Drop rates; are they proportional to server load?

This is my first thread ever on any forum, so forgive any stupidity you see.

Has anyone noticed the difference in drop rates / values due to how many characters are logged on at a given time? In two years I have. I have farmed at all times of day and found Mon - Fri 4pm to 9pm and most times on weekends that drops rates are higher and the value is more per drop (as the server may view the value) . The only common thread i have found is the number of people logged on whether they are actively playing, trading or just standing there. I am on eastern standard time btw. I have farmed with most builds in most places and found this to be true regardless of kill rates builds etc.

As an example, in normal mode (i know noob mode) when farming the tengu outside seitung harbor at peak times i get more rune and inscription drops as well as purples during peak hours. This isn't good for my farm as I am trying to get feathers so i usually farm this area "off peak". In UW I want ectos, (duh) well it seems the server sees this as valuable loot and they seem to drop more often during peak hours. This is simply observation albeit 2 years worth.

It also helps to understand what the server deems more valuable loot. Chalk, blue, purple and gold is easy to figure out. Anet's statement about not loot scaling certain items is also a good barometer. And true to pattern, I have found dye, tomes, golds, and rare materials drop far more often during peak times.

To make a few things clear; I do switch farms, do quests etc. to refresh farms. I also have found that as shown elsewhere in these forums, loot seems to be determined when the instance forms and slightly by kill rates. However, I have observed that the number of logins MUST be an important variable in the drop rate codes. Personally I farm during peak times and do everything else during off peak hours.

Has anyone else noticed this and can back me up here?

BTW: Thanks to all the build and farm progenitors out there especially Rezzdog. The grind dies out a bit when farming is an option.

I have been playing since launch and I have to say that I have NEVER seen a correlation between drops and peak times..I too have farmed in the last 3 years different builds in different areas at different times...

I think a lot of it is people "see" patterns (for whatever reasons) where there is none...Even something as random as a coin flip appears to have a pattern (at least in the short term). I still get a chuckle out of a rumor that was going around about a year ago about holding dark remains in your inventory would somehow "make" more ecto drop ..Unfortunately in GW perception IS the reality for some.

Just my 2 cents

well, I don't know about all this, but i do believe the number of people farming the same thing at once has effects on the drops, this was always a hunch to me that I never got really deep into believing for a while there, just something i noticed, like when the holidays come around and the grawl necklaces seem to drop less and less the more people you see out there farming for them for the holiday stuff.

I always thought this was a hunch till one day I went into uw after there had been a new build out for about an hour and I refused to get it as it was the first nerf to SF and I wanted to keep going... Long story short, 22 ecto run.

It may still be just an unproven hunch, but that's proof enough for me.

The easiest way to test this is to have a bunch farm an area in off-peak hours seperately, compare their drop-rates then all log in together and farm that area at once and compare the results. Perferably they'd log in together during a peak hour to maximize the differences.

At the very least you'd need maybe 50-100 people doing 20-30 runs each for both trials. That gives you between 1k-3k runs which is starting to get large enough to create a statistical sample from.

Seconded, it's hard to see a reason why this would be so, and it would require a large, objectively measured sample if you're trying to suggest the existence of such a phenomenon. The human mind doesn't handle randomness well so I want to see some actual statistics.

I haven't seen a correlation between server loads and good drops, whether midweek or Event Weekend.

When I was trying to sync load (soj vs sv thread) I noticed that towns/explorable areas that are empty (eg Piken Square int D1) are hosted on the same server (ip) as those that are full (Rata Sum). Though at the time I was trying to see if it was easier to sync from a loaded server as opposed to an uloaded server.

So here's my theory:
There are 3 IP connections that GW makes, 1 is a login connection, it's the first connection and transfer's a couple bytes of info when you login. 2 is the message system (if you are disconnected from the chat, it drops the IP's connection). 3 is the town/explorable/motion data.

So for the login connection 1; data is only transfered when you login, not much help from that...

Connection 2, the message system ; if you ever are disconnected you'll still get drops, and you will keep them once you are reconnected, so that system doesn't determine drops.

Connection 3, the town/explorable; when you go from town to explorable area all IP traffic is on the town/explorably IP, meaning the town is generating the drops and mobs spawns etc movements etc... When you load into an explorable area from an empty or full town, into a popular or unpopular area it's on the same server as a loaded one (Anet load balances). Meaning if you leave from a full town or not, it's the same as leaving from an empty one.

So to address your theory, towns or explorable areas generate drops on zone, and it seems unlikely that a town server or explorable area server would check all the connection from all the players that are online to determine drops everytime someone zones. That's a lot of traffic, and is unlikely as there is already a system connecting all players together, an independent low-bandwidth connection, the personal messaging system :-) Which has nothing todo with drops.

Of course it's possible that there's some "a lot of people are online, so increase your drops" flag that is passed from the messaging system to all the town/explorable, so better drops occur on the weekend, IMHOP I don't see the advantage, at least from Anet's perspective, I mean how does it improve GW?

It doesn't really make sense and would be near impossible to test.

Gaile Gray has said at least once that drop rates in an instance are not influenced by any actions of other players in a different instance of the same area, nor by the actions or presence of anyone who isn't in your party in that instance. I'm paraphrasing here. She presumably got those answers from the devs responsible for the drop system. Absent any non-anecdotal evidence, I think I'll take the developer's word for it rather than any other opinions to the contrary.

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