hero armor upgrades, *drop* rate

Background info: In Nightfall there are three challenge missions that randomly award players with item drops that can be used to upgrade your heroes armor at the appropriate NPC.

Now I have realised that no matter how long, often or well you play those, there seems to be a limit in how many can drop for you in a certain time periode. eg. I had about 5 drops in about 8 runs. Then suddenly it stopped and I got NO more drops during a further 15+ runs!

Anybody had the same experience, or knows that this is true, or false?

I wanted to get another two hero armor upgrades and was very annoyed yesterday because from my point of view, this crapy game tries to control when, how and how long I play Guild Wars!!!!

I usually can't play much during the week, only on weekends - why should i be at a disadvantage????

Yes, I'm pretty sure I remember an official statement by Anet/Gaile that they drop in limited quantities for a person(not sure character or account), and thus you shouldn't sell them.

I've got 4 on my ele and 2 on my ranger. Not sure what the limit is, if any.

That's called the farm code kicking in. If you keep going into the same area, your drops just keep getting worse, until they stop altogether (in theory).

Curse You, Anarkii has it right - hero armour item "drops" are special cases. ANet has hinted strongly that there's a cap on how many drops each toon can potentially receive (though no-one's managed to test the limits of that statement yet and they haven't been more specific).

The armor drop rate seems to go down sharply after your fourth or fifth, probably because that's all you need for one character (and to prevent mass farming of armors). The drop rate seems to be per character, so if you have another character there you can get another 4 or 5 on that one.

The drop rate seems to be affected by the farming code as well...probrably, can't say honestly. Because I got about 4 or 5, then went and finished the game... came back and got another four or five... gathering Ancient Armours. But it does drop after that amount, very big drop.

There will be a limit else everyone will master a challenge mish and start earning big bucks by selling them...

I understand the strategy that Anet is using, I just hope it doesn't apply to DoA because I was trying to farm the primeival armors for my other two toons, just using my ranger by trapping stygian. Also, if this is true sales of the armors by player to other players may drop, because people figure they can't get more. Don't know if that is good or bad.

Well of course i do support the battle against bot-farming, but I don't see what's wrong with (human-)farming as such. Anyway, i can't understand how/why the game does not drop or farming code kicks in, before a player can get one armor for each of his heroes!

Maybe i should retry after my itempool has replenished in a couple of days and in the meantime,.... play WoW

I have to say that this is the worst thing in the world. I've done almost everything in all three chapters except some Torment and DoA on my Rit and I still need 1 Ancient Armor and 4 Mysterious Armors and I can't get any other drops. I've even gotten on the record boards multiple times for the Remains and killed god knows how many Souls just because I want that one last hero to get armor, heck, I'm not even selling them, I'm just doing what you have to do in order to acquire the item in the game, just like it tells you to!

/rant

Take different characters through, rather than using the same character for each run.
It works much, much nicer this way. And if that's not possible...than accept that some characters and their heros are SOL

I farmed most of the hero armor. I had to buy a few to complete my set. Primeval armor is another story. I've only found 2 of them, and bought a third. It's gonna take months to get all 14 Primeval armors. I don't see a problem, since we can still buy the armor. You can still do the challenge missions if you want, but you're less likely to get the armor drop.

It's actually not much nicer this way, because characters are being punished for repeatedly trying to get the armor drops that are needed for the Hero armor.

It's quite simple, put a limit on the number a character can get but allow them to get at least the amount needed for Hero armors at the location - and remove the farming crud. Either that, or make the armor pieces unsellable or customized somehow so that other players can't use them, farming problem solved while letting players actually acquire the goods to acheive said goal in game.

I'm not going to put multiple characters through Nightfall because 1) it's long and 2) it's too long - I have other things to do in real life and ingame that are much more fulfulling than going through this chapter again. However, I would like to fully complete the game using my main character. I somehow doubt that Anet designed the game intending to make players go through it multiple times.

The way the system is right now it's broken and needs to be fixed.

EDIT - I removed a phrase that could have been taken the wrong way.

See the thing is.. if you want armors for heroes on another character... you need to go through the storyline to get those heroes at which points you have completed a big portion of the game

Saying these drops are needed is like saying you need a 15^50 fellblade instead of a collector sword.

That's an incorrect exaggeration. The Hero armor drops are a unique item that have one purpose and one purpose only, only usable at one location and one location only, and each Hero can only use one. Very specific use. Also, acquiring the armor drops is the *only* way to upgrade the armor to the armor type in the game.

And I said "needed for Hero armor," which is a specific part of the game, and I consider it to be a part of the game because it is so specific and unique.

A fellblade's just a big sword, there are lots of those lying around, in many places so they do not have a very specific and unique role in the game

yeah. not buying it. the upgraded armor is end-game fluff. if you're that frustrated and it's that important to you then save up the money to buy one. i really want the magrid armor for myself but i was done playing pacman like 20 years ago so i haven't really bothered.

I played pac man over 20 years ago but I still enjoy playing. And all PvE is fluff, if you think otherwise you're fooling yourself

I was just frustrated on my original post because it's a catch-22 (I read that almost 20 years ago too), you have to farm to get the item but if you farm then you don't acuire all of the items. I wasn't aware of the farm code being applied to it until I'd placed on the record board four times at once in efforts to acquire something that per the game should have been acquired in all that time. It's like searching your house for hours on end for that really good book you want, only to find out that your housemate's reading it at the moment and won't give it back to you until they're done, which could take a while.

I read over the anti-bot thread in this area just now, I'll try a few of those things to see if it works. Since I've completed most things already I'll have to re-do stuff to un-anti-bot myself perhaps, but at least it's a possible solution.

I've played Dajkah Inlet well over 20 times so far and have gotten *one* hero armor drop - the very first time I played it.

The drop was when I first entered the mission outpost, then I played it 5 or six times (very low score - had no idea what I was doing). Got bored and didn't go back until around Vabbi or so, played it for a few hours and nothing. I then tried it again after beating Nightfall and capping quite a few elites for both me and my heroes and started posting decent scores - still no drops (note that between vabbi and beating the game I also played through and beat prophecies - so lots of game time between).

It doesn't matter if I kill everything, target the guild lords only, go fast, go slow - nothing. At the lest, there should have been enough runs there that did *not* trigger anti-farming code (if it does indeed effect hero armor drop rate), nor have I gotten any hero armor drops in the dozen or so runs through the other challenge missions.

Either I triggered some "no drops for me ever" flag or it is luck and I happen to be really unlucky there (OTOH, I seem to have found more greens when just playing the game than normal - oh well). My general guess is luck, for one thing the drop mechanism seems to be quite different.