Make Loot Beautiful Again

When people complain about loot most people do so about bad returns or unbalanced loot but I have other issues with loot atm....

First of all:
I agree that Markup is the key to having a decent return
I agree that shrapnel is a good thing as it gives instant 1% MU while e.g. peds in loot gives none
I agree that if you have a very long periods of constant loss you are doing something wrong, not tracking your returns well enough, not utilizing the markup in your loot or not paying enough attention to what's going on in the universe(I'm doing all the above wrong and thusly I have very long periods of bad loot)

All this being said:

I want items in loot, I want bigger stacks of craftable resources and I want ALOT less ammo and shrapnel.
In fact I would rather have all this even if it meant that I'd have less markup.

I miss being able to hunt feffoid, loot a h400 before your old one died and keep hunting.. now if a mob drops an item it's probably to weak to kill that same mob.
Or working to gather a set of an armor like; gnome, pixie, goblin, gremlin, shogun, kobold ,vigi, knight, hunter, paladin etc where most parts with the exception of a few rare ones could easily be looted, kept or sold to others or even given away to new players.
Not to mention that all the above armors dropped from easy to kill mobs, at decent rate AND were infact good items.

I feel like the only thing you can work towards now are getting skills... any other prospects are irrelevant.

So I say flood loot with items old or new, useless or decent, fill it up with wool, hide and oils!
I mean if I looted an Omegaton M2722 it'd probably be worth jack shit but it'd make me happy.. like half of the items that ever existed are now completely unobtainable and shouldn't even be used due to poor eco, but I wouldn't mind having to TT a few items

Because frankly if no one is gonna craft anything other than explosives using materials from TT and no one is gonna loot anything other than shrapnel and ammo then everything nice about EU is already gone and the symbiosis of Entropia is broken.
Loot looks like donald trumps fucking tupé
Sorry for the long post you may now imagine a potato

try other planets u might loot some items there. Caly is very bad when it comes to looting items. atleast for me.

They did that & crashed mu with it on several L items.. take martial for example, used to drop from segs.
Then they started dropping from feffoids, another mob & la that went to crap becouse mu crashed.
As a result, they adjusted droprate & now ppl complain about not getting items.
Don't think there's an easy fix & tbh I doubt they wonna fix it, look at the daily tokens.. another reason why less guns get sold. IMO, whoever balances that stuff should've been fired years ago
& 101% on crapnell seems nice but it's just to blind ppl, where do you think that mu comes from?

I agree but you might want to replace "Entropia" with "Calypso", because it's not nearly that bad beyond it, and at some places you hardly have any ammo in loot at all and could build yourself a bungalow out of all those guns and armors you've gotten on a single run (L junk that goes straight to tt, but still). It sometimes comes to the point where after returning to Caly I enjoy for a while that I have to sort only 3-4 stacks of different materials after a hunting run, and not dozens. That feeling comes off fast though and once again I see Caly's loot rather boring than convenient

tuxxan said:

try other planets u might loot some items there. Caly is very bad when it comes to looting items. atleast for me.

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Was going to reply something similar.
Johan, you should go on an adventures trip, it will be good for you!

das said:

They did that & crashed mu with it on several L items.. take martial for example, used to drop from segs.
Then they started dropping from feffoids, another mob & la that went to crap becouse mu crashed.
As a result, they adjusted droprate & now ppl complain about not getting items.
Don't think there's an easy fix & tbh I doubt they wonna fix it, look at the daily tokens.. another reason why less guns get sold. IMO, whoever balances that stuff should've been fired years ago
& 101% on crapnell seems nice but it's just to blind ppl, where do you think that mu comes from?

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That is another problem, some mobs are completely unhuntable due to poor spawns and lack of interest.
So having SEG drop martial but not enough people hunt SEG makes martial useless due to way to high MU...so instead they make feffoid drop it and suddenly too many parts are dropped.

Same with other mobs....I mean who the feck hunts TskTsk anymore? therefore if you place anything nice in TskTsk you wont see much of it in auction and possibly to high MU to bother with it, so instead you place it in the popular mobs but with shit drop rate...good enough rate since so many hunts them but too low to give a real incentive to try and loot the item for personal use

It's a lazy mans stupid quickfix

EDIT:

Svarog said:

I agree but you might want to replace "Entropia" with "Calypso", because it's not nearly that bad beyond it, and at some places you hardly have any ammo in loot at all and could build yourself a bungalow out of all those guns and armors you've gotten on a single run (L junk that goes straight to tt, but still). It sometimes comes to the point where after returning to Caly I enjoy for a while that I have to sort only 3-4 stacks of different materials after a hunting run, and not dozens. That feeling comes off fast though and once again I see Caly's loot rather boring than convenient

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But I'm a caly-man 40 different ark items with the same skin isn't much better... but you're right

Depends on the item a how much it's used.. they dropped hermess parts also & most where TT food or close to.
Oh & the big mobs dropping lower items isn't anything new, when I was hunting chompers back in the day they dropped both hl15 & korss. Then again, maybe it was intended to be used as finnisher

All the old-timers will probably concur. Loot windows used to be pretty, colorful, fun...and the rare time you got a HOF, there was that pause for a second or two while the loot window populated with guns, armor pieces, clothing, a FAP & mining tool, Atrax jaw and skins. Oh, for a return to the glory days of Project Entropia.

But on a more psychological side, those loot windows were themselves a motivator; it was the incentive to keep on hunting. Now, I see some of these massive HOF and ATH loots, look at all the ammo and shatnell and maybe an (L) gun and I could just cry.

I've been saying the same thing for years...here's a screenshot I made a while ago, it pretty much says it all.

Furthermore, when I see looted UL guns or items in lucky people's recent loot windows, and they have minimal TT value, I call this a MA cop-out...they give the person an unlimited item, but force the eventual owner to repair the decay...which probably puts money right back in MA's nasty pocketses. If you're gonna drop an UL gun, let's get things back to 1/3 minimum TT value or higher, shall we?

I agree man, even useless stuff was fun to loot, shrapnel + ammo make up way to much of loot nowadays.

Too little demand to offer more stackables. Too much damage being done by ul items. Ammo should be replaced by shrapnel but the 1% boost is being paid from either pp revenue, or the overall loot pool, or a combo of both.

Nothing will improve for as long as explosives are available. It is the single most reason why the economy is a bit shaky especially for grinders.

Asking for more stackables just means you're asking for more tt food. People are extremely irresponsible with listing on auction.. sometimes undercutting themselves 3 times or by large drops that are senseless. Have to sort out demand first.

atomicstorm said:

Too much damage being done by ul items.

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I agree with most of your post but this. I can't even REMEMBER when I last looted something UL...and the Vivo S10 doesn't count, right? The majority of HOF images in the hunting gallery mostly show nothing but tons and tons of ammo & shatnell, and maybe a (L) gun. Where are all the unlimited items, I wonder? Please point me in that general direction?

Oh...it's the ubers and chosen ones looting those, I guess...

Coelacanth said:

I agree with most of your post but this. I can't even REMEMBER when I last looted something UL...and the Vivo S10 doesn't count, right? The majority of HOF images in the hunting gallery mostly show nothing but tons and tons of ammo & shatnell, and maybe a (L) gun. Where are all the unlimited items, I wonder? Please point me in that general direction?

Oh...it's the ubers and chosen ones looting those, I guess...

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gotta keep in mind that people leave the game but the guns stay here.
Damage enhancers is another contributor, more damage done => more mobs killed so they lowered the droprate..
Big L guns also play in this IMO

Ul1000s, m83s, etc have been looted fairly often. But my point was not that they dropped often but rather there is a lot of them in circulation.

The loot structures needs an overhaul. In my opinion:

* no more limited stuff from any mob
* drop parts for crafters to make weapons, Armor, faps in lieu of L in the same spirit of the nanocubes adjusters and upgrading of ul gear.
* no more explosives or make nanocubes a conversion byproduct of shrapnel
* wood used for upgrades (housing)
* no more ammo in loot.. shrapnel only
* implement more house decor item blueprints that have to be crafted.
* allow items, L or ul gear to be smashed into metal residue
* allow pills and avatar bound junk to be smashed into ua at a 5:4 tt ratio in refiner.. complete the RCE circle
* reduce auction fees by 25 to 50%

Few suggestions.

I like a lot of those suggestions. Allowing us to convert our crapnell into nanocubes would be awesome...but not at a rate of 5 bazillion:1 cube, though. The rest are all worthy of consideration. But as you already said, EP crafting has to go too.

I miss looting items like the old FAP-5 while hunting exas and daks

Loot is great, perhaps the shrapnel could be turned down a bit, but at least it allows us to stick at it for longer. Shrapnel has saved me a few times when I thought I had just enough ammo to take 1 more mob and it turned out I was about 2 shots short

Way too many L guns dropping and perhaps even worse is they are very low decay now. At first everyone thought this meant higher markup because of the lower decay, but now there is a shitload of L weapons on auc for <110%.

Also need to get rid of those damn explosive bps so materials have markup again.

While you are at it, why not make weapon crafting a viable profession again?

tuxxan said:

try other planets u might loot some items there. Caly is very bad when it comes to looting items. atleast for me.

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True but the only issue is Calypso is no fun anymore and I haven't really hunted there in over a year. Every time I start I only get the basic loot and stop. I'm guessing most new players are doing the same. I do understand what MA is trying to do** but sorry it is not working.

** MA is slow so I hope this isn't going to be moving to other planets as well.

This isn't a droprate issue, at least, it's not like MA have set a ridiculously low drop rate % chance in the traditional sense.

The issue is inherent with MindArk's item looting mechanism. There is an item cap limit on all items.. once that cap is reached, bye bye items from loot.

If you want an example of this - look back in the day when Imk3 was first introduced... Bam, first two Hogg's killed dropped it, and it's never been looted since.

MA have an item cap to maintain MU on the older items... I still believe the old Marco post that "everything is lootable" - I just think everything has now been looted. I don't know if this item cap is manual (i.e. the balancing manager for each planet modifies it on some basis) or if it is linked to accounts created or current participants, who knows. I do know, for a fact, that it is there though.

I actually can't see a way around this? If you remove it, then two or three hardcore grinders will find the mob that drops modfaps or imk2 and grind them to death until the MU is 1k ped.

The (L) markup issue is less of a droprate issue and more of a variety. Korss H400 used to be 180-220% MU, but could you name me another (L) laser pistol, 40dps and Lvl 20, from that era? It dropped more often than any current (L) weapon drops... but had massive markup because literally everyone was using it. Now you have a hundred and 1 options once you hit lvl 30... especially with tiers bringing lower level weapons up the DPS scale.

Item caps seem to be in effect with all items L and unL though... that explains to me why places like Toulan literally spam you with (L).

I like shrapnel in loot. I don't like ammunition in loot. The only reason that I can think of for it to be there is to give the illusion of variety. I wouldn't mind if they replaced that portion of loot with (L) weapons, armor pieces, and faps. Most would be TT food, so it wouldn't change balance much, but would give a better illusion of variety. When you got a global, your loot window, or list, would fill up with four or five items, which would give you a momentary thrill, and sometimes you would loot the piece you need, or the weapon you use. A change like this isn't too much of a jump. More usable weapons are already entering the game as loot rather than from crafting.

Explosive Projectile crafting is not going anywhere, for the same reason that Lootable Space is not, because they are doing what MA wants them to do. Any realistic proposals need to take that into account.

OZtwo said:

True but the only issue is Calypso is no fun anymore and I haven't really hunted there in over a year. Every time I start I only get the basic loot and stop. I'm guessing most new players are doing the same. I do understand what MA is trying to do** but sorry it is not working.

** MA is slow so I hope this isn't going to be moving to other planets as well.

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There is no reason to assume this. If you've seen any of the new player vids on Youtube, they seem to enjoy the hunting fine as it is.

Avon(AJ)Jerrix said:

There is no reason to assume this. If you've seen any of the new player vids on Youtube, they seem to enjoy the hunting fine as it is.

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Humm, they look bored out of their minds to me.

Hence why they stream, so they can talk to people and feel a little less bored

Avon(AJ)Jerrix said:

I like shrapnel in loot. I don't like ammunition in loot. The only reason that I can think of for it to be there is to give the illusion of variety. I wouldn't mind if they replaced that portion of loot with (L) weapons, armor pieces, and faps. Most would be TT food, so it wouldn't change balance much, but would give a better illusion of variety. When you got a global, your loot window, or list, would fill up with four or five items, which would give you a momentary thrill, and sometimes you would loot the piece you need, or the weapon you use. A change like this isn't too much of a jump. More usable weapons are already entering the game as loot rather than from crafting

There is no reason to assume this. If you've seen any of the new player vids on Youtube, they seem to enjoy the hunting fine as it is.

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I'm at a lose here? You say there is an issue as well then turn around and say it's just fine?

But the issue at hand is that MA is moving away from RCE. So we can both wish for it but it will never happen. I still have a feeling that the loot balance will make it slowly to the PP as well sad to say. Yes we can fight over it and justify it but sad to say we just need to look around and see what is going on.

And remember when I had this feeling a while back when UB items started showing up and everyone was kind of giving me that hard time..yet VU after VU we get more and more non related RCE items. Then the loot on Calypso goes to hell. And last, sorry to say, we get TT Tokens to play the EP. I really don't like the way it's all going and I hope MA does change it mind. I really do.

O and forgot, MA sold off the platform to a casino. But yes I know how this looks and if MA is reading this..please prove me wrong I do love this game.

I'm just happy i'm not the only one thinking this lol, even though nothing is probably going to change...

Aio said:

MA have an item cap to maintain MU on the older items... I still believe the old Marco post that "everything is lootable" - I just think everything has now been looted. I don't know if this item cap is manual (i.e. the balancing manager for each planet modifies it on some basis) or if it is linked to accounts created or current participants, who knows. I do know, for a fact, that it is there though.

I actually can't see a way around this? If you remove it, then two or three hardcore grinders will find the mob that drops modfaps or imk2 and grind them to death until the MU is 1k ped.

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This is a really good point Aio.

It is sad in some respects, I used to like to loot my armour sets and would target the mobs which where known to drop the pieces I needed. Now I feel like I could kill 10,000 and never get the item I have been looking for. If any item is completely removed from the pool, then it is a shame for anyone who continues to camp the mobs for a few weeks/months in the hope of looting said item believing "if I just kill enough i'll get one".

That said I don't see anyway around this either. I guess it is a generation thing, our generation was used to this first player advantage and was used to looting the stuff we wanted/needed, the new participants today will never have this and therefore will not miss it so much . Also as we sell our items from time to time or move on then those high end items will shift hands and few people will be left who still have the advantage of looting a mod fap rather than paying for it. All will be fair in time I guess .

First they need to change Explosive BP.

By just changing loot and lower sharpnell and adding wools and oil will just lower ur returns as it is now.

atomicstorm said:

Ul1000s, m83s, etc have been looted fairly often. But my point was not that they dropped often but rather there is a lot of them in circulation.

The loot structures needs an overhaul. In my opinion:

* no more limited stuff from any mob (why only limited? remove all items from hunting loot!)
* drop parts for crafters to make weapons, Armor, faps in lieu of L in the same spirit of the nanocubes adjusters and upgrading of ul gear.
* no more explosives or make nanocubes a conversion byproduct of shrapnel
* wood used for upgrades (housing)
* no more ammo in loot.. shrapnel only
* implement more house decor item blueprints that have to be crafted.
* allow items, L or ul gear to be smashed into metal residue
* allow pills and avatar bound junk to be smashed into ua at a 5:4 tt ratio in refiner.. complete the RCE circle
* reduce auction fees by 25 to 50%

Few suggestions.

Click to expand...

That !!!

Beside that:

Introduce upgrade BP, that consume full TT crafted (L or UL) items as base resource + additional resources to generate the better item (L please).
Introduce daily trade in missions, that demand a trade a stack crafted items for TT only + daily token
Increase decay of daily token weapons (reduce ammo burn, to keep same eco on it), that way this guns don´t last that long and need to be replaced faster.
Increase TT value of daily token weapons (only if last point already is implemented), so it takes longer to get enough tokens to replace broken guns
Return generic components into loots
Introduce even more upgrade missions for old style (looted) UL gear, so the total amount existing UL gear get reduced (more need for L gear) -- slowly shift to a real L economy we asked for 10 years ago (introduction of L was really halfhearted)
Introduce weapons that need a special crafted ammo (beside explo) and make the ammo BP for that kind weapons use Explo ammo as crafting component

A lot more ideas to get EU economy back to a real economy

Sadly I don´t think MA will listen.

Aio said:

This isn't a droprate issue, at least, it's not like MA have set a ridiculously low drop rate % chance in the traditional sense.

The issue is inherent with MindArk's item looting mechanism. There is an item cap limit on all items.. once that cap is reached, bye bye items from loot.

If you want an example of this - look back in the day when Imk3 was first introduced... Bam, first two Hogg's killed dropped it, and it's never been looted since.

MA have an item cap to maintain MU on the older items... I still believe the old Marco post that "everything is lootable" - I just think everything has now been looted. I don't know if this item cap is manual (i.e. the balancing manager for each planet modifies it on some basis) or if it is linked to accounts created or current participants, who knows. I do know, for a fact, that it is there though.

I actually can't see a way around this? If you remove it, then two or three hardcore grinders will find the mob that drops modfaps or imk2 and grind them to death until the MU is 1k ped.

The (L) markup issue is less of a droprate issue and more of a variety. Korss H400 used to be 180-220% MU, but could you name me another (L) laser pistol, 40dps and Lvl 20, from that era? It dropped more often than any current (L) weapon drops... but had massive markup because literally everyone was using it. Now you have a hundred and 1 options once you hit lvl 30... especially with tiers bringing lower level weapons up the DPS scale.

Item caps seem to be in effect with all items L and unL though... that explains to me why places like Toulan literally spam you with (L).

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IMO Cap must be in effect on ALL existing items even stacks, but this is also what made the universe so good.
Before if you'd notice that the majority of globals came from crafting that day you could deduce from the items being crafted that a certain loot were probably being hoarded by crafters at that time.
This meant that 1 or 2 days later the very same item would drop a lot more frequently and this was true for all items and especially useful for loot like BTAU/ATAU etc.
It is probably still true, it's just that crafters has less need of certain loot and most loot is made up of ammo and shrapnel anyway.
(have you guys seen a single Leaf beret global since Starman left?)

However if you were to start dropping items then simply if there is no market it would go in to TT and be looted shortly again without saturating the market.
We're not talking about spamming angel or shadow parts, just introduce some of the old loot like fap-5.

Seeing 4-5 items in a global is what made my heart jump anyway... even if it was shit with no market

Can't have a good MU, unless they remove explosives BP... But with the MA stubborn policy that's not gonna happen. So they will keep adding missions which need oils to be completed to raise MU, but that's only a temporary solution.

johan roadkill said:

IMO Cap must be in effect on ALL existing items even stacks, but this is also what made the universe so good.
Before if you'd notice that the majority of globals came from crafting that day you could deduce from the items being crafted that a certain loot were probably being hoarded by crafters at that time.
This meant that 1 or 2 days later the very same item would drop a lot more frequently and this was true for all items and especially useful for loot like BTAU/ATAU etc.
It is probably still true, it's just that crafters has less need of certain loot and most loot is made up of ammo and shrapnel anyway.
(have you guys seen a single Leaf beret global since Starman left?)

However if you were to start dropping items then simply if there is no market it would go in to TT and be looted shortly again without saturating the market.
We're not talking about spamming angel or shadow parts, just introduce some of the old loot like fap-5.

Seeing 4-5 items in a global is what made my heart jump anyway... even if it was shit with no market

Click to expand...

There is still a cap on all items/stackables in game. I think it would be better for MA to fix the whole synergy between hunting, crafting and mining in the game, than to worry about artificially modifying loots to include a bunch of TT shit. It was like that in the past (peds, TT crap) and I can't say I was any more "excited" looting fap 5's and trox bones from Atrox than currently.

One key thing is that crafters cannot have market control. If everything is crafted (and limited), you create an impossible to pass 2-tier game. Anyone who has an unL item now will have a huge advantage over anyone who does not, because the have-not's will not only be incapable of looting a unL, they will be constantly losing money:

Hunter: Material A is looted at a 95% cost (rake to MA). 95ped TT needs to be sold at 100ped to regain TT losses (i.e. 105.2%).

Crafter: Material A is purchased at 105.2% cost TT, and crafted to Item B. Again, assume 95% cost (rake to MA), so TT crafted = 90.25. This then needs to be sold at 110.8% to break even.

Hunter: Buys item at 110.8%; lets say that the item decay is 10% total cost of the hunter's costs. Therefore, his "TT" MU cost is: 90 ammo + 10 item (effective 11.08 due to MU) = 101.08 cost per 100 TT. This means, the original 95% return (95ped tt) now needs to be sold at 101.08, to break even. So Material A now needs to be sold at 106.4%.

This cycle will repeat it self ad infinitum. There's only two scenarios - the hunter controls the MU, and eventually we're buying weapons at 600% and any volatility in our loots = suicide for the hunter. Or, the crafter controls the MU he purchases at, and the hunter always loses and the crafter always wins.

The definitive reason you need unL items in game is that they create a break in this cycle - they have defined costs (no MU) which is only related to MA and this means the hunter can undercut the L hunters on MU.

If you move to a craft controlled system, the game will die as everyone will want to be a crafter, and no-one can afford to be a hunter. The reason why a "craft" economy works in the real world, is you don't have a natural rake on costs (just time). This is the reason craft economic games work as other MMOs too (as "gold" is effectively free).

My personal opinion is crafting can be a MU generator, if the things that are crafted are valued by the community higher than their cost:

- Pills - Loot, Skill, Regen, Reload, Critgain should all be crafted and use in-game components.
- Tools/Weapons - Enhanced BPs which should be guaranteed to have high TIRs (>1,000/lvl). Perfect for events where you need a DPS boost from enhancers
- Tiers - I never understood why it's so easy to self-tier. OK we had the first garbage system which was totally unbalanced, but now I can tier anything myself with looted components. It should be harder to tier items (unL) and the components should be crafted.
- Enhancers - Blank enhancer socket should be removed and changed for components.

Well Aio I see it slightly different.

Using L items is not the full decay a hunter/miner generates.

They always need ammo/probes that come from TT to use that items.

No need to have UL here.

Beside that there always will be people that use TT gear on low level mobs that generate resources for crafting aswell.

We have daily mission token brokers, that make a good source for weapons that are not crafted aswell (for all levels).

Even with a lot more upgrade missions, there will always be some UL gear left.
Beside that we have anual events that normally reward with UL gear, too.

IMHO the input of UL gear through event rewards is more than enough.
And there is old style crafted UL gear too, its not that super eco but those who want to save MU for L, still can use this (Madox 4 for example).

True Mad4 isn´t crafted very often as Ruga is extremly rar, but thats good imho, every here and then Ruga appears so every here and then a new Mad comes onto market. Even if used for an upgrade sooner or later another crafted Mad 4 will find its way in the market.

I don´t say remove all UL, thats simply not doable. Just stop dropping it from hunting.

Event rewards is more than enough UL gear -- 2-3 events a year on each planet === do the math how many UL items this will generate every year.
Even with growing playerbase we would be years away from a real L economy.
Actually an pure L economy can´t be reached due to already existing UL gear and existing BPs that generate infinite amounts UL gear on the long run.

My point is, the motor of a working economy is the crafting. This is fact in RL and needs to be fact in EU, too.

As said above, MA is going straight in the opposite direction, lowers demand for crafted with every VU.
Obviously MA don´t want a working ingame economy, what drives more and more players out of the game.
Whats left is the gamblers that don´t care.
While I smiled at people that claimed EU is a online casino in the past, I sadly have to say EU transforms more and more in a online casino these days. And thats just sad.

Avon(AJ)Jerrix said:

I like shrapnel in loot. I don't like ammunition in loot. The only reason that I can think of for it to be there is to give the illusion of variety.

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Here's my problem with both shrapnel & ammo in loot. Yes, shrapnel is good in that it's a slight markup over regular ammo. But--and I'm not sure how temporary this will be--currently, the shot count tracker is all messed up, gets lagged out, and you'll see the number of shots remaining of green shrapnel-converted-ammo not change for quite a while, it won't count down with shots fired...behind-the-scenes, you're using up your normal ammo but you can't tell how much you have remaining because all you see is the stupid green converted ammo counter stuck on a number. Then it finally catches up and you discover you have 10 shots left of your normal ammo!

I don't want to have to play "musical ammo chairs" to figure out how much ammo I have remaining by adding extra stacks of ammo, either.

I just don't see the point of having both ammo AND shrapnel in loots. One or the other, not both.