Disappearing Ectos

I came across a very interesting thread on Anet's forum that could potentially add greatly to the community's knowledge about anti-farming code.

I'm not sure I've ever seen this in a situation without any heroes or henchman, but I believe I have seen items before "drop" that never ended up on the ground and were never listed in the text as this person describes. I wonder what causes this?

https://forum.guildwars.com/forum/fo...s-disappearing

sometimes i see stuff too, i don't know if my mind is playing tricks on me aswell.

I have seen that multiple times. I've always assumed they were drops that are automatically assigned to my heroes/hench and picked up immediately.

Seen this as well, though outside of UW with regular drops, assumed it was due to...

- Guild Wars Wiki

Though this shouldn't apply for most areas in UW.

Yes indeed, it does happen. There's even documented cases of minipets getting drops (visible w. screenie), which cannot be picked up by the player.

If Rurik can get drops I wonder how many ectos the Reapers in UW collected in 7 years.

It's almost as funny as disappearing Griffs when I run EoE in FoWSC

Over the course of a 78 month account I have seen this happen many times all over the game. It could be that the farming code is bugged and sometimes slows down an extra frame. I have actually seen it slow down enough to see my name on the drop.

I too have seen stuff on the ground for a millisecond! Not in the air but actual text on the ground. Happens especially when I do W/N raptor farming, which the spike sometimes lag and I would see drops and they disappear.
I believe that's loot scaling in action but some part of my mind tell me it's just my illusion.

I have seen that too in UW solo farming...
Also, did anyone noticed that when killing mobs at same time you get far less loot?
When I farm Vaettirs with A/Mo AoE build they mostly go down at same time and I noticed that only 1 or 2 drop loot when 10+ of them go down at same moment. But when they die one by one they drop something more often.

Yes! With good spikers doing uwsc there is a DRAMATIC difference depending on whether the ball died at the same time or not.

uh oh, some people destroyed my belief that its an illusion

well, at least i know i'm not seeing things
seeing so many drops and thinking you see some, while there's nothing o_O

That's the exact reason Sliver Armor used to be so popular in solo farming builds.

afaik it's an anti-farming measure put up a while ago

so is the drops disappearing in mid air, even when no other aliies or group members are present, is that loot scaling or some crap?

They used to have anti-farming code that would reduce drops the more you famred an area. They changed that out for lootscaling a few years ago.

What gothic is noticing is something a lot of farmers call the Rate of Kill bug (it's called a bug in the sense that Anet has never said that they intended drops to be less if you kill things all at once vs. one by one.)

I can't recall ever seeing drops that disappear when solo farming. I have seen drops tagged for heroes that disappear pretty quick.

The lootscaling code basically makes it so that you get about half the available drops for a full party when you are solo (or other names are greyed out in party window) so it is certainly possible that this is the lootscaling code working. No official response to the thread, so it's hard to say one way or another.

Edit...ectos are actually exempt from lootscaling, so that doesn't make sense now that I think about it....must be something else.

/sarcasm: it dem bots glitching the reapers and teleporting in and stealing the ectos...

yeah I have seen it and then asked ducky and sosucky to GIVE MY DROPS BACK, yet they refuse....dang heroes, we clothe them, give them really nice weapons, make them carry NOTHING and they still steal from us!
Next time we stop in the pub for a drink I am going to leave Koss and Goren there to pay the check!!

I'm betting that's how Dunk got those scars. Lazy mofo...

Heroes should not be taking drops when you are SOLO in a zone all by yourself...
I have seen this in action in UW myself and am mystified.