Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Finally something that isn't pure speculation and this clearly validates anyone who points out that it's not fair to complain before tracking some activity over many "loot instances." I'm guilty of complaining to my bf and after reading this, his comment was to decide on some arbitrarily high number of loot instances before averaging and then keep a running average after to track variations.
This is too much work for me. I'm going to decide to trust Charlie/Mind Ark because if I don't, putting money into the game is stupid.
I read a post back in January that got me to thinking and since I was relatively new to the game decided to try it out. While implementing this idea, I had multiple people call me a noob and taunt me for not knowing what I was doing and how I was stupid to hunt the way I did. I ignored them as I wanted some solid data to work with.
It's now been over 4 months of tracking runs and I think the data speaks for itself.
ammo/decay - 50456.3185
loot TT value - 49226.63
% return - 97.562865
During that 4 months I had 454,931 attacks, 399,038 of which simply hit, 44,833 that were evaded/dodged/jammed and 11,060 that crit.
The returns alone justify the method I was using, but that was not why I hunted the way I did. The post I had read was about skilling. So, add to the above loot returns 72,686.6204 skill points.
Before the invariable trolls butt in with their BS let me add that I had in excess of 110,000 skill points when I started this, so yes, not everyone will see those kinds of numbers if they also did what I was doing.
So accomplishments in the last 4 months using "the method":
stage 4&5 of Gallard, Carabok, Male & Female Monura and Arkadian Hornet
stage 1, 2 and 3 of Feran
stage 3, 4, 5 and 6 (twice) of Jori
stage 3, 4, 5 and 6 (6 times) of Halix
stage 4, 5 and 6 (twice) of Ostelok
stage 1-5 of Dromia
stage 2 & 3 of Oro
stage 1 of Zadul
stage 4 & 5 of Punies (Caly)
stage 2 & 3 of Merp
Accomplishments not using "the method"
stage 1 & 2 of Bokol
stage 3 & 4 of Hadraada
stage 3 of Nusul
stage 1 of Riptor
stage 1 of Tiarak
stage 1 of Mutated Hadraada
stage 2 of Oratan
currently 52/60 on Oratan Rogues
stage 3 of Argonauts
I am missing some things, but you can see that I did do a lot. In this I have pretty much proven what Charlie said in the quote above as I have killed in excess of 150,000 mobs in 4 months.
Sadly I did not make a note of my standings when I started but I know I was around lvl 21/22 in BLP pistol & sniper as well as level 24/25 in laser pistol & sniper. I don't think I was above 15 in anything else in my combat/mindforce skills except maybe Evader. I was lvl 33 VSE from repairing motherships, so had a fair number of mid teen engineering skills.
Currently (hit/dmg):
Cryogenic - 38/41
BLP Sniper - 37/36
Laser Sniper - 36/35
BLP Pistol - 35
Laser Pistol - 35
Electrokinetic - 30/34
Pyrokinetic - 30/34
Swordsman - 30/31
Brawler - 28/30
Plasma Sniper - 30/25
Gauss Sniper - 30/25
Knifefighter - 27/30
Plasma Pistol - 29
Whipper - 26/27
One Handed Club - 21/26
Two Handed Club - 21/26
Grenadier - 16/25
Evader - 22
As you can see, unlike some I prefer to work up all my professions. I feel it gives me a wider range of options since some of the higher damage Laser/BLP weapons are a bit insane in price. Having run out of the low HP level mob missions on Arkadia, I have to resort to (L) weapons to build Laser/BLP skills. Gotta love the Caly Daily tokens for that.
Hmm? What is "the method"? The "Method" is actually one of the least eco ways to play this game. Part of the reason I get a chuckle every time I see someone ranting about needing to be eco. Eco went by the wayside with Loot 2.0 unless you have one of the "Unique" or near unique weapons and do nothing but shared loot events to suck up peds from the un-eco fools there. Part of why I shy away from anything shared loot. Before the trolls start shouting how shared loot doesn't work that way, I will just say this:
All mobs in the game have a multiplier attached to them. It can be as low as .25 and as high as 8000+. Some people believe that the multiplier is calculated at the moment of death which is why they rant about wasting a high multiplier on a Chirpy. Others believe the multiplier is generated when the mob spawns. Only the Devs know for sure.
Getting back to the ECO thing though... let's say that you have 2 people killing a 10k hp mob and take no damage, one person using a Unique Sacrifical Dagger with 85.4 dps and 3.815 dpp and the other person has a Isis BL1950 (L) with 2.853 dpp and 81.1 dps. On each mob they both do 5k damage. This means on average player A spends 13.10 ped of ammo/decay while player B spends 17.52 ped. Having done equal damage, each will then get 50% of the pool (30.62 ped) * the multiplier. Let's say they kill 1000 of these 10k mobs and hit the average of 95% loot return.
30.62*1000=30,620 * .95 = 29,089 ped in loot. so each person walks away with 14,544.5 ped. Player A however only spent 13,100 ped giving him a 111% return while player B having spent 17,520 ped only sees a return of 83%. This is why I do not team hunt and shy away from shared loot events.
Getting back to the "Method". Let's say you have 100 mobs that the total multiplier adds up to 95.00, so if you kill these 100 mobs you are guaranteed an average of .95 on each mob. Using a mob with an average 1 ped to kill, under perfect conditions you will get 95 ped from that 100 ped spent. But now luck plays a part. Let's use an extreme example:
99 of these mobs have .25 multiplier and 1 has a 70.25 multiplier. Since the average person like to use weapons that kill mobs in an average of 10-15 shots, we'll use 10. So luck will determine how much we now win or lose...
Possible outcomes on the 70.25x multiplier mob (1ped/mob avg = .1ped/shot)
Shots - Loot
5 - 35.12
6 - 42.15
7 - 49.17
8 - 56.2
9 - 63.22
10 - 70.25
11 - 77.27
12 - 84.3
13 - 91.32
14 - 98.35
15 - 105.37
16 - 112.4
17 - 119.42
18 - 126.45
19 - 133.47
20 - 140.5
So, with luck I now have the chance to end up with anything from a loss of 40 ped to a gain of 64.5, all depending on how many crits or misses I have on that global mob.
The 'Method" minimizes this swing. Using it in the above scenario I would either lose 5 ped or if lucky come out 64.5, 134.75 or even 205 ped ahead. But this of course is an extreme example even though it proves the point.
Ammo+decay in times the multiplier = loot out. If you are lucky you will crit on the .25-.99 multipliers and get evaded/dodged/jammed on the 1.0+ multipliers. Nothing is worse than seeing yourself miss 3-4 times on a .25 multiplier. Except maybe critting 2 or 3 times on that 500 multiplier... 3 crits + 4 good shots = ~.7ped * 500 = 350 ped global, nice in itself, but 3 misses + 12 fair shots = ~1.5 ped * 500 = 750 ped global...
97.56% return not including MU on over 50k ped cycled speaks volumes to me... and those 72k skill points might even be worth more than the 2.44%....
(go and r*pe dome2!?)
