Mini polar bear returns - same drop rate

With the amount of CCS being farmed in the runs why not have it at the end of event
for 1000 (or more) CCS for a bear.
Oh wait thats Grind and Anet don't like us grinding to much for things as they have stated
but wait what are we doing now to get a bear O.o
lol

The way I look at it, they completely abandoned that whole "don't gind for things" mentality a long time ago..... I personally have a problem with the mini not being work based at all and instead being based on a random drop in a quest with a narrow window. It's not an issue of the have vs. have nots or the workers vs. lazy people. For that matter it's not like a lot of the people that want this thing expect to have it HANDED to them. A lot of GW players are here because they wanted to tone down on the amount of rarities in a game. The minis that are tournament rewards are justified, they're a trophy showing an in game accomplishment. Making a cute holiday pet barely attainable is ridiculous. Stuff like this really reminds me more and more of failcraft.

Idiots like this one crying about irrelevant shit on an online game piss me off.

All I have to say is welcome to the free market... where you can't afford everything you want unless you are very very rich.

just a thought.

For all those complaining that they don't like the odds, and think there should be a guaranteed way to get the polar bear - there is!

go farm 1500 ectos and buy one!!!

You're an idiot. Let me explain why.

Remember such sought after items as: Dwarven Axe, Serpent Axe, Stygian Reaver, Sephis Axe, Sickle (Tyrian)? Everyone and their monkey's uncle wanted one for two reasons:

1) the skins were superior to those of common drops
2) they were hard to come by

If everyone can have one, possessing one becomes without value. Find someone that is dying to have one of the skins I just listed.

Much of the intrinsic value of such items derives from their scarcity. Items that people want have to look good AND be hard to come by. Otherwise, there's little reason to invest in the effort to acquire them. It's an accomplishment to own such an item, and people like feeling as though they have accomplished something.

You are the sort of moron that apparently ANet has been trying to market to with the title concept, where achieving 30 max titles requires no skill, only time. Go back to WoW or Runescape. The skill level required in those games suits you better.

You are not entitled to everything you want whenever you want it. You are what is wrong with America. You deserve to be flamed. Please crawl back into whatever hole you emerged from.

So many people just don't get what the gripe is...

I like that it is rare. There should be more reare items in the game. I do not want things handed to me. I like when I have to work for what I want, it's called accomplishment. The fact that this is rare is not the issue. The insane degree of rarity is the issue.

I have to say, this statement speaks to me. I have never had anything given to me of value that i didn't work for. When Wintersday cam around, I decided I was going to do as many runs as I could to get this mini and set that expectation. Then I did the runs. Luckily I got one before doing too many.

It's a rare mini....perhaps too rare, but a rare mini should be earned, not simply handed out, and this mini we already knew was rare before the event occurred this year and how to get it which at least gave everyone an advantage as opposed to last year.

At least they even offered it this year and confirmed that in advance. They could have removed it and replaced it with something equally rare and way uglier

hardwork doesn't pay off, and thats annoying because i did 206 runs now and really lost all motivation

I love people telling me I'm an idiot, they always make my day. You want to explain why, that's really too kind of you, seems like I hit a sensitive spot.


Thanks for that totally brilliant (insert random sarcasm here) gw economics lesson, but, excuse me, what's the link with what I posted here ?

If you want something mostly because it's rare, you should be the one called idiot.

Are you one of those black fow + chaos gloves + ninja mask + mini ghostly who think they look leet, and who stay all day long in spamadan ?
I hope not, but you really talk like you're one of them, maybe I shouldn't dare to attack your leetness, sorry about that...
I'll stop attacking you with such low blows, even if you don't (or can't) realize, a sterile debate like you started isn't what I'm looking for.

I obtained my minipets because I like their look when I pve or afk, same goes for armor or weapons (both for pvp and pve).
When I look at them, I remember when I used to DoA with friends (Mallyx), when I used to race in RollerBeetle and scored a few top 100 entries (Greased Lightning), when I was collecting things for celestial meal with friends (Celestial Rat)...

Most of the people I know in game share my point of view (they're in my guild or in my fl after all), so yes, people who do not care about the number of ectos something is worth exist.

By the way, I didn't say anything should be owned by everyone, I said anything should be attainable by anyone who deserved it. But I'm sorry to tell you that I can't consider being rich (even very rich) in GW as an achievement, it's not that hard if you get lucky and decide to waste some of your time power trading...

value, blablabla, rarity, blablabla, value...

You totally fail at understanding different points of view, you talk as if everyone shared yours, but it's far more complicated.

Rarity in GW became a matter of ridiculously low droprates (some items are even impossible to obtain anymore), I'd rather see rarity being a matter of how hard it is to get where the special item drops. It's not because an item is worth 500 ectos or has a 0.00000001% droprate that I consider owning one as an achievement.

Insults now, we're getting here to the most serious part of your post. Or maybe I should say most pathetic part...

What do you know about my skill level at GW ? What do you know about my pvp skill ? What do you know about my pve characters and their titles ?

I you were less arrogant and had 2 cents of intelligence you would have undestood I'm not the kind of player interested in time consuming / money sink titles, but that's totally off topic.

Where the f*** did I say I should have anything I want whenever I want ? I said things had to require efforts to be obtained, but nothing should be as luck based as dropping a polar bear is. Make things really difficult and set better drop rates.

Is it that hard to understand ?

BTW : - I'm not american, and, who cares ?
- Do not use such low level taunts, you really are pathetic, and it brings nothing to the debate.
- Try to buy a brain somewhere, and to be more open minded. There are many people that don't share your opinions, and they do not deserve to be flamed for that.

Otherwise, you'll end up like this one :

Always off topic, unable to understand basic arguments, aggressive, and ridiculous.

The problem Anet has is that they have too many different player bases to please. As well, theres been a persistent hatred of elistism in both pve and pvp. Yes i said pve. Yes some people find pve hard. Some people found normal mode a little hard. But most of those people are new and haven't quite figured out all the game mechanics yet. But in order to satisfy those who had already beaten the game, they introduced areas like doa and enabled Hard Mode. And even still for some people they don't think the game is hard enough. However to help they rest of the player base, they introduced pve skills and consumables and before that heroes. Heroes helped gain pve popularity back and helped people complete areas where most people had long already completed. But pve skills really brought an interest to pve, because now people can farm more. Look at ursan. You had every nub in the game who beat Nightfall trying to beat DoA. That singlehanded brought torment gems from 100k+ for 1set to what like 10k now?

Because before that people where pretty elitist in some groups in doa, and only those with guilds or one of the holy trinity professions could play. Pve skills combated this and everyone could play. Then they nerfed ursan - way too late - and then buffed SF. Then ectos shot down. Then they had to balance SF a little bit.

Anyway, the point is that they tried offered High End rewards for DoA, and majority of the player base thought it was too high end. They called it a grind (taking 5-10 hours for a run through) and elitist (because of the group requirements and gem prices). Then with ursan, doa skyrocketed, and everybody got their gems and weapons.

Anet has done nothing but make the game dumber for the ease of casual players since after the creation of DoA and Hard Mode.

Their only option is too offer grind titles/items now. Its the only way that is fair to the whole of the player base. If you want to spend 20 straight hours farming to get then you can do it. If you have the 2000e to buy one you can do it. The quest isnt hard. Hell SoS is done by running to the end and afking for 6-12 minutes FFS!

Its purely grind. Its purely luck. Buts its the only option Anet has left.

Do you see complaints about hardness of the quest or can't find a group or its not available to me? No.

The only complaints you see are the drop rate is low (It is because they are trying to keep it rare unlike the celestial pig they botched) and a few 'its too expensive' here and there. And Anet is happy with that. They finally learned that MANY MANY MANY people pay to play games for grinding. If the elite pve and pvp aren't happy, well they probably already resigned to the fact that most of them already left.

So while I would love for them to make some UBER UBER hard quest where i need 8 GOOD players to go through like 2 hours of a quest, and have gimmicky set ups that people have to figure out, it won't happen.

Like Combine, UW's multiple tasks with DoA uber imba 1-hit crits with the gimmickyness of some of the rooms in Urgoz/Deep, for one quest, and give slightly higher drop rate. But thats just wishing for somethign that won't happen.

So back to farming SoS for hours on end hoping for that minipet.

1. You don't need to have a bear. Just like you don't need to have crystalline swords. That kind of "grind" has been in the game from the start. Look at FoW armor.

2. Anet didn't set it up as a grind. It's a very low chance to drop (what, 0.1-0.5% it seems?) so they didn't mean it to be farmable. If you want one, you can pay 4 stacks of ectos for it, but what's going on now seems like madness to me. Don't you people have anything more fun to do in your life or in the game than performing the same repetitive thing, grinding something that wasn't meant to be grinded?

If they wanted it to be a grind, they'd make it buyable from a trader for 5000 candycanes, as you said. That would be a grind, but even then, it would be a grind for something optional.

My reading of Bug John's posts has to do with random drop rates, not rarity per se. There are other ways to make items rare, such as by making them the reward for a very long/difficult task. For example, an item that could only be obtained by getting r15 Hero would be pretty rare, without requiring a random droprate. I tend to agree with this view; games should strive to minimize randomization where feasible (random damage, random drops, etc.).

I'm not sure why people are talking about elitism, but the whole argument against elitism is tired, and the term is almost always misused to begin with. Games (good ones, anyway) are meritocracies; better rewards for higher skill isn't elitism, it's common sense. I've never understood why those who know nothing about the game constantly expect to be able to complete the hardest content in the game at the highest difficulty level. This expectation exists nowhere else - amateur athletes don't expect to win gold medals at the Olympics; amateur musicians don't expect to play at Carnegie Hall; fresh hires don't expect to be CEO. Even in other games, people recognize their limitations: some people can't beat DMC's DMD mode, and don't ever expect to. So why do GW players continue to suffer delusions of grandeur?

Although I agree with your point of view, I'd like to point out to the obvious here: because they paid for this game. Some players feel "restricted" (or "granted", it's a case of glass half-empty/half-full) in terms of access to content of a game they payed for. In your examples, it's mostly people's job where you get paid for, while here it's something we buy and in return expect to have "fun".

I'll repeat that I agree that there has to be challenges to make the game interesting, and in the end it's about a "fine balance" based on the expectations and "skill" (whatever this means, as it's not an easy thing to define) that player have. Some people don't have the time to become as skilled as they could (not talking about lazy people and they do exist!), because it's only a game and it's fairly low in their priorities. Expectations are quite far from those that do invest this time (and "effort", rather than "work") because they can and/or want to.

Yet amazingly, people who buy a book expect to read all of it, not just most of the chapters. And people who go to a movie expect to see all of it.

A game is entertainment, not a contest. People expect to be able to enjoy all of it, not just a part.

The effort needed is there to make for a sense of achievement, not to lock content off.

Exactly. That is precisely the reason I started this topic. Rare stuff is fine. But this is beyond rare. It's so rare it's hardy worth your time. Imagine having spent the entire X-mas holiday farming 24/7, missing out on all holiday cheer, both real life and ingame, and what do you have in the end? A big fat chance at nothing (except lots of shards). What's the point?
I say: forget about it. Besides, it's so incredibly rare, that the price is going to be WAY too high to pay anyway for the bulk of GW players. So the MPB is a little plaything for the insanely rich. Whooptee doo. I just wonder what's the point in that. Why did Anet add it if it'll only be for the elite few? That's my question. I mean how many MPB's actually are there atm??? 10?
Now, the Ursula tameable pet, THAT is something they did well.

Maybe their korean gold selling botters disappeared and they're afraid of lost sales. Now people have a reason to buy gold.

I am sorry, but if you are looking for a game that gives you all 'content' without having to do anything for it, you should not play an MMO, or any game at all.

Do you really want that you can get access to the endboss directly? Do you really want that you can get high end stuff at the start? Do you really want everything to be availlable without having to do anything? People won't play this game for longer than a day! Why? Because it removes all the challenge.

If you don't understand this, well, then I suggest you go play games like Bubble Shooter. See how long that keeps funny.

I agree with you on the last part there but I do have one question to bring up. Usually, when someone says that they have "earned" something, it means that they have put a considerable amount of service, time or work into their goal(s). With what we have heard about people obtaining Mini Polar Bears (and congrats to everyone who has!) in as little as 20 runs, would you honestly say that it is still a matter of "earning" one or that it's mostly a matter of luck?

I think most would agree, luck is key in obtaining the MPB.

No. My time is too valuable to waste using GW as a chat program.

That's nice. But you're an anomaly. People like status symbols. Go check out some of the psychological research that's been applied to marketing and behavioral economics.

Proves nothing about humanity generally. Social networks are built upon similarity. Of course your friends think like you do. If they didn't, they'd be idiots. Many comedians (Dennis Miller and Scott Adams, to name two; possibly Carlin as well) have commented on this fact.

Define this "deserve" concept, please. Introducing undefined concepts is bad. It leads to failure in attempts to explain what you mean.

No, there's a distribution of preferences on this. You're not like most other people, and you don't seem to know it.

Which caused most of the problem with in-game cash sales for IRL cash. I agree with you here, but the problem is that balancing the "difficulty" of acquiring things over the long term is very difficult from a design perspective. People constantly innovate to find ways to do things more easily/quickly/with fewer people. I agree with you in principle here, and I've argued for tying skins to accomplishments for years. However, it creates headaches for the design team.

Do I need to know anything? If the present system worked for you, would you expend your time and energy complaining about it? Are social revolutionaries usually happy with the existing social order, or are they dissatisifed because it does not provide them with what they want?

If you think that people should be able to afford whatever mini they want, this implies that you believe that accomplishment should not be tied to skill. Hence the comment about titles. Titles are time > skill.

You seem to deny the existence of inductive reasoning.

You said, and I have cut and pasted: "I don't give a **** about minis prices, and I think anyone in GW should be able to afford any mini they like".

A little logic here:
If everyone in GW should be able to afford any mini they like
Then it follows that you should be able to afford any mini you like

All I've done is couch the second statement in the appropriately pejorative language.

You made a bad argument. Either:

a) You aren't explaining what you mean clearly.
b) You are attempting to defend the above argument that you should be able to have what you want when you want, and you don't even realize it.

Either way, you deserve to get lit up. Clear communication is key.

I'm still not sure which after your last post. Define your "deserve" concept, and I'll know if the problem is a) or b).

The polar bear is f***ing stupid

Not big on reading, are you?
See? Some effort is needed, and it's a matter of delicate balance. Too little, and the game becomes boring. Too much, and the frustration outweights the fun. But this has nothing to do with exclusivity of content.

It's also hardly the first source of GW minipet e-drama. You'd think the designers would learn.

The book/movie analogy is oversimplified. Consider a child reading Sun Tzu, Shakespeare, or Dostoevsky; the child cannot reasonably expect to be able to understand the bulk of the material she's seeing. A similar situation would be someone attempting a book written in a foreign language, or a book dealing with highly technical or esoteric philosophical subject matter.

The point is, people are necessarily limited by their own ability; this is true absent any perceived "elitism", whether real or imagined. Naturally, being notoriously self-interested, we would each prefer if the baseline difficulty were set at our own level of skill, but consider: what does that leave for everyone that's above that line?

Furthermore, as I've stated previously, even other games don't suffer from the phenomenon that GW does. Many DMC players recognize and accept that a DMD SB game is beyond their level of skill. A typical GW beginner in the same situation would demand that DMD mode be toned down so that anyone could complete it. The existence of higher difficulties - and of difficulty in general - is meaningless if all difficulties are restricted to the lowest common denominator.

The sad reality here is that GW players - or at least, the ones that post on Gurus - generally don't care about anything unless there's a shiny, exclusive reward attached to it. As such, how many people would mind if players were given the ability to simply spawn items at will?

your analogy with dmc fails even more...

we're talking about the strength of snow, how can you talk about skill ? the quest is so easy it can be botted and ran on multiple accounts

you don't need skill to get a mpb, you need luck (see how ppl who got one did less than 20 runs, while those who made 100+ runs didn't get one)

a real hard mode requiring skill to be beaten would be a good thing, but you can't find that in gw wintersday pve

I have done over 280 runs by now. I have only one account, and would not dream of using bots and break the EULA & risk my account.

Every time I open that endchest I so hope I'll see the mini bear!

But alas, after about 10 stacks of cc shards, no luck.

Because that's exactly what this is about, just pure luck. I was saying it to my sis ingame, if I ever get a polar bear drop, it should also max my Lucky Title in one go.

I am sad to see that this bear is so unbelievably rare and the drops are so random that some ppl can get it after their 20th run, and those who truly grind their butts off for it might/will end up with nothing.

As for those saying that people only want this bear to get rich off of it, that's bs. I am very far from being rich, I had 200k only once since I've been playing GW and I spent it on my vabbian armor. I am usually in the 80k range. That said, I would never sell my mini polar bear, dedicated or undedicated, because I think they look adorable and if I ever get a drop, it's because I "worked" very very hard for it.

The randomness, the luckiness factor (luck... I don't seem to have that in GW), and the insanely low drop rate is what makes me almost lose hope and give up doing that quest.

For gods sake I have over 2500 cc shards from that quest only! Which is nice to have but that's not the reason why I'm farming my little heart out and doing that quest over and over again.

~Minami Kaori

i figure this relates to everyone posting on this thread, enjoy:

http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/polarbearfever/index.html

On another note, I can relate to others complaining of the polar bear being a luck based reward. the drop rate is incredibly low. it was made for a few players in thousand to get it after days of farming. however, it was NOT made for any individual player to have a decent chance of getting it after days of farming. This is what is so disturbing to me. the only other thing comparable to this is the mini mallyx, but that is available all year round, and i already got one

Except I'm not talking about Strength of Snow. Please read above.

Furthermore, I actually agreed with your point regarding random drop rates, so I'm not clear on where your disagreement is.

But this requires luck as well, because you're probably not going to legitimately get that many ectos in any guaranteed way that doesn't involve at least some degree of luck to it, in some way or another. So you're pretty much stuck using the grind/luck method no matter which way you go on this.

I like what everybody is saying about luck getting a MPB, or just plain farming for the X ecto needed to buy one. Like any game, it runs on chance, or it'd be boring in a few hours. This minipet is just the pinnacle of chance. However, as with ectos (which drop by chance as well, i managed 10+ runs without one in the UW), you can force your chances up by just repeating things, i.e. farming.

For those who say farming can't ever get you one of these minis : try better farming It's like brute force. If it aint working, you're not using enough.

Remember that we don't need a minipet, they're just nice. They just float, and i have yet to find a build that uses them Why we do such crazy work for them? Vanity. Anyone wants a Tyrian sickle? Not even max, no mods to speak of, and i don't like the skin. Used to cost you a million, whereas you could get better stats from any weapons trader in the area.
Bottom line : if you want the polar, be prepared to bleed for it. (or just hope your angel is having a good day).

Mini polar bear is an ugly minipet , if we were talking about a mini margonite paragon (don't know the exact name) I would farm my ass off.
If you did hundreds of runs and didn't get any , tough luck , nobody promised you would get it.

I figure I have done between 100 and 130 so far, averaging 15 minutes per run (I usually get there, then surf the web or run off and do something while going, so I don't farm as efficiently as I can, but I do get a lot of stuff done), and I haven't seen the bear.

I also took a day off to do the GWEN quests with three toons, and have another toon I may do the quests with. I would like to see a bear, but I am mainly doing it for the CCS and the consumables. Either to use or sell.

lmao, you should farm CC shards in first place, not polar bear

That's the way I feel about it. I mean, you're not going to get the bear unless you open the chests, but you shouldn't be overly disappointed if you don't get one.

Just get your shards, get your gifts, sell or consume your loot, and be happy.

After my next few runs, I will have collected 12 stacks of CCS (most of them from Strength of Snow), and will pretty much be done with farming this year. I am getting sick of the damned snowmen. I sold 3-4 stacks at the start of the event to get soem quick cash, and may sell some of the loot, but most will be kept for titles.

As for the mini-bear, well, it doesn't have its own statue or contribute to a title, so meh!

Are we even sure that the mini polar bear still drop after the event had ended on Jan 1st?

I'm seriously beginning to think the MPB is a GW myth. If not for the few screenshots here, I'd say it doesn't really exist.

Curiously, not even during the finale (several different times, both continents) did I see a single one out and about. Every other mini pet but not mini polars. Strange, huh.

I saw 3 or 4 throughout the finale over various districts of Lion's Arch International. Also saw one about 2 weeks prior to the event in GToB. Guess I just have a polar magnet or something. (har har)

I think he is just saying that DMC has a lot of skill in it(and DMD mode is hard as heck(i had trouble in normal lol)), whereas the SoS run takes no skill and all you have to do is run to the end and hug the door.

The mini polar bear is overrated. I would prefer a panda any day and you can get a real life jingle bear, which is a good compromise, I really don't see why everyone is just looking at the bad side of not getting the bear. You got thousands of shards and alcohol, which is pretty good and each time you farm you have a small chance of getting the bear. You don't have to work for it, infact you can read your email and watch some youtube vids while farming.

I usually complain about a lot of things, but still, this is just one of those things that was meant for fun and has been adulterated to such disgusting levels. (this is just to all those complainers)