Bug type:
The new update on rune, that will reduce exp and drop rate if we don't activate it for sometime, is bugged and possibly stack into the map for a long time. It doesn't dissapear even after another player activate a rune at the map
Brief bug summary :
On several occasions, the effect from not activating runes that resulting in decrease on 50% drop or more is bugged. Actually it is also reduce exp, but this report is focusing on reporting my experiments and samples on proving that the drop rate decrease caused by the rune is still in effect on several occassion even after we activate the rune. So I will put aside the exp drop as i don't know if it is also bugged. But the drop rate decrease by failure to activate the rune stack to the map and under some unknown circumstances possibly doesn't dissapear even after the rune is activated. I believe this is possibly the cause why so many players complaining about the nodes drop rate nerf. It is not the drop rate nerf, it is the rune drop rate decrease that is bugged and still in effect at the map even after a long time or after a rune is activated..
More details:
My experiment was actually meant to find what caused the drop bug on nodes drop. While GM claiming that the changes in drop is actually increase the drop, but a lot of people complaining that the drop rate has been reduce significantly. Gm claiming it is not, but it actually slightly increase it. So the 3rd scenario would be noone lying. It is not the drop rate nerf. It is another thing that is bug. I actually wouldn't care so much if myself didn't experience of 3 hours farming nodes with 0 nodes drop result. I ussually get around 30 nodes in 3 hours farming with the same situation, same map and same power/strength overall. But i believe GM and even most players wouldn't believe me it happened to me. But it did.
So, no matter what I'm going with my own sampples and experiment. And thus, i found the cause is not the changes in drop rate system itself. But the drop bug is caused by the new rune system. The new rune system itself, if we don't activate rune in map after several times, will cause in decreasing on exp and drop rate by 50%, 65% and even 100%. I will not discuss about the exp coz i'm not focusing in that.
But I'm focusing on the drop rate decrease by the rune effect. The decrease in drop rate by rune, on several occasion doesn't dissapear, in another word it will stay within the map even after we activate the rune. I reach this conclusion after i matched 2 coincidently seemingly different cases, but in the end brought me to 1 same conclusion, the decrease on drop rate by rune still stack in the map, on several occasion. This is 2 things that has happened to me, to give you more inisght and clear view of what is actually happening. So many players furious about drop rate decrease, in result players quitting. In actuality, we are actually addressing a wrong issue, it is not the drop rate, IT IS THE RUNE.
1. As i mentioned above, i had farming nodes for 3 hours at chuchu island with a Nightwalker around lv 216 with 270 AF that give me averagely double damage in chuchu. on my previous report, someone said that it depends on capability on how fast we can kill (someone thought that i have just started farming nodes past few days, I am not). I can tell you that my NW has 2mill damage range with 180% drop gear. And so there is no way, i am killing slow. My 4 perfect nodes is averagely level 25 with my boost nodes on my mobing skill is lv 30+, I have gotten 90% damage buff from nodes. I also had a kanna to kishin at the map. And also NW has two 5th job skills that is very good at killing masses. One that creating a clone that standing there and hitting opponents. The other one that spread spears everywhere in result killing a huge area of mobs. NW also has that bats passively flying everywhere killing opponents. But it was still resulting on me getting me 0 nodes. 0 nodes and i am not lying. I have no advantage on lying to you. I tell you what i experienced. I also have a level 223 Demon Avenger with 180% drop gear. I have been hunting like 500 nodes+ with it (resulting on 4 of my perfect nodes to reach averagely level 20 on each node which result on level 40 on each skill boost) so i know getting 0 nodes on 3 hours nodes farming with 180% drop gear clearly signalled me that something is bugged/wrong
But after i find some similar incident, now i came to the conclusion, on that moment before, when i got 0 nodes after 3 hours nonstop farming, i conclude that the 100% drop decrease by rune effect is take place in the map. It was probably cause by another players who was in the map before me. This decrease drop rate by rune can stack in the map for a long time. I will post what makes me arrive at this conclusion below.
2. From number 1 alone, i wouldn't actually arrive at this conclusion. But this 2nd proof was my solid proof what drive me to this conclusion. I found it when i did mesos farming. I ussually can get around 300mill mesos perhour. I used battle statistic to time my mesos gain perhour several times, and i sum up that i gain averagely around 280mill-330mill perhour depends on how fast i kill. But at lowest i gained was around 280mill. Until recently i feel like sometimes my mesos gain is not as high as it used to be. It actually feels like sometimes it got cut by half or even more. Sometimes the mesos bag is dropping lessen compare to i normally would get, eventhough there is no rune or no rune effect at the map. One time, i thought i might remember it wrong. Or it is just my feeling. But after several occasion, 10-20 times of mesos farming moments, which i gained a very low amount of mesos, i start to suspecting things. On several occasion, i found out i get only around 150mill perhour even with the same set up, class, equips and place. I tried to change the chat window to "combat" mode which show the mesos i gain, but i still gain normal, which is around 10k mesos perbag averagely (i have total 120% mesos increase from gear and innner ability). But after sometime, after a moment of thinking i realise this rune doesn't affect the amount of mesos we received, but it reduce the chances of bags dropping. I hunt at malaysia map which gave me at most 2 bags from each monsters. so if the drop rate is low, it will only drop 1 bag or even no mesos bag dropping, in result i will get a lot lower mesos gain in an hour farming. But i don't have proof until past few days i start to put my mesos in storage before i start farming. And i actually found out that in 1 hour, on several occasion when i saw the mesos bag drop in not as usual as it is, i only got around 170mill perhour, compare to another time can get me around 300mill perhour.
3. Related to number 1, on several occasions, i still can get 8 nodes drop perhour with the same setting. Sometimes only 2 nodes perhour. I refuse to believe the RNG is that bad can get me from 8 nodes perhour to 2 nodes perhour even to 0 nodes after 3 hours farming
.
4. At first i didn't think that these 2 things relate to each other. Until i suddenly think it more thoroughly, what if these 2 incidents is related. There is no way that if there are a lot of players reported that nodes drop has been nerfed so badly that all of the players are all lying. Though, I also refuse that GM was actually lying. I believe GM has been telling the truth that actually the changes on drop rate is actually resulting on a slightly better nodes drop. . I myself won't believe it if i don't experienced it myself, 3 hours of farming with 180% drop gear with capability can easily clearing the whole map result me with 0 nodes drop. In the end, i arrive at conclusion that these 2 has the same root problem. The root problem is that on several occasion if a player actually didn't activate a rune in result activating the decrease in drop rate, even after several times pass and even after another rune being activated after, the effect of drop rate reduce from rune is still take effect. It can also caused by another player before us. Activating a new rune doesn't actually clear the previous drop rate reduce by rune.
5. my other suspicion is if the rune drop rate decrease in map was triggered by another player. And then after the player leave, another different player came to the map. Even after the other player activate the rune, the drop rate decrease might still in affect because it was triggered by another player. In result, the map will have lower drop rate or decrease in drop rate
6. Additionally, this might also affect exp rate. But i haven't done any experiment and i have no samples as i have been focusing on nodes farming and mesos farming lately. So this is just additional. Might be and might be not.
Steps to reproduce:
I have 2 different scenarios i can think of to reproduce this. I haven't gotten a clear system how actually it is happening since sometimes it is happening but sometimes it doesn't. But here the way that i think it is possibly can reproduce it. If i find more proof, i will send more report. I hope another players who experience the same thing as me can come up with a better way to reproduce this.
A.
1. Do several different occasions and times of nodes farming and/or mesos farming on different times and different channel.
2. While doing nodes farming, write down the nodes drop on those several occasions
3. while doing mesos farming, go to crowded malaysia map (bye bye station) or ghost ship map where it has monsters that can possibly can drop 2 bags from each monster. Open up Familiar Eye of time as it can create a huge difference in mesos gain if the drop rate actually bug due to monsters ussually dropping 2 bags but now dropping only 1 bag or even no bag because of the rune drop rate decrease effect.
4. Write down the result of 20-30 sets of farming of 1 hour time frame.
5. You will see mesos gain or nodes drop on several occasion has been cut to half or even more
B.
2. Lets call, the player as player A. Player A go to a map (ghost ship map for mesos farming or Chuchu island for nodes farming). Player A wait until the rune trigger 50% drop rate decrease and/or 100% drop rate decrease. Let it triggered for around 15-30 mins to probably achieve higher effect.
3. After that, Player A leave the map without activating the rune
4. After player A leave the map, let a different player, lets say player B to arrive at the same map, same channel, and same place.
5. Player B will see the message that Drop rate decrease is in effect and is asked to activate the rune. Player B activate the rune
6. Try farming mesos (with eye of time familiar to have a more convincing result) or nodes (with spider familiar to have a more convincing result) for 1 hour.
7. Do this on several different occasions since it is happening on several occasions.
8. You will see mesos gain or nodes drop on several occasion has been cut to half or even more
Additional : This must be tested on a crowded server such as Reboot or any other server that mostlikely has most of them time all channels are crowded on Chuchu
and vanishing journey maps
Character name:
RedNightW
Character level:
217
Character job:
Night Walker
World name:
Reboot
Date and time of the incident:
Since the new update on rune that can trigger 50% or more decrease on exp and drop rate
Comments
Would be great if you can provide a bit more detail eventhough not the exact hours of grinding. But a good estimation can be added to my samples too. Like, what is your damage range, what additional drop rate do you have, which class, or are you using familiar or not (and which familiar did you use).
I have been collecting various information from players and friends in Reboot regarding this too. I have put a great detail of my experience above hoping that it can be a help for developers to find, if there is actualy a bug. If you go take a look on the other forum section there has been lots of players who actually have been complaining about the nodes drop. Though, there is not much great detail on it.
But there are 2 possibilities, which are players are just complaining merely just because the drop rate change, or because the changes is too low that makes players react to it. Thus, I am the one who react because the changes is unacceptable because in my case, it was dropped for more than 80%. Actually i have accepted about the nodes drop changes. But 1 day before i posted this, i found out about the abnormal drop from the mesos farming.
That is why i am asking to look into the rune. As I can remember it was actually 2 updates went together that can affect drop rate, which was the changes on drop rate system and the rune new system that can reduce the drop rate which was why we cannot actually analyse whether the problem is on the new changes on drop rate system itself or there is actually a bug on the new rune system.
If GM is reading this and you believe, and you actually didn't lie that the new drop rate system should not reduce the nodes by far or might even increase the chance for it to drop, GM should start collecting what it may cause. A lot of player have been reporting the huge drop on nodes. In my opinion if the drop, even only less than 30%, i believe most players will just ignore it. But if it reduce from 10 nodes perhour to 2 nodes perhour even to 0, obviously a lot of players will ask about it.
You should also put some believe in your players input. If you believe that your update didn't actually decrease the drop rate by huge margin, then it might be caused by another bug. One of the other player from another guild has been suspecting that it is the bug from familiar since KMS doesn't have familiar? Recently some players told me that it might be caused by drop rate gear bug. But i still don't know since i always farm with spider familiar and drop rate gear.
But if Nexon actually have reduce the nodes chances to a lot lower, they should have announce it. Eventhough they have to give a reason such as that they have to do the nerf on drop rate to balance the game. Or if the effect will nerf drop gear, you can just anounce that you will balance the drop gear effect on drop system. It is the same as if they nerf certain class or other things. What makes people curious is that they claimed the changes even give slightly better chances for nodes to drop. Instead of claiming that it has been adjusted and even as i can remember, a GM said it that it is actually a slightly better.
I believe GM doesn't lie. The problem, there might be a bug that is still unknown. Such as a friend of mine, Luminious around lv 215 with HIgh AF also have been on problem with the nodes. He was farming at lantern erdas. I haven't checked with him in every details but in a few hours of farming he gotten only 2-3 nodes. He said, ussually he gets more even after update.
I assume if you have a level 250, you are experienced enough to know how good is luminious at killing a massive amount of monsters especially with the 5th job skills. I just feel that something is off. After updates, i Sometimes i can still get 26 nodes over 3 hours of farming. Sometimes i can only get 8 over 3 hours farming. And the worst was what i mentioned above with 0 nodes. Eventhough i know it is RNG, statistically and mathematically, the difference shouldn't drop that far. In the end, my conclusion is that there might be an unknown bug eventhough it might not be on the drop rate itself, but lies on another things
Did you ever leave a rune untouched long enough for it to get cursed?
Oh, i also have just remembered, if you are grinding at high level map like arcana, you might not face this because there are less players there. But at Vanishing Journey and Chuchu map, especially at the Slurpy forest depths or below the cave, there is a lot more chances the rune curse effect might stack to the map, because there are a lot of players come and go on those maps. It is a very famous map. Even without 2x events, mostlikely 50% of the channels available is full of players. So this might lesslikely happening on high level map, because there are less players with high level. And this is also lesslikely to happen if you are playing at server with low amount of players. Mostlikely only happening to crowded server that has most channels are full at Vanishing Journey and chuchu map such as at reboot server.
Yeah i remember it now, some of my friend with level 230+ who was grinding at Arcana after the update, said that there is no changes/less changes on nodes drop rate. They still get the same amount or only like 1 less or at most 2 less. Yeah, as far as i can remember, the players who were complaining about the huge drop on nodes were those who were at Chuchu And Vanishing Journey maps around level 205-220.
But if you do this everyday for 1 month and every 2-3 days you get only 1 black ball with 9 white balls (which means in 1 month you get those combination around 15 times), i would say that there is something wrong with either the balls or the jar because it is happening too many times. It is still possible to occur but not repeatedly.
In my case about nodes farming, i found that this was happening repeatedly. It happened to me that sometimes i can get 7+ nodes perhour, but also it happened to me on a lot of occasion that i can only get around 0-1 nodes perhour.
The difference is just too huge that it is just doesn't make sense to me. If it is only happened to me once or twice, it won't arouse my suspicion. But having this happening to me for more than 5 times, it really makes me wonder if there is an error somewhere. I also heard repeated report from friends that it was also happening to them, getting nodes drop ridiciously low. If GM believe the drop rate system didn't get too much huge nerf, i suspect it is on the other update, which was the new curse rune system. Both updates has an effect on drop rate and was released at the same time. So we cannot actually differentiate if both were released without any following error.
Another idea from me how to check this is by testing on test server. Using a same char with same drop rate, trying it on a server with both new drop rate system and new curse rune system (try farming after the curse been activated for around 15-30 mins mins and then activate a rune to nullified it). While also testing it on a server that only have the new drop rate system, but without the curse rune system. If the nodes drop has a huge difference, there is high possibility that there is an error caused by the rune.
So far i still experimenting and collecting more samples. Past 5 days, i have been avoiding any maps with cursed runes been activated even before i arrive at the map. The result, the rune drop has been amazing. Yesterday I got 7 nodes on around 70 mins nodes farming. On the other occasion, i farm for around 45 mins and gotten 9 nodes. But I find it normal. Today i tried farming nodes on a map with cursed had been activated before i arrived (Same map with same gear and char). But before i start farming, i activate the rune to get rid of the cursed message then i farm for around 30 mins. I got only 1 node. Still This is just another additional samples from my previous experiments.
I also experimented by adding the bunny etc item drop. I forgot the bunny etc item name, but it is the one that we had to collect 50 items, which will give us 5-50 coins. I was experimenting this while doing dark world tree daily quests for my absolab gear. Without curse rune, i can get around 1-2 bunny etc item drop every 3-5 seconds. But when i hunt it on the map that has curse activated for a long time before i arrive, even after i activate the rune to make the curse dissapear,i can only get around 1-2 bunny etc item drop after around 10 seconds. i did it around 2-3 days, and the results still seems the same to me. There was a huge difference. Still might be a coincidence. I will need to do more experiment and getting more samples.
Maybe it was not an error. but probably a mis-formula.
1. Is there a chance you apply, example curse rune 50% decrease drop rate, so that if this happen, you cut 50% off the drop rate chance? But after we activate a rune to make the curse dissapear, you add/multiply +50% drop rate which actually will only make our drop rate to 75% rate? It because if we only have 50% drop rate and you increase it by 50%, it means we only get additional 50%x50% = 25%. Did you actually reset it?or you just simply add back +50%? if you add +50%, there is possibility it will not go back to 100%, but to only 75%.
2. Is there a possibility, after a curse rune has been applied for some time, even after we make the curse dissapear, it nullifies/ make the effect,of our drop rate increase from equips/accesories/ spider familiar / Inner ability to dissapear? If that is so, it might answer my suspicion. After a curse rune is activated, even if we have already activated a rune to make the curse dissapear, we will only have pure 100% normal drop rate without getting additional drop rate increase from outer sources.
On another word, after we activate the rune, it will get us to the condition that we have only normal 100% drop rate. It doesn't add the additional drop rate we get from gear/accesories, inner ability or spider familiar. If this is happening, then it will also answer my suspicion. It is because, if i hunt without my 180% drop gear, inner ability 20% drop increase and spider familiar, i will only get around 1 node for 1-3 hours. With drop rate gear i can get around 7-10 nodes for 1 hour. A long time ago, before i have additional drop rate increase, i can only get 1 node after 1-3 hours farming. So the other possibility is that the curse rune, will nullify/cancel any additional drop rate until we actually move to another map or on worst case until we relogin. This is still a possibility, just based on my experiment.