Just gonna add my 2 cents in here.
First, I am going to reiterate what my mentor, who likely helped write one of the first CS courses, and what I have stated to students over the decades:
You cannot, and NEVER will be able to generate, a completely random string of variables/results. (In regards to computational output.)
This is a technology limitation that has existed since it’s inception of the DIDO system, and still to present day it is unlikely that we will overcome it. I know that everyone thinks AI is amazing and all that, but still at it’s core, any AI CANNOT generate a random output.
Now CS majors/students/armchair fanatics understand the reference of this. For everyone else, it means that no matter how “RNJesus” the result/variable seems to your perception, it is all based in code and came from “somewhere”.
That all being said, I can confirm that luck loot is indeed broken, and furthermore, they broke it intentionally for the Winter Convergence event. Why? Well I don’t need fancy calculations and source script to know first off, it’s much easier than that. Because of the way that guaranteed loot and object interaction works in a script environment, it essentially “breaks” the script of generation.
Everyone talks about loot tables like that means something. It does not. Loot “tables” haven’t been used in modern gaming for nearly a decade now. This isn’t old school D&D. They are entries in a database, which yes is still technically a table, but also not as well.
When you have guaranteed drops, out of special containers, the script that Mathrandil obtained and calculated/tested goes out the window. Although many people would believe that it only applies to certain containers, and I agree that is how it should work too, the coders/devs that work on this haven’t the foggiest idea what they are doing, because it’s not all one person/company’s code. AG outsources a lot of this development, which is why there are gapingly obvious holes in consistency. It’s really that bad.
Because of where it has to reference the character, an interrupt of sorts has to be thrown into the mix on the character side script, that doesn’t exactly jive too well with the existing “luck” calculations. Because of this, a character’s “luck” is not being considered at all after daily allocations of event loot are met through w/e “event objectives”.
If you would like to prove this, go on an elite chest run at least 30 hours after the last time you did all of your daily convergence/tree runs, as well as the last time you obtained any gypsum.
You will find that your loot is SIGNIFICANTLY better than as if you did it the other way around, but go ahead and then do it the other way around just to be thorough.
So the big question you will have after almost 3 days is WHY? Well, I don’t exactly know why either, but back to the confirmed way that AG uses contracted coders, I would be willing to bet that piecemeal way of doing things has led to luck scripts being ignored after a character’s daily allocation of “guaranteed loot” has been filled, and is no longer running the scripts after that point.
The biggest tell in this is prior to the WC patch, you could easily get 5 or 10 chests in a 3-4 hour gaming session that would seem to “bug” and not issue loot. Relogging, porting, and even redownloading did not fix this issue. This is likely because the “loot scripts” were receiving too many simultaneous requests for processing, and your particular “request” (when you looted a box) was stuck in queue, and dismissed because there is no queue hold time for these requests.
(You can also tell because upon relogging, the chest appears looted for your character, when you clearly did not get any loot)
Although at the end, this is all conjecture, it is logical conjecture based on knowing enough about how scripts work, system limitations, database limitations, and being able to see the bigger picture.
AG knows about all the problems, but they don’t know where, or probably even how, to start fixing them. Eventually they will be forced to retain a company whose script and assets rule the majority of the game, and there will likely be a “major overhaul” to how loot works sometime in the next 3 or 4 months. Which really is just one company coming in and “unfucking” the loot adjustments by completely deleting the mess we have now.
Until then, we are all stuck with what it is, just make sure you do your tree/sack/present looting for the event AFTER you do everything else in the “normal” game for now if you want your luck to have a heavier consideration in your chest runs. Doesn’t mean you will always get better stuff, but at least this way you can still have the “dice thrown” for your character’s luck, whereas I have found the other way around the “dice” are not being thrown at all.
