I'm fairly sure it's not completely random, although there's always the risk of seeing trends that may not really be there, when looking at a small sampling of anecdotal evidence.
What I've noticed is that, at least for a short-term cycle, the game tends to provide me with things as vendor specials that I've recently bought. I very, very rarely found Blast Rifles and Disruptors on vendors, until I actually bought some. After that, they seemed to turn up much more often, at least for a few days. I had one toon early on who went a long time and just never got SAWs as loot or as specials. Until I bought one, and then suddenly they were everywhere.
Same with certain mods. I don't see a Controlled Burst for ages, but then one turns up and I buy it, and then I see 4 or 5 the next day or so. Of course, it's possible I'm just seeing a cycle of things rather than a cause-effect event -- maybe there were just going to be a few days of that mod being 'in the rotation', whether I bought the first one or not. But whether it's a case of predictive stuff based on my buying habits, or a system of rotating weapon availablility in waves/cycles, it doesn't appear to me to be truly random.
What I do is check every easily accessible shops (fast travel spots) every hour during my gaming sessions. There's no event in this game which lasts more than 45mins anyway, even when everything goes to shtako.
I got all my blue mods from doing that and even a few good blue/purple weapons. But what I've noticed is that they didn't "normalize" their randomness much, if at all. So peaks actually do happen very regularly (peaks = very bad or very good in all shops, all the same models/types, etc). It's simply a matter of how many times you check all the shops since they really have a lot of weapon types/models/bonuses and mods.
What I wish though, is for them to remove a few weapon models from this game... which clearly no one uses.
Seems that way to me. From time to time a vendor special may be
an AR OR SMG.. bit no mod slots and no nano or nano that I
would rather not use. Loot drops and vendors seem to offer
me weapons in classes I would rather just not even look at.
In addition to this, recently I have been getting 2 identical weapons
of different color from drops. Mass Cannons purple and blue.
I wish the drops were at least the same weapon type as
A weapon in 1 of my classes. As for vendors, well I only stop and check
a location if I am in the area. Normally when I go to unload
some garbage before hitting the next AF. Because of the same issue OP
stated.
PSN : Dr_Flankinstien
CLAN: Cerebral Assassinz
Region : NA (est)
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"MY NAME IS NOT FRANK!"
Yes, I've noticed that often if one vendor has something on sale the others will have something similar. My thinking is that sometimes it's geared toward stuff you don't have or don't use very much because I constantly get Berserker or Birdshot shotguns showing up, I've seen white, yes white mods, and bolt action sniper rifles and RLs. The opposite seems to happen with lockboxes. I frequently get cruddy versions of things I use a lot and lately that means green weak (veteran, machinist, survivalist) synergy, and no-nano things. Can you say "salvage"?
And yet the synergy mod boxes are always for crap I don't use (again sniper everything-lots of sniper scavenger crap, and RL sights, lots of them, in green). My game is stuck on green and white everything. I'm thinking this is happening because the game thinks I have too many purples now.
And way too many lockboxes have given me the exact same item several times over-cool green shields that don't give me much in salvage. Someone has a funny idea of "uncommon".
The thing is, these items are far from special. Just another irrelevant piece of crap Defiance implemented into the game, Guessing its to have that urge to teleport about the map and check them.
I seem to be in the group of getting things in Vendor Specials and Lockboxes that I don't or hardly use: BMGs, Infectors, RLs, GLs, and Pump Shotguns. I very, very rarely get a LMG or AR, which I use almost exclusively. If it is truly random, then I have the worst luck imaginable.
I really guess it's random, but the probability that was set are not random and could be weighted in some degree, I agree possibly closer to white and green than blue and purple.
Sure because if you only search 2 weapons over 12, you have less chance to find them, that's statistic
Most of the time it's crap, but you can found very good weapon and most of it very good mods.
I felt this way for a while but now I've seen the vendors do cycle through all weapons eventually, my current Saw , Sinper, Pistol, Pump Shotgun, AR and SMG all came from vendors..... Which is kinda of sad that I'm over EGO 3600 and most of my gear has to come from vendors?
You'd like to think playing the game hard, Arkfalls, Missions, Contracts, Emergencies, etc would be the way to get the best weapons, but it's not. Lock-boxes have been a joke for me mostly get blues and greens from T3's and T4's and the few purples I've seen were worse than the blue and green vendor weapons I've bought. I hope they improve this in future patches?