Let's try and solve how Loot Scaling works.

I think a good idea would be to try and work together as a community to try and work out the conditions and parameters that loot scaling follows. If we can do that, we can identify what the best situation to farm stuff is.

The following questions probably need answering, and other members can suggest more to be test/answered:

-Is loot scaling affected by what time of day people farm?
-Is loot scaling affected by the amount of other players farming the area? Will secret farming locations give people better drops?
-Does loot scaling gradually decrease as people kill more enemies in the explorable/mission?
-Is loot scaling affected by the speed of using skills and the speed of kills?
-Is loot scaling affected by the type of skills? Do you get more drops if you use attack skills? AoE? Skills that kill one at a time ([sliver armor]) or all at once ([inferno])?
-Is loot scaling reduced if you barely survive with your build, or when you're at full health all the time?
-Do higher level enemies really drop better stuff? Do level 28s beat level 24s in terms of the chance of gold drops?
-Does Hard Mode really make a difference?
-Do locations which require lots of traveling beforehand give you better drops?
-Why are some locations with enemies of the same level still have different quantities of drops?
-Is loot scaling affected by how you use your character? Do characters dedicated to farming get worse drops than general PvE characters?
-Will playing PvP or a long PvE mission improve drops if you then return to farming?
-Does farming on different server matters to loot drops?
-Does favor effect drops in an area that needs favor to go in?

Loot scaling means less party members = less total drops. Anything else isn't loot scaling but other loot code.

By loot scaling, I meant any code that alters the amount of drops people get. I should have been more specific.

one more:

does farming on different server matters to loot drops?

Another:

Does favor effect drops in an area that needs favor to go in?

The problem is that ANet quite simply lied. Loot scaling is not implemented simply on party size. It is implemented on rate of kill.

I can go out solo and get a drop off every mob with some builds and with another build get next to nothing.

And its not just solo. My guild has recently been running Urgoz's Warren to see how fast we can do it, and the faster we do it, the less drops we get. Thats for a full party of 12!

So we can start with the ANet lie. They have repeatedly told us that Lootscaling is working as intended. Well if this is true, then ANet lied about how it works, because it most definately does NOT work how they say.

Oh, and by the way ANet, nice screwed up economy you created. So all that gameplay nerf was for absolutely nothing, the oh so precious GW economy lies in tatters thanks to their stupid intervention.

This reply is based soley on my opinion and experience
-Is loot scaling affected by what time of day people farm?
Doesnt matter
-Is loot scaling affected by the amount of other players farming the area?
Doesnt matter
-Does loot scaling gradually decrease as people kill more enemies in the explorable/mission? doesnt matter
-Is loot scaling affected by the speed of using skills and the speed of kills?
Yes
-Is loot scaling affected by the type of skills? Do you get more drops if you use attack skills? AoE? Skills that kill one at a time
Yes
-Is loot scaling reduced if you barely survive with your build, or when you're at full health all the time?
Doesnt matter
-Do higher level enemies really drop better stuff? Do level 28s beat level 24s in terms of the chance of gold drops?
Yes
-Does Hard Mode really make a difference?
Yes because of higher level enemies
-Do locations which require lots of traveling beforehand give you better drops?
Doesnt matter
-Why are some locations with enemies of the same level still have different quantities of drops?
Parameters of drops and percentage associated with that
-Is loot scaling affected by how you use your character? Do characters dedicated to farming get worse drops than general PvE characters?
Doesnt matter although some people will probably disagree I think people think this because of expectations. After you do a couple of farming runs that are great all runs after that just dont seem to live up. However my avg numbers are consistent no matter how long i farm.
-Will playing PvP or a long PvE mission improve drops if you then return to farming?
Doesnt matter

You have a good idea here to really get an indept look at loot scaling, however I think it is much more simple. If anet implemented a complex system then its real easier to work around it.

I think enemies have a number of drops( they can drop) and a percentage associated with each drop, things such as: how many others are farming the area, what skill your using, how long you traveled to get there etc dont matter. What does matter is how fast you kill and that is set on a time limit: ie:x amount of enemies killed in y amount of time lowers the the chance of a drop overall. I have seen this to be true, over the course of my experience, and after doing the UW farm for ectos which are not effected by loot scaling (for now) it has just reaffirmed my beliefs.

I've added the questions to the list.

It'll be good if people who answer the questions could give some evidence for their thinking.

I'm probably going to begin testing the server question, as I have a suspicion that farming in polish districts will give better drops as there are less people on that server.

Quoted from GWW
"With loot scaling, players receive an amount of normal drops (common and uncommon rarity items, collectable drops, gold, common crafting materials) proportionate to the size of their party as compared to a full party. For example, a solo farmer will on average get the same number of blue weapons as a player in an eight person party. The only items exempt from this rule are:
Skill Tomes
Insight and Passage Scrolls
Dyes
Rare crafting materials
All rare (gold) items
All unique (green) items
Special event items "
it's not a mystery >.>

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10225077 <explains that only what time you enter an area matters for what loot you get.

Why do drop levels gradually decay after the 3rd of 4th time of entering an area then?

Didn't notice you added that link. Great info!

I would have to say from experience that time has some effect. I am not sure if it has a direct effect such as at 9:00am you get better drops or an indirect effect at 9:00am there are less people farming in you rarea and therefore you get better drops. I say from experience as when I farm raptors for a 15-30 min prior to work I get about 10 golds, when I farm later on in the day i get significantly less. Maybe its just bad luck but this seem to happen all the time.

I wanted to find the image to where it says "When you enter an area repeatively then you receive/ worse drops" I forget what it says but basically it's along the lines of that. And that has nothing to do with loot scaling because this has been around since the beginning of the game, or at least sometime around the beginning.

Basically what it did was give full parties even more of an advantage in farming ontop of the inherit one they already get by having a full party which makes farming easier. Its like paying someone $50 to cut the lawn, if he brings help should his help get paid $50 too? no , that doesnt make sense, if he brings help the advantage he gets is easier work. Would you pay $50x however many people show up to do a $50 job? Of course not, Anet doesnt mind doing it because they do what they want since they make the loot but it does screw over the solo player which is by far the majority.

Specualation and rumour!
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10225077
^^

It may seem that time taken to kill mobs has an effect, but the above thread conclusively shows that it does not.

As for mobs dropping _fewer_ (¬_¬) golds after the 3rd/4th farm of a zone, yes, I would agree also, but only from a very limited sample of runs.

My observations,

On certain days of the week, Tuesdays for example I get more dye to drop. I do not know why. This is also between the hours of 6-8PM. Weird for me.

I am in North American Districts EST.

Also if there is only 1-5 districts in ascalon city - presearing- i get more charr kits- the only gold drop in pre- than I do other wise. I do not know why.

Just for example. Seems weird by maybe if more people are farming I get them less often cause I miss my window of oppertunity?

Weird. Sorry for the spelling errors.

Actually, you're quite simply WRONG.
That's not loot scaling. It's the basic drop code that's always been there. What Anet said was true, loot scaling (which was implemented after NF came out) is effected by what they said it was effected by.

I'm not disputing whether party size is a factor (still needs research), but LS based on kill speed definitely applies in full-henchmen parties. That's quite different than what was implied.

Gaile called kill-speed throttling the "elite farmer filtering" code.

People posting their anecdotal experience won't mean much. You need to record exactly the frequency of scaled drops you are getting, in what area, with what build, how many henchy/heros around, and compare notes.

You know, I find that if I /clap twice and then /jump right next to the area portal before entering into explorable areas I get approximately 1.6 more gold items per run. Anyone who isn't providing a tested environment to backup their superstitions won't help this discussion.

and here is another one:
-is it affected by whether or not you have a 'blessing' (by which I mean you get ss points for undead, lb points for margonites etc).....

I add this because I have noticed that when I do the ss/lb run outside of remains that I seem to NOT get drops from things I have a 'blessing' to kill---like the margonites and undead, while I DO get drops from the mandragors (every time!--usually money, but its a drop)....it seems strange (guess I should go out without the blessing and see if the drops improve---).

[I have also noticed that rate of the drops in prophecies is better than those in either nf or factions...while eye drops are almost nil---kill 30 things before the first drop sometimes].

Well, I have been testing this with both of my accounts. My main account assassin and my other account assassin enter an area at the same time and farm the same stuff with different builds. So far I have tested probably about 50 times, and its very shocking. Almost every single time one account gets a gold drop, the other account will get the same gold with the same mods on it. So personally I believe that how you kill the monster doesn't matter, it's when you enter an area.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Loot_scaling

This explains loot scaling by anet's definition. Unfortunately what it doesn't explain is that the total anti farming effects also include the amount of time played consecutively on one char, the number of consecutive times one char enters and re-enters an area and the speed at which consecutive enemies are killed via non AoE damage per attack (i.e. one duration of sliver armor is considered one single attack).

I find it funny that wiki had a full page on this topic when anti farm codes were introduced, now this little quip of info is all the "official" info I can find.

Months ago, after reading someone's post about drop rate variation based on mob kill vs single kill rates, I decided to test the theory for myself.

I decided to use the Gates of Kryta farm as my test location and used my elementalist for the test character. My builds centered around sliver armor for individual kills, and fairly generic nuking for the mob kills.

My first series of tests relied on a few hundred runs for each build. The drop rate for the sliver armor build was several times higher than that for the nuking build.

I have since done a larger test with 1500 runs on each build. The sliver armor build consistently received a better drop rate. In the end I received just over 4 times as many drops on average using the sliver armor build than the nuking build.

I have found the same pattern repeated when using a perma SF sin. When I use a dagger build, generating individual kills, my drop rate is much higher than when using Mark + Lava. Of course the run takes forever using a dagger build so the fire build still works out as more efficient over time but the actual number of drops per run is better on the dagger build.

Sorry no screen shots.

Ashen

Yes, a lot, i never play easy mode anymore, the drops... baed.

Be more wrong kthx

One of the most misinformed, incorrect and stupid posts ever made. Check your facts, check the research and try again. Its very easy to prove, try reading my post again and then read the original dev update which explained what loot scaling was. As so many have posted so many times before over the last year, it is very easy to prove that it is inacurate. ANet have refused to acknowledge there is a problem despite undeniable proof, though they never state that findings are wrong (how could they) but merely things are as they intended. The dev update is a lie, and anyone who denies the rate of kill factor is ingorant/lazy/fanboy/gullible/newbie.

You can't just post that provable and repeatable facts are wrong purely because you want to believe something. By all means feel free to agree with the decision ANet made with loot scaling, but don't deny facts and don't think for one second that ANet told the truth, because they very provably didn't.

My answers to your questions are based on my observations and are MY opinion and only my opinion. I am sure there are some that will disagree with me.

Is loot scaling affected by what time of day people farm? Yes. The fewer people on, the better the drops.
Is loot scaling affected by the amount of other players farming the area? Yes
Will secret farming locations give people better drops? Yes
Does loot scaling gradually decrease as people kill more enemies in the explorable/mission? Not sure what you mean. If you mean "gradually decrease" in drops: No.
Is loot scaling affected by the speed of using skills and the speed of kills? Yes and No. Depends on your party make up.
Is loot scaling affected by the type of skills? Yes.
Do you get more drops if you use attack skills? Yes.
Is loot scaling reduced if you barely survive with your build, or when you're at full health all the time? Loot Stealing is in active or inactive, there does not appear to be a scale that loot stealing applies to any zone I have found.
Do higher level enemies really drop better stuff? Better stuff, Yes; as often, No.
Do level 28s beat level 24s in terms of the chance of gold drops? Not from what I have seen.
Does Hard Mode really make a difference? Yes, as for the varity and value of drops.
Do locations which require lots of traveling beforehand give you better drops? Depends on the area. The old anti-farming code is still active so going to a heavly farmed area does reduce the drops.
Why are some locations with enemies of the same level still have different quantities of drops?
Is loot scaling affected by how you use your character? Yes. Part of the old anti-farm code.
Do characters dedicated to farming get worse drops than general PvE characters? Yes, see above.
Will playing PvP or a long PvE mission improve drops if you then return to farming? Yes, see above.
Does farming on different server matters to loot drops? No.
Does favor effect drops in an area that needs favor to go in? No.
Why do drop levels gradually decay after the 3rd of 4th time of entering an area then? That is the old anti-farm code that we were told would be removed. Apparently it wasn’t.

I just loled.

Didn't think anyone who frequented these forums would ever deny that large groups of monsters dying at the same time = less drops.

What I believe but can't prove is that anti-farming code was weakened, but not totally removed. Are we supposed to believe everything Anet says? Did Anet not say it was impossible to stop GoLE cast-faking? Did Anet not say it was impossible to separate PVE and PVP skill function? But realistically, I don't see much effect of farming any place repeatedly.

What I know and can prove (and so can anyone):

Hard mode drops are basically the same as "normal mode" before there was such a thing as hard mode.

The time elapsed between enemy deaths affects drops TREMENDOUSLY. On several UW Chaos Plains runs, I used different methods to kill Specters.

1) Fastest kill- 3 Lava Fonts in succession. All adjacent enemies die simultaneously. Drops are almost non-existent. Non-lootscaled items (ecto) drop normally. Can kill 18 enemies at the same time and MAYBE have 2 drops.

2) Slower kill- 2 Lava Fonts, then wand each enemy individually so they die one at a time. Only a couple seconds between deaths though, since you just target the next foe and hit them with staff to finish them off. Total drops increase dramatically. Get more gold coins and more blues, whites, golds and purples. I'd say off the top of my head a 5x higher chance of getting something to drop. The drops may be crap, but even crap adds up at the merchant.

3) Slowest kill- use conjure flame + MoR, hit with staff or fiery scythe. Takes a lot longer, but drops are a slight bit better than method 2. The time spent versus the items dropped isn't really worth it.

There really is no mystery. These results can be very easily reproduced by anyone. If all the enemies die at once, you will get JACK S**T for drops, especially in Normal Mode. I seldom AOE farm in hard mode, so I can't give conclusive data there.

As for Loot Scaling, it's pretty simple. You more or less get the same drops solo as you would in a full party. Nothing too hard to prove, just take a full party or H/H on one run and do it again solo and compare your share of drops.

Please re-read that thread more closely. It conclusively shows that the effect is very small, but it definitely exists.

If you know even a modest bit about programming, it's not shocking at all. Let me explain what's going on: Computers cannot generate truly random numbers. The best they can do is to produce a (long, but repeating) sequence of numbers with an even distribution across a range where the terms have a very inelegant relation to each other, and then pick a different starting point in the sequence each time it is used so that users don't get deja vu. You pick the starting point by giving your pseudo-random number generator an input. Standard industry practice is to use the very small digits from the system time as the input, since it creates the illusion of randomness at a very fine granularity, and it's virtually impossible to the user to control their input that precisely. GW is taking the system time when you enter a zone as the "seed" input to initialize its pseudo-random number generator.

(For the more metaphor inclined: GW is not rolling the dice every time you kill a monster. Rather it's rolling a hundred dice once when you enter the zone, then looking at the first die when you kill the first monster, and looking at the second die when you kill the second monster, etc. It's also using the the same set of 100 dice for everyone who enters the zone at the same time. So, if you and I synch join, it will roll just one set of 100 dice, then look at the first die when you kill your first monster and when I kill my fist monster, and look at the second die when you kill your second monster, and when I kill my second monster, etc.)

So where does this small difference that the synch joining experiments found come from? Tmakinen proposed the best explanation I've seen, and backed it up with some experiments.

First, let's imagine a non-loot-scaling world where every critter has a 50% chance to drop an item. How would you program that? Well, a simple way would be to take the next pseudo-random number off your series, range 1 to 100, and drop an item if it's over 50. Or, to put it another way, "if (roll > threshold), then drop item."

Loot scale appears to make two modifications to this simple system:

First, the threshold that your pseudo-random number has to exceed to get an item to drop varies with party size. Going by some old comments by Gaile, it scales from zero for a full party (every monster drops something) up to the top of the range on the pseudo-random numbers minus two divided by the max party size (you get twice as many drops solo as you'd get in a full party, after loot division among party members).

Second, before your pseudo-random number gets checked to see if it clears the threshold, a small value might get added to or subtracted from it. This value seems to be defined by reference to the rate at which you've been making gold (as measured by the merc value of the things that drop for you). If you're making money too fast, something is subtracted off your pseudo-random numbers to lower your odds of getting more drops in the immediate future. If you're making money slower than the limit a-net set, pseudo-random numbers might get a small boost so that you're more likely to get drops in the immediate future.

That leaves us with, "If ((roll +/- adjustment) > threshold), then drop item," where adjustment is related to how far above or below a-net's "speed limit" your drops have been recently, and threshold depends on how many people are in the party.

Try full party trapping or EoE bombing and you will see its not "very small"
Try solo farming one kill at a time and see a drop from 95% of the mobs, then say its very small.

The OP first screen shot in that thread proves it: Solo run, 70 mobs yet 50-60 drops? Loot scaling is not as ANet says

QFT
I remember back when you could farm with splinter/barrager; always got way lower drops than I did with my sv necro even though I killed faster with my barrager.

It is hard to get any exactly acurate data on Loot Scalling simply because you have to factor in the Random chance of a drop.

Enter a zone solo and kill just one monster and leave, repeat. You might get a drop every time or just 1/100. Try that same test with a full party and see if the results change.

Loot scaling alters the probability of getting a drop as well as the quality of the drop, but its altering a random variable so the change may not be measurable in some instances and very noticable in others.

What do we know about Loot Scaling?
Loot Scaling does not affect full parties. It reduces the number of drops when less people are in the party. As soon as you play with less than a full party you won't see all items drop.


There is a difference between anti-farming effects and Loot Scaling!
Anti-farming effects are the so called AoE-bug or RoK.
The AoE-bug: makes sure that you get less drops when you kill multiple enemies at the same time.
RoK (Rate of Kill): Some people think that it's not only the AoE damage but only the number of enemies that you kill in a short period.


To know if Loot Scaling is working correctly, you have to know if every opponent in the game drops an item when you're in a full party.
We tested this on a different forum some time ago and a few people added information. We killed every single enemy in an area that didn't take much time to complete. We saw that every enemy dropped an item when we had a full party. Then, these few people, completed that same area ~50 times with hero and henchman. Average numbers after all these runs showed that we got 1/8 of the drops in that area. (It was an 8-man area)


Does that mean Loot Scaling works then?

A: We discovered that Anet has a few Loot Tables for several area's.

Example:
People were complaining that they didn't get 1/8 of the drops when they farmed the Snowman Dungeon. They expected to get 1/8 of the drops but a smart player will immediatly notice that the Snowmans don't drop gold coins! Anet changed the Loot Tables of these enemies. Probably because the area was used for quick Derlver points and the low level of the huge mobs.

There are more area's that have different effects. People who farm the first Stygian Veil quest can also tell you that the mobs they farm won't drop gold coins.

Thus it's very hard to tell what you can expect in some area's. But it's safe to say that most explorable area's that you can vanquish will earn you 1/8 of the drops. (And 1/4 if it's an 4-man area)


B: Bosses
Bosses can drop up to 4 items. Which messes up statistics. It's possible to get more drops in a full party than there are enemies on the map.


C: Gold coins
How to count the gold coins? Statistics gave us the impression that a single gold coins drop can be considered to be 1 drop. Meaning that in a full party: 8x gold coins drop for the party = 1 drop for a single player. (You get 1/8 of each gold coin stack in a full party. --> 8/8 = 1)


Conclusion:
Nobody can tell you if Loot Scaling is working correctly. The only ones that know if Loot Scaling has the effect it's used for is Anet. Anet won't reveal any information on this, they haven't done that since they implemented it and gave the additional dev. update.

I'm still convinced that Loot Scaling is working like intended. My gaming experience became more fun. Since they implemented Loot Scaling I didn't feel the need to farm anymore to buy all equipment. Low prices is more fun for everybody.

If you want to know how LS works here is the thread to see.
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...lo ot+scaling

That is the plain and simple way loot scaling works for soloing.

Nothing else matters. Most dont want to aggre but its there.

No you are quite simply WRONG.
Before LS there was never an issue with rate of kill (turai farm anyone?).

I was discussing this with a guildie a fwe days ago. If you observe your rate of kills you will see that if you are too efficient your drops will decrease.
This is basically a catch all by anet. no matter how many kills you make/hour you loot not change dramatically.

Anet have lied about how LS works. I think it was a mistake that plagues this game to this day.

Instant fail

So how do explain that I can farm a certain way solo and get a drop off of nearly every mob, and yet I can enter Urgoz with a full party of 12 and EoE bomb mobs and get very few drops for the entire party?

Hm. Considering the success of the recent SF ecto runs or even smite runs, could it be the run to Chaos Planes or to the smites (in which nothing is killed), that prevents proper loot scaling from occurring? That is to say, the type of loot scaling that's mentioned here (less gold drops over a period of time), unless that's anti-farming code.

I dunno. I pulled that from my behind.

Weirdly enough, I get more drops if I complain in-game about getting less drops.

Instant win for Fay just coz Urgoz was mentioned.

My guild has had the entire room killed instantly in an EoE bomb with a full 12 man team, and got a grand total of 0 drops. It is clearly not the size of the party, it is the rate of killing. Denying that is like saying oil prices didn't go up over the past year.

Afraid not. It actually has to do with the Timing of kills. Not the rate or how fast you kill them.