I can say for certainty that there is something about an avatar that affects a person's potential for getting globals and HOFs. I've been primarily a hunter since before gold, and it seemed I always had to work 5 times as hard as other friends who joined about the same time as I did, to get good loots. It took me 3 times as long to get my first global, and by the time I got my second, they had 6 or 7. In my entire time of hunting over the past...I dunno...5 years? (I can't remember anymore), I've never had a loot over 1K peds. My best was only about 787 PEDs. Most of my friends have long since had more ubers than I've had HOFs. Noobs that I mentored have long since surpassed by 'best evers'.
I really wanted a ML-35 so I hunted all the mobs I knew that dropped them. I know several people who looted a few in a single hunting session. Me? Hell no, it took me about 2 years to finally get lucky and loot one!
Last night, I decided to hunt Atroxes south of Ithaca. I hunted almost 6 straight hours (I didn't care a diddly about the event, I just wanted a good loot dammit!). Everyone around me that I saw seemed to get a global or three (or half a dozen) during that period. I never got a single one. I don't know how many hundreds of Atroxes I shot. Every minute someone was globalling off them. Not me. (Gee thanks MA for giving me those two Isis guns--in near minimum condition--even better that they're not repairable! Great loots!)
Years ago I was hunting big Armax (providers, guardians, etc.). Back then I had ML-35, MKV and V1 (and smaller stuff). I'd been hunting them for hours and hours. I was shooting this one male provider, he was almost dead, another shot or two and he would have died. At that instant, the game lagged, the screen froze--for about 5 seconds. When it unfroze, I was dead because the Armax killed me as I was unable to shoot, and someone else (an avatar who was known to get big loots) got a major HOF on...you guessed it...male armax provider.
More recently, for the fun of it, I documented how many Atraxes I was hunting in this one area. If I recall correctly, I'd shot over 1200 of them and my best loot was about 40 PEDs only. Several Atraxes were globalling, but never for me. I had just killed an Atrax Old. A few seconds later, someone else got a major HOF (7 or 8K PEDs I believe) on...you guessed it, Atrax Old.
These are just 3 examples of what's been going on for me, since I started hunting 2 weeks before Gold. It's been an endless series of nights of absolute frustration as I hunt several hundred mobs, I can put 'em down almost as good as anyone out there, and I can see certain avatars repeatedly get global after global (even on different mobs in a certain time period) and only extremely rarely experience the same fortune.
My theory is that mobs build up a "global potential". As more and more get shot, they reach a "global trigger" or more infrequently, a "HOF trigger". Each avatar has a something in its coding that gives it a percentage chance of "pulling" that "trigger". Some avatars have statistically impossible luck, others (like mine) are the opposite. The people who play the impossibly lucky avatars just assume they're smarter or better at predicting the loots (or they in fact know an exploit perhaps), but it's all programmed, and IMO I believe their avatars just have a much higher percentage chance of triggering a global or HOF. Granted, the majority of us are just plain unlucky, that's the way a casino works; but EP goes beyond just that. For some people, it's IMPOSSIBLY unlucky. For some people, it feels like you're trying to flip a coin and get "Heads", but after 30 tosses, all you get is "Tails". That's how it feels when I'm hunting.
The one fact I can provide that seems to prove this, is when you see a certain avatar get several globals over a few hour period---from entirely different mobs. Atrox, Longu, Snablesnot globals in a 3-hour period, from the same avatar. Pretty unlikely, eh? Furthermore, I've seen VUs come and go where, for whatever reason, a few avatars are 'flagged' or selected for this statistically impossible luck. For a month or so, you'll suddenly see some avatar name appearing regularly on the global list. It comes and goes.
The loot programming in EU or PE or whatever you want to call it is FAR FAR FAR from random. There's definitely something going on at the avatar level, I just wish one day it'd happen to MY avatar and end my impossibly bad and statistically impossible luck!
