pathetic Wintersday in July drop rates

I just want to say thank you to Anet for the pathetically low drop rates for Wintersday Items.

Thank you for the non event weekend event!

I basically 'vanquished' Lakeside County.

2 snowmen summoners
1 fruitcake
1 eggnog
1 frosty tonic


I did get 1 green dye and 2 yellows.... ( not great but.... )

and....

I vanquished Old Ascalon

238 foes

3 Fruitcakes
3 Eggnogs
1 Snowman Summoner
1 Mischievous Tonic


Hooray for the non-event!

Did you vanquish solo or what?
If you had Hero/Hench or a Group with many other players its sure why you dont get a lot dude.... use your brain before crying oO

Go farm anything solo and you'll get more if you want event stuff....

Tonic droprate seems a bit low to be fair. Been farming spiders outside of Rilohn most of the weekend. Seem to get about 1 tonic/hour. Not complaining tho, the rest drops plenty and tonics are slow points anyways.

So what is the problem here? You did not get a "good" drop rate, so what? Sometimes when I go out and Vanquish I get good drops, other times not, the fact that they are dropping at all should make you happy. I do not understand your post sir

Seems like you must be "enjoying" a different event, ~10 hours of farming Raptors later and I have 500+ of all the event items plus 33 Mischievous/30 Frosty tonics.

(as system.fan said, henchman and heroes take away some of your drops, you're not going to find many items with a full party)

I think he's just upset that Anet didn't put stacks of the items directly into his inventory for him.

It does seem low relatively speaking but there are 3 main drops (Eggnog, Summoners and Fruitcake) plus the two tonics. It's certainly not going to be a profitable event if you are one of the many people farming for a drops for a variety of reasons...least of which would be duration.

umad that you didn't just go to play Snowball and get CC Shards by default for victories?

If you're just going to complain about the drop rates, we've had threads like those in the past, and they've done just about as much for improving drop rates as you're going to do - nothing.

The drop rates have been pretty low. But that's normal in my experience. Like others have said, your henchmen and heroes reduce your drop rate.

This free stuff is CRAP! I demand more/better free stuff!

EDIT: First half of my first Vaettir run I got 6 Wintersday drops.

solo vq in factions noob island - 5 snowman summoners, 3 fruit cake and so on i can count teh winterday drop on the fingers of my two hands.

In the OP's defense, he was farming in Lakeside County. Try using your brain before responding.

The drop rate for special drops from any event (Wintersday, Halloween, etc.) is a bit low. The drop rate for stuff this weekend is no better or worse than any other event.

All this fussing about 'do it solo' etc is all well and good. However, what about all those who are casual players who have no choice but to play in NM, and or use hero/henchmen? They get a handful of drops over an hour or so of playing and that's it. Don't think its quite fair to them, when I can go solo raptors or the hopping chickens, (vaiiter, or however the hell its spelled) and rack up on stacks in no time flat then either horde them away or sell them.

Anyway,
Just my $.02

I didn't vanquish but just played normally (took a char through EotN) and I found the drops to be a bit low as well compared to other event drops.

Yeah obviously he vanquished solo, because that's possible.

/sarcasm

Can we close this thread please?

We've seen what these usually turn out to be, and the drop rates have already been explained.

Nah its things like these threads that are fun to post in ^_^.
But @ OP I gotta say I agree the droprates aren't great, but if you want the event items like all years, go farm the vaettir/raptors.

Even casual players can *easily* beat a campaign, gain access to Hard Mode, and go to PvX to find farming builds. If you've already beaten a campaign, it only takes a few hours to set a new character up for HM farming.

If you don't want to farm, that's your own deal. But it's not like farming is ruining the game. The concept may be flawed, but at least it's readily accessible to everyone.

Casual players don't play games to farm. By definition. Yes, we can go to PvX wiki and find farming builds, but that would mean we're not casual players any more. We're zombies whose life consists of boring repetitive sequences devoid of any spirit and humanity.

It's not that casual player can't beat this game in HM - it's why he bought the game and plays it - but he simply refuses to become a zombie.


---

Before you start with the nonsense "oh you want everything free" - the issue here is why someone who spends 10 hours vanquishing Joko's Domain over and over - should get less wintersday items / benefits than someone who solo farms for 10 hours.

The reason why PuGing is so rare in this game is this:
* You progress faster with H/H
* You earn more money by solo farming

That's a horrible design for *online* game.

I'm afraid we're terribly outnumbered.

I didn't get to play much this weekend. I just logged on to do the 3 Kessex WiK bounties that I saved up on a character. I didn't even realize there were event drops until just in front of Justiciar Marron, where I found a single snowman summoner.

So yeah, drop rates are rather low.

What I'm saying is I've NEVER seen special event drops this low.

I'm not asking for a event drop everytime.

and I HAVE seen MUCH better drops for past events.

Killed 238 foes and got 8 drops?

That is a drop rate of .033

and yeah the Old Ascalon VQ was solo. Just me.

I thought I picked an area that isn't farmed a lot
( or am I wrong on that? ) to see if that made a difference.


I've farmed Skales in Pre and gotten 2-5 drops consistently
during other events.

God that's just AWFUL. Last event that I farmed in I got drops rates a little better than that and they were still considered awful drop rates.

I think anet needs to bring up the % drop chance's up a bit in the database.

This is a terrible justification for what comes down to outright bad game design.

If you have a MMO, then making the game give greater rewards to people that play solo is just stupid. You're basically discouraging everyone to play the game normally or form parties and play with others. In short, you've transformed a multiplayer game into a solo experience, because solo players running a gimmick build can earn 100 times more money and loot than if you had used a regular balanced team build.

You can't say that this isn't the game's fault either. It absolutely is. At several points in time, ArenaNet had a choice of leaving the system alone, but they decided to fiddle around with drop rates or altering monsters to slow down farming. If they had left it alone, then the market would eventually collapse and people would just quit farming. In the end, all of ANet's anti-farming work only made it even harder for normal gamers to get anything, and farmers were hardly affected at all. Now the whole game is effectively driven by farmers and ArenaNet decided that this was for the best anyway. This is because if everybody in the game was able to play the game and get plenty of loot, then people would soon realize that Guild Wars has nothing else to offer. Once you get everything you want, then you don't want to play anymore because the game wasn't that fun in the first place.

You're right. Guild Wars was never fun.

Gtfo.

last time i tried farming Raptors I got fewer drops than out in regular play
after about 10 runs I stopped and just went a played the game for a while.
( I chalked that up to luck and went on to something else )

This is worse than that.

and even WITH H/H you'd think I should get more than .033.....
and I KNOW i've regularly gotten better results than that.
This event is low enough that I can;t just blame it on luck.

I would not be surprized if we found out that Anet had tweaked
the anti-farming code and we have not been told.


and if you assume 100 foes in Lakeside County that would be .05 and
I was alone/solo there.....


oh and my examples were after other game time with consistently
low enough
drops to make me think to keep track.

This thread isn't dramatic enough.

That's how the standard MMO is modeled. "Go with other people? Psh, then I have to share loot!" One enemy, one loot to be had. If there's more than one party member, someone isn't getting it. There's no getting around that.

Regarding increasing the drop rate...yeah. Someone mentioned earlier that 10 hours of raptor farming netted 500 of each item. Increase the drop rate, so casual players can get a nice amount, and he'll have 2000 of every item. Do we really want to make this game even more about farming?

Finally, if you want an easier place to solo that isn't raptors, a while back I used to go after charr and grawl in Old Ascalon. You can find the grawl outside Ruins of Surmia. It's no where near as profitable as raptors, but, anyone can do it.

QFT because that's what it is.

I vanquished 5 Ascalon regions over the course of the weekend (which in itself is a bit of an achievement for a more casual type like me) with my warrior + discord heroes. Between them all I got maybe half a dozen snowmen summoners and fruitcakes, 2 frosty tonics and 9 eggnogs.

I was a bit surprised at not landing at least a little more than that, even taking into account my party of 4; but not really that bothered since I was chipping away at a few other titles like VQ, Treasure Hunter etc at the same time. And what I did get was more than it would have been had I VQed on most other weekends.

So... *shrug*.

I think it has been about normal...I did chubbak village (still had the zmission for it) and of the few drops I got (4 in my party) I got an eggnog.
I have also been getting pretty good amounts of drops with a full 8 party too (as proportionate to other holiday drop rates).
I see nothing amazing different this time around.

Um I thought it doesn't matter if you have henchman or not, i thought the drop ratio was "balanced" across all players and hero and npc henchman.

Vanquishing yields poor returns if you want event items. Why are you doing that and then complaining? Kill more things faster to get event drops.

Everything drops for you if you are the only party member. Drops are shared between party members, including heroes and henchmen, in compass range. Solo farms are done solo for a reason. Loot scaling doesn't actually work as it was described, or not entirely. Even ANet acknowledged solo players will receive more drops.

hmmm.... makes sense

I solo in the areas I can farm myself and it's generally close to where my game started. Drop rates won't change/improve for the festive items so it's best you make the type of solo build you can kill and manage best for those returns or you're just wasting time.

Here's a hint, atm I'm collecting skulls. Figure out where you get those!

Flawed.


The problem are rewards in general not a Fruitcake.

Compare 30min of farming with the reward you get after doing Thunderhead Keep mission in HM. Compare an hour of farming vs vanquish reward you get doing Joko's Domain.



Don't get me wrong - I couldn't care less if farming is profitable. The problem is that normal gameplay is not close to farming gains - not by a long shot. After 1 hour spent on Vanquishing area X, you'll get 1k gold (ok, plus "drops"). 1k gold is absolutely pathetic compared to the yields of farming.


The point is - shouldn't it be the opposite? That people who want to play alone can still do so but that game caters to multi-players?

Wouldn't it be more fun for everyone if you could "farm" NM HM missions and VQs? Instead of raptors for 10 hours like some here? Wouldn't it be better to encourage players to actually help out new people (and old alike) in missions? Right now when someone asks you for mission help, it's "oh great 30-60min of my time lost - I better go farm raptors". It's not "ok I'll earn slightly less here but it will be more fun" - but "i'll get nothing here and tons on raptors".

Word.

should solo Raptors or Vaetirrs been getting great wintersday drops along with gold items

I wouldn't mind seeing an increase in the item drop rate for "regular" PvE, but as Xiaquin said, this would likely have an even greater impact on the farming community (people who actively farm are going to notice a much, much bigger increase in drops than PvE players will).

As for the "farming versus PvE" thing Upier and Josip brought up, I'd much rather be able to just play the game rather than farm/grind my way through the titles.

Originally Posted by vader
There is a huge difference between 3 fruitcakes and
250 fruitcakes. Somewhere in the 8 to 10 range and
I would not have been annoyed. 10 fruitcakes is
.001% of the maxed title....

So am I asking for full stracks?

No. I am not.

With ALL the respect you both apparently are due, I must ask
this.... Is there a respectful way to say "Bite me."?
( I'm only returning the same respect you gave me.... )

Nice of you to read something and jump directly
to personal insults. Did I say I wanted it to take NO
effort? I am just asking for a reasonable effort IF they
are honest about not wanting farming in their game.





My point was more if Anet is gonna have an event maybe
the drops should reflect an event and be meaningful instead
of insignificant. Drop rates that low end up meaning that the
ONLY way to get the consumable titles is by farming.... You
either have to farm for the cons or farm for the gold to buy them.

Can ANY of the consumable titles be maxed without farming?
Not if you have a life away from your PC.

If they do not want farming why have titles that REQUIRE it?

If they really want less farming make the drops that are
connected with titles obtainable without living your life in
front of the PC farming them for 18 hours a day. I'm not
implying that they should drop with every kill but for a title
that maxes at 10000 points 3 drops in an hour* DURING what
is billed as a special event weekend is sad. There is a drop rate
that balances out reducing farming and making titles still something
you have to 'work' for. The Sunspear and Lightbringer bonus weekends
DOUBLE the rate.... This event did what.... increase the rate by
.001% for Sweet and Party titles?

( * that rate would take 3333.33** hours of playtime.... If they
want that they should really remove the "You have been
playing for ___ hours. Please take a break." message. )




(**for those watching the math..... that is 138 days playing 24
hours a day.... without potty breaks )

The drop rate (and rewards in general in the game) is/are fine as they are. There is no need to increase it. Iv been farming topk all weekend cause im prepping for my obby armor and i got a good 60 snowman summoners, 10 tonics, 60 fruitcakes, and 50 eggnogs. The place iv been farming isnt even high on enemies (only 6 enemies for a minute and a half run). This drop rate is perfectly fine and doesn't need to be increased. "Things" in the game shouldn't just be handed to you - they should take time to get.

OK, I'll make a correction. Guild Wars used to be fun. Then ArenaNet continually modified the game in a desperate attempt to improve the game, but they actually drove the game into another mundane, run of the mill MMO. Everything that made Guild Wars unique and fun soon was replaced with endless farming, speed runs, broken PvE skills, and con sets.

I remember how Guild Wars was at launch, because my best friend was a beta tester for the game. He convinced me to buy the game a month or so later, and I grabbed the pretty black Collector's Edition box at my Best Buy, back when there were dozens of these things on the shelf and nobody cared. Everybody else was excited about the free headset, the hardcover artbook, and the CD soundtrack. I remember saying, "Those things are nice, but look at my glowing hands. I don't know about you, but people are going to want Divine Aura."

Let me remind people what kind of game this was. People had so much money after a time that there was nothing to buy. In towns, beginning players would ask, "Can I have 1000 gold to buy this armor?" And about 25% of the time, somebody would just hand it to them because once you got one set of Elite Armor, then unless you wanted some extreme crap like Obsidian Armor or a perfect Crystalline Sword, then gold bought absolutely nothing. Superior Vigor runes traded at around 90 platinum each, showing how meaningless gold was.

I remember standing around various outposts and mission areas, and there were level 20 players who were bored (you literally ran out of quests after four months of playing) so they would openly ask anybody if anybody needed any help--any mission, any quest. It was a matter of time before I started doing it too. Half of the time nobody would send an invite because everybody had a party already with other high level players and/or runners.

Mesmers were some of the most powerful PvE players in the entire game. They could do so much e-denial that boss monsters would just stand there unable to cast any spells because they didn't have any energy. ArenaNet made sure to nerf the living crap out of mesmers so they could never do that ever again. Tank and spank ruled the game, and every elementalist used Fire Storm if they even had the tiniest amount of brains. Heck, I used Elemental Attunement as my Elite Skill and I was still a death machine.

At the time there were free treasure caches in the various explorable areas called wreckage. Pretty soon bots and other idiots would do nothing but run around all the areas to the wreckage sites to hoard free loot. Actually, I don't even know why they bothered since Superior Vigor runes didn't make you much of a better character. But in any case, you would think that a solution would be to just randomize the locations of the wreckage so you couldn't run or bot the zone. But this is not what happened. In an update, ArenaNet deleted all wreckages (except in Prophecies mission areas), then they added keys, locked treasure chests, and added a nearly useless title based on opening high end chests.

The plan was to cut down on the gold inflation and make money worth something. This worked, but this was the start of turning a great game into something really twisted from the original design point.

I can go through all kinds of "improvements" that ArenaNet put into the game that did the exact opposite. So yes, Guild Wars *was* a great game. Then it started to degrade very quickly. I guess that I should have seen it coming when ArenaNet decided to lock the gates to towns in Factions.