loot cave purples were no less real than any other purples (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Monday, March 09, 2015, 02:31 (3328 days ago) @ Robot Chickens
edited by Ragashingo, Monday, March 09, 2015, 02:48

At that point, purple engrams were not guaranteed to decode to legendary gear. They could decode green- hence the fake purples. Later, Bungie patched it so that purple engrams were guaranteed to decode as legendary gear. However, the rate of having actual legendary equipment drop was kept the same so purple engrams became much more of a rarity.

I've always had the suspicion that there aren't just five types of engrams that drop (white, green, blue, purple, gold) but instead there were and still are many more. Like there were four types of purple, ones that were actually green, that were blue, that were true purples, and were gold. Same for the other colors. After the big Cryptarch change I think there are less engram variants, just white, green, two types of blue (true blue, and purple blues) two types of purple (real purple, and gold) and gold.

This would be why right after the change the old purples still did the old behavior... because you might actually have had saved up greens and blues and golds that were pretending to be purple...etc.