Loot Scaling

That is mostly correct, you should make about double playing solo what you do in an 8-man party and some items are excluded from the scaling totally.

Humans are *really* good at finding patterns, in fact we do not handle random very well at all. We tend to handle random by interjecting some pattern into it anyway. Anet has told us over and over that, other than scaling the amount of loot you get based on party size there are no other "adjustments". None for how many other people are farming an area, none for repeatedly farming an area, none for how old a character is, there is only one community observation that they have not commented on (more on that one). The OP's post has two - loot scale is degrading his gold drops because too many people are playing: Golds are excluded and loot scale is simply your own party size and is irresepctive of how many others are playing (so I rather imagine the answer is no, they aren't going to "fix" it as that isn't how it works).

People think they see a pattern and have decided Anet has lied, it is fairly amusing to watch people argue over which non-existent thing is the *real* anti-farming method they use. Like you, I have found every single one of the anti-farming codes Anet denies to have never affected me (or at least never affected me for anything greater than could be accounted for as "bad luck") and every single one they say they have to affect me in exactly the way they said it would. Go figure.

The only thing I am not aware of them denying is the difference in drops by killing one-by-one vs mass death. There has also been a fairly large and decently aggregated "study" (I use that term loosely here) that shows that to be the case. However, your GPH (gold per hour) on loot scaled items stays the same due to the fact that one-by-one takes far longer to kill things. I, personally, believe loot scaling to be implemented similar to the way Soul Reaping works - it limits the GPH the game allows to drop for you. Of course, without Anet officially weighing in on the matter we do not know and it is pure speculation. I say this because looking at the table it "scaled" more based on GPH (it stayed the same) than any other factor and we know it is quite possible for them to do such a thing.

But, do whatever makes you feel good. There are many many many people who fervently believe that a rabbit's foot gives great luck regardless of how unlucky the donor rabbit was with four of them. Though this generally boils down to ignorance on how "random" works including a general belief in the Gambler's Fallacy and the Law of Averages.

The sad thing is, I can farm undead outside of Bergin with my monk, get decent drops, maybe a few golds and then go do some missions etc. When I come back to Bergin, and start farming undead, I have gotten 5 golds in ONE run. And others have reported the same thing, if it happens often enough it isn't random.
I always liked that little thing about rabbits feet being good luck, but even though I know it wasn't lucky for the rabbit I got one anyways.

Really? And why is that not part of random? Again, go look up the Gamblers Fallacy and the Law of Averages (Both are included here).

There are all types of superstitions where people truly believe something fixes their luck and they have all types of anecdotal evidence. Yet, like the anti-farming code supposedly in there now every single time anyone does a long term recording of their drops it works the way Anet says. It's not like doing missions hurts, it just doesn't do anything.

I definatly find that the more you play with one char the less the drops are. In my guild the leader and I both only have 1 char we really play with. And when ever we go to FoW/UW/Vanquishing. We littrally get currently about 1 gold drop in 2 weeks(and we play about 36 hours a week). While the other guildies that go vanquishing/FoW/UW with us get all the good drops. I'm dead sure they also limit you if you play a certain char allot. Our guildies would get about 1-6 obs shards when doing FoW while we would get 0-2 shards for the entire FoW.

it isn't random because it happens with to much regularity. try it sometime if you have a monk, the first time gets the best drops, after you do the run a few times, the drops...drop....off. Go kill stuff somewhere else, come back and here are the gold drops again.

not really, there were days where i farmed...and farmed...and farmed without doing any single thing and i saw how my gold drop ratio went from 5 the first time in a run, to 0 gold drops for several runs, and some runs later i would get 5 gold drops again.

during the period i was getting 0 gold drops normally i would go out and do missions and other stuff, then come back and get my gold drops, but after that first incident, i decided to keep farming during that lack of gold drops, and as frustrating it was to see 0 gold drops for that while, it was quite pleasant to see the gold drops coming back.

Is there a method to the loot scaling madness? I still don't agree with the fact that solo farming only gets you twice the drops as a full team of 8. The reasoning being, if a team of 8 kills 80 guys, you'll get 10 drops in a drop rate of 1/8. If you are solo and you get double the drops in comparison to a full party of 8 in the same area, you kill 80 guys solo and get 20 drops. That is a drop rate of 1/4, that is if the drop rate for an 8 man group is 1/8. Pre-loot scaling it was a drop rate of 1/1. Think about it, you have to kill four times the guys to get loot like you did before. This applies to casual players and hardcore farmers.

AoE damage reduces drops - I agree entirely.
Rarely played characters get better drops - I have experienced this (9 characters here)
Of course without anything official from Anet, we can only theorize. There is no need to flame either, your counter opinions are welcome. Thanks.

[QUOTE]exactly what they stated it would be

official wors from the developers here
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10146006

note this

not just 8X but up to 30 X

Well the loot scaling stinks, but i really isn't going to be changing any time soon... For easy ways to gaining money use the golds and money from treasures to start buying and selling. Sell those gold weapons too! Get enough to get a nice stash of lockpicks and go to the free services forum to get someone to run ur lockpicks in HM or NM. You can get a few nice golds that way. Then sell the golds and rinse and repeat.

Granted you might not be lucky, but chests are really the only way to get good stuff.

Yea i've noticed...but in any case i can always fill my bags with GOLDS every run, everytime. (If you know where to go) >=) There's more to farming then just tryin to mutilate monsters. Know which *quests!* to farm with and try to farm the impossible, unfarmable areas. Once you've got that under wraps. Do it HM. Reap the benefits! >=)

I'm dead sure they don't. Not only do they say they do not but there are many many many people experience who says otherwise.

Over 90% of time in game is on two characters, of that well over 80% is on just one. I farm, play the game, and do mostly everything on that one. Over a week long period I still get the same old Gold/Hour (both in terms of money *and* golds) that she has gotten since I first made her. She gets the same as the second most played character, and both of them get the same as any of the other characters when I try a farming build I happened to want to try. And, in fact, every single time I know of someone actually bothering to record drops they find the same thing (and by that I mean more than just noticing but actually recording them *all* the time, for both the good, the bad, and the normal with no breaks in keeping records because you didn't feel like it).

Now, back in the old Anti-farming system that was not the case. It degraded on every single character at around the same rate, quality (in both terms of money per hour and rare per hour) dropped eventually to nothing (and the game informed you of this also). It did it every single time on every single character and for every single person that kept track of their drops.

For what you say to be true those crafty programmers would need have only picked out a few random people to do this too and generally know when people are trying to take longer term counts so they can fool all of us. I don't buy that - if it were an actual anti-farming code it would be applied all the time, not just from time to time. I find it MUCH more likely you are doing what millions of other people do when faced with a random situation - find patterns that aren't there by selective observation. It is the same thing that makes so many gamblers have a "lucky charm" and many of those being the same thing across many different people all come up with independently. Humans do not handle "random" very well.

Strcpy: I'm one of those guys as you can see from my post. If you like. I'm willing to meet you in GW, do any run and show you how much your/other ppl drops will differ from what I get with my Character. Maybe we should make it a bit of an event :P. Get all the guys that say they get bad drops and then get the guys that say they get the 1 gold/hour and record everything. Maybe settle this debate that way .

I would agree if you if it wasn't the case all the time. I think my heroes get better drop rates than me :P.

Loviatar thanks for that link, here are some things I noticed.

"People who periodically enjoy farming solo (with no heroes or henchmen) but are casual about it are also likely to see an improvement."

This is absolutely wrong. If I farm an hour, out of the week, I still get 1/4th the drops I used to. Improvement=better than before, which is incorrect. The developers say it is not effecting anyone but "People who were advanced solo farmers", lets be honest, it effects anyone who farms, which is everyone eventually.

"the most advanced farmers should differentiate themselves from the crowd not through the amount of gold and common loot that they farm directly from monsters, but instead through the amount of gold that they can get from selling rare items"
"Here's how we've provided a new way for advanced players to make as much money as they did before: by introducing new items which will have a high demand from other players and thus high trade value"

So now you can just farm voltaic spears in slavers! Yes! Or you can clear underworld and get your eternal blade! Oh, there is no guarantee that you get these items after 3+ hours, but if you are an advanced player, the option is there. (I love options, but is this really a viable one for the majority of players, no.)

"The bottom line is that ArenaNet's goal is to make it easier for normal players to make money while redirecting the efforts of the expert farmers to a way to continue to reap rich rewards without having a harmful effect on the overall game economy."

Normal players have a much more difficult time making money, normal players don't farm elite areas, normal players do quests, story line progression, etc. On a positive side, Eotn provided dungeons are excellent sources of loot, and work in with progression. But people without Eotn, or when you are playing another campaign, your loot is awful. Play through nightfall from the start, brand new, without using existing storage, without farming, and be thirfty with your gold and when you reach the end of the game, buy one elite set of armor...(100k+ with material pricing so high)...You think it is possible? I don't.

These are my opinions and viewpoints, feel free to disagree with them, and make a counter point. I think this is one of the biggest issues in guild wars currently, and would like to discuss it.

Excuse me, but NORMAL people come into these forums now and ask how us rich people got so much money.

KANE

I believe the issue is not that humans make patterns out of the random, but instead that a computer cannot create a "random" no matter how much we try to do so. There is eventually a pattern. And just like you said, humans are extremely skilled at finding patterns. We see that pattern and think it is something that has been programmed when in reality it is actually the limitations of computers.

I would have to agree that I think loot drops are pretty random and any patterns that we see are of our own making.

Lately, I've been getting much better drops playing with a full party. Make of that what you will, but I think it's just random.

The other interesting factor for me in this discussion, is the idea that you somehow NEED to accumilate wealth in this game. I've never really understood that. Gold is for spending. I only farm if there is something I WANT. Elite armor, rare skin weapon etc... But I don't NEED any of it.

The only things you NEED in this game are max armor (skin doesn't matter) max weapons (skin doesn't matter) and skills.

Everything else is just a WANT.

My $0.02

-SS

My observation is that soloing Hard Mode now gives the same reward as soloing did before there was Hard Mode/ loot scaling. When I go out and pillage Hard Mode Old Ascalon, I usually rack up about 150-200 kills before I call it quits. The amount of cash and golds/purps/blues seems to me to be about on par with what I used to get farming Skyward Reach Hydras before Hard Mode came around. Again, I would kill dozens of enemies per run, and not just wipe a out a mob or two and repeat.

The same goes for my monk 55'ing Titans in North Kryta. I'd say the drops from clearing the zone in Hard Mode are equal to or just slightly better than clearing it pre-Hard Mode. The addition of lockpicks makes it more rewarding, because whenever one of those drops, I know it's a guaranteed 1k sale (I sell em for 1k, since it's 100% profit anyway).

If you really want money, the best way to do it is to make a dedicated farming character, rush that character to get the skills and equipment you need, and then farm that toon to death to pay for stuff you'd like to have for other characters. Realistically you can make over 10k an hour if you farm the right spots. Unlike other people, when I say 10k an hour, I don't factor in the headache of selling stuff to other people. I mean from piles of gold and selling stuff to the merchant. People who say "I make 100k an hour in my super secret spot that I'm never telling anyone about" are either a) full of BS, or b) assuming that they can / will sell whatever items they find to other players. Since I really hate selling, I just farm all my loot. And when I want to buy something, I just go to LA/Kamadan/Kaineng and WTB.

This is a discussion on loot scaling, this would be better posted in another thread in which people are in need of money. Feel free to start one, I'll be glad to tell you how I make money. Thanks.

In response to Shadow Spirit,
Yes it is true you don't need to acquire wealth in a game, but progression and advancement through gains (material, statistical, or otherwise) is what a role playing game is build upon. RPG's have a recurring theme, this is one of them, role playing essentially is something we all enjoy doing, and no one wants their role playing character to "suck". Well...you never know. There might be someone out there striving to be the worst.

There is no discussion on loot scaling. Overall consensus is that it sucks and should never have been instituted in the first place

As to your comment about making money, notice I said "us" rich people. I included myself because I sure as hell don't need you to tell me how to make it. lol

KANE

I got 5 elemental swords all q9 inscribeable with +30 hp and 15^50 mods, 26 crystalline same stats, and for some reason bosses were dropping mini ghostly's and stacks of armbrace's so I got 20 stacks and 45 ghostlys..you just have to know where to farm.... You see if I told everyone where to do this then I would be proven wrong so I am not going to tell you just like you are doing in your post