Dear MA: We Need More DPS

Detritus

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Detritus the Troll
I feel like I have enough observational data from hunting now to come to the conclusion that being able to kill mobs quickly (within 3-5 shots) has a meaningful impact on your returns. I have heard others say this as well, but now I have actually tested it a bit.

Maybe this is not actually part of the loot algorithm (I suspect it's not), but an unintended statistical side effect. Logically, the more loot events you can get to occur in a given period of time, the more likely you will be to hit mults and item drops during RNG waves.

At any rate, this brings me to my request/suggestion - we need way more DPS.

If you take a mob that has, say 1K HP - you need about 200dps on the low end to kill it efficiently. There's a big level gap here though. With my highest weapon skill, 52, I can only pull around 80dps (amped ArM BC-50, for example). However, a 1K HP mob is usually around a L10-L12 mob. So with a L52 weapon skill I can't effectively hunt a L10 mob. On the flip side, the high end players that actually can pull 200dps probably aren't that interested in hunting a lot of L10 mobs either.

Please give us some weapons that we can use to hunt mobs at our skill level; or if I'm just dead wrong about all this please tell me what I'm missing here.
 
I feel like I have enough observational data from hunting now to come to the conclusion that being able to kill mobs quickly (within 3-5 shots) has a meaningful impact on your returns. I have heard others say this as well, but now I have actually tested it a bit.

Maybe this is not actually part of the loot algorithm (I suspect it's not), but an unintended statistical side effect. Logically, the more loot events you can get to occur in a given period of time, the more likely you will be to hit mults and item drops during RNG waves.

At any rate, this brings me to my request/suggestion - we need way more DPS.

If you take a mob that has, say 1K HP - you need about 200dps on the low end to kill it efficiently. There's a big level gap here though. With my highest weapon skill, 52, I can only pull around 80dps (amped ArM BC-50, for example). However, a 1K HP mob is usually around a L10-L12 mob. So with a L52 weapon skill I can't effectively hunt a L10 mob. On the flip side, the high end players that actually can pull 200dps probably aren't that interested in hunting a lot of L10 mobs either.

Please give us some weapons that we can use to hunt mobs at our skill level; or if I'm just dead wrong about all this please tell me what I'm missing here.

I think you are correct about this, I have observed the same things you have. Even though I am a level 32 Laser Sniper I tend to stick to level 6-18 mobs because it just takes too long to kill higher level mobs. But if MA were to double or triple the DPS of current guns, Armors would become practically pointless and I think that there is an intent here as part of the general gameplay experience for players to have a need for knowing what damage types mobs they want to kill deal and finding the right armor in order to protect against it efficiently. I don't think Armor is only intended for melee weapon yielders.
 
Maybe you should hunt lvl 5 mobs then ?

I do currently stick within low level mobs that I have the DPS for. That's my point though, it would be nice if I could hunt bigger than level 5, since my weapon skill is 52. It just seems like there's a big gap between mob level and player level.

But if MA were to double or triple the DPS of current guns, Armors would become practically pointless

I see what you're saying, but I don't think it would make armor pointless. In fact the latest changes make armor generally cheaper to use than faps, so even hunting a L10 mob I would still wear armor to avoid the defense costs of fapping. Even if you can kill it within 5 shots, you are still going to get hit here and there.
 
At any rate, this brings me to my request/suggestion - we need way more DPS.

If you take a mob that has, say 1K HP - you need about 200dps on the low end to kill it efficiently.

I feel that, to get higher dps, you just need to reach a higher level first. That's part of the game.
amped and tiered, many weapons are over 200dps, even a simple t10 mod merc can reach 200dps with A204hyper, 15% reload ring and some FB/CH
 
I feel that, to get higher dps, you just need to reach a higher level first. That's part of the game.
amped and tiered, many weapons are over 200dps, even a simple t10 mod merc can reach 200dps with A204hyper, 15% reload ring and some FB/CH

Sure, I get that. I wasn't focused on a particular number, my point is just that there's a big difference between mob level and player level, or maybe that's how it's supposed to be and I am just misunderstanding the numbers.

I mean, I think you are one of the highest level hunters right? What DPS can you get, and how does that compare to the mobs you hunt?
 
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Have you tried damage enhancers? Maybe they improve your returns even after MU.
 
yea i think the faster you kill a mob the better, but its more complicated than that. im gonna post my loot theory now. because usually when i speak i seem an alien to other
 
It sounds like with loot 2.0 you're noticing some extra TT when you load up a mob with some overkill.

At 20 - 33% damage per hit you're often hitting a mob with roughly 10 - 30% more TT than it takes to kill it, and the loot 2.0 engine will definitely compensate you for this by adding more shrapnel to your loot.

This is easy to test for. Moving ar-matrix 30 to clericdagger 3c (~ 60% eff. vs ~24% eff should be reducing loot by something like 2.5%) was moving my "base" return on small longtooth from 2.xx to 4.xx per kill. Smaller mobs give similar results every time. Proportionately,of course.

That 'session' was a large TT loss overall, BTW. Lots of fun though. You're going to see the exact same returns over time doing this consistently but also, as long as things are working correctly wreck your loot quality for large stacks of shrapnel.

I've done a lot of small testing on loot quantity effects but loot quality is more nebulous, MA haven't given us nearly the info on that but I find that handling the kill in 20 - 45 seconds leaves me with occasional drops of extractors, hides, hairspray, partial TT items, etcetera. Regardless of mob.

High regen or big fat mobs allow for more time spent loading the TT input but have a little higher risk of volatility of course... I've been hunting ambu a few times a week lately and swapping from Ar-Matrix 30 to Enigma L3 CDF i don't really notice a significant overall change. The L3 gives me slightly faster kills (+ about 18% DPS for the same level and weapon efficiency within a couple percent) but moving the kill from 30 - 35 shots to 25 - 30 shots still seems less important than whatever mood lootius is in today.

Walking away from a 200 PED session at ambu doesn't feel significantly different with either gun. More ambu with the higher DPS but less TT input per kill not battling their regen as much means that if the increased kill count doesn't pay off in an extra multi or two, it's not notably different to the TT result of the hunt. Strict logging over a few thousand kills might show a clear effect of the average 18% increase in kill speed on loot quality but as long as it's still in that 20 - 45 seconds per kill the paint cans and extractors continue to drop on occasion.

I went and hunted some levi and let me just confirm that you DEFINITELY don't want to be taking a few minutes soloing a mob and then loot it with <20 looter. So many 2.xx PED levi that a 67 PED global sort of pissed me off.

Anyways some of this is only related to your question but it sounds to me exactly like you're pumping in extra TT and still basing your average loot expectations on a loot 1.0 style fixed TT input based on the mob's HP. This will come back for you in loot quality (probably) but if you're hitting good multis with the turnover it might be less overall hassle than managing stacks of low TT loot with MV.

There's a lot you can do to affect loot right now. I'm not even vaguely sure the impact of over armoring on loot quality but based on realizing the other day that what I though may have been healing loot from 2 pec decay on divine intervention was probably shared loot based on armor decay I took healing hunters at the event.

If I can find a friendly group or hunter today I might get some screencaps of me taking loot without ever shooting or healing at all, in a shared event spawn. I got loot going into the fort lahar event last night to make a waypoint for a player, and I never even equipped a weapon or healing tool. That cleared up the Divine Intervention mystery right away.

Ok I'm swerving off topic because of the armor thing but in relation to what you're saying here, I don't think more DPS is going to change the overall situation a lot. There are lots of things you can use to overkill a mob and in other people's testing as well as mine it has a clear and immediate impact to the loot.

If you're not carrying this out to thousands of events (yet, I know you just got back) the end result may not be clear but in the end you should be walking away with a similar TT return overall. Taking a little more time may result in you receiving more interesting loot.

For the armoring thing, it's a classic compromise. If you are hunting that far downlevel you should probably ditch the armor when you're able to focus on hunting. It's good for your avatar. But IDC about standing in a could of punies in mah'ketta or gremlin /5b it's so much cheaper to wear armor right now. :wtg:

Seeing armor decay returned as loot even when not shooting or healing a shooter has got me fascinated at the moment. It brings me back around to questions about healer loot and defense costs being returned in general. And also my last sentence about building your skills. TBH maybe you would rather add straight TT to the input for the loot event, than skill at this stage.

I wonder what happens if I feed an extra 10 PED tt into a maff before someone kills it. I wonder if it has to be actually armor, of if it can be my car.

Sorry, that's a lot of extra information, but it sounds like you might be interested. I had a great time figuring out that as long as I kept an equivalent ar-matrix around for backup during periods when DPS swing low I can do just fine for a while (hunting appropriate mobs of course) with a FreanD Delta as the ar-matrix in terms of average TT over a few hundred or couple thousand events.

This saves quite a bit on (L) MU but if you get distracted and carry on during the wrong times the system will take back any savings with a long streak of low average damage per hit and rather than turning into an "overkill bonus" situation you're moving into flat inefficiency. It also means that during those times you are feeding a little extra into the bonus pool.

I love that bonus pool. It forgives so much. Second Shrapnel has saved many a session for me now.

It's a big thing to get used to, that you're controlling (well, managing) the TT input to a hunting loot event which is something that wasn't even a consideration in the old system. The nice part though (for some people, I guess) is that it still seems to be the same old multi cycle pseudoRNG in the heart of it.

Knowledge of certain aspects of the loot engine reaching all the way back to PE still seems applicable. It's mainly only a certain type of player that's screaming about the change. But all of the information that MA has shared is pretty easily tested and accounted for so far.

I still have real questions about how the two direct modifiers to loot quantity are applied but so far no word from them on that. I don't have a specific test plan for that as it would take at least two committed hunters with very different looter levels using a mix of weapons and probably losing PED the whole time at the same mob. It still might not prove anything conclusive and I'm not even interested in the turnover required.

A little carried away again, sorry. Despite some people's comments about entropialife I like this stuff, and exploring loot 2.0 is definitely part of what brought back my interest in the game. After "Loot v2015 - v2017" how could it not? IMO TT+ beats swirls every day of the week.

Continue keeping your eyes open to small changes. Manage your attachments and gear to keep efficiency high at the damager and you can push for more TT or more MV depending on what your style is.

Get your looter level up. 100% that's my top new priority for "avatar development" right now even over dodge/evade. It's exactly the earned bit of VIP adjustment the grinders were asking for and while I don't think it's unfair, honestly - I think it's a lot bigger blow than the "weapon efficiency" nerf.

Enough DPS to kill an eomon in 3-5 hits is probably going to produce one amazing stack of shrapnel :eyecrazy:

I don't think anyone hoping for item drops wants to do this to their loot quality.
 
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Dps is a limiter how many peds you can cycle and faster cycling equals bigger loss of peds in the same amount of time. Handing over high dps tools to beginner level players is like adding fuel to fire on their bankroll.

There are ways to enhance your dps ingame and they all come with a cost but if someone can't part from the peds needed to get those upgrades they'd most likely dont have the bankroll to life trough the valleys of using that high dps tool regulary.
 
You guys who keep telling me to just level up and get a bigger weapon are missing the point. This applies to all levels. If you have a setup right now that pulls, say 300 dps, and you are out there hunting Yuka with it, you are not getting as good of a return as you could. For a 3K HP mob like Yuka, you need at least 600dps to hunt it efficiently. I'm not saying you can't hunt it, I'm saying you aren't hunting it as effectively as you could.

In my opinion this is a bit of a disservice from MA. They need to make better tools available at all levels, including ubers. I'm not trying to suggest people hunt out of their budget or skill level, I'm trying to suggest better weapons that would allow us to hunt more effectively within our budget and skill level.
 
... For a 3K HP mob like Yuka, you need at least 600dps to hunt it efficiently. ...

This guarantees 1-2 PED overkill per yuka though. That's a lot of "leaning on Lootius" right there.

There is something to what you're saying, I just find it pretty extreme. IMO, and especially after my loot 2.0 experience with levi, there's some point (hopefully a HP/Time ratio) where the mob starts to "forget" TT input.

As long as you're not running into something like that, loot 2.0 should have you covered on %TT returns over time.
 
You guys who keep telling me to just level up and get a bigger weapon are missing the point. This applies to all levels. If you have a setup right now that pulls, say 300 dps, and you are out there hunting Yuka with it, you are not getting as good of a return as you could. For a 3K HP mob like Yuka, you need at least 600dps to hunt it efficiently. I'm not saying you can't hunt it, I'm saying you aren't hunting it as effectively as you could.

In my opinion this is a bit of a disservice from MA. They need to make better tools available at all levels, including ubers. I'm not trying to suggest people hunt out of their budget or skill level, I'm trying to suggest better weapons that would allow us to hunt more effectively within our budget and skill level.

I think you should talk to players who currently hunt these types of mobs effectively without complete non-sense theoretical DPS
 
The easiest way to double your DPS is - get your wife a gun. :cool:
 
I solve the "lacks of DPS"-issue by finding other people for teamhunts and then everything dies very quickly :laugh:

Bonus-perk by team-hunting: way larger bankroll than solo & better loot-quality

Anyway, i was wondering about the DPS thing already too, i mean we have very high levels and high hp mobs but not so much DPS for those levels.
 
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...
I feel like I have enough observational data from hunting now to come to the conclusion that being able to kill mobs quickly (within 3-5 shots) has a meaningful impact on your returns. I have heard others say this as well, but now I have actually tested it a bit.
...

I went out this last weekend and did hunt tiny mobs with heavy overkill all weekend and through monday.

ELM Edition Emik s60 (25.2 max DPS)
CDF Edition Isis Proj Zero-Three (40.8 max DPS)
CDF Edition Enigma L3 (58.9 max DPS)

So many caudatergus, little shared maffs, and daikibas at first. Working my way from Icarus to the Orthos rig.

Loot was good, in terms of TT. In terms of items I got 1 rubio and the rest was all bones, shrap, and muscle oil. I honestly wasn't logging any of these kills but I was able to cycle for a very long time converting shrapnel.

I've seriously avoided this for years. I mean I've had a few hunts like this and it always hurt. A lot. This was great fun, the 'bankroll' was so low I wouldn't have cared about losses but I kept breaking even. A ton of fun.

In the end, due to a post from Corwin and the spawning setup over there, I wound up camping the orthos rig between my other activities for much of sunday and monday.

...
Maybe this is not actually part of the loot algorithm (I suspect it's not), but an unintended statistical side effect. Logically, the more loot events you can get to occur in a given period of time, the more likely you will be to hit mults and item drops during RNG waves.
...

I have to agree with you here, and disagree with Corwin on this point RE: the loot pills. I like to stack them up, 'age the meat', and then hit the loot engine with as many loot events as I can in a couple of seconds. Some loots:





It's especially fun to stand in the middle of 100+ corpses and take a loot pill. Of course that means an hour of slow loot to follow. I'm not into logging per kill especially this tiny stuff so I'm not really sure whether I'm hitting more multis this way, or if they just stand out more.

From this weekend I have nearly 40 rubios in loot. 4 lanceheads, 2 photons, 9 B-101. 8 Azuros. 5-6 PED oil at least (some got caught up in crafting) and right now I'm holding 7.4 PED shrapnel so that's definitely enough to push me back over 30+ ped as has happened twice. Selling this item loot for even half of the MV on it would guarantee me TT profit in item loot alone. No MV for half TT rubios though lol. I'll bulk trade them for some sweat.

Anyways Detritus this was a blast. It didn't feel 'efficient' to me it felt 'extravagant'. This month I'll hit 8 years of practicing to minimize expense on a hunt. Overkill would destroy your loot. Over armoring was a heavy cost. Too much healing the same. Efficiency has always meant maximizing damage per pec, and minimizing any other cost you could, and once you had tuned for that, killing faster pretty much always meant "compromising efficiency".

The reason I'm sort of rambling here is because thanks to you, my disciple, and a couple of other conversations lately I'm starting to take a new perspective on hunting in EU. Testing is showing that you are well compensated for armor costs. And after a few thousand kills like this, I'm comfortable that overkill is not a problem for TT returns.

These little mobs have a pretty limited loot table though. This probably still doesn't say a lot about 'loot quality' on mobs with larger loot tables. Nevertheless it seems like the message from EU was always "Be Careful or You'll Get Burned". It's required me to relax a little bit, but more and more I'm getting that the new message is "Go Have Fun". Bigger mobs to follow, for me.

I still can't even imagine hunting a mob like Yuka with turnover running up near 3 PED per second :eyecrazy:
 
I feel that, to get higher dps, you just need to reach a higher level first. That's part of the game.
amped and tiered, many weapons are over 200dps, even a simple t10 mod merc can reach 200dps with A204hyper, 15% reload ring and some FB/CH

guy talks about hunting a level 10 mob effectively with 200 dps and you mention a simple 50-60k gun with a 20-30k amp and a 8-15k ring.... :laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:
 
You guys who keep telling me to just level up and get a bigger weapon are missing the point. This applies to all levels. If you have a setup right now that pulls, say 300 dps, and you are out there hunting Yuka with it, you are not getting as good of a return as you could. For a 3K HP mob like Yuka, you need at least 600dps to hunt it efficiently. I'm not saying you can't hunt it, I'm saying you aren't hunting it as effectively as you could.

In my opinion this is a bit of a disservice from MA. They need to make better tools available at all levels, including ubers. I'm not trying to suggest people hunt out of their budget or skill level, I'm trying to suggest better weapons that would allow us to hunt more effectively within our budget and skill level.

There would be no difference between 1h hunt with 600dps or 4h hunt with 150dps. Amount of mobs would be basically the same, PEDs cycled would be the same, regen shrapnel would be the same as overkill shrapnel. And i am more than 100% sure that you (or at least 99.99% of playerbase) can't handle 600dps- it would be at least 7k/h PED cycled- GL surviving few weeks or even months at 90% return rates...
 
... even a simple t10 mod merc ...

:lolup:

"even a SIMPLE t10 mod merc.."

Like, it's like the standard tt pistol. Right?

As in, who doesnt have one lying around in storage getting dusty?
 
but armatrix have same DPS than a CDF weapon

with a :

armatrix lc-50 compare a cdf lc-55

5 level diminution are little useless than before
 
There would be no difference between 1h hunt with 600dps or 4h hunt with 150dps. Amount of mobs would be basically the same, PEDs cycled would be the same, regen shrapnel would be the same as overkill shrapnel. And i am more than 100% sure that you (or at least 99.99% of playerbase) can't handle 600dps- it would be at least 7k/h PED cycled- GL surviving few weeks or even months at 90% return rates...

yeah, isnt it just another case of gamblers fallacy?

Everybody sees patters everywhere.

I usually get the best loots when I'm hunting just before I need to log off.
Just when I want to log out and shoot that "last" mob all of a sudden I'm getting good loots.

So, what I did was, I planned my agenda full with appointments.
And all of a sudden I profited everyday!

And last months I did not plan any appointments, so I did not get a single global!

uhhhh.

But keep those theories coming. I so love to read them!
 
To clarify I'm not talking about overkill (which is compensated, btw), and yes I understand that total input would be the same and all that. I'm talking about the simple fact that dropping mobs quickly (under 5 seconds) seems to make a difference in my returns over dropping them in say 20-30 seconds, based on my (admittedly low-level) tests. Y'all can test it for yourselves and come to your own conclusion.

Anyway sorry I made the post, I wouldn't have imagined anybody would actually be opposed to having better weapons available.
 
:lolup:

"even a SIMPLE t10 mod merc.."

Like, it's like the standard tt pistol. Right?

As in, who doesnt have one lying around in storage getting dusty?
I thought the same when I read that post. :silly:
 
... I'm talking about the simple fact that dropping mobs quickly (under 5 seconds) seems to make a difference in my returns over dropping them in say 20-30 seconds,...

Is that a real fact?
Or just your impression?
 
Is that a real fact?
Or just your impression?

Fair point, it was a poor choice of words. I should have said "observation".

I have read others observe the same thing. But again, I encourage anyone to test for themselves. I'm a small-time casual player and don't have the means to test on a scale that would convince anyone in PCF.
 
Fair point, it was a poor choice of words. I should have said "observation".

I have read others observe the same thing. But again, I encourage anyone to test for themselves. I'm a small-time casual player and don't have the means to test on a scale that would convince anyone in PCF.

Ah ok, cool. Was afraid I missed some stated info from MA somewhere ;)
 
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