Leechers and raptors

Hello,
I just wondering if anyone has done any research to prove that leechers affects on number of drops at raptor (or any) farm.
I know (i saw some table with calculation) that killing group of mobs at once (eg using AoE) cause less golds than killing them slowly (one by one).
Does anyone have done any research about affect of leecher for drops?
Can you share numbers, procentage, chances, etc, for any popular build (eg W/N, E/M or else) with and without leechers.

Is it official that leechers rise the chance for golds? Is it also affect for white items? For festive items?


And finnally - does NM/HM affects on number of festive items? Or maybe both modes has the same chance to get it.

Aint alot of official stuff around about droprate, there is someone though who studied it a bit, made graphs etc. It's on the forums somewhere.

I coudn't find those graphs and sheets.

I've made hundreds of raptor runs in the past week.

I spent an hour farming with 6-8 Leechers, and an hour famring with none, and I saw no noticeable difference in drop rates.

If larger parties = more drops, then I must have been extremely unlucky.

So the leechers stuff its just an urban legend?

I have had the same experience over the shortened Grog weekend. I was using the old A/E sliver build, and saw no noticeable difference using no leechers, 1 leecher, or up to 4 leechers.

I did get a decent amount of gold and Grog drops. I didn't chart the numbers, but I think that the faster the mob died the less the boss dropped. If I split the mobs, I got Elite Tomes and the Green regularily. If I pulled the whole cave and the boss went down in a group I got nothing or a white. But it did make a difference between a less than three minute run versus an over four minute run.

I suggest you get cracking with your research. A period of a year would be sufficient.

Further, this research won't really prove anything as a certainty. You might see a trend of sorts, but nothing that is a mathematical certainty.

Don't forget to count the amount of people in a zone at any given time also doing the farm, since this may also play a role in the droprate.

kthx

If it does make a difference... it must be so small that a) I can't detect it, and b) it's cancelled out by the time wasted gathering leechers. That's time you could have spent doing extra solo runs.

I suppose IF you believe in leeches, AND your runs take 3+ minutes, then it might be worth it - but good luck with that cos the leeches won't be happy. My current E/Me takes 85-90 seconds to zone out, kill 31-32 nestlings and the boss, return to town and zone out again... and even that's sloooow by today's standards.

So, in my opinion - don't bother with leeches.

The only things you can expect to change with leechers should be gold coins (autosplit so who cares) and lower end drops. Everything else including gold items, dye and holiday items are all exempt from loot scaling.

The folks who perpetuate this myth either a) didn't bother to read how loot scaling works or b) are too lazy to work on their Asuran title any other way.

The better drops with leechers myth more than likely sprouted out of people who wanted max asura rank fast but could not find an alternative. So they tricked the classes who could raptor farm into thinking if they came along with them to syphon(aka "Leech") asura rep. that the farmer would get better drops.

And wha' 'da ya' know, it worked.

For leechers to affect the drop rate they should be in the radar range with the farmer. If they are not there is no difference.

your chances of drops only increase in a bigger party if those people are in compass range of the monsters dying, that is proven i believe?

edit: wow i fail, the person above me got it perfectly lol

This is something I have been curious about lately - not so much because of festive items, but more so because of the items that the Traveler wants. I have always found it easier to get the travelers items - which are just common drops - in NM. This could, as usual, just be one of those random things that evens out if you have a large enough sample, but here's something to consider:
There are things that drop in HM (such as Tomes) that don't drop in NM. Also, HM seems to have more good drops than in NM. And, are festive items just common drops or are they considered uncommon/rare. So the question is - does the increased chance of getting a good drop decrease the chance of getting a common drop, or does the ratio of common to good remain the same, but there is just more variety and less crap in the good drops?

More research would be needed, but I'm playing D&D Online these days, so someone else will have to do the research.

I can only give what I have found while farming feathers. If I take a full group of four I only get maybe 10-12 feathers, if I take a group of 3 I will get 15-18 feathers. If I take a group of 2 I will get 24-39 feathers. If I solo I get about the same amount of feathers as the group of 2 or a few more.

I also did this same test on those Stone Summit Badges Dwarves just outside of Yaks bend. This test I just did solo. The first run I got 39, the second run I got 34, the third run I got 28 and the 4th run I got 25. I noticed a considerable lower drop rate each successive time I did the SAME area. I also tried this for those insect legs around Kamadan and played solo and each successive time I got less and less drops in the same area.

All these played in NM and the groups were made up of heroes. I'm pretty sure without a doubt that there is a random code minus a value when farming. Solo I still get more, but, not always that much more than farming with another player or another hero. Thus now I can take a hero necro and let it do all the work and all I have to do is pickup the profits. ) There is no specific this amount will drop everytime value though. It looks to me like there are at least 4 code values everytime I play the same area. Plus if I see certain npcs when I zone into an area also makes a difference on the amount of drops I get.

Instead of 4 runs, try 4000. Or 40,000. Then you might have some meaningful statistics.

Leechers do not help with drops one tiny bit. Depending upon how long it takes to find them vs how much time they save zoning you, they may have a positive or negative impact on how quickly you can repeat your farm.

This post provides the best known explanation of how loot scaling works in GW.

I wouldn't know unfortunately. I always did a cost/benefit analysis in my head of the actual drop rates if that rumor is true versus the definite stupidity I would ultimately have to deal with and I decided that - It's just plain easier to go alone.

I would say in the over 4 years that I've played I've done 4000 runs of each except for Kamadan area. My stats are valid for me and that's all that matters. When you get the same statistics over and over and over again from numerous tries as I have it's pretty easy to draw a conclusion of how the drop rate and code work together. I'd never say it's 100% effective, but, it's close enough for me. ) Now go on back to your trolling elsewhere. )

Calculations and clearly specified assumptions, please. Also, what hypothesized mechanism are you testing? Leechers, repeat farming -> fewer drops, what? What drops? Ecto, gold items, event items?

Without the math, I don't see generating a .05 level hypothesis test in an hour anywhere. A day, sure. An hour? No way.

The required number of runs depends heavily on the underlying (unknown) baseline drop rates. (BTW software development for sample size analysis happens to be one of my day jobs, lol).

I'd be happy to analyze any data that anyone submits to me. You'd just need to define your criterion in advance (e.g., drop rates of a specific item or class of items under two different conditions, such as n1 teammates vs. n2 teammates) and try to make sure that no other factors vary. Alternate or randomize the two situations to account for possible time effects. Please PM me with any data.

For example, let's say you're measuring the drop rate difference of festival items when soloing vs. with 7 leechers. Then depending on the approximate drop rate when soloing (Ref Proportion) and the underlying difference (Proportion Diff)), you'll need approximately this many total runs (if split evenly between both situations) to have a 95% chance of establishing a statistically significant result at the .05 level:

If any of you happen to have SAS installed where you work or go to school, here's a program that you can modify and run for different situations:

proc power;
ods output output=p;
twosamplefreq test=pchi sides=1
proportiondiff = .005 .01 .05 .1 .25 .5
refproportion = .01 .05 .1 .15 .2 .25
alpha = .05
power = .95
ntotal = .;
run;
%powtable(data=p, entries=n, rows=refproportion, cols=proportiondiff);

nah it started with speculation about bots using full parties to trick the lootscale system and get more loot iirc.

So many people always assume you need thousands and thousands of runs to make numbers significant. In fact, for most purposes a sample set of about 30 is generally sufficient to have 95% confidence in your results.

(waits for people with no knowledge of statistics to disagree)

so then why hasnt anyone done it instead of asking?

Because when someone does the "staticians" much prefer to take apart anything they have done as 'anecdotal' rather than allowing anything to conform to some illusionary standard that they have set.

As was just happening before you post.

When someone attempts a new study even to appease those standards, the standards keep getting raised until simple drop rate tests require years worth of runs.

Many spots in the wiki. Lunar fortunes, christmas presents, trick or treat bags have all had their drop rates calculated by simple averages and rounding to the nearest divisible %. The rates seem to work just fine, yet certainly don't live up to the 'standards' of the people that insist you must perform hundreds upon thousands of runs when Nelson ratings poll less than 1 person per 25,000 and statistically work just fine.

To answer a few of the questions brought up: (and ignoring the troll/s)

Loot scaling 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
Thus, the size of a farming party, with respect to loot, only affects the distribution of the exempt items.

The following is an excerpt from Gaile News 20 April 2007

"Without loot scaling, solo farmers received every loot drop, whereas people who played in a party received only a fraction of loot drops. Thus, solo farmers received up to eight times as much loot for killing the same group of monsters. With loot scaling in place, solo farmers still get more loot than people who play in parties, but the gap is less severe than it was before. It is impossible to quantify precisely how much less because it depends on the type of loot farmed and involves some randomness, but here are some rough guidelines:

People who play in normal size parties, including parties of heroes and henchman, will see no difference at all from loot scaling. At the same time, they will notice that normal mode is now much easier to farm, and that the introduction of Hard Mode provides a place they can play where the loot is better than ever before. Thus, people who play the game primarily in parties will simply make more money than they previously did.
People who periodically enjoy farming solo (with no heroes or henchmen) but are casual about it are also likely to see an improvement. They'll find that solo farming is much easier than it was before, because monsters don't have the anti-farming AI that they used to have, and because the game no longer prevents players from repeatedly farming the same monsters over and over. Many types of builds that didn't work in the past, or that haven't been effective since the earliest days of Guild Wars, can now be used for solo farming. Thus, casual farmers will find the game much easier to farm than it was before, and that they can earn more money than before even with loot scaling in place.
People who were advanced solo farmers and who were earning vastly more money through solo farming than through playing the game normally will see the full effect of loot scaling. They will earn less gold and common loot from solo farming than they did in the past. The loot scaling for gold and common loot is not linear with the number of players in the party, and it includes an element of randomness, so while the difference is not easy to quantify, it is by no means a factor of eight. Advanced solo farmers may now earn about twice as much gold and common loot from farming solo as they would if they farmed in a party. While gold and common loot are thus reduced for these players by loot scaling, certain other types of loot are completely unaffected. For example, Skill Tomes are completely unaffected by loot scaling, so they still drop eight times as frequently for solo farmers than they do for people who play in parties. Thus, advanced solo farmers will find that certain types of farming are still extremely productive for them, but they may have to change what and where they farm if they want to earn as much money as they did before."

This is all well and good, but I still see that the first 6-8 critters don't drop when I leave a place, especially when I have been hitting it for a while. Drops also seem to get scarce when I have been doing long runs of farming i.e. pre-sear dye runs. After about 50 runs, the bandits drop nothing but belts. It seems to me that they still have some sort of farming code in there that they don't want to tell us about.

On the other hand, when I am looking for collectable drops (dor Taveller or Holliday), this can come in pretty handy.

Agreed Boneyard as this has been part of my findings as well that there's more to the loot code than just numbers in your party. My Yaks Bend runs and feather runs have shown me this over time. Even the Kamadan newbie area run for insect legs does the same. Still though I get more by playing with less units in my group except when i run with just myself and 1 hero as these run around the same numbers everytime as running them solo. Since all I farm are feathers, insect legs and dwarven badges I can see a common amount dropping from these areas and lowering over time the more I farm them in a row. What seems to work is farming one, then goto another, then to another and then back to the first and the higher end of drops continues to come in each one. But, as soon as I start to farm the same area successively the drops of what I am after (feathers, badges, insect legs) go down and down and down.

I think also chances of getting a weapon/armor drop instead of a collectible is higher in HM. We did a few tests with friends and indeed festive items and collectibles were a bit better to get on NM. Might be that our sample is biased. We tried on raptors and Nicholas farms.

This is wrong. It's been proven wrong. It simply does not comport with the observed data. Please go read the thread I linked to earlier, and the threads that it links to, before posting again.

Yes, Gaile did indeed say that loot scale equalized drops between solo farmers and larger parties, but that is nonetheless totally incorrect. At best, the goal of loot scaling is to equalize drops at different party sizes; but that certainly is not how it works.

Loot scale is a relatively simple item-gold-value/time cap on each individual's drops. End of story.

-----------------

As for festival items, I believe that they are generated by a parallel loot system like that for quest items. You often see festival items as a second drop off regular monsters that never give double drops of regular items.

QFT.

The Gaile news on 20th April 2007 was deliberate misinformation by Anet. Despite being proved to totally bogus, people still believe and quote it. Loot scaling affects full groups every bit as much as it does solo players. Your drops are throttled by time, the faster you kill, the less drops you get. I can solo farm slowly and get a drop off of nearly every kill, or wipe Urgoz in 45 mins with a full party of 12 and get very little from the hundreds of kills.

The only difference leeches make is better rezoning (they walk to portal after you pick drops - you end up in best possition avaiable to zone back to do next run, instead of ending on other side of outpost and having to run all the way to right portal).

When executed well, it can and will make difference. That means that leecher must place himself right next to portal and react to "zone me" in chat in timely matter.

Remeber that farming runs are timed from last kill of previous run to last kill of next run. Bad zoning can increse run times by 50% easily even while you might not really notice it because you only time from entrance to instance to last kill.

Less time in outpost = more money.

(Btw, as Fay said, there is different scaling system than people believe, you can easily do this experiment:

1) Go out and aoe mobs in starter area as fast as you can and as soon as possible
2) Go out, AFK for several minutes and kill same mobs, again as fast as possible

number 1) will give you very few drops
number 2) will give you drops from nearly each monster.

If you want to casually farm while diverting your attention, your best bet is to zone in instance, alt tab and do someting, alt tab back, kill mobs and rezone back to new instance.

People usually wait in outpost when afking. You want to wait in instance
)

Or you could just do it for like 2 hours, record that the difference is negligible, tell yourself its a waste of time to get 7 leechers, and just do it without leechers.

BTW, you're retarded if you think you need a year. If you think seasons effects your results, you can do multiple experiments throughout the year, but not every day.

I'm pretty sure party size is a factor in loot scaling, but yes kills/time is a big one, even full parties are punished by it, albeit less so than a solo player.

From my tests I'm convinced that the loot scaling has zero interaction with players off the radar (AKA leechers). However, I have a suspicion that there is a seperate means by which boss drops are throttled, so people might be noticing slightly better drops due to the boss's influence. Needs to be tested in a more controlled enviornment (AKA no scaling, AKA kill a boss without touching the minions.)

Uh, you don't need leechers to do that. Walk out, walk back in. Now you're ready to farm. Every time you /resign, you will appear right at the exit ready for the next run.

If you're lucky, signalling your leech and have them walk through the door... may be slightly quicker than resigning with Enter-UpArrow-Enter... but only barely.

I kind of have to agree with this from testing AOE bombs for insect legs vs killing them one at a time in newbieland outside of Kamadan. I don't get nearly as many legs AOE bombing them no matter how many times I try. But, go kill them one at a time and I get oodles of legs and other stuff. I have to believe bomb killing yields less and would have to agree it must be about time of kill vs next kill and the code doesn't have time to register every kill and drop all at once and actually bypassed several of them or it's just a built-in penalty that Anet will never tell us about.

Damn, you got me... (where are those sarcasm tags when I need them?)

In case you still didn't get it... I was being sarcastic with an ironic twist (can you dig it?).
The OP can easily do his own tests and make his own conclusions.

This very question has been asked 100's of times. ANet will never give us a definite (or even approximate) answer, since they are the only people with the right information that can. Even then, they can simply supply half-truth's or blatant lies, as has been evidenced by a previously supplied post by Gaile.

Get it? Got it? Good.