Is Loot Lag costing us claims and PED?

Ape Drape

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Jaque ApeDrape LeCaque
We've all experienced Loot Lag. That thing that happens to everyone at the exact same time. Where if you're hunting and loot a mob, nothing happens you go on and kill several with the same thing happening then after a minute or two, a butt load of loot suddenly appears as the loot machine started working again.

Or when crafting and it stops at 99% of your click, and then in a minute or two you get your drop and crafting returns to normal.

Or when mining when your finder stays on searching and you can't put it away and kill the mobs that are attacking you or jump in your sleipnir or basically do anything until the loot machine starts coughing up loot again.

So hunters get to keep on trucking, crafters get mildly annoyed (but not attacked by mobs at least) and the red-headed step-children of Entopia, miners, get shafted.

Why? I'm going to quote me from another thread...

I wholeheartedly believe that hit rate is wave based and when you are riding the crest, you can't drop probes fast enough. I don't believe that honeycombing is an effective method anymore. If you drop every 110m, you are missing A LOT of claims. And we all know that it's not about if you are putting nickles or quarters in the slot machine, but how many times the handle gets pulled.
I'll add and WHEN the handle gets pulled.

It's hard to ride that wave when you cannot drop probes. It porks your drop timing, it wrecks your search patterns.

So, I believe Loot Lag does negatively impact miners and costs us claims and ped.

Your thoughts?
 
No, I doubt it. When the loot lag occurs you can still damage mobs, so my guess is that the servers you connect to handle most of the game events, like object translation, dmg rng, etc. The loot is queried from a backend server which seems to either get overloaded or has connection issues. Sure, this might impact your looting something right at the crest of a wave, but in the long run I don't think it matters.


What DOES costs us PED is:

1) The general lag/server failures; which for some reason causes your hits to fail even though the mob can still hit you. I've often wondered how much extra money MA makes of this each year.

2) When the mob suddenly goes "unreachable" standing in front of you even though you've been hitting it and starts regenerating health while you can't hit it.

3) When your avatar suddenly loses the ability to shoot and starts contorting, or the mob starts dancing in a circle around you.

There's probably more inane bugs and problems that cost PED, but those are the main ones that come to mind.
 
No, I doubt it. When the loot lag occurs you can still damage mobs, so my guess is that the servers you connect to handle most of the game events, like object translation, dmg rng, etc. The loot is queried from a backend server which seems to either get overloaded or has connection issues. Sure, this might impact your looting something right at the crest of a wave, but in the long run I don't think it matters.


What DOES costs us PED is:

1) The general lag/server failures; which for some reason causes your hits to fail even though the mob can still hit you. I've often wondered how much extra money MA makes of this each year.

2) When the mob suddenly goes "unreachable" standing in front of you even though you've been hitting it and starts regenerating health while you can't hit it.

3) When your avatar suddenly loses the ability to shoot and starts contorting, or the mob starts dancing in a circle around you.

There's probably more inane bugs and problems that cost PED, but those are the main ones that come to mind.
This isn't about other bugs.

You can keep hunting when Loot Lag happens, you will eventually get your loot. You can even put your gun away, pull out your medkit, heal up, pop a crit pill, pull your gun out and continue hunting all while the Loot Machine is choking. You will get your loot. You are not even inconvenienced in the least bit.

You cannot continue mining and just have a bunch of claims appear when the Loot server starts pumping out loot. You can't put your finder away, pop some pill that helps mining (because there isn't one, i.e. red-headed step-children) You cannot do anything until the loot server begins functioning again. Therefore, when it comes to dropping probes at the right time, well that ship has sailed. Enjoy your next 10 NRFs.
 
You cannot continue mining and just have a bunch of claims appear when the Loot server starts pumping out loot. You can't put your finder away, pop some pill that helps mining (because there isn't one, i.e. red-headed step-children) You cannot do anything until the loot server begins functioning again. Therefore, when it comes to dropping probes at the right time, well that ship has sailed. Enjoy your next 10 NRFs.


I feel ya, and I agree it's a real problem, didn't mean to suggest otherwise. I just don't think it statistically matters in the long run, whereas the other problems I mentioned are clearly and obviously costing PED.
 
You cannot continue mining and just have a bunch of claims appear when the Loot server starts pumping out loot. You can't put your finder away, pop some pill that helps mining (because there isn't one, i.e. red-headed step-children) You cannot do anything until the loot server begins functioning again. Therefore, when it comes to dropping probes at the right time, well that ship has sailed. Enjoy your next 10 NRFs.

once i got global the next drop after loot lag.
 
1) The general lag/server failures; which for some reason causes your hits to fail even though the mob can still hit you. I've often wondered how much extra money MA makes of this each year.

Having observed this for a while, sometimes more closely due to connection issues on my side, I think what happens under the hood is this: Damage you deal requires a server response to become effective, whereas damage you receive is calculcated in the client and therefore effected immediately and just reported back to update other clients nearby on the situation. It makes sense considering server load, but of course gets out of sync when any of so many conditions are less than perfect. I believe the associated PED loss should be mostly compensated now in the new loot system since it bases returns on your actual cost. While there is still a difference between doing something efficiently or not, it's by far not such a big deal anymore.

I don't know what the current state of mining is regarding Loot 2.0. Subscribing to learn more.
 
once i got global the next drop after loot lag.

yup, I also had a loot lag global.
Quite odd to get a global 2 minutes after you've killed a mob. :tongue2:
 
yup, I also had a loot lag global.
Quite odd to get a global 2 minutes after you've killed a mob. :tongue2:


I've had that happen, but 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the time the Loot Machine is not choking on the enormous amount of loot I am going to get.
 
Having observed this for a while, sometimes more closely due to connection issues on my side, I think what happens under the hood is this: Damage you deal requires a server response to become effective, whereas damage you receive is calculcated in the client and therefore effected immediately and just reported back to update other clients nearby on the situation. It makes sense considering server load, but of course gets out of sync when any of so many conditions are less than perfect. I believe the associated PED loss should be mostly compensated now in the new loot system since it bases returns on your actual cost. While there is still a difference between doing something efficiently or not, it's by far not such a big deal anymore.

I don't know what the current state of mining is regarding Loot 2.0. Subscribing to learn more.

The failed hits do not cost any ammo. However, they could word it a little better to something like, Sorry, my bad instead of Failed. like its something we did wrong.
 
It could be that the system is overloaded so a certain unlucky player may get generic loot drop instead of a rare item drop, because the system cannot compute if it's his time or not. Then all of the sudden the system realizes that the item limit has been opened a bit so the rare item drop magically gets available all at once. Hence explaining why usually when a rare item drop happens, it mostly happens all at once.

So to answer your question. Yes I do believe it hurts us.
 
unless you can predict when an item is gonna drop loot lag does not have any impact at all
 
unless you can predict when an item is gonna drop loot lag does not have any impact at all

This isn't about item drops and predicting if you are going to get a certain item. How can you get a claim if you can not drop a probe?

This is about mining and hit rate. Call it anecdotal if you want to, but my observations of planet mining have told me that hit-rate comes in waves. It has a high point and a low point. You want to drop as many probes in that high point as you can and try not to drop in the low point. This is effected when you CAN NOT DROP PROBES because of loot lag. This is the difference between between a 75% hit rate and a 40% hit rate. This isn't about if we are hitting IIs and IIIs or Vs and VIIs and what ore or enmat they may be. This is about getting anything at all.


You can not drop a probe, put your finder away, enter a vehicle.... ANYTHING, until your finder returns a result from the loot machine, if it's a claim or an NRF it does not matter. You are locked out of doing anything until the loot starts flowing again. This does not happen in hunting. You can go on and continue to do what you want to do, unless, that is, you want to pull out a finder and drop a probe, because then you will be locked into that.

Hunting loot, Crafting loot and Mining loot are three different beasts. They even got rid of the no looters for hunting. There are no more No Looters. You will ALWAYS get something for loot.

Crafting still has FAIL but as long as you do not move the slider all the way over, they are minimal, you still get something for a near success. You have some amount of control over how much fail you are going to have. Hell, them near success can even give you quite a few extra clicks. I've done 200 clicks on EPIV and at the end, had enough nanocubes from the near success to 70 more.

Mining has 2 results, NRF and HIT. WHEN has a lot to do with your chance of a hit(possible more than WHERE), things that stop you from putting a probe in the ground where and when you want to completely take away what little amount of control we have over our results.
 
You forgot to add the instant NRF that happens after the lag as well :eek:
 
102.85% tt/tt on last ~5k drops, and I mine slower than most (never drop running).

Perhaps chasing 'waves' isn't the way to go. :cool:
 
Having observed this for a while, sometimes more closely due to connection issues on my side, I think what happens under the hood is this: Damage you deal requires a server response to become effective, whereas damage you receive is calculcated in the client and therefore effected immediately and just reported back to update other clients nearby on the situation. It makes sense considering server load, but of course gets out of sync when any of so many conditions are less than perfect. I believe the associated PED loss should be mostly compensated now in the new loot system since it bases returns on your actual cost. While there is still a difference between doing something efficiently or not, it's by far not such a big deal anymore.

I don't know what the current state of mining is regarding Loot 2.0. Subscribing to learn more.

Eh... I don't really know what's happening under the hood either, so I can't say for sure, but I think this is probably unlikely for a couple of reasons. In my experience writing MMOs, nothing should occur client-side.

Having the damage dealt occur on the client side would be trivial to exploit; I could make an in-memory trainer that prevented my avatar from ever receiving damage. Then when I submit the damage I received to the server to calculate my loot payback I could say I received a shitload of damage. Basically if this were true I could easily write an exploit that caused my avatar to be immortal and every loot to be a HOF.

I would assume that damage received is calculated server side as it should be. Why the server lag allows for you to receive damage without being able to deal it is a mystery.
 
The most lag happens during a global wave or ripple... caused as lootius decides who the lucky winner is for this round... it probably is spaghetti code to compare avatars that hit loot event at same nanosecond or something and a bunch of it this than that coding so one avatar wins ok loot and other gets shraped
 
102.85% tt/tt on last ~5k drops, and I mine slower than most (never drop running).

Perhaps chasing 'waves' isn't the way to go. :cool:

We mine alike, I run 100, stop and drop ...

So far TT return with me is 104,33% so cant complain neither. (this is the result after substracting costs)
 
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102.85% tt/tt on last ~5k drops, and I mine slower than most (never drop running).

Perhaps chasing 'waves' isn't the way to go. :cool:

We mine alike, I run 100, stop and drop ...

So far TT return with me is 104,33% so cant complain neither. (this is the result after substracting costs)



I learned to mine from Leeloo. Currently 106.72% TT using the same technique. Hmm.....:smoke:
 
I learned to mine from Leeloo. Currently 106.72% TT using the same technique. Hmm.....:smoke:

question for those returns is the turnover though. i can ha ve 110% tt return over 500 drops or 1k drops easily as well. but keep it after 100k drops and it would be great. especially if those 100k drops are in a matter of a few months and not many years. turnover per time is the key here.

you can have 106% tt or whatever all day long, but when you only make like 6 ped with it in a month its quite useless
 
question for those returns is the turnover though. i can ha ve 110% tt return over 500 drops or 1k drops easily as well. but keep it after 100k drops and it would be great. especially if those 100k drops are in a matter of a few months and not many years. turnover per time is the key here.

you can have 106% tt or whatever all day long, but when you only make like 6 ped with it in a month its quite useless


Don't want to get too far off topic, but for me it's about the same as Haruto, last 5k drops or so, over a period of about 3 mo. I don't think it's statistically insignificant. Anyway it works for me, so doesn't really matter if anybody says otherwise. Every run is positive, even if it's a TT loss.

Plus I've learned in these forums you can come show stats with 10 million loot events and someone will still say "pshh... not enough data".
 
Eh... I don't really know what's happening under the hood either, so I can't say for sure, but I think this is probably unlikely for a couple of reasons. In my experience writing MMOs, nothing should occur client-side.

Having the damage dealt occur on the client side would be trivial to exploit; I could make an in-memory trainer that prevented my avatar from ever receiving damage. Then when I submit the damage I received to the server to calculate my loot payback I could say I received a shitload of damage. Basically if this were true I could easily write an exploit that caused my avatar to be immortal and every loot to be a HOF.

I would assume that damage received is calculated server side as it should be. Why the server lag allows for you to receive damage without being able to deal it is a mystery.

I came to this conclusion because I receive damage even while the network is out and can't transport the information in either direction, while I can deal damage only when it's back. Anyhow, it is a sidenote not directly related to OP.
 
Eh... I don't really know what's happening under the hood either, so I can't say for sure, but I think this is probably unlikely for a couple of reasons. In my experience writing MMOs, nothing should occur client-side.

Having the damage dealt occur on the client side would be trivial to exploit; I could make an in-memory trainer that prevented my avatar from ever receiving damage. Then when I submit the damage I received to the server to calculate my loot payback I could say I received a shitload of damage. Basically if this were true I could easily write an exploit that caused my avatar to be immortal and every loot to be a HOF.

I would assume that damage received is calculated server side as it should be. Why the server lag allows for you to receive damage without being able to deal it is a mystery.

You right. There is noting on client site! Every client ask the server. If you move, if you drop probes, if you do anything. Then the server update the clients. Otherwise there would be a cheat festival.

There is also a precomputing on the moving. The server calculate your direction, and let you move to there, without controlling any milisecond if you realy moved to there. After a while the server send out your real location. Now if you got a submit data problem, while this process, you just move stright forward, then if the server send the real possition it make the correcture. In a normal case you will not check anything about this. But if a submit problem occure, you will see some thing like rubberbanding.

Now, there are not only a few servers, there are many server with special functionality, like moving, get loot, AI handling etc. How they made it, is more or less unknow, But basicaly it work that way on larger games with MMO or multiplayer. At least, it is a very complex system!
 
To me, it always seemed like loot is on a seperate server from damage, actions. This would explain most of what you experience..
 
It could be that the system is overloaded so a certain unlucky player may get generic loot drop instead of a rare item drop, because the system cannot compute if it's his time or not. Then all of the sudden the system realizes that the item limit has been opened a bit so the rare item drop magically gets available all at once. Hence explaining why usually when a rare item drop happens, it mostly happens all at once.

So to answer your question. Yes I do believe it hurts us.


I always figured the loot lag was loot screening. Just like the loot belonging to someone else. It was your turn to HOF but the screeners couldn't confirm you are on list of oks. so they just give you the token loot. nothing to see here move along folks...
 
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