by Doguso » 06 Jun 2014, 23:16
A good way I look at it is that the 3 metals are like booster packs.
They each pick from a loot list based on where they dropped, bronze has a higher chance of commons and a low chance of rares. Silver has a higher chance of uncommon, about the same as common, and slightly higher rares. Gold naturally just pushes that more, higher uncommon/rare rates and lower common rates compared to silver. However, you can still get incredible items from bronze and shit from gold.
Those stars you see are the item's rarity, as far as I can tell, and orange/red seems to be the rarest type. The weapons are also somewhat randomized and two of the same weapon can have slightly different base damage (and skills naturally). Also, the rarer the item, besides base damage, they also seem to have better picks at skills (for instance, some uncommon/rares have the ability to pick elemental skills, but that's weapon-specific and not rarity, but I don't think elemental commons exist). Skills also tend to have higher grades, so you'll probably see at least 1 skill at rank 2 or more and higher rarities tend to have better skill grades on average.
That's what I've been able to tell from experience so far, and opening hundreds of items.