Gradual Reduction in MF Effectiveness

[LiquidDamage]

To remind everyone: my current stance is that it is all psychological. I am just saying that if you really want to test it, you can not count HDMI as uniques, because they are not.

When testing something, it makes sense to keep track of all the details. Often, you will set all variables constant but one, in order to see if there is a problem with that one variable.

If we are trying to find out if "good" items drop less over time, it makes sense to start by checking to see if MF decreases over time. If you are going to test whether MF is working properly, you must count high durability items as failed uniques/sets. This is because MF will actually cause more of these items, as well as uniques and sets, to appear. Given the massive number of item types that can drop, streakiness in the RNG might cause you to come to invalid conclusions, just because when you test it, it might happen to drop a disproportionate number of some item quality than it does for someone else, since you are ignoring some ~50% of "good" drops as they relate to magic find.

Think of it this way:

1) Joe does 200 runs which yield 10 uniques, 20 sets, and 10 failed uniques and 20 failed sets. He happens to get the 10 uniques and 20 sets early in the runs, and the failed ones late in the runs. He concludes that there is a dropoff in MF% as you do more runs, because he ignores the failed items.

2) Ten other people do 200 runs which yield the same number of items of each type, but they all actually note the durability of the items, and count them as failed uniques/sets. In checking their data, they find that, on average, their "good" drops still occur at the same rate regardless of how many runs they get.

This is why you must count them if measuring MF. You will be more likely to get inaccurate results if you don't.

Now, suppose the ten people in #2 consider your suggested situation: that more failed sets and uniques occur later in the runs. They now have the data to see if this is actually occurring, since they kept track of the high durability items.

In both cases, you need to pay attention to them for more accurate results.