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.