Gradual Reduction in MF Effectiveness

[JustAGuy]

This has been mentioned before, and shot down just as quickly. But, allow me to postulate.

Take these points:
1. Magic Find has been increased in effectiveness.
2. Quality of drops has been increased.
3. Bosses drop big first, then drop smaller afterward (big = better).
4. Pindleskin has been reduced in his drop probabilites.
5. Monster drops are dependent on the area (champs are +1? can't remember the numbers. Refer to nobbie's guide).

From these points, it seems that Blizzard wants players to find their gear by playing through Hell, any and all acts. Good drops can happen anywhere, so these changes make any amount of magic find applicable all throughout the game.

Now, take for instance a player who does "runs", killing the same monster(s) over and over for the potential of the unique or set item that he(they) drop. This is a cheap way of getting the good items, albeit time consuming. What benefit would it be for Blizzard to allow the best items in the game to be found so easily? Is it so unfathomable that Blizzard could have added some anti-run server-side code?

No one has knows or has read the code for the server side version of Diablo II, other than the developers, as far as I know. It could be substantially bigger and more complicated (and most likely is) than the client code.

I believe that the developers have added some sort of mechanism to the game which gradually reduces the effectiveness of your character's total magic find. Adding more MF seems to make no difference, because anything added after the base amount has been lowered, is already too low.

This is all conjecture at this point. All I can provide as evidence is my account of the numerous runs I've done. They first started at ~200% MF using a sorceress. Drops were good, fantastic even. On average, I completed about 20 runs in 1/2 hour. Of those 20 runs, 18 produced at least a unique or set item, 2 being only rares.

My MF increased to 497%, and the drops got better, but not for long. More runs followed at slightly better drop percentage (more uniques, but not many).

My MF increased a final time to 502%, and the unique and set drops seem to have ceased all together. 500% should be practically guaranteeing a set or unique per drop. This is not the case. Uniques are the exception, rather than the rule. While doing runs against Pindleskin and Mephisto, they commonly drop only rares, and every once in a while you'll get a normal or exceptional unique -- rarely a high end exceptional or elite unique.

My last 50 runs or so have yielded nothing but gold pieces (not literally, I just sold the crap that dropped). I am led to believe that the gradual decrease in quality of my drops is attributed to killing the same monster over and over. Either my MF has been reduced all together, or the effective drop probability of the monster has been reduced. Instead of 20 runs giving 10 medicore drops and 8 good drops, its more like 20 runs giving 1 medicore drop only.

The only other thing that could be causing the runs to produce garbage is the amount of MF. Perhaps 500% is causing some wonky cacluation wherein the chance for rares being dropped is higher than the chance for unique/set. To test (again, not an emperical test), I kept my non-MF weapon equipped for a number of runs, thereby reducing my total MF to around 400%. The drop statistics seemed the same. Really, the only way I can establish a pattern is with volume and strict charting of the drops.

Some people have tried to go kill other champions and bosses, as a form of resetting the "counter". I believe that either the monster has an effective drop probability that is only modifyable server-side, which decreases per time killed. What this would mean is that a character built for running, or MFing, would only have a limited life span before it becomes useless. Either that, or each piece of equipment is reduced by a percentage, leaving the character to re-equip with new MF gear. Certainly not a favourable option.

I wish I could prove it. All I have is my impression on numerous, and I'm talking numerous, runs of Mephisto and Pindleskin.

Since my Ice Orb MF'er has become practically useless with 502% MF, it looks like it's time to retire her and make a new MF'er. Maybe a hammerdin this time.

Anyone care to chime in? Anyone know something I don't with regards to this issue?

ASIDE: Why do I do these runs in the first place? Well, there's always room for improvement in my gear. I'd actually stop if I found the following items:
1. Herald of Zakarum
2. Azurewrath Phase Blade
3. Griswold's Set

[Samka]

I've noticed a similar effect - only I'm on single player. First few runs are terrific, later runs much less so. Yet the information must be recorded somewhere, so I assumed someone would have located any such records since it must be on client-side for SP.

Unrelated : I think of Pindle/Meph, only Pindle can drop Griswold's hard stuff, and neither can drop Azurewrath. Could be wrong though. Try any of the 85 areas for azurewrath.

[JustAGuy]

According to d2data.net, Mephisto can drop Azurewrath (and Lightsabre -- I got one from him in 1.09) and Griswold's Armour, but none of the other set items. Pindleskin can indeed drop everything that I mentioned. It's too bad that I haven't been able to get a single unique from him at all, though. No wait, I think I got a unique axe once.

Pindleskin has the potential to drop practically everything. He just doesn't like to... Now if I could only build a hammerdin with a fast-attack weapon (for conversion, never hurts to get a nice free meat shield involved in the action) that can kill him quickly while still wearing tons of MF gear...

I found a nice tactic for making Pindle runs much easier -- use redemption on the dead bodies outside. Since their EXP is relatively low when compared to Pindle and his minions, I just clean them out. Redemption will remove the corpses before they get up, thus leaving you with less distractions should pindle and his buddies cause you to retreat.

[Samka]

You may be right, although I was under the impression that pindle's level was too low for the highest items (due to the area-level constraint).

[Vash]

People usually just shoot down such theory as "foolishness" or "a figment of the imagination". But the data is undeniable.

The effects are VERY noticable on single player. I got to a point with my meph running Barb where meph was dropping potions, arrows, and tp scrolls. It was REALLY that bad.

The effects are not as noticable on the realms but I'm quite sure it's there. On the realms whenever I take a break from my meph runs then resume them a couple of days later, the first few runs ALWAYS yield uniques and then afterwards I get maybe 1 unique every 6 runs or so.

[Jarulf]

Just a few notes. ON the “client” and “server” wording, one has to be clear about how the game actually work. There is not a “realm server” game and a “single player” game on your own computer. For one, there is open multi player where the game is hosted on players computers for example.

What exist is a client component of the game. It is the part that interacts with the player, taking input and forwarding it to the server and getting responses back from the server and displaying information through the screen. That is the client part.

Then there is a server part, which runs the actual game. It doesn’t care about things such as graphics or sound but just run the game, taking communication from each client in the game (in case there are many, there can be up to 8 in a game), processing it, together with the game itself and sending back communication to the clients about what is happening in the game.

Now, when you play on realms, the realms obviously runs the server, and you run a client on your computer (each player do).

In an open multiplayer game, each player still runs a client on their computer, in addition, one of the player run the server part as well (both runs “separate” on that computer and that persons client still communicate normally with the server even if that component happens to run on the same physical computer).

When you play single player, it is basically the same as open multiplayer but the game doesn’t allow additional players to join. You still have both the client and the server components running on your computer and they still communicate with each other the same way as in multiplayer games (well, there is no sending of data over the net of course). There is not a special single player version of the game where the client and server part is merged into one.

In all cases where you play the game, be it single player, open multiplayer (hosting or non hosting) and realm, closed multi player), each player runs the exact same client component, and the server used is the EXACT same. There aren’t multiple different server components for different game types.

Of course, nothing would prevent Blizzard from actually DO having different server programs, but that makes little sense, why in effect programming and maintaining several different “games” when they could all be the same or at least extremely similar. They already duplicate some code between the client and server component, and that has in the past (and probably still) lead to several bugs where the code have not been similar enough and the information displayed on the client have not matched the actual server data. On top of that, it would be VERY confusing for players, playing a game that would differ depending on what type of game you player, even more so if the differences are small, subtle and unknown. That would be horrible.

Obviously the server IS aware of what type of state it is running in (on a realm, as a single player server or a open multiplayer), and differences are handled in a few places by checking the appropriate flag or variable showing it and acting differently. Mostly that would be from basic things such as not allowing other people to join a game in single player and such. Looking at the game code, it is easy to see that the actual game played do NOT have much, if any, (can’t think of any at the moment) checks were the actual game played would check to see if we play a single player game or realm play and so on.

In case anyone wonder, the server code on your computer, has ALL the components and functions that would normally ever only be used on realms. One can look at all the game code that handle multiple games running at the same time on the server. One can see all the code that handle and set up the possible 1024 game slots on the server and so on). It is all there on your own computer since the server component is the same on realms and on your computer. The only thing lacking on your computer is the components handling the character database on realms and other such realm components such the chatting and initiating games through a call to the server. However, the functions receiving that call and setting up and inserting a new game onto the server exists on your computer along with the functions to setup a single player game (there are slight differences).

Looking at the game play part, there really is no differences. Looking at the code that drop items, there is no such check for single player, multiplayer or realm play. On top of that, there is no stats, code or other thing to keep track of how often you kill a monster or do runs. Actually, there is no need for it anyway. Setting up such huge system really make no sense to start with, but that is another story).

Of course, Blizzard do update and patch the server component on their realms more often that they patch the same server on your computer. That is mostly to fix realm problems such as duping, bug exploits and other cheats, or to fix critical bugs. Rarely do they make actual game play changes on the realms, but wait with those until there is a downloadable patch. For one, many changes would actually cause problems since the client would be desynced with the server to much and one would need far more data communication to keep in synch.

So no, there are no such run “counters”, nor any special MF dimishing effects in the game, not in single player, not on realms.

[whereagles]

Funny... sometime ago I was curious as to just how superstitious people can be. So I decided to start a rumor claiming that for each mephisto kill your character did, his magic-find would decrease by 1, so that after 200 runs, he'd get nothing but worthless blues. The effective magic-find would be saved on a special, well hidden and hard-coded, counter, which I claimed to have "hacked".

And you know what? In two weeks it became one of the biggest hoaxes of the game, and was even given a spot on the top 10 hoaxes of D2 in d2.net, right next to the gem effects in b.net chat, lol.

I'm surprised to see the story I made up is still around, lol :rolleyes:

[lfd]

I'm surprised to see the story I made up is still around, lol :rolleyes:

And the moral of the story is: we can't trust anything you say. ;-)

[Vash]

I had heard of that hoax but I had been feeling the effects of and pondering the existence of this "phenomenon" long before I heard about it.

[rriggs]

Well as long as we're speculating on the realm server code, how about a different angle? Let's say you were the developer, how would you rewrite the server to give more rewards (better drops) to 'legit' players and fewer rewards to the 'non legit'?

Well, everyone knows the non legit players are using bots to make runs on certain bosses over and over. Legit players trying to level are more likely to be clearing out entire maps at a time. Seems to me, non legit players are killing just a few monsters per map and legit players are killing all or nearly all per map. So all you have to do is either A) pregen a fixed number of rares/uniques and spread them across the map or B) keep track of how many rare/unique drops have been made on each map, so you can dynamically adjust the drop percentage so that as more and more monsters have been killed without a good drop, the chance for a good drop increases.

My guess is, the second method sounds harder, but is probably easier to implement, because you do still want to take the players MF into account.

Oh, and if you are a legit player but all you do are runs? Sorry! You lose out as well. You were supposed to be playing the game anyways. No one considers 100's of mind numbing runs playing. Sheesh!

Realistically though? I think it's all just random and the server works exactly like the single player clilent. It's just the nature of Gambler's Falacy that makes people go crazy trying to come to grips with it, and hence, make up all these amazing superstitions. The developers at Blizzard have been laughing at them all for years.

Cheers!

[Professor Frink]

I believe that the developers have added some sort of mechanism to the game which gradually reduces the effectiveness of your character's total magic find.

This reminds me of the impression a lot of people get from video poker machines--that when you first sit down, the machine pays well, and you get ahead, then it goes cold and takes all your money, either through some sort of internal logic or because the people watching the hidden cameras think you've been winning long enough and hit a button.

Even if you can't look at the code and don't believe it's the same as the single-player version, both can be checked on if you're careful; you just need to be sure to decide in advance what exactly you're going to measure (uniques per drop, what % of items are elite, how often you fill out an outside 4-straight, whatever) and write down what happened in a particular drop if you decide before the drop happens that you're going to write it down (and then always write it down). It's surprisingly easy to decieve yourself if you aren't careful.

And whatever it is you're trying to measure will need to happen at least a few dozen times, or it's just luck.

-- frink (contemplating a mod that keeps statistics for you)

[jahcs]

The almost, not quite, Random Number Generator strikes again.

If you want to see a really good example of this play Civilization I, II, or III.

[Taem]

I do not take what Jarluf says in contempt, however I have made no less than 6 Magic Finding characters and, well, here are my steps and results on the USWEST closed realms:

1.) Create character
2.) Level character up to 50, but don't kill Baal!
3.) Create a game with a character that HAS killed Baal
4.) Enter game with MF'er (no MF required using this trick) and kill Baal

RESULT first 10 runs) Drops are UBER good (i.e. ALL rare, unique, and set)

RESULT next 10 runs) Sets and Unique’s drop less frequently (every other game), and blue starts showing up

RESULT next 10 runs) Less and less sets, uniques, and rares and more and more blue. Seems to me that it teeters out around here or gets a little worse where sometimes I see all blue and a few whites, even when I strap on 150% MF, however intermittently, I do get all rares with a one or two uniques at a time.

As I said before, this is from personal experience on no less than 6 characters that I can list and name their creation dates (but probably more realistically around 20 MF'ers but I just don't recall details of the others). The results have continually been the same! I suggest further testing for those interested, however.

[Samka]

Well, if Jarulf is sure that no record is being made, then of course MF can't be adjusted accordingly and it must just be a psychological effect. Yet in every run I've done in single player, the runs have started great, and swiftly reduced to much lesser effectiveness where it plateaus. I'll try to record these from now on. If there is an effect, it isn't permanent - switching runs seems to reset it.

There have been a couple of server-side gameplay changes recently, and I suspect this is because Blizzard doesn't intend to patch again. I'd imagine single players notice the FE "bug" most commonly, since it renders their melee chars near worthless, as one blast will do a massive amount of damage (which requires reducing damage output to survive).

[JustAGuy]

The realm game is the same as the TCP/IP game and the single player game. From a development point of view, that's perfectly fine and would fall under "good practices". Why make diverging code trees; that would only be more code to support.

What I was getting at was the true server part of the game. The actual core game part runs in single player, then the client (graphics, sound, inputs etc) interacts with it. On the realm, the client interacts with the game part over a TCP/IP connection, established by way of battle.net. That's all well and good. But, that's where our certainty of what truly is going on stops. We, not you or I, truly know if there is another server side module that runs in the background that is communicating via some sort of IPC to the "server". The game code is the same as single player, but somewhere along the line, drop statistics are being skewed by another server process.

As far as drop results go, I am not making anything up. Nor am I suffering from what rriggs refers to as "Gambler's Falacy". The results are real. The more runs you do, the worse your drop gets (with regard to the number of uniques and set items dropping). If there is no extra process that affects game drops (maybe there isn't, because the same phenomena happens in SP), then it's in the code somewhere. Blizzard has stated, already, that the first kill gives you better loot that the next kill. Who's to say that it doesn't keep getting worse and worse. I know that there are special TC's for "Baal 1st Kill" and "Meph 1st kill", so those are special cases. But, maybe the character files stored on the server have that special counter variable? Maybe the "extra" process holds it? It could just be a floating point number that is multiplied against the amount of MF the character has to reduce it. Who knows what and where it is, if it exists at all.

The point is, there is something going on. I'm not willing to dismiss it just yet because it actually happens.

Think about all those people that get abducted by aliens. I sure don't believe that they were abducted by aliens of all things, but where the hell did they go off to for 4 days? Maybe someone took them and raped them for a few days, and their subconscious made up a story that made it easier to deal with. That doesn't matter -- what does matter is that this person was gone for 4 days and their corn-hole hurts a damn hell of a lot.

MEAT and Vash corroborate my "run" results. Just because whereagles claims to have made up this "hoax", it doesn't mean that it's not an actual phenomenon.

What would be nice is if we had definitive proof one way or the other. If indeed there was a mechanism stopping runners from getting or doing anything productive, well, it would be in Blizzard's best interest to keep quiet about it, that is, if they really cared about people getting items the "easy" way...

[Taem]

Now wait a minute JustAGuy, I'm not verifying my experiences as FACT, but simply stating this is what indeed happened to me (I kept a record of my unique drops as a matter of fact, so I am quite certain of it with at least 6 characters!).

Don't go stating that there IS indeed a phenomenon if you don't know the facts! I don't claim to know the facts, thus I insinuated that any interested parties should DO MORE TESTING! Again, I am in no way verifying what you said, simply stating my own experiences.

If people are interested, it would be fun to see about ten to twenty people do 30 runs with at least 3 or more characters and record their results. The combined results may yield a statistical anomaly, which would then verify your theory.

[Samka]

He isn't stating that it is fact, he's just summing up the evidence for the theory. If it's true, I don't think it's just a server-side addition because I have really noticed this playing locally and have been tempted to put it forth as a hypothesis on many an occasion.

[Vash]

When I have the time, I'll do long series of runs. One problem with the testing of this theory would be the time between runs/series. How long would we be able to stop before our mysterious tracker "resets" and the drops become good again...

[JustAGuy]

I did not say that your experiences, nor mine, PROVED the existence of a background phenomena that affects MF. I did say that your experiences are the same as mine, wherein the drops you get after multiple runs gets increasingly worse. The drops getting worse when MF is very or extremely high is indicative of something, somewhere, affecting the quality of our drops, but as of yet, cannot be proved.

I agree with you that more testing is needed. I'm going to build a new character to do runs with, right after I finish my avenger (he's level 72, so shouldn't be long till he's 82ish -- that's usually where I let them rest at). With the new character, I'll catalogue the runs and see what, if anything, the data can bring to light. I'll be tracking my drops for my own sanity's sake, not really in the hopes of uncovering a conspiracy.

Due to the nature of probabilities and the lack of true randomness (which probably doesn't exist anyway, but that's another topic), my sample will probably be not nearly big enough to come to a conclusion about the topic of this thread. Nevertheless, I'll do it, and maybe I'll finally get that Herald of Zakarum.

[Taem]

my sample will probably be not nearly big enough to come to a conclusion about the topic of this thread. Nevertheless, I'll do it,

I would be very interested in contributing my help towards this endeavor, as I'm sure everyone interested that posted so in this thread can also contribute. We need some agreed upon guidelines before we start:

1.) Virgin character to test with (has not killed said boss yet)

>>We seem to all be in agreement that long-lived MF'ers have less than adequate drops, leading me to believe we should all start with new characters, level them up a bit, then start MF'ing and record our results. Only then will the results be accurate.

2.) 'X' Boss and/or Area to test in (preferably boss for faster results)
3.) Amount of MF if any (I suggest 150%~easily obtainable and the perfect amount for 100% uniques)

>>If we decide to do that MF trick/cheese where we always get "first kill" drops, then we won't even need any MF. Maybe we should test this “trick” way with one character, and with normal MF on a character that’s already killed the boss.

I'm sure theres more guidelines or suggestions everyone might have for testing purposes. I'm not sure how to list the MF "trick" as opposed to normal MF'ing, but I suggest anyone interested post their findings in this thread with the following listing:

All Runs done in (single or multiplayer [single, realm, or TCP/IP])
#people in game (or players 'x')
Run#, act, area or boss, mf%, items dropped

EXAMPLE:
All runs done in Multiplayer (Realms); 1 Person in game
RUN#-ACT-AREA/BOSS-MF%-ITEMS
1-Act5-Baal-150-set, unique, rare, rare, blue
2-Act5-Baal-150-rare, rare, rare, blue, blue
3-Act5-Baal-150-set, rare, rare, rare, rare
etc...

If anyone has a better idea on how to list this or anything, please feel free to trash this as you see fit :D . I'm half awake right now so I'm not sure how much sense I'm making.