Blizzard Defends the RNG, Again
Posted 9 December 2012 by FluxSome players took their bad drop luck complaints to the Battle.net forums and got quick replies from Blues on their woes.
Before someone jump on board – I have been farming keys for more than 2 weeks and had more than 10 rings made – so I know how it was like. The drop rate had never been THIS bad. Yes I have 5NVs on this 20 runs stretch.
Vaeflare: It’s unfortunate that you are experiencing a streak of bad luck, but the drop rate for keys and plans was not changed in patch 1.0.6. The drop rate is still 5% on MP0, 10% on MP1, and 20% on MP2, all the way up through a 100% drop rate on MP10.
And another 3 runs a3 mp 8 = 575% mf … no leg or set…bad luck? crazy? dumb? Can you check if there is something wrong? 
please? not to point that several creeps are invisible and hit me and i can’t do anything about that…
Vaeflare: Since patch 1.0.6 did not change any of the drop rates I would say what you are experiencing is, unfortunately, simply a bad luck streak. 
I know it can be hard to believe after a very long run of previously great luck, but we truly didn’t lower the drop rates of Legendary items.
That said, our Bug Report forum would be a great place to post about those invisible monster attacks.
This happens every patch or hotfix; someone has some bad luck and heads to the forum to ask if drop rates have been nerfed. Since the question is both inevitable and pointless (if drop rates were nerfed intentionally they’d announce it, and if the nerf was a stealth the CMs certainly wouldn’t spill the secret), let’s look at it the other way. Has anyone ever posted after a patch to say, “I’ve had awesome luck on item finds! Was there a stealth buff to drop rates? Maybe it’s a bug you guys should check on.”
I’m not holding my breath for that post, personally.
It’s our selfish and stupid human nature; we take our successes (due to luck) as our well-earned rewards, while our failures (due to luck) are inexplicable and in need of correction.
I agree with Flux on this one, I have never experienced the drop rate changes that everyone else keeps thinking happen, mainly because I assume that its because its just bad RNG, me and my friend always say “Wow I have such bad RNG today” like every single day until suddenly me and him start finding like 20 legendarys in an hour, and most of them are worth over 5mill, then we say we got lucky and had a great streak… am I the only one whos like this? I guess not…
People are making the same mistake for this RNG as they do in slot machines…that past failures means you should expect future success.
Previous failed attempts do not make it any more likely that you will get the thing in future attempts. Your bad luck earlier shouldn’t make you expect to have good luck in the future. People understand the RNG as it is, but don’t understand the way RNG is experienced.
If you had a 50% chance to drop the key on each attempt, in 5 attempts you have a 97% chance to have the key drop at least once. However if you fail the first attempt, the chance of any one drop goes down to 93%, then 87%, then 75%, then 50%.
However, the poster is not concerned about the next drop. He cleared stats he has gotten 2keys out of 20 runs. If he is running it on mp7/8 like he is claiming, the chance of running 20 times and only 2 occurances happen is very very low. Much lower than 1-0.70=30%.
With that said, it could happen.
I think overall the rate is unchanged. The distribution of the drops is NOT a proper bellcurve, after lvl 100 Paragon I can be pretty(95% pretty) confident about it statistically (meaning it’s actual science, not belief).
Oops, forgot the link:
http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?842152-What-happened-to-the-drop-rate&p=8463959&viewfull=1#post8463959
I understand what you’re saying but isn’t it also possible (I’d say likely) that the events you described and have experienced could have also occurred by chance?
It can only start to look like a bell curve when there are enough samples to do so. The drop rate is just too low for any one person to determine the drop rate, including big-timers like yourself.
If you can’t trust what Blizzard says, you also can’t trust your own experiences or the things you hear from others. This is the kind of thing that only a tool that pools data could solve, like what Deckard’s Data Dump was meant to be.
Fair point, though I’d argue that a Paragon 100 sample is large enough to draw some conclusions. I’ve found hundreds of legendaries, and I’d argue that I didn’t have a good enough pattern around 30 or even 50 legendaries.
I notice clear difference in drops just after a patch and 2 weeks later.
For one thing I got tons of recipies both bs and jc ones the first 2 weeks, talking an average of 2/run, alkazier a3 on mp0-1 @300% mf. Apart from the jc ones it is total crap so not like I care much that I now rarely get one recipe every 20 runs instead of the usual 40 I’d have gotten from that at the start.
First week I got more recipes by ten folds than I got in the whole game since release. The difference is huge enough to question normal rng values being at play.
For months since release, I have found nothing worth mentioning, and then I found an Inna’s armor with +68 res all as var stat. Sold it for 75 mio. gold, then decked out my WD with that gold. I can now plow at MP3 through all acts in Inferno. That’s just how the game works, and has worked in the past. One good item drops suddenly catapults you into the upper class.
My personal experience is that weekends suck for drops.
My tinfoil theory is that more people play on weekends and the evil people at Blizzard throttle the droprates. Actually, Jay Wilson himself controls my droprates… and we all know what kind of mean person he is.
I have had this same luck. It is beyond ridiculous. I’m won’t go as far to say its conspiracy, but seriously must have the world’s worst luck. I have less than 10 legs found since release. I have yet to find a real good rare. I have sustained only thru the AH which is fine but I did much better in D2.
I also had better luck gearing characters on D2 and I never traded for items or ran with much MF. I’m not saying it’s because I found more legendary items (even though I definitely did), but because I always found something that managed to work build-wise (even though it was probably due to the +skills mods that so many seem to loathe). So I’m thinking there’s still an itemization problem and/or lack of modifier synergy with the viable skills/builds.
It’s generally accepted that the inclusion of the AH necessitates the current rates, even though the trade channel and dupes allowed many to get what they wanted in D2. Now, I love the anticipation that builds up every time I hear that pile of gold/equivalent useless item drop and the ding of a new level… because then it’s time for me to play the real game, clicking the bid/sell button. We all love shopping and the intensity of ebay, so it’s cool.
Uhg… I’m just aggravated because I made my first hardcore witch doctor about to kill butcher on hell difficulty and haven’t found a single legendary. Random number generation or not, it isn’t fun to work through 2+ full completions of the game (especially on hardcore) and not get a shiny precious. The casino formula needs to be reworked.
Although I guess it doesn’t matter, because the game doesn’t require the best of the best anymore (I’m still hard pressed to get through inferno without using the AH). It would have been better to address these issues rather than just making the game so much easier.
I feels like I have bad luck, but I probably do not. It’s just that I’ve read all those posts about people selling stuff for 400-600 million gold, people that usually have been farming less than me and with less MF also.
Thing is though, those who get these great drops post about it. We who have not had that luck usually do not post about it. Gives the impression that everyone else has much more luck than you yourself
After getting keys at roughly the % rate I was playing on for the last month, I’ve suddenly hit a cold streak trying to get keys in Act 3. I’m 0 for my last 12 keywarden runs on MP5. I literally did key runs for 5 hours straight and got nothing. It was extremely frustrating to say the least.
I had a streak of 3 keys in a row, then a streak where I did over 40 runs, over 2 days and didn’t get a single key. Its rng man sometimes you get that 0.1% over and over and theres nothing you can do T.T
Lol oh blizzard… such failures.
4 full mp8 uber runs in a row with keywarden in each game… 0/16.
15 games in a row mp7 without a vengeful eye dropping.
mp*10 for % my ass.
What i belive is there is bonust drop chance for leg after bigger time without loging in. It would make sense but obiously there is no way to prove it as it requires probably 3+ weeks without playing.
the itemization is so dull that you can only have binary “super items” / ****ty items – which is why i stopped playing again after ~10 days of the last patch. with that kind of indecisive slow fiddling around without substantial changes to skill design and balance as well as itemization i really don’t see myself starting again.
****ty crafting doesnt help either. runewords and cubecrafting atleast allowed for special affixes which would not have been available otherwise.
I also doubt that PVP will blow me away if current “design-philosophy” is any indication as to what to expect.