User:Tennessee Ernie Ford/Shortcuts/Loot scaling

Loot scaling
The amount of confusion on this topic is staggering. ANet has posted precious little about anti-farming code and loot scaling, but what they have published is generally disregarded. This page is an attempt to collate official statements and repeatable experiments so that this is no longer the most mysterious bit of code in the game.

The short story
ANet includes anti-farming and loot scaling code to make it hard for that small percentage of players up to no-good, primarily bots and Real Money Traders. It is not designed to punish repeat farming.
 * Loot scaling is the code that encourages people to farm in groups while still reward solo play. The key point is that:
 * Soloists should expect more common loot, but not as much as they would get if farming more often with more players.
 * Anti-farming is the code that punishes the tiny fraction of players. People reading this are almost certain to be exempt.
 * Exempt items are those that are not scaled.
 * Soloists should expect to receive just as much of these and they would farming more often in groups.
 * Drop rates measure the number of times an item falls from a dead foe, but could also refer to number of drops per hour.
 * ANet has never given an official word about whether there is any code that affects drop rates over time.

Speculative fiction
Most of the conversations about loot scaling and anti-farming code are based on anecdotal stories that players have. The fact that 1000s of players believe these ideas doesn't make them true. TEF's favorite RL example of this is that nurses and police fervently believe (based on experience) that crime rates and crazy behavior spike during/near the full moon. However, actual research proves this to be false.

In particular, I have yet to see any repeatable research that supports any of the following claims; in each case, players remember confirming instances and ignore those that do not support their beliefs (this is officially known as heads I win; tails you lose).


 * Unproven: drop rates vary with the time of day.
 * Unproven and unlikely: drop rates vary with the number of players farming the same area.
 * Demonstrably false: drop are reduced by repeat visits to the same area.
 * Poorly tested: there are fewer drops when foes die simultaneously (usually from AoE).

What scales

 * Specifically included
 * Gold
 * Common (white) items, including common materials.


 * Exempt
 * Skill Tomes
 * Scrolls
 * Dye
 * Rare materials
 * All rare (gold colored) items
 * All unique (green) items
 * Special event items

Official info

 * Source: ArenaNet:Developer_updates/20070420

"People who play in normal size parties, including parties of heroes and henchman, will see no difference at all from loot scaling. At the same time, they will notice that normal mode is now much easier to farm, and that the introduction of Hard Mode provides a place they can play where the loot is better than ever before. Thus, people who play the game primarily in parties will simply make more money than they previously did."
 * Baseline


 * Translation: Historically interesting; of zero value to those farming in 2011.


 * Casual farming


 * Translation:
 * Monsters do not have anti-farming AI.
 * The game does not prevent repeat farming.


 * Advanced solo farming


 * Translation:
 * Advanced solo farming is defined as earning vastly more money through solo farming than through normal game play.
 * Advanced solo farming earns less gold and common loot than equivalent group farming.
 * Advanced solo farming has no effect at all on rare items, which are exempt from scaling.