How loot works

Nirfu - not only does it say 'Theory' in the first post, but there also are a big (in red even) disclaimer in the very beginning of the post :)

It's on the front page because it's an article made from someone in the EP media team - and it's a very interesting article even.

It's posted as a theory to bring more discussions to the subject, which is in the mind of a lot of Entropians; How does loot work?

 

I always thought that Auction and Decay went straight to MA/Planet Partners pocket...?

Counter thoughts?

Wistrel

 

Only thing I can know for sure in this post isnt correct is this.

Main elements of gambling:

1)Investing any money while not knowing if will return anything
2)Knowing it might not give you anything back
3)Hoping to get A LOT more then you invested

Those are main elements of gambling and this game is full of them. If you disagree here is one example:

You first spend PED (quivalent to money) to kill a mob and dont know if you will get it back. Is there any difference then inserting a 1$ bill in casino slot machine and not knowing if those reels will make a payout?

No there is no difference! Just different "packing material".

From your calculation you calculated that you get everything back, So who is paying for :
1)People that work for MA
2)Their expenses to run the game like internet connection, you pay it at home right?
3)Bank transfers
4)Offices they work in
5)All bills that come with those offices
And so much more expenses every business has.

So having this in mind we all pay for these expenses and not just them, MA wants some profit too. Do you work at your job for free or want to buy something nice at the end of the month? They didnt invent the game to give donations ;)

This is all reallity to me, dont be dreaming.

 

Loot doesn't work. It is just a wonderful dream and you wake up to an empty storage container.

Having said that, I would agree with the personal loot pool theory with some floating threshold for globals and hofs etc. I can also confirm the depo bump which kicks in about 12 hours after a deposit and runs for about 2 days. I'm not sure about specific mob loot pool and how that affects things.

 

There's definitely a grain of truth in this theory - whoever has depoed has noticed the rise in frequency and size of globals.
Also, it seems there's several mechanisms that, in general, will reward higher stakes with higher pay.

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However, can't say i'm a die-hard fan of the long-term balance theory.
I think it's more like a mix: One Huge Fruit-machine + few rules that will temporarily increase certain probabilities in case you are a paying customer.
The effect of the recent deposit seems to wear off in 10-15 hours of active game time, no matter how much you actually got back - in the form of more/bigger globals and better overall loot.
MA's fruit machine seems to have pretty short memory, just like the RL ones. Once you got your Thankyou! notice, your again nobody.

Sry, i'm afraid there's no Santa.
I think what's lost in the long run is lost forever, no divine providence will take care of you.
Then again, this is also only a theory.

 

Hi,​

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I'm just a poor database minion, but I cannot follow you with the idea of a "Personal loot Card".

My method to evaluate such theories always was the idea of checking a not-so unusual hunt:

1. I fire a rocket at a bunch of aggressive small mobs.
   • Roughly 15 critters hit, so 15 HP changes to their 15 resp. records.
2. A second later, they have swarmed me, while I drop a grenade.
   • 15 critters are starting to munch on my armor, for every successful "nam" the decay has to be calculated, and new protection values as well as the new TT value of the resp. armor part has to be saved. Not to mention the continuous updating of my HP record.
   • my grenade explodes, and 13 of the 15 mobs are hit. Again the HP changes to their resp. records, while they still are munching on my armor and creating a steady flow of database updates.
3. Wash, rinse, repeat until all of 'em have entered a better world.

So far, so good. This is common knowledge. Heavy stress on the database, but caching can help a lot here, not anything of this really has to be entered in real time, temporary variables in (server) memory can do miracles.
And, we don't know, quite some of these calculations could be made locally, by the client, and only periodically synced with the server.

But now we evaluate your Personal Loot Card. Containing very important "loss or win" data that cannot be cached, caching always bears a risk of the loss of data. Imagine you send bullet after bullet into a Hussk, and after 30 min, shortly before it falls, the server hickups. This must not happen.
So any data concerning your Personal Loot Card have to be transmitted immediately using transactions if possible. Sloooooww!

In my above mentioned example we'd create a nasty stream of database updates to my Personal Loot Card, many of them within quite short time. Just for 1 hunter.


And, more serious, we'd have, as a result, a fixed number ("Personal Loot Card Value") in any avatar record that will decide of it's further good luck or bad luck. No rocket science to realize that this value is most delicate, and needs topmost security measures. Any employee able to mess with this number has the license to print real money.
Alone the existence of such a most important value will raise the brows of any experts judging the system, and will cause suspicion about potential abuse. Such a number can only be held in a certified black box, where not even MA would have access. Anything else would be just too dangerous.


Now let's judge where would be the benefit for all this effort. For sure, a "Personal Loot Card" would equalize the results, everybody would be at a rough XY%age of it's costs, all would be nice and cosy.
Ahem? Only ppl having spent insane amounts would get those fabulous 6-digit ATH's? I never got my 4-digit HoF, because I was in + already at this time?
All these irregularities are only because of the puny auction fees, that act as kind of a salvation army?
Sorry, this doesn't work.

We have some ppl that regularly are withdrawing. We have people like me, that can survive for years now w/o ever depositing, and still not loosing too much of their avatar value.
And we have people that loose house, home, wife and children in a matter of months.

Cannot help, but this theory just doesn't fit.

Counter-theory:

Loot is fully random, and the complete amount of loot available is bound to a floating number representing MA's business results. There might be a small part of "income" going into a separated loot pool, that only affects the Uber-loots. Your auction-PEC's might end here, too, as well as the long-gone ad-money from the good old days.

Loot is bound to the money spent to get it, but this is seen for the single attempt: The HP you wasted to kill a certain mob, the depth & multiplier for this mining drop (Bomb + Finder decay + amp decay), the value of the materials and the setting chosen for this one crafting attempt.

Additionally:

• Floating server multipliers. Every server has it's own, some pay better, others pay less. This changes quite often.
• Floating mob/BP/mining type multipliers. Once what you try is "hot", an hour later it can be very different.
• A floating independent "luck multiplier" - what kind of loot now? "None, small, decent, good, crazy"?
• And, last but not least, your personal luck modifier when the last, most important RNG kicks in. That decides if your "crazy" loot in a good server, on a "hot" type, will result in a 4 digit HoF, or in a 6-digit ATH.

This way the results would perfectly match what we hear all over the forums. Some lose, some win, MA wins always.

I'm very sure we have a system of variables, connected to a cascade of random (or semi-random, to be precise) numbers.
This assumption would perfectly match the reality, and could be done without nasty super-computers, at acceptable costs.


I no way is this meant to attack the OP. I "liked" his post and gave Rep, actually it's a great piece of most elaborate work, and I just love to read such. That doesn't mean that I always have to agree.

Thx, Ace, for this thread, hope we'll get a challenging and exciting discussion here!

Have a good time!

 

Exactly. Any control mechanism would effectively create such a vulnerable point in the system.​

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Besides, it's not really needed - there already is a natural balancing mechanism. The arithmetic average of a set of values infinitely closes to the overall average. In short term there may be huge up's and down's, the longer the period the closer to the average we will get. Fortuna is blind and (in the long run) also fair - exactly because she's blind.​

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Another factor that may have given ground to the personal loot card theory is the factor of skills. Average player who's not selling out regularly will eventually get to the point where the effectiveness of the tools and weapons will rise: less futile decay, better overall returns. It's noobs and medium level players who are paying for the whole show ​

 

hI,

This might be true. I'm not sure why I'm getting quite good results for a longer period of time now, but this might be a valid explanation.

I changed a bit, all changed is in bold.

I see a lot of ppl in these forums reporting losses where I ask myself: "Guy, you wouldn't want to see a head medic?"

I don't get it, they actually sell all their livestock, for this game. This is sad, and shouldn't be this way, I think.

Well, from this money I live ...

Very strange, this all.

Reality check: I have talked about my not-depositing, or rare-depositing.
I'm close to about 100K of skills. My most prominent skill is long sword, but any other useful (mainly laser) weapon skills are close. Whenever I hunt, mine or craft, I know what I do, I have sufficient skills to do it, and I don't do it when theres no chance to get a satisfying result.
And plz don't whack me, but any other 3 months when I deeply analyze my inventory, I have made another some more PEDs. Ignoring the skills I get, and ignoring the possible ninja deposit I might have made.

IMHO the basic trick is to overcome the RNG - to decide what, where and when is "hot", and to go for it. The RNG is creating "waves", this much we can be sure. Finding the crest is the art.

Have a god time!

 

Hi all, first post on here :)

I have a theory about that, just one of many and very probably wrong, but I've been kicking it around for a while.

I think MA is simulating randomness using non-random variables.

For example:

Let's say it costs 1ped to kill a mob, decay and ammo.

I know in the past MA has claimed that they take their cut from decay, but I'm not sure this is still true, it would be too complicated i.e. ammo vs gun decay various quite widely from weapon to weapon even in the same dps range. And what about melee? Anyway, I think they just look at the whole cost of kill and subtract a percentage.

So, 1 ped goes into the hunting lootpool, then I think it gets split up into different "boxes", like so (%s are arbitrary):

MAs cut: 5 pec
Box 1: 60 pec (normal loots)
Box 2: 20 pec (minis and globals)
Box 3: 10 pec (HoFs and Ubers)
Box 4: 5 pec (Big Ubers and ATHs)

Then when you loot the mob, the system runs a check and allocates you a number, say between 0 and 100 (I'll get to how this number is generated just now).

Between 0 and 80.00: You are payed from Box 1 (Cost of kill x (0 to 1))
From 80.00 to 98.99: You are payed from Box 2 (Cost to kill x (1 to10))
From 99.00 to 99.99: You are payed from Box 3 (Cost to kill x (10 to 100))
100: You are payed from Box 4 (Cost to kill x (100 to 10000))

Now how do they assign this number without it being random?

I think they use a non-random system that is so complicated and usingso many variables so as to appear random.

For example:

((last 2 digits of ped balance) x (current health level) - (distance to nearest revive) + (total kgs in carried inventory)) modulo X where is is the last digit of the time of day

I think they probably use a similar system to determine the multiplier applied in the payout. It's also quite possible that the actual equation changes at different times/locations/mobs etc.

So all the parameters would be defined in-game variables over which we have complete control, and therefore not random, although appearing to be.

I don't know if this would be enough to skirt being classified as gambling though.

Anyway, just my 2c, what do you think?

 

FINALLY I KNOW HOW LOOT WORKS! TY :)