Fixing the loot distribution system

So that you're penalized for taking out monsters with smaller groups?

Personally I feel that if you're able to take out the mob with 3-4 people you deserve more drops than if you need 8 people to do it.

I also don't see your point. You have a 1/8 chance TODAY of getting a drop if you go out with a full team. If you go out with less than full team, you have a higher chance but take more risk and take longer to kill mobs. Seems like a pretty balanced system to me.

Besides, I don't think your basic premise, that people don't group, holds. AFAI can see people group pretty much all the time, it's just a fairly small group of people who obsess with monk farming builds. And the botters, which btw would be completely unaffected by fixed drop rates.

/unsigned

Acolyte Devathi

i understand pefectly you want to change it so every one in a group gets something every time a mob is killed and i already told you the problem with that. the only way to do that is to increace the drops and in turn the solo players get that much more maybe you should learn to read.

No, you do not need to increase drop rates and solo players would not get more - do solo players get 8x quest items if they kill a quest monster solo? No the monster drops one for each party member - so a solo player gets 1 drop, team of 4 will see 4 dropped, team of 8 will see 8 dropped - regardless of how many or how few are in the party everyone will only get one quest item, so why not make rare drops the same? They'd still be rare, but if one did drop, everyone in the party would benefit rtegardless of whether solo, 56 man trapping, full party of 8.

Take Rago's Flamestaff as an example - I've been in parties that have killed Rago at least 15 times, but I've yet to see him drop the flamestaff even once, but if he had only one person from the party would have benefitted - so why not make it that if he does drop a flame staff all party members get one? It is still a rare drop afterall.

/sighs

This thread is equally frustrating and humorous to read.

Taken from Fansite Friday #61:
So ANet's problem is farmers being able to produce significant amounts of gold quicker than groups of normal, non-farming players. They just said so themselves. Why, exactly, is it that these farmers are able to produce so much more gold? The answer has been stated many times already but I will repeat it here again. THEY GET ALL THE DROPS. Not 1/8th of the drops, not 1/6th, but 100%. Like it or not, this is a team/group oriented game, and is promoted as such. Yet there is LESS incentive to play within a group for the aforementioned reason.

Solution? Change the loot system entirely. Add some sort of modifier that would change the amount of loot a monster drops that would be entirely dependent on party size. For instance, in a party of one, the total drops for a run would be x. In a party of two, it would be 2x. In a party of three, it would be 3x. You get the idea. This system rewards solo farmers and group players EQUALLY. It creates balance. This would also remove the need for the constant nerfing of the game. Solo farming would still be a viable option for people who enjoy playing alone or need some time away from PUGs, etc. Nobody suffers because of it, and the vast, vast majority of people will gain from it. Everyone should be relatively happy/not pissed off.

That is the best explanation I could come up with. I don't think I could explain it in simpler terms. If you do understand and disagree, please write an intelligible response and explain why you do.

/signed

you make much more sense than the other two but i still don't understand how they will put such in you got to think of the dev team too. also you ppl should stop insulting peoples intelligence.

Sorry if it came across as though I was trying to be an ass. I was feeling frustrated that the others' continued efforts to explain it to you weren't working. As to the actual difficulty of programming something like this... well, I haven't the faintest idea. I assume that with their vaunted streaming update technology and the ease with which they changed things like the enemy reactions to AoE spells, it wouldn't be such a big deal. Of course, I could be way off.

No, totally not signed. What... is one monster going to start dropping multiple items? Ye gods, I can see people dropping out of missions to go sell to the merchant because they're full halfway through.

Nah, all told, not a good idea.

No, his idea isn't to increase drops in large groups, it is to decrease drops for small groups.

I.e., if you go soloing you get no more drops than if you have 7 other players with you.

This to encourage people to group instead of solo.

Personally I don't think it is necessary to encourage people to group, people group when they need to anyway.

Ah, so then I read it wrong? Still, it makes little sense... a creature's going to either drop or not regardless of party size... changing that based on party size seems to violate... reality, for what it's worth.

Besides, I don't think of it as being penalized for being in a large group, rather as a bonus for being in smaller groups.

But I'm not greedy for imaginary "items" that are nothing more than bits of data capable of being erased by unknown people at their whim.

Perspective, FTW.

Salvage ftw? They have those huge kits now, so put 'em to use. A lot of what drops can be sold for more as salvage components anyway, and a lot more is relatively worthless. Pick and choose what you want.

Nope.

Realistically, why would these monsters have all that random loot in the first place? Is it realistic that I can only cast fire storm on a monster and not anywhere on the ground within my aggro circle? Or how about dying? Realistically, you wouldn't expect a party of adventurers to come back to life in the nearest town, yet they do. Realism in a fantasy game can only be justified to a certain reasonable extent before issues of balance and practicality come into play. I don't really see a downside to this proposed change to the loot system, but I also don't expect it to have a snowball's chance in hell of ever being implemented because it's too radical a departure from what we have now. Then again, I never in my wildest dreams would have expected them to nerf aoe like they did. Either way, I still believe this is a very viable alternative to the way the system currently works.


You may call it greed, but really it's just a desire to develop a character that is perceived as more 'special' than the average; in other words, they want to differentiate themselves somewhat from the majority of people. Many people will be satisfied with drok's armor and collector's weapons. Some will not. For those who want more, they will have to work for it. The problem lies in the discrepancy between time and effort spent acquiring these items and the payoff in terms of satisfaction that one receives from obtaining them. Generally, any accomplishment of this nature will be very satisfying, but only for a relatively short period of time. Then you start to wonder if it was worth it. Don't interpret this as me trying to say that getting fissure armor or whatever should be easy. It just shouldn't be ridiculously hard. People will be more inclined to play the game if their next goal seems to actually be attainable rather than a pipe dream. And yes, keeping people playing is a good thing.

Well, here's the rub... you tone down drops for solos and really you change nothing for your personal character development. You jack up drops for groups and you over flood the market so everyone has everything and there is no more 'special' anymore, not that special isn't a matter of a percent or two as it is.

Either way, you accomplish nothing other than annoying more people.

Bad idea stamp is a good idea here.

Amen, someone who understands!!!!!

I am so sick of hearing a few guildies say comon play pvp, use a spiker or use your iway, OMG !!!1111 you don't have an iway!!! or you don't have this or that build....tho at the same time i'll ask him why is it that you beaten the game how many times and didn't know about solo monking??!!! or that glowing hearts can salvo into charcoal...etc..etc..etc....sure i'll pvp ....sometime, but not untill i'm ready, i feel more accomplishment from pve than trying to show people how big my virtual groin is etc..etc..etc..

:::End Transmission:::

Where are you guys getting this "tone down drops for solos" idea? Apparently out of thin air because all that's being proposed here is that whether you go out by yourself for farming, doing missions, quests or whatever or you decide to go out with a group of whatever size (from 2 to 8), you should be able to get pretty much the same amount of crap and gold in your inventory when all is said and done.

I don't much care for the "drop enough rare items for everyone in the party to have one" junk though. If that's the case, they better make rare items WAY more rare or that could have potentially bad repercussions for the market.

Right now there are solo builds for a reason; it's more profitable. It's a simple fact that you get more junk and gold farming an area for 30 minutes solo than you do within a group and for a game that prides itself on the "team" concept, the loot distribution system is as back asswards as it gets.

can you get anymore hatful

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I am at a complete loss for words
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Oh god

if you can read through that and can't see the hate than you most be blind

I swear to god you must be fooling around with us. A human being just can't actually be this... I don't know what to say...

i am so confused...

Trust me the human race is far dumber than you think and guess what i'm on the top end of the chain in fact I have a IQ of 147.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea i'm saying you wrote it wrong and Megamanfan wrote his/hers in a hatful manner.

As my first post here in the forums, I'm gonna have to say I agree with Orbberius up there. Although with all the banter and arguments I feel like I've lost a portion of what I thought the idea was. Here's what I think he meant when he began all this and BEFORE people decided to start throwing really random and crazy ideas outta nowhere.

At the moment, drops are dropped in generally the same amount regardless of whether you're a farmer or a team of 8 players(human or henchie). As such, the gameplay is geared toward favoring soloers/farmers. If you solo/farm then you'll essentially gain 8x what you would if you were in a full party of 8. What Orb is trying to say is that in order to encourage partying up with people, they should patch it so that you would get generally the same amount as a soloer. I mean we all know that it'll never be properly equally split. Now this could be done in a large variety of ways(which is probably why so many people got so confused).

Now don't flame me for all the different ways. I'm just telling you them and what i think Orb means.

1. You can drop the amount of drops for soloers and increase the drops of parties so that it's more profitable to go party than solo.

2. You do the same as #1 only you do it on a basis of a randomized number between x and y(relatively close). Multiply that by the amount of party members. You'd get approximately the same as you could farming/soloing although, again, there's still variety.

3. You can decrease the amount of drops you get when soloing so that you don't really profit much more, if you profit more at all than if you were partying.

4. You can increase the amount of drops that parties get so that they get relatively the same and maybe more than the soloers. Quit your griping and b----ing and moaning about the economy. You're in a simulation. Economy doesn't count for much here. And I'd rather see an economy where the average joe can afford something like a staffwrapping of fortitude +29 without having to dish out the amount of money it'd cost for a flipping guild hall and change of capes. Don't even mention trying to get a perfect.

Now those're just 4. There's a couple of other ways to do it but those 4 seem to be the prominant ways people are arguing over. Let's establish this. I'm pretty sure Orb means that they should implement #4.


Edit: As a note: IQ means nothing. No really. It's a number that tells you how well you can adapt to some situations or questions/problems. There are people who have, literally, genius IQs who totally suck at life and have squat for knowledge and actual education. Intelligence only measures your ability to think through things provided you know what's going on.

Edit2: Sorry if I sound like I'm flaming you on that edit darkdragon. Just that it's true. IQ doesn't really mean anything besides potential.

WHAT!?

Not only did I not write that post in a hatful manner, it wasn't even in a hateful one! I'm dumbfounded.

Hmmm. I'm inclined to agree with you to a certain extent. However, even with added loot, getting the great items won't exactly be a walk in the park. I think about it like this: Two days ago I finally convinced my guild leader to try a two man UW run; he had gotten burned out on UW back before the nerfs and hadn't really given it much thought since then, but I had relatively little gold and wanted some ecto and maybe an eternal shield. Each run we did took us about 30-40 minutes, maybe more. We averaged about 1 ecto a run. Fissure for my elementalist will require 105 ecto and 105 shards. Even if we had the 2x multiplier on drops and thus each got one ecto per run, it would still take around 62 hours of straight farming (@35 min/run) to get enough ecto. The other drops and money I'd get from the runs (most of which are crappy truncheons) could maybe pay for the shards I'd also need. Considering the cost of materials and pure gold I'd still need, and the time it would require to get the actual armor, we could tack on a few more hours, I'm sure. So I'll be generous and say that it would take 65-70 hours at that rate to get FoW armor. I don't know about you, but I think that 70 hours is a significant investment of time in any game, and this would just be for one set of armor. If you wanted four full sets... I'd rather not think about it to be perfectly honest. Actually, now that I have and realized that it will take 130 hours to get my FoW armor, I really wish I hadn't, heh.

Wouldn't everything still be completely random? Rares would drop at the same frequency you would get from soloing, right?

Um... can you be specific? I didn't see anything hateful in there. Maybe you are reading too deeply into what he posted?

Yes, exactly. Also, if there was even the slightest chance of getting something nice like that through my own adventuring, it would be far more preferable than farming for hours to pay for it.

Thanks for summing up the situation. I think you've really outlined all the possible steps that could be taken to equalize loot distribution. I'm afraid I didn't really take into account that there are many ways to do this and so people started inventing things out of nowhere based on what they thought my idea was. Yes, in my initial post I was aiming for number 4, though I might have veered from that occasionally, but that's because I'm still not sure which method is best.

I am happy at least that most people here have understood the gist of what I was trying to say, I thought I was losing my sanity there for a second.

Really, and this is from someone who doesn't farm at all (except UW trapper runs, which are fun...), the drop system is fine.

Solo characters get more than parties that share. Well.... right. Why not? You're out there alone, of course everything that drops will be for you. Besides, it takes special builds for soloing. It's more work and requires more specialization. These 55 monk things are absolutely worthless in a non-soloing world, so if someone wants to waste a slot on one, so be it. Now, a group of four trappers, for example, same drops divided by four. Logical. Also, consider that four can kill (in general) faster than one, so you can increase the number of drops by sheer volume. A good party of eight in Sorrows can eat through mobs at a good clip. Drops are diluted, yes, but overall drops per unit time increases. Really, it's fine the way it is.

Hardly, all but the originator of the builds just copied it off the internet and followed the instructions. Even if people did make their own build, it's not any harder than working well together in a group. Actually it's probably a lot easier to solo than to play in a group, all things like teamwork and cooperation considered.
That these builds are useless in non-solo has little to do with the argument at hand.
Logical isn't really the right word here; maybe realistic? but it's pretty funny to talk about realism/logic in an online internet game about magic and monsters who die when you click on them with your mouse cursor or press keyboard buttons). If there's a lot to be gained from a small drop in perceived "realism", then so be it.
For the drops between a soloer and someone in a group of 8 to be equal, the group of eight needs to clear areas 8 times faster. That means that an area that would take a group of eight 5 minutes would have to take a soloer 40 minutes. I think that simple calculation shows the "oh but the group of eight can clear an area faster" argument is an absurd one.

The basic fact is that the current system contains an economic disincentive to form groups. I think this is just inexcusable in a game that is supposed to be a cooperative/competitive online multiplayer game.

In reality, (funny that I say that in regards to a game) the loot system does need some tweaking. Some sort of solution needs to be implemented, because many a time have I felt like I was being punished for playing in a group of 4, or 6, or whatever. So, here's two possible solutions, or stepping stones to a greater solution.

Step 1. Make it so gold drops are the same amount, but all the players in a party get that amount. This would make it easier to afford neccessities such as salvage kits and Id kits, without having to take a chunk out of your savings.

Step 2. Do something that would make the enemy "realism factor"(hence nerfing the AoE skills) a little more realistic- make every enemy (not just bosses) have a random chance to drop two(between wand z), three (between xand z), or four items (between y and z)

Now, both of these would not completely solve the "problem" at hand, but it would at least alleviate some of the said issues. My point is though, this could, should, and hopefully will be implemented sometime between Chapter 2 and 3. And, to stop the argument that the "economy would become unbalanced," what are more item drops going to do to hurt it? Rare drop rates may have to be increased depending on your party size, but in the end more items+lower rare drops= less items+higher rare drops. So many people make it seem like this is so hard. It really isnt. It just requires people to not be greedy and accept that the game wasn't made to reward players who farm for ubers, it was made to reward players who play the game well. Read the description of the game from Arena Net. GW doesn't reward people who play for hours to get great stuff, it rewards people who play well with what they have.

EDIT: Whoops, misread the date of last post. Sorry guys :P

I wish they would fix how items are distributed amongst party members.

I just finished a 5-person ToPK UW trip. Greens dropped for everybody, two greens for some. I picked up...zero.

The same goes for Sorrow's Furnace Orozar/FA farm runs. Every run yields zero greens, zero rare item drops, zero for me. While others tend to pick up one or two each time. I dont remember the last time I picked up something *nice* that I could actually use or sell.

So that means that the only way for me to acquire green items is to grind for gold for weeks to buy one. Just one. While items drop like candy for others. How at all is this fair that the same people get multiple items while others are left with zilch after hours of play? :|

Fix the damn loot distribution system.

Well once the game forces grouping to get full loot, then pve will become just as elitist as pvp,since taking hench reduces your loot. Hench are better than 90% of pugs. Cutting off hench as an option for loot will eliminate almost all creative builds, with people only accepting certain builds into groups.

And off topic and out of curiousity, why not the same loot if you go with hench?

After reading through these posts, I believe people have a few misconceptions about the proposed changes here. Correct me please if I am wrong.

1. Each party member will get more loot in a party than if they solo.

The entire point of the system is that each party member will get the SAME amount of loot whether they are in a party or are soloing. If you go out with one person, you will receive X amount of loot. If you go out with a party of 8, each party member will still receive X amount of loot. How does this work? When you have 8 players in your party, the drop rate increases by 8. Net result? People get the same amount of loot, REGARDLESS of how many people are in the party.

2. Every monster will drop 8 items, one for each player, without fail.

Nowhere do I see in the OP's suggestions that each monster must drop an item for each player, every time. Hell, not every monster drops something as of now. INSTEAD, all that he is suggesting is make the drop RATE scale up with each member of the party, with the net result that, on average, everyone receives the SAME amount of loot, REGARDLESS of how many people are in the party.

3. Scaling the drop rate with the number of party members will flood the economy with rares and ruin it.

This will not happen if the total drop rate remains the same. How can that happen, you ask? Simple. You set a drop rate for each player that will be less than what it is for a soloer, but more than what it is for a member of an 8-man party. No one said everyone MUST get rare items. Random chance should factor into the drops, just as it does right now.

What's the point, you ask? It's simple: as Anet knows, ideally we should have even distribution of resources to promote a health economy.

What's the problem right now? Solo farmers are rewarded for playing selfishly and hoarding resources.

What would the OP's suggestions change? Each player will receive the same rate of drops, REGARDLESS of whether he is playing by himself or with a party. This evens out the income distribution for all players.

Net result? We IMPROVE the economy by allowing everyone to share in the wealth, instead of concentrating it in the hands of a few.

5. Solo farmers will simply get eight times the loot by farming in 8-player parties.

That does not follow. If 8 farmers were to form a party, each would receive 1X of the loot, giving them a total of 8X between them all. Alternatively, if each of them soloed, each would get 1X of the loot, giving them 8X total between them all. The OP's suggestions will not give an advantage to farmers in 8-player parties as opposed to soloing.

One advantage of this would be the reduction of the situations in which you have a solo monk or two rushing into UW and purposely trying to get the party members killed, so they would leave and allow the monks to farm. In the new system, the farmers would receive the same amount of loot REGARDLESS of whether there were 8 or 1 person in the team. It would certainly reduce the grief of such situations.

6. The suggestion will take away the reward for finishing an area by yourself.

This is a valid point. However, the question is, shouldn't players be rewarded for good teamwork and cooperation as well? At the very least, shouldn't the two be balanced, instead of penalizing those who like to play a multiplayer game with other people?

Personally, I think this idea is one of the better ones that have come up in the forum. Props!

Oh yeah.
/signed.

haha tryed a little experiment to see about the loot distribution.
Solo Farm UW (1 hour)= about 1 Ecto per run
Duo UW Farm (30 minutes) = about 1-3 Ecto per run
5 Man UW Farm (1 hour)= about 3 Ecto per run
8 Man UW Farm (3 hours[all missions])= about 18 Ecto

5 Man SF= 2 Greens
8 Man SF= 6 Greens

Solo FoW= 2 Shards
Duo FoW= 2 Shards
8 Man Fow(all missions)= 26 Shards

Hall of Heroes (2 wins)= 2 Sigils for me hehe

The Shards and greens and ecto arnt all for me those are spread out over the party. I found if u play in a certain area for long enough everyone will eventualy get something if ur playing in a party of 8. I have made more money in Group farming then i ever did with a 55 monk. Now On to the Arenas!

I always wondered why the developers (who came from battle.net, the same developers who copied the Assassin from Diablo2 for the new Factions expansion[1] pretty much wholesale) didn't also copy how loot scales with more players. Diablo2 had it pretty much down -- more players = more loot, so that it scaled properly so everybody wound up getting the same amount of loot as they would have if they were in a 1 person game.

But no, GW has it backwards. The amount of loot stays the same, and the number of players goes up, so it starts dividing out, giving each player *less* loot in the end than if they were playing solo. No wonder there are so many solo farming builds.

Fix it to be like Diablo2, Anet. That solves alot of your farming issues, I think. Plus, it drops the rarity on a lot of things, which drops the price, which makes them attainable for newer players. These are all goals that you have in mind. Hell, it's why you put in greens, for chrissakes. So newer players could get rare mods cheaply. Make the rare mods themselves cheap by making loot scale properly.

Some players will complain, "but then the sword i spent 100k on is worthless!" Well, yes. Not worthless, but worth less. It's still worth *something*. That's what happens when buy high and sell low. But just because you bought an item when it was expensive doesn't mean it's worth that much later. You buy a $5000 plasma tv as an early adopter, it's $2000 later for everybody after the market stabilizes. That's how shit works.

And, really, in the end, here's the real issue: We are *NOT* beautiful and unique snowflakes. We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. Every character winds up looking just like every other character, more or less, in the end. There are slight variations, but seriously. Get a grip.

Make it easier for people to get things without 1000 hours of 55hp mo/wa solo farming. Give them an incentive to group for more than running and missions.

eudas

[1] don't bother correcting me and saying it's not an expansion, it's a standalone game, blah blah, i don't care. it builds on the work already put forth from the guild wars engine/campaigns, it's an expansion in my mind. you can think of it however you want, i won't stop you.

p.s. sorry about resurrecting an old thread if i have done so.

eudas

If you cant solo make a character that can, or learn to lol. Soloing is more profitable, and generally more fun and challenging than group play, and teh rewards are in proportion to the amount of effort.

When you solo you rely on yourself for everything, healing, damage etc.

In a group technically each member has less to do than a solo farmer, wit hthe monk healing, warrior tanking etc, so i think the loot could be tweaked for grps but should stay the same with soloing.

Quoted because these guys said what I was going to say much better than I ever could.

What you say: drops are unfair for groups. People who group are being penalized for grouping with henchmen and RL players.

What I hear: I want greens, gold and any other goodie you got...but I don't want to bust my rump to get it.

I agree that the drop ratio is crud in many cases, but not due to Henchmen or groups. Its due to the farming code and its varying attempts to keep rare and uncommon items...rare and uncommon. Yes, loot distribution can come back to bite you on the butt (that includes me and yes, I was pissed about it).

Thats what random means. Sometimes you're the one who gets 2 drops a run, sometimes you're the poor schlub who got gimped. Happens to everyone. my suggestion: if you're farming the same spot over and over, farm another for a while. Go elsewhere; search for new farms, farm different times in the day (I wake up early so the US servers are quiet when I hit my farm for the day. less traffic=more loot for me).

I think solo farming is here to stay. In fact, there are several farms that seem BUILT toward solo farms. Any petition to mess with them more than Anet already has is just downright petty at this point. Get a build (use Guildwiki or Google) tweek it to suit you and have at it, just like the rest of us.
Bought with farmed money or farmed on the spot, no one ever said getting uber leet gear was/should be easy. And if they did, frankly, they lied.

Community requested, company added!

It's been a long time coming, but ArenaNet does listen to the community voice, apparently!