Darksong (Kind of Rantish)

This thread is hilarious. Some people will simply not replace their personal anecdotal experience with the solid-as-rock official Anet response (as voiced by Gaile), backed up by very successful and much more experienced farmers (I humbly consider myself one of these).

What I also find amusingly fitting is that those who continue to hold onto their misperceptions will continue to be unsuccessful farmers, because they don't understand how anti-farm works.

Keeps the more intelligent and open-minded farmers a bit ahead. I could pretty much split most of the people who have posted in this thread into these two camps, and I can guarantee you which side is overwhelmingly more succesful.

I got Terob's Wand today with henchies. It's a very nice wand, IMO, I love the +5 energy. Shame it's not worth a whole lot :P

Well managed to get Darksong without even trying, just happened to be passing by and with a full hench & hero compliment and almost fell off my seat, especially as I was using my Necro at the time

It is if you'll use it!

Gee, thx, Blackhawk. I really needed to hear how a Darksong just sorta fell into your lap.

Even were that the case it is totally irrelevant. It is sufficient to be called "random". Drops do not need an algorithm to be cryptographically secure.

As long as they do the calculations in computer it will *always* be deterministic. That's the nature of the beast - our computers do not handle non-determinism at all.

While I am sure there are some that want this, no one in the thread is arguing for that. If you *really* want to see mass leaving I suggest you do that. The complaint is that they believe people over farming an area effect the whole. Anet says it doesn't do that, while I too always thought they did I will have to side with the devs.

Correct, however I would, personally, go with server logs and sales. Those are the people playing the game. I would have to say that managing a few software projects really changed how I view things. It's amazing the things I never knew about the code I wrote and how "everyone" wanted something different than what our server/usage logs showed. Developers may lie, but they do generally tend to know if their code does certain things.

yes, but there are varying degrees of separation from being close to unpredictable to being fairly predictable (which was my point). I don't think we need anything near what OpenBSD requests upon installation for seeding SSH (I don't enjoy a screen or two of semi-random characters myself), but it should be to a point where a particular, close-knit group of people, cannot (with a very good amount of accuracy) predict which characters within the group are going to get the 'top of the line' drops and which ones are going to get crap.




Unfortunately, that could be too late. Like I mentioned in the Factions GotY thread, sales of that expansion were very good, but that could easily correlate to a 'high' among players coming off of a much beloved Prophecies. I don't believe they've released similar information concerning Nightfall yet. ANet is new, so they have not done anything like that in the past, I'll give them, but other, not so new companies have indeed taken their product down the drain, for doing things contrary to what their players said they wanted. I know of at least two MMOs, one fairly large in the past few years that have done just that, and several non-MMO type developers who have done something similar in the case of sequels.

I'd like to see them implement the 'last logged on' feature that the guild list has into the friends list. I'm sure they'll say its some kind of privacy issue, but if it were implemented, maybe I can actually see when most of the people in my long friends list have logged on (as it appears to be mostly empty nowadays). Of course, that's not necessarily a morale-builder either.

as far as greens, well, here's a solution, although it would require some additional space on the back-end to save the relevant data, at least a byte (or smaller if you wanted to use bitwise ops on each block) for each green in the game, scalable for each new green introduced, per character. each character starts out with the counter at 1, a 5% chance to get a particular green when he/she is ]in a party that kills that boss (taking into account the same rules as drops/xp where he/she would have to have contributed/been there). if the character does not get the green, the counter increments by 1 (each increment increasing the chance by 5%, up to a maximum of 95%). Unless that character's player is really unlucky (it could happen), that character should be able to 'farm' that green in under 20 kills regardless of party size. After the character gets the green, set the counter to 0, giving further attempts the same ungodly chance that you currently hav e to get any particular green, without ever incrementing again. the numbers could be changed to 10% increments (with a 90% cap) if they wanted the greens to be given out faster. regardless, with enough effort, even someone not smart enough to figure out how to solo farm a particular boss would be able to get in a group to go get it. Is it realistic? no, but most of us aren't playing the game for its realism in the first place.

This would give your regular players a chance to go out there with friends or heroes and henchies without having to master some kind of solo build) and get ONE green for themselves. As for those that make their gold off of farming the greens, then they are welcome to do so as any further attempts past the first green they get would be similar to what htey have now. Even if the drop rates are skewed, most casual/regular/non-elite farming zealots just care about getting one single copy of that green so that they can collect or use it.

It will hurt the farmers somewhat but there will still be people who don't want to take the time to kill that boss several times, or those that want more than one green for their heroes, but there will still be a market. If ANet wants there to be a fully flourishing player-driven market, then they need to remove the caps off of everything at the traders, and make other items player-based as well, like they did with the insignias.

This method does not make it 'easy' to get a green. You still have to get to those bosses out in Anguish before they'll drop for you. You still have to fight your way into Sorrow's Furnace to get that green. Nothing is being handed out to anyone. If you think this makes it too easy to get greens, then you might enjoy a game like ShadowBane, or some other game where you can have all your shit jacked from you if you're not really careful. or you can play PvP. This method just makes it so that after some hard work you may (unless you truly are unlucky) get a green. Is it realistic? no. In real life hard work doesn't pay off, but smart work does. I make more money than people that work a shitload harder (physically) than me because I'm smarter in a particular field that happens to pay a shitload more than most manual labor fields. I've done both. As I said before, though, we don't play this game for its realism.

lol, I'd almost bet on how long until we see an ignorant 'oh noes I want everything handed to me because I dont want to play the game' response from someone that didn't even read the message.. probably either from someone sitting on a shitload of platinum from selling greens to those that can't get the solo build right to farm it, or an ANet employee that looks like a player trying to discredit anything 'against the party'...

ultimately I guess it doesn't matter now. either thing swill get better or they won't. some of us will keep playing because there's no alternative we want to play, others will leave, some will play because they are ok with it all. ArchLord is free now, unfortunately it sucks. Believe me, its the worst feeling when you're playing something that you enjoy and you see people that you play with leave or the game winds down (Multi-Player BattleTech was one in that case). Most of these games do not survive on just a few hardcore players. Since opening, GW has had the 'free gimmick'. Now it needs to do more than just be free. There are other free games coming and many of us have too much time invested to jump ship now.

Got proof? Not that I do not believe it would never happen, but you would need to know the exact seed and algorithm. Even with plenty of evidence and assuming anet took the most brain dead method available this is *not* easy to do. That's a pretty stiff accusation.

As far as possible, one can do it no matter what with any in-computer only algorithm - even the BSD algorithm has a fairly well known attack against it and has shown to be *not* cryptographically secure. Heck, there are even attacks against nuclear decay that are sometimes effective.

From the way you wrote that I hope you have something that says top guilds and experienced players know what their drops are going to be - not only that but I bet Anet would be interested to know it happens also.

Speculation. They know it already and it will not be released until their marketing department finds it useful to do so. Given my in game experience I suspect much better than Factions (though that is only personal experience - yours may vary quite a bit) - though GotY also has to do with ones competition. Until then your mojo is as strong as mine, not to mention the general forum's consensus is that Nightfall has sold better..

Any company out there can do that and has nothing to do with age. Microsoft has been accused of this for years (and accused of it by me also, I said the same thing about 2000 I said about XP, same about XP I have vista, though this time I am correct ), yet have shown it to be wrong every time. I wouldn't count either company out.

Nor is it remotely accurate either. Since you are so well versed in Mathematics you should know that your sample is worthless - it is not even close to any form of a random sample. You loose a lot of respect by seeming to think this will give you useful information on the rise or decline of GW. Such a sampling technique would fail even intro level stat courses.

Factions sold enough to win GotY and account for a large amount of sales despite the overwhelming consensus of forums that is sucked and no one purchased it and everyones guild has no one logging in. I've been here 15 months according to my /age - I've heard that since day one and have no reason to think that people are telling a lie about their guild participation. Until I see it actually happen you need more than what you have posted, it's been stated for many many months and has been grossly inaccurate to this point. Maybe you are right now (just as I think Vista will have finally crossed the line into unacceptable), but I wouldn't count on it.

Sorry Gaile , but it's as you say the drop is completely random so I guess I was just really lucky on that one unlike The Nightbringer which took about 30 attempts during the Green Weekend

I only go after the Greens I want to use on my chars anyway and anything else I get I give to friends or sell cheap, as I'm not obsessed with "farming for profit" like some people seem to be in this game.

I've proven beyond a reasonable doubt to those that I felt I needed to prove it to. A mathematical proof wasn't necessary to them. You would not need to know the exact seed and/or algorithm unless you were planning on showing precise details. Patterns are commonly used to determine (at least initially) how strong or weak a particular algorithm (known or otherwise) is. From the way you write I think you probably know that.

I'm not certain whether the 'BSD algorithm' you are referring to is the PRNG, the algorithms -various assymmetric and symmetric- that OpenSSH uses, the derivative of Blowfish (and/or BCrypt itself) that OpenBSD uses itself, or another algorithm. If you are aware of a successful attack on OpenBSD's version of blowfish (or BCrypt which also uses a variant of Blowfish), then I would be most interested in seeing you present at next year's BH/DC (hell, you could PM it to me here if you want). An algorithm though is only as strong as its implementation. In many cases, you could (with software help) generate (eventually) a collision based on the layout of the human hands on a keyboard and probability of keystroke patterns from there. For something much less complex, patterns can sometimes poke you right in the eye even without a large sample. There's a difference in predicting 'so and so will get the golds 75% of the time within this group over x times' and 'so and so will get the gold sundering hammer of obnoxious behavior +10, followed by the 15^50 dirt dart of dragon slaying, followed by...' detecting patterns almost always comes first when you don't have access to a particular formula. some patterns also don't require a large set to be noticable. Actually one of the few times that OpenBSD was indeed left vulnerable was because of a bug in OpenSSH which is uses, but that was some time ago.

I'd guess that the top guilds are mainly interested in PvP and don't spend quite as much time worrying about drops in PvE. the large PvE guilds and alliances seemed more about faction and holding cities. otherwise I don't think I am sure I know what a top guild is (sorry , medium-sized guild most of my time in GW).

I believe I recall Enter the Matrix getting quite a few awards for sales. It doesn't mean that was any good. Also, a good hit of any kind usually seems to reflect upon the next version as far as sales go (except in the case of Star Trek where you've got the even-odd rule that people know about :-).


I wouldn't go so far as to compare a company that completely dominates its market with a company that is in a quite healthy market, though not the top of its market (though near the top).


[/QUOTE]
Nor is it remotely accurate either. Since you are so well versed in Mathematics you should know that your sample is worthless - it is not even close to any form of a random sample. You loose a lot of respect by seeming to think this will give you useful information on the rise or decline of GW. Such a sampling technique would fail even intro level stat courses.
[/QUOTE]

I am going on the assumption you meant lose and not loose. Quite frankly the stats class days are far behind so I'm not worried about failing or passing one again. Sample sizes are a funny thing. A sample of 3000 people is quite commonly accepted as enough to represent 300 million people by those that really care. There will always be a bigger and better sample that could be used, but is seldom necessary. Exit polls use rather large samples and we've seen they are not often accurate.

Think about what you just stated. Factions sold enough ... despite the overhwelming consensus of forums that it sucked. Now how are people going to know whether it sucked or not unless they buy it first?

Thanks for the counterpoints (and on the forum here they are equally valid counterpoints, as like you said we are all equal here). People can take or leave our opinions, as I don't think either of us really care too much about it. I'm not looking for respect. The only ones that mattered were my friends that I game with (well friends used loosely as its more of a circle of maybe 100 or so people) and ANet. My /age says 18 months I believe and we didn't really start noticing the patterns until last fall. Of course ANet did indeed find a flaw at one point in September which was made very noticable due to the SF update, but that was fixed. It's definitely not a 'weekend' or two to notice somethign like that, but rather trends. Could we be mistaken? Of course, we're not perfect. However, several of the players that noticed this trend were able to take those patterns and use them to their advantage to become pretty rich (just based off of patterns) in-game. They just had to know which character to use for which purpose. If I want a particular drop, then I have an idea on which character to go and get it.

It's just noise to get someone's attention so that maybe someone else will take a look at it. I think maybe they'll find something.. Regardless, I'm sure we won't here whether they look, or even whether they found anything or not, so it's kind of a moot point I suppose. I'll stick to patterns. This game is something I do away from work and I don't do work at home, so there's no way that I'm going to sit down at home and try to prove a weakness in this thing to anyone else. Hopefully, it'll serve as an eye-opener to someone else out there that has noticed any kind of pattern. Perhaps not, though.

It's just a forum, believe it or not. If I lost respect, then shame on you for respecting some anonymous loudmouth on a game forum in the first place lol... I look forward to seeing you all in the snowball arena in the near future :-)

oh.. and a spell checker would be a nice feature to have here, though I think we can do with just keeping the database up and running.

I didn't ask for a mathematical proof, nor do I require one. You stated that top guilds and players could know what drops are coming and adjust accordingly. All it takes is a screen shot of them doing just that - not hard. So far, you haven't supplied anything other than "I say so and others I know believe me", which is pretty weak evidence let alone proof.

Just give the simple pattern that you know occurs - it would have taken MUCH less writing on your part to do so and, if you actually have it, it would be indisputable proof it works that way. There would have been no need to be snarky about spelling.

I very well know that easily findable patterns show how strong or weak a random number generator is - I see no place I have argued otherwise. If you are going to pick something that I got wrong, at least pick something I actually said.

All I want is proof, or heck at this point even evidence, of what you claim about Anet's random number generator. So far, you have mostly tried to change the subject, talk about how brilliant you are, and make fun of my spelling.

As for the BSD stuff - any of it. There are quite a few attacks on nearly all of the real time encryption schemes - I suggest you peruse some of those publications you talk about. Some, like blowfish, usually are not against the algorithm itself but on key generation. I'm sure you know this and are just making sure all bases are covered, not intentionally hoping to deflect attention from what you actually claimed - right?

Again - all I need is a simple short description of the pattern. It's not hard if you have it. I'm sure others are interested also - it would be quite useful in farming.

I know, word like "assymmetric", "noticable", "overhwelming", and "somethign" really hurt. Firefox 2.0 automatically spell checks, it would have caught your mistakes but will not catch things like my "lose" and "loose". MSIE also has a spell checker plug-in out there.

you're right, I'm wrong... see you in the snowball arena :-)

EDIT: about the spellchecker in Firefox.. heh, never used it.. thanks for the info I'll have to check that out. the "somethign" is where I hit the most, something about the way I type I suppose. I'll have to dig around for it and start using it from now on..

as far as a pattern, it appears along the lines of a seed generated for each character upon creation, unique for each one even on the same account. unless you solo and if you adventure/explore/farm with a steady group of friends over a few months then you should start to be able to get an idea amongst your group how the distribution works. we didn't really pick up on it until last fall/winter and I've been playing since right around the beginning of June. there was a discussion thread somewhere else concerning possible seeding of the characters. I'll try to find them here. they were on guildwarsguru. of course this was all in the only campaign available at the time, I don't know how it works across nightfall yet, whether its the same or not. we had the Sorrow's Furnace one down, and I had my inventory full of greens at the time to show for it, but as is noted in the update logs it was actually caught and fixed. lol probably brought attention to it when I told Gaile in LA how many greens I had... anyhow, you can try sticking to around 20 friends or so, go out adventuring in groups over a few months (you may notice it earlier than I did) to start to get a feel on how the distribution is working between you all. after a few months, try a few character changes and see if the distribution is a bit different than before. you should eventually have an idea about which character you should take out with who (and what area) to maximize your drops. hopefully, it will be a character you like playing with. before long you will be able to determine (pretty accurately) how the distribution will end up within your group (and possible with your character in other groups to an extent). there may be a way to determine this going solo, I just have not done that. I may be off on the seed generated per character, though that's the feeling I get with the patterns I've noticed. there may be other explanations (based off of name during an instance/drop or something else).

anyhow, I hope that helps and if it does may you enjoy the benefits of it (assuming, again, the drops favor a character that you enjoy playing). at the least you should have an idea which character to take when you really want to farm something and which other characters are just good for having fun. anti-farm code (blue box of death) still applies to everyone, though...

good luck. and you're actually right on about the seed in many algorithms being week. that's actually the point I was trying to make in the original message, but I probably goofed it.

EDIT2: btw, I would recommend changing your handle to strncpy...for reasons probably obvious to both of us :-)

Don't know how many times I can say it, but no matter the anecdotal "evidence," or the faith-based "proofs," the distribution is not a pattern that you can establish, alone, with a group of friends, or across the entire server.

'Tis random it is, and random it will be. The fact that people have "lucky streaks," or draw to inside straights, or roll 43 7's in a row does not negate the fact that streaks, the draw of the card, and each roll of the dice is sourced from a random base.

Hyprocrite much?

troll much? are you trying to start things with some people or something.



PS. Gaile if you still want one let me know. ill get you one.

You mean since the September update I suppose... :-)

Well..its not bad but,id rather try what it says at the bottom of the page.

This weapon can be replicated except for the skin with:

a perfect Vampiric Scythe Snathe
a perfect Scythe Grip of Fortitude
a perfect "Guided by Fate" Inscription
and a Suntouched Scythe obtained from:
Weaponsmith Shausha in the Command Post
Retrieved from "http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Eshekibeh%27s_Scythe"

Simply because i hate a -1 health degen.

I was farming with the henchies and heroes and my aim was gettting Wandalz Refuge. I flagged the henchies away to maximize my drop chance, but I flagged them near 2 other bosses. They killed the bosses and their groups. Then I killed Wandalz. He didnt drop for me
BUT one of the bosses the henchies killed did drop a nice smiting wand for me I think it dropped cos I had bonded 1 of the henchies.

That's weird considering you've been hounding so many of my posts trying to start a fight. So yeah you're a hyprocrite too.

I don't know about you, but I prefer to get something without paying anything. That's why I farmed that Scythe during the Green weekend (using my solo build).

funny i believe this was the first one i responded to ur post.

I haven't stopped doing the Happy Dance since I scored The Darksong a few minutes ago. As I said, I only visited the Resplendent Makuun area a few times a day. But I didn't hesitate to visit those few times a day, every day, I have to confess.

Second run this evening, my Heroes whined, "What, we're going again? We're still licking our wounds from the last foray!" I took down a couple of standards before heading to the Big Guy. My health at about 70, poor Georgette dead in the dust, my Ele/Healer Zhed busy, apparently, putting polish on his hooves, Jishol Darksong coughed up my prize.

*resumes Happy Dance of Unique Item Goodness*

lol and grats

i know darksong was getting tired of seeing my monk wondering how a single monk was killing them hehe.

congrats Gaile :-) enjoy the prize. I think I may go check him out myself, even though my Paragon is more of a Centurion, using a sword and all. lol Zhed is a horse of many hooves. I've had him as a healer, smiter, all kinds of ele, minion master, and more...

I got the impression that Nightfall greens are much less common than others. I got SkillHunter(5) and Elonian Cartographer 100%, and in that time only had 1 green drop.

Good to know I'm not the only one that does that dance!

I got a totally random green tonight with a huge party (go figure) and I did the dance too.

...Er, those go for around 30K. It seems to me that you're better off just farming the boss for free.
Well, that's neither here nor there, really. Doesn't change the fact that it's still going to do more damage than any other usable scythe.

Just curious. I don't play a Paragon regularly so maybe I'm just not down with what is good for a Paragon to have, but this weapon doesn't seem that good to me at all.

I mean it can't be that difficult to find a barbed what not for the bleeding and a fort addition for the health, so why is this weapon so popular and selling so well? Is it the skin or what? Because that doesn't look very hot to me either.

So what's the deal? What am I missing?

Livingston

for me, something to give my 8 copies of Melonni (she's the derv hero right?)

Your whining about not getting his drop ONLY in 45 times?

Dude i farm skybringer yesterday 24/7 and what is that? about 500++ times???? and guess what I solo skybringer with assassin and no heroes/henchies and still dont get no damn skybringer. Yes i agree with you, Anet is hating.

Livington, Darksong is far from an "ideal" Paragon weapon....
but it does have max damage, perfect stats of 15>50 and HP+30, and easily obtained.

When you have like 10 characters not counting the mules.... getting an easy to obtain green for all those General Morgans comes in handy.
Much faster, easier, and cheaper to obtain than 10 copies of +30 HP handles and 15>50 inscriptions, as well as getting 10 req9 collector spears.

Btw, VitisVinifera, you have Melonnis all equipped with spears?

*shrugs* Random is as random does, but I'm sticking to my guns about my second account being totally more lucky than my first... I've used the accounts pretty equally and my drops just suck with my primary at least 84% of the time but about 90% of the time my second account gets rocking good drops. Dunno why this is, it just is... Honestly I cannot wait for my primary to finally hit its lucky streak since I've been playing it more and more often as of late.
Maybe it will hit when I get to Dead on Arrival >_>

Ah I see.

Just making sure there wasn't some magic trick to bleeding with Paragons that I wasn't aware of.

Though from what people here are saying it doesn't seem easy to obtain at all...

Livingston