Devs: Does Rate of Entry Still Affect Loot?

In the old forums, a developer explained how Rate of Entry (or "RoE") factors into determining what rewards a character will receive from chests.

He provided an example of how a person running the same heroic instance twenty times in a week will have a lower chance on his/her twentieth run of receiving a fabled item than someone who has run the instance fewer times in the same period.

Is this mechanic still in place and, if so, is there an RoE "threshold" (or a certain point beyond which the chance for getting fabled loot can get no worse)?

Also, how is RoE determined? Is it reset weekly or more dynamic and dependent upon the aggregate amount of times a person visits a zone in any given time?

I've not seen this posted, but here is how I *think* RoE works in EQ2.

It isn't bound to the character / account in any way, its bound to how many times instance X is fired over a period of time.

So if instance X is utilized infrequently the RoE seeds more favorably to the player, but with the instance is utilized more and more, the seed is far less favorable to the player.

You see this both in when new instances launch a very high drop rate, but you also see this buy going back to old instances that are no longer popular and seeing those rare items far more frequently.

Purely tinfoil hat stuff, but I remember the RoE conversation and the lack of details, and going off what little was shared and my personal experiences, it seems the above is likely what is in place.

Opinions will vary.

Using the patented "Seems Like™" method, I'd say Atan's scenario is correct. There have been times when the loot table just tired. It's like it had X number of whatevers, and they are all gone, come back tomorrow.

Insert reply from a red name here.---^

Option 1. ROE does not exit.
Option 2. ROE exists and this is how it works.

This is the first time I have ever heard of this kind of mechanic.

Not sure how you would represent that in Loot Table data.

It wouldn't be in the feed we see. Its like there is x percent for legendary and y percent for fabled. That tree is evaluated then the available reward is selected. RoE simply adjusts or seeds the values of x and y. Or the RoE seed value adjusts up the % chance of fabled drops based upon zone utilization. What we see in the old Zam feed would be the native value before an RoE adjustment.

I don't know for sure if EQ2 uses RoE. I do recall a discussion on the concept and eq2 once upon a time, but I can't recall if that was beta, nda forums, or live forums.

To me, I think either RoE is in EQ2, or they monitor drop rates and adjust loot tables, which in effect is a manual form of the same concept.

The discussion I recall was in no way an automated process. Rate of Entry of items was monitored on a per Server, per Instance, and per Player basis. (Something kicked out a report, or was query able). And the devs "Lyndro?" stated that this was used to manually adjust the tables so that the RoE matched what they felt was appropriate.

ie, a relevant example of the idea would be someone sitting down and seeing that Solo zones are, on average, giving 500 red slot fabled items per day on each server. 500/day might be considered too high a rate of entry for such a simple zone, prompting adjustments.

In theory. In practice, I'm not sure anyone's actually watching any more...

* 500/day being an example number, no way based on anything.

Ynnek is probably correct here. It was a very academic discussion at the time and I kind of glazed over it.

I think this would make sense as to why "Solo is dropping nothing" now... unless they changed values the Solo zones are over-farmed so they drop their rare stuff less.

I really hope the devs aren't being diligent about monitoring loot because that would mean the generally bad drop rate (consistency, frequency, quality) is intended.

been this way for as long as i can recall. such as on patch day first ones out in the zones get the best drops then the loot generator dies then randomly spits something out when it feels like it.

enter an old zone, rarely traveled and watch the chests rain from the sky, not like anyone cares for a fabled T5 piece of loot.

even in the middle of the night i notice drop rates tend to rise when compared to peak server hours. i tend to transmute first thing in the morning before the server fills up and has been idle for many hours. the zone you are in also seems to affect the outcome of anything RNG related.

Another great example of them WRONGLY regulating loot on a wide scale. Loot rates and the RNG's should be regulated down to guilds/raids/groups and ideally down to the individual player. Not 'well it dropped a lot in terms of every server put together so lets pull it back a bit.' Not even per server. Just because a lot of them dropped globally absolutely does not mean they dropped EVENLY. When players run things countless times and never see something they want, they aren't comforted that some other player somewhere else got one to drop in one of their first runs and think 'well that evens it out.'

Ok, it sounds like you guys are saying that Devs monitor loot and adjust rates. That's not surprising. The original post on the subject sounded like there was some dynamic formula that adjusts drop rates in realtime. That seemed unlikely.

I think that post was widely misinterpreted. I'm pretty sure all it was meant to say was that the amount of times and frequency that loot has a chance to enter the game plays into the quality of the loot. Extremely rare items being more powerful for example.

It wasn't meant to say that things are dynamically adjusted, or even manually adjusted on occasion.

Haven't checked forums in a couple of days. Couple of interesting theories being presented.

As to the difficulty of implementing such a mechanic, DDO comes outright and states that loot will decline in quality after 6 runs of an instance and continue to worsen until the player lets the zone "refresh," which takes something like 48 hours.

Based on the observations in this thread and personal experience, I'm guessing something similar is in place.

Edit: Note: In DDO, it's linked specifically to the character and not his/her account or server-wide drops.

Wow if the devs really coded it like that with a decreasing drop rate the mode people do the zone it s probably the most stupid thing ever done.
It would be like singing stop playing it s not worth your time anymore.

This thread actually discusses very curios and interesting thing. I too got an impression that something is going on with a loot drop. Few months ago I was loging pretty much mostly on my fury and would run SS solo zones. Never got anything decent from frequent runs not even a master spell. But when i would log on my alt i would get a master spell on every other run of the same zone. Each run of course would have at least a day break. Now it's other way around. Nothing to write home about on coercer, but few nice things on fury. I think i have to start randomly log in on either one of then for the sake of experimentation

Maybe some people just have bad luck with the RNG? I seem to be getting the same amount of fabled drops out of the solo zones as I did from day 1 of the expansion launching. Sometimes I get a few in a short amount of time, then junk for a few runs, then more fabled stuff, then an ethereal. If you ask me, its just random and you might be over-thinking it

I seem to experience the same thing with transmuting or refining. I get junk for a while, then it feels like I hit the jackpot for a while getting lots of mana's/rares for a good number of items. In the end, it feels like the same rates to me. Maybe thats just me

It would not surprised me if it was coded. Many games do this.

That would make Loot Table data kinda useless, no?