Curse

ichigo_panty · May 16, 2007, 02:05 AM // 02:05

Quote:

#3. AoE Slaughter vs Individual Kill.
This almost certainly IS a factor... at least when solo-farming. I have reason to believe that when a lot of enemies die in very rapid succession or simultaneously, that the drops are intended to cycle between the people present to keep it more fair.... but if only one person is there then some drops may not happen at all. There is quite likely a timer in effect on this which resets after a few moments... In other words, killing enemies one at the time should yield better results than AoEing them down.

This code should be active. Every time i farm a mass group and i used SS to drop them at the same time, i often see drops but soon vanishes. Does anyone notice that? When you drop lot of them at the same time, items do drop but soon vanishes. Either it is the work of the loot scale or aoe kill scale.

Quote:

#1. Populace Overfarming.
Myth. Total and utter myth, of that I am certain. Yet it is a totally prevalent one. People complain about certain spots being overfarmed because it is the easiest thing in the world to blame other people because you don't get good drops. I've tested this one a lot... farmed in areas where other people are swarming... and farmed in areas where there is nobody else around at all. In both cases, I've had times where I was getting tons of gold and loot abounding, and others where I got nothing much. Who else was there didn't seem to influence the results at all. Not in the slightest. You can even do the same farm as the bots at Granite Citadel and get just fine drops (provided you don't mind being mistaken for a bot yourself).

Need more testing though.

rohara · May 16, 2007, 03:04 AM // 03:04

/agreed

especially this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by SotiCoto

#3. AoE Slaughter vs Individual Kill.
This almost certainly IS a factor... at least when solo-farming. I have reason to believe that when a lot of enemies die in very rapid succession or simultaneously, that the drops are intended to cycle between the people present to keep it more fair.... but if only one person is there then some drops may not happen at all. There is quite likely a timer in effect on this which resets after a few moments... In other words, killing enemies one at the time should yield better results than AoEing them down.

i've noticed this whilst spider farming at rilohn and kappa farming outside gyala. nothing like dropping 20+ kappa and only getting 200g

*edit*

see attached images. both taken on a spider run at rilohn - one using SV, one using SS. :O wow...

ArKaiN · May 16, 2007, 03:09 AM // 03:09

kappa seem specially dickish about dropping golds.

My Green Storage · May 16, 2007, 03:21 AM // 03:21

I also agree with #3 and the AoE versus Individual killing.

UW I noticed this.
Killing single groups nets me more then killing 2+ groups at a time (E/Me - So AoE is what I do :P)

I also tend to agree with the "Take longer to kill" theory.
I've always noticed this about bosses. The longer it takes to kill them (either them healing or you dying), the better the chance of good stuff dropping off of them.
Mind you, I don't mean every time you slowly kill the boss he'll drop good stuff, but in general of casual "Let's do something else" type farming (When you're just plain tired of farming one area and feel like mixing it up by killing a boss once or twice for the hell of it), even at "overfarmed" areas.

And if you notice, I said "Better Chance" so don't come at me acting like I said He/She WILL drop something good.

Anyway, I'm sure this also has to do with regular foes out and about.

**And yea, the Jade Brotherhood (Especially the Knights) always drop something good and/or often. The Mages .. not so much. Gold armor drops off the Knights pretty good once every other run, 2 in 3 runs.

manitoba1073 · May 16, 2007, 04:38 AM // 04:38

[QUOTE=SotiCoto]
#1. Populace Overfarming.
Myth. Total and utter myth, of that I am certain. Yet it is a totally prevalent one. People complain about certain spots being overfarmed because it is the easiest thing in the world to blame other people because you don't get good drops. I've tested this one a lot... farmed in areas where other people are swarming... and farmed in areas where there is nobody else around at all. In both cases, I've had times where I was getting tons of gold and loot abounding, and others where I got nothing much. Who else was there didn't seem to influence the results at all. Not in the slightest. You can even do the same farm as the bots at Granite Citadel and get just fine drops (provided you don't mind being mistaken for a bot yourself).[QUOTE]

I aggree. The only way for it to affect you is if you are in a group farming. otherwise seperate instances dont effect others.

[QUOTE=SotiCoto]
#2. The Anti-Farm Code.
~~ 2a. Zoning Repeatedly.
A-Net removed this. You can zone in and out as often as you bloody well please and it won't influence the drop rates. It doesn't matter if you're killing the first one or ten enemies, or going in there three times per minute. This won't change drop-rate.
~~ 2b. Killing Same Enemies Repeatedly.
Possible, but it seems unlikely at present. While my Necro's efforts always seem to wane over time, I've had other farming runs that show no diminishing returns over time, even when I'm killing just the one group.
~~ 2c. Getting Rares Repeatedly.
If any sort of anti-farm code is in effect, this seems the most likely.... though probably weak at best. With many characters I have had quite a lot of golds initially from farming, and then had them wane to a low level and stay there... and stay there until I haven't had any golds for a while despite killing a lot (for whatever reason). O'course that doesn't stop there being an occasional gold-spike... [QUOTE]

Correction here, Anet always said before HM came out there was no anti-farm code and it was an anti-bot code. However I personally havent seen anything remotely close to an anti-farm code myself.

[QUOTE=SotiCoto]
#3. AoE Slaughter vs Individual Kill.
This almost certainly IS a factor... at least when solo-farming. I have reason to believe that when a lot of enemies die in very rapid succession or simultaneously, that the drops are intended to cycle between the people present to keep it more fair.... but if only one person is there then some drops may not happen at all. There is quite likely a timer in effect on this which resets after a few moments... In other words, killing enemies one at the time should yield better results than AoEing them down.[QUOTE]

Nope cant say that there is one of these, as ive had several golds drop whether i drop the fast or slow.
[QUOTE=SotiCoto]

#4. Loot-Scaling + Hench-Flagging.
As far as I can tell, how much chalk / blue / grape stuff you get is going to be the same irrespective of whether you're solo-farming, 8-group farming, 8-grouping with the herohench parked out of compass range... Hard-mode OR Normal-mode. You will get one person's worth, and that seems to be it.
As for non-scaled stuff... you will get 8 peoples worth if you are the only person in compass range, irrespective of what is flagged outside. Normal-mode and Hard-mode much the same. Alive or dead doesn't matter; only whether they're in range or not.
Just remember though... herohench will take their share of any raw cash you find, no matter where they are on the map and whether they're alive or dead.... so only bring them if you absolutely have to.

#5. Hero/Hench versus Real Players.
The same. Totally the same. If you're in a party of 8, you will get 1/8th the rare drops and the same number of normal drops irrespective of whether the other 7 are meatbags or AI. Any suggestion to the contrary is a myth... Totally. [QUOTE]

I'll have to take your word for this. As im not really looking for loot while with henchies/heros or even people.

[QUOTE=SotiCoto]
#6. Enemy Variety.
Can't really be sure on this one, but I don't think it makes any difference at all. I seem to get exactly the same number of golds, other rares, etc from farming runs with only one type of enemy as I do with every species under the sun.... Only thing enemy variety influences is WHICH items you get (and they will tend to have the same probability of a rare from one to the next).
[QUOTE]

Nope enemy variety has nothing to do with it either.

Now the only real way for anyone to test there drops is simple. Farm one spot not for 1-3 hours, but do it for 7 hours or more. Then you will see what i've seen. That the drops come in streaks.

KartMan · May 16, 2007, 05:47 AM // 05:47

ok I must be wrong about the "prediction" part, I don't know that stuff much since graduation :x
however I still do believe that for a given server, the loot is kind of "spread out" amongst the different instances, Gaile may have said otherwise but it would be only considering the code, like there is truly no "if there is X instances of zone Y then droprate for Y = N/X" or something like this, but the behaviour of their RNG may be unwillingly alterring the drop rate.
That's at least what I'm convinced of ...

cheers

SotiCoto · May 16, 2007, 03:25 PM // 15:25

I've still been getting nothing but chalk drops from the 7 Naga Archers that compose Sstou Swiftscale's group... and I've farmed them quite a lot now.... very slowly.
On the contrary, the hopping vampires and whatnot at the start of Urgoz's Warren are still dropping golds for me on a fairly regular basis... despite most of them being spike-killed (though not all).

As it stands.... I'm not sure quite what to think of the whole kill-timer thing.
I'm inclined to believe that it may get you MORE drops, but not better ones...

And I'm still trying to test an old theory of my own that how close you stand to the enemy when it dies (besides inside / outside compass range) might influence drop-rates.... I believe by default that it is false.... but rather superstitiously I still insist on having the enemy fully within aggro range when it dies.

So... aside from people agreeing or occasionally disagreeing.... are there any other new observations?

Koning · May 16, 2007, 03:51 PM // 15:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by SotiCoto

I'm inclined to believe that it may get you MORE drops, but not better ones...

I believe every1 was referring to more drops rather than better drops, at least I was. More white/blue/purple drops and more gold coins dorps. As Anet said, rare drops are excluded in loot scaling.

And I still really believe there is some kind of timer involved in the new loot system...

King's Spectre · May 16, 2007, 04:52 PM // 16:52

I agree with OP on #3 even though he didn't agree with me right after HM was released. Ok, you *were* drunk.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10146588

Drop *quality* on the other hand, is strange. I suspect that if you made a new account, got the character up to lvl20 in PvP, and got all your skills with factions unlocks that you would have absolutely phenomenal drops for awhile. Maybe that's why we saw crazy gold drops for the first bit after HM came out. Maybe all our "noob" codes got reset.

deluxe · May 16, 2007, 05:13 PM // 17:13

Alright, my tests prove enough for me.
In the first screenshot, I lowered all foes till they only needed 1 more hit from SF. Then I (fiery)axed all of em to death one by one, resulting in decent drops.
In the second screenshot I just smash em all to death at once, resulting in crap drops. This is not just a "one-time" experience i have, i tested this thoroughly.

(by the way, the reason the killcount on 1st screenshot is higher is because i killed another mob on the other side to test, they also dropped higher than normal when you kill at once)

ArKaiN · May 17, 2007, 02:14 AM // 02:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by deluxe

Alright, my tests prove enough for me.
In the first screenshot, I lowered all foes till they only needed 1 more hit from SF. Then I (fiery)axed all of em to death one by one, resulting in decent drops.
In the second screenshot I just smash em all to death at once, resulting in crap drops. This is not just a "one-time" experience i have, i tested this thoroughly.

(by the way, the reason the killcount on 1st screenshot is higher is because i killed another mob on the other side to test, they also dropped higher than normal when you kill at once)

hey, nice build =D

strcpy · May 17, 2007, 02:15 AM // 02:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by KartMan

however I still do believe that for a given server, the loot is kind of "spread out" amongst the different instances,

In order for that to occur one would need to keep track of it - I'm sure the programmers are quite aware of if they do this or not.

Quote:

Gaile may have said otherwise but it would be only considering the code, like there is truly no "if there is X instances of zone Y then droprate for Y = N/X" or something like this, but the behaviour of their RNG may be unwillingly alterring the drop rate.

Even simple crappy random generators do not work in such a fashion. We know of a few of the Anet programmers and know they have been in gaming for years. Even back when I was doing similar stuff in college (95 or so) it was fairly well understood what the different RNG's could and could not do.

You may have some form of a pattern if they made such a terrible choice even an undergrad in CS would not do it, but then you only get somewhat regular lows and highs, not some form of drop quality lowering based on how many instances of an area you have going. Even lets assume that it uses that as a seed - it *still* will not dictate that even if they just use a plain "rand" from the languages standard library (and game programmers have quite a few good standard RNG's at their disposal). They would have to have tailor made a RNG that did so, and once more the programmers would be quite aware of this.

Quote:

That's at least what I'm convinced of ...

You may want to go re-read how RNG's work and look at the math a bit. Scaling the quality of loot down from the number of instances, how many critters you killed, how fast you killed them, and any thing consistently non-random is not the RNG's fault - it would have to be specifically coded to do so. A bad RNG would make it such that you would know when your "bad luck" and "good luck" streaks were coming and adjust accordingly - not consistently shift luck up or down.

There are three cases - one they are lieing, two they are mistaken, three they are correct and we are seeing patterns that do not exist. Of that, option three is the most likely. Though in the case of how fast one kills things I do not think that Anet has said anything about it specifically so it is still in the "who knows" category and I would that one would be much easier to put into the "bug" category - it isn't necessarily something that would have to be kept track of and *could* very well be caused by something like a seed for the RNG.

lord_shar · May 17, 2007, 02:29 AM // 02:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by deluxe

Alright, my tests prove enough for me.
In the first screenshot, I lowered all foes till they only needed 1 more hit from SF. Then I (fiery)axed all of em to death one by one, resulting in decent drops.
In the second screenshot I just smash em all to death at once, resulting in crap drops. This is not just a "one-time" experience i have, i tested this thoroughly.

(by the way, the reason the killcount on 1st screenshot is higher is because i killed another mob on the other side to test, they also dropped higher than normal when you kill at once)

I've also personally confirmed this using mass-AE kills vs. individual kills. In each case, mobs which were mass-slaughtered dropped considerably less, while the opposite held true when they were killed using triggered non-AE effects like VWK, Sliver Armor, etc...

Conclusion: ANET rewards serial killing, but not mass-genocide

taurus999s · May 17, 2007, 02:50 AM // 02:50

Excellent thread. What are some of the better class or builds to kill swiftly one at a time?

Fresko21 · May 17, 2007, 04:13 AM // 04:13

Populace overfarming used to be a fact, but it's been changed for some time now. The best example was the Shiroken farming outside of Harvest Temple. I was doing it when it was new, and it was by far the most productive run I had ever done. Averaged at least a gold per run, and 2-3k in gold and merchable items. Once it became the "Flavor of the Month" farm, I never hit 1k in gold or items, and gold drops were rare. That wasnt even due to the old farming code, that would be after a few days of not even going to Harvest Temple when I should have been getting drops, but the Temple was full of solo farmers.

I dont believe there's any overpopulace farming code anymore, but it was real, and very noticeable if you checked the flavor of the month builds.

Ive noticed the AoE vs single kill drop rates, but it never really hit until I read this thread. Ill be taking that into much consideration from now on when farming, as you can usually do your runs in the same amount of time, and if you cant, it takes just an extra minute or so.

ArKaiN · May 17, 2007, 04:29 AM // 04:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by taurus999s

Excellent thread. What are some of the better class or builds to kill swiftly one at a time?

sure, 55 with spoil victor.

SotiCoto · May 17, 2007, 12:08 PM // 12:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by King's Spectre

I agree with OP on #3 even though he didn't agree with me right after HM was released. Ok, you *were* drunk.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10146588

Yeah... I don't remember much about that. I think I totally misread what you were talking about... That might have been after I came back from work having drunk a bottle of wine that time.... ^_^;;
Sorry about that.

Quote:

Drop *quality* on the other hand, is strange. I suspect that if you made a new account, got the character up to lvl20 in PvP, and got all your skills with factions unlocks that you would have absolutely phenomenal drops for awhile. Maybe that's why we saw crazy gold drops for the first bit after HM came out. Maybe all our "noob" codes got reset.

There is SOMETHING going on with drop quality... of that I'm sure.... but precisely what it is I can't tell. It seems far too complex for me to readily tell on the spot....
I mean I would have thought it something simpler, but having done a lot of Urgoz's Warren hopping vampire farming lately I was surprised to find that my first character... an Assassin who has been everywhere and done everything for the most part.... is still rolling in golds.

Eli Rela · May 17, 2007, 01:42 PM // 13:42

Ok, tested #3 yesterday, and I can completely confirm that it is true.
Test setup: Rhilon Refuge Zelnehlun farm
SV - each(!) spider dropped something (whites, purples, gold item,webs, gold)
SS - got one drop of gold (100g) and one web

Tested - 5 times in a row, result is always same, with small variations in drop quality, but not much in quantity (+/- 1-2 items)

Very nice summary, Ringsgold

SotiCoto · May 17, 2007, 02:57 PM // 14:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eli Rela

Ok, tested #3 yesterday, and I can completely confirm that it is true.
Test setup: Rhilon Refuge Zelnehlun farm
SV - each(!) spider dropped something (whites, purples, gold item,webs, gold)
SS - got one drop of gold (100g) and one web

Tested - 5 times in a row, result is always same, with small variations in drop quality, but not much in quantity (+/- 1-2 items)

Very nice summary, Ringsgold

Thanks.... but can anyone now test this theory in places other than that spider farm?! =P

If anyone has any way of rapidly killing off Sstou Swiftscale and his Naga Archer hoarde in one fell swoop (from behind the rock-face), I'd like to hear it. I'm considering whether I could take them out with more AoE effects, since SS alone takes too long to kill them all.
So far, I haven't had a single gold from any of them. Two blue scrolls from Sstou himself is the best I've had.... and aside from that, I've been getting TONS of chalks.... mostly because it takes so long to kill them off.

A Leprechaun · May 17, 2007, 02:58 PM // 14:58

i never twigged it at the time and have no screenshots on the subject but when i was mucking about killing HM minos at ice tooth, I noticed that if i killed them with Me/Mo IW the drops were many many times better then if i SS'ed them.
So when yoiu emntioned it, it reminded me of that, so yeah i wont be mass killing for a while.

~A Leprechaun~