Hi,
not sure about all of this. Even not sure if we are not misunderstanding each other ;-)
My basic idea is that "HP wasted" is already calculated. In the very moment a mob gets damage first an array is initialized with at least 2 fields "Damage" and "from player". Each time the mob receives damage a new record is added.
When the mob is dead it's determined who gets what loot, according to these data. The array is deleted then, 'cause it's useless now.
If a team is involved, or not, or if 1 player did all the damage, or more but one, this just triggers different methods of calculating.
But the basic "HP wasted" data are already recorded, we can be sure of this. Because they are used in some team loot distribution settings, and in the question of "Who owns that loot".
Tests have been made, and have shown with an IMHO sufficient reliability that actually "HP wasted" is the key, not "raw HP of this maturity".
These data are already available, and are getting used. I guess nobody questions this.
Now about the personal decay, and about the question:
Because it's a load of data to track additionally, and because it wouldn't just give an additional benefit to do this when not needed.
An event is a defined thing. It has a point of start, and a point of ending. Usually only a limited amount of participants is involved. I could imagine that in such cases the decay is tracked, like this:
- At the very beginning of the event an array similar to the one above is initialized for every participant: "PED value", "Action", "whatever else".
- During the event every change in TT ("Action": ammo shot, item decayed, loot received, trade actions etc.) is added/ copied as a new record in this array.
- When the event is over this array then can be filtered and calculated, to get the event results. Then deleted.
Would the personal decay actually be used in the usual loot calculation such an array would be needed for every single mob that gets involved in a fight, i.e. every one of the 10 young Argo around me would have its own array at my avatar. These arrays would need to be quite long lasting, 3 of them might run away, but I might kill them later - and I have already spent decay on them.
So I'd carry a load of such arrays with me whenever hunting, and any other of my beloved co-participants would do, too. For sure, any advanced laptop could handle this these days, regarding the tiny population EU suffers these days. But there was other days when a multiple of todays hunters was whacking the green slime out of them Argos at Twins, and maybe MA hopes to reach these numbers again?
Well, even if it will not improve your loot to pump more PEDs into a mob (on this particular mob), you will loot back what you've wasted, in a global or a mini, as described somewhere above.
With all due respect to the people that have this opinion, I seriously doubt this and consider it an urban myth. We have countless examples of people pumping PED after PED into this game, over years and years, that then get nice skills, sure, but never the much needed payback. Usually it's mentioned then that they just "wasn't smart enough", but I'd regard this as a little insulting. They had just bad luck, IMHO.
(Guess I should mention that I'm not feeling to be one of those - my TT (items only) reflects roughly the amount of PEDs I deposited, and having a sufficient markup, and counting my sell-able skills, I'm in a small profit even.)
Why do you think they keep records of every single action?
They MUST keep track of ammo spent, so ofc they adjust several counters every shot (ammo, amp decay, weapon decay, scope and sight decay & now even possible "enhancer gone")
Because it would be needed to calculate something useful out of this data maybe?
As mentioned above, I severely doubt the existence of a "personal loot pool", and only for such this would have any meaning.
They MUST keep track of Ammo etc. in certain, comparable rare, cases, yes. But using such a huge monster of tracking and calculating, bit shoveling and CPU torturing, when it's not really necessary, why?
Is there something that might prove that such is done outside of events? For sure, I might have missed.
This happens all in one go, if you equip a weapon, the attachments and the decay values are loaded (hence a spearate "equip" action, before you can "use" it), everytime you fire the weapon, TT is lowered by these loaded values. This happens in RAM, where you keep a list of players currently online, not in the database (but the changes are dumped to database every XX seconds).
For sure, databases are usually cached. And for sure, too, there's entries for every single part of equipment that is used. This are quite simple operations, send an ADD request to the database server to change one fields value.
But to use such data for loot calculation those entries would need to be connected to a certain mob - so a copy would need to be created for every single mob you interact with. And HERE is the problem, IMHO.
Maybe you're talking of a "global decay calculation" while I'm talking about a "mob related decay calculation"?
Actually, keeping a hidden "Loot Pool" stack, kind of a PED stack in inventory, would just require that you add there what you subtract from the ammo counter (for the sake of simplicity, we assume that weapon, scope and sight decay goes to MA, and not back to loot pool) and maybe a fixed percentage of the amp decay.
Ah, here it is! Yes, we are talking of different things.
I deny the existence of a "personal loot pool". This would, IMHO, give much too many possibilities to be abused. By people at MA. A can of worms.
I am very sure that MA (and PPs) have the ability to force special loots in a certain region, on certain mobs - but having the ability to change the parameters of a "personal loot pool" for their participants would be close to be criminal offense, wouldn't it?
You, on the other hand, seem to think that there's kind of a "global decay counter" for every avatar that then plays a role in the loot received. Did I get this right?
I might have jokingly have talked about such (as a way to pay MA employees), but don't you think that such would give the possibility to any MA employee with sufficient rights, to alter this value and such enforce huge loots to anybody they like?
A can of worms, IMHO. And a functionality that could, when ever leaked, destroy MA, and EU. I really doubt that they'd be stupid enough to implement such.
A word about client/ server architecture to the last:
You can be very sure that nothing of importance will reside in your clients RAM. The client will be busy to calculate what you see, and it will often calculate ahead of the server in this regard.
But you'll never ever find any variable of value in your client RAM. Much to easy to monitor certain client RAM addresses, and to change em. This was done since computer games exist, and the MMO ppl are well aware of this.
The end (guess I just need to write something to keep on topic ...):
I'm sure that "HP wasted" is the central point in the loot calculation. There's sufficient prove to be sure that it exists (team distribution rules, "who owns the mob"). So a very powerful mechanism already exists.
I'm reasonable sure that there is nothing like a "personal decay/ loot pool", because such would be a pain (additionally!) to handle, and would open a helluva of possibilities to abuse. And there's enough reports of luck-less long time players that just rebut this theory.
In my book loot is determined simply with using "HP wasted", and quite a few rolls of the dice (random). This sufficiently explains the nOOb HoFs, IMHO. nOObs are killing a huge number of small mobs day-in day-out. Ways more then the mid-level players, and a vast multiple of the few remaining Ubers.
Unavoidably they hit jackpots doing such. When hunting, due to the "HP wasted" rule those are usually quite small. It seems that at mining that there's a less good algorithm implemented.
Have fun!
PS: This discussion is quite enjoyable for me. Plz don't be mad if I have another point of view, let's talk about! And let's hope we're on topic enough to not get strangled by the mods ...