Curse

burianek · Jun 13, 2005, 05:05 PM // 17:05

If you read the update page, it seems kinda clear to me:

Quote:

New changes will improve our ability to ... reduce the overall effectiveness of bots, exploits, and other highly repetitive forms of gold and item farming.

We know that some players currently engage in repetitive farming activities for the primary purpose of unlocking skills and items for PvP. Rather than preserving the effectiveness of farming for this purpose, it is our intention to address the larger issue of the need for farming by assessing how players acquire and unlock items, runes, and skills, and then by taking steps to ensure that players can acquire and unlock these things through normal gameplay... You can expect to see the first meaningful changes towards this goal next week.

This was posted last Wednesday, June 8th.

It seems like a two step process:

- Translation of the first paragraph: First they made drops suck. Anet just came out and explicitly stated that they hate farming. Fine, done. I don't think there's any going back, get used to the new system. They did it to make farming pointless. Don't bother responding that drops haven't changed for you. You're either on crack or being intentionally duplicitous. Either way I don't care.

- Next, translation of the second paragraph. They realize that you had to farm to get your items and runes. This week, they'e going to make the fact that drops suck somewhat less relevant. You're going to be able to get runes, items / item unlocks, etc. some other way. Maybe as quest rewards, maybe something else. Heck, maybe they'll be a signet of item capture now. I dunno, those guys get paid to think of clever ideas, I'm sure theirs will be better than mine.

Have patience, they came right out and said it was gonna take a week before they implemented the band aid to soothe the 'drops nerfed' wound. Give them some time to work it out.
Cheers.

codemonkey · Jun 13, 2005, 05:35 PM // 17:35

I believe they could leave the system similar to how it is (less special drops) if they toned the drop's toward the class of character. Again, similar to how I ran D&D games... if a wizard player kills something big and mean they probably have no use for an axe+2 right? So I'd take the random item charts, but re-roll until I got something closer to what the character could use. Perhaps a few scrolls, or a wand of magic missiles.

This is sort of pre-staging an area with things desirable to a type of person or group averaging (three warriors, a mage, and a necro should get swords/axes/hammers/wands/runes, etc.). The concept of farming may end up different as well, because people would be doing less offloading of items because they will be getting stuff they could actually use rather then just sell for money (although older items could be resold if they were not customized).

It would allow users to complain less about crappy drops because items would be more fit to they're class and make those that don't want to sell off tons of useless (to them) weapon upgrades only have to sell stuff they really do not need or have something better. Of course that should not be the only type of drops, but at least be a medium chance of it occuring.

For example a random chart like:
1d100 -

1-35%: Items that are relevant to the character types in the party.
36-71%: Items that are tailored to any type of character (not just party); common materials, crafting items, collector items, etc.
72-82%: Generalized rare items (major runes, rare materials, etc.)
83-95%: Rare items relevant to the party members (purple swords for fighters, etc.)
96-98%: Gold Item(s) that are general to all classes of player
99-100%: Gold items tailored to party members.
(given I don't know the real random algorithm, I'm using a similar D&D style for the concept)

I've only, in the last 45 days of playing with two unique characters (I did /age to tell for sure, I think it was 45 days) and about a combined 160 hours of playtime have received two gold items. One was a superior rune of beast mastery or something, and the other was a gold ankh (energy+12; armor+5; requires like 11 prayers). The ankh is still in my inventory and I've already found someone selling the exact same item (nobody wants it!).

So overall I can't say that the patch really made a big difference in rarity drops; I still don't get that rare of an item to begin with. Lots of blues, several purples, very very very much no golds.

CodeMonkey

Dan Mega · Jun 13, 2005, 06:19 PM // 18:19

For the last week, I too noticed that I was going several missions with only one or 2 blue items to show for it.

Somehow, in some miracle yesterday, I got 2 superior runes, 2 purple items, and 1 gold- all within 15 minutes of each other when going out near the temple of ages to fight minotaurs (with 2 henchies).

I kept the surperior runes and sold the items for nearly 50k total!

Guess it was just my lucky night.

codemonkey · Jun 13, 2005, 06:24 PM // 18:24

Well remember, the game is highly server based so there is a chance they could be tweaking the drop system w/o pushing a client side update....

So there is another random factor for you

You may be testing changes and not even know it

CodeMonkey

Phaedrus · Jun 13, 2005, 06:33 PM // 18:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Studio Ghibli

Anyone want to try explaining how I can run Thunderhead Keep four different times and come up with crap each and every time?

You can ramble all you want about nerf/no nerf, but it still stands I ran that damn mission four times TRYING TO COMPLETE IT and the drops sucked each and every time.

Actually, I can.

Drop rates are based, in part, on morale. If you die, your drops don't get better.

When I help people through missions where we can cap morale, we tend to see great drops. I'd suggest being more selective in forming pick-up groups. :P

[ ]

Studio Ghibli · Jun 13, 2005, 06:35 PM // 18:35

.. if I die, my drops don't improve.

I wouldn't expect them to.

In suggesting that I ran it four times, I meant to suggest that I invested enough time to make it to the Dagnar four times before we ended up dying--and, each time, drops consisted of mostly commons.

Our morale was high until we reached Dagnar--as most everything is easy until that point.

Phaedrus · Jun 13, 2005, 06:39 PM // 18:39

Then you're just incredibly unlucky. I've never failed to see two rare and at least five magical drops on post-ascension missions, and I've been running those missions fairly regularly.

I apologize for the earlier assumption, I just don't consider Dagnar's bit any harder than the rest of the mission. Most deaths I've seen come when clearing the city.

[ ]

Akshara · Jun 13, 2005, 06:46 PM // 18:46

Quote:

I believe they could leave the system similar to how it is (less special drops) if they toned the drop's toward the class of character.

I think this is an excellent idea. My current character is a W/N18 and at the Wilds mission in the jungle, and to date I've unlocked 3 items throughout the entire game playing normally: two bow upgrades and a staff upgrade. It would be really cool if the items that our characters got were related to that profession. Makes total sense to me.

I'm surprised to hear that so many of you are having a difficulty reproducing the "all drops stop" effect. Raiddinn was able to reproduce it, but that's about it. It's happened to me a few times now on long quest runs, where I'm doing several at the same time and then go get the rewards for all of them at once. And I've read posts from and spoken with others who have experienced the same thing. I wonder if there was some kind of setup which made it more frequent the first few days, and then it levelled out after awhile, kinda like the prices at the rune trader.

At this point, I'll just be glad to see what Anet unveils this week with the new update. It's my feeling that the majority of our experiences are simply because of the band aid they put on the bot farming problem, and that things will level out again once this new update is implemented. That's the hope anyway... I'm all for getting rid of excessive farming, and really just want to enjoy finding cool stuff through normal gameplay.

Creston · Jun 13, 2005, 06:47 PM // 18:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phaedrus

Then you're just incredibly unlucky. I've never failed to see two rare and at least five magical drops on post-ascension missions, and I've been running those missions fairly regularly.

I apologize for the earlier assumption, I just don't consider Dagnar's bit any harder than the rest of the mission. Most deaths I've seen come when clearing the city.

[ ]

Do you mean strictly for you, or for the entire party combined?

Creston

Edit : Btw, I would accept the unlucky part, except that I was getting alright drops until last week's update. Nothing fancy, but at least it allowed me to build up money so I could BUY stuff. Now, I'd be lucky if I had 5 plat by the time I take a char from pre-searing to Ascension, the drops are that crappy.

I think Burianek (hi Burianek, how's X3 coming?

) is right when he says that they nerfed the drops in last week's update, and will do something with it hopefully soon.
In my opinion, however, that's a sucky solution. Don't nerf something first, piss off your players for a week (or longer), then fix it. Either nerf and fix at the same time, or fix, THEN nerf. This is the kind of crap that Blizzard used to pull frequently...

Creston

Akshara · Jun 13, 2005, 06:50 PM // 18:50

Quote:

Well remember, the game is highly server based so there is a chance they could be tweaking the drop system w/o pushing a client side update....

So there is another random factor for you You may be testing changes and not even know it

This is a good point as well. Anet might be tweaking things behind the scenes. I haven't played much or gone out solo in a couple of days now, but will have to check it out tonight at some point.

Studio Ghibli · Jun 13, 2005, 06:55 PM // 18:55

Mm.

Yeah, me, my party, and everyone taking note of this here and in that other forum--all unlucky.

There's some kind of mechanism involved, and I'm not sure exactly what it is. Most of my tests have been confined to post-Ascension, so I've been running a character around Fort Ranik with roughly the same results.

Lots of commons, one or two blues, and one purple.

Miyamoto Tzu · Jun 13, 2005, 07:21 PM // 19:21

Hello folks,

Just thought I'd chime in here.

When there's nothing else to do with other folks available I like to do some solo "farming" as a Smiter Monk. Miyamoto is a Mo/E w/9 points in Earth currently so with high Smiting I can do fairly well against lvl 24 mobs that have no knockdown/interrupt capabilities.

There is one portion of one area in particular that is perfect for my needs without taking a long time to get to or requiring henchmen...so I like to repetitively play through this one portion of this one non-mission area to see what I can procure for myself to use or to sell.

It is challenging to engage a group of 3-4 Lvl 24 mobs wearing only Monk armor and having a limited Energy pool as seems to be the lot for the class (I mean seriously, the only way I can transcend 50 Energy is via Morale Bonuses or using an item with negative energy regen...or maybe by finding a really good Insightful Staff...yah, RIGHT!!). It's both challenging and exciting and is certainly fun BUT the drops are the suck lately.

These mobs dont drop any Rune-bearing armor loots. They do drop a lot of white items, some collector/crafting items, gold and good XP per kill but no purple or gold items. I've really been hoping for a godly gold Holy Rod or Staff but no such luck! I've been through this area at least 20 times in the last couple weeks and no rares at all from these lvl 24 mobs!!

Anyways, just wanted to share/vent a bit about this. I know they are working on changing the structure of the rare/special loot system and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with it.

On the other hand I'm a bit apprehensive because they seem to want to make this just another PvP game and I'm somewhat unimpressed with the PvP stuff so far. Any match I've played in, whether GvG or Tombs has always devolved into a confusing mess that ends with "Victory!" or "Defeat!". Every match is the same whether you win or lose but I'm still hoping this will change for me.

Laters,

Tzu

codemonkey · Jun 13, 2005, 07:34 PM // 19:34

I believe its noted in the Prima Guide, and probably a good general concept: Rare/Gold items are typically going to be found on a leader type person and that person is usually found in a remote part of the area that may be hard to get at. And then there is only a random chance they'll drop it

I guess the idea being, you have to hunt around for it you'll pretty much have to kill everything on the map in order to find it and then that's only a "chance" of it occuring. Not sure if that's word of mouth or has any shred of truth to it, but the concept seems solid.

I'm sure that there has to be some level of alteration on that else a person could farm the same guy at the same place over and over to find gold weapons.

Just a thought.

CodeMonkey

codemonkey · Jun 13, 2005, 08:09 PM // 20:09

I feel fairly lucky. I've found lots of cool stuff. Unlucky in that its not something I can use, but I can sell (if I'm once again lucky).

Lucky: Selling minor swordsmanship rune for 890gp at rune trader.
Unlucky: Rune trader offering me 25gp for my Rune of MAJOR Beast Mastery.

CodeMonkey

~Sir Valance~ · Jun 13, 2005, 08:28 PM // 20:28

I've never gotten a Major Rune or Superior..

codemonkey · Jun 13, 2005, 08:31 PM // 20:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by ~Sir Valance~

I've never gotten a Major Rune or Superior..

Good, you want a major rune of beast mastery?

CodeMonkey

Kuku Monk · Jun 13, 2005, 08:31 PM // 20:31

Best drop I've ever received was a Gold Fire Staff. The stats on it were ok, nothing to write home about or anything...had no use for it so I salvaged it and got 6 wood planks....yippie

Phaedrus · Jun 13, 2005, 08:32 PM // 20:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Creston

Do you mean strictly for you, or for the entire party combined?

Edit : Btw, I would accept the unlucky part, except that I was getting alright drops until last week's update. Nothing fancy, but at least it allowed me to build up money so I could BUY stuff. Now, I'd be lucky if I had 5 plat by the time I take a char from pre-searing to Ascension, the drops are that crappy.

Usually for me. The only places I'm inclined to agree on for the "nerf factor" are the Fissure and Underworld. I've noticed a lot less love there. I don't really mind since one plat isn't really much money to begin with, but it bugs me when I take a group of eight and it goes slowly, only to reward our efforts with shadow staffs and dark remains.

The trend I have been noticing though, is that magical/rare drops seem to be very unspectacular if dropped from non-named enemies. I've seen a surge in the number of "clean" (I hate that term, sorry) magic or rare items lately--or rares with one very minor mod.

[ ]

Creston · Jun 13, 2005, 09:12 PM // 21:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phaedrus

Usually for me. The only places I'm inclined to agree on for the "nerf factor" are the Fissure and Underworld. I've noticed a lot less love there. I don't really mind since one plat isn't really much money to begin with, but it bugs me when I take a group of eight and it goes slowly, only to reward our efforts with shadow staffs and dark remains.

Man, that is even WORSE. They specifically IMPLEMENTED the 1 platinum charge three updates ago, and said "We've boosted the loot found in these areas quite extensively to make it worth the entry fee."
And now they've NERFED it again?

*shakes head*

This is such reactionary stopgap patching. They need to sit down, think what they want to do, and then carefully map out a strategy to get there.

It seems right now they're changing things bi-weekly, it's all bouncing around without any seeming direction.

Creston

dansamy · Jun 13, 2005, 11:13 PM // 23:13

See, I think the UW and Fissure's drops need to be improved significantly from what I experienced the other night. In 2 trips to UW, I got 2 globs of ecto and a cool-looking shield. Total haul after selling? Less than 3k. Haven't sold shield yet.