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Question: What's the MA excuse for rubbish loot?

I

iancampbell

Alpha
Joined
May 25, 2009
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555
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NW England
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Christopher Chris Kinnison
I usually hunt in rather small runs - up to now 10PED has been my maximum, sometimes extended if a pile of ammo turns up in a loot. Regardless of that, up to now there has usually been at least one item other than oils/hides/etc. (such as armour parts and FAP) in maybe every two runs.

Yesterday, having deposited (rather unusual for me) I blew about 50PED on ammo for a run. Decay costs were perhaps another 5-6 PED. That might not sound a lot to some, but believe me; when you're using an opalo with a TT laser pistol for a finisher it is. It took four hours.

Returns? Perhaps 18 PED of assorted oils, hides and so on, nothing in large enough amounts to do anything but TT it and most importantly not a single permanent item. Not a single one. No armour parts, no weapons, no faps, no anything.

I have heard it said that the rest of the loot has been reduced to account for the SGA item drops. Why? It makes no difference to MA; AFAIK the TT value of the SGA items is the same as that of the normal equivalent. I can't really see the double skills accounting for it either, because with higher skill you use up more ammo and decay - for example, just yesterday I switched to the second-lowest BLP pistol from the Omegaton because of increased skill.

Anyone else got any other ideas?
 
Oh noes... not again !

:headbang:
 
iancampbell said:
Anyone else got any other ideas?
Click to expand...

One single 50PED hunting run? Do 50-100 runs more with that amount of ammo and then come back and present the average loot % and I might belive you when you say loot is rubbish :rolleyes:

EDIT: I don't mean to sound rude or anything, but basing loot returns one a single run is like doing a pre-election poll and only ask 1 person who he is going to vote for :laugh:
 
If you are a newbie, you must not hope for big loots. Your investment now is only for skilling purposes, no more. If you believe that 3 dollars is a great amount for lost in SGA loots, you are wrong. People lost thousand of dollars before to win something good. Relax please.. and enjoy the game.. believe me you has not economic problems yet.

:D
 
As said above: do 1000 runs, track each, and then you have an idea if loot is good or bad (no offense). Statisticly correct data is usually collected for 1000 surveys inside a target group.

That's one point.

My major other point I stated I don't know how many times:
MA needs to make money to pay servers and employees. You will not be able to make profit on a regular basis. So you say you paid 5 US$, could play for 4 to 5 hours and even got 1.8 US$ back.

That's less than one US$ per hour, so you made more loot that MA states on their website, plus you had fun for 4 hours... compare your costs with visiting a cinema for 2 films (=4-5hours).
 
Smoerble said:
As said above: do 1000 runs, track each, and then you have an idea if loot is good or bad (no offense).
Click to expand...

You would have to have a serious amounts of ped on the Ped card to be able to do that :eek:
 
Smoerble said:
compare your costs with visiting a cinema for 2 films (=4-5hours).
Click to expand...

oh yeah, that is a good comparison :D

lets see, with swedish prices that would be like:
2 x 150PED for tickets
2 x 75PED for popcorns and something to drink

So... say 450-500PED for 4-5 hours :silly2:
 
safara said:
You would have to have a serious amounts of ped on the Ped card to be able to do that :eek:
Click to expand...

well if you did one 50PED run every 2 days for a year (182 hunts/year) and had 75% returns on average, it would be like the following:

50PED x 182 = 9100PED
9100PED x 0,25 = 2275PED
2275PED / 12 = ~190PED

If it indeed takes 4 hours to use up 50PED ammo with the opalo:
182 x 4 hours = 728 hours
728 hours / 24 = ~30 days

So if you get 75% average returns you can hunt for a month per year for 190PED/month :laugh:

(if I got the calculations right)
 
Nighthawk said:
oh yeah, that is a good comparison :D

lets see, with swedish prices that would be like:
2 x 150PED for tickets
2 x 75PED for popcorns and something to drink

So... say 450-500PED for 4-5 hours :silly2:
Click to expand...


With Swedish prices being like that I have a different view at MA's financial report now...
 
Nighthawk, that only works, if you are a single person.

Parents who want to go out for dinner/cinema w/o kids, need a babysitter too. Means either some "PEDs" for sweets anddrinks for friends, or 100 to 150 PEDs (or even more) per hour for normal babysitter.


Back to topic:
If you want to really try to find out statistics, that involves a lot time and PEDs, yes. But you can also try to find some really reliable hunters who might give you some of their numbers.

Problem I see here:
Most people will not give exact numbers, some will slightly adjust them up or down a little to adjust it to their view (good loot/bad loot).

I tracked maybe 400 runs or so (would need to check my Excel). Result is (including all decay and pretty exact markups) 101% return...

... sounds good. But I have to say, I did not track every single loot I did, especially when I decided to "just go out for 15 minutes" or "do a fun hunt with soc" I did not track.

So I expect my loot around 80/90% for hunts lately. I did not track the first years hunting though, I estimate that I lost a lot more in my first 2 years playing.

For my crafting (tracked about 100 runs) it looks way worse, about 35% loot incldung markup... that hurts :). But it got better in the past, as I did not craft much, lol :D:D:D
 
Well, apart from the fact that a thousand 4-hour runs is about (tap-tap-tap on a calculator) 23.8 solid weeks 24/7, or around a solid year 10 hours per day...

The point is that for a noob like me a 50-ped run is quite an event. It probably means about 250 mobs at my level. Maybe slightly more, because I burned all the ammo in the loot as well which probably amounted to another 6-7 PED - and half destroyed a sword as well.

Not one half-decent item in 250 mobs is pretty awful. It's not at all the same as even a mid-level player burning 50PED worth of ammo, and is a much better statistical sample.

I don't expect to even break even (or even close to it) at TT prices, because OF COURSE MA needs to make a profit. My comment is that loot is uncharacteristically bad, and the excuse is the drops of special items that cost MA precisely nothing, zero, nada extra. Whether any individual player that gets lucky with SGA stuff makes a profit off other players is completely irrelevant to this.

Skills also cost nothing to MA.
 
ain all loot useful?
 
Loot sucks for everyone at certain points. I did a test run, hunting Daikiba/Exarosaur Youngs using up a full tt (17 ped) a Castorian Enknuckles-A, and came back with 22 ped tt loot including a couple of pixie parts.

So it's not a matter of loot being 'nerfed', it's just bad for you at the time, be it depending on location, time, mob, some crazy cycles or what have you.
 
Smoerble said:
... compare your costs with visiting a cinema for 2 films (=4-5hours).
Click to expand...

Umm, not all of use go to the cinema because they are a bunch of price gouging tw*ts.

Let's compare it to my TV bill. I pay £60 a month for Sky TV, so that's £2 a day. That would make 4-5 hours under 35p.

If you want to add the tv tax {yeah, it's officially a "license"}, then it's still less than 35p, maybe a tiny fraction above.
 
The only valid comparison in price is to other mmo games.

Or other casinos...

Apples and oranges don't make a valid comparison.
 
iancampbell said:
I usually hunt in rather small runs - up to now 10PED has been my maximum, sometimes extended if a pile of ammo turns up in a loot. Regardless of that, up to now there has usually been at least one item other than oils/hides/etc. (such as armour parts and FAP) in maybe every two runs.

Yesterday, having deposited (rather unusual for me) I blew about 50PED on ammo for a run. Decay costs were perhaps another 5-6 PED. That might not sound a lot to some, but believe me; when you're using an opalo with a TT laser pistol for a finisher it is. It took four hours.

Returns? Perhaps 18 PED of assorted oils, hides and so on, nothing in large enough amounts to do anything but TT it and most importantly not a single permanent item. Not a single one. No armour parts, no weapons, no faps, no anything.

I have heard it said that the rest of the loot has been reduced to account for the SGA item drops. Why? It makes no difference to MA; AFAIK the TT value of the SGA items is the same as that of the normal equivalent. I can't really see the double skills accounting for it either, because with higher skill you use up more ammo and decay - for example, just yesterday I switched to the second-lowest BLP pistol from the Omegaton because of increased skill.

Anyone else got any other ideas?
Click to expand...

looting is never consistant, with experience over time you will learn some simple facts such as this.

There are also many variables to take into account, i do not belive that during events MA purposely decrease loots, it seems that looting is based on activity towards certain professions where general return is concerned and it can seem really unfair at times but in so many cases.. what goes around comes around. Loot does come in waves that are close to impossible to predict without experience but even then it's not an exact science to recognise loot behaviour, especially now when even more variables have been added due to current game circumstance.
 
iancampbell said:
Well, apart from the fact that a thousand 4-hour runs is about (tap-tap-tap on a calculator) 23.8 solid weeks 24/7, or around a solid year 10 hours per day...

The point is that for a noob like me a 50-ped run is quite an event. It probably means about 250 mobs at my level. Maybe slightly more, because I burned all the ammo in the loot as well which probably amounted to another 6-7 PED - and half destroyed a sword as well.

Not one half-decent item in 250 mobs is pretty awful. It's not at all the same as even a mid-level player burning 50PED worth of ammo, and is a much better statistical sample.

I don't expect to even break even (or even close to it) at TT prices, because OF COURSE MA needs to make a profit. My comment is that loot is uncharacteristically bad, and the excuse is the drops of special items that cost MA precisely nothing, zero, nada extra. Whether any individual player that gets lucky with SGA stuff makes a profit off other players is completely irrelevant to this.

Skills also cost nothing to MA.
Click to expand...

Ian stop reading the forum...
:rolleyes:​
 
iancampbell said:
Yesterday, having deposited (rather unusual for me) I blew about 50PED on ammo for a run. Decay costs were perhaps another 5-6 PED. That might not sound a lot to some, but believe me; when you're using an opalo with a TT laser pistol for a finisher it is. It took four hours.

Returns? Perhaps 18 PED of assorted oils, hides and so on, nothing in large enough amounts to do anything but TT it and most importantly not a single permanent item. Not a single one. No armour parts, no weapons, no faps, no anything.

I have heard it said that the rest of the loot has been reduced to account for the SGA item drops. Why? It makes no difference to MA; AFAIK the TT value of the SGA items is the same as that of the normal equivalent. I can't really see the double skills accounting for it either, because with higher skill you use up more ammo and decay - for example, just yesterday I switched to the second-lowest BLP pistol from the Omegaton because of increased skill.

Anyone else got any other ideas?
Click to expand...

You mentioned you "switched to second-lowest blp pistol because of increased skill." I'm guessing you are in the SIB period for that gun and so do not have maxed stats. You also mention burning a sword--how are your stats for the sword? With those two changes, you might have reduced your amount of kills significantly for the 50 peds.

But that wouldn't account for all of your bad run. My (very unproven) theory is that at certain times you will get smaller hits/items more often, while other times you have a chance at a big hit/item but lower average loot. If you are in the later time, you either get the hit/item and have a nice profit, or you miss the hit/item and have a really bad run.

I know I've had <50% runs before on 200 ped, so it's not suprising that you would have an occasional bad run on 50 ped. If you keep at it, sooner or later a global (or a couple minis) will put your overall average loot back on target. Probably.
 
Loot is......
































Dynamic.

I don't speak Swedish, is "dynamic" Swedish for "sux"?
 
Ya, like most of the people here said, you need to hunt a bit more in order to break even. And dont expect to get the big loots from small mobs, EU just doesnt work like that.
 
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