Developer-Notes--2

[Ty Williams]

THANK YOU!! MA!! I MENTALLY FEEL BETTER ABOUT Playing The EU!!

 

[aia]

The general stress on efficency would imply that you are better off using as high dps weapon as possible on these to minimize wastage, as long as you don't get overkill ...

For (L) weapons, as a general rule, prices% go up as the DPS go up. Breer p5(L) is like 110%, HL11 125%, HL14 155%, HL15 160% (average current BO prices in auction). So you'll be paying more in markup.

But again, those who have a good repaiable weapon, either since the "golden days" or one of the few lucky ones to loot a good repairable weapon, are the winners.

For years I was using Katsuichi Determination to skill longblades, simply because it was the only option (well, there were the slightly better "Pride" also). Then it came Sib (L) longblades, like nano katana(L), but those had a very high cost to use (at say 160%) (these were crafted so nothign a hunter could hope for). The time when I could let go of(*) my determination was when I got in range of Sulfury(L) which from time to time there is a supply of in auction at a decent cost (on calypso - doesn't help if you're on another planet...). But when I run out of supply, then people who have repairable longblades (I think the first Dragon's Breath was looted in radar range at vu9 Emerald Lakes fields) doesn't have any issue.

I recently bought an Archon Sword with deposited money. It has decent economy, but it's a bit below my skill level. It's both good and bad it's got a low:ish TT value - good thing it's affordable (below 10k ped), it's mostly of use when you're relatively close to an outpost so you can repair it.

Back in the earlier days I used the mk2 for hunting/skilling rifle. When regen mobs came it was clear it was too slow, and it's deemed uneco to nowdays. Same thing for carbines as with handguns: Higher DPS means higher % - partially because high level carbines are considered "pk toys".

As for plasma, I've used plasma rifle to skill for years since it's been the only practical option. The heatrays were more at "snable" level, and the (L) robot ones korss level. I wasn't lucky enough to loot one from an Iota (I can't kill iota by myself either) - so for me it's still not of an option. Roughly when it comes to dmg/sec, with enhancers and crappy amp, the plasma rifle has dmg/sec at korss level (though at longer range ofc). Again, a few lucky people have been able to get the repairable eredicator type four and are able to hunt and skill economically; I'm not among those.

To get a hint of the kind of weapons that would fit my skill levels, here are my (hit) skills: Laser sniper 60, Plasma sniper 59, BLP sniper 58, Laser pistoleer 55 (...), (Gauss sniper 50 - never touched one), Swordsman 49, Whipper 30, Gunner 26, Electro Kinetic 39, Cryogenic 27

So again my problem is to find affordable weapons at my level. And again I don't have any mod merc or something like that to blast through the regen mobs.

 

[remontoire]

Hence, we get the confirmation about loot being absolutely random following a preset payout model. What's still missing is a statement about the payout percentage you can maximally achieve in the long run.

We did not get this. We got no information about "completely random" nor "preset payout".

 

[hoolioz]

+ REP MA for this Info!

 

[RickEngland]

.......... Unless you really upset MA then you just get left on the bad loot server.

I've had a think, and I must say that Mindark do a splended and fanstastic job. I will not have anyone saying anything bad about them at all (shame on you, you bad people), plus anything I said or implied that might have offended was either misunderstood, or an error of judgement my side.

hee,hee....smiling away here...

However on a serious note, nothing has changed really has it. I'm sure I'll still be shooting the same guns I was before. Skilling was good, loot not to bad, damn think I've had more small hofs this year than any previous year. So something good is happenning, for whatever change has been made....seriously, I'm not joking now.

I just going to try and enjoy time on line, can waste too much time trying to figure out the loot....stick to the old saying "loot will come".

Rick

 

[SpikeBlack]

The only thing it will change is that some people may stop hunting / crafting / mining earlier in a run knowing that according to MA there is no adjustment loot to account for previous loses.

The only other thing I hope it stops will be people shouting down other players who say they only get 50% returns.

 

[Luna D]

no loot pool .. probly a return per skill gain mostly ( ohh perc and hof )

 

[Nisha]

MA, tell us this, please: Is loot a wave or a particle?

That depends on whether you look at it before the click or after the click.

 

[remontoire]

For (L) weapons, as a general rule, prices% go up as the DPS go up. Breer p5(L) is like 110%, HL11 125%, HL14 155%, HL15 160% (average current BO prices in auction). So you'll be paying more in markup.

I know. It is not just the question of the weapon, but also that of amp - is at some level switching from an A series amp to E series or Shear a good tradeoff? And when? After all, you trade off efficency to dps when you do so, so it becomes even more important to know if dps is sometimes part of efficency or not.

To get a hint of the kind of weapons that would fit my skill levels, here are my (hit) skills: Laser sniper 60, Plasma sniper 59, BLP sniper 58, Laser pistoleer 55 (...), (Gauss sniper 50 - never touched one), Swordsman 49, Whipper 30, Gunner 26, Electro Kinetic 39, Cryogenic 27

So again my problem is to find affordable weapons at my level. And again I don't have any mod merc or something like that to blast through the regen mobs.

I'm about 12 levels (more on handguns) behind you, and I have the same problem of finding affordable weapons. I guess it will continue to largely be LR41(L) with occasional uses of LR53(L). Which have been maxed for ages.

 

[Infinity01]

We did not get this. We got no information about "completely random" nor "preset payout".

Yes, you are right... they did not say it's completly random!

here is the best example of it:

Now, from the above, can we agree that there is a preset

1. group of players

or

2 preset (predefined) mobs that can be hunted only by the preset group of players..


The reason for one of the above 2 conclusions is very simple....

During the recent bot events... we didnt' have such drops from the Hydra at a such high rate... when the whole community was shooting at them at solfais crater!

 

[Artrat]

The only other thing I hope it stops will be people shouting down other players who say they only get 50% returns.

I for one am certainly not going to stop this, because they are either a) a liar, or b) an idiot, or c) the unluckiest bastard in the entire universe. This recent information only confirms that.

Over the last 100k ped cycled, I had exactly one run that was less than 50%, and that was crafting a BP that I did not have the skills for.

If someone is truly getting consistently less than 50% returns then they are doing something wrong. I have yet to see one of these guys produce logs to support their claims, in fact the only guy who did start a log after complaining went on to show returns of pretty much 90%. If these weren't too lazy to look at their results properly they would see that their returns are not nearly as bad as they think they are.

In fact they absolute worst long-term return I was able to get was about 75% over around 15k cycled. And that was by completely throwing eco out the window.

I'll lay down a gauntlet right now, I will give 1000 ped to the first person who can show me evidence on a TT return of lower than 70% over 10k ped cycled.

The disclaimer to this is that there must be sufficient credible evidence to convince me that the results are real (i.e. not fabricated), and it excludes the commonly accepted "gambling activities", like high-end amped mining, amped FOMA mining, amp crafting etc. If I do not agree with the results I am willing to let the community decide in the form of a poll whether I should pay or not.

I will make a seperate thread soon to lay out the details properly.

It's time for people to put up or shut up.

 

[Nisha]

Tell me how can MA say dynamic and efficient way of playing in the same sentence. If an avatar/noob wins an ATH by doing something stupid we say ...oh it's dynamic ... And if an older avatar loses his shirt by doing the same we call him "inefficient" ... Or he can't play the game?

I cannot see a contradiction there.

If the efficiency/good choices they talk about are closely linked to the stats (skills among other possible factors) of your ava, then it is also dynamic, because your ava's stats change all the time.

making good choices will affect your results ... BS ... Why? ... It's vague

Ofc it is vague. What did you expect? - To get step-by-step instructions how to optimize your ava's return?

 

[Xandra]

Hi,

As you can see by the "Originally Posted Here" link in the opening post, this information was posted by MindArk on the Entropia Universe Buzz page, and made available for all community sites to pick up via RSS feed, so I'm not sure what you are on about.

I stand rebutted, ashamed, blushing and regretting!

Nevertheless I feel uncomfortable with the main discussion going on here, and not on EF, where it should belong to. 5 posts on EF, and pages after pages here on PFC, for a topic that is clearly of importance for the whole EU.

This excludes many EU participants that are not Calypso-bound anymore, and just strengthens the divisions put upon us. Actually, this whole thread is off-topic here, IMHO. It isn't about Calypso. It is about the whole Entropian Universe, and thus should be treated in an approbate forum, EF in this case.

I appreciate the link to the buzz site, but why wasn't there a link to the correct EF thread, a "discuss there" request, and a locking here?

As far as I know both EF and PFC are yours, 711? So why not have the discussion on EF where it'd actually belong to? Is EF bound to vanish now? I'm sure, EP would be happy about. More and more they're establishing as the only left interplanetary forum.

I don't know if it's this that you want. *Scratching head*

Have a good time!

 

[Fifth]

The only thing it will change is that some people may stop hunting / crafting / mining earlier in a run knowing that according to MA there is no adjustment loot to account for previous loses.

I can't imagine how the system could work without periodic adjustments.
I think we can safely assume it is based on adjustments. If so the system has to "remember" some info (inside a certain time frame). Our only problem is - we don't know when it "forgets".

It means you could stop your run exactly before the next adjustment. As we have no info about the cycle length, we are as much in the dark as before.

 

[Mega]

Hi,


I stand rebutted, ashamed, blushing and regretting!

Nevertheless I feel uncomfortable with the main discussion going on here, and not on EF, where it should belong to. 5 posts on EF, and pages after pages here on PFC, for a topic that is clearly of importance for the whole EU.

This excludes many EU participants that are not Calypso-bound anymore, and just strengthens the divisions put upon us. Actually, this whole thread is off-topic here, IMHO. It isn't about Calypso. It is about the whole Entropian Universe, and thus should be treated in an approbate forum, EF in this case.

I appreciate the link to the buzz site, but why wasn't there a link to the correct EF thread, a "discuss there" request, and a locking here?

As far as I know both EF and PFC are yours, 711? So why not have the discussion on EF where it'd actually belong to? Is EF bound to vanish now? I'm sure, EP would be happy about. More and more they're establishing as the only left interplanetary forum.

I don't know if it's this that you want. *Scratching head*

Have a good time!

I haven't checked, but is a similar discussion taking place on Arkadia Forum?

 

[Ace Flyster]

A lot of interesting discussions here, just a bit of fyi from my point of view

Pre this announcement, if i gambled on condition crafting and lost a lot in tt returns, i would envariably recieve a compensation payback within 24 hours, crafting or mining normally. This happened enough for me to believe in a personal loot pool

Now with this statement, i obviously no longer believe in a personal loot pool, however if my observations continue and i carry on getting compensated for low tt return condition crafting, i will have to come up with another reason that it happens lol

As for 90%+tt returns, this is still allowed in a random system if you cycle enough ped, and has been shown by many to be true. As my own results also adhere to this there is no reason to suggest this is still not the case

Rgds

Ace

 

[valentin]

How stupid can you be to believe in something MA writes, that they suddenly have decided to begin to reveal their greatest secrets ---> dynamics of the loot.

They do it just because something has changed, that it used to be a certain group of people who are whining now it is all noobs as well ubers and frustration are large in the game and that many players are much less in the game as the game has become much more expensive than it used to be.

MA has apparently realized that this has given a bad name on the forum and their public face, so that they're doing now is to give us diplomatic misleading information in order to save his face, but everyone knows that MA has an agenda to follow so that everything will continue as usual no matter what they write.

 

[falkao]

We did not get this. We got no information about "completely random" nor "preset payout".

... There is no such thing as a “personal lootpool” for individual avatars, and there is no system in place which tracks each avatar’s returns over time, or which provides compensation to individual avatars. ...

we can debate about it, but I guess we do use the same term for different things.

My focus was on the term "personal loot pool" or avatar based loot. Loot per avatar does not depend on past loot and hence it is completely random as seen from the avatar. This does not exclude that the system might have other constraints as well. A payout model might be one of them, increasing loot per hp dmg done might be another one.

 

[Joat]

I think we can analyze and over analyze that statement a lot which end up in
even more ideas and theories, that are either right or wrong.

Just look at this sentence:
As a result, long-term results in Entropia Universe are directly related to the choices made
by each participant, and those who approach their chosen profession in an efficient manner will
find more success than those who do not.
This could mean a lot of stuff. If I hunt and I have to heal a lot, I'm not efficient in my hunting
profession, since I have to use another profession to do my primary profession...
But if I have right armor on and my defenseskills helps me out, am I efficient in two
professions now?

Imo, this statement is vague (as it should be ofc) and can be looked at in several ways.

 

[Ace Flyster]

I can't imagine how the system could work without periodic adjustments.
I think we can safely assume it is based on adjustments. If so the system has to "remember" some info (inside a certain time frame). Our only problem is - we don't know when it "forgets".

It means you could stop your run exactly before the next adjustment. As we have no info about the cycle length, we are as much in the dark as before.

There are many ways payments could be made with out personal loot pools

Just a few examples:

Server Loot pools
Specific item/mob/ore loot pool

or

No loot pool

Every click, bomb drop, animal loot, is taken individually with a random loot returned, around 90% return


But as has been proven many times, it is nearly impossible to prove either way. All we can do is remove one possiblity that it is not personal to each avatar.

Falkao, with out personal loot pool, in a random system, does this allow an avatar to have extremely high tt returns?

Rgds

Ace

 

[girtsn]

Nothing is really revealed, and I agree they will never do so. Contrary to the popular belief that MA does these announcements to screw us up even more, I think it is a good move (though too much open for interpretation, ditto) and in fact should be treated a warning for those trying to squeeze ATH out of the game knowing their TT return is around 90% (thinking the game owes them something based on personal loot) and a warning for those using tools over their skill level. However I believe most of them will continue it anyway, gambling ftw.

How stupid can you be to believe in something MA writes, that they suddenly have decided to begin to reveal their greatest secrets ---> dynamics of the loot.

 

[Pham]

lol if i had my imp mk2 again i would show you that there is no personal lootpool and dmg/pec really matter
but i'm not ready to spend 16+ hours a day having only +300 ped profits in the end of the day, also, knowing that a wave of good loot on a mob will enevitable bring people who spend their time sitting in the tracker just for it.

 

[Ze-Tomb Raider]

A lot of posts in this thread are somewhat depressing.
But a lot of them also pretty funny and entertaining.

Gets me thinking though, people really want their thoughts heard here, whether it be "MA is obviously not tell the truth." or "Good move." or "Nice to know!" etc..., In the end your thoughts will do nothing here, most people are dead set in what they believe and your posts are highly unlikely to change that. The small chance of changing a mind is too small to be worth the effort. What you say wont change what was posted by MindArk either.

And geez, now I'm doing it.

I part with this, go interact with the Entropia Universe already.

 

[girtsn]

lol I would enjoy watching you fail. imp mk2's advantage these days is close to 0 or 0 in terms of tt return.

lol if i had my imp mk2 again i would show you that there is no personal lootpool and dmg/pec really matter

 

[falkao]

..Falkao, with out personal loot pool, in a random system, does this allow an avatar to have extremely high tt returns?

sure, all depends on the period you do observe. For instance, if you get an ATH on first hit then you're one of them.

On the long run, all avas should be within the same average (assuming same eco) but there is still some spread.

What MA is saying is that you should take care about your skills and playing style as spending more thus not necessarily imply to get more. This is old news, but at least officially confirmed now.

 

[falkao]

....
Nevertheless I feel uncomfortable with the main discussion going on here, and not on EF, where it should belong to. 5 posts on EF, and pages after pages here on PFC, for a topic that is clearly of importance for the whole EU..

I personally do prefer to follow only one forum and it will be the one with the most posts.

 

[dr3w]

I'll lay down a gauntlet right now, I will give 1000 ped to the first person who can show me evidence on a TT return of lower than 70% over 10k ped cycled.

No need peds, and ofc I can't prove what I will write now, since I tracking just my TT whole balance. But just FYI:


02/28/2012 was my peak, since that I did lost 35k TT AFTER MARKUP.


1) 95% was planetary mining.
2) Amps: lvl5s, lvl7s and lvl8s (all self-crafted) - 7s and 8s was used PRIOR niksarium and duru rebalance, so I really know what I am doing, it's okay.
3) Something funny? 6500 UNAMPED drops in HELL, with 50% TT return in the end.
4) Planetary drops with amps - more than 100000.
5) Craft? Well, hard to say. All my amps, none was sold to someone.


There is not 10k ped cycled, as you can see. Also, those, who knows me, or those who can see my tracker (including history) - they know that I am "MU-sniper", so there is all ok with "efficiency".


DISCLAIMER (not for you, Artrat, just for some idiots):


I know what happening, and this is not whine, or something like that. I really know what I am doing, and that "loss" didn't even hurt me. So just STFU.

 

[Infinity01]

sure, all depends on the period you do observe. For instance, if you get an ATH on first hit then you're one of them.

On the long run, all avas should be within the same average (assuming same eco) but there is still some spread.

What MA is saying is that you should take care about your skills and playing style as spending more thus not necessarily imply to get more. This is old news, but at least officially confirmed now.

How many players data have you analyzed ... longitudinal and or cross-sectional?

Can you fit the item drop rate as posted in post 280 in your random model ?

I'll lay down a gauntlet right now, I will give 1000 ped to the first person who can show me evidence on a TT return of lower than 70% over 10k ped cycled.

It's time for people to put up or shut up.

I'd have accepted your offer last year....

 

[xaph]

This one tops the pop's
Ma...Bertha You've done it again!

 

[Fifth]

Every click, bomb drop, animal loot, is taken individually with a random loot returned, around 90% return

It could, but 2 considerations make it highly unlikely:

1. If there's no info about previous actions (and their results) you effectively disable all safety mechanisms, therefore becoming extremely vulnerable against all new exploits and software glitches.
2. Tests are showing a pattern* of few considerably higher (ten times up to thousands) returns among large amount of lower returns, the difference is too big for a simple randomization. If you are using some more complex algorithm for randomization it quickly becomes too resource consuming to execute with every single click.

In other words, it's not impossible but it's unlikely.

______________________
* "pattern" here isn't a clear and easily recognizable pattern ofc, obviously the goal is to make the system unpredictable, and we can assume special efforts to make it so. Could be several overlapping sinus waves or if it's just one then it might have random length... it's only examples how it could be made, idk ofc how it really works.