The "random" chance for item drops in Diablo 2 is masterfully done.

in #gaming16 days ago

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They've implemented statistical distributions that deviate from more stochastic results by allowing the actions of unrelated elements influence the dice roll.

Things like walking distance from the chest opened, if other enemies are nearby and which, the laws of coupling (When two similar items fall, they're often both similar in some stats or even rarity).

This makes for an interesting result where your minds keeps trying to crack the code beneath, often to be washed away by a sea of stochastic noise.

A pareidolic prone mind would find all these unrelated connections (no doubt I've found some false ones myself) but one that can discern the very long tail unrandomness in the random, can benefit off of it and implement heuristics that help them progress more, faster.