[Open] Loot and Legendary Items

[Winter]

I added some numbers because some of you asked a lot of questions/said a lot of things. I'm still retired, but here are some thoughts/answers that may or may not be helpful.

1. The most likely reason for this
A) Old devs who wrote the game code and understand how the loots system was written by a drunk man at 3am, either left the mod or simply couldnt be bothered.
B) Current(Ish) Developers who knew how the system worked but didnt know how to ammend the code
C) Recent(Ish) Retired devs read the code and realised thats not what they wanted to be slogging away at with an already waining interest in the develoopment of the mod
D) Current developers who either don't know where to start or dont know how the code works, or even, know how to game code the loot system.

2. The reality is the loot system wont change, if it is infact a true random number generator that decides on who loots and what drops have a look at the birthday paradox of probabilty, this is probably the most likely explaination for the repeat looters or the repetitive nature of Heraldic Plates.

3. If the development team wanted to make a 'Random" loot chance Jez and ConquerorWorm shouldve probably used a Pseudo-random number generator all those years ago to make the loot drops feel 'random'. If you ever bump into them why dont you ask?

1. C is probably the main reason. As can be seen in this thread and others, there is no clear consensus on a better system. Many people want mutually exclusive or outright opposing things. The current system is good enough in the grand scheme of things. It could be (and certainly has been) worse.

2. Nice.

3. The drop system has changed significantly since those days.

But but but... my anecdotal evidence!

Yes :')

We know that you are a developer, but the question is: 
1. Do you have knowledge of coding? 
2. Are you able to access the code for obtaining legendary items? 
3. Have you examined these codes or used the vibe coding tool to help you understand them? 
4. Or did you merely answer this question based on some developer guidelines?

1. No (sarcastic)
2. No (retired)
3. No (wtf?)
4. No (I helped write it and test it in its current iteration, although I didn't write it myself)

1. Are you sure no mistakes were made in the code of the loot system?

2. I’ve heard stories claiming that the person responsible for coding it did so one night while drunk. I’ve also heard that it loops over all player IDs in the game instead of checking who is actually on the server.

3. It’s also been said that it’s not true RNG but rather a pseudorandom number generator, and if that’s the case, you can’t say it doesn’t “favor” certain IDs.

4. And if you’re saying it’s truly random, can you make the code public?

5. Because in this current situation, its just not mathematically possible, that its not in favor of certain players.

1. As sure as I can be.

2. I believe this is in reference to when the mod was first made. Unsurprisingly, many changes have happened since then. Almost every system has been rewritten, some several times. Regardless of the validity of the "one drunken night" claim, the drop system is one such system that has been redone multiple times.

3. I specifically avoided this terminology because I don't want to debate over what truly counts as random or watch the community argue about such concepts. The system works the way it does, play or don't. It is as simple and "random" as we care to make it. The droprate is stable unless manually changed. There's nothing that automatically adjusts based on someone's number of loots, what has been dropping, etc.

4. No. We are not an open source project. Even if it was released, I have doubts many parts of the community would believe it. This thread is evidence of that.

5. I would like to see your mathematical proof for this.

Maybe one approach could be to slightly increase the overall loot chance, but limit it to one legendary drop per player per week. That way, everyone would have a fair shot at getting at least one drop without flooding the market.

No, this would encourage many players to stop after they get their one loot for the week. Players should not be penalized for being lucky and have additional playtime be handicapped.

What I'd like to see is something akin a 'Wandering Trader'. A separate shop sectiin in the store overview where you could buy legendaries in exchange for gold and essence. This trader could be on something like a bi-weekly rotation, having a set anount of legendaries up for sale, lets say 2 single hero locked ones, 3 non single hero locked legendaries. Similar to what we used to have with the upgrade roations. The cost would be its essence value + 1M gold for each essence you pay.
This would help:
1) against the frustration of being locked out of playing a specific legendary just because its not favoured by the loot system
2) gold wouldnt be worthless anymore
3) encourage the selling of surplus essence for gold to finance trader purchases, making essences more liquid in the market, thus preventing players from being locked out of upgrading when they dont loot
4) equalising the distribution of absurdly rare legendaries (eg. Byrllysg, Gothic Gauntlets)
5) random trader offerings boost player activity -> motivation to play so you can afford that item you really want when it comes up as available purchase.

Something like what Warframe had with its Void Traders sums it pretty much, i suppose.

I personally love stuff like this. However, it is unlikely in the current iteration of the game.

Maybe instead of a hard weekly cap, a system with gradually increasing drop chances over time (like a soft pity system) could work better. That way, players still feel like they’re progressing toward a reward without relying on a strict limit.

The development team does not want to implement any pity systems that affect droprates at this point.

Also, maybe could adjust drop rates based on essence value? Then oranges on normal would have a higher drop chance than the reds on rag. That would also tend to favour the newer players who will be playing on normal more often than rag.

This is a good idea that I would support.

I could also request that the RNG code be made public. This way, we can verify whether it’s truly random or not, and if needed, I’d be willing to help improve or fix it.

#RNGCodeMustBePublic

Request denied. I understand and appreciate your desire to help, but this is not the way things are done.

#No

I think there’s a pattern where someone loots a Legendary item and their chances of looting another one right after get a boost. It happens all the time—like, someone scores a Legendary today, then pulls another one just a couple days later. I’ve seen this happen to tons of players over and over again.

Most certainly not. The vast majority of looters do not experience "loot streaks." Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.

Sometimes maybe loot, sometimes maybe no loot

They don't think it be like it is, but it do.