Hey man
I dunno why the heck I am even writing this, but here it goes.
I am one of those whose life has been affected by gambling (arguably in my case not greed, but that is less relevant to the topic). And by "affected" I mean alot, family, friends, debts etc. Can't really say if for the worse or better, it was simply my life and this is how it went, no point in meaningless regrets (while there is some place for meaningful regrets where it matters, is normal).
It took me +-10 years to get out of it and funny enough Entropia helped me.
It is true that the mechanic is the same as a casino, judged from tt point of view, but that is precisely where it ends and beside that is where the actual game begins. As a direct game, EU is not much, there are RPGs and FPS out there who do a much better job, but the metagame is one of the most exquisite available.
It is okay to pursue gain and profit, the game counts on your greed. As long as is not so powerful as to degrade your humanity and your relations, greed is acceptable and fundamentally productive if harnassed and controlled.
If you also have an inclination for gambling, there is exclusively one way to heal it in Entropia: numbers. Once I reached that, casinos are not even tempting anymore for me, safe for the pure addiction potential, but that never accounted much anyway.
Don't let yourself be fooled: playing against players exclusively (trading or services) and not against the system is not a guarantee you will not gamble. You can still try to hoard whatnot material betting on a price increase in an unsubstantiated manner, you can still promise more than you can deliver, hoping you will manage by some miracle etc.
I would guess you are at the regular "middle-age crissis" of any avatar: somewhere between lvl40 and 50 in your chosen hunting prostanding, or close to 30 on mining or close to 20 on crafting.
Is pretty much the threshold at which the inner mechanics start to bite you in the face if not approached correctly. Gone are the days where a 2-300 global or small hof means fuel for a whole week. That is, if you try to keep the expenses up with your skill level, aproppiate guns and mobs.
The only thing which you can do is to lay down statistics for what you do and analyze them. What you must master is exactly this type of analysis which in time should become almost instinctual.
For example, if you'd hunt I don't know, let's say feffoids. Pick a maturity which is okay as hp for your gun (around 12 shots per kill) and do that for thousands of peds without changing neither your armour, neither your fap, neither your gun. Of course if you use buffs, same buff constantly, as such a ring is better than pills, to be sure is constant.
You should log your expenses as follows: armour and fap should be considered defensive costs, in your burden, while gun decay, ammo and amp decay should be considered offensive costs, in game's burden.
Your first aim should be to establish for the chosen maturity and range of hp (you will have variations, you don't have anywhere a pure spawn of say feffoid guards, but bandit to raider is give or take same league) the offensive expense needed to reach the point of +- break even. 95% to 102% or so on the whole cycle.
But be sure to only compare that to your offensive costs. When you do meet this cycle (my personal guess for the given example would be between 3k and 4k tt expense), you need to check the MU.
First you need to split between what is reasonable to expect and count on regularly (oils, hides) and what is completely accidental and will not happen again next year (ESI, if they even drop anymore on this hp).
Then, on what is reasonable to expect, you should calculate wether your MUexpenses (MU of the gun and, say, MU of some L fap) AND your defensive expenses are coverable by looted MU in a predictable manner.
This will rarely happen for mobs under +-2k hp and for those at 2k hp and higher, the prerequisites (defensive skills, placement only on taxed land, speed of killing etc) usually makes it also a dead end.
But there are opportunities on every planet and the whole point is to be hard, that much I believe is obvious.
Same is true for mining, don't count on lyst and oil hofs to make you rich, it just won't happen.
Of course, do not forget operational costs, like fuel and
auction fees.
Of course hoffing is good, but don't forget few points:
- bankroll is extremely important. In the given example of feff level, at least some 3k liquid cash to begin with, just to be able to fill in an xls and check data. Only then you could extrapolate, if is even possible, how much to actually profit. As such, Entropia is the perfect place for "rich will be richer, poor will be poorer".
- if you do luck out on some fatty 4 or 5 figures, treat that as bankroll to ride coming bad waves
- whatever ped is on your pedcard, is ped on your pedcard. If you chose to sellout tomorrow, that is what matters
- whatever method or path to success you might envision, see above, it must reflect consistently on your pedcard
- be realistic about what "gifts" you can expect from the system. If you roll say 2k ped a day, the chance of a 200ish hof to be a lucky fluke which you will see in time it remains on your pedcard, is much higher than tenfolded, compared to spending 200 ped a day. I am not saying the chance to loot a 200ish global or hof, I am saying the chance to have it for keepers.
- be realistic that you need an investition for any degree of seriousness (or, 1 year of sweating and walking for fruits). If RL is not a problem, 3-400$ just for bankroll aside for a 200ish$ for beginner setup (say, a plated ghost, imp ares, some a104 and a L gun). If all what you can or want to depo is 20ish$, then see Goni's post, also need to be realistic and stick to swunting (which is fun as hell once you get the habit).
The whole point is to separate as perception the tt variation ("luck") from MU variation (will include here operational costs). What can eat your pedcard is either too low number of tries (hunting say atroxes with a pedcard of 200, something which the system DOES check or is built to pressure, however you want to call it), either negative MU trend.
See also 5$'s
thread on risk of ruin, not necessarly as numbers, but as mindset, that's what matters.
Once you get into this thinking, will become obvious what is gambling in EU and what satisfaction you can have out of avoiding it.
Until you clarify what you want, what you know and what you can, stay out of shared loot, events and teamhunts. Solo is the only way to learn.