Open letter for the Balance Manager

[shoti]

i think problem is that as much ppl hates ATH's same amount of ppl loves them.

 

[addz]

i think problem is that as much ppl hates ATH's same amount of ppl loves them.

says the guy who just purchased the biggest ath popping mob the game has ever seen

 

[levithanikos]

The more we seem to say the ATH's are wrecking the game and making people quit the higher the ATH's seem to get It seems to ME MA is trying to shoot themself in the foot

They did that already .. plenty of times

 

[valentin]

It's not been working correctly since VU 9.0 and is now worse in VU 10. Pre- VU 9 you'd never ever not at least get your ammo or close to your ammo back. Sure, losses on decay and such. Now, there's to many hunts with huge losses, maybe even half of your ammo back.. if lucky.

Yes, there's something seriously wrong with the balancing manager. I don't expect to break even every hunt. I expect losses. I don't expect to ever have a 70% loss on a hunt and that happens to much lately.

It started with the removal of peds in the loot and has now gotten overall worse with the addition of the stupid fragments. It's never been properly balanced and it needs to be done ASAP! We've been screwed many times by these changes that never seem to get fixed. Why? Because it ends up in their favor overall. Now, if the balancing manager was off the other way, how long would it take to get fixed?

I wrote support years ago about it. Pretty much same reply and nothing done that I know of other than to make things worse

Yes... The new "balance" and "dynamic" came with VU 9.0 before VU 9.0 they did not even use the two words i dont know perhaps they become greedy or just Psychotic.

 

[AJack10600]

says the guy who just purchased the biggest ath popping mob the game has ever seen

Yes, he is being honest... would you hate it if you had just hit the jackpot ?

 

[Yquem]

First post updated.

 

[falkao]

I guess the problem can't be solved that easy as we don't know how things might come out when the loot distribution is changed. There will be always some that will start complain.

The best solution would be to let loot be ava based and configurable. If loot is ava bound then everybody is free to set up his odds. If one is after HOF's or ATH’S then he is free to set his odds in this way. If one is after quicker returns then he can set odds differently.

 

[Yquem]

i think problem is that as much ppl hates ATH's same amount of ppl loves them.

Yes ppl with a gambling problem and ppl with unlimited ped card (= ppl that can deposit a lot of ped and dont care) might love those ATH.

But that kind of ppl need to think on one thing - those who pay these too high ATH is those that deposit. And when depositing is dropping (see the last closed books from MA) and continue to drop there is noone to pay for the crazy high ATH's.

So balace manger take a look at jour job title and see if it still fits

 

[sitram]

I guess the problem can't be solved that easy as we don't know how things might come out when the loot distribution is changed. There will be always some that will start complain.

I think this is already implemented by the various loot distribution on different mobs.

One example would be the longtooth(4890 HP) which can have no loot or just a few blazar/nova fragments in loot versus a mob like Scipulor(max HP 2200) which always gives loot and never loots blazar/nova fragments.

Ofc, you don't see ubers every day on scipulors, unlike longtooth or leviathans.

I doubt a checkbox on which the user choose what kind of loot he wants would benefit EU.

 

[falkao]

I think this is already implemented by the various loot distribution on different mobs.

....
I doubt a checkbox on which the user choose what kind of loot he wants would benefit EU.

No, loot distributions per mob are quite the same but they are scaled by HP.


Making loot configurable would imply, that every user is free to choose how payout is triggered over time. The payout% itself is still the same for every player.

 

[dynamic loot]

all this discussions about loot are pointless at this moment . nobody is willing to listen : MA nor FPC . of course FPC doesn't set loot mechanism , but they were part of MA and could have some influence if they wanted .
that's not the case since PLANET CALYPSO will be sold , FPC's interest to make things work is ZERO ! you can see that from the quite that comes from FPC for many weeks by now . Marco just pops in to give reply here and there , nothing with substance though. on the other hand MA never dealed directly with players comunity , they speak only with partners with authority .
so our only hope to make things right is the new owner of calypso who can negotiate with MA and put some pressure on them if necesary .
so save all energies for a discussion ith the new owner of Calypso , wich i hope will be a better listener than the previous owner(s) .
good luck all !

 

[sitram]

No, loot distributions per mob are quite the same but they are scaled by HP.


Making loot configurable would imply, that every user is free to choose how payout is triggered over time. The payout% itself is still the same for every player.

I don't see the benefit in a system where the user can choose that the payout on a mob like longtooth to be trigered in a year or every week.

Imagine a player with maxed MM, angel, imp fap and lvl 55+ evader on a mob with a lot of markup choosing the payout to be triggered over a period of 10 years. Because his loot fluctuations would be very small => a lot of profit generated from markup.

If someone sets a payout of 1 month on a mob like longtooth then he will probably get no loot or nova fragments for thousands of mobs to prepare that 30-60k uber in 1 month.

Besides, we will loose the dynamicity parf of the EU if we can configure something like this and predictibility would be a lot easier to do.

 

[falkao]

I don't see the benefit in a system where the user can choose that the payout on a mob like longtooth to be trigered in a year or every week.

...
Besides, we will loose the dynamicity parf of the EU if we can configure something like this and predictibility would be a lot easier to do.

No, what I'm mentioning is different.

Assume that the system is set in such a way that odds for nomral loot are 5:1 with payouts 1:5. This would imply that in normal occasions you'll get 1/5 = 20% as payout and sometimes 5/1 = 500%. Total payback is then (5/5 + 5)/6 * payout% = payout%.

What the user can choose are those odds. A user, that likes to get it as 2:1 would have payouts of 1/2 and 2/1. Total payback is (2/2 + 2)/3 * payout %= payout %.

Both players will get the same payout % but times are longer and costs are higher in case 1 than in case 2 to get the set payout% (6 attempts in mean vs 3 attempts and hence costs are twice as much with case 1). High loot of player 2 is only 2, whereas player 1 get's 5. On the other site normal loot is 1/2 for player 2 and 1/5 for player 1. Money spent per time period is the same btw, but money that is bound in system (loot pool) is quite lower in case 2.

As you see, there are a lot of implications hence letting the player choose is the right thing to do from my point of view.

 

[Mega]

I so hope the looter posts this thread today:

Fantastic!


EDIT: From looking at in game HOF list, looks like live feed is on LSD again. Already made a thread about it previously.

 

[Yquem]

First post updated with this:


Update 4:
I send a copy of some of your +rep and got this comment back from support:

2010-07-28 16:39 - Entropia Universe Support:


Hi Yq,
Your feedback is very important to us and you can be sure that we have forwarded this case to the balancing team and that they are currently looking into this.
Unfortunately we don't have any information about this at the current time to be able to provide you with a more satisfying reply.
We thank you for your patience and participation as you are an important member of the Entropia Universe experience and want to wish you a nice day.
Kind regards,
Entropia Universe Support

Just keep pushing them.....

 

[PW3CKA]

all this discussions about loot are pointless at this moment . nobody is willing to listen : MA nor FPC . of course FPC doesn't set loot mechanism , but they were part of MA and could have some influence if they wanted .
that's not the case since PLANET CALYPSO will be sold , FPC's interest to make things work is ZERO ! you can see that from the quite that comes from FPC for many weeks by now . Marco just pops in to give reply here and there , nothing with substance though. on the other hand MA never dealed directly with players comunity , they speak only with partners with authority .
so our only hope to make things right is the new owner of calypso who can negotiate with MA and put some pressure on them if necesary .
so save all energies for a discussion ith the new owner of Calypso , wich i hope will be a better listener than the previous owner(s) .
good luck all !

And you really had to make new account to tell us this? Hahaha, its a long time a saw a pussy like this , It must be hard to even order a food in restaurant for you right ? DD

 

[Naithen]

The old days it was "give and take" today it feels like "take take take" and get lost! so i prefer the old days.

 

[Yquem]

Holliday is soon done - so keep tell Balance Manager what we want

 

[Yquem]

Im sure he is now back from holliday - keep pushing.....

 

[JingyiDai]

They will only take more, even we read in an official open letter to the community that things will be changed.

It is most likely bullshit. It wont be the first or last .

A very long text with empty meaningless words, maybe sound very inspiring

Like from any speeches.

I do like listening to inspiring speeches from time to time.

Who doesnt

Be critical and realistic, when we start to heard/read some "good" news.

This time I cant even blame they, since we've asked for it

 

[Parlog]

i seriously doubt that the problem lies in the "balance" of the game. EU is a competition and we are the powermongers who drive that competition further and further, its a simple arms race. We permanently try to outmatch, outrun and outdo each other. Raising potential --> raising money spent --> rising prize for the winner --> epic aths

i seriously doubt that the balancing manager will do something about it, its the heart of the game

my2pec

 

[valentin]

The old days it was "give and take" today it feels like "take take take" and get lost! so i prefer the old days.

When i started to play this game back in 2006 the word "dynamic loot" and "balance" was not in use in the game MA started to use this words later when they started to do lots nerfs and started to create new nerfs often.

So this two new words "balance" and "dynamic" its just two diplomatic words they trying to hide behind so they think we cant see theres greed.

 

[Yquem]

Bump it up on the new forum

 

[Trucidator]

I know I belong to a minority - but the reason I went for hunting, and stayed in hunting, was because at the time, it was a chance to loot *items*, and it had lower requirements of budget than mining (at the time, crafting was either grinding basic filters or for those having unique blueprints).

*I* don't hunt for ATHs. I understand other wants to hunt for ATH, but a pile of PEDs isn't my dream, rather fun and useful items that I can use in my gameplay. Items that last longer than a weekend, I should add - a HL12(L) that I loot once every 6 months is soon forgotten after it's been grinded down on spiders. A pile of peds isn't that fun if you go to auction, and find out what you want isn't there, and the pile-of-peds isn't enough for what you want or need.

Another comparison; consider 3k ped from a young exosaur to *one* player. My guess is that if you want to keep beginner level players, it would be more useful with 20x150 ped HOFs, enough for a set of (pixie/goblin/gnome), step up of (L) weapon and plenty of ammo to stay iname, or try mining.

I honestly do not think you belong to such a minority... Many think as you do, myself included...

 

[Yquem]

I honestly do not think you belong to such a minority... Many think as you do, myself included...

Yes and the big loot will just be pulled out of the game

 

[Tussi]

It's not been working correctly since VU 9.0 and is now worse in VU 10. Pre- VU 9 you'd never ever not at least get your ammo or close to your ammo back. Sure, losses on decay and such. Now, there's to many hunts with huge losses, maybe even half of your ammo back.. if lucky.

Exactly.

Back before VU 9 the scenario was as follows: You bought a load of ammo from the tt, fully repaired your gear, went out to the fields and burned through the ammo by shooting at mobs.

After that the TT of the loot was something roughly similar to this distribution:
- 5% of runs sucked
- 15% of runs covered ammo spend
- 60% of runs covered ammo spend and repair of amps (leaving you with decay on guns, faps and armor)
- 15% of runs you globaled, this covered ammo spend and paid for full repair of your gear (incl. armor, guns and faps)
- 5% of runs you knew the moment you saw swirlies the second time that this run will give some profit

And this was on TT value of loot, so you were able to stay afloat for a reasonable timespan by selling loot for markup.

That system was actually FUN.

Last time i checked it was more like that 80% or more of runs loot didn't even cover ammo spent, globals or not.

Tussi

 

[falkao]

Exactly.

Back before VU 9 the scenario was as follows:

After that the TT of the loot was something roughly similar to this distribution:
- 5% of runs sucked
- 15% of runs covered ammo spend
- 60% of runs covered ammo spend and repair of amps (leaving you with decay on guns, faps and armor)
- 15% of runs you globaled, this covered ammo spend and paid for full repair of your gear (incl. armor, guns and faps)
- 5% of runs you knew the moment you saw swirlies the second time that this run will give some profit

Those numbers do look very optimistically to me. Before VU 9 you could break even when globalling (depending on mob but was about 4% on 1000 HP mobs). With introduction of increased health regain on mobs this changed quite significantly. Number of globals went up, but also decay and hence more expenses within less time.

All in all, and this nearly was unchanged since the beginning, one had a return of about 60% in 90% of occasions and in 10% you’ve got significantly more.

 

[Yquem]

Right now MA hates me

Had 3 500 peds run in the weekend - no gloabal at all (twice on proteron and one on atrox) - very cool loss. Was hard to get close to get 400 ped loot back from each hunt and then there was a decay bill for more than 170 ped each hunt (lees on trox thou).

 

[Tussi]

Those numbers do look very optimistically to me.

It was roughly what i was able to achive before the mob improvement shit started.

Remember: only TT of loot vs. tt of ammo and decay on equipment.

All in all, and this nearly was unchanged since the beginning, one had a return of about 60% in 90% of occasions and in 10% you’ve got significantly more.

Maybe we had a different playstyle, different luck, or a different random seed attached to our avatars, but your experience dosn't fit what i experienced (and summed up in the post above) back then.

Should i have had encountered the 60% in 90% of cases from the start i wouldn't have survived the first 6 months.

Tussi

 

[falkao]

Maybe we had a different playstyle, different luck, or a different random seed attached to our avatars, but your experience dosn't fit what i experienced (and summed up in the post above) back then.

I don't think so, but there were quite some differences compared to today.

Mini’s were quite frequent. For instance, Allos did drop a 10 to 20 PEDder quite often (5-10% of kills). Typically for hunting 1 to 2 hours the bill was 50 PED without globals. With a global (rare) one was able to break even and very often to profit. With a Hof (very rare) profit was guaranteed, but max HOF values were quite low (capped at 400 PED for quite some time).

Hence, it could be that our total playing time was different and therefore we did observe different returns per run. But running total was always something about 80-90% TT return.

Unfortunately, the old datasets that I do have are very small and a mixture of different mobs. It seems however as normal loot has become lower due to less mini’s and therefore #globals and maybe Hof’s went up. Moreover, as HP of mobs that are hunted frequently increased, absolute cost increased as well. But all this is speculative as I do have not enough data to verify it.