Question: How do I prove there is or is not a personal loot/expenses pool/tracker?

[Infinity01]

Clearly not everybody. But I will dumb it down for you (follow the logic). The guy was asking a question (among others) how you could prove if doing idiotic things are punished. And I gave valid tests. You, on the other hand, said I am wrong assuming I answered the other question. And gave invalid tests for what he asking.
Capisce?

LOL, if he meant shooting in the air as part of doing dumb thing... then you are correct....
But that would be really a futile way of trying to prove the existance of a "personal loot pool"

Anyway, I really think he won't be able to test it in a proper way... coz it would take a lot of peds, time and effort. And finally, the hardest part, help from other players.

 

[girtsn]

Since mrproper does not tend to structure questions properly, I will structure the Q as I read it. You are trying to answer Q1 (which imho is comparable to theological theory unless he means 90% tt return which is proven statistically), and giving a test which aligned more with Q2, in no case Q3.
I was trying to answer Q3.
You said my answer to Q3 is all wrong.
It is very likely I misunderstood the structure a lot, in which case I apologize. However I already suggested mrproper to define his question in a more detailed way which he chose to ignore.
Actions, consequences

Please post your ideas and thoughts about how such an experiment should be conducted to provide cheap, effective and clear data that shows:

1. the highest bias between personal loot pool and no personal loot pool
2. that previous events influence or not future events in a significant manner
3. that doing dumb things in an inefficient way is either penalized or rewarded while playing Entropia Universe.

LOL, if he meant shooting in the air as part of doing dumb thing... then you are correct....

 

[Norbert]

All we can do is keep data and examine it ourselves, or hold on to your belief/mantra you believe if it works for you. I remember popfuzz calling a loot in his way loot works thread, and spent lot of time in discussion with many players over the years about loot/system etc.

Whatever floats your boat and makes you happy, if it works for you then carry on.

As to prove/disprove would be almost impossible to get definite conclusions i think.

 

[Jimmy B]

Three's company?

No, sorry. You just volunteered yourself for the new 0.75dpp group

3. What everyone else is doing affects on KIND of your loot. The TT returns - is purely your own cycle.

I'm not convinced of that at all. If most/all of your data is from mining I can see why you are more likely to think it though, since there's very little you can do to make your mining inefficient except things verging on deliberate stupidity.

Back in the Opalo+106 days, the difference (presumably due to efficiency) between that and some unmaxed old-style gun was pretty stark. It could be that things have changed - it's much harder to test in a safe way (ie. by using significantly above normal eco rather than significantly below) these days unless you happen to own and max something like imk2.

When I was logging a lot, I used to see what appeared to be statistically significant differences in tt return across the different mobs that I hunted extensively. I put that down to either something inherently different about the mobs (e.g. some mobs give more skill but worse loot, or something like that) or down to differences in how much better or worse I was doing in terms of kill cost on that mob compared to the global average kill costs.

It could all be wrong, EU isn't my job and I didn't analyse my results with the depth I would for work. But ultimately the only way we can get to the bottom of these things is to gather lots of clean data sets, share them publically, and analyse them.

Where are the suggestions guys?

Either a big collaborative data collection and analysis, or some of the insane shoot-10kPED-into-the-air type tests.

 

[Fifth]

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.

The confusion would end if MA would elaborate what is the time frame: minutes? hours? days?
However, i can bet even this announcement had to be approved by the CEO before publishing, no way will they give us even more detailed info...

We can safely keep making new theories, forever


edit: I mean, why add the words "over time" there?
if there is no tracking of returns, it should say: "there is no system in place which tracks each avatar’s returns or provides compensation", period.

Maybe i'm reading too much into this, maybe it's simply written by some non-native english speaker like me, who gets lost in finesses sometimes... hehe

 

[mrproper]

Will you do either of the tests I outlined, or do you want another test proposal?

Yes, I actually did a pentabombing test versus normal bombing on two planets for about 240 drops, results show there is no short term correction, will increase the test to 1440 drops (full finder options) and show the results.

I am also doing an Ostelok hunt after each mining session to check for any loot trends and gather some null-null hypothesis A/B testing.

Time being limited, the shoot dead mobs and uneco tests will come later.

 

[Wollongong]

Please post your ideas and thoughts about how such an experiment should be conducted to provide cheap, effective and clear data that shows the highest bias between personal loot pool and no personal loot pool, that previous events influence or not future events in a significant manner, or that doing dumb things in an inefficient way is either penalized or rewarded while playing Entropia Universe.

You cannot proof that something does not exist. You can only proof that something exists which totally rules out the existance of another thing.

So proof that there is something which is not -in any way- compatible with the concept of a personal lootpool and you are done.

Or...you could just take the word of the developers on it....

 

[remontoire]

Yes, I actually did a pentabombing test versus normal bombing on two planets for about 240 drops, results show there is no short term correction, will increase the test to 1440 drops (full finder options) and show the results.

Ah, good, thank you

 

[mrproper]

Or...you could just take the word of the developers on it....

They also said fees from advertising, events, estates, etc, are distributed as unusually high loots. Yet nobody seems to get them. Which word do I take?

I got to two churches of different denominations, they both want me to agree with them on contradicting information. Who's word do I take?

 

[Fatboy]

Please post your ideas and thoughts about how such an experiment should be conducted to provide cheap, effective and clear data that shows the highest bias between personal loot pool and no personal loot pool, that previous events influence or not future events in a significant manner, or that doing dumb things in an inefficient way is either penalized or rewarded while playing Entropia Universe.

I doubt you could ever prove it or prove it does not exists. Without knowing all the possible variables it will just become another "Theory" For example

Player A - Perc works
Player B - how do you know?
A - I got a perc gain then 11 mobs later I got a global
B - so you always get a global 11 mobs after a Perc gain?
A - no sometimes it 1 sometimes its 69 sometimes I get a mini ?
B - so how does that prove Perc works?
A - but I got a global?
B - but its not consistant - sometimes its only a mini
A - oh - yea thats cause I went west not East
B - so if you go west you always get a mini
A - no sometimes nothing
B - so it prove perc is just a "random" skill gain
A - but I got a global

lol people will always come to the conclusion thier addiction needs - and everyone else is just wrong, a troll or did something wrong

But if you do find a way to prove / dis-prove - ill help if I can

gl

 

[Infinity01]

I doubt you could ever prove it or prove it does not exists. Without knowing all the possible variables it will just become another "Theory" For example
gl

You dont' have to know all the variables to prove or disprove a hypothesis...

The number of variables (and their variations) will simply affect the number of pairing needed to do the test to come to a reasonable conclusion....

with too few parining... the test would become inconclusive..

 

[Fatboy]

You dont' have to know all the variables to prove or disprove a hypothesis...

maybe - i dont calim to be smart enough to figuer out much more than how to put me pants on

but you know that if you dont rule out everything - someone will say "what about XXX, you forgot about XXX" and they will take the oppsite view or claim they didnt get he same results = just another theory

 

[Infinity01]

maybe - i dont calim to be smart enough to figuer out much more than how to put me pants on
but you know that if you dont rule out everything - someone will say "what about XXX, you forgot about XXX" and they will take the oppsite view or claim they didnt get he same results = just another theory

Yes, and thats why it's important to simulate similar conditions....
The potential variables that might counfound the outcome are avatar skill level, weapon, armor dps dpp. time server, mobs. etc..
Ideally one should match all those factors... but even without matching, with higher sample size it's possible to tease out the existance of one ... if it really exists!

 

[Fatboy]

Yes, and thats why it's important to simulate similar conditions....
The potential variables that might counfound the outcome are avatar skill level, weapon, armor dps dpp. time server, mobs. etc..
Ideally one should match all those factors... but even without matching, with higher sample size it's possible to tease out the existance of one ... if it really exists!

would be nice to see it proved / disproved even if only to a certian degree but then we could just take MA's word on it lol

but i think to do all that and have a reasonable sample size would take years and years and take a fortune to do

AHH HA that it thats what MA wants us to do - try to prove they lied about the personal loot pool and spend a fortune doing it! thats it - wow they are good

 

[Infinity01]

but i think to do all that and have a reasonable sample size would take years and years and take a fortune to do

AHH HA that it thats what MA wants us to do - try to prove they lied about the personal loot pool and spend a fortune doing it! thats it - wow they are good

lol that's what i've said earlier:

Anyway, I really think he won't be able to test it in a proper way... coz it would take a lot of peds, time and effort. And finally, the hardest part, help from other players.

 

[Dave Stevens]

I love these threads, they remind me of the scene in Hitch Hikers where Deep Thought tells the religious people he can work out the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything! They dont like it until he tells them it will take him 6.5 million years to calculate so in the meantime they can keep themselves on the gravy train of competing theories for life...

Anyway, imagine a machine that you put 100 ped into and it gives you 90 ped back when you push the "loot" button. If you dont push the "loot" button, the money carries over. Have a queue of people using the machine and pushing the button each time and they will each have a 90% return. This doesnt mean that the people themselves are remembered by the machine, it just means that the machine pays out 90%.

Now imagine a slightly different machine that pays out an AVERAGE of 90%, but can be as low as say 50% sometimes or as high as 150% others. Any time its a bit higher/lower than 90%, it tries to return to 90% average. The same queue of people use it and, to them, they get widely differing loot returns in the short run. Over the longer run though, statistically they will return to the mean of 90%. This is still without any memory of what they've got before.

Now, someone thinks that they've spotted a trick (the equivalent of shooting into the air) by not pressing the "loot" button. They put a sequence of 10x100 peds into the machine so the machine will pay out 900 ped when you press the loot button (of HOF if you like). This is fine, providing the person who paid in the peds is the same person as the one taking them out. As there is no personal loot pool, this is not guaranteed. Anyone pressing the loot button will get the peds, regardless of how much they themselves put in.

So, now imagine that the machine is a server (e.g. LA/TP area) and this machine is trying to stay at 90% return and has a "pool" of peds added (decay on this server). This machine also has a daily "accounting" where it sees how close it is to 90% over the last 24 hrs and adjusts the pool size to help it return to 90% in the next 24 hrs (see how I built in the lag hour there? nice huh?). Everyone fighting on this server is contributing to the server pool. If only 1 person is there, and the server is currently at its 90% average, that one person can think there is a personal loot pool as it seems to acts like that. If there are 100 people there, then it would be clear there isnt a personal loot pool, but there is a server pool. The person shooting 10k peds into the ground is filling the pool, but anyone on that server could collect it, not just the person shooting the ground. Should be easy to prove - get a rich idiot to shoot the ground and never loot, and a smart person killing the odd mob and looting it - the looter should get WAY over 90% return (statistically 180% if only 2 of them on the server, as the other guys is getting 0%)

Put it another way. If it was a personal pool, behaviour would be this: anyone getting <90% return would continue until they got a big payback which overshoots and then cash out (thereby getting >90% return). Anyone getting ahead of the curve early with >90% would cash out and start a noob so as not to be dragged back to 90% on average. In other words, the result would be >90% payout and MA would lose/go out of business. To stop this, they run a server loot pool not a personal one, and the server adjusts dynamically to ensure an average of 90% and therefore MA can keep in business.

Anyway - I'll let you digest that for a while.

 

[Fifth]

Have you ever run away from a fruit? It appeared behind you, you caught a glimpse but already stepped forward and it disappeared? And then you take few steps back and there it is, on the exact same spot.

I'm thinking about the guy who got his global again after server restart... that guy and any guy who gets a global or hof. I mean, it isn't very likely that the game mechanics behind different rewards are totally different.

Just out of curiosity - anybody knows if fruits are instanced? Can others see your fruit?

 

[Dave Stevens]

anyone can see the same fruit (proven as my wife and I play next to each other and can see each others screens).

THe fruit doesnt "disappear" as in its gone when you walk past it, it is still there but has a very short draw distance (like the oil drum at the rig) so its easy to miss. It also takes a few seconds to appear so its easy to run past it.

 

[dr3w]

anyone can see the same fruit (proven as my wife and I play next to each other and can see each others screens).

THe fruit doesnt "disappear" as in its gone when you walk past it, it is still there but has a very short draw distance (like the oil drum at the rig) so its easy to miss. It also takes a few seconds to appear so its easy to run past it.

Fruit does dissapear. While hunting argos, I did backwalking, and kinda 5 or 6 argos was on me. I saw fruit right before it dissapear cuz I walked out of "visible" range. I immediately stopped and finished argos (less than one minute), step forward - no fruit.

Well, I didn't test that, but maybe fruits/stones have some timeout when they get out of "visible" range? Or it because I did killed and looted some argos?

 

[Infinity01]

Fruit does dissapear. While hunting argos, I did backwalking, and kinda 5 or 6 argos was on me. I saw fruit right before it dissapear cuz I walked out of "visible" range. I immediately stopped and finished argos (less than one minute), step forward - no fruit.

Well, I didn't test that, but maybe fruits/stones have some timeout when they get out of "visible" range? Or it because I did killed and looted some argos?

lol......you are realy not very vigiliant...

Might explain your verbal diarrhea and my rainbow diarrhea!!

 

[-Archangel-]

Well, I didn't test that, but maybe fruits/stones have some timeout when they get out of "visible" range? Or it because I did killed and looted some argos?

I has been tested they vannish after a while if nobody picks them and nobody is seeing them.

 

[remontoire]

Well, I didn't test that, but maybe fruits/stones have some timeout when they get out of "visible" range? Or it because I did killed and looted some argos?

Next time you see fruit, just stand and wait - and you will see in unspawn after a while.

 

[Shadowsong]

Next time you see fruit, just stand and wait - and you will see in unspawn after a while.

Noooo!!!!! That's even worse eco than not looting the dead mob Don't do it!!

 

[Jimmy B]

edit: I mean, why add the words "over time" there?
if there is no tracking of returns, it should say: "there is no system in place which tracks each avatar’s returns or provides compensation", period.

I think you're reading too much into it. I agree the "over time" is arguably redundant, I can't really think of a situation where "track returns" and "track returns over time" would mean fundamentally different things. But "track returns over time" is probably how I'd say it too, it feels perfectly natural to me.

They also said fees from advertising, events, estates, etc, are distributed as unusually high loots. Yet nobody seems to get them. Which word do I take?

What advertising is that? Anyway, I see some loots that are unusually high from time to time.

Any time its a bit higher/lower than 90%, it tries to return to 90% average.

Nice post.

I don't see the need for the bit I've quoted though. For instance, if the button has a 50% chance of paying 70 PED and a 50% chance of paying 110 PED, in the long-run the return will be 90%. There's no need for it to remember what happened before and try to return to the average.

 

[mrproper]

Ok, this situation happens very often and I am sure you can all agree and test it:

Team hunting with disciple, one of the first mobs, we both do almost equal damage, looting gives me ALL the oil residues and socket components. Another mob, I do 95% of the damage, he gets just a shot in, he gets the only big stackable in that loot.

We stopped and reflected. How logical is that? The team setting is Shared Loot. Does this setting allow for what might be an individual loot within the team loot? As in, stackables happen to be shared because we are both "looting" the mob at the same time, so the system has the same loot value in queue for a few seconds? Do we sometimes get apparently illogical distributed stackables because our individual loots happen on different multipliers because the server changed between the looting actions?

Is there a team tracked loot pool that resets when someone leaves the team and suddenly I global when people go offline on the next mob? How are these explained by random chance?

 

[aridash]

I don't see the need for the bit I've quoted though. For instance, if the button has a 50% chance of paying 70 PED and a 50% chance of paying 110 PED, in the long-run the return will be 90%. There's no need for it to remember what happened before and try to return to the average.

precisely this. the system doesnt have to track your returns for it to trend towards a common average.

Ok, this situation happens very often and I am sure you can all agree and test it:

Team hunting with disciple, one of the first mobs, we both do almost equal damage, looting gives me ALL the oil residues and socket components. Another mob, I do 95% of the damage, he gets just a shot in, he gets the only big stackable in that loot.

nope, i cant agree with that. thats sounds like a bug, assuming your using the correct team setting, loot should share stackables. (or maybe you are using one of the daft team settings). Bring up teaming is interesting point as i have always felt teaming is a major obstacle to person loot.

 

[Dave Stevens]

precisely this. the system doesnt have to track your returns for it to trend towards a common average.

.

My whole point was that it doesn't need to track individuals returns, to give the appearance of tracking them (which some see as proof of personal loot pool, but is nothing of the sort). Glad you agree

I do however think that it needs to do a daily balance - trends can take a while to return to mean after some oddball numbers get thrown up by the random number generator. It makes sense for MA to quickly return to 90% average in order to avoid cash flow problems.

 

[Serica]

...
nope, i cant agree with that. thats sounds like a bug, assuming your using the correct team setting, loot should share stackables. ...

aridash, my guess is that he's saying only a single unit of a stackable but relatively high TT one.

As the logs show when fishface and i did some testing on how we think shared loot works, it can happen that the person doing most damage doesn't always end up with the highest tt loot on a mob, even though overall the system is designed to distribute the stackables based on damage inflicted by each team member.

 

[Fifth]

anyone can see the same fruit (proven as my wife and I play next to each other and can see each others screens).

i see, thanx. so fruits are not instanced, if others can see the same fruit they can also pick it up.

now, if there is absolutely no tracking, then globals should behave exactly like fruits - the system doesn't care about you personally, once the reward "dropped out of the machine" it sits there, waiting - whoever sees it can pick it up.

saw Mercury taking global after global a while ago. i knew the spawn so went there and took my fruit from the same spawn. sry, i mean my global.

 

[Dave Stevens]

I believe the loot is created at point of hitting the loot button. It is not sitting in the pockets of the mob.

Think about it from a coding point of view - you'd need a huge database just to hold all the spawned loot for each and every mob in the entire universe if it was sitting in their pockets. If its generated at the point of pushing the loot button, then you dont need that whole database structure which would be pointless expense to build and maintain.

The fact that the particular server you were on was flush with peds doesnt mean the particular mobs in that spawn had the loot in their pockets already.