a pattern for drops...anyone noticed it?

Has this happened to anyone else or just me? Is this a fluke?

I go to the zone "Tears of the Fallen", kill the Grand Drake there (south entrance/exit). I get a plain item. I zone out, and come back in, kill the grand drake again, I get a spiked crest. I zone out, come back, kill the drake, get some shells. I zone out, come back, kill the drake, get some gold coins. I zone out, come back, kill the drake, get nothing. I keep zoning out, and coming back to kill the drake, and always get nothing.
So the pattern is this:

1st kill: plain white item
2nd kill: spiked crest
3rd kill: shells
4th kill: gold pieces
5th kill: nothing
6th kill: nothing
every subsequent kill: nothing

I've tried it three times, with the same results.

Now i know that the last update "nerfed" farming, and that's fine. I'd just like to know if anyone else has experienced this, and if anyone has tried it with other mobs and gotten the same, or a similar result.

If this is a pattern, how exactly is it implemented in the game? I'm just curious. Does it keep track of each time you visit a zone while *not* coming from a town/outpost?
It seems I can go to fisherman's heaven, come back to Tears of the fallen, and the pattern is reset. Of course, this slows down "farming" a lot. My guess is that they implemented a counter that increments every time you come to a zone, and resets when you come to a zone from a town or outpost (though it may reset when you enter a town/outpost...).

Also, if this is the case, is there any way to find out if the standard drops for Grand Drakes have been reduced? In 20 Grand Drake kills, i would average 3-5 gold/purple items. To see if the drop rate was reduced, I would have to go from fisherman's heaven each time, and I just don't feel like it.

Anyway, I'm just curious about all of the above. Please don't take this as a complaint or an attack on the new update. I think it had some good changes and bad ones as well, nothing earth shattering though...

I have never gotten nothing from any mob. Are you using henchmen, if you are your not getting nothing, they are just taking if from you.

It is stupid to nerf farming. They just need to design a way for money to flow out of the game.

Here is an idea. Tax everybody weekly on their total wealth (counting the values of the items) if their wealth exceeds X gold. Perhaprs there could even be several levels of taxation.

But nerfing the farming is stupid. All it does is give an advantage to the people who farmed right away.

POp

Nope, I was soloing.

Taxing is good...here's how we do it :P
Everyone with 99,999 gold or less gets heavily taxed, and everyone with 100k gold hardly gets taxed...kind of like real life taxes that no one likes!

Or we can heavily tax the rich and hardly tax the poor...either one works

ill just have to switch to a different region. maybe korea. oops, there might be tax there too. doh!

yes im having the same issue, i was fighting the sand drakes in diveners ascent solo for the xp (120 each kill) and then zoneing back and forth between salt flats and divener's, and bam after the 5th or 6th time i get no item drops anymore....i am still getting the xp but no drops, i even went to old ascalon to test it out...same results...0 xp but no drop...bug? a "fix" to farming? maybe they shoulda let us no..this game is getting me to the point where i miss everquest...and that shouldnt be happeneing...anet, fix this stupid nerfing crap soon or you will lose more than just me i fear

taxation is a pretty poor idea...though I do believe they need to find a way to get money out of the game rather than 'nerfing' farming. Farming is really the only way any of the newer players are ever going to catch up with the older players. I'd suggest something like charging to fight PvP in the Arenas and HoH. Not Alot like 1p for each PvP battle.

I think they are just making the game super easy so people will play the game, do everything quicker and quit sooner, thereby removing another bandwidth eater from the server.

Yes, that's why i'm glad I got my farming done before this (giants boots). The golden age of them is gone, I used to sell the gold ones for 20k a piece. One of my guild members made over a million doing that, and still had the money o.0

I "farmed" that drake a few times and now she doesn't put out any more also no one has been putting out for me though. I helped a freind get to yaks bend. And along the way I did not receive one drop or gold. My freind did get like one in three drops but still where wer mine? Even in my currect area... I am getting nothing... Anyone else having this problem

yep i got the same problem doesnt get any items for like 40 times:\

Yep experienced this as well. I reentered the zone about 20 times and the first 4 times i got a drop (only one purple :/ ) and after that it didnt drop anything at all. This is so frustrating. They are making this game more "noobish" with every update.

dont blame ANet, blame those who abused farming and bot users, those are the bastards that caused this change.

It still sucks. It seems like everytime I turn around I get screwed over... First with the "every gold armor will unlock a rune" I have had 7 gold armors before that update the didn't ID anything. Then you have the nerfing. Now you have the XP on "The Villainy of Galrath". I got the 500xp for this insain quest... now its upto 4000xp. And now I can't get any drops. I mean WTF... Whats next.. can't go out of a town without a full party?

Drops world wide have been watered down. I find this odd since superior runes of vigor are now selling at 80-100 thousand gold. I mean come on, arena.net ... this is exactly the joyous occaision those gold farmers were looking for.

Of course, gold farming has been a plague in every product associated with NC Soft.

I'm surprised no one gave a decent analysis of what they've been experiencing.

Basically they've nerfed farming. How they did it is still a guessing game, but I'm sure it works like this: If you're by your self (soloing) and start killing one type of monster for more than a minute or say 3-5 monsters, every monster stops dropping. Like last night, I killed 9 imps in a row and the next set stopped dropping even other monsters in other parts of the world. This obviously cancels out bots and the point of farming because if nothing drops then you won't farm.

I haven't tested it with a group, but I think groups are immune to this, so you can still farm, but with groups (I haven't confirmed this yet).

I think next week they're gonna come up with better drops at the end of missions OR they might give item rewards in PVP which would make the most sense. If they don't want us to farm, then they should give us item rewards in PVP that way we don't have to farm to get better items to advance in PVP.

Right now, there's no way anyone can get a better weapon, upgrade component, or even gold to buy runes without farming, so their new system better be good.

I have tested this you cant "farm solo" but myself and a guild mate went out to a certain area that we use and got the same amount of drops we normally received. just to confirm it i went out by myself and got a drop from first mob and nothing from subsequent mobs.

Oh good, so it isn't the end of the world, hehe, you just gotta farm with someone else.

I wonder if you have more people in a party you get more drops.

But thats still dumb, so now they've effectly slowed down farming by 2 fold, whats the point? Just to stop botting, but two bots can still do the job and we end up paying the price for playing fairly.

Just to clarify we went out with NO henchies just me and my guildmate we wiped the entire map once and collected our drops when we went back out again from same town we got nothing, we mapped to another town and entered from there and were able to wipe the map again... so 2 bots would need to be smart enough to warp to different towns after wiping the map in order to accomplish anything.

You are only making my point as to why taxation is a GOOD idea. Since the rich would be paying more in taxes and new players nothing at all, new people entering the game have a better chance of catching up. This will also encourage more new players to buy the game.

Face it, the problem comes about because too much money gets concentrated into the hands of a few people. A scaling tax percentage would fix this. At some point it would just not be worth while to farm.


Poppinjay

Nope, blaming ANet is perfectly appropriate. They are the game designers. It is their job to forsee the reprocussions of the rules of their game. Farming isn't exactly new you know. Why would you think ANet wouldn't expect it to happen here?

Again, the problem isn't so much farming it is A.) A concentration of wealth in the hands of a very small percentage of the population. Solution: A progressive tax scale. and B.) limited ways for money to exit the game. Solution: More items that players can buy and adjust and get into bragging wars over. I have mentioned these ideas in other posts.

Weakening farming is the dumbest thing you want to do. That is like saying "Poor people are being screwed, so lets lower the minimum wage." The lower level players will NEVER have a chance like that.

Taxes would curb excessive farming, and more exits for money will keep the economy healthy. That is ALL that is needed to fix this, and most of this would require only minor pieces of additional coding.

POppinjay

OK, here is a paste of a post i just made after discovering the same crap happening to me.

OK, I decided to build a chart for my own interest of what mobs drop what loot.
I started with dune burrowers. I killed 8 of them (well, the same one but i kept going in/out of town).
I got a hammer, a sword, 5 jaws and some gold. Then i got nothing.
I thought that was unfortunate so i killed another.
Again i got nothing, and again and again.

I logged out and tried again, only to get nothing.
I exited the program completely to no avail either.

Maybe it was a glitch with having 5 jaws in my inventory, so i put them in storage and tried again. Still nothing.
Puzzled i decided to kill something else.

I went for the two jade scarabs that thought they could eat me. I got nothing from them either.

I went to elona reach and killed two sand drakes but still got nothing.

And that's where i am now. Can anybody help?

Is it a new (and ridiculous) idea of giving people no loot for killing the same mob several times in succession???!!!

I don't want to jump to conclusions but this doesn't look good, especially from a fun-seeking,pvp hating, pure pve players point of view.
I care little for trade or gold and i only want to hunt for fun and new weapons to better my pve character.
Someone please shed light on this situation.
----------------

OK, this is getting ridiculous. Why should people who play solo and not give a flying **** about runes or pvp be punished for playing a game they enjoy?
Monthly fee or not, i am now severley ****ed off!

Killing the Sand Drake outside of Elona's Reach. After about the 5th time zoning back in I got no more drops. I went to Yak's Bend to see if it would fix it.....no drops there either. Basically it's completely shut down any drops for me anywhere as far as I could tell. I'm assumming this is a penatly for "farming" and that after a certain amount of time my drop permissions will be restored lol. I'll have to check when I get home today to see if it's fixed. Would have been nice to receive some sort of warning ahead of time. If you're they're going to change the rules they should state them a little more specificly and put them somewhere I can't miss them.

You Guys need to know something

The 'Farming' in a video game = EXPLOITS

And there is ONE thing that game developer HATE A LOT, it's ALL EXPLOITs in their created game.

ALSO, there is a LOGICAL et GREAT way to STILL find gold and items in GW, just play NORMALLY the game, by doing quest and bonus one after one. THAT'S IT.

If you CAN'T understand how work a game mechanics ... just leave GW O_o

ALSO again: if you guys can read the entire of a text when it's posted by Arena.net ->

----and then by taking steps to ensure that players can acquire and unlock these things through normal gameplay. We believe that the most effective way to play the game should also be the most fun way to play the game.-----

Did you notice the NORMAL in this paragraph?

****

I have a current level 20 Elelemtalist with all quest done (not all bonus), and i NEVER used the 'Farming' thing, but i got a FULL 15k armor set (more than 60k of Gold and the price of all rare materials used). How can i find all this gold? I SIMPLY play all the missions and Helped Friends and players around .... Also, Traded some items, etc...

Try Underworld or Fissure, there is a lot of nice drop there, with a great value.

Amen, Arts. It's interesting to see all the farmers crawling out of the woodwork to whine about changes to an economy that they destroyed.

...aaaand after you've done that, and you still have many runes for your primary profession that still need to be unlocked (not to mention the other five professions), then what should you do? Hmm?

What's the difference between doing the same missions over and over, and farming the same spawn over and over?




Cutscenes.

Yeah, what is normal gameplay in a game like this? Once you've completed all the missions and quests, thats it, you start over, but that means you can only do that 6 times and then what, you never visit the areas ever again? That doesnt' sound normal. How about PVPing, thats the heart of the game, but you don't get items out of that so they're wrong in saying normal gameplay if they're refering to PVP.

Since when is farming exploiting? Exploiting is doing something using a bug to further your goals. Farming isn't exploiting, farming is the attempt to get the best gear possible, either by drops, or by gaining money in order to buy said gear.

Farming is not exploiting, and even to think so... well I won't get insulting. But okay so what happens when I get to end game, but don't have that best type bow yet or the best type armor yet? Oh I know, since farming is exploiting I'm just going to have to say "f" it and move on, because I don't want to try and get my character the best it can be.

The name of the game is to get the best character possible, whether by skills or equipment. Farming is a way to do that. Its not an exploit, its just a way to get money and items to make your character the best it can be. Its not like we can keep gaining levels.

Strange It doesnt seemed to have effected Me or my guild mate the patch must think we are playing normally?

It's not exactly an exploit, but it screws up the game's economy by flooding the game with too much gold. A few people start farming, and are able to pay more for items than they are really worth. Now item prices go up, forcing other players to start farming. Prices continue to rise, requiring more and more farming. Without farming in the game, you'd be able to get "that best type bow" with the money that comes in near the end game. At release, high level weapons and runes were selling for 1/10th of what they sell for now, easily attainable for someone playing the game the right (non-farming) way.

Although I do agree that something should be done about the lack of rewards for PvP. It seems like people who want to focus on PvP are forced into PvE far too much, and that may be a factor contributing to farming.

the people that are complaing are not people that are exploiting.. exploiting is useing a bug in the game to your advantage...

ANet was worried that people were creating 'bots' to zone into an instance, kill a mob, pick up items, zone out, zone back in instance kill mob, etc..

that would be 'botting' wich is a bad idea.. banning will insue if your caught...

but actually being at your pc hunting mobs AKA farming is in no way an exploit...

you complain because people do this.. then you talk about how you go into the Temple of ages dungeons, and sell the items from there.. I would bet money that you got drops from there that others in your groups probably could have used... so, your in the same boat as everone else... your trying to improve your self by selling items that others could use, just to further your own character.

Alright, so from what provoko, The Destroyer, Tactical-Dillusions, and XG_Darkside said, it seems I'm not the only one experiencing that. Furthermore, it would seem that if you solo one area, after killing the 6th monster of the same type, you won't get any more drops from those mobs in that area. To me, this seems like an idiotic way to nerf farming. I thought the counter idea (which I assumed was the case) would have been much better.

This means that you *can't* solo an area, for fun, or to farm. You *must* bring henchmen or other players. I think that's ridiculous. Having to force players who would like to solo an area to use henchmen is a major annoyance. Maybe if they actually fixed the AI (which I found was worse after the latest patch, even though they fixed the "running off" thing) it wouldn't be so bad... but still!

I am level 20, and have finished all quests and missions. I only have one superior rune unlocked (which was via farming [I started very late], if I didn't bother with farming, I wouldn't even have that one...) and it isn't even useful to my primary or secondary class. I'd like to get into PvP, but having only one Superior rune unlocked puts me at a great disadvantage. How do you propose I unlock the other runes? Playing the game normally? Once I've beaten it? Playing the game normally again with Henchmen who share drops? Do you have a solution that would take less than 60 hours?

Since if you solo an area, you don't get many drops, you can't do that. So you have to do it with at least one person. That means you're half as effective (time-wise), which means you need to spend *more* time unlocking runes. So the way I see it, this update has just made it more time consuming to farm, and harder for people like me (who didn't farm, but played through the game and unlocked only 1 superior rune) to get the runes they need for PvP.

Bleh. I didn't intend my thread to start complaining, but it seems that I'm doing that now. I didn't even consider the possibility that they nerfed the mobs after X amount of kills, regardless if you leave the zone or not.
This sucks

Everything is in balance. There are no UBER items and its useless to gain more gold after buying the best set of armor. So if players like to farm, just let them farm! You can wear only 1 gold weapon at once. It does not matter if you have 5 or 10 of them. It does not make you stronger. Same for other gear. Same for gold. After buying the best of the best its useless. Same for runes. If players like to collect, just let them. They wont get any stronger of it. In fact I would allow them to find even more, since that would stop a lot of useless complaining

EDit: I did not know about the costs of superior runes. I think the policy of Arenanet is the same as Blizzard's policy in unique itemdrop: It should not be easy.

The reason I farmed is to get runes to unlock for PvP. I have never had more then 10,000g Ever!. How is anyone suppose to get 100k to buy a Supior Vigor Rune now? Missions/quest give you just enough to upgrade your armor...


Venom I'm right there with you. I have NEVER gotten a Supior Rune. I have only gotten 4 major runes. I don't farm every day, and I don't farm for hours on end. So this is a painful change... now the price of things will go up since you can no longer farm, everything is going to be even more in demand. Think of how much a unID supior Vigor is going to go for now, since an IDed one gos for a 100k.... where looking at 150k - 250k easy...

See I agree with this, GW has a serious lack of gold sinks in the game, and too much gold equals inflation. That said, you now have to find that best bow out there, and they are going to be even super rarer then before. Now I'll stick to my premise that says that the items aren't the end all say all of the game, but still, every little edge does help, so a casual gamer should still be able to go out and find their gear the same way a hard-core player can.

Now with the farming nerf, a casual player will be lucky to find half of what he would like. Its going to be the hard-core gamers, the one who have time to bounce around and farm at different locals, that are going to get those items.

Why not make a max selling price for items instead of changing the drops. Then there would be no concern about outrageously priced items.
It seems reducing the drops also hurts people just trying to get better items for themselves.

just a few words to say ( that I know would make the farming community happy):

no nerfing was done in this new patch period.

if you dont believe me. pm me and ill tell you my answer. its pretty ez when you think about it after i tell you.

I will though only say it to 1st person who pms me. ill let him/her decide if they really wanna spread this around cuz its pretty valuable to some ppl.

if you already know why. ignore this...(you're probably saying to yourself plz dont tell them...hehe)

-cheers.

All of you are missing the point, the idea is that there shouldn't be any need for mass amounts of gold, in the coming weeks they will increase drop rates of certain items or give you more gold or whatever so that you won't have to go and fight for a billion hours on end to get the best items(so that everyone can compete on an even playing field) that is thier ultimate gold

And to all the people who say they're fighting solo to enjoy the game or for the exp stfu, why are you complaining that theres no items if you still get to do what you want to do(fighting solo/getting exp)

I am somone who enjoys farming - not for the fact that I like to kill stuff, but because it is fun to get cool drops (and I am not one of those that overprice everything to try and make money, most of the time I either give what I dont need to my guildmates or sell it to the merchants if no one needs) If your not getting any loot, its just boring.
as a side note: My guild consists of about 5 RL friends, so we need to farm more than most guilds in order to get things like a guild house, and for those that want the 15k armor.