How many no-loots are accaptable??

I told my soc leader once that MA wants all the most experienced players to quit eventually, but I think I was wrong.

They want you to keep spending more and more and more to play or quit from boredom, they give you the option.

/conspiracy mode

Marco said that best results are achieved when hunting at your level. So therefore you must keep hunting harder and harder mobs as your skills increase, also you will likely have to keep buying higher level weaponry and armor/fap as well.

The solution (just guessing) is to find a level where you can afford to play at and keep your skills/gear stagnant at that level by chipping out whenever your loot starts to diminish. Pretty boring this way though.

When you first started, you were always playing above your level since you had very little skills. As you progressed, loot seemed to stay the same since you also bought new guns and armor which are much cheaper at lower levels. When you hit the mid-level wall which would have required you to buy much much more expensive gear, you can't or won't put in a large deposit to buy gear which MA thinks you should be using at your level. So TT loot vs expense declines no matter what mob you hunt.

Markup on loot is the only thing that can save you. If everyone hunted at their level and only hunted mobs which looted good markup items, then the markup on those items would go down and everyone would be getting the same crappy returns. It's meant to be boring and eventually most will stop playing if they don't keep increasing their expenditures.

/conspiracy mode off

It's just a guess like any other, not provable.

One of the main reasons why I stopped playing (other than sheer boredom with the hunting system) was the day I dropped a bomb and hit a XX claim. A miner in my soc who had been playing 4 years longer than me and had huge skills compared to mine had not got anything worthy of their skills in over a year and I'm sure they dropped many more bombs than me every day. I realized I didn't want to play a gambling game anymore since gambling really doesn't entertain me and the gaming part of the game is just antiquated and boring. I could easily have afforded to continue playing at a higher and higher level, but it wasn't entertaining enough.

As Pham said, "if the game costs 100 times more to play than before, shouldn't it be 100 times more fun?"

I stopped playing over 2 1/2 years ago??? (not sure exactly maybe three years) and the gameplay has not changed one iota from then. (Makeup and artwork are not gameplay).

I'm hoping that Rocktropia will have something different to offer, but didn't want to wait a decade for things to change on Calypso.

 

if i had 5 or so no loots in row i would, and have, logged off. this used to happen on feffs when i camped them, i reckoned there must be a bug and if not i wasnt going to keep ploughing through.

recently i do feel like there are more no loots, and on fairly high HP mobs too which makes it harder to accept.

 

About hunting your level seem to ring rather true for me.

Lower mobs then your level tend to be the same mobs that holds more no-loots (the lower the mob, the higher risk of no loot).
Higher mobs then your level tend to hit you often, cause armor and fap decay.
Gotta find that golden midway.

That being said Marco's stated he's made it some personal mission to get rid of the "no loot" um...feature. So we'll see what happens.

And yes, some armor and equipment today is expensive, but alot of people forget the cheap (L) armors, such as martial for example. There's other (L) armors where 1 piece is expensive while the rest is cheap as well, and in that case its no problem usually if you dont mind mix&matching.

Anyway, I think a lot of hunters think that their level is higher then it actually is. It seem hunters think that if they can take it down, its their level. But I think its an important factor to be able to out-evade the mob.

Another thing to take into consideration is the skill value you get from hunting the mob in question. If you, Lykke, at 58hit hunt argos - it'll mean less value in skillgains for you then if someone at lvl 30 hunted it. So even if the loot is the same for both, it'd be more for someone who just about out-evades the mob, uses a low markup L gun that they have maxed etc.

As far as I understand it anyway.

That being said, Im a complete idiot and almost always hunt above my level. Because its fun, and I'm not really trying to hunt eco :) Although, that made more sense when I hunted a couple of times a week (because of my fingers) since I could afford it. Now that auto-mode is here I can hunt every day so I might have to rethink my strategy :D

 

well,


where to start... ok, let's look at the facts. MA said (not once) that they are totally ok with 70% or close players leaving very soon after joining. how come? strict logic would say - take and keep them all close. why do they not want it? I suppose the reason is - MA needs only those able to depo and interested in either "the fun" or the wish to earn out of it. what do you think would be the ideal schema for taking the ped from clients? yes, the pattern where you take as much as the player is willing to put in, no surprises there. so you become addicted to it. you skill up first 30 pro levels and the returns are rather ok. at least they are acceptable as you are using lower level equipment and hunt lower level mobs or craft somewhat cheaper stuff. then the game gives you a hint to deposit more by giving you worse returns while continuing doing the same thing. what do you do? yes, most of the addicted ones deposit even more. what is wrong with the schema? indeed, it simply can not be a long term business. EVERY business is healthy when it is known as a good one and not The Most Expensive. I am quite confident MA is moving towards the long promised 1 buck per hour rate average. simple logic says the bottom levels of the pyramid must grow a lot to support the system so it can come true. why do you think the missions and mentoring "suddenly" became priority #1 and #2? of course they see now the results of the last year(s) - playerbase is diminishing, deposits aswell. I'd dare to say someone ducked it up hard at some point by saying "we do not care if masses are not joining - the current active depositors are more than enough for us", the global economical slowdown was just a catalyst for it...

so I say, soon there will be no messages of zero loot as it is just another strong demotivator in general. average loot will get worse (for a while) as the 1 pec instead of no loot comes from the same lootpool everyone is depositing into. it will later turn better again IF the gods manage to drag the masses in again.

interesting times are ahead. every business that wants to survive the global crysis HAS TO lower their average fee for the service. as long as it is not done within the E.Universe, people will start depositing less, quitting and... and let's hope for the bright future =)


J.

 

Is there a bug in the pics full size view or is it just here that it displays the thumbnails instead of the larger image when you click them?

They already removed the yellow "no ressource found" from chat window, this is just the next logical step.

 

I noticed it last night, I believe it has to do with the image resizer mod recently installed... the IMG tag needs to be replaced with IMGLINK tags. I'll let VF know, now that I know it's not just me :)

 

Could also be a very low loot pool, MA might have started with zero after new VU. But they are stupid! Near anarchy exists due to MA not fixing game play to be cheaper. Now its a waste, cos ammo gets wasted a lot, Loot is bad, Peops dont depo, many are leaving. Why do you thing MA is holding back on chipping etc? Peops wanna leave the game on-mass . Looks like MA is in a self-destruct mode.

Why? For years they have been out off touch with their clients. The hope is, they wize up and take note of posts in EP instead of brown stinking EF, and use the info. I may not be active anymore, but I would like to hear that MA has become fair and righteous in their hosting the game. To give all clients a fair chance. No individual or soc should be a MA-pet. Absolutelly no favoritism. No judging avas with feelings alone.

But when money gets involved, peops become bribeable. I find a day laborer depositing mabe 50 Euros a week should get the same treatment from MA as Peops who depo 5/10/20/30K pm. You mess around with "weights", Numbers or bad bussiness in general, youre screwing with Karma and bussiness wont be sustained in bad-times, or may simply go wrong. Joseph in the service of King Nebikadnezer in Babylon teaches exactly the moral of this. ( No religion intended, only a lesson learnt)

Tricks like 6 piece armors turning into 7 piece armors, for profit and greed. Removing the easy healthbar drag targeting modus, causing a lot of unnececary ammoburn through misses, for profit and greed. Tweaking item deacay higher, for profit and greed. They sure are reconning on those depos. Is it honest Bussiness? This treatment of clients and nonsense from MA, will boomerang and bite them from behind, hard. In fact it has started. Rumors of a virtual full anarchy brewing that is.

 

For the loot situation now, I believe it was shown elsewhere that deposits are down yet the global/HOF spam rate is holding steady. So this would intuitively tell you that the small loots would suffer.

I think that's why you see some people complaining about loot who never did before. They were in their 'sweet spot' in the skills/gear vs. mobs equation, but the general downturn in small loots has upset their return rates, they may need to lower their mob level and chip out some skills.

 

To me it would be completely dependant on the mob I am hunting. If I am killing Araneatrox or Daspletor, then zero no-loots are acceptable. The cost to kill alone should guarantee a loot IMO.

Snables and Combibos...? I would be more tolerant ;)

 

yep! Exelent point Rayne. Ubah mobs must always carry loot guaranteed . Personally i feel that mobs, like spiders, Dasps, etc. should alway have a minimum of a global and higher. Uber-players will therefore be more motivated and I am sure it will stimulate activelly the economy.

 

Im one of these persons that since VU10 has lost my butt off just to try to get me some SGA items...

It just showed that Mindark was making another event that I could only lose in.

Since VU10, I lost around 25k ped - even when counting an 10k ped scip young and an 2k ped spider young.

I did those losses on big ass mobs...

Fact is - that when I use my Improved M2870 + A102 (or A105 for that sake), I will not lose big - just a few peds an hour max.

I can also just use Korss400, LR32, LR41 or LR48 on small troxies and make a tiny profit per hour. (2-10peds an hour profit).

Im around lvl 84 laser pistoleer hit and 78 dmg... around 270-280k skills, 225HP

Thing is, I dont give shit about Marco's statement that I need to hunt according to my skills... I lose 25k on big ass mobs like frescouda, furor, chompers, but make a tiny income on tiny mobs like atrox... and gets an 10k hof on a scipulor young that most ppl can take down.

I learned, that hunting small trox or something that basically never hits my armor - or that I can do armorless fairly easy... Is only way to stay away from depositing... And sell ANYTHING above 103%...

 

damn,


I think the line rhymes with "clucking bell"... If a rather highly skilled player is getting such minuses, the universe needs immediate help in form of loads of fresh blood, I see no other way keeping it alive for long...

Tom, could you also tell how much was the average time you spent during that period of loss? was it like 2h, 5h or 8h+ per day?


J.

 

I started working fulltime 5th of october - but prior to that - I was hunting maybe 10hrs a day for 4 month, most likely more even. I know Im a geek

 

ok, 10h/day should be more than enough to make at least 5k ped turnover per day which is about 150k ped turnover per month with i2870. actually your minuses were close to 10-15% of the total which is not that bad compared to masses of pro level 50 guys getting average 50-70% returns. if you calculate the skillgain and the theoretical profit from it, you gained around 200 ped from every 3400 ped turnover (maybe even double more). that'd make a total of 9000 ped in a month at least. see, the overall picture in your case is not that bad after all =)

P.S. my calculations were very rough.


J.

 

Very rough to say the least.

I don't blame Mindark for anything else than making another event I couldn't stay out of. If I had, If I hadnt chased the items, I wouldn't have been that much minus. So basically theres just me to blame :)