Random numbers doesn't mean what you think it means.
Some affixes have a higher drop-rate than others. This is established and expected. One affix dropping more often than another is working as intended. No, I don't have a source, it's an understood principle of statistical distributions. The "source" is the natural logarithm
Secondly, the beauty of random is that literally anything can happen. People have a tendency to believe that if you pick a random number 1-100 lots of times, there will be an equal distribution of all the numbers from 1 to 100. This isn't the way it works. Randomly, the number can be 73 every time. That's still random. Each time you select a new random number, it has an certain chance (usually approximating an equal chance) to be any of the numbers, but that's true every time you select a number. There's no bias away from a number you've already selected, no matter how many times it gets picked. Probabalistically you'll see all the numbers distributed somewhat evenly, in a way, over large samples. Even then: random is random. If it was true that you'd never see more 73's than 61's in a large sample, it wouldn't be random. There would exist within that RNG a bias towards equalized distribution. That's called a "pattern" and it isn't the same as random, it's an even distribution. People have a tendency to assume that "random" means "evenly distributed", but it doesn't. It means random, and that means that heads can come up 1000 times in a row and there's no problem. It might be weird and a little unlikely, but heads is an equally valid "next flip" no matter how many times it has come up heads in the past.
People have trouble getting past this idea, but it's true. Random is random, not perfectly heterogeneous. The two concepts have little to do with one another.
Blues are already not worth a glance, except the one per 100 which has good itemization.
Those 1/100 blues, for all intents and purposes, _are_ the uniques and legendaries. The main problem that people have isn't with the rarity or the color of the text, it's that it's not exciting to get blues. You pick up all your blues, go back to town, every once in a while there's a good one. There's no "pop" from picking them up, and very little from looking at the item. If those nice green set pieces were those 1/100 blues, when you saw green text on the ground you could get excited because you knew there was a good chance it was worth something. As it stands, you just pick up all the blues, just in case, and there's never any excitement. Even yellows have little excitement for me, I primarily see them as "yellow mats" as opposed to "possible new gear", or sometimes "10k on the AH" instead of "Oooh! Shiny!"
I think it's a good system in terms of the mathematics, but I think it would be wiser to bring back "Golds" from D2, or something similar. Something that when you see it drop, you know it's worth picking up, and you're excited to immediately identify it to see what it is. Even if those "golds" were just the same stats as a nice blue (maybe even just make blues with a lot of sockets, or affixes rolled above a certain amount, or something, be gold instead of blue so you can see the difference), at least then I'd see a gold on the ground and feel excited that it may be something better than the other 99 blues I just got. i'd be less likely to overlook it, I'd be more excited when I saw it drop, it would make me maybe kill a few more champion packs hoping to see one. Yet, it wouldn't even be truly any different than a good blue, except for it would be easily visually distinguishable.
That's what I'd do to add more excitement to the farming runs, personally.
In fact, I think i'll post this to the official forums.
6
Some affixes have a higher drop-rate than others. This is established and expected. One affix dropping more often than another is working as intended. No, I don't have a source, it's an understood principle of statistical distributions. The "source" is the natural logarithm
Secondly, the beauty of random is that literally anything can happen. People have a tendency to believe that if you pick a random number 1-100 lots of times, there will be an equal distribution of all the numbers from 1 to 100. This isn't the way it works. Randomly, the number can be 73 every time. That's still random. Each time you select a new random number, it has an certain chance (usually approximating an equal chance) to be any of the numbers, but that's true every time you select a number. There's no bias away from a number you've already selected, no matter how many times it gets picked. Probabalistically you'll see all the numbers distributed somewhat evenly, in a way, over large samples. Even then: random is random. If it was true that you'd never see more 73's than 61's in a large sample, it wouldn't be random. There would exist within that RNG a bias towards equalized distribution. That's called a "pattern" and it isn't the same as random, it's an even distribution. People have a tendency to assume that "random" means "evenly distributed", but it doesn't. It means random, and that means that heads can come up 1000 times in a row and there's no problem. It might be weird and a little unlikely, but heads is an equally valid "next flip" no matter how many times it has come up heads in the past.
People have trouble getting past this idea, but it's true. Random is random, not perfectly heterogeneous. The two concepts have little to do with one another.
1
Blues are already not worth a glance, except the one per 100 which has good itemization.
Those 1/100 blues, for all intents and purposes, _are_ the uniques and legendaries. The main problem that people have isn't with the rarity or the color of the text, it's that it's not exciting to get blues. You pick up all your blues, go back to town, every once in a while there's a good one. There's no "pop" from picking them up, and very little from looking at the item. If those nice green set pieces were those 1/100 blues, when you saw green text on the ground you could get excited because you knew there was a good chance it was worth something. As it stands, you just pick up all the blues, just in case, and there's never any excitement. Even yellows have little excitement for me, I primarily see them as "yellow mats" as opposed to "possible new gear", or sometimes "10k on the AH" instead of "Oooh! Shiny!"
I think it's a good system in terms of the mathematics, but I think it would be wiser to bring back "Golds" from D2, or something similar. Something that when you see it drop, you know it's worth picking up, and you're excited to immediately identify it to see what it is. Even if those "golds" were just the same stats as a nice blue (maybe even just make blues with a lot of sockets, or affixes rolled above a certain amount, or something, be gold instead of blue so you can see the difference), at least then I'd see a gold on the ground and feel excited that it may be something better than the other 99 blues I just got. i'd be less likely to overlook it, I'd be more excited when I saw it drop, it would make me maybe kill a few more champion packs hoping to see one. Yet, it wouldn't even be truly any different than a good blue, except for it would be easily visually distinguishable.
That's what I'd do to add more excitement to the farming runs, personally.
In fact, I think i'll post this to the official forums.