Ok, so here’s a breakdown to those who are not up to speed on Islands:
Pre-8.1, island loot was derived from what you killed on the island (as well as azurite loot satchels/boxes/treasure spawned by specific mobs). The only reason people were aware of how this worked was from hours and hours of testing and EVENTUALLY Blizzard came out and told us how it worked with a blue post, describing the ‘score card’ system in better detail. The behavior of players at this time was to either a) Kill only mobs that obtain loot, increasing loot chances, but slowing down the run; or b) Gathering & killing everything, speeding up runs (and xp gained if leveling), but lowering loot chances
In 8.1, Islands were revamped - Mobs were clustered, more invasions occur, and mob health/damage got boosted. Also, the loot system was tweaked so that anything on the island could give you a chance at loot, regardless of what was killed. This solved the issue above where two different group types emerged - it was beneficial to everyone to simply clear the island asap. These changes were welcomed by pretty much everyone, and in addition Blizzard further incentivized islands by giving a treasure map on your weekly island cap, for an additional mission reward. All in all, good times.
Unfortunately, what players realized is that they could simply AFK islands and still get loot. Groups would form, afk 15 mins or so on the boat, and let the opposite faction win. With the new system this team had the same chance of loot as a team that tried and won in 7 minutes. Not as efficient, time wise - but hardly any effort was required aside from clicking accept 4-5 times an hour.
Thankfully, Blizzard was listening to our forum gripes and stepped in to tweak something under the hood to prevent AFK groups from getting loot (happened around 10-14 days ago, hard to tell when because there doesn’t appear to be any blue post signaling this change. No patch notes, no Blizzard CS tweet, no nothing.
The end result however is that whatever changes they made under the hood is also effecting everyone’s chances at loot. All last week, and this new week - Island drop rates seem to have tanked, and nobody can quite nail down why. Did we drop back to the old system where you get loot based on what you kill?
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.