FYI: Player's Notes vol. 1 - Hunting Loot Mechanics

Season's greeting fellow Entropians and Happy New Year!

Like so many of you out there, I have played this game for years and have loads of ideas and concerns about the game we love. It has been an idea of mine for awhile to finally put all these thoughts, however big or small out there in some sensible fashion..

Originally, I had planned to start these player's feedback notes off lightly: concerning some small things, bugs/annoyances, simple feature requests, while getting into deeper topics in later notes. The timing of the end of the year, Merry Mayhem, and Mindark's new roadmap (in which even they are admitting to loot returns being an issue that needs to be addressed) as well as quite a lot of hunters reporting some depressingly bad returns lately has changed my precedent a little. So i will now focus this post on sharing with everyone some things i have dicscovered about hunting loot mechanics:

Notes:
I have read these forums religiously for years, even though i don't post much, and what I am about to say is in no way common knowledge and I want it to now be.

This is NOT a loot theory.. these are insights about how the hunting loot mechanics work and can be in no way taken advantage of or otherwise abused. The sole purpose of this post is to help the game as a whole, not me you or any other group of players. As such, the info is more about the way hunting loot works now and hopefully can gain some insight on how it can be improved and not just in loot returns but i feel more importantly the hunting experience.

One last note before i get on it is that this is a bit of a rabbit hole.. so please be careful with how much further you read on.. I do not want this to be a flame fest nor do i want to upset or frustrate people with Midark or the game in any way, but i do realize the info can lead to some upsetment possibly but it is for the good of the game and I am trying my best part to help improve it, so I'm asking the same of all of you, try to be constructive!

and here we go.. there are 2 points of how the loot system pays out, these 2 points play together to create our hunting experience

Hunting Loot Mechanic #1 - Min/Max Loots

Every mob's normal loot will have a set range: A normal loot consists of all loots that are not No Loots/fragments and are not multipliers (what many call minis)

A very handy formula i use is 300 hp damg per ped spent (roughly ofc) this is derived merely by taking 3.0 damg per pec and simply moving the decimal out to get 300 damg per ped.. this is a reasonable and easy enough number to use for the EU community on avg. This number also helps to set the Max loot in the min/max loot range.. the minimum loot u can receive will be a fraction of that (seemingly around 1/10)

Example: An Argonaut young has 300 hp.. this is the classic 1 ped mob.. 300 hp damg per ped, it costs roughly 1 ped to kill an argo young. When you hunt argo youngs all normal loots you will receive (not frags, not minis/multipliers) will have a tt value range somewhere in the min/max range.. The max being the cost to kill - 1 ped while the minimum i haven't nailed down yet but something like 1/10 we will say.. so that's 10 pecs, all argo young loots will be between 10 pecs and 1 ped (min/max) - These are also essentially "losing" mobs, at best breaking even.. this range can be applied to any mob in game.. 600 hp? 2 ped per kill 2 ped max loot/ 20 pec min loot etc.

So how about those multipliers? (now it gets interesting)

Hunting Loot Mechanic #2 - Loot Multipliers, Where are They?

I am defining a multiplier as loots that you get over the min/max range,, a loot that gives you back more in tt than it costs to kill.

Here it comes..

Does anybody know that a 2x multiplier doesn't exist??(!!) - you cannot loot 2 peds off an argo young (1 ped to kill)

Does anyone know that a 3x mutiplier doesn't exist???(!!!) - it is also impossible to loot 3 peds off an argo young..

In fact: a 3.5x Multiplier is the minimum multiplier you can get in hunting! - you can get a 3.5 ped argo young

Hmm crazy right? Oh, but you probably want some proof right? (I would) well thanks to Stafinder's awesome tracker/E-Life we have all the info we could need..

Examples in proof:

We have some very large HP mobs in game that when you apply these formulas of 300 hp per ped, min/max loots and the 3.5x multiplier minimum.. they generate predictable global minimums (they cannot global under a certain amount because of the minimum multiplier)

A few mobs display this very well:

Longtooth have 4890 hp.. divide this by 300 hp per ped and you get 16.3 peds (we will call this 17 peds for ease of use) so 17 peds per kill is the cost to kill and the max loot you get in the min/max range..

now take the 17 ped and apply the 3.5x multiplier minimum - this gives 59.5 ped minimum multiplied loot (again we will round this up to 60 ped) so basically a 60 ped global is the minimum global u can get on a LT..

Tracker verifies this.. you can click through as many pages as you need to, but you will not see a single global of 50-59 peds in there... i believe the smallest global was 61 peds..

Daspletor have so much hp that they can verify both the min/max as well as the 3.5x minimum multiplier

a Dasp young has 7800 hp. /300 hp per ped gives 26 ped per kill.. its minimum global should be around 91 peds

a Dasp Stalker has 16990 hp! /300 hp per ped is actually almost 57 ped per kill! so they have so much hp that a normal min/max loot can generate small globals (up to about 57 ped) and then their 3.5x would jump all globals up to 200 ped and up..

You can also see the pattern change on mature rhino beetles from when the beefed up the hp back in May, they now have 6khp and cant global in 50-59 ped range where b4 they were often (when they had less hp)

How it Plays Out

Not only are the returns often a big issue, but so is the entire experience psychologically..

Lets take my recent runs in MM as a good exmpl because it has some nice round #s..
I was in Cat 2. at lvl 49 just giving it a reasonable go, i shot for the whole hour, using a L1100/a104 (lvl 45 to max) so 1 full hour hunting and i was averaging 100 kills per run on the spiders. So the round numbers are 1 full hr hunting, killing 100 mobs..

of these 100 mobs.. 90+ of my loots on avg are going to be the min/max loots (cost to kill or below), then there will be 3-4 novas/no loots, and 3-4 minis/multipliers to round out the 100 kills. This is the avg experience over and over. The returns are frustratingly bad but also the entire experience you feel frustrated as you wade through 90+ losing mobs . Good runs are solely dictated on just how good those 3-4 minis you get are ( how high above 3.5x you get)

The best way to describe how the min/max loot operates is think of your weapons.. Both the high(max damg) and the low (min damg) are in practice rare, resulting in an avg damg range..

min/max loots are seemingly like this as well, this results in the avg loot being rather far below the cost to kill, and near closer to 50% of cost to kill in practice. And as such if you go on a hunt and dont get any multipliers at all, you will be looking at a near 50-60% return..

I want to stop here because i just wanted to lay these things down as they are for the moment. without trying to attempt any solutions or fixes..

But at first take, I will only say it does seem that the absence of say, 1.5x, 2x, 2.5x multipliers in our hunting loot could be something to be looked at both for overall returns reasons, as well as the overall psychological experience of hunting. Also the min/max range,, maybe the min is too low on that (and again i'm not sure what it is, but can probably be tested and verified easily, i only used 1/10 as an exmpl, tho its close to that)


so, what does everybody think?
Is there a better way to do this?

Mindark, Entropians .. Thanks for Reading! and a Happy New Year!

008

Plus rep... Very insightful... I look forward to reading more of your thoughts.

Well thought out post as always

Cheers 008, have a gun licence yet?

Seems...

Accurate...appreciate ur efforts!

Brick

+rep

I didn't realize the comment i typed in the +rep doesn't pop up in the thread(never used the rep system).

My comment was that I was noticing a similar pattern here while grinding Corns, I am only coming out with profit if I get a multiplier during my run. My runs are small, less than 50ped cost so it can be very noticeable.

Thanks for the input and a little better explanation than I was coming to (you seem to have done all the leg work I would have eventually lol).

Good job. And well written.

I don't think that MA adjusting those values will help us anything, since the fundamental problem is that MA needs money, and we have to pay.
MA needs other sources of income, more players to share the cost or to cut their costs.
(I'd prefer the first 2 options)

Very good. Pretty much accurately sums up the general looting system - obviously it's not going to be completely accurate as you need the information from MA's side.

It would be nice to see that information - it could never be exploited for gain by the player, just like in roulette you know the odds but that isn't going to help you win per se. The two reasons I can see the odds not being released would be that a) it would turn a few players off the game and b) it's an admission by MA that this is indeed gambling.

One tweak to your notation though would be in the min/max loots, there are actually two possibilities:

1- You have as you say, 1ped max 10pec min per 300hp, and MA tweaks the "per hp" to adjust tt return % or,

2- 1ped per 300hp is set in stone, however the min/max is a percentage calc on that 1ped, so you get .95 max .95 min, giving 95pec max and 9.5pec min, and MA tweaks this min/max percentage to adjust tt return %

I would suggest it's the latter, as it's unlikely they are fiddling with the "master" loot equation on a month-by-month basis, only on a major update (like we hopefully will see in 2013).

/mod note/ moved thread to Hunting sub-forum

+rep I really enjoyed the post and appreciate your efforts. Hopefully we can nail down the min return. Subscribed

¤#%"#¤%&"... Double post. Sry.

Regen HPs counts too

Oh btw... Just to make things more complicated:

Earlier studies suggest that the loot return is not calculated from the mobs starting HP, but includes the HP it regenerates.

This makes it harder to extract precise values for min/max and multipliers.
It also means that they *might* be an x3 multiplier after all, and that the x3.5 was really just x3 with some regen. Hard to tell for sure.

Vedder said:

Oh btw... Just to make things more complicated:

Earlier studies suggest that the loot return is not calculated from the mobs starting HP, but includes the HP it regenerates.

This makes it harder to extract precise values for min/max and multipliers.
It also means that they *might* be an x3 multiplier after all, and that the x3.5 was really just x3 with some regen. Hard to tell for sure.

Click to expand...

Yeah, this is true.

To find a true multiplier, you'd need to test on a 0-regen mob (say, cornundacauda) and log every individual loot.

Aio said:

Yeah, this is true.

To find a true multiplier, you'd need to test on a 0-regen mob (say, cornundacauda) and log every individual loot.

Click to expand...

0 regen mobs are a myth, all mobs regenerate. Some just not fast enough for you to notice normally.

Very interesting read...

Didn't know about x3,5 actually, well I never thought about it either..

Anyway, great post +rep

remontoire said:

0 regen mobs are a myth, all mobs regenerate. Some just not fast enough for you to notice normally.

Click to expand...

By 0-regen, I mean a mob which will not gain HP whilst shooting it...

I don't really care if it gains HP 1 time per hour, if I kill it in 3 shots. There would be some possibility for results skew, but the effect would be very, very minimal over a large sample size (10k)

Nice to see another entropian demonstrating some brains again ,,, we cant count on the loot , but at least we can count on each other

Very nice post, and your observations concur for the most part with my own.

From my experience, really the minimum return you can get (assuming you kill a reasonable number of mobs) is around 50-60% if you don't get any "minis", or multipliers as you call them (I have had lower runs than that, but these are the "outliers"). Usually it's closer to around 70% unless you've been really unlucky.

This is why when people pop up claiming ludicrous things like 10 runs at <30% I'm like .

I've noticed that when I do regular hunts on the same mob (same setup, same amount of ammo), I can usually predict to within 5-10% the exact amount of any particular loot material.

For example, when I was doing runs on aurli (every run exactly 1 full evil amp), I knew I would get ~50 ped eye oil, UNLESS I had had a mini or global that contained a big chunk of it. The extra amount will almost always exactly match the amount recieved in the global.

I've seen similar patterns on the MM mobs. I know almost exactly how much of any given loot type I'll have at the end of the hunt unless I get a global with an extra chunk.

There are exceptions to this, such as the Output Amplifier Components. At certain times they will drop regularly every 3-4 kills and at other times they will not drop at all. I assume this is the balancing algorithms at work i.e. not allowing any more to drop untill some have been consumed in the system.

Unfortunately I haven't figured out a way to trigger the multipliers, although I have noticed that it seems to help if a lot of other people are hunting the same mob at the same time; and if you have a higher dps relative to the average.

To toss in a firetorch.

What if the multiplier is on your avatar and not in the mob?

or in the loot table on the specific server?

Food for part 2

Good reading, love your thinking.

TY for sharing your thoughts.

Nicely explained observations, I was not aware of the 3.5 multiplier. +Rep

A very good thread, great OP.
Also to add a little bit to the studies here:
I tried pedes on Cyrene after they introduced the xx ammo to them to see this new layer of less than 1 pec.
They have the advantage that all are the same, with 30 health. The maximum normal loot is 12 pecs, plus xx ammo. The most I got in combination with 12 pecs was 77, so 12.77 pecs. The lowest loot that is not fragments or non-looter is 1 pec.
Maybe the basic argo calculation needs to be modified a bit upwards, but the range on pedes is at least a factor of 12, as we can see (dunno if ammo layer is seperate and static on top of basic rate). It may be possible to find out if the ranges of the multipliers can be identified more closely across several mob types.

On the subject of transparency, yes roulette does seem like an unfortunate close comparison here (gambling), but plenty of business decisions are based on costs and yields too. In fact buying wholesale and selling to your customers at mu is exactly that shopkeepers do to make a living, except that they do not go to the wholesale (bulk) market and buy stuff blind and for a variable tt return per 'purchase', which is what we do when we kill mobs.

I do think there needs to be more transparency in the whole loot mechanism, especially when killing or crafting for rarer or new items. There should be some publication of when certain things are in the loot pool, or are at least actively set as ready to be added by the system - a bit like an auction list. It is really frustrating to hear after a vu that some loots still need to be activated manually (when they are new). Effectively, people cycling away peds before this happens have ZERO chance of getting the new drop, and then SOME chance once activated. I do know from experience a bit about how semi-regular things drop, but that's a different matter.

Look forward to part 2, your mind interests me

Good writeup

Cheers,
Viper

Stefan 008 Bond said:

Season's greeting fellow Entropians and Happy New Year!
...
<removed>

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I got to admit I personally tried out his theory and proved it a few days ago when he sent me this in a message while playing. I was hunting halix to do the ironman for hours and hours. Never looted a 20 pec halix, so yeah he is right the 2x multi does not exist.

David Joker said:

I got to admit I personally tried out his theory and proved it a few days ago when he sent me this in a message while playing. I was hunting halix to do the ironman for hours and hours. Never looted a 20 pec halix, so yeah he is right the 2x multi does not exist.

Click to expand...

Only a slightly off-topic comment: crafting has a variable multiplier (the quality slider bar). There it is possible to set your 1x normal result to 2x result but less often (with more partial successes and failures).

Is nobody willing to say here what the top of the 1x range is compared to killing cost for various mobs?
For pedes (30 health) it is around 12-13 pecs (xx ammo in there) maximum 1x return for an average cost of under 12 pecs (not narrowed down more yet as several runs using different low weaps). But it is over 100% of the average kill cost.

What is the maximum non-multiplied loot on an argo young?

Some follow up thoughts..

It seems fairly certain now that the min/max loots and the 3.5x multiplier are in play.

Many posts here are right that there could be more factors behind the scene at work (and i imagine there is as well), but in the end, all we see is the min/max range and so that's all that really matters for us (the players), and all that we need to work with..

Also, I intended this post (a bit) to be somewhat addressed to Mindark as well as the players, in an effort to give some feedback to what we see and experience from our end.. I originally had posted this thread in the Dev's corner but was moved by the Mods.. It wasn't only about how we experience the system but also tried to highlight some possible problem areas in returns (missing multipliers) as well as the overall psychological experience of the hunt in general ( min/max loots, almost all losing loots, being over 90% of what we loot)

So, assuming that we do indeed have these min/max and multiplier barriers, what can that tell us?

Well I had some thoughts:

Is the Min/Max range a constant?

Using the min/max ranges we might be able to test a few things..

Weapon types and loot returns - Do all weapon types (laser,blp. mf, melee, rockets etc.) all produce identical min/max values?

In other words, Do I, as a laser handgun user have the same min/max loot values as a mf user? or a rocket user?

This could be interesting to verify...

A friend of mine reported to me (after these notes) that he had been hunting argo young and that the highest loot in min/max range he received was 1.24 peds.. this seemed a tad high to me, but here's the catch: He is a MF hunter,, so the next question is: Can anyone else, using laser/blp etc also record a 1.24 ped loot on argo young? or are the more eco weapon types have a slightly lower max range?

this could be very easy to test..

Does the amount of HP a mob regens affect the min/max range?

Much harder to test, but still possible using the min/max values, would be the element of regen.. if a mob was allowed to regen, would it still only produce min/max value loots or would it possibly shift higher (to compensate for regeneration)

To note, I personally have never been a big believer of either of these theories, but never discounted their possibility of existing either.. the min/max range loots could offer us a good standard to test these things against..

It still seems very certain that 1.5x - 3.5x multipliers do not exist in hunting..

But the min/max values i believe deserve a closer look now because they might have the ability to help us test some things..

Thanks everyone for reading and sharing your thoughts, keep them coming!

008

Stefan 008 Bond said:

Weapon types and loot returns - Do all weapon types (laser,blp. mf, melee, rockets etc.) all produce identical min/max values?

In other words, Do I, as a laser handgun user have the same min/max loot values as a mf user? or a rocket user?

This could be interesting to verify...

A friend of mine reported to me (after these notes) that he had been hunting argo young and that the highest loot in min/max range he received was 1.24 peds.. this seemed a tad high to me, but here's the catch: He is a MF hunter,, so the next question is: Can anyone else, using laser/blp etc also record a 1.24 ped loot on argo young? or are the more eco weapon types have a slightly lower max range?

this could be very easy to test..

Does the amount of HP a mob regens affect the min/max range?

Much harder to test, but still possible using the min/max values, would be the element of regen.. if a mob was allowed to regen, would it still only produce min/max value loots or would it possibly shift higher (to compensate for regeneration)

Click to expand...

For the first question, I would be very, very much surprised if there was a difference between laser / blp / MF / explosives / melee; as long as they had the same dps - I say this because leading onto your second question...

I am a believer that the more a mob regenerates, the more loot you will get (up to a certain point). I have experienced this myself on Combibo Brood Mothers - I use the same knife that I use for all the other bibo's, and therefore the CBM regens a fair bit. I can confirm that I've received many loots above the 3 dmg/pec max loot (710hp = 237pec maxloot) yet below the 3.5x multiplier (237*3.5 = 828pec) - loots in the 350pec range - which would make sense as the CBM is a high regen mob, I would estimate that each kill actually is worth 1000hp or slightly more.

Nice post, I had a similar view of how it works. My general rule of thumb is that I need 50% of my ammo used during a round in globals/hofs to break even. I.e. 500ped hunting round = 250ped in globals/hofs to break even.

The mob in itself dun matter, but the probability of getting the "multiplier bonus" you speak of is obviously more likely if you kill 200mobs in a round rather than killing 30-40 mobs. This can clearly be seen when hunting smaller mobs, since the killrate is higher and you simply get more "data". Last night I hunted longus, got 3 globals and a lot of HVs (high value loot 20-40pedders) in the same round and ended up with +60ish ped in tt. Every round i done today has been without globals and hofs and I ended up losing 150-200ped each round. So while my 50% in globals theory is an oversimplification of what you said, it is a easy way of getting an indication of what you should expect in returns.

Anyway, nice post. Hope MA follow up on their promise stated in the 2013 road map and sort out the loot, because as it is now, it is very costly to play the game even if you do play eco-smart.

Stefan 008 Bond said:

It seems fairly certain now that the min/max loots and the 3.5x multiplier are in play.

A friend of mine reported to me (after these notes) that he had been hunting argo young and that the highest loot in min/max range he received was 1.24 peds.. this seemed a tad high to me, but here's the catch: He is a MF hunter,, so the next question is: Can anyone else, using laser/blp etc also record a 1.24 ped loot on argo young? or are the more eco weapon types have a slightly lower max range?

Thanks everyone for reading and sharing your thoughts, keep them coming!

Click to expand...

well, honing in on things more closely, I'd say the 1.24 ped argo was pretty much spot on as a 300 hp mob, if my 30 hp mobs give a max of presumably 12.99 pecs. What I was unsure of is whether that extra xx ammo layer was added with or without regard to what the original payout algorithm said. From that argo, I'd say it means that the minimobs don't bump up against the last payout possibility at a round pec now and can pay out 2 more digits of the algorithm figure.

Also, my lowest multiplier is 36 pecs - that's only above a x3.5 if we take 10 pecs as the base, but we know the non-multies go above that, apparently to 29.99% more than 10 pecs (or a ped on argos if we assume that is a base of 3hp per pec).

Anyway, we are getting there.

Stefan 008 Bond said:

...
A friend of mine reported to me (after these notes) that he had been hunting argo young and that the highest loot in min/max range he received was 1.24 peds.. this seemed a tad high to me, but here's the catch: He is a MF hunter,, so the next question is: Can anyone else, using laser/blp etc also record a 1.24 ped loot on argo young?
...

Click to expand...

If he took long to MF kill the argo, it would have regenerated more, explaining the extra loot.

I'm sure the weapon type doesn't affect min/max loot.

Stefan 008 Bond said:

...
Does the amount of HP a mob regens affect the min/max range?

Much harder to test, but still possible using the min/max values, would be the element of regen.. if a mob was allowed to regen, would it still only produce min/max value loots or would it possibly shift higher (to compensate for regeneration)

...

Click to expand...

The min/max itself is not affected, but the HP it is calculated from depends on regeneration.
It's not hard to test, but takes a little time. As I wrote earlier: It's already been done.

Stefan 008 Bond said:

It still seems very certain that 1.5x - 3.5x multipliers do not exist in hunting..

But the min/max values i believe deserve a closer look now because they might have the ability to help us test some things..

...

Click to expand...

Yup if it was tested thoroughly, maybe we could even update entropia with calculated min/max loots (without regeneration). That would be a neat feature.

"We" - You know what I mean

+rep. Great stuff!

To calc total HP of the mob via regens = count the total damage dealt over the combat.

Then use that value to compute min/max and multiplier values.

Very nice thread, and I agree with the theory of the OP

It does seem that the 1 PED MAX per 300 HP is a bit low. Last night I killed 2 Argo Young's with a MarCorp Kallous-4 + A105, that looted 1.08 PED and 1.11 PED respectively, and that seems just a bit much for it to be accounted to HP regen.

And I had 5 Mini/Multiplier loots between 8 PED and 12 PED (not all on Young's though).