Gradual Reduction in MF Effectiveness

[Jeger]

So if you get a double-durability set item, that has to be considered a set item for purposes of drop "goodness", since you would have gotten a set item if it was at all possible.

Not necessarily. The random number generator does not generate random numbers, but pseudo-random ones that are generated by making a call to a mathematical function that returns numbers that "behave randomly." These functions are sought after and tested.

The testing is difficult. For example, if function is used to generate a number between 1 and 10. One test would be to determine what the odds are that you would get a particular number. If it generates each number roughly 10% of the time - it passes that test. Suppose, though, it generated a 1 five percent of the time after it generated a 9, but 15% of the time after it generated an 8. The odds of getting a 1 on any call would still be 10%, but the RNG has a degree of dependency, and is not a good RNG.

It goes on. Suppose that after six "extreme" numbers (1, 2, 9 or 0) there is a tendency for a "middleish" one (3-8) ? That would be more difficult to find. Much effort is invested in testing these routines, and I will take it for granted that Blizzard chose a good one. However, it still is not random. This has always been a problem for games. People are very good at figuring out patterns. I played an arcade game where I started to "know" how the enemy would behave. I think I was seeing a failure in the RNG routine that resulted in a subtle pattern that my brain learned.

I don't know how many numbers it takes to generate an item - let's say it is four. Suppose, that the RNG tends to fall into a pattern after many calls, so there is less of a chance that a group of four numbers will result in a valid unique, but more of a chance that it will be a non-valid unique. In that case, the observation could be a RNG failure not a deliberate MF reduction.

This is one explanation, that may not hold water, but there are others.