How big of a ped cycle is needed before you would typically see ~95% Returns stated by MA.

[Deemer]

Every mayhem this happens, since mindark didnt restart servers since end it continues.

The probability of getting the smaller multipliers has been greatly reduced.

This is why all the big loots keep popping, short term losses are much greater.

My view point is different, in the mayhem duration has more active people, therefore the pool grow and hofs are bigger. There has no logic the same algorithm to work different for x-time duration only.

And again, the guy here is new like many others. Looks he pay to play and wondering where his peds goes.
Wrong weapon for mob range.. unskilled but hunt hight level mobs for him.
Take a bit time and check the stats

 

[Evey]

My view point is different,

There's a new loot theory for every PEC BabyOxide lost on explo and he lost millions of PEDs probably.
99.99% of these theories are plain silly and only 0.01 are based on proper testing, proper numbers and facts stated by MA. Someone should start collecting this in a thread

 

[WoenK]

Please check the OP stats in EL. You guys forgot some things... there is path to walk from 100 HP mob to 2k mob.

In this road ingame inactive players are much more than active, their hunt means 200 mobs daily. And their goal is the pool only.

No difference if you hunt 20HP, 2ßß hp or 2k , if you have the right gun for each and the right level.
And pool ?
What "pool" ?
The general one, personal, climate pool, snookers ?
Sounds like someone can take out more than he spent which definately does not happen.
One could say "wow. you got an over 5k Uber in September" and I can say " yah, because I lost over 5k a few weeks ealrier on EP4s".
Nothing special, you get a payback of your losses, you do not get more, it is not a win against the "house"

 

[ImUp2Mischief]

No difference if you hunt 20HP, 2ßß hp or 2k , if you have the right gun for each and the right level.
And pool ?
What "pool" ?
The general one, personal, climate pool, snookers ?
Sounds like someone can take out more than he spent which definately does not happen.
One could say "wow. you got an over 5k Uber in September" and I can say " yah, because I lost over 5k a few weeks ealrier on EP4s".
Nothing special, you get a payback of your losses, you do not get more, it is not a win against the "house"

Did you miss the 160k noob ath?

 

[Rocket192]

better efficiency and lower mob hp will reduce the curve. might take 500k cycle w/ a pbr 20 on 900hp mobs, but may only take 120k with lp70 fen

 

[Deemer]

No difference if you hunt 20HP, 2ßß hp or 2k , if you have the right gun for each and the right level.
And pool ?
What "pool" ?
The general one, personal, climate pool, snookers ?
Sounds like someone can take out more than he spent which definately does not happen.
One could say "wow. you got an over 5k Uber in September" and I can say " yah, because I lost over 5k a few weeks ealrier on EP4s".
Nothing special, you get a payback of your losses, you do not get more, it is not a win against the "house"

A pool man... Bad pool vs Good pool.. many people in the pool, happy family.. grinding mobs solo is sadly story

better efficiency and lower mob hp will reduce the curve. might take 500k cycle w/ a pbr 20 on 900hp mobs, but may only take 120k with lp70 fen

Still don't understand how the efficiency work, can you explain please.
Also if i don't have $50k, should i change the game? Because my range is 10-300 HP. Looks like i'm not in MA curves?

 

[WoenK]

Did you miss the 160k noob ath?

probably...the only one I found was an EP4 ATH...and just looking at his globals, that was not a real noob. 3months of EP and shrapnel crafting prior to that and a noob starting off with EPs? and one of his first crafting globals beeing a LR-20?
Not the typical starter, rather someone with a fat wallet and he is not the first one doing things like that.

 

[Alukat123]

When you see that things aren't going your way, when you get a multiplier like every 17th mob or so, or when your hitrate in mining is about 20% planetside, just stop, stop, don't push it, do something else instead, try another mob, another mining area, maybe some crafting, look for whatever works for you.

nah, it should be safe to just keep going...
yesterday my hunt started with 50-60% TT-return over the first 100 kills, lots of low looters, only 1-2 bonus shrapnell, only 1-2 very small multipliers... then 5-10 minute break and over the next 400 kills the bonus shrapnell and bigger multipliers started to appear, even a global, and it did end up in an okay hunt.

same usually for mining, even if i get bad hitrate and have quite bad return i keep going, shortly before the end of the 100 drop run, there's usually a multiplier which boosts the tt-return quite a lot.

what i've been wondering about is, wether or not the game does session TT-return and time tracking and MA has set something like TT-return has to be 9x.xx% after 1 hour or so. Something like that may explain why there's usually multipliers and more bonus shrapnell than usual, after taking a break of 10-15 minutes when having a bad start or run... but this one will be difficult to proof/disproof, as it can be explained by then nature of randomness as well...

However, as it goes for team hunts, imo, there's longer bad tt-return phases (phase w/o or just very low frequency of bonus shrapnell and multis) but more frequent hofs compared to hunting solo...

 

[M Rufen Power]

Having a real bad time of it lately with hunting must have cycled around 3,000Ped before recycling shrapnel and my returns are really low around 70-80% TT. Should I be cycling much more ped than this to really start to see those reported ~95% TT returns that MA report?

For the more seasoned hunter, how much ped are you cycling in a month before you start to see acceptable TT returns?

Having read all the comments on here, here are my two cents. Anyone that says that kills do not affect cycle isn't too bright. You can cycle peds without having to hit a mob and get nothing back, just saying. The cycle does not help with loot cycles it is the number of kills to trigger more than avg loot drops.

If you are getting 80% returns, I can say you are doing some of the following:
Not killing 3000+ mobs per run, don't have adequate peds to hunt said mob comfortably.
You don't have the right skill set to hunt said mob comfortably, def costs are to be avoided.
Hunting a mob that is too high in maturity coupled with lacking def and loot prof skills?

It sounds to me like you are playing above your ped card which is dictated to you by your weapon.
A lot of people get this wrong, hunt based on gun setup is totally wrong, it should be on ped card.

 

[shoti]

@ OP.... Maybe try keep your avatar hunting in range where multipliers are more probable and decrease "cost per try" in periods when multipliers are less probable. That way your balance swings will flatten out much and u get closer to that MA stated 97%. . Constant grind and camping one mob is good for ppl with big bankrollss which alow them sustain activity in bad periods. Worst thing that can happen to hunter is to go broke before that "normalizing" things multiplier is nailed...even worse is nailing it on low cost activity. GRinders and campers don't have such problems as their bankroll is so big that hitting that "evening out" loots is not an issue, just matter of time.

 

[psyche]

And guys, honestly, this is part of what I was talking in my thread about leeches. Hunting is the most popular profession by far, and you have hunters like this with 70-80% returns on the one hand, on the other - bunch of parasitic leeches with ZERO TURNOVER, who do absolutely nothing but tax every other participant in the economy by withdrawing their PEDs out of the pool that we create. How long is this model going to go on, given recent developments in the gaming industry? Is it possible that one day we will have more resellers in this game than hunters, miners and crafters? If so, what would be the consequences of this?

Just want to be clear, I'm a depositor. I bought the gold starter pack and have bought $500 USD of AUD from the web shop and some universal ammos, but I feel like you're being too emotional in your thinking. resellers exist in this game for several reason. Biggest reason is that we allow them to. The impatient hunters want to make a quick sell off of their loot even at lower mu so long as they get their ped to keep hunting. Also the impatient buyers who buy at higher MU because they don't want to wait for lower price. Resellers only survive off these impatient people. If everyone is patient then resellers cannot exist. I'm also guilty of being impatient. Sometimes I sell higher MU and while everyone undercut me and I lose out on my auction fees. Sometimes, I get impatient and I just sell low MU so i can get my quick ped. Sometimes I buy but get outbid and sometimes I get impatient and I buy at higher MU than average. I'm sure we're all guilty of this. In a sense we kinda need the resellers in this game to get items moving. They add to the demand of many items in game.
On the flip side, imagine this game without resellers, sometimes, you cannot find any buyers no matter how low MU you go simply because the buyer is not buying at the right time as you're selling. Sometimes, when you want to buy a item, but you can't because there's no one selling for months. If this game does not have any "leeches" then buying and selling will become a nightmare.

 

[Deemer]

Just want to be clear..

There are two types of resellers:
1. People who want to deal only with this and in this case it is in their interest you to look for them again, so their offers are fair to the current market situation.
2. You're talking about the second type... most of the traders who are idiots and think that 1 pec more is a profit for them.

I agree with you because the second type is growing. My opinion is that this can only be fixed if there is a competition in the Orders, as it is now in Sales .. this can only happen if the hand-to-hand trade stops, which I do not see how it can happen =)

Everyone uses MU statistics, but the hand trade doesn't fit there. There must be changes to be fair for all, now the trade looks like a 3rd world country.

I always use Auction to sale my items to avoid all this bolsht, but this is a lost cause =), for me is better to skill up with 101-102% loot..

 

[AckerZ]

Really good advice given in this thread so far, thanks for all the contributions.

 

[Westy]

Play what you can afford. have fun doing it. Everything else doesn't matter. Let others play as they wish. Don't try to be someone else. Be what you want from the game. That's the sandbox. Experiment and try new things until you find what you like doing. At a base level this game is a grind. It requires lots of input or accept that you stretch that input out over a longer period of time. 10hrs a day vs 1hr a day is no difference. Just the time to achieve a goal varies and you need to be patient. 1000hrs of game time over 3 months vs 12 months the outcome won't be much different (events excepted they have limited time frames).

 

[eyeshark]

Play what you can afford. have fun doing it. Everything else doesn't matter. Let others play as they wish. Don't try to be someone else. Be what you want from the game. That's the sandbox. Experiment and try new things until you find what you like doing. At a base level this game is a grind. It requires lots of input or accept that you stretch that input out over a longer period of time. 10hrs a day vs 1hr a day is no difference. Just the time to achieve a goal varies and you need to be patient. 1000hrs of game time over 3 months vs 12 months the outcome won't be much different (events excepted they have limited time frames).

I would like to believe this is true. But many other players are convinced it is not.

 

[Westy]

Cycles in the game are much bigger than 30 days. Can be 6months+
Properly tracking returns should just boost the morale up a bit but that's it. Make sure you track correctly and it should never fall below 94% over 50k peds or so.
Main focus should be MU while continuing to improve skills and gear. Don't fight the %tt return war, it's a lost cause.

Agreed but can't be f&*ked tracking. Unless its your thing to do. Rather just hunt/chat and enjoy the game. To make a crude example. Evey and Westy kill one mob each. just say we have same everything (we don't) but for the exercise here. Different mobs but same inputs. Evey gets a 100 ped global and the noobs go I wanna be like evey. Nice go see a beauticean (lol no offence evey it looks cool). Westy gets 40 ped loot but 11.50 ped ESI. So who is getting ahead here. Longer term with similar looting. Now you not gonna get an ESI all the time but 115% items vs shrap etc. If your doing mayhem and your storage is not full of wool, outputs and hide your doing it wrong. Accumulate and sell that is the balancer. If your tt'ing mats you will get less than 100% return and gradually entropy your ped card. Entropia is by far the best and most accurate name for this game.
edit: and you can bet your ped card evey won't be going for shrap either.

 

[shoti]

[...] Accumulate and sell that is the balancer. If your tt'ing mats you will get less than 100% return and gradually entropy your ped card. Entropia is by far the best and most accurate name for this game.
[...]

You have choice. Like in RL it can be fun or struggle. Making money in EU will always be struggle to some degree ( there will be ppl ofcourse claiming that their struggle is fun for them ). But at least u have to count input and output. So if you are here for fun and don't count money u funding those who are here after money and care to do that.

As for MU...you can play not reclessly, dont stack loot for few % of MU and still doing fine. In fact, if you are after money in this game not being pasive income like LA or Deeds , and just taking it from other players via active systems and mechanics game is providing, then saving loot for that riny MU might be not time effecting and only slowing you down.

 

[Westy]

You have choice. Like in RL it can be fun or struggle. Making money in EU will always be struggle to some degree ( there will be ppl ofcourse claiming that their struggle is fun for them ). But at least u have to count input and output. So if you are here for fun and don't count money u funding those who are here after money and care to do that.

As for MU...you can play not reclessly, dont stack loot for few % of MU and still doing fine. In fact, if you are after money in this game not being pasive income like LA or Deeds , and just taking it from other players via active systems and mechanics game is providing, then saving loot for that riny MU might be not time effecting and only slowing you down.

Agreed. You do have to find your own way so you enjoy the game whether it’s as a ongoing depositor, cost neutral or profiting. But even cycling shrap to uni makes the game better. First you get immediate 1% back for next to no effort. So I’d recommend building up that. I’m using 4- 8k uni and once its converted to shrap 5k is a convert to uni global of 50 ped. For doing nothing. Also no stuffing round in different ammo or probes, your always ready to go. so unless u need shrap to peds for a purchase it’s more than 1% because it’s repeated every run.

 

[Granny Rowan]

There is one variable you are all overlooking … MA
In those posts where they named or hinted at average returns, they probably spoke the truth at that moment in time. That they have the power to change variables at any time is clearly true throughout this game, is it still the figure you read ? was it last week ? will it be next week ? frankly we have no idea.
We see others doing well, or claiming to do well, we get in a panic because we cant get that much..why ?
What does it matter in the grand scheme of things what our returns on a month or even a year are ? I have had appalling months sometimes 3 or 4 in a row, I have had superb ones, did I do anything radically different...No
What matters is this is a GAME, we are here to have fun, not stress over it. Make sure you have a budget, stick to it, and get out there and ENJOY it.
Trust me the stress levels fall as the enjoyment increases so long as you change gameplay from time to time to stay ' affordable'
There is far too much time and worrying spent over percentage return, yet can you think of any other entertainment that gives you this many hours per month (however many you play) as cheaply. Seriously most of us can play for a week or 2 on the price of a good night at the pub, even when on a bad streak. No hangover either

Go shoot things, work on your skills and mostly have fun with friends

 

[John B Knight]

Worst decisions are usually taken when you have wrong assumptions about partial information given or misunderstood.Expecting similar outcome when you don't have information about other's input and maybe yours leads to even more misunderstanding and eventually disappointment and discouragement.
I advise reading every single piece of official note 100 times each and forget what you heard from any player.

This + dont make the error of 'wanting' to beat the system - work with it. accept it, let it work for you.
Understand that not only what you cycle and what you hunt affects your loot/returns but also who else is hunting what you do and what gear/skills they are using and always keep in mind even with the best gear/skills if you hunt next to someone who lost tons and is willing to loose tons more it will likely affect your shortterm returns one way or another.

I am hunting with weaponry below 70% efficiency and have no problem maintaining a tt return of over 98% - but it requires to know when to 'hold them and when to fold them' eg when to stay and when to move on/scale up down in mobs.

 

[Bynkm]

Just my 2 pecs
I had 80% TT return over 3000 same mobs so that amount of kills is not enough for TT% to stabilize.
I also had 2600+ mining drops with 80% tt return so 3k attempts are likely not enough.

 

[M Rufen Power]

Just my 2 pecs
I had 80% TT return over 3000 same mobs, so that amount of kills is not enough for TT% to stabilize.
I also had 2600+ mining drops with 80% tt return, so 3k attempts are likely not enough.

It doesn't necessarily mean that killing 3k mobs is false, I never once said 3k was the max, it's actually the minimum lol.

Here are a few questions to try ascertain why this practice didn't work out.
What is your looter profession?
What is your efficiency rating?
What is your avg DPP on your weapon?
Does the mob have high regen?
Are you doing lots of overkill?
What's the avg DPP/EFF of other players hunting that mob? (Yes this is actually very important)
Where are you hunting, in MM event?
What were your defence costs?

I could go on; the main focus points is high regen, players, and event, IMO these criteria create a higher variance than on avg.
This is my guess I can speculate further but need you to reply to some of my queries to find out why you're at 80% TT returns.

 

[shoti]

Just my 2 pecs
I had 80% TT return over 3000 same mobs so that amount of kills is not enough for TT% to stabilize.
I also had 2600+ mining drops with 80% tt return so 3k attempts are likely not enough.

It was 97% each run, which became 80% over time on your 3000 kils and will become 50%...40%....20%...till zero. U paid to much between good multipliers or wasted them on cheap "cost in" activity ( to make reward count) is my bet.

 

[Rocket192]

my experience is still that returns can be "off" for 6 months or more at a time regardless of how much ped you pump in or how many looting events you have. but over a few years you should really fall around 95% at a MINIMUM

 

[Bynkm]

Just for some clarification.
I wasn't actually complaining about 3000 mobs being shot without proper TT returns I was just informing 3000 streak might happen. So in my case I gotta redo the calculation about proper hunting bankroll. It happened in one day one hunting session on single maturity puny mob.
The info provided was to somewhat solidify the magic number of 3k kills as bare minimum.

 

[M Rufen Power]

Just for some clarification I wasn't actually complaining about 3000 mobs being shot without proper TT returns, informing people that 3000 streaks might happen. So in my case, I gotta redo the calculation about proper hunting bankroll. It happened in one day one hunting session on single maturity puny mob.
The information I collected provided me to somewhat solidify the magic number of 3k kills as the bare minimum.

Great stuff, I am glad that we are on the same wavelength. Your findings are the same as mine from 2017, 3000 kills is definitely a starting minimum. See BOLD; many people got to take notice of it, considering the proper bankroll for the mob being hunted is imperative to surviving all bad loot fluctuations.

 

[M Rufen Power]

Great stuff, I am glad that we are on the same wavelength. Your findings are the same as mine from 2017, 3000 kills is definitely a starting minimum. See BOLD; many people got to take notice of it, considering the proper bankroll for the mob being hunted is imperative to surviving loot fluctuations.

Some examples in case people still can't figure it out lol.

Cost To Kill:
0.30 PEC x 3,000 = 900 PED
Possible Loss 900 PED / Bankroll Need 1,800 PED

3.00 PED x 3,000 = 9,000 PED LOSS
Possible Loss 9,000 PED / Bankroll Need 18,000 PED

30.00 PED x 3,000 = 90,000 PED LOSS
Possible Loss 90,000 PED / Bankroll Need 180,000 PED

 

[Ferial]

There are a lot of false assumptions in this thread.

There is no set amount of mobs you need to kill, nor amount of time, nor amount of ped spent, to see a balanced return.
It is really simple: The more mobs you kill, the more likely you are to arrive close to / at your expected return, with current setup, skills etc. (be it 75% or 100%)

What you really have to do to be successful in this game, is find opportunities. People tend to liken this game to either slots or poker, and while there are aspects of this game that is similar to both those things (e.g. the pseudorandom payouts from slots or the parimutuel wagering of poker) I'd be more inclined to say that this game is more like chess than either of those two. Your job, to be successful is not to find the "right mob" to get the big fat hof. Your job is to analyze the moves that the game makes, analyze the moves that your opponents make, and try to capitalize on their misplays.

If someone more skilled than you, with better equipment is hunting a mob, maybe you should not go hunt that particular mob, because your opponent will be able to provide loot at a lower cost than you and still retain a better position financially.

Your job is not to copy what the seemingly successful people are doing. Your job is to find your own way, cause they're likely better than you at doing what they are doing successfully.. If you try to do the same, you end up losing to those people, one way or another. (fringe cases excluded)

In short, figure out how to make the most of the money that you spend, Also, shit happens:

only 0.01 are based on proper testing, proper numbers and facts stated by MA. Someone should start collecting this in a thread

That's a great idea!

 

[Glenden]

I was about to ask something along the same lines and stumbled across this thread. Seems the current returns is not that optimal especially if you are a new or low level player hunting small mobs.

*To give some background, I was having bad runs 98% of the time with Argos and Cornandacauda so thought would try the low level mobs.*

Using weapons like SI Scorpion, HK 110, TT weapon from ARK I tried hunting Gallard, Jori, Halix and Ostelok. And the 500 mob kill theory for better returns doesn't hold true.

For example,
Killing 1600 Gallards over 5 runs spending 76 PEDs ended with a loss of 22 PEDs. The worst part being that the profitable runs are mostly profitable by 0.10 to 1 PED while the loss runs are averaging at about 3-4 PED (No FAP / Armor / Pills / etc).

And other mobs also provided similar result. In the last ~35 runs with low level mobs spending cycling ~800 PEDs my loot return rate without markup is 83% (Including shrapnel) and 88% with markup.

Since the 500 mob kill doesn't work, some of the other things that I can try are checking the results by killing >10k of a mob or spending more on killing a mob.

Thought I was the only one having this kind of problem but seems not.

 

[shoti]

@ Glenden

What 500 mobs theory ? U can have complete run in less than 100 mobs usualy. Check this out :

Research about loot multipliers frequency in hunting.

As some of you are already aware there are few possible loot action outcomes when you looting killed mobs. Most of loot values don't cover kill cost or equal, it and fall into category „base loot”. But some loot actions exceedes even greatly kill cost and are known among comunity as so called...

www.planetcalypsoforum.com