Predetermined Drops (tinfoil alert!)

[martymart]

Yea this is a total tinfoil thread, but it's based on observed evidence across my clan's members during their significant amount of farming. (t6 only)

Some of us have noticed that we get the same items dropping, repeatedly, on different classes.

Me: I've gotten 5 stones of jordan. I've gotten 6 masks of jeram. I've gotten the entire jade set, several times over, even before 2.0.6 drop buffs for sets. All on my WD. I have gotten all set pieces and all offhands and all weapons possible for the WD to drop. Three shards of hate. Literally everything that could drop for my WD based on smart loot, has dropped. Even some Crusader shields and monk helms have dropped. 6 harringtons. 3 RoRG's from chests just casually farming a1 for rift keys, not even trying for it.

On my Wizard, I have never even seen nor do I have the transmog, for Mirrorball. Not one. I have never had the Firebird chest, offhand or pants drop. I have only gotten the boots and pants for Vyr. I have only gotten the amulet of Tal Rasha. No offhand, and no other set pieces. The play time for my Wiz far exceeds my WD. But it seems like almost clockwork, that when I swap to playing my Wiz, sure enough, an endless supply of Blackthorne belts and pants drop for him. Back to back. Within just a few minutes of one another. two handeds out the badoonky (which of course are totally useless). ENDLESS Wildwoods and Staffs of Autumn. Endless Crudest Boots.

On my Crusader, nothing drops. I followed last night for 5 T6 Rift runs with my best buddy, and not one legendary dropped during those runs. not one. on T6. With three people in the game. They all got several back to back legendaries. My crusader got jack shizz.

My friend Jon loads up his monk and I power level him from 60 to 70, and right after he hits 70, he gets three different monk set pieces back to back within two t6 rifts. Our other friend Mike? not one set piece on his monk and he farms on that monk constantly. He hasn't had ONE set piece drop and also gets an endless supply of blackthorne and Hearts of Iron, and crudest boots.

Now, I am making this thread to see if other people have noticed the same thing...? That each character keeps getting the same..damn...drops. Over and over and over, and never the ones you want. As if the hero you make has a predetermined loot table for him/her.

Our clan leader decided to make a new DH and level him to 70, and he has been getting the same drops for that DH, some he has never even seen on his main DH with whom he has farmed to paragon 580ish up to now. It's just mind boggling.

Am I crazy or is there a pattern going on here? Has ANYbody else noticed this at all?

 

[darkrealm]

So, here is my take on seeded drops. They do not exist. BUT I think the algorithm that Blizz uses is poor or the refresh of such a pool is poor. Everyone has noticed that double drops even across different games IE I get a set piece and someone else in the clan gets that exact same set piece/leg in short order in a completely different game.

There has been SO much discussion on this topic. We have tried to break down the chances at finding things like making a new game with a lvl 34 character to see seeded drops or narrow the chances at gambling exactly what we want. It does NOT work. We have followed IP/Port adresses. We have speculated that you should gamble only the item type that drops in your game. We have posted % drop chances for items..ON and ON ad nauseam.

I am very sure, given some other very poor design elements, that Blizzard short-cutted the Algorithm or used a cheap bias system to determine drops.

 

[martymart]

When so many people across the player base experience the same scenario, since this has been discussed ad nauseum, is everyone then telling the same lie?

If everyone is telling the same lie or giving the same experience, how then is there not a pattern of "seeded drops?"

I say everyone not as literally everyone, obviously, but as the majority.

The official forums are ablaze with complaints about drops (and drop rates being nerfed back to where they were before the anniversary buff, but that's another topic entirely, one I am angry about as I have gone 7 T6 rifts before without a single legendary (????)). Are they also just making things up in their head, when their stories all fit together with the same scenario?

How then, is it possible that one Wizard gets 4 mirrorballs in two days (non gamble!), and the other across their entire 1000 hour experience hasn't even seen one, after gambling for it and farming for it endlessly? That one wizard gets 5 stones of jordan (non gamble!) in a week, and the other gets none, and they ARE gambling for it? And they play together? Something is amiss. There is an observable pattern that I am not exaggerating over. I'm not talking about IP sniffing or anything such as that, but there is flat out a pattern going on here.

My personal opinion for what it's worth, is that this is a remnant from the loot coding from back in vanilla days with the AH active, that some accounts are predisposed to getting certain loot tables, so that the spread is evened out and one account is required to use the AH if they need to get a specific item (one that only drops from another person's account farming), forcing people to partake in the economic process Blizzard set up for profit.

The argument: it's totally random RNG BRO! Well, no. it isn't RNG. The Diablo 3 drop rates are far far from RNG, since different items have different drop rates. That's the exact opposite of RNG when items are skewed to be a certain percentage on an individual basis to drop. If the loot table can be controlled to that extent, then Blizzard can also control on an individual account basis by a random selection, which legendaries get a percentage to drop for that account.

Am I overexamining this? Maybe so, I am open to that, absolutely.

Do I think an observable pattern is taking place? Absolutely, without a doubt, or people wouldn't have been discussing it ad nauseum in the first place as you said.

 

[ZappaFan]

I tell ya one pattern I clearly see on the BNet forums is complaining... no matter what's going on in the game.

I mean seriously, what sort of motivation could Blizz possibly have to engage in this sort of heavy handed drop manipulation? It serves no purpose for them.

You can't make an analysis of a random process based on a small sample size. That includes my clan, your clan, and the relatively small percentage of the player base that is bothering to post on the forums.

 

[darkrealm]

TBH it's mostly tinfoil. The only credence I give to anything is the poor algorithm.

Two weeks ago, all I was missing for my jade 6 pc was the boots. I was in a group with another WD and they got the boots on a drop. I immediately went to Kadala and 3 gambles in I got them. Chance? Most likely yes. But my thought is if the algorithm is poor it might not randomize quickly or effectively. So why not, and it paid off. Does that always work...hell no.

 

[martymart]

Only, they ARE using a heavy handed drop manipulation - Smart Loot. It isn't entirely unreasonable to conclude from evidence presented that there could be additional loot manipulation in place, since Smart Loot is a thing and proves they have the coding in place (as is also evident with the anniversary buff, and buffing drop rates solely for set items), so saying they don't have any system like that is not true. And the loot system DID serve a purpose for them: to drive people to use the RMAH and buy things so they get their 15% cut out of it. I am not saying either scenario is good or bad, nor am I complaining at all. I wasn't complaining, so complaining about me complaining (which I wasn't)... is...well....*shrug* (and if you weren't doing that, then my apologies).

Also, quite a few people have posted about this, as said before, ad nauseum, on here and on official. It's a small sample size relative to the entire playerbase as you guys say, so how is that evidence that it isn't taking place? Wouldn't it be logical to conclude, then, that since the vocal forum posters who are a small sample are experiencing this pattern/scenario that a larger portion of the playerbase is, as well, and just not posting about it?

Look at it from the other corner:

What are the odds that someone gets, out of all the possible legendary off-hand items in the game, a majority of Mirrorballs dropping? He has had one firebird orb, one triumvirate, one tal rasha, and FOUR mirrorballs. I have had zero mirrorballs dropping. Every other member of my clan hasn't had any mirrorballs drop. This is not me complaining, but pointing out an absolute fact.

What are the odds that someone gets FIVE stones of jordan in one week, and only one or maybe two of the other legendary rings? This is not me complaining, but rather, pointing out an absolute fact.

What are the odds, that yet another person gets three Orpheus rods in two days, twice in one rift, as a matter of fact, whereas no other person in the clan has seen one drop at all, and this same player completed their entire Tal Rasha set in a week, and I haven't gotten but the Tal Rasha amulet?

It's easy to say that it's tinfoil, but since nobody here works at Blizzard as a Dev/coder, then nobody can say for certain either way. I am merely pointing out the same pattern happening over and over again to people in my clan. If my small group of friends are all experiencing the same pattern of dropping for our heroes, then it's more than likely happening to others as well.

 

[0blique]

My suggestion is that, if you think there's some fishiness at play in drops, that you start keeping records. It seems to me that you're relying on your memory, which is not necessarily the best way to determine how random things are. It's easy to remember the time you didn't get any items, or when you got the same item over and over again. In a perfectly random system, streaks and repeats and dry spells will happen extremely frequently, and because of the way human memory works, we will remember the time those odd things happen. I remember once when I got 5 1-hand cross bows in a play session, whereas previously very few had dropped. But in reality, 90% of the time, I get normal drops; I just don't remember them that well.

But you never know: it's possible something weird is going on. After all, there is no such thing as a truly random system in a computer program, so there are bound to be some quirks. I'd suggest that you start keeping track. Once you get enough samples, it should be obvious if there is as big as a pattern as you are suggesting.

One thing I'll share is that I've been keeping track of drops in my clan (150 members, several hundred drops per day and over 10000 drops altogether, but I will talk about the details in another post). From what I've seen, there definitely seems to be some streakiness in play with some of the very rare items, but overall in general, the odds of items dropping pretty much match the drop list that was posted awhile ago. Since this is an aggregate, it doesn't preclude that individual characters might have funny drops (which is why I suggested keeping track of your own), but such streakiness is expected, and due to the huge number of possible legendary items (more than 450), it takes at least 2-3000 before things start to look properly distributed.

 

[fmulder]

What's with all the conspiracy theores? This is a Diablo fansite, not an X-Files fansite.

 

[Flux]

I have no doubt that there are some bugs in the item drop code for Diablo 3, if only because there are bugs in the item generation code for every game of this type. D1 and D2 certainly had plenty. And not necessarily even bugs, just imbalances or inefficiencies or whatever you want to call them. Something like the Treasure Class organization system in D2, where item scarcity had very little in common with item quality. (D3/RoS are much better about that than D2 was.)

That said, almost all of the "my friend found X right away and I've never found it" stuff is so anecdotal and psychological. It's almost like the game is doing a non-stop exercise in cold reading, where it throws out nonstop randomness and the human observers construct meaning and significance from the jumble, like seeing faces in clouds. We remember the hits and disregard the misses, for psychological reasons anyone can educate themselves on.

I'd be much more interested in and convinced by people who kept actual records. Record every leg you find for a month or two. Record every leg someone in your clan finds for a month. Count up the totals. Do some math. What are the results?

For a while during D3v we were heavily into recording our leg finds and trying to understand the system. I wrote down every leg I found for a few months, getting a list up to several hundred, and looking over all that data there were some weird bits of RNG. The thing I noticed most was... how falliable was my memory. Numerous times I logged on, glanced at the list of legs as the game was loading, and stared in surprise. I had never found that item. Not even once! Someone else must have broken into my apt and written it down, in my handwriting! The same thing happened each time I added my results to the forum thread. I'd tabulate all the finds and just be shocked that I'd found 6 of item X out of my last 100 legs, when I didn't remember seeing a single one. Often it was a good item that I'd gotten a shit roll on, and in my memory I *never* found that item. In fact I'd found a bunch, just with bad rolls that I forgot as soon as I salvaged them.

Which, I think, is the kind of thing that happens in RoS item drops. You find 3 good legs in close succession, especially the same one, and you'll remember, while forgetting all the junk that averaged that out. (Or vice versa.) It's the law of small numbers, and the law of big numbers. One in a million runs of luck are really rare... but when there are billions of markable events occurring every day in D3/RoS, weird stuff is going to happen. Someone will find 3 Shards of Hate in the same game today. RNG guarantees it. Will they take this as evidence the drop system is broken? Possibly...

 

[martymart]

[email protected] the article pic. Now I want to make my own tinfoil hat to wear while I play, that way I will get MOAR DROPZ or something.

I want to point out that I am in no way stating that there is a conspiracy going on, nor am I complaining. I am enjoying the game quite a bit. There is no motivation by Blizzard to have any secret plans (since the AH is gone). What I am suggesting is that there is buggy legacy code for drops and everything done after the AH is gone is patchwork, hence:

1) The coding for the drops was designed in such a way by Blizzard in D3V to drop certain items more frequently and less frequently for each account, so that the players would be persuaded to go to the Real Money Auction House and use their gold and spend money, in the same way that other F2P online games limits the currency and items for the online "stores" in-game that drop. If people don't think that market manipulation takes place throughout all facets of buying/selling, then...*shrug* I don't know what to tell ya. Blizzard's marketing department is quite ingenious.

2) Since the AH is gone, the coding for drops is still in place in some manner, be it bugs or just legacy coding, and the "account seeding" is still going on and everything they do after that is patching the system to work away from the seeding.

Blizzard manipulates the drop rates. Smart loot, anniversary buffs, buffing to specific drop rates of items. It's there, they do it, and they can do it anytime they want as much as they want, with no notice.

Is my memory fallible? Extraordinarily so. Is this just a fun topic I wanted to bring up for discussion's sake to see what everyone thinks? Yes. Am I crazy? The magic 8 ball said, "All signs point to yes."

However, I do see patterns. I have noticed that friends who play very little will log in, tag along in a T6 rift of mine, and will get quite a few drops, good ones, as a matter of fact. My friend Daniel who has been stationed elsewhere for military purposes logged in recently and while in a T6 rift with me, in which nothing dropped for me at all (he and I both noticed this), he got 5 drops.

I also get a sense that you guys are sitting there laughing at me. And that's fine. lol.

**UPDATE**: So, I finally gambled a Firebird orb. It had crappy rolls, but I was able to do it, so I guess my account isn't seeded to never have it afterall *takes off tinfoil*

 

[nurman]

All drops are based on what items have been placed on the loot tables.

COME ON, OF COURSE THE LOOT IS PRE-DETERMINED, THEY MADE THE BLOODY ITEMS.