Originally Posted by strcpy

If that showed anything I wouldn't mind doing it, however it doesn't. What you need to do is record *every single drop* you get, no matter what and where you are for long enough for any patterns to show (*at least* 30 or so runs). Make sure you note each "run" what the variables are (that is - new player with me, old player with me, solo, etc). Just record the things that matter to you - value of what you merch, number of shards/ecto, number of gold.

That isn't the way random number work with a computer. Yes, there is eventually a pattern but it repeats after a certain period per seed (and is why PRNG's re-seed from time to time), that period is generally fairly large and would not cause a depression in drops on older characters or hit any one particular character more than others systematically. While true that the sequnce generated is deterministic for any statistical analysis of the data it conforms to being "random" - that is there is no discernible pattern.

What this means is that you can not predict that next state generated from looking at the previous ones (and thus, for all intents random) but if you knew the algorithm used and the seed you could predict each successive exactly. This doesn't cause a single individual to experience anti-farming code in any way and has nothing to do with it. Even with the *REALLY* poor ones that you are going to find a pattern by looking at the outcomes they take large amounts of data and generally complex statistical analysis to find the pattern (and since PRNG's are central to much of gaming they do not use the bad ones and haven't since the early Atari 2600 days). And, even then, all it would allow you to do is to predict what is going to drop next, not have a systematic depression of drop quality against a single individual.

Even should they seed off of "time spent in game" it *still* wouldn't degrade drops for long term players unless they used a *really* poor PRNG and, again, the field is old enough that it is well known how to avoid this - it takes intentionally doing so even if there is one out there (I know of none as that destroys the whole statistically random thing). Plus it puts us back into the Anet is liars and it violating any of the longer term data anyone has compiled.

All of this is drilled into your head on any course dealing with seminumerical algorithms (go have a read of Knuth's volume two of The Art of Computer Programming/Seminumerical Algorithms). Your taking a small tidbit of information and carrying too far - you know enough to extrapolate some *really* incorrect ideas.

Originally Posted by tmakinen

There are two options, either (1) ANet has misinformed us and implemented a complex and mischievous piece of anti-farming code in addition to the well established loot scaling effect, or (2) people are seeing patterns where none exist, like in 'other lanes are always faster than mine' (a psychological illusion confirmed to exist even if the test subject is aware of it).

Originally Posted by Crom The Pale

Time has always been a large part of making money in GW, but most don't realise how much time is involved.

Some people will claim to make 5-10K every hour, and they probably do, but they don't factor in how long it took them to lvl their char, unlock all skills needed and reach the area they are farming/runing/ect.....

Making lots of money in GW is easy, but it does take time.

Simple completing most missions on normal mode will net you 1-2K at an average mission time of 30-60min. More on hard mode.

You can lear any map in GW in about an hour with a full party and make between 1-10K depending on drops.

There are several places people pay for runs at 1-4K each.

The real trick is to not spend any money at all once you start saving up for something. It's harder to do than most think because many people are trying to save before they have fully equiped a char, then they find they need a diff rune or weapon mod to improve the performance of thier build and there goes 1-30K just like that.

Once you have a lvl 20 char that is fully equiped and has completed at least one campain it is very easy to make lots of money in a REASONABLE amount of time.