Seriously, whats up w/ the drop assignments? anyone figure it out?

Played Prophecies since retail release, leveled up four chars. In Factions, three of those finished game and most quests. Also leveled up assassin and all missions, most quests. My luck? Horrible!

It comes as a great surprise that bosses in Factions drop greens. I have killed hordes of bosses in Factions, and yet not one green. Best chest item has been a Rune of Superior Vigor. All other chest items were basically merchant drops.

My play is highly varied, I avoid ever going out into the same area twice, unless there is a quest in progress. I do not farm, per se, just adventure mostly.

Call it luck, ramble on about statistics and probability, but I know others who are in the same boat. I wish ANet would clarify the issue.

Can I blame you? And for those who say that some of us lie about playing for 13+ months and not getting anything, it isn't true. One of my guildies sat and watched my first ten runs completely clearing The Falls trying to get one of those stupid axes. To this day, it hasn't dropped.

As a long time farmer, I can say the drop rate is definitely not completely random. There seems to be several factors in play for it though. I'll list what I've noticed, and other people can comment on whether they've seen evidence to either support or contradict my conclusions.

1. The amount you farm an area lowers the drop rate of rare items. I think this is character-specific, as opposed to account-specific. If I farm with one character in a certain area a lot, and notice that I'm getting crap drops consistently, I can sometimes get better drops by switching to one of my other characters who I haven't used in that area much. It seems to track which enemies you've killed too, rather than just a general variable for the area as a whole. As an example, suppose there's two bosses in an area, and I keep killing one of them but not the other. The drop rate for that boss will lower, but it seems the other one won't, until I start killing it.

2. If you go in a party of human players though, the general drop rate is equalized using all members' drop rates for the area. So if you buddy with a person who's new to farming an area, you'll be more likely to get better drops than if you go with someone who's farmed the hell out of it already.

3. But having said that, within a party drops aren't necessarily randomized either. It seems that the more you do to an enemy, or the more you're involved in the fight with it in general, the more likelihood a drop from it will be for you, as opposed to anyone else in the group. Now the amount of work you do can seemingly be judged not just based on damage inflicted, but on other stuff like damage taken (for warriors), and damage negated (for healers), as well as a lot of other stuff. To make it simple, the more you actively do in a battle with a certain enemy, the more likelihood there seems to be that you'll get the drop from it, rather than someone else.

Now I'm not sure that henchmen really lower the drop rate, but they do of course act like other players. And additionally, they seem to not affect the drop rate of an area at all. So if you've farmed an area a lot, you could still get a higher chance of drops by going with a group of players, but henchmen won't affect your base drop rate value at all. So when you go with just pure henchmen, the only thing seemingly affecting drop rates is how much you've farmed the area before, and how much work you're doing in battle compared to the henchmen.

I have no proof of any of what I'm saying, aside from many, many hours of my own first hand experiences with farming. But I thought I'd just throw out my observations here, and see if other people have encountered the same kinds of trends with these variables seemingly having a noticable affecting their drop rates.

The only farming I ever did was SF with henchies ages ago. I got my fair share of greens despite ppl saying henchies steal all the drops. Maybe this expains why most ppl get nothing with henchies cuz they weren't doing as much?

Too many people think they have "horrible" luck. Lower your expectations; drop distributions favour noone.

I can agree with you on this, something needs to be done about the drops..

I can farm all day, and not get much from it... and my friend can spend 2 hours farming and get several greens and things..

we have tried it together, and who got all the drops???? - he did.

I cant understand it :\ --- its like they pick at random ppl who get the decent drops, to keep the economy working, they need richer people, and poorer people... very annoying, any ways....

Not trying to defend Anet or anything, but there are a few points worth reminding :
- humans handle randomness poorly : we basically expect random occurences to be evenly distributed, which has no reason to be on small samples
- humans are biased, both ways : grass is always greener on the other side, and conversely people are satisfied with a 'lucky' reputation, and won't discredit it
- the anti-farm code, be it real or real rumor, is rather effective in at least making farming more diversified, if not less frequent. It may be broken, too.
- among the millions of GW players, some probably will have incredible bad luck streaks, that's the way random works.

As for me, I guess it's how you look at it. I've been in PUGs where everyone but me saw golds (note the plural). Then again, I accidentaly got hold of Kepkhet's Refuge the first time I killed this bug ; full henchies party, didn't know about greens or queen farming or anything (colour me noob) : I just found it annoying those smug little insects would feel so safe in their little nest ...

Luck is flickle, and favors those who deem themselves favored ...

"humans handle randomness poorly" -- this is true. I agree.

I did get some greens in Grenth's Footprint and the Furnace when that patch was first released (none since then); but what I am saying and others are saying in this thread is that in Factions we are simply not seeing the greens, nor much else in the way of quality high end items, whether from drops or chests.

Taking four characters through the game, with another halfway through, and still no green drop from a boss?

I remember when Etting Farming was still kinda fresh...i picked up 3 superior absorptions and made about 300k in about 2 days.

That was my best streak ever. Nowadays most of my best drops are from gold chests and usually when im NOT farming.

When the new greens came out, i took my guildmates to go hunt for them. Rotwing's Bow and the ice breaker both dropped for the same person in my guild in a 8 person party. I soloed the falls and got zero axes. My guildmate picked up 2. -.o

Suffice it to say, everyone else got crap drops, i got a superior rune of fast casting...but thats about it. -.o Later on i got a superior rune of inspiration. Hows that for random? Ok Anet, i get it, im gonna play my mesmer some more.

earlier today i was trying to get Geoffer's Bulwark. it's not that great, i know, but i like the skin. he is always using the bulwark, yet he never dropped the damn thing. even in 30+ runs.

then i decided to try and get Sskai's Sword. the bastard was holding the sword, but it didn't drop. he didn't drop anything at all. ANYTHING.

i can jump to conclusions, but the most plausible one is that SHIT IS RANDOM.

Again, I'm not saying there isn't something wrong. Maybe you're just getting the crappy end of the distribution, which is probably impossible to evaluate, maybe the thing is plain broken.

Thing is, I don't expect to see a change in this anytime soon. GW is a 'low-budget' game : even buying the collector edition each time, you end up paying half a WoW fee, and a lot less with standard edition. I guess you can't expect personal drop statistics, with adaptative drop rates and such.

All in all, I've seen 1 black dye, 2 greens (2nd one being that crappy bow from a lvl16 Skull ranger) and a dozen or so useless superior runes in ~330 hrs (I'm a lightweight). Then again, I can afford whatever armour I need for my characters (do a bit of milking the minotaurs at elona on the side), except for 15k, but that's learning humility. Collector and crafted weapons are good enough for me (heck, they're still perfect), so I guess things are good enough. Stings, though, when you see the other guy counting his frequent buyer points with ectos'R'us.


Only 2 to go ! 55 mesmer FTW !!!

I doubt this. AFK people still get their share of drops as long as they are in range. My observations suggest that only range matters. *Edit* Only exception seems to be when working with NPCs; as minion master I sometimes feel I have to at least 'touch' an enemy myself to activate drops at all. *End Edit*

Binomial distribution has no memory. So lets do the experiment with higher numbers - 1000 players have a lottery for 1000 (lets call them gold) items, chance to win each item is 1/1000 for everyone. Expected results?
~368 get nothing
~368 get 1 item
~184 get 2
~61 get 3
~15 get 4
~3 get 5
<1 gets 6
results may vary

Conclusions? Lots of people will have a war story or two where exactly this happened... Way more people feel they 'lose' than win. Congrats, that's statistics for you!

I didn't see a black color drop for me in several hundred hours of play time. Then two dropped within a month. Conclusions? That's what the dye trader is for!

If you want better distribution you'd need an algorithm with memory, but thats a risky proposition as well. If you get a gold item, but the wrong one, then your chances for the intended item take a dive. The algorithm would also have to evaluate items 'correctly', which is impossible as most people ingame have different value schemes.

really, there is no such thing as random! random is merly a human perception.

A Computer doesnt know how to generate a truly random figure either, it must use complex equations based upon a 'seed' number, so complex are the equations that they give the impression or perception of being random.

however, the game mechanics in GW MUST have its own 'random generator'.. this generator must take certain factors into consideration before it can attempt to generate a random number.

We are unware of what these factors and equations are in guildwars! if we did.. I would bet all my wages that you could increase the chances of you getting the drops you want and the 'random perception' would be lost.

We know for a fact the drops arnt random, you never get a charr hide from a bone dragon for example!.. so the same must be the case for every item, certain places, certain creatures, certain chests...

We also know that the game as a whole makes certain that that only so many amounts of certain items are dropped.

an example of this was.. Sup Vigors and Sup Absorbtion, before factions these were 80k+ in price and were extremly rare, I played for over a year and never seen one!... the first week of factions they dropped like crazy! I dont know anyone who didnt get a sup vigor.. and suddenly the price crashed!.. and still is low!..

so we know that there must be certain factors which increase or decrese the chance of certain items dropping.

So knowing that there is a global drop rate, and that certain creatures droped certain items and certain items only drop in certain regions.. also add to this that we have seen 'bugs fixes' which cause incorrect distribution of drops, sometimes giving certain players NO drops (remember the no shards bug)..

All this adds up to more than just random and more than just luck!.. there must be a pattern, but knowing what this pattern without any information from ANET is is going to be very difficult to understand.

We know how buggy GW gets, (error 7) and I personally think that there is more bugs in the random generator than ANET would ever care to admit!... if you suspect something is wrong, re-start GW! this fixes most temporary bugs.

But I do agree, there MUST be a pattern!.. new characters for example always seem to get high amounts of good drops in their early life.

If you want to see it onscreen for yourself, do the following:
1. Find a small easy to kill group of enemies just outside of a town (the closer and smaller the better).
2. Walk outside and kill only this one group of enemies, then walk back into town (don't map warp).
3. Keep repeating step 2. After a few times you'll see a tip message come up on the screen in the game telling you about the anti-farm code.

that's true. IMO it's really not code more like a flag that pops up and tell the the severs your killing Sskai, Dragon's Birth for his sword and not enjoying the rest of the game. witch the pop up windows says "contiune playing the game and be ok"

as for gold chest i would open 5 in row and get 3 of the 5 gold and the 6th and 7th are purple. so i just stop opening them all and try again in 24 hours.

don't belive in "luck" in this game. well as for drops

This is just a message telling you that if you continue to zone in the same area and kill the first few monsters, your drops will diminish. This should have no bearing on drops in other areas.

Rarity is not factored into the agloritm. However: The algorithm is weighted: Players that have received less drops are more likely to get the next drop. This algorithm does not take into acount item rarety, just total items.

well could'nt sleep so popped into a pug this morning to kill rotscale.. using my nuker I'd say probably did the most damage in the group and got the bow- noticed this with my elem- he seems to get alot of drops compared to my support characters as long as he does'nt die.. maybe it's just luck.. but I know the anti farm code is real- it's not an end all to your gold drops- you'll still get golds even after all you get is whites/blues just not as frequent.. also noticed if you stick it out in an area almost like for a short time the drops get crazy good- like the farming code "gives up" lol no other way to describe it but you'll end up with multiple golds on a few runs.. my other theory is at certain times of day the drops are excellent but only for a short amount of time.. if you have'nt been to an area before your drops will be really good first few times through too

Just like everyone I've had my share of good and bad luck.

Totem axe dropped for me - first group - first behemoth.
3 FOW groups last night - first 2 absolutely nothing ... some dust maybe (woot!) but on the 3rd run - black dye, perfect holy rod (ok from chest but still good), nice shield and 2 shards.....

I think Anet wants to keep everything simple - it's just a set of tables with odds of dropping for each possible drop - that way they can dynamically change the proportion of drops at will.
Certain monsters can drop certain objects (n-element table ) - Say the monster dice roll picks "dye drop" from the table - next you roll another dice and select from another table (one where black-dye has a small proportion of dropping) and of course there's the dice roll which allocates it to a party member.

This tiered approach is quite simple - of course I don't know how they do it but this method modularizes it and makes it easier to change. For example with the 2 new professions there's 2 new sets of runes - all they would need to do is extend the "runes on armor" table to include these.

Computers can do pseudo random with seeded values very well today.
So there's no Anet hates me or Anet loves me..... only place where they would really monkey with this is on overfarmed area's which you can easily handle using a multiplier value.

e.g. trolls outside droks = .2 multipler = low end objects but higher drops still possible.
e.g. FOW = 3 multiplier = high drops but low end drops still possible.

IMHO of course but had to comment....

http://guildwars.com/support/gameupd...ve-2005-06.php

if its your first time in an area then i believe that you have a better chance of getting stuff, but if you continue to go to an area and kill there you get crappier stuff.