Curse

Winx.ZN · Jun 22, 2006, 05:50 AM // 05:50

I just have to say, I do not totally agree with the "IMPACT ON XP/LOOT" of the SOF website.

Who should the smites, aataxe, coldfires hate more? The person killing them, or the person using 3 spells. (ps, hb, bonettis) Yet time after time, I get the drops (all that nice white stuff) and the necro might get one or two things. This happens even after holding aggro the necro comes and stands next to me.

Secondly, since the aggro item nerf tanks have to manage aggro the right way. Most times those tanks are set to "survival mode" and most of the skills I would think the AI thinks are less important than a healing monk, an ele, a necro etc.

Thirdly, that article says nothing about characters getting an averge of better drops (not loot distribution) than others. So, the myth is still unsolved.

Last, playing safe "monks get no loot" is false in my case. He's probably the luckiest. Gets gold drops regulary (when I id them, well...).

The thing I do agree with is damage caused may affect loot distribution. An easy example of it is using NPCs by shrines. If you hurt a monster all the way down to 10% health and the NPC kill him off the rest, youll get the drop, on the other hand, if you bring the monster to the NPCs while still at a relativley high level of health and the NPC kill it, youll get nothing.

-done thinking for now-

Wyldchild777 · Jun 22, 2006, 06:11 AM // 06:11

Greetings,

I just had to pop in here and comment. When I saw all the comments about drop rates being random, I just cringed in my chair. With computers, there is no such thing as random. A computer is incapable of making a random decision/choice. This is coming from my years as a computer programmer. Snowman and others have it right - the computer must use "seed" numbers in a calculation for it's "random" number. The thing is - a computer can make computations so fast that when a monster dies, more than a million computations can be made between the death and the item drop. But, it is not a "random" drop.

By the way - the most common "seeds" for a computer's "random" decision is the date as well as the time (down to the fraction of a second) that the computation takes place.

When the drop rate is looked at in this way, along with the mounting testimonies from the various forum posts (along with my own experiences), it seems that there is a portion of the "seed" that is taken from either the account key or a character "tag". For example - the numerical equivalents of the letters in your account key are added together as part of the total "seed" number used in the "random" computation. Or, the letters of your character's name are used instead of the account key.

Truth be told, though, this is getting way too much "behind-the-scenes" about the game's programming, so we more than likely won't be hearing any kind of offical confirmation from ANet about how the loot system assigning works.

As for my own drops - I've been playing since August of 2005, and I've only gotten: one non-max green from outside Shing Jea Monastery, 3 golds worth doing anything more than merchant selling, no superior monk, warrior, or vigor runes. I've resigned myself to being a broke bum and mooching off of my room-mate's success

.

Hope this helps those who are still scratching their heads over this whole issue.

Merry meet, merry met, merry meet again,
Wyldchild777

AlbinoChocobo · Jun 22, 2006, 08:41 AM // 08:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wildi

antifarm code was always real, some people still don't belive it

Do you have a link for that update, it'd would be handy for citation in future antifarm code arguments.

I've seen the bug actually. Went out with henchies, remembered to take a cap signet, so went back to town and exited right away. Drops where incredible crap (when there was drops at all). I was wondering if antifarm hadn't gotten too sensitive ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bitoku Kishi

but one thing I do know beyond any doubt from my own personal experience is that gameplay style can definitely affect drop rates.

Any hint there ? I do seem to get far better drop in Cantha than in Tyria, and better drops with my necro than with previous chars. Then again, no ground for comparison, since I'm mostly playing my Canthan necro through faction atm.

Quote:

Originally Posted by KiyaKoreena

The 4th charcter of his is constantly getting gold drops (up to 4 a run), coming out with an average 6k per run, and has gotten 5 black dyes from this spot over the last 3 days. I need to find my magic spot...

That would fit with the seeding theory : loot determined by character + local identifier. That would mean lucky UW farmers, but what if your lucky spot is old ascalon ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by skizdidlyidler

There is no code to make something actually and literally random.

yep, but there is code for decent pseudo-random ; that would be good enough.

Correcting for character activity is fine, but that will lead to major exploits (ie : leecher stays away from party for most of quest/mission, and moves in at boss to collect the goodies). It could also disrupt team dynamics : if doing damage improves your drops, wth ! I'm a prot monk, i don't deal damage, I deal _with_ damage ... I'm also relatively far from the action most of the time. If monking means dealing with disgruntled tanking eles (<avoid assassin trolling>) and getting crappy drops, this char will soon convert to 55/605 gentleman farmer ...

Shruikan_Shade · Jun 22, 2006, 09:47 AM // 09:47

I have seen screnshots of the anti-farm bug, it IS real.

However i am not sure how to get rid of it...........whehter to farm another area until you get it there, or just not to farm there for a long period of time. Overall, it seems a bit pointless to use it when no-one knows about it or how to get rid of it.

CyberNigma · Jun 22, 2006, 10:10 AM // 10:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlbinoChocobo

Do you have a link for that update, it'd would be handy for citation in future antifarm code arguments.

That is assuming it was an update. If it was in the game from the get-go then it would not be documented anywhere, as it wouldn't be an update. It may be kind of like looking for the update that says Prince Rurik has Hundred Blades.

Farmer · Jun 22, 2006, 10:30 AM // 10:30

The loot system, totally random or not, is fair and just. People just simply don't know how to appreciate lucky moments and whine about every unlucky thing upon them.

People gets jealous when others get good things and selfishly believes a gain by others is a lose of himself; on the other hand, when he gets lucky, he continues to seek the next profit like a greedy dog and never gets enough. When both the jealous anger toward others' lucks and greed without bound boil his mind, he crys for the God's "unfairness". Since he puts himself in the center of all, he of course cannot understand why God's blessing isn't shining right at the "center".

Mr_T_bot · Jun 22, 2006, 10:33 AM // 10:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Farmer

The loot system, totally random or not, is fair and just.

No, it isn't. If it was fair and just, everyone would get an equal share of decent loot. As opposed to something like, 4 purples dropping during a mission and going to exactly 2 people.

unienaule · Jun 22, 2006, 05:55 PM // 17:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winx.ZN

I just have to say, I do not totally agree with the "IMPACT ON XP/LOOT" of the SOF website.

Who should the smites, aataxe, coldfires hate more? The person killing them, or the person using 3 spells. (ps, hb, bonettis) Yet time after time, I get the drops (all that nice white stuff) and the necro might get one or two things. This happens even after holding aggro the necro comes and stands next to me.

Secondly, since the aggro item nerf tanks have to manage aggro the right way. Most times those tanks are set to "survival mode" and most of the skills I would think the AI thinks are less important than a healing monk, an ele, a necro etc.

Thirdly, that article says nothing about characters getting an averge of better drops (not loot distribution) than others. So, the myth is still unsolved.

Last, playing safe "monks get no loot" is false in my case. He's probably the luckiest. Gets gold drops regulary (when I id them, well...).

The thing I do agree with is damage caused may affect loot distribution. An easy example of it is using NPCs by shrines. If you hurt a monster all the way down to 10% health and the NPC kill him off the rest, youll get the drop, on the other hand, if you bring the monster to the NPCs while still at a relativley high level of health and the NPC kill it, youll get nothing.

-done thinking for now-

Did you actually read the entire thing? It is unknown how much hate healing skills generate, but healing skills DO generate hate, and lots of it, if used a lot. By "playing safe" he means the closer you are to a "sit there and do nothing" build, the less hate you generate, so the less stuff you get. This theory is supported by some statistics Savio and I took on Orozar's runs in Sorrow's Furnace. For the last 30-40 runs, he ran a build which enabled him to take a gear and just stand there and not do any damage or healing. He got exactly zero drops, but, according to the average drop rate from the total of 130+ runs, he should have gotten from 8-10. Could it possibly be a coincidence? Yeah, except for that towards the start, his drops were much better than mine when he was doing lots of spike damage and using skills, etc. Now, is this data very precise? Not really, but now that more people start to pay attention to this, I'm hoping for someone to get some really good data, or maybe even for a release from Anet. *crosses fingers*

Sir Skullcrasher · Jun 22, 2006, 06:08 PM // 18:08

I remember going into tomb when it first released and saw one person getting both Victos Axe and Blade at the same time. I really don't know how drop is assigned but i do believe there is codes or programs that limit the amount of drops after you overfarm certain areas.

joobelix moo · Jun 22, 2006, 07:20 PM // 19:20

My theory:

If you farm.. say.. Wing, Three Blade(Can someone "donate" his axe to me

? IGN Joobelix Moo)

You farm with 7 friends

You go 80 times, and nothing drops fo you
In theory, there should be 10 drops for you, and 10 drops for each other player.
But all of the other players get their drops the first 70 times. In that case, presuming A Net use a Ratio pattern for their drops, you will get 10 drops in a row. You WILL get your fair ratio of drops, just maybe not at the start, and you may need to do 80 more runs, with the first 140 being unsucsessfull.

So to recap
-You WILL get your fair ratio- Albeit not spread out

like you go 8 times and you get nothing, but you go another 8 times and you get 4 drops, so the next 16 times you go you wont get aything.

aB- · Jun 22, 2006, 10:08 PM // 22:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wyldchild777

Greetings,

I just had to pop in here and comment. When I saw all the comments about drop rates being random, I just cringed in my chair. With computers, there is no such thing as random. A computer is incapable of making a random decision/choice. This is coming from my years as a computer programmer. Snowman and others have it right - the computer must use "seed" numbers in a calculation for it's "random" number. The thing is - a computer can make computations so fast that when a monster dies, more than a million computations can be made between the death and the item drop. But, it is not a "random" drop.

Nothing can truly ever be completely random. Random is just a concept. But computers can get pretty close to random - close enough that it should not matter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wyldchild777

By the way - the most common "seeds" for a computer's "random" decision is the date as well as the time (down to the fraction of a second) that the computation takes place.

When the drop rate is looked at in this way, along with the mounting testimonies from the various forum posts (along with my own experiences), it seems that there is a portion of the "seed" that is taken from either the account key or a character "tag". For example - the numerical equivalents of the letters in your account key are added together as part of the total "seed" number used in the "random" computation. Or, the letters of your character's name are used instead of the account key.

You bring up an interesting point, and know much more than I do about computers generating random numbers. However, from what I understand, there is very little one could do to get better drops. In that case, it would be best to just play the game instead of complaining on a forum about bad drops.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wyldchild777

As for my own drops - I've been playing since August of 2005, and I've only gotten: one non-max green from outside Shing Jea Monastery, 3 golds worth doing anything more than merchant selling, no superior monk, warrior, or vigor runes. I've resigned myself to being a broke bum and mooching off of my room-mate's success

.

Getting ANY gold items is lucky. Even if your gold comes with just 10% vs. plants, the fact that you got a gold in the first place makes you lucky. To get a gold, AND get good mods on it is extremely lucky and rare.
[/QUOTE]

The Great Al · Jun 23, 2006, 02:08 AM // 02:08

I think I'm right in the middle...neither lucky nor unlucky. I went out with a full group, and on our first run I was the only one to get the green Ice Breaker. I get a decent amount of gold drops, but they're almost never worth selling. With chests, I got maybe 6 purples in a row when I went with henchies. For the most part, however, I only open chests when I am with a real PuG and someone else opens it first, that way i don't waste money on purple chests.

Something to note, however: Without a doubt, I get more drops on my warrior than my elementalist or monk

Branskins · Jun 23, 2006, 02:17 AM // 02:17

I really think it is random and a game of chance... I do not believe in luck

Angelica · Jun 23, 2006, 06:19 AM // 06:19

Well I don't farm and I don't get any good drops at all!
But I know of people who farms a lot and get very nice drops and they are rich too!

AlbinoChocobo · Jun 23, 2006, 08:15 AM // 08:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by CyberNigma

That is assuming it was an update. If it was in the game from the get-go then it would not be documented anywhere, as it wouldn't be an update. It may be kind of like looking for the update that says Prince Rurik has Hundred Blades.

I was referring to the screen cap. posted by Wildi (http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...4&postcount=82)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Farmer

he continues to seek the next profit like a greedy dog and never gets enough. When both the jealous anger toward others' lucks and greed without bound boil his mind, he crys for the God's "unfairness".

someone needs a hug

but there's truth in that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr_T_bot

No, it isn't. If it was fair and just, everyone would get an equal share of decent loot. As opposed to something like, 4 purples dropping during a mission and going to exactly 2 people.

Hate to disagree with the big man, but equal share is fair split, not random. If you toss two coins, odds of getting heads+tails are only 50% ; half the time you'll be yelling "wtf ! 2 heads ! no fair for tails !" (or the other way round).

On a small scale, random occurences will often seem to cluster ; since us humans live by patterns, we will manage to see some. Add to that, as Farmer stated, that time flies when you're happy whereas we can appreciate every second of misery, in a truly random system you'll just think you're mostly getting ripped off, ie : focusing on drops you didn't get.

Ran a few missions yesterday with my necro, multiple dye drops, 5/6 were for me (+1 crappy gold), which started the party griping. Well, I've had a dry spell before, so things kind of even out in the long run ..

Quote:

Originally Posted by unienaule

but healing skills DO generate hate, and lots of it, if used a lot. By "playing safe" he means the closer you are to a "sit there and do nothing" build, the less hate you generate, so the less stuff you get.

This looks good on paper, but I still think the balancing may be a bit off. I've been playing (non-smiting) monks for a while now (monkey got his birthday present

), and a necro (currently MM) for 3 weeks. Both are going through factions, and (no objective statistics) I seem to get far better loot with necro girl than with my monk.
This could support the character creation skew theory, or just be due to a fairly more aggressive style (I guess minion damage count toward master hate) or yo-yo health bar, which would definitely be unfair for monks (it's not as though I was sitting there doing _nothing_, whereas MM is mostly spawn spawn nova spawn), or ritualists for that matter.

Anybody seen the same pattern ?

Pandora's box · Jun 23, 2006, 10:34 AM // 10:34

Random drops don't mean everyone has the same chance to find something. Like someone already stated: It depends on the seed (mostly time based with eventually account or chr. based parameters added). So some may be more lucky than others.

I myself found only 1 green from the moment they started dropping. But the many runs I did to get to the bosses dropping greens provided me with more than enough gold to buy the desired unique that did not drop for me. So the result is the same. But I admit, I would prefer the thrill of a green dropping above the gold to buy it.

Numa Pompilius · Jun 23, 2006, 11:04 AM // 11:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wyldchild777

I just had to pop in here and comment. When I saw all the comments about drop rates being random, I just cringed in my chair. With computers, there is no such thing as random.

Would the computer 101 students please stop with the semantics?
It's true that it's not actually literally random, and it's equally true that from the POV of the user, provided the routine isn't buggy, there is no discernible difference to if it was.
Hence, that the drops are not in the actual literal sense "random" is completely irrelevant.

Secondly, please everyone understand how 'random' works. Tossing a coin and seeing which side comes up is random, yet there is absolutely nothing prohibiting you from getting tails ten times in a row. Or 20 times in a row. In fact, toss the coin enough times and you *will* get tails 20 times in a row. It is only when the heads vs tails is _averaged over a large number of tosses_ that the probability of getting, say, tails become 0.5.

Now, it is possible the random number generator used by ANet is buggy or biased or sticky, but going out of a town and getting no drop at all from killing a bunch of mobs proves NOTHING. Going out of a town twice and getting no drop at all from killing a bunch of mobs STILL proves nothing. Getting two superior vigor in a row when everyone else in the team get nothing ALSO proves nothing.

You want to prove something, you start jotting down every kill, every drop, every mob, for every player in the team, and once you have several hundred entries, you do a statistical analysis.

Everything else is just idle speculation.

Regarding the anti-farm code: yes of course it exists. If you kill the same thing & zone repeatedly, you get less drops, and need to go somewhere else and kill something else to reset it. That's no secret. You even get a help-message telling you about it (if you haven't turned off hints in options).

eudas · Jun 23, 2006, 02:17 PM // 14:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Numa Pompilius

You want to prove something, you start jotting down every kill, every drop, every mob, for every player in the team, and once you have several hundred entries, you do a statistical analysis.

Everything else is just idle speculation.

QFT.

Go to http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Drop_rate and add in your statistics. *That's* how you help us figure out what drops what and when and how much and to whom.

All this anecdotal evidence ("once, when i was in zone X, i got item Y Z times in a row, lol!") is useless.

eudas

Ismoke · Jun 23, 2006, 04:57 PM // 16:57

my drop rate sucks just like the rest!! Is totally BIASED.

Ex. Napuhi Quarter Mission.

5 guildies no golds for me, everyone else got a gold(Celetial shield Req9 tactics -4 +41 health enchant) best drop by far.

I have always gotten crap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FIXE IT PLZ>> i want my wheaties!!!!

Loviatar · Jun 23, 2006, 05:54 PM // 17:54

has anybody else noticed that the drop rate on rubys is way up after the last update?

maybe a bug but i got 3 today off low level enemies in one short session.

going back for more