Curse

Memphis Rain · Dec 11, 2007, 06:19 PM // 18:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Armond

Nope, they're in different places, connecting to different servers, and have different internet service providers.

If that's the case then the question would be how would ones know they are synchronized perfectly going into the area if they are physically in the same room where they can see each other's screens? Given Ventrilo or TS are great tools but there are delays.

Armond · Dec 11, 2007, 08:07 PM // 20:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by NateAlluran

I doubt you could test this since you'd have to sync the runs to the exact same milisecond week after week without any way to be sure if you've done it right

Well, as we've already seen, there's some leeway...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Memphis Rain

If that's the case then the question would be how would ones know they are synchronized perfectly going into the area if they are physically in the same room where they can see each other's screens? Given Ventrilo or TS are great tools but there are delays.

By watching as they enter the area and checking the spawns, as has already been discussed. :P

Runi · Dec 13, 2007, 12:25 AM // 00:25

You guys got me so curious about this I had to try it out myself. My friend and I sat down and tried to repeat your experiment. It took us around 5 tries to finally get the same spawn of skale at the beginning. We were sure we had the same spawn when we started reaching the next few skale groups because they were the same as well.

And the results:

It worked! We both got the exact same gold drops (with the same stats) from the same monsters. We also shared all of the purple drops with one exception. The white and blue drops tended to be the same, but were different sometimes. The dervish boss gave us both an elite dervish tome too

I was pretty skeptical about this when I read this post the first time. I seems reasonable that ANET is seeding a random number generator with a time stamp when you first enter an area, but I figured it would be very difficult for two people to get the exact same time stamp. It actually was not very hard at all.

Now my friend and I can farm the same area and each take a slightly different path. If one person gets good drops from a particular group, then the other can go there and get the same drops. This should make farming a bit faster (since two people can cover land more quickly than one) and more profitable.

TheLordOfBlah · Dec 14, 2007, 08:03 PM // 20:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elite Bushido

ever hear of knowing what skills are best for builds? like Mystic Regeneration which makes HB+Mending obsolete to hell.
no, apparently not

lol, its funny how you guys think those skills are needed and yet, very very sad at the same time

Unless there is heavy degeneration in the area you are farming, healing breeze is just as efficient as mystic. You aren't going to complete the run any faster because you run it.

A Leprechaun · Dec 14, 2007, 08:11 PM // 20:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheLordOfBlah

Unless there is heavy degeneration in the area you are farming, healing breeze is just as efficient as mystic. You aren't going to complete the run any faster because you run it.

I don't use Mystic Regen but I can see its better, it replaces HB and mending, thus saving you a slot.

~A Leprechaun~

Xylia · Dec 14, 2007, 09:06 PM // 21:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Krazi Bastid

im not really sure if i understand this correctly. so if this stuff is true then that means drops are determined based on the time a player goes into the zone? how could knowing that be exploitable?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nightow

Well, I think we have plenty of proof here. Now how can every one use this to their advantage, I wonder?

I don't think there's anything advantageous about this. It is, however, very interesting. Since you can't see the server time to the millisecond, there's really no way to even look for patterns and see if the drops are repeated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Krazi Bastid

i do however think its true. i am pretty sure that items and their stats are determined when you load the map. how do i know? because a couple of times, i have fought enemies and got hit with some random -3dmg and lifesteal shows up in my dmg skill list thing. when i kill the enemies, they drop a weapon that had a vamp mod on it.

I agree, I have seen the random life steal as well and been rewarded with a vamp weapon.

Quote:

Originally Posted by political necro

5 deadswords

all defense except 1 warding

this is of course after a couple of runs, but its still kinda strange

does that mean equipment mods vary by the area farmed?

I believe it means that the sword pommel of defense is a very common mod. Some mods definitely drop more often than others, and defense is one of the more common ones.

Quote:

Originally Posted by KartMan

no mobs ? you sure about that ? isn't it rather shadow form that makes you believe that ?

for your second point, what would you prefer ?
10 sec of loading (generating etc), and then play a smooth game ?
or
no loading, 1 sec of loading (lag included) everytime you move to a new spot ?
another reason I think it is pregenerated is that gw is a client-server game, the generation is made by the server, imagine that if the server had to generate things on-the-fly, multiply it by the number of instance it has to handle, it will have far more workload than if it was done one-time only per instance.
my 2 cts ^^

I believe the mobs are generated at load time, but are not placed into the instance until you approach them (so they're basically loaded into memory, but not given coordinates). This would keep the server from constantly moving all of the mobs and then having to send updates to all clients connected to the instance.
I do agree that the loot list is almost certainly pre-generated when you enter an area. I suspect that it is stored on the server, not the client, to prevent you from peeking.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Armond

This is ANet. Don't expect greatness. It wouldn't surprise me if it were only timestamps.

What else could you use in a random loot generator that would be both random and fair? If you use anything character, account, IP, or logon ID based, then you will basically guarantee that certain characters will always seed the generator in a certain way. This would almost certainly lead to exploitable patterns, once someone figured out what the "random" seed was.

Quote:

Originally Posted by gw_poster

Is it possible that each day starts with a 'pool' of rare (gold, unique, etc.) drops, meaning a total number available drops for all monsters?

I believe that this is unlikely, as it would mean that you would "run out" of drops towards the end of the day. I play at all times of day, and I have not noticed a significant difference in the number of good drops I get at a given time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hallomik

2) The other possibility is that the "much experienced" decay is really a "much believed" drop in loot quality. Or rather, the experience may be real, but the result of normal variation.

When they put in loot scaling, they took out the penalty for repeated map entry. http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Game_up...iscellaneous_2

Armond · Dec 15, 2007, 12:53 AM // 00:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by A Leprechaun

I don't use Mystic Regen but I can see its better, it replaces HB and mending, thus saving you a slot.

~A Leprechaun~

And yet there's a number of farming builds I run with mystic regen that don't use that last slot at all. (To be fair, I usually put in blessed sig, but that's because I'm lazy and it's only useful right after my enchantments anyway. I could just wait the five seconds or so for my energy to regen, but like I said, I'm lazy. :P)

blackknight1337 · Dec 15, 2007, 01:41 AM // 01:41

extra slot ==> damage skill

can't have a too fast farm run now can we? also thats the slot that usually is utility for me, e.g. if i need anti-kd, thats the slot for it...

strcpy · Dec 15, 2007, 07:38 AM // 07:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xylia

What else could you use in a random loot generator that would be both random and fair? If you use anything character, account, IP, or logon ID based, then you will basically guarantee that certain characters will always seed the generator in a certain way. This would almost certainly lead to exploitable patterns, once someone figured out what the "random" seed was.

You are correct those things are mostly useless, but not in the way you mean. If the time stamp is added to that list it is as "random" as the time stamp as the rest of the stuff is fixed. That is, seed(time) is just as "secure" as seed(3,4,5,time) because the only variable is time. It doesn't give someone any greater ability to seed the generator in a certain way than simply using the time stamp.

You need more "variable" seeds - for instance a traceroute, ping time, more fine grained time stamp, your login time (either direct time or seconds since login), time in an instance/town, or many other things. The more added the harder and harder it would be to take advantage of it - remember a seed of 6534324 will give a *totally* different outcome than 6534325 even though there is only one unit difference. You don't just get a drop or two different, you get a wholly different outcome.

It would be near impossible to force a seed if you had to (even to the nearest second) login in at a certain time, enter an outpost at the same time, stay in the outpost an exact amount of time, and enter the explorable at the same time in order to "fix" your drops how you wanted. Most of these things are already kept track of (in fact, my bet is that *all* of them are).

Armond · Dec 15, 2007, 09:35 AM // 09:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by blackknight1337

extra slot ==> damage skill

can't have a too fast farm run now can we? also thats the slot that usually is utility for me, e.g. if i need anti-kd, thats the slot for it...

If the last of them doesn't die any earlier, it's not worth taking a damage skill. And that's the situations I tend to run into. :P

blackknight1337 · Dec 15, 2007, 06:22 PM // 18:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Armond

If the last of them doesn't die any earlier, it's not worth taking a damage skill. And that's the situations I tend to run into. :P

When I take a damage skill, it speeds up my run. Otherwise there's no point. The extra dmg also helps take bosses out if you're running SoJ. But for some of the harder farms, you need extra utility more than damage, which is where that slot comes in useful. For instance farming things that KD ==> fleeting stability, enchant strippers ==> cover enchant, etc...

Armond · Dec 15, 2007, 06:35 PM // 18:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by blackknight1337

When I take a damage skill, it speeds up my run. Otherwise there's no point. The extra dmg also helps take bosses out if you're running SoJ. But for some of the harder farms, you need extra utility more than damage, which is where that slot comes in useful. For instance farming things that KD ==> fleeting stability, enchant strippers ==> cover enchant, etc...

My point is, if I don't need any more utility and I can't think of a damage skill that'll speed up the run... wut2do?

ekamdu · Dec 30, 2007, 02:34 PM // 14:34

holy crap thats amazing!!!

anyway... which one was faster?

ekamdu · Dec 30, 2007, 02:55 PM // 14:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadowfox1125

Well, once when running a few chests, I got two Greater Guardian Spears, both purple, both Q11, both with the same mods (+13% while in stance). The only difference was the merch price. They came in consecutive chests.

i once got 2 exaclty the same fiery dragon swords +15% -5, +7 arm vs elemental... from the same smite in UW... different runs (like 20mins apart i think)

snoopypup248 · Feb 04, 2008, 04:08 PM // 16:08

Nice research!

stretchs · Feb 04, 2008, 07:31 PM // 19:31

Last spot now goes to Judge's Intervention, Great skill for killing. Also good is Signet of Mystic Wrath, all depending on your energy load for the build

As for this post, I love it, I had heard about this concept a while ago but was never sure what to think of it. I would definitely be interested in trying to test this, I may use both of my accnts and try to sync entering somehow then do one farm, then the other, see if as we have stated they are predetermined then you could easily do one farm, switch to the other pc that is synced and then do it. By our thoughts this would still generate closely similar drops as they still both entered the zone at the same approx time.

sungod88 · Feb 04, 2008, 10:46 PM // 22:46

i beleve everything shown in those pictures is highly possible to get. i do the farm myself and have gotten 2 greens 1 per run, and a dead sword in one of them and mutiple lockpicks. the loot shown is more then possible to get without question. hell im gonna do it some more maybe ill get that lucky lol

but yea very much possible so its safe to say its real, good job mate

Skinny Corpse · Feb 04, 2008, 11:19 PM // 23:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by stretchs

As for this post, I love it, I had heard about this concept a while ago but was never sure what to think of it. I would definitely be interested in trying to test this, I may use both of my accnts and try to sync entering somehow then do one farm, then the other, see if as we have stated they are predetermined then you could easily do one farm, switch to the other pc that is synced and then do it. By our thoughts this would still generate closely similar drops as they still both entered the zone at the same approx time.

I guess your PC's are connected to the same internet connection via router?
Just curious.. for the sake of science.

Have patience when you try to sync your entrance.. sometimes it takes
quite a few tries to get it right.. you just gotta keep trying.
Would love to see the result of your run!

As for me, I've been busy vanquishing.. and the only farming I've done in
the meanwhle is the Raptor farm to afford all the lockpicks I break during
vanquishing.

I can't really say I've found any new suitable area for further testing yet.. but
I've got some places left so I'll keep looking.

Have fun!

Kiragi Yagami · Feb 05, 2008, 12:22 AM // 00:22

Having a bit of trouble believing these results, but if they are true, thats incredible. i doubt you faked it though, i mean, apart from having a couple of "oohs" and "aahs", you gain nothing from lying.

Thats so odd... the drops lining up so well like that.......

Nemo the Capitalist · Feb 05, 2008, 02:16 AM // 02:16

thank you for thread!