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So tell me again there is no personal loot pool

Rocket192 said:
This would account for why changing areas, or moving to a different mob or whatever almost always results in different looting behaviors.. Maybe the server sine wave is at a better position in accordance with the avatar sine wave and mob/resource sine wave.
Click to expand...

Basically. Serica's post on Pendulum dynamics looks interesting. I'd be tempted to bite but for the following scenario.

For about 2 years I hunted Maffoid to the virtual exclusion of all other mobs. I had a specific time I was available to play, right after work, and had a specific gear setup that I had created to basically eliminate dying to the point where during that 2 year period I would only die if the server went into a lag type situation. I had UL items for all armor pieces and the same UL weapon.

This made hunting very predictable.

I noticed early on that if I did not deviate from this schedule, my returns were the same, and I could even predict how many globals I would get a session based off time spent hunting. However if I went home early and logged on, or came home a bit late and logged on, my hunts changed drastically. Usually they would be less than what I was used to.

2 years is a long time to experience the same phenomenon, and I started to think it was more than just a coincidental observation. I started to see a bit of organization in the chaos. I'd try different mobs, and have wildly different results, but if I returned the next day to my faithful Maffoid and repeated the steps, I could remedy whatever problems happened during the previous days event.

There seem to be some predictable elements in the system, if you've got the patience and resources to spot them. I spotted this one through accident. I'm sure others have been able to create situations of their own which have also been repeatable. Thus the outcry when dynamics are changed for some reason. People find a niche, its comfortable, and it worries them when it is taken away. There are patterns here.
 
Magyar_Republic said:
For about 2 years I hunted Maffoid to the virtual exclusion of all other mobs.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, did you hunt an area that was not occupied by others? In other words, did you have the herd basically to yourself, or did you notice a lot of other hunters there as well?
 
Sorry if I wasn't clear. The triple pendulum is merely a common example of a model of a dynamic system, used to illustrate how system complexity can be achieved from combining elements that on their own are simple.

Real life abounds with complex dynamic systems - biological, economical,
And people study them, and model them.
Generally using system dynamics.

I originally became interested in systems thinking from a problem-solving 'business management' perspective, rather than a mathematical one.
 
Magyar_Republic said:
Basically. Serica's post on Pendulum dynamics looks interesting. I'd be tempted to bite but for the following scenario

I noticed early on that if I did not deviate from this schedule, my returns were the same, and I could even predict how many globals I would get a session based off time spent hunting. However if I went home early and logged on, or came home a bit late and logged on, my hunts changed drastically. Usually they would be less than what I was used to.

2 years is a long time to experience the same phenomenon, and I started to think it was more than just a coincidental observation. I started to see a bit of organization in the chaos. I'd try different mobs, and have wildly different results, but if I returned the next day to my faithful Maffoid and repeated the steps, I could remedy whatever problems happened during the previous days event.
Click to expand...

This could work the same as mining.. I've noticed that if I'm mining calypso I get garbage returns (mining the same two spots for the last few years) unless I'm mining really late at night (1am-4am) my time.

Conversely.. If I'm mining my favorite spot on RT I get the best returns and chances for a hof between 8-11pm

And arkadia I seem to only be able to hit big hofs on weekend afternoons and mornings.

It's not my play schedule, as that varies greatly from week to week, but it's safe to say I seldom get to play Monday-Wednesday until after 5pm.
 
JohnCapital said:
Out of curiosity, did you hunt an area that was not occupied by others? In other words, did you have the herd basically to yourself, or did you notice a lot of other hunters there as well?
Click to expand...

I was virtually alone at all times. The occasional blip on the radar would be somebody going through the area. Only when the maffoid camps were introduced and the mission happened did I start seeing other hunters. That was after the initial 2 year period, though.

I would usually hunt Fort Ares, and make a loop southeast, clearing out all mobs on radar until I hit the road, then circle back up and clear out all mobs going straight north, avoiding any argonaut spawns. By the time I got back to the fort my weapon would need repair.

Serica said:
Sorry if I wasn't clear. The triple pendulum is merely a common example of a model of a dynamic system, used to illustrate how system complexity can be achieved from combining elements that on their own are simple.

Real life abounds with complex dynamic systems - biological, economical,
And people study them, and model them.
Generally using system dynamics.

I originally became interested in systems thinking from a problem-solving 'business management' perspective, rather than a mathematical one.
Click to expand...

That's a really tempting train of thought. I'm going to try to learn more about it, and think about hunting from that perspective more to see if it fits any better. Either way, both systems seem to eliminate any 'unlucky' avatars and point more towards unlucky patterns.
 
Magyar_Republic said:
I was virtually alone at all times. The occasional blip on the radar would be somebody going through the area...
...By the time I got back to the fort my weapon would need repair.
Click to expand...

So you were reasonably sure you were hunting that spawn all alone.

Thank you, that fits my expectations. :)

A large part of my loot theory depends on a simple fact: We're all affecting it. The more hunters/miners/etc. in a certain area (spawn, or server or whatever) And the larger the fluctuations are.
 
I was on 267/1000 atrax. Last night I went northeast of camp phoenix to the atrax spawn. Stayed up all night and killed 733 atrax without getting 1 single global.
 
Serica said:
There's more formulae for 'waves' than simple smooth sine waves. Especially in dynamical systems theory.
Marco always said loot was 'dynamic'. I believe he was telling the literal truth, just not quite the way most interpret it.

Ever seen a simulation of a triple pendulum?

And that's a simple one.

Now imagine what happens if the lengths of the pendulum arms aren't constant...

What Magyar is referring to though is the addition of multiple sine waves, which looks like this:
sumofsines.jpg

Adding more sines with different periods and/or amplitudes increase the state of chaos of the resulting curve.
Click to expand...

Couldn't you feasibly have a portion of this sum be a personal loot-pool of sorts so that say 50 % of the avatars cycle goes to the global loot curve and the other 50% goes to a personal loot pool to smooth out long-term loot returns?

I'm just thinking out loud on what I would do if I were creating such a system.
 


If you see any patterns in this picture then you lean on the tendency of a "pool" of some sort and "timing" is of the essence.

If you do not see any patterns within this picture then "dynamic randomness" and "crap shoot" tendencies are rampant.
 
It all depends on which list you are on in the MA database. If your avatar is on the good list you will HOF regularly and find plenty of rare items. Note the avatars who always find new things...cough cough

Yet if you are on the naughty corner list you will go months with nothing, occasionally a small global to keep you going with hope.

If it is a sinusoidal curve then I am on the trough at the moment
 
If it were a really really simple loot formula, it might look like a skewed right probability curve,
valuesob1.jpg

where the function provides the chance of rolling a certain 'multiplier' value for loot based on rolling a random number.
Again, MindArk's 'share' represents a % of the area under the curve.

But I think we all know it's not so simple as that.

We've probably all seen someone who has a 'Midas-touch' day.
(This is the guy you want in your team hunt!)
We've probably all noticed that a particular mob can be 'hot' for a while - regardless of which server the mob is on.
We've probably all noticed a time (say migration) when every man and his dog were hunting in an area - but the big hof came from a much smaller mob (a merp in a eomon spawn for example).

And these are only 3 possible variables that could be included.
Some of this was far more noticeable in the past, before the loot formula was tweaked so that there were more 'average' loots and less 'high multiplier' loots.
I don't think the underlying formula was changed though, just the distribution adjusted.

JC, I'm not sure if the number of avatars makes a difference doing an activity makes a difference - although it could tend to increase the level of potential 'chaos' I guess.
(Think of the scenario of having a person just standing there not doing anything. Would this make any difference?)
Possibly more likely is some measure of the activity of the avatars present. (Gross PED burn/sec?)
 
Serica said:
JC, I'm not sure if the number of avatars makes a difference doing an activity makes a difference - although it could tend to increase the level of potential 'chaos' I guess.
Click to expand...

Many that camped Ancient Greece to do the whole cyclops missions noticed what being in an isolated area does to loot.

The same was true back in the old days. Pham was famous for his "hunt alone for hours" philosophy.

And no, the loot system doesn't care about someone just standing, but activity (read: decay) by multiple people does generate much wilder swings for all involved.

And no, they don't all have to be active art the same time. Activity shortly before your activity in the same area does affect you, just as much as your activity affects those who arrive after you.
 
I also noticed, certain "lucky times" for me but that was a number of years ago. It used to be between 9 to 11 Saturday mornings, but this is no longer the case. Maths is not my strongest point but is there such a concept as a time shifting sine wave - in other words 9-11 is no longer 9-11 but maybe 2-4 on Mondays? In fact following the unlucky avatar theory, is it just that I have never managed to find my "lucky" time yet?
 
Is it possible you haven't found your 'sweet spot' yet? Sure.
However, don't expect this to remain a fixed thing where you can log in every Saturday morning at 9am, kill 10 atrox and boom! HoF! :silly2:

Dynamical systems by their nature aren't stationary, and it's not just your own activity that affects the state-space. Magyar apparently found a stable time-space where the actions of others didn't affect his returns, but we can't all have our own personal loot time-space :laugh:

Also, I think our skills have an impact on what activities will give us the 'best' returns.

I've noticed this with some soc members over the years - the 'argo whisperer' went off them after a time due to poor loot, changed to troxies and became the 'trox whisperer', til that ended too and he moved up to levi and so on.

I can't tell you how to change your game-play to find the 'right' balance, other to observe things in a reasonably methodical way, and experiment by making small changes. The phases in a 'learning cycle*' are more or less:
. observe the current state,
. plan future actions,
. act in accordance with the plan,
. review the outcome.
Rinse & repeat.
*Note: there are multiple theories about the elements in a learning cycle, depending on who you read, but let's not go off on a tangent about that :wise:
 
There is no personal loot pool, there is only A loot pool that everyone can contribute & interact with decay. How you get a better return rate versus other individuals is to out dpp & dps them all &/or hunt for longer.

Whether someone is there or not it should not affect you in the slightest if your high on DPP, DPS or TIME. You can be high on DPP and Time and still come out ahead, because all DPS does is reduce the Time spent.
 
JohnCapital said:
My problem with "sine wave" theories is they don't jive with ingame action. Often, uber loot pops quickly after a string of no-loots. That's not a smooth wave action of any sort. Loot never gets graduallybetter, peaks than gets gradually worse. The changes are sharp.
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This is a very good point and whoever has played long enough has noticed this.
Magyar provided the 1st half of the explanation, i can add the missing part.

There's no need to carry out full scale calculations (along with the necessary database queries) for every looting event. You can easily lower the total processing power requirement tenfold by carrying out the precise calculation only in every 10th looting event (10 is an arbitrary number ofc, it could be a variable itself).
Those 9 "nonessential calculations" inbetween use a simplified formula and they are severely capped - they can't produce multiplied loot. No globals, no HoFs, not even a mini.

There's another wellknown observation to support this theory - globals/HoFs tend to come in waves. ;)
 
What if the wave attaches to the mob - I guess the problem then is how does the Avatar interact with the wave? I suspect I am thinking back to hot mobs.
 
Too tired to do a long post but loot in basics:

1. Avatar controlled.
2. System controlled.

In avatar controlled part you chose gear, target and time.
In system controlled part you have skill/prof stand progress and bell shaped sine waves
for system controlled bonuses.

To get best possible loot you have to peak and maximize all parts.
(A bit too simplified but as I mentioned, to tired atm. :silly2:)
 
It's more likely connected to mob types and/or servers. You move/switch to on other server or mob and your chance of getting loot changes depending on the current lootpool connected to that server or mob.
 
Serica said:
Dynamical systems by their nature aren't stationary, and it's not just your own activity that affects the state-space. Magyar apparently found a stable time-space where the actions of others didn't affect his returns, but we can't all have our own personal loot time-space :laugh:
Click to expand...

lol I just chose a mob that was a non iron challenge mob during a time when everyone and their mom was grinding Atrox, and I sat on it.

I still prefer to hunt mobs that are non-mission or not popular. I've been considering camping Oculus, as even with a mission they dont seem to be widely hunted. I did the same with Eviscerators briefly, and found that I was doing very well. Were I to find a full suit of Hazen, or Thunderbird Thighs (UL) Evis would probably be my next mob of choice.

I think the system is a blend of avatar and system controlled. To the extent that Avatars can add multipliers by creating a cash sink on any situation (including crafting, that's what residue is for). However the system itself works against any player action to try to reclaim as much of the money spent as possible.
 
JohnCapital said:
My problem with "sine wave" theories is they don't jive with ingame action. Often, uber loot pops quickly after a string of no-loots. That's not a smooth wave action of any sort. Loot never gets graduallybetter, peaks than gets gradually worse. The changes are sharp.

...
Click to expand...

JC, I meant to come back to this point the other day, but got distracted by other things.

There are more functions than just nice smooth regular sine waves.
These could be used (perhaps in conjunction with other factors) to produce the 'lull before the ATH' effect we observe ingame.

I don't really want to have to download, save and then repost them all to the Gallery here, so I'll just post links:

Hydrogen 2p wave
Hydrogen 3p wave
Voltage drop across a Capacitor
Harmonics of a sawtooth wave (notice how the graph at the bottom is built up from the addition of multiple sine waves, shown at the top)
Elliptical sine wave
and this nice little graph that shows all the trig fuctions, not just sin, but cos, tan, sec etc

Consider also that while some functions may be continuous over time, others may have a different base (oh, just for example, the cumulative net decay for a server) which would produce more of a 'step-line' graph.

And then there are non-continuous functions like this one.

I also came across a very nice graphic the other day which showed the effect of non-continuous sampling of a rapidly oscillating continuous wave, which ended up looking more or less completely random.
I wish I'd bookmarked the page, as I can't find it now. :ahh:
If I come across it again, I'll post it.
 
Serica said:
These could be used (perhaps in conjunction with other factors) to produce the 'lull before the ATH' effect we observe ingame.
Click to expand...

So, you believe MA intentionally built their loot system with some form of semi-random looking, oscillating wave functions to specifically make noticeable dips in loot return just prior to certain, but not all, ATHs? And the only real trick is to determine exactly what that wave looks like in order to properly ride it?
 
MA is not building this game, the participants are doing it to themselves!!

Play the players, not the game.

JohnCapital said:
So, you believe MA intentionally built their loot system with some form of semi-random looking, oscillating wave functions to specifically make noticeable dips in loot return just prior to certain, but not all, ATHs? And the only real trick is to determine exactly what that wave looks like in order to properly ride it?
Click to expand...
 
JohnCapital said:
So, you believe MA intentionally built their loot system with some form of semi-random looking, oscillating wave functions to specifically make noticeable dips in loot return just prior to certain, but not all, ATHs? And the only real trick is to determine exactly what that wave looks like in order to properly ride it?
Click to expand...

Waves are simply the graphical form of a function.
A function is just a mathematical equation.
y = X[SUP]2[/SUP] can be displayed graphically.

A sine wave at its most basic form as a function of time (t) is
Wikipedia said:
y(t) = Asin(2 π f t + φ) = Asin(ω t + φ)

where:
  • A = the amplitude, the peak deviation of the function from zero.
  • f = the ordinary frequency, the number of oscillations (cycles) that occur each second of time.
  • ω = 2πf, the angular frequency, the rate of change of the function argument in units of radians per second
  • φ = the phase, specifies (in radians) where in its cycle the oscillation is at t = 0.
    • When φ is non-zero, the entire waveform appears to be shifted in time by the amount φ/ω seconds. A negative value represents a delay, and a positive value represents an advance.
Click to expand...

Formulas are (relatively speaking) a piece of cake to program.
While I can grasp the fundamentals, I really don't have the maths education to explain stuff like Fourier series in any sort of coherent way. I'm sure other members could though.

Did MindArk intend to "specifically make noticeable dips in loot return just prior to certain, but not all, ATHs"?
Probably not.
That's just an observable effect of the application of whatever their formula is.

However consider this:
If the loot formula was just a bunch of random numbers, there would be no observable effects like that.
You wouldn't get the sense of rhythm in loot that long-term players eventually seem to notice.
 
The peds have to come from somewhere that pay for all the resources points. What I am seeing is that the trade terminal that you use to change peds into probes or ammo, acts as a resource spawner, distributing the full peds spent.

By making the resources harder to find, the "quality" of the resource will increase but its "quantity" will decrease, much like the way the crafting interface looks.

A sin wave fits this quite nicely with the apex of the wave representing loot, the amplitude would be the amount of peds needed to acquire it. The positive side of the wave would be regular loot, the negative side would be higher than normal loot, ie globals. It would take twice as much resources to change from normal to abnormal loot and back again.

Serica said:
Waves are simply the graphical form of a function.
A function is just a mathematical equation.
y = X[SUP]2[/SUP] can be displayed graphically.

A sine wave at its most basic form as a function of time (t) is


Formulas are (relatively speaking) a piece of cake to program.
While I can grasp the fundamentals, I really don't have the maths education to explain stuff like Fourier series in any sort of coherent way. I'm sure other members could though.

Did MindArk intend to "specifically make noticeable dips in loot return just prior to certain, but not all, ATHs"?
Probably not.
That's just an observable effect of the application of whatever their formula is.

However consider this:
If the loot formula was just a bunch of random numbers, there would be no observable effects like that.
You wouldn't get the sense of rhythm in loot that long-term players eventually seem to notice.
Click to expand...
 
R4tt3xx said:
The peds have to come from somewhere that pay for all the resources points. What I am seeing is that the trade terminal that you use to change peds into probes or ammo, acts as a resource spawner, distributing the full peds spent.
Click to expand...

This makes no sense, when you buy probes from the tt, you still have the tt amount on you, it's been transfered from your ped card on to probes that you have in inventory? You still have the tt amount.

Also, unless I am mistaken, it would be completely pointless for MA to program resourse points based on probes bought. I tt probes back all the time to the tt, resource points would appear and disappear hundreds of times a second.

None of this makes any sense at all. Unless i misunderstood, of course.


Rgds

Ace
 
MMMM You are correct sir, reversing the transaction should pull peds from the pool. Ur right , now Im confusing myself. So how was the game's first seeding of resources done ....

Ok idea is scrapped.

Thanks for the dose of logic !!

14:26 - Hang on a sec ----- Im sending potential claims over the map, probes have to be expended to find those resources that I placed. Ah ha it does work ... Will post more later


Ace Flyster said:
This makes no sense, when you buy probes from the tt, you still have the tt amount on you, it's been transfered from your ped card on to probes that you have in inventory? You still have the tt amount.

Also, unless I am mistaken, it would be completely pointless for MA to program resourse points based on probes bought. I tt probes back all the time to the tt, resource points would appear and disappear hundreds of times a second.

None of this makes any sense at all. Unless i misunderstood, of course.


Rgds

Ace
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
There is no personal loot pool.

Only personal multipliers, GL
 
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