HM drying up?

Notice how there hasn't been a peep from Anet on this topic?

Feels like they flipped us the double bird, then ran away and hid.

I dont think the anti farming code is gone. . .
I've been farming zehlon reach corsairs and I'll go there, farm say 4 times and I'll get a couple of golds + couple of purples then I'll start getting maybe one puple and the occasional gold
Then I go to bed, come back the next afternoon and it starts again

Since Anet support asks us to post on fan forums for discussion on game issues (i.e. support issues), when can we expect a response from Anet's PR on this issue?

This is more that just random speculation. What's happening goes directly against what they have told us.

Some sort of farming code is still in effect, I just don't know how it works anymore.

I've 'Wammo'd these minos on and off since the release of hard mode. To be honest all i've ever got is what you say you're getting now, some cash and the occasional nice drop. Never finished a run and gone 'wow, what a great run'.

(when you say 'chests' dropping, what do you mean?)

Cheers.

My piece of story is my Monk farming Corsairs:
run 1: 6 golds (!!!)
run 2: 3 golds (i was quite excited by now)
run 3: 1 gold, some purples (i assumed by now that first two runs were extremelly unlucky)
run 4-10: occasional gold, several purples
run 11 (people joined me on run to see how it works): 2 golds
run 12 (other people joined me on run to see how it works) 1 gold.
run 13-20: ocasional gold, mostly purples and dyes, last 2 runs were purple only.

After all runs i had 23 golds in storage ready for my identifier char

Now, this is very little runs done, but its hard to disregard this, being enormously lucky on first two runs and then unlucky for 18.

If i would test Chi Square on two hypothesis (note, i am doing falacy as in ideal test, you should work with all hypothesis and sample values greater than 5 aand if they are lower, you would have to collapse them):



The bigger chi is, the lesser propability of matching hypothesis basically.

What does it mean? i can say that with there s 19/20 chance that drop DO have decreasing dentecy, i can also say that there is 1/4th chance (actually first pass for that test was at 5%) that drops are even and i was jsut unlucky.

Now, all we need is area where you get 5+ golds per run and do about 33 runs.

I don't think age of charcater has anything to do with what you get dropped, My oldes character, 12months and 1,500 hours spent on it, was geetiing the last few Elonan elites on Sunday, and amazingly got three green drops, these were the first I had recieved since the canthan increased rate a couple of months back.

With regard to gold drops I have seen roughoy the same amount either on or two in hard mode, I dont farm though, and this is when i have been tryign to vanquish, however i have noticed a smaller drop rate for lockpicks, when i first went out i was getting 1 or two per map when vanquishing now its one if i'm lucky

I'm seeing what Zwei2stein had listed as well. Almost to the tee.

Loot sure as hell scales when you zone and rezone..... Now, can we expect Anet to be responsible, and actually tell us what the heck they are doing???

Even if it's a "Whoops, sorry", that's better than sticking your head in the ground like an ostrich, while humming loudly some top 40 pop crap.

***edited to add second comment***

Well,

Welcome to the new antifarm code.

I just got back from a 45 Cosair farm in hard mode. 11:00AM-11:45AM CST

1st run: 3 golds, many purples, crafting materials etc. (great, they reversed the crap cap on us)

2nd run: 2 golds, some purples, some crafting materials etc. (Hmmm...not as loose as the first run, but still, not bad!)

3rd run: 1 gold, one or two purples, crap. (yeesh....better chalk that up to bad luck)

4th run: 0 golds, a white or two....that's it. (ouch)

5th-8th run: Carbon copy of run #4. (Oh, screw you. "no scaling of loot", my hairy ass)

9th-? run: yeah right. I gotta go to work, and post up on Anet's support page (and by that I mean Guru). lol

There it is in nutshell.

Honestly?
They have removed the "repeated entry" Antifarming code but didn't tell us that they introduced a completely different mechanism. Over the last days i've made an experiment, I asked 7 different people to observe their loot while farming. I explicitely told them to observe it in regards to killing speed.
All 7 of them came back to me with the same observation: The faster you kill a mob, the less likely you're to get loot. This perfectly back up an observation I made while CS Farming. The ultraslow Sliver Armor build which killed them one by one offered plenty of rares. Doing the same with a 55 HP Monk, the loot was almost nil.
Call it coincidence but imho loot now depends upon your speed of wiping a mob out. Try killing them slower and even moreso, not at the same time. See if your drops increase.

u guys complain to much, go pvp and get pwned if u want complaining rights, or go get a life and learn that its all virtual and only there for enjoyment.

Interesting...Time to check it out. Now what farming builds do I have that make things slow...

No thanks. It concerns us, therefore we care about it. I'm sorry the same cannot be said for you.

Drop the attitude. If this was a pvp type issue im sure you would be crying your eyes out in a similar thread. Save your "holier than thou attitude" for someone else, it's not needed or wanted here.

As for the killing ratio of slow to fast I will experiment with this tonight as well.

Double post, sorry.

Interesting theory. Id like to see what the rest of the community gets if they try this.

I suggest killing 1 mob at a time to not kill them so fast.

If they wanted to implement anti-farming, this is probably the most fair way to do it. A normal player may kill 5 monsters per minute while a farmer may kill, say 20 monsters per minute. If ANet sets a specific rate that items drop, then killing monsters four times faster might only give you two times more items. They did say that their goal is to let farmers still make more items/gold, but not significantly more. I seem to notice some similar behavior, I can wipe out huge mobs very quickly while riding a wurm, but half of the groups don't even drop anything, not even gold or collector items.

Hi,

I just want to make sure that everyone knows: We have made absolutely no changes to the drops since we introduced Hard Mode.

If that's the case Gaile, buff the gold drop rate, along with the drop rate of scrolls and tomes. Otherwise, Hard Mode isn't worthwhile. (besides the titles)

Hard Mode doesn't offer much besides those items. If no enticements are made to Hard Mode,will die, and no one will play it.

Its hard to find PUGs for Hard Mode already.

hmm Gaile says they have made no changes to the drops in hard mode since they introduced it, she doesn't comment on anti farming code in hard mode though...

The fact that no changes were made to HM since it was released doesn't mean there isn't a slightly different means of triggering anti-farm code in an area of some kind that has been in place in HM from the start. I'm not saying this is the case, BUT, from my experience, like many others, I have noticed that drops were great when HM began, but over time simply began to degrade with repeated farming. There are a number of zones in which this occured,

1) Gates of Kyrta
2) Zehlon Reach
3) Haylcon Job (spelling?) quest outside Zos Shivros
4) Dead Swords

Everyone on of them was great to start, and then simply got worse and worse to the point where almost nothing was dropping outside of some whites or collectable drops.

I think "no changes" means they didn't remove anti-farm code in hardmode. Anti-farm code was removed in normal mode only.

Also, I think this is not a complaining thread. People share their experience and to know what happened to drops. What's wrong with that?

I assume you mean since you excluded the items in a later update as that was a change to drops and after you introduced hard mode.

This really doesn't address two questions: is the old anti-farming code present in Hard Mode (from the ordering of your update notes, I assume not as it is under "miscellaneous") or did you introduce another anti-farming type of code (besides drops) with hard mode. Neither of those is answered by your statement and, other than this time, changes to it have not been added to previous notes.

I'm not going to rant, it just would be nice to know. I still prefer my old farming areas and methods, however I'm making just as much as I did before and with prices dropping that means more spending power. Plus I'm happy to see gold sellers prices greatly increasing and them leaving to go elsewhere. I find it strange the areas that I make the most in (both are slower areas to kill though the GP/H comes out better - to a previous poster: I have no characters to compare if drops reduce if I kill them faster), but since it is an artificial world once can also argue that nothing is strange.

You must be playing a different Hard Mode than I am. I'm not even trying to farm and I get so many gold items and tomes that I don't have time to sell them all. I can understand why some farmers are worried about many once rare skins becoming common/worthless with the insane drop rate I've been getting.

Please let us know where and how because I gave up on HM, the drops were simply aweful for me and its not worth the effort.

We removed the anti-faming code in normal mode. The code was never implemented in Hard Mode. So no, there is no anti-farming code in Hard Mode.

In addition, based on player feedback and our own review of data from the early hours of the introduction of Hard Mode, we excluded several items from loot scaling, as explained here.

I hope this is helpful information.

I had 3 golds just for me on Minister Cho's estate first day, and since then about 4 gold drops in total from HM. (and I've been through every elona mission, vanquished raisu, done half of cantha's missions.)

I have to admit there is something wrong in what’s going on in GW besides what’s already happened to it by the Hard Mode update. It’s not all about the drops either; I am starting to see bugs in the game pop-up more often now. I would like to know if these “drops” are based on something entirely different (besides the supposed scaling back of loot).

I haven't noticed changes in HM drop rate, so far that is. I have vanquished only Canthan starter island though, been busy testing new HM farming methods.

Just did a bit more in the ice tooth cave area. 20+ minos killed, 4 white drops and 6 gold drops of just over a hundred gp each.

In this area since HM was introduced, this is pretty much consistent with how it's always been. Yet a number of people (not just in this thread) have mentioned the number of good drops here.

I also trawled through a few of the prophecies areas - ascalon, nebo etc, when HM started, and wasn't getting drops at the rate that other forum posters were reporting.

So for my experience, HM now is no different to when it started (I mean, when they excluded greens etc from scaling).

Cheers.

There is no anti-farming code at all? I don't know, that just doesn't match up with my experience at all. Maybe it's just bad luck vs. good luck, but what I've noticed is that the first few runs in any area drop alot of golds and subsequent runs get diminishing returns, the random purple or gold, but nothing like the first couple runs. My guess is that there is a buff (which wouldn't be classified as an anti-farming measure) in place for the first few zonings in any area, and after that it gets stale, or "normal". Every area I do repeated runs in has the same pattern. My first 55 HM run out of Bergen Hot Springs I got 5 golds. The second 3. The third one or two. Since then, over 20 or so runs, I've gotten two. Same thing everywhere I go... But whatever.

I personally believe that my account is cursed, or maybe its just me that is cursed, I think I'm prolly the most unlucky bastard on earth. Ill be goin through an area such as Urgoz or Tombs and we will get to a chest and a storm bow req 9 will drop for someone or a Zodiac sword r 10 or a zodiac bow will drop and then I think sweet. Then I go open chest and I'm the one that gets the r12 fire magic purple ghostly staff that when I ID it it halves the casting time of illusion magic spells :S So for me the Drops havent gotten worse or better -_-

But alot of poeple I talked to that farm (wether in HM or NM before HM came out) they say the same thing, the more they farm the worse drops get. It keeps weapons rare though, I guess....

It seems that there are differing views on the reduction in drops, but others like myself seem to have seen a reduction after going through a region. In fact in my case after vanquishing the first area from gates of kryta to the next portal and getting 2 gold drops, I have only got one more gold in numerous subsequent runs in all areas in hard mode. Doing missions in ascalon, over in factions anywhere my drop rate sucks.

Maybe there is a bug in the droprate, that is affecting only some of us, but there is a definate trend. My friend who plays asked me today if there was farming code in hard mode as she'd had good drops the first time and only one white and and a few gold for an hours farming the next day. She hasn't seen these posts and I had said nothing to her.

Maybe anet should investigate this further, if there is no deliberate farming code in then something else seems to be happening.

Thanks for replying in this thread.

If what you are saying is correct (I have to ask if you've verified this with the programmers?), and there is no "scaling of loot" when a player zones multiple times (and farms an area over, and over again) then there is a problem that the Anet team needs to be aware of.

What is being seen in the last few days is on par with the old antifarm code. This is why many players are addressing concerns here. Until now, we haven't heard a peep from an offical source.

I think what speaks volumes to the GW player base is frank discussion on this matter, especially in light of the massive changes that have been made to the loot drop mechanics. This way, we can bring up problems/concerns without having to draw on speculation.

I'm willing to do my part. When I have time to dedicate an hour (or two), I will log the drops in one area. If what I've been seeing over the last few days continues, I can show times, drops, and location.

I have a farm run that takes on average 45 minutes (normal and hard). Although I don't farm often I do it sometimes.

Since HM was introduced I only used HM to farm.

First run was 2-3 golds, lots of purple and white, my inventory was 3/4 full.
the next 2-3 runs I only got whites with a few blues, inventory 3/4 full.
Then I hit the jackpot (at least for me), approx 8 golds, a few (4-6) purples, the rest whites and blues, inventory nearly 4/5 full.
The last run was again only whites and blues, inventory 3/4 full.

It seems that it really depends on luck whether you get golds or not.

Maybe after my next few runs I think differnetly but i have faith in ANet, at least with that issue

some poster above mentioned the correlation between

number of drops(any color) vs number of things killed at once.

I've been doing the halcyon farm, and using a SoA/SH/SS 55, i can tank every assassin there at once and trap them so that they can't run which means around 20 assassins will all drop dead at once. That method usually yielded 4-5 drops of various colors.

Now If i tank each group seperately, around 5 groups, i will get 2-3 drops per group, which means around 10-15 drops.

So i no longer kill them all at once, which makes my run 4x slower

edit - i am gonna dust of my excel spreadsheets and start keeping track, if other players want to compile data with me let me know.

Guys try doing something called a farming "route"....

• Find 5-10 good spots
• Do 1-2 runs on your first spot
• Move on to the next spot and do 1-2 runs
• Etc, etc

With so many good places in HM across three continents you could easily have 20+ spots...and with Templates it's quick and easy to swap around your builds.

I have seen nothing posted by Gaile or ANet thus far that said they changed anti-farm code that affects your drops when killing the same thing over and over. The only change to anti-farm code I have seen is something that has to do with zoning or "area instances" or something like that. Who knows what the hell that means but I do know from personal experience that if you kill the same type of mob over and over your drops will go to the crapper (in any mode). Sure you'll get the occasional good drop every couple of runs, but it won't be as good as those first few runs for sure. And if your drops are sucking from the beginning you're just anti-farm code overloaded and you need to do a couple missions/quests to clear the code. Or you can just not play GW for a couple days and time will clear the flags.

Lastly like I've said before drops are completely random! Luck plays a huge factor in all of this. If you want to farm the same place and kill the same mobs for 5 hours straight you can do that and you'll still get the occasional good drop but IMHO you could be doing better by following a simple farming route and changing things up every couple runs.

Edit: I know Gailed posted earlier that "there is no anti-farm code in HM". I'm not sure what they call it then, but there's definately something in place that makes your drops get worse when you kill the same mobs over and over. If they truely do not want "anti-farm" in HM then perhaps they should look at their coding again because something is definately in place that makes your loot get worse...

Edit 2: Just incase I was sticking my foot in my mouth with some of the above theories I decided to read up again on some of Gailes/Anet's claims:

Taken from: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gaile..._20_April_2007

I call BS on this statement. It's obvious to me and most other farmers that kiling the same thing over and over affects your drops. As mentioned above perhaps ANet needs to re-check the coding or actually play the game themselves to see that killing the same monster over and over does affect your loot.

Well, at least it's not just me who is watching drops in HM go downhill fast after 4 or 5 runs in the same area.

It can't just be coincidence. If I stay out of an area for 3 days or more the first few runs are typically good and then get significantly worse. I've tested this several times to be sure it wasn't just the random "roll of the dice" catching up with me. However, it's not the same as the code was pre-nerf. I'll still get an occasional gold after 3 or 4 runs with only whites and blues if I keep after it - but when I start in the area I'll usually get 2-4 gold items in the same run. Most are crap, but gold nonetheless.

Whether or not there is any official "anti-farming" code embedded in HM, the effect of decreasing loot after several runs definitely exists in my experience.

Exactamondo!

This is the concern. I believe that there's something (intended or not) acting on those that zone, and farm the same mobs over and over. If there's something in place, and it's not called "anti-farm", we derserve confirmation from an offical source. However, I am open to testing and discussion, as long as Anet programmers/reps are honest and forthcoming with us. I think we deserve that.

If it is a genuine error, lets get this sorted. If it's not, all I would like is a confirmation, so myself and others aren't wasting our time in trying to help nail down the cause of the issue. Either by design, or flaw I (and many) would like to know.

Well theres is something def up with the loot dropping in hardmode.

I really cannot understand why ANET made these changes after 2years lol.

And give them credit they tried to reverse the farming problem somewhat but i think all they have managed to do is totally screw things up lol .

SO IF ANYONE AT ANET IS LISTENING WOULD THE LAST PERSON OUT PLEASE TURN OUT THE LIGHTS AND SHUT THE DOOR

To me it appears identical to the old anti-farm code. Seems like they just removed the blue pop-up saying you are farming too much...

I say this because before if you farmed too much the drop rates were bad and you had to basically play your character for real and then eventually the game would let you farm more, rinse and repeat.

I was getting golds like crazy (3 dead bows, 2 dead bows, 1 dead bow, pop), then nothing. I beat a few quests and missions I wanted to beat anyways, and the gold drops returned for a few runs and then were gone again, which I regained the same way.

The fact I can control it the same as before pretty much suggests the anti-farm is alive and well. I dont believe much in coincidence, and even random factors can be accounted for and normalized on a broader scale, which using this thread as a sample data set it appears a pattern has indeed emerged that is hard to brush off with "luck" or "randomness".

That said HM is fun as heck so I am not angry. I just get a certain satisfaction out of good loot.