Loot scaling please explain why, how is it better?

Now read the thread again and engage your brain, it is anything but conclusive.

That thread did NOT address rate of kill. Both farming methods had a similar kill rate. That thread is often wheeled out as a counter to rate of kill and it absolutely is not.

Also, nobody I am aware of has ever reproduced the effect, and I tried a lot.

Here is proof of rate of kill (in the same thread)

Loot scaling was implemented because basically solo farmers were getting approximately 800% more gold over time than regular players. Most of the money came from gold coins and crappy whites... The latter which would be instantly merched/salvaged for an easy gold return.

This caused gold farmers to basically run the entire game. NPC traders for runes and materials would have outrageous prices because gold was so worthless.

What this does is slant the entire game toward the veteran player and screws over any new gamer. No new player wants to step into Ascalon City for the first time and see that his armor is going to cost like 20,000 gold pieces for materials when he's only getting loot that's worth like 20 gold per drop. That's basically telling all new players to deinstall and never come back.

Guild Wars makes almost all of its money on selling accounts to people. Since ArenaNet says that they are removing hundreds of accounts each week for illegal activity, the assumption is that at least that number of accounts are being rebought because Xfire doesn't show much of a loss of gamers playing the game. Whether you want to believe me or not is fine, but I think all of us would agree that there's no way that the majority of Guild Wars's income is coming from veteran players buying extra character slots or the Game of the Year Upgrade package.

Loot scaling nerfs farming runs so farmers could continue to get rare drops, but not a ton of easy money (i.e., gold coins and crap whites). This had the side effect of killing the rare market, but that's another story.

Whether or not this was the best solution or not is besides the point. The bottom line is that Guild Wars is friendly to new players and that's the real source of money. Loot scaling has almost no affect (if any) on the PvP culture of the game, so it doesn't affect Guild Wars's most important feature. Finally, older PvE players can whine all they want, but they keep playing anyway. For all of these reasons, ArenaNet is never going to remove loot scaling and you can forget wishing for it.

This guy is smart. A few months ago, the three ways to get rich from farming were-

A) Endless Grind
B) Farm items related to titles (Elite Tomes, Sweets, Alcohol)
C) Ectos, Shards, and Armbraces

Anything else was virtually a waste of time.

One word, just one word: GW2

Back on topic:
I came in on Jan 2, 2008, I have no idea what happened before that so I also seem to have entered just as the glory days of pug's was drawing to a close (good alliance fixes all that).

Both high and low lvl mobs have the same drop rate for Golds and Grapes though the quality of those are differentiated by the mob lvl.

I know I screwed that all up but that's all I can say.

a big part of this game died when farming died and i'm talking about way before loot scaling.

sad really

It seems that very few people in this thread understand how loot scaling works. It also doesn't help that the wiki entry is not correct.

In this thread, Nechtan Thaumaturge puts together a credible, coherent, and logical explanation of loot scale that accounts for the results of statistical testing done by Skinny Corpse on rate of kill and tmakinen on the entry effect. I very strongly suggest that anyone who wants to comment on loot scale should read that thread before shooting your mouth off and making a fool of yourself.

A short summary for the "too-long, didn't read" crowd: Loot scale places a limit on the gold-from-the-merchant-value per unit time you can get through drops. Once you've reached the limit, loot scale kicks in and prevents you from getting any white, blue, purple drops until enough time has passed that you are under the limit again. What happens in practice is that you get a drop, then loot scale kicks in for awhile, then it wears off and you get a drop, then loot scale kicks in for awhile, then it wears off and you get a drop, rinse and repeat.

Killing farming didn't kill the game. It just had severe distributional consequences that drove a good chunk of the most creative PvE-ers away. The power traders were already making more money per unit of time, but hammering the early farms just widened the gap.

Loot scaling is great for the new player in Ascalon but terrible for the new player in the Desert and beyond. By that point, your drops still aren't worth anything, so you can afford necessities but no desirable shinies. Loot scaling and the inscription system condemn non-farmers to a subsistence living in PvE.

With that said, today a player of any sophistication can make a ton of money quickly with overpowered event farming.

The rune trader had ridiculous prices early on because the code used to re-evaluate prices was flawed, not because of an influx of bot farmed gold. The margins were so wide that no player would ever sell to the trader (it was worth the time to resell on the market), but impatient players would buy. Result? Permanent inflation.

I'm talking about rate of kill. This isn't relevant.

Rate of kill is pretty easy to prove even if you don't farm. All you need to do is clear a zone slower (with a full party) and you'll notice the difference.

Well last night my friend and I did Rragars menagerie. And we both got a worthless gemstone out of the chest, and tons of useless white junk from all the mobs.

I am not happy, but I also know GW doesn't care if I am. If anyone reading this is thinking about buying the games, if you do not care about rewards, buy it, if you do care, don't.

Not sure about this loot scaling.. because me and my farming buddy in 2-3 trips get a combined 10 golds, 3 Lockpicks, 1 Black Dye and several Attunements and Radiants... making about a combined 10-13k every 20 minutes...

However... when I 600 alot in CoF... I wont get a gold or a purple the entire run somtimes... not even a gold from the the chest at the end... (2 diamonds once)...

You know, if you want people to discuss that, you should probably not name your thread "Loot scaling", as this isn't loot scaling. Do we have to go over the definition of loot scaling every time someone talks about drops?

Has GW ever said how it works, if so where is it posted?

It increases pageviews which increases your Ad potential and potential Ad revenue, the need for moderators, etc.. Otherwise the entire forum could be 5 stickies and not have any members :P

Yes, Gaile did give an explanation at the time it was implemented. That explanation was later proven to be unequivocally false.

Players (farmers mostly) have been collecting statistical data on drops, and the only theory that is fully consistent with their empirical findings is the one by Nechtan Thaumaturge that I linked to earlier. Barring some unexpected new data, it's safe to say that s/he's correct, and anyone who says differently is not. Now go read his post.

His test took two builds with not radically different kill rates on small groups. While the syncing method is the best, the builds and locations he chose weren't.

To keep the staff pleased, I'm branching this off to a new question in keeping with the original premise.

With the advent of loot scaling many have said loot in general went down, be it drops from mobs or from chests. Me personally, the chests I have encountered in the wild (requiring either a key or lock pick, or treasure in NF) have generally yielded purple junk not worth keeping and generally only worth salvaging into crafting materials. It should be stated I do not do chest runs. I fight through and area, if a key or lock pick drops I use it, if I find a treasure chest or dungeon chest at the end of a mission I pray and open it.

Tonight I got a gloom shield req 10 tactics, from a dungeon chest, a platinum wand from a dungeon chest req 11 divine, and as a drop a max dmg platinum bow, req 12 marks. My friend got an Platinum Ingneous blade req13 from the dungeon chest!!! *sigh* Shouldn't Platinum be max stats and perfect? Well as it was explained to me, the system is not very sophisticated and cannot be set to produce perfect items on demand, it happens when it happens. It is working as designed.

So is it working as intended and it's supposed to produce junk 99.9% of the time or is it broken? What do you think?

Isn't platinum just a skin name? No reason it should be perfect any more than a longbow or anything else.

It helps prove one point I have maintained for many years. Computers cannot randomize. Any programmer with a few years experience knows this. Random is a concept not a fact. So it follows the gw loot system can easily be manipulated. Good read, thanks!

That's still not loot scaling, and I could care less what you do. I only said that if you wanted answers, not talking about loot scaling would help. It's a lost cause at this point.

The loot system has always produced crap items 99.9% of the time. The only thing that's changed is the definition of a crap item. Having gold text and a nice skin doesn't cut it anymore.

I laughed.

True dat, I was hoping this might put it to rest. As you said "Oh god not another.." or words to that effect

As for "I laughed", long running discussion with my programming pals. Computers cannot randomize, when you write the code to make it "randomize" you are making a set rule for it to follow, so it cannot be considered random QED. :P

Anyone who knows computing or random numbers well enough will know that it is rather trivial for a computer to generate an extremely good representation of a random number. Any number that is imposible to predict can be effectively considered random, and computers have been doing that for a very long time. There is a lot of mature mathematics underlying this.

The difference between true random and pseudo-random is beyond the ability of humans to detect.

Technically computers can do true randomisation, with a hardware extension that makes use of a external, random source (like background radiation, or the decay of radioactive atoms).

But that is irrelevant. From what I've read, it isn't so much that the system is designed to be random and the pseudorandom nature of computers is letting it down, as that it isn't designed to be random at all. The server is just keeping track of how much wealth is dropping for the player, and limiting it to a predetermined amount given a period of time. Whenever a drop would push the player over that amount, it is removed.

The actual drops themselves are, for all practical purposes, random, as there is no way to predict what they will be, and no way to manipulate the system to get a specific drop.

Or in the case of GW, internet latency. One of the things Skinny Corpse's experiments showed was that a-net is seeding their loot generation RNG with your zone-entry time. And, even if you can be precise enough about when your client send the message that you're entering the zone portal, the time the server gets the message depends on a whole lot a random real-world variables.

I have one question, does anyone here have any proof loot-scaling does any of the things you people keep saying it does?

This thread is the one that gives evidence for the max drop rate theory, you are free to try the same and reproduce the results (I'm tempted too myself).

Well said. I would tend to agree with your logic.

As for random quotes (didn't ya know that was coming?)

Random is a concept, and cannot be replicated.. only imitated. - me

There lies the problem in GW. While in theory, yes, it should be harder on your own, in practice though it's alot faster and easier to do it on your own. The 55 monks, the SB monks, the SF assassin, they can do it all on their own with relative ease and enough practice. Not to mention that you won't have to wait for a whole group to run through it, so that also results in more runs you can do instead.