[i]Preface: I try pretty hard to "check myself" on reality, to avoid things like Dunning Kruger. I do things like keep written track of my competitive experience-- how many 3v4's have favored or been against me, how many times I place first on my team vs second or fourth, the relative performance from my random teammates to myself and the random enemies, etc-- all to make sure I don't grow bias and cry "muh team!" instead of trying harder. I don't track exotic drops very well, just because they can come from anywhere and I've gotten so uninterested in them dropping because they are always year 1 duplicates I've had for 10 months+. It's just not exciting anymore.[/i] Topic: In the past ~2 weeks I've gotten 4-5 exotics. They've all been from the exact same activity, turning in ~2500 simulations seeds for packages on Mercury (something I use to do for masterwork cores, but noticed the drop chance of exotic to be fairly consistent). I haven't had one drop in the world for me, and this includes numerous crucible matches with medallions, as well as doing some "high chance" activities for both resets (such as the hardest spider bounty, or the weekly heroic on tangled shore this week). Since duplicate protection came online, I've forced ~4 exotics from simulations seeds (I say forced because it's not the same as getting them for completing activities). They've all been duplicates, and not just duplicates, they've all been duplicates of things I've had forever (like wardcliff coil, the most recent drop). At the same time, I have 3-4 friend who've all reported having 2-4 exotics drop naturally for them while completing activities (just in the past few days), and they've received 1-2 forsaken drops (a buddy got contraverse hold, and just tonight a friend I was playing crucible with had heart of inmost light drop after a match. Even before the reset I have more friends with more new and un-owned exotics than I do. If I set aside the weeks before Oct 30th's "duplicate protection" change, to avoid perspective or memory bias, I've clearly been crapped on for RNG for two resets now, on both drop rate and drop item. I understand random (I received top marks in both stats and econometrics), but it really feels disheartening when I appear to be the "unlucky" variation to balance out the "lucky" side. Between this, friends being on less frequently, and some alarming results about matchmaking from my last 25+ competitive solo matches, I'm honestly considering quitting (haven't purchased the xpac pass yet). It's sad because I really enjoyed the Forsaken changes, and believed this to be a game I could keep playing consistently long-term. Now I might go on a long break like I did after D2 launch, not bothering to play any of the DLC or the game for almost a year. Can anyone speak to why everyone I play with has experienced much greater fortune in the exotic department? Does the duplicate protection even work? I've seen speculation that Bungie would fail to enact it properly, and have to fix it a few weeks down the road (track record). Thanks, I'm trying to avoid the complaining that's all too common, and stay reasonable (Forsaken has knocked it out of the park in so many ways), but this is [i]really[/i] discouraging.