what is the deal with drops!?

That's why I go back to my earlier argument that it would be nice if UPGRADES were dropped a bit more often, rather than "already maxed out" stuff. That way players could upgrade standard white stuff with what they think is important rather than for what is already on it. It would raise the value of "plain white" items and make farming for uber items less likely.

Now before anyone bites my head off: I realize that it seems to only transfer farming from the "whole" item to the upgrades. Maybe it would... I don't know. I just know that, even culling through all the items on just this one sell forum, I have only found one or two things that have the stuff on them that -I- want. *shrugs*

-search- ... even highlights your words in red so you dont have to read everything.

I agree 100%! You are right on the money! Finding cool items are part of the FUN of PvE! Not ALL of us want to break the economy...most of us just want to explore and get awesome stuff.

I wish that they would allow items being sold to merchants to be 'viewable' and 'purchaseable' by others in the area. If nothing else, just for a limited amount of time.

Better than that: Allow the merchants to sell decent stuff instead of the junk they DO sell. They're not very good merchants if they don't sell goodish stuff. I sort of think of Griswold in the original Diablo: He sold good stuff. You could find better, but you could also get pretty good stuff.

There could be alot of reasons why drops were a bit to good at the beginning and now are a bit scarce. IMO the current sytem seem's to be in line with the way things should be. Gold is incredibly easy to come by with a bit of effort and getting 10k a run is very possible. In the Prima guide it states that 1-3 rares are assigned to an area and generally the higher level monsters will hold them(but I believe this has changed since)and it also stated that the mob it was assigned to doesnt always drop that rare item. The way I see the current system is the way it is stated in the guide. I still farm but not for gold but for XP and unlockables. The one thing I have noticed lately is when I try to salvage good upgrades off of weapons, including rares, my success rate has seemed to drop to around 10%. The better the item, the less my chances of salvaging a component off of it but hey, I have a boat load of wood now

Think AN would let you build or craft a boat?

Here are things I hope to do in this game and the reason I enjoy framing.

---

1. Anyone who has ever had a gold drop, knows it is fun and exiting for some strage reason.

2. I hope to find great weapons for my characters

3. I want to have alot of gold.. who doesnt..

4. I need the gold to buy things, perhaps good weapons, or upgrades, armor, whatever.

5. Most importantly... ITS FUN! I enjoy going out to witmans folly and farming the grawl. Just too bad not too much ever comes out of it. (Especially since rune prices are soo low - I found a superior tactics, went to the trader, trader was selling it for 125 gold)

Anyone who "farms" would probably tell you those same things.

When we dont have favor, I am usually out killing stuff hoping for good drops.. what else is there to do.

Drops aren't as good? I dunno about now compared to the early days of GW since i've only been playin 2-3 weeks, but today I got 3 gold drops in 2 hours of playing, and usually get a very high rate of purple and blue.

Nothing over 10k? Oh you poor person

Thanks a lot Magik, ill try it soon- I'm trying to get money for FoW armor & materials but i still think its going to take a long long long time.......

As for farming.... all i ever do is take UW or FoW runs; if we dont have favor, i have my new char to build up...

you are all missing the point of why I started the thread.

I wasnt complainin about the QUALITY of drops. but the fact that so many creatures so quickly drop NOTHING AT ALL (No gold, no whites, no blues, no pruple, no golds, no materials, no collectables).

when you DO get a drop, the system for deciding what that drop is works well IMO. but the fact that no matter where I go, or what I do a full 40% (at least) drop NOTHING is stupid.

I have finished PvE. PvP sucks IMO (and is not why I baught the game).

All I do ingame now is change my armor, change the colors, but new and different LOOKING weapons and shields, and run from A-B killing things.

with this constant lack of anything dropped at all, making gold is hard, getting new weapons/shields/armor is REALLY HARD (bought or found).

i dont have that problem... guess im lucky...


it happen that i get nothing, but only in the first or two hydra that i kill, after i get all the time blue/purple/hydra claw/gold

Wow you're lucky

I wouldn't put it past Anet to have coded item drops differently for different serial keys, to promote trade or engaging in other nonfarming activities. After all, it seems that the problems are consistent for one group, but the exact opposite is consistent for another, while some are in the middle.

</conspiracytheory>

well all I can say is I have well over 300 hours into this game so far. for a long time I was happy with the drops. I mean i never EVER had a perfect anything drop and it was rare to get any max dmg weapons and such but I atleast got some cool stuff, some decent to good quality stuff.

its been quite some time since I had any good drops at all. I mean its like all the monsters stopped dropping, or when they do its utter crap items. Im all about PvE and I enjoy playing out the missions and such but I also like to find good stuff while adventuring. Theres really no reward for my time any more. I can do this, do that...beats this mob, that mob, and what reward do I get? I find something, someplace out in the middle of no where...what do I get for my troubles? nada.

this game really does need to reward the PvE player a bit more.

First of all, the economy needs to get under control. Prices need to be lowered because anything going for over 100k is getting unreasonable. Lowering the drop rate is only going to make matters worse because the less of an item, the more demand for it there is.

There is a HUGE advantage for people who farmed before the patch changing drops was released. They were able to accumulate a hoarde of expensive weapons, upgrades, and items which they can now sell for an inflated price since drops are much more scarce. This is downright frustrating for anyone starting the game or anyone who hasn't been able to heavily farm.

As stated before, finding items is fun. I wouldn't mind if monsters that dropped items were EXTREMELY hard, as long as their drops matched their difficulty. Right now, there are almost no places you can go where the time and effort of killing a monster is worth the drop you receive from it.

The PvP aspect of the game seems like something to do other than PvE. The only reason I play PvP is because of boredom from playing PvE. I like to go and explore, and hope to possibly explore all of the map someday, but nothing seems to drop and it just seems to be a waste of time. Therefore, I choose to go play PvP, however, PvP is dull and boring with the same repetiveness.

In short, there is nothing left to do in the game. After it has been beaten, you are VERy limited as to what options you have. You can either farm/explore, (unworthwhile) make a new character, (when only 4 can be made) or PvP (which gets dull fast). I can't see buying any expansions for this game unless something is done to make more options available after you beat the game.

Anet said in a patch that they were going to eliminate the need for farming. Since then I have not done any farming. I have simply played the game, including going to UW and Fissure. It's not working out so well for me. I play every day for 4 or more hours. With 3 ascended characters, two of which are at Ring of Fire area, I have not found a single superior rune. Other than absorption and vigor I don't really care. It's just the idea of unlocking superiors. I've recently been doing PVP and looks like it'll be much faster/easier to just get the runes I want with faction. Since the nerfs and supposed "elimination of need to farm" I have not found anything of value. I used to find a rare every 2-3 days through normal gameplay, but now it's been two weeks and no rares for me. Maybe it's just bad luck though, I don't know.

Since I haven't been farming I don't know about no drops at all. I thought they fixed that in a previous patch and that all npcs drop something.

You and I are in the same boat, my first time through the game I got plenty of gold items playing through the game. It was sort of goofy and fun, "Oooh, a Furious Maul of Pruning!" Or those great items that required the skills from one class but boosted the skills from another (sure it'll help some people out, but finding them to trade with them is /rough/!).

Anyhow, I figured I'd just play through the game two more times to unlock all the skills and by that point AN would have their issues sorted out. Instead I'm left wishing that I /had/ farmed earlier since I cannot get the rares I need for the life of me. My new concern is that in some update they'll make it so you unlock items by completing missions and quests. Then having beaten the game 3 times will have been a waste....

-Diomedes

I don't really agree with you here. I think their system for deciding what properties an Uncommon or Rare item has sucks, plain and simple.

I have over 700k XP on my Monk. I have finished the game with my Mo/E and my W/Mo and done a bunch of PvP as well as repeated many missions with my finished characters.

Two days ago I found a Purple Max Dmg Holy Rod!! I was doing a skill capture run with my W/Mo in Mineral Springs...this is the first Holy Rod I have found that has not been White or Blue. I was very excited...I finally thought I had found a good Holy Rod for my Monk to use...THEN I IDENTIFIED IT!!

It was a Purple Max Dmg Holy Rod...that was it...no mods...nothing at all to justify the different color....it's just a common piece of crap in a purple wrapper.

This is not the first or only time this type of thing has happened. It's very common for me to find uncommon or rare items with no special stats or with mods you can find in the Old Ascalon areas (lower level stuff) that I've had drop from level 24+ mobs.

I really hope they amend their loot system because it currently stinks and no longer conforms to the advertised promises on the game box (reduced grind factor).

I have yet to experience a large number of mobs yielding no drops whatsoever but I also dont go out farming much anymore. I currently play to unlock stuff for a future PvP only character I'm going to make.

IMHO the huge and knee-jerk-nasty farming nerf has sucked 60% of the fun/replayability right out of the game. Unlocking everything is sort of fun in its own right but I like having the skills on my PvE characters so that I can play them in PvP too...seems stupid to spend hundreds of hours unlocking stuff just to scrap your PvE character completely in favor of an insta-20 rag doll.

Laters,

Tzu

Good post, Miyamoto.