.

Looking at the data, one could also argue that in case A, there appears to be ~3x as many ELE items dropping as NEC, and this seems in-line with the fact that NEC drops nothing most of the time, while ELE drops nothing only half the time (this is not going to be statistically significant)...

More of this sort of drop difference can be seen looking at A to B2 (again not statistically significant), and could be used to further increase sample size on a future study to tease out a statistically significant signature...

I also understand this is not entirely the right way to go about things, as it is really binomial and we should really be looking at the chance that some distribution is (or is NOT) X, given Y trials showing Z...

PS - would still like the lowdown on how lockpicks are categorized WRT lootscaling... =)