[Dev Update] Farming and Loot Scaling

Such as? Chest farming/drunkard titling?

This is a real question. I want to know what part of GW that is fun requires money to do.

Being rich is fun

Actually most people can't make up their own builds, that's why they use other people's. I have no shame in admitting that when someone makes something vastly superior to what I thought up, and I start using that.

But what Gaile posted isn't a formula, it's a rather vague general description. The formula you've extracted from the description may or may not be correct. I'd love to see the actual formula, because I suspect it's a good deal more involved than we've been led to believe.

I find the solo drop rates vary enormously, though with some consistency. I've had reasonably decent drop rates when I'm solo exploring in Tyria and Kryta (between 1 in 2 to 1 in 3), but my drop rates from vermin farming are consistently dismal (never better than 1 in 4).

Chest running, title farming, trying out new builds, buying new armor, improve your character's looks (with weapons), making new characters, Guild events (Like parties, or who has the prettiest armor, etc.), giving stuff away, try to clear area's with different methods and skills, farm events, dyeing armor for special occasions, FoW/UW, Urgoz/Deep (Unless your guild controls a town), changing the flag of the guild once in a while, making new guilds, buying stuff for GH, giving birthday pressies to guildies/friends, filling up storage with materials (salvage costs LOTS of cash), giving guildies/friends sets of armor just for cool screenshots etc.

All these cost money (in the form of skills, entry fee or just plain cash). Notice how the things mentioned up here aren't 'needed'. There are more stuff, but I only used to do these things in thye past when I still had cash and ways to make cash.


About everything in the game requires cash, even playing the game does. (Unless you wanna battle with your starter skills only). I don't count armor for this, cause most of the time, you ALMOST have enough cash for 1,5K armor when you have arrived at the location where you buy it (Not always though, I remember I needed to farm for 3 weeks before I could buy my first character his first 1,5K armor).

There's also the weapon problem. To obtain a decent weapon, one can either give 5K to the weaponsmith (+ materials), or grind 5 days long for the collectables the collector wants for a weapon. Ohh, and actually getting to the collector isn't a walk in the park, either. And then there are heroes who also need weapons and runes. Or you must be EXTREMELY lucky that a monster actually drops a useful weapon that's not highly salvagable/precious.

I knew that one, I think it boils down to full parties roughly getting in total four times the amount of gold as when compared to soloing. I was referring to there being no known relation between the drop rates before and after the update.

And no, it had nothing to do with word problems.

[email protected] scaling now there are 100 times more bots, and now there selling it for even more korean kids want to just say thank you.Good job screwing everyone else.

It is a formula in the form of a few sentences, not an algebraic representation. As I alluded too, that is what "word problems" in school are trying to get you to understand. It doesn't matter if I say "F=M*A" or "force applied to an object is calculated by multiplying it's mass times it's current acceleration". The only vagueness in her part is saying you get about twice as much - they either have not calculated it or it is close enough to two that there is no reason to list it. I'm betting she isn't going to write "solo farmers may now earn 1.97236754 times as much as gold as before". The only variable we do not have a decent idea of what to expect is the "random modifier" but her statement would indicate it is not that large.

So, to help you understand Gaile said: "solo farmers may now earn about twice as much gold and common loot from farming solo as they would if they farmed in a party".

so "loot earned = 2*(1/8)*loot_earned_in__full_party". She did say "about twice" so one can assume something a little smaller than that, but this is close enough. And to note to Amy Awien, Gaile said in that paragraph: "While gold and common loot are thus reduced for these players by loot scaling" so you have *still* seen the general formula on gold, whites, blues, purples, and rare items. Since the formula is based off "loot earned in full party", and Anet said that didn't change, we *do* know the relationship from pre-to-post change.

"certain other types of loot are completely unaffected". While I will admit that the items excluded are from a different paragraph that still translates to "Full_party_excluded_items".

and finally "it includes an element of randomness". That translates to "A small random modifier.

So, each one of those is exactly a formula given in words. Further, while not explicitly stated, it is implicit that you, as the solo player, get all of them together. Thus you get: "(2*(1/8)*(full party drops))+(full party excluded drops)+(a small random modifier)". If you need to know the relationship to before you had "full party drops + full party excluded drops + some random modifier". Divide the two and bang - you have it!

You basically have two choices - believe what Anet tells you or not. As is more the case a few are simply not believing it. If you choose to disbelieve it then pick whatever is going to make you happy and run with it - Anet has told you the formula on what you are earning in game. There was no "extraction" of the formula - it is a symbolic representation of the words and the "real" one. Either Anet told the truth, lied, or is incompetent enough to not know how they calculate drops. If you believe the latter two then there is nothing anyone anywhere can say that will make you happy as they are not in a position to know and if they are you will not believe them.

I already covered this with:Most players are bad at the game and do have shit for understanding. You can't blame these players for using other people's creations if they're effective. Doing otherwise would be stupid.

You're basically taking my comments out of context, but still agreeing with what I was getting at (albeit, at much greater length).

I don't want to get into an argument about language but the most pertinent definition of a formula to this discussion is "a mathematical rule expressed in symbols" (Oxford English Reference Dictionary). This is not what Gaile presented however much you want to prattle on about word problems.

More importantly you've made a huge assumption in your attempt to produce a formula from Gaile's English description which is that "an element of randomness" translates to "A small random modifier" (my bold).

From my experience with solo farming the random modifier is either quite large, or as I suspect, it is not entirely a random modifier. This isn't paranoia on my part, nor am I accusing ANet of lying. I'm simply suggesting that their description of the loot scaling was imprecise, and may also not have been complete.

Many don't make up thier own builds, but many do. Credit goes to the person who posts on wiki first.

In the same vein, some copy a build, then edit it to taste, picking up on the gist of the build and adapting it. Even though I agree people can be bad at the game, I don't think it's as many as we assume. It also depends on the level you play at... that's usually the level you judge others against.

And this is a huge problem - We don't know when A-Net is telling the truth, lying or telling half-truth, while holding back other aspects.

I'm not blaming Gaile here, cause she's not on the dev team and only gets her info from other sources, but most of the time, the limited information leads to discussions like this one.

Stuff like 'Changing the monsters running from AoE back to normal.', but not mentioning ANYTHING about nerfing the entire drop system is what made me mad. They actually let me think that things would be back to normal, but no, they just HAD to let people down at the last second.

Sure, they didn't lie, but they DID hold back information. And by holding back information, the available information can be put that way that it DOES look like lying.

More stuff like this happens, often with time. ('Within a week'/'Soon, very soon') turning out to be months later. The problem with the communication is that A-Net only mentions positive things, and the things that'll make people leave aren't mentioned at all. Also, A-Net dislikes people disagreeing with them, it seems.

Actually, not to say that blame needs to be assigned to anyone in particular, a team works as a whole or not at all, but Gaile has mentioned oh so many times that she is in fact a dev. I don't know what her imput is on any one matter, because like it or not, you just don't go against your team while you are a part of that team... it's just unprofessional. Just wanted to put that out there for truth's sake. Gaile is a dev.

What, Gaile is a dev? I really thought she said somewhere that she didn't know anything the devs were working on and stuff like that...

Ok now she really needs some explaining to do :P

she cant tell some things and sometimes things between her post and it turns out different.

things change..........they are not lying to us.

as for being a dev read and decide for yourself.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...93&postcount=9

When she says dev, i interpret it as she contributed to the game, you dont need to be a programmer to be a developer and its well known female programmers are a myth . Theres a huge amount of roles in a development team that all contribute to the end product.

I expect members of the team cant always communicate there progress in real-time which is why some of her answers may be pretty vague or turn out slightly different.

Shes trying to keep you informed when she doesnt have to, give her some slack.

Lol, I know you are being funny, but I so wanted to come back with some woman programmer I know. Only thing is, I so can't come up with one, all the programmers I know personally are men, and I'm too lazy to research this.

Important lesson being that if I haven't seen it, it must not exsist... like 6 AM. "Early Morning," right, whatever, keep inhaling.

On topic (I think), we do have to cut her some slack because she really is just a person trying to do her job as go between. I'm all against the loot scaling because I think (really quick recap) that it will adversely effect the more casual players when it comes to advancing their characters past end-game, cutting a great game short. I'm a long time player and I now have yet to hop on for more than a minute each day. But having said that, we are people too and have that human tendency to treat the messenger as if they were a faceless entity responsible for all our plights.

So, as a community we need to say sorry to Gaile for anyone that has taken things too far. I haven't seen anything because the Mods have been good about removing bad posts, but I trust their judgement here. I think we all know tasteless when we see it.

However, we the community are people too, and even though all the legal asspects are taken care of on the company's part, I will still always expect that the company communicate with me/us the consumer. One doesn't exist without the other, and I will be checking in periodically, hoping to at least see someone acknowledge that a large part of the community feels that some fun is lost. I for one have left, and I know of so many more. We are organizing for other games, but it doesn't have to be this way. I don't beleive the scaling will ever be reversed, but I'd love to see someone say that something is being looked at in regards to skill acquisition at the very least. I don't feel we've been heard here.

EDIT: LMAO, I just realized that this thread I am posting in is a thread Gaile said she is leaving behind her and not reading. I guess she'll never get this message, but oh well, it can't be an original thought. I thought I was posting in a smaller thread I also subscribe to. Well, someone tell her sorry for bad behavior... but also that we want to be heard on this.