Containers such as desks, barrels, sacks, etc... are instanced per player. No one is taking anything away from another player by farming containers for motifs and provisioning ingredients.
Rune_Relic wrote: »Well if other people have no effect on motif drops....I am at Vet1 and only ever found 1 racial motif. I spent the 1st 30 levels ransacking every building. Someone explain the empty cupboards and desks too ?
Rune_Relic wrote: »The only the system makes sense to me is the object cycles through a predefined list of items to keep the probabilities of dropping a certain item consistent. Is that right ?
Rune_Relic wrote: »Well if other people have no effect on motif drops....I am at Vet1 and only ever found 1 racial motif. I spent the 1st 30 levels ransacking every building. Someone explain the empty cupboards and desks too ?
Define what you mean by "cycles". It doesn't go A->B->C->D->A->B->C->D->... That would be too predictable and potentially exploitable.Rune_Relic wrote: »The only the system makes sense to me is the object cycles through a predefined list of items to keep the probabilities of dropping a certain item consistent. Is that right ?
Blackhorne wrote: »Rune_Relic wrote: »Well if other people have no effect on motif drops....I am at Vet1 and only ever found 1 racial motif. I spent the 1st 30 levels ransacking every building. Someone explain the empty cupboards and desks too ?
(Pseudo)
Random.
Number.
Generator.
Congratulations! You're one of the (un)lucky ones who happened to hit one of the tail ends of the probability distribution. If you didn't exist, there would definitely be a problem with the system.
Blackhorne wrote: »Define what you mean by "cycles". It doesn't go A->B->C->D->A->B->C->D->... That would be too predictable and potentially exploitable.Rune_Relic wrote: »The only the system makes sense to me is the object cycles through a predefined list of items to keep the probabilities of dropping a certain item consistent. Is that right ?
Instead, there's a table which lists the odds of getting each item from a given container. So the table could be, for example:
A: 10%
B: 3%
C: 25%1%
M: 0.001%
When a container is generated or refreshed, the game generates a (pseudo-) random number for each item and tests it against the probability of the item being there. Note that this means more than one item might show up in a container, or the container might be empty.
The consistency of the pseudo-random number generator and the laws of probability ensure that, over time, the distribution of item drops approaches the defined odds, just as a coin-flip repeated over time approaches 50% heads and 50% tails, even though each flip could go either way.
In ESO, many containers* are instanced, which is why if you watch a location with containers long enough, you will see players fiddling around with containers which are empty for you, and ignoring containers which have items in them -- for you.
Because they are instanced, no player "takes" loot from another player by farming these containers. This also means that the contents are generated for you each time, ensuring the odds of you getting, say, an M, are consistent each and every time.
* Not chests in the open world, though -- except for buried treasure chests, which are instanced. It gets complicated.