Based on 1200+ hours of game play, over 1000 of which were spent heavily farming act 3 inferno, and countless interviews with other veteran players of the game, I have concluded the following:
1. Blizzard will allow more legendaries/sets to drop for a player/account that has been logged off for a certain amount of time. The threshold for this seems to be a day or longer. If an account stays logged off for less than that, there seems to be no increase legendary/set drops. A reason for this may be that an account that has been logged off for a large amount of time is in danger of being permanently lost to Blizzard as a potential source of income (RMAH sales) and thus needs incentive to be played.
2. Blizzard uses the AH to determine what is allowed to drop in game. On a per player basis, you may still see great items drop, but on a large scale, the less an item is being purchased from the auction house, the greater the chances of it being selected when a legendary/set does drop. This is why you might see 20 andariel's drop before a mempo does. The incentive to limit the drop rate of items that have a greater potential to be 'good' is that too many of such items in circulation would limit their value, reducing gold sales as well as the viability of replacement items. Additionally, if items were allowed to drop freely, the correlation between play time and in game gold would skyrocket, again reducing the need for RMAH purchases.
3. Blizzard green flags certain accounts for an increase in legendary/set drops after a threshold of RMAH sales are met. This is because only a limited number players have the impetus to use the RMAH to sell a high enough grade of items to procure profit for Blizzard. Players who would rather use the gold auction house are of lesser importance to the company in this respect and thus receive no such bonus.
4. The main reasons for the above implementations is that Blizzard:
- realizes it has to maintain a balance between the economy tanking and allowing enough legendary/set items to drop without upsetting the general population
- understandably wants to make the most money that it can out of Diablo 3
- knows that the biggest current deterrent for players are quantity/quality of legendary/set drops
- knows that the first sign of a player potentially quitting Diablo 3 is an extended log off period
5. There are likely more formulas/coding in place allowing Blizzard to efficiently balance legendary/set drops, player 'satisfaction' with drops, and RMAH sales through either item sales or gold purchases. However, for this author, only the above statements are the only ones he has verified to be accurate through enough gameplay and informal interviews with other players. The author will also update this information in the future if there is enough evidence on other components of the legendary/set drop system.
6. I have yet to find any conclusive evidence regarding rares (yellow items).
7. Thanks for reading and I look forward to your comments, criticisms, and flame posts!
LOL bro... its random... you have too much spare time to think lol. i used to get back luck too but everyday when im MFING randomly in act3 or act4 i get atleast 2-3 legendarys in a 6-8 hour period. some days i get 1-2, some days i get 5-6. some days i get 2 mempos in 2 days some days i get 2 ik helms in 1 day. its totally random. ive been farming act3 inferno MP2-4, nothing crazy and i still get like 3-5 legendarys a day haha. not saying they are all good legendarys 100% of the time, but still they drop. maybe its got something to do with your MF? what paragon level are u? what MF do u have? what MP do u play? im sittin at about 200%MF unbuffed.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
...Been playing Diablo Since Diablo 1 came out...and haven't stopped playing Diablo since...
The drops might be random, but the frequency of the drops is definitely not. Say for instance a couple days ago I played mp5 and had 1-3 legs drop in every run (a complete 5 buffs, bosses, and keys included; where i kill all packs in between). One run i had my most legs drop ever "7" in one run...amazing... things were lookin up. Then I missed a day or two and came back to playing. On MP5 i did 7 Key runs in a row and got "0" keys or legs. Now I am a gambling man, so forgive me for hating, but RNG makes no sense if u consider those odds. What are the odds of flipping a coin (50%) and hitting heads 7 times in a row... My Point is and hear me out.... There is more to it then "JUST RNG"...prove me wrong, u cant. Fact is if you take blizzards word then you are sadly mistaken. Think about it... a company that makes money off of RNG items is kind of like a computer virus company that claims to be the only company that can fix your virus-hmmm maybe its bc they made it that'a way BAhAhahHAhaaHHA
LOLLLLLLL!! ya and blizzard also has little blizzard camera bugs/insects they have trained to fly in your house and watch you play too and they gather dataz from that
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
...Been playing Diablo Since Diablo 1 came out...and haven't stopped playing Diablo since...
what is more believable to you. 1) some people just continually find 200mill items on a regular basis b/c they are lucky OR 2) There might be some factors that we dont know about b/c we dont know all of the facts. and 3) if u say RNG=RNG your are a lemming
The drops might be random, but the frequency of the drops is definitely not. Say for instance a couple days ago I played mp5 and had 1-3 legs drop in every run (a complete 5 buffs, bosses, and keys included; where i kill all packs in between). One run i had my most legs drop ever "7" in one run...amazing... things were lookin up. Then I missed a day or two and came back to playing. On MP5 i did 7 Key runs in a row and got "0" keys or legs. Now I am a gambling man, so forgive me for hating, but RNG makes no sense if u consider those odds. What are the odds of flipping a coin (50%) and hitting heads 7 times in a row... My Point is and hear me out.... There is more to it then "JUST RNG"...prove me wrong, u cant. Fact is if you take blizzards word then you are sadly mistaken. Think about it... a company that makes money off of RNG items is kind of like a computer virus company that claims to be the only company that can fix your virus-hmmm maybe its bc they made it that'a way BAhAhahHAhaaHHA
In WoW Baron Rivendare has a 1% chance to drop his mount. Some players got it on their first run. Some ran it 500 times.
What the hell? Controlled I say.
If a mob has 1% chance to give a legendary than killing many mobs... does not increase that chance in case that's what you're assuming. For every mob out there the chance is exactly 1%, growing theoretically in very, very small scales.
I know that if this were my game , and I owned the AH and the RMAH, and could tweak the mechanics this way or that way with each little patch. MY pockets would stay fat. Disagree with that and as I must quote someone on here the sum of your QQ=DERP DERP DERP
I've noticed you almost never find an item that can be used by your class. I have had a bunch of awesome stuff drop and its never something for my monk. Which makes sense. If you find something good, but never for your class, you get directed traffic to the AH.
I've noticed you almost never find an item that can be used by your class. I have had a bunch of awesome stuff drop and its never something for my monk. Which makes sense. If you find something good, but never for your class, you get directed traffic to the AH.
That's why I play with two classes! My WD found a Vile Ward for my Monk and my Monk found Zuni boots for my WD! Works miracles.
I know that if this were my game , and I owned the AH and the RMAH, and could tweak the mechanics this way or that way with each little patch. MY pockets would stay fat. Disagree with that and as I must quote someone on here the sum of your QQ=DERP DERP DERP
And that's why you're not a good game designer. And no company/audience would ever trust you.
I really just dont understand why some people dont get the fact that there is a Reason for: The game not being what we all wanted from the beginning: $$$ As long as it can seem balanced to the avg person there is longevity. When we bitch about it not be...they tweak it a little....have u noticed... never all at once, adding a little in here and a little in there... (ITS NOT THAT THEY DONT KNOW WHAT WOULD MAKE THE GAME BETTER) ...its about inserting it in slowly, so to keep our interest. As for the Items that drop, again ask yourself. If I owned the RMAH and was in it as a business (in this economy) - what do I do to keep the money coming in???
I've noticed you almost never find an item that can be used by your class. I have had a bunch of awesome stuff drop and its never something for my monk. Which makes sense. If you find something good, but never for your class, you get directed traffic to the AH.
That's why I play with two classes! My WD found a Vile Ward for my Monk and my Monk found Zuni boots for my WD! Works miracles.
I know that if this were my game , and I owned the AH and the RMAH, and could tweak the mechanics this way or that way with each little patch. MY pockets would stay fat. Disagree with that and as I must quote someone on here the sum of your QQ=DERP DERP DERP
And that's why you're not a good game designer. And no company/audience would ever trust you.
"""And that's why you're not a good game designer. And no company/audience would ever trust you."""" b/c u think business is about being trusted and or / honest. Look at the richest of rich business or business owners out there and check how many have gone bankrupt and are still billionaires, the scandals are endless.... really, if good business was based off of honesty and truth this wouldnt be the reality we live in.
I've noticed you almost never find an item that can be used by your class. I have had a bunch of awesome stuff drop and its never something for my monk. Which makes sense. If you find something good, but never for your class, you get directed traffic to the AH.
I have found my Helm, Crafted my MH, and found my Belt.
I really just dont understand why some people dont get the fact that there is a Reason for: The game not being what we all wanted from the beginning: $$$
It's exactly what I wanted in the beginning.
As long as it can seem balanced to the avg person there is longevity. When we bitch about it not be...they tweak it a little....have u noticed... never all at once, adding a little in here and a little in there... (ITS NOT THAT THEY DONT KNOW WHAT WOULD MAKE THE GAME BETTER) ...its about inserting it in slowly, so to keep our interest. As for the Items that drop, again ask yourself. If I owned the RMAH and was in it as a business (in this economy) - what do I do to keep the money coming in???
They tweak it a little because there are about 20 people in the team. They develop slowly because they're working on multiple things all at once. Otherwise we'd go many months without updates.
And what would you propose they did to make the game better?
b/c u think business is about being trusted and or / honest. Look at the richest of rich business or business owners out there and check how many have gone bankrupt and are still billionaires, the scandals are endless.... really, if good business was based off of honesty and truth this wouldnt be the reality we live in.
That's not the case in the game industry at all. EA is a huge company but their business thrives not because of the huge success they're having with their games (because only a small minority of their games is successful) but because they've acquired a large amount of resources since they started. Right now they trade in companies, not in games. They buy new companies, dismantle them, create a few games and fire off whole branches to save profits.
I know that if this were my game , and I owned the AH and the RMAH, and could tweak the mechanics this way or that way with each little patch. MY pockets would stay fat. Disagree with that and as I must quote someone on here the sum of your QQ=DERP DERP DERP
And that's why you're not a good game designer. And no company/audience would ever trust you.
Seriously. Get over it. You know what happened during a stretch of time when I was farming from paragon 60-70? A string of awesome dexterity items kept dropping for me (some godly rings, Nat's boots, Inna's Radiance, etc.) instead of int items for my wizard (they dropped, but they didn't upgrade me). Know what I did? I made a monk to make use of those items.
You know what happened when I went from paragon 92-95 without getting a single legendary/set item worth more than a Brimstone? (FYI, that's close to a billion EXP's worth of farming on MP4). I said, "meh, farm more. I must get more unIDs to sample." Speaking of which, I'm paragon 96 now and I still haven't gotten a legendary/set item worth more than a mil (better than a Brimstone at least). But I have gotten several rares that sold for a lot more to make up for it (including a rare int shoulders that was close in stats to a great Vile Ward).
As for the OP — because you're sampling yourself and "countless" other players that don't make up the vast majority of the player base (if there are 5 million people playing worldwide and you alone, BY YOURSELF, interviewed 2 million people that claim this phenomenon, I still wouldn't believe your outlandish ideas). You know why? Because IT'S ALL RANDOM.
This is why you might see 20 andariel's drop before a mempo does.
Andariel's is ilvl 62 while Mempo is ilvl 63.
Do you not see the overpowered items that are still in the AH and that still drop on a regular basis? You ought to browse trade forums, including the official ones, d2jsp, the one here, and the various trade channels in-game. You'd be surprised how many "GG" items people find on the spot and quickly try to sell.
You know why you're not getting anything? Because you're a random victim of unluckiness. You know what you should do? Play more and ID more things. You know why? Because everything is random and you need more random samples in order to possibly get random results such as a crazy-rolled godly item (which, think about it, is unlikely to happen on a daily basis considering the numbers of the randomly rolled stats are at the pinnacle of the stat ceiling).
I'm going to blow things up in-game now because all of this crap I've read in the OP has given me a serious migraine.
I didn't quite get what you meant with my quote Jaetch.
Mind elaborating?
Ah, not telling you to "get over it." I supported your statement that if a game designer actively manipulates the in-game economy, no playerbase would trust the developers (then proceeded to give my personal example of why I didn't care about the drop rate). Sorry for the ambiguity.
1. Blizzard will allow more legendaries/sets to drop for a player/account that has been logged off for a certain amount of time. The threshold for this seems to be a day or longer. If an account stays logged off for less than that, there seems to be no increase legendary/set drops. A reason for this may be that an account that has been logged off for a large amount of time is in danger of being permanently lost to Blizzard as a potential source of income (RMAH sales) and thus needs incentive to be played.
2. Blizzard uses the AH to determine what is allowed to drop in game. On a per player basis, you may still see great items drop, but on a large scale, the less an item is being purchased from the auction house, the greater the chances of it being selected when a legendary/set does drop. This is why you might see 20 andariel's drop before a mempo does. The incentive to limit the drop rate of items that have a greater potential to be 'good' is that too many of such items in circulation would limit their value, reducing gold sales as well as the viability of replacement items. Additionally, if items were allowed to drop freely, the correlation between play time and in game gold would skyrocket, again reducing the need for RMAH purchases.
3. Blizzard green flags certain accounts for an increase in legendary/set drops after a threshold of RMAH sales are met. This is because only a limited number players have the impetus to use the RMAH to sell a high enough grade of items to procure profit for Blizzard. Players who would rather use the gold auction house are of lesser importance to the company in this respect and thus receive no such bonus.
4. The main reasons for the above implementations is that Blizzard:
- realizes it has to maintain a balance between the economy tanking and allowing enough legendary/set items to drop without upsetting the general population
- understandably wants to make the most money that it can out of Diablo 3
- knows that the biggest current deterrent for players are quantity/quality of legendary/set drops
- knows that the first sign of a player potentially quitting Diablo 3 is an extended log off period
5. There are likely more formulas/coding in place allowing Blizzard to efficiently balance legendary/set drops, player 'satisfaction' with drops, and RMAH sales through either item sales or gold purchases. However, for this author, only the above statements are the only ones he has verified to be accurate through enough gameplay and informal interviews with other players. The author will also update this information in the future if there is enough evidence on other components of the legendary/set drop system.
6. I have yet to find any conclusive evidence regarding rares (yellow items).
7. Thanks for reading and I look forward to your comments, criticisms, and flame posts!
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
In WoW Baron Rivendare has a 1% chance to drop his mount. Some players got it on their first run. Some ran it 500 times.
What the hell? Controlled I say.
If a mob has 1% chance to give a legendary than killing many mobs... does not increase that chance in case that's what you're assuming. For every mob out there the chance is exactly 1%, growing theoretically in very, very small scales.
Ha. Bagstone.
That's why I play with two classes! My WD found a Vile Ward for my Monk and my Monk found Zuni boots for my WD! Works miracles.
And that's why you're not a good game designer. And no company/audience would ever trust you.
Ha. Bagstone.
"""And that's why you're not a good game designer. And no company/audience would ever trust you."""" b/c u think business is about being trusted and or / honest. Look at the richest of rich business or business owners out there and check how many have gone bankrupt and are still billionaires, the scandals are endless.... really, if good business was based off of honesty and truth this wouldnt be the reality we live in.
I have found my Helm, Crafted my MH, and found my Belt.
It's exactly what I wanted in the beginning.
They tweak it a little because there are about 20 people in the team. They develop slowly because they're working on multiple things all at once. Otherwise we'd go many months without updates.
And what would you propose they did to make the game better?
That's not the case in the game industry at all. EA is a huge company but their business thrives not because of the huge success they're having with their games (because only a small minority of their games is successful) but because they've acquired a large amount of resources since they started. Right now they trade in companies, not in games. They buy new companies, dismantle them, create a few games and fire off whole branches to save profits.
Now that is a business. And no one likes it.
Ha. Bagstone.
Information bias
2.
Seriously.
Get over it.You know what happened during a stretch of time when I was farming from paragon 60-70? A string of awesome dexterity items kept dropping for me (some godly rings, Nat's boots, Inna's Radiance, etc.) instead of int items for my wizard (they dropped, but they didn't upgrade me). Know what I did? I made a monk to make use of those items.You know what happened when I went from paragon 92-95 without getting a single legendary/set item worth more than a Brimstone? (FYI, that's close to a billion EXP's worth of farming on MP4). I said, "meh, farm more. I must get more unIDs to sample." Speaking of which, I'm paragon 96 now and I still haven't gotten a legendary/set item worth more than a mil (better than a Brimstone at least). But I have gotten several rares that sold for a lot more to make up for it (including a rare int shoulders that was close in stats to a great Vile Ward).
As for the OP — because you're sampling yourself and "countless" other players that don't make up the vast majority of the player base (if there are 5 million people playing worldwide and you alone, BY YOURSELF, interviewed 2 million people that claim this phenomenon, I still wouldn't believe your outlandish ideas). You know why? Because IT'S ALL RANDOM.
Andariel's is ilvl 62 while Mempo is ilvl 63.
Do you not see the overpowered items that are still in the AH and that still drop on a regular basis? You ought to browse trade forums, including the official ones, d2jsp, the one here, and the various trade channels in-game. You'd be surprised how many "GG" items people find on the spot and quickly try to sell.
You know why you're not getting anything? Because you're a random victim of unluckiness. You know what you should do? Play more and ID more things. You know why? Because everything is random and you need more random samples in order to possibly get random results such as a crazy-rolled godly item (which, think about it, is unlikely to happen on a daily basis considering the numbers of the randomly rolled stats are at the pinnacle of the stat ceiling).
I'm going to blow things up in-game now because all of this crap I've read in the OP has given me a serious migraine.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Mind elaborating?
Ha. Bagstone.
Ah, not telling you to "get over it." I supported your statement that if a game designer actively manipulates the in-game economy, no playerbase would trust the developers (then proceeded to give my personal example of why I didn't care about the drop rate). Sorry for the ambiguity.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site