Odd experience

[Twibz]

im no expert or anything guys but this is also the same with Iding items, this happened to myself: I had found some rare light gauntlets and identifying them i hoped for some nice java ones but no they were junk :( anyway... my game crashed shortly after as did the game with TJ (hope this isnt offensive) i started up again and the gloves were unidentified and when i identified them again they were an exaxct copy of the ones before, JUNK! anyway hope this might shed some light?

[IncubatorJones]

The attributes are determined once they drop, not at ID

[purplelocust]

@twibz: an unidentified item still has all of its properties determined already, they just aren't shown. So that is different than processes which change the item, like crafting, cubing, imbuing and so on.

[ThomasJohnsen]

My understanding is that in any case, the resulting items would have the same fingerprint, so it would be apparent that they were bogus. I think your fears have to do more with the ability to predict the stats or outcome of a reroll, but I don't think that could come from these methods. It's been a long time since I played on b.net, but my understanding is that you can't even see the fingerprints (or ilvls) of items on b.net, unlike in SP.

I don't know if you can see fingerprints. But iirc it is possible to see ilvls. I seem to remember someone posting a pic (getting him banned ofc) some years back, where the ilvl was displayed after the item-name. The addon was supposedly a maphack - again iirc.; it's been a couple of years.
But with regards to my fears - it isn't so much duped items or super items I am worried about. It is more the fact that so many things in this game revolves around randomness. If this randomness is predictable to some extent, much of the fun parts of the game goes down the toilet. If one could predict drops - what's the point in running areas? If cubing could be predicted - what's the point in using the cube? Etc...
Thankfully it seems that the generation of random effects, allthough predictable to a limited extent, is rather complex and not something hackers are likely to figure out anytime soon; if ever.

[magicrectangle]

Hopefully this is not the case, and my '1-socket' x 2 was just a 1/36 freak incident.

Getting the same number of sockets twice in a row is a 1/4 chance. I don't know where you got 1/36. It's simple, you were going to get some number of sockets on the first roll (1-4 randomly), your chances of getting that same number again on the second roll (1-4 randomly) were 1/4.

Hardly a freak occurrence.

[IncubatorJones]

The game rolls a number between 1 and 6. If the number is greater than the max amount of sockets it will obviously give max number of sockets. It doesn't matter it tha max is 4 (like in this case) the game will still roll a number between 1 and 6

So it's 1/6 x 1/6 = 1/36

[Black Lotus]

Keep in mind that random processes might work differently in single and bnet, so SP tests are not supposed to tell something about realms.

[ThomasJohnsen]

Keep in mind that random processes might work differently in single and bnet, so SP tests are not supposed to tell something about realms.

I doubt we will ever discover the mechanics behind, since we have neither the desire nor the ability to perform roll-backs of servers repeatedly. But given that a mapseed can cause the same few items to drop upon game start in SP, coupled with the fact that racks have similar drop tenedencies on fixed maps in SP, I think it's safe to say that, at least in SP, true randomness is simulated by using map-seed (and possibly more keys) for pseudo-random number generation. Given the experiences mentioned above of myself and CDM, something similar may apply at least to cubing on b.net.
We could ofc perform massive testing in SP trying to replicate cube-results, rack-drops etc. to try to determine a set of formulae. But personally I think we should put this topic to rest now. Hopefully the keys, that may or may not be involved in generating random numbers (map-seed, fingerprints etc.) cannot be seen by addons on b.net, and thus it will never be possible for a hack to determine pseudo-random behaviour. That is random enough for me

[Twibz]

question!!!

what is the situation with creating a runeword? does the 4os flail already know that as soon as a ko-vex-pul-thul is inserted it will recieve @40? so is it the same is ID'ing or same as the mechanic when cubing? just throwing the idea out there

[IncubatorJones]

It's random