Gradual Reduction in MF Effectiveness

[JustAGuy]

So, the seeding at the start of the game affects the entire game, including potential drops and monster generation...

So, as you have championed in this thread, there is no gradual reduction in MF effectiveness. The actual Magic Find property never changes, but rather, what it's being applied against does. This is normal program operation.

All of the conjecture in this thread has me convinced that there is no extra mechanism that challenges your MF. Notice that everything in this thread is conjecture (save for a few things) leaning toward one side or the other, but I'm safely to the point where I don't have any reasonable doubt about whether there's a mechanism or not. There appears to be none and I will leave it at that.

The seeding is where the problem lies. In my experience, some games drop better than others on the whole, and this is most likely due to a "better" seed. But, it's all random, so getting that "good" seed is the lucky part. I have no idea how these seeds get generated, nor if there may be some "problem" with it; a problem for us runners, but not noticeable to others.

As mentioned in this thread, Hunky had a suggestion about waiting a little longer before creating a game. This would directly affect the seed(s). This seems to be a way to influence the drops, even if it is indirectly. The problem is, we don't know how it actually affects drops. How are we supposed to know how long to wait and what kind of seed the extra time will give us? For example, if I was to wait 10 seconds from the last game that I exited, what would be the difference if I were to wait 30 seconds? I bet the net result of waiting acts like a random number generator, some being better than the previous seed, some being worse. On top of that, when you kill a monster your MF is applied and you have a range of things that can drop. Here's where the probability stuff starts to stack up; you just simply have to be lucky, assuming things are working properly.

If someone figures out how to get the "best" possible seed all the time, then the "best" items would drop all the time. I highly doubt that this is possible, and that appears to be the goal in this thread. Not to prove or disprove a conspiracy, but rather to find a way to explain the bad drops, finding a solution and thereby increasing magic finders' effectiveness.

I suspect that the realm and single player Diablo II's both use the same internal seeding mechanisms, but they are just supplied to the game differently. Unfortunately, this is one of those things where we might never know how the seed(s) is pased to the realm game.