Question: What should MA do about loot waves?

[Vadio]

Back to 2015... sir.... ok can be 2017 where only ASHI with Pyrite is wave....
and fews Rare is Amp cap.... today you can run with tm8+10 and still hit 60% ore tt food 80% enmatter tt food anywhere

Make skills where should be.... or maybe its time to swedish lotto/gamble authority audit this game again

 

[Droob]

I don't get it, if loot is rare, have a really high amount of PED cycled be the average chance that it drops. It should never be based on how much of a material is currently in circulation.

Players compete with eachother purely based on the market, why is the market controlled in such a way that can be exploited based on whether someone is hoarding an item or not?

 

[Korin Dante MDe]

there should be no loot in the any professions. 0% tt return makes experience more enjoyable. That is what everyone voted.

 

[jetsina]

Just on the technical definition of a wave, I understand it to be when various stuff is added to the loot pool in one go: an update to the loot server database of availability according to certain criteria.
No waves thus equals no loot, unless every single unit of everything is injected individually in a steady 'stream' (whether a babbling brook or mighty river). Alternatively, there is no pool at all and your loot is somehow cobbled together after each kill based on hundreds of (independent?) probabilities.

Personally, I think the loot server is an essential part of EU mechanics, however much or however little it is a black box to the rest of the system (secure environment of ped release management)... thus for me, competent balancing is key.

Yes, I would welcome the chance to be involved in the dev of an RCE virtual universe and no, I'd probably not want to work for MA, but for any place in the universe, would a waveless platform be able to perform to requirements???!!!

 

[Sub-Zero]

Based on my observations on how the loot wave works now for rare items. You can be shooting for weeks and months and not get anything. Then when they decide to fill the lootpool so that the item cap is raised for that specific rare item the one who happens to be shooting at that time gets the item/s, sometimes almost all of them at once. This shouldn't be possible. In order to keep it fair and motivate people to keep shooting, loot 2.0 wave system needs to be upgraded to loot 3.0 wave system.

The chance of looting a rare item should be calculated based on the total amount of cycle that you do on a particular mob, once you reach a certain threshold you'll increase the odds of you looting a rare item, it will never be 100% guaranteed, but it will increase your chance every time you reach the threshold. Once you loot the rare item you'll have to start the cycle from the beginning. Though with luck you should still be able to loot a rare item before reaching the threshold, just more unlikely than someone who has cycled way more than you on that particular mob.
Add hard cap for rare items so that one person can't loot most of them in a short time frame. This should prevent "Happy hour" etc.
The same should apply for boxes imo, no more just opening it during wave.

This way I think it would give players the proper trust and motivation to target specific rare item on any mob, and we'll never get these instances of someone getting all the rare item hofs at once again. I think that would keep it fair for most people don't you think?

 

[mastermesh]

The chance of looting a rare item should be calculated based on the total amount of cycle that you do on a particular mob, once you reach a certain threshold you'll increase the odds of you looting a rare item, it will never be 100% guaranteed, but it will increase your chance every time you reach the threshold. Once you loot the rare item you'll have to start the cycle from the beginning. Though with luck you should still be able to loot a rare item before reaching the threshold, just more unlikely than someone who has cycled way more than you on that particular mob.
Add hard cap for rare items so that one person can't loot most of them in a short time frame. This should prevent "Happy hour" etc.
The same should apply for boxes imo, no more just opening it during wave.

This way I think it would give players the proper trust and motivation to target specific rare item on any mob, and we'll never get these instances of someone getting all the rare item hofs at once again. I think that would keep it fair for most people don't you think?

loot algorithm would require major rework to make it happen. Also 'personal loot pool' would have to be created to verify past loots for any avatar in the game. You think lag is bad now... just wait til they calculate past loots for last hour, much less day or weeks for every single avatar logged in...

 

[jetsina]

Then when they decide to fill the lootpool so that the item cap is raised for that specific rare item the one who happens to be shooting at that time gets the item/s, sometimes almost all of them at once.

I think that is possibly happening, yes, and could tie in with there being no max or RND settings on those rares once they are added. As mentioned, I see plenty of loots that appear to be on a wave, but with a maximum number dropping per mob, AND not every mob that probably qualifies drops one. Under qualify I mean stuff like a loot quality assessment of how much cost was put in and what can then drop. Just normal kills, but the loot selection doesn't add the wave loot to every drop, even if the tt value is very small.
Perhaps this is missing from these select rares, that they should be delivered right away if possible, but when injected directly after a new raised cap, they then all go at once. The system working fine, but not the brains operating that system accounting for this or changing it. Could be ...

 

[Legends]

Hmmm

Well so far I think these Poll results are mostly inconclusive... I mean, only 82.7% of people said "Eliminate all waves!", so I think we'll have to do a lot more Polling to figure out if people want more, or less waves... Hard to tell

/sarcasm mode off

 

[jetsina]

^^ That's why I wrote #34 above, as I appreciate the sentiment, but not the actual content of the wishes/desires expressed. Maybe people could have a little rethink? My response years ago may also have been 'eliminate these damned waves!', but at some point I must have begun to think about what I'd actually do if I were in charge. I don't think it's right to 'wave goodbye' any more...

 

[Legends]

^^ That's why I wrote #34 above, as I appreciate the sentiment, but not the actual content of the wishes/desires expressed. Maybe people could have a little rethink? My response years ago may also have been 'eliminate these damned waves!', but at some point I must have begun to think about what I'd actually do if I were in charge. I don't think it's right to 'wave goodbye' any more...

Definition of "loot waves" as it would apply to Entropia:

The observable phenomenon of several nice multiplers and/or valuable item drops happening in quick succession within a short period of time as opposed to being more spread out and evenly distributed over time. Seemingly, the wave loot system that we currently have does not distribute item drops evenly, it appears that it "accumulates" and "sets aside" the items that should drop, for an hour, for a day, a week, or even a month or a year, and "dumps" it all at once in a very short timeframe in a manner that seems increasingly unfair.

As such, I think it isn't unreasonable for the majority of players to feel that this is an unfair system that needs to change.

What this system "should" be replaced with is an entirely different discussion as far as I'm concerned. But I think it's ckear that players are frustrated and want a fairer distribution.

 

[jetsina]

Yes, sure, players are rightly frustrated, but surely the definition of loot waves, at least as far as the actual system is concerned, is largely this 'let's say hourly' repeating function. Generally, this is about the timeframe for 'waiting for a new wave' when one has just come and gone.

The unfairness is partly on this level too, yes, but the big upset here is this big wave, regardless of how it came into being, and the short time-frame of many drops.

Fixing what's wrong is surely a subset of the wave system, not the entire system. I think we can see partial solutions to the general wave problem already in game, so maybe people here think the tsunamis should be stopped, not all waves, no matter how benign? However, as the poll answer ticked most is about all waves, even with many less severe answers available, I assume people are somewhat throwing the baby out with the bathwater (an old 20th century expression for getting rid of much more than is necessary or desirable).

Thus, I took things in this direction a bit. I don't mind other opinions, of course, but want to know what people really mean with their answer. Perhaps they mean it as you suggest, maybe not .

 

[Legends]

Yes, sure, players are rightly frustrated, but surely the definition of loot waves, at least as far as the actual system is concerned, is largely this 'let's say hourly' repeating function. Generally, this is about the timeframe for 'waiting for a new wave' when one has just come and gone.

The unfairness is partly on this level too, yes, but the big upset here is this big wave, regardless of how it came into being, and the short time-frame of many drops.

Fixing what's wrong is surely a subset of the wave system, not the entire system. I think we can see partial solutions to the general wave problem already in game, so maybe people here think the tsunamis should be stopped, not all waves, no matter how benign? However, as the poll answer ticked most is about all waves, even with many less severe answers available, I assume people are somewhat throwing the baby out with the bathwater (an old 20th century expression for getting rid of much more than is necessary or desirable).

Thus, I took things in this direction a bit. I don't mind other opinions, of course, but want to know what people really mean with their answer. Perhaps they mean it as you suggest, maybe not .

Well I can't speak for others of course, but here's some of my experiences:

- Last year I made a valiant effort to integrate hunting as part of my activities: I unlocked the CP Cave and did a couple of hunting runs there. The last hunting run I did there was more than 10 hours long and the returns were horrible; I think I lost close to 2500 PED. Not only that but I also didn't get a mutated bone. Having results like this does absolitely nothing to encourage me to keep hunting, in fact I have not returned to the CP Cave since and probably never will.

- I have been clicking Gizmos for the last 3 days, fishing for some BPs I can use or sell. I probably did 8 hours or so in total in that time, cycle many thousands of PED and got very few BPs that have any value at all; AP-48 Electric, AP-48 Acid and 8 clicks of 42B amps... Waves of BP drops are NOT hourly. The only way to succeed in Gizmos is to leverage a shit-ton of PED over several days or weeks, otherwise most of the time, it's just pure loss. I think "good" waves in Gizmos come maybe once or twice per week, if you miss it, you miss it and it's just massive losses.

So you say hourly waves... No, I really don't think that's what people are frustrated with. In the case of mutated bones, I understand that they can't drop them every hour, but to not get 1 in 10 hours AND also get 80% return is just nuts.

For Gizmos, it's too painful and I just don't want to do it anymore, so what I've started doing is I started buying the BPs from others more and more, and clicking less and less.

Until MA fixes this, I am going to reduce my engagement with the loot system as much as possible.

 

[Angela Draniie Cloud]

There poopy

 

[jwestonmoss]

it's pretty obvious that, assuming the recent so-called "happy hours" were BUGS, they were probably caused by the loot wave loot table system. a purely random system wouldn't see those kinds of anomalies, or in the exceptional case where it did, we could happily say "you lucky dog!"

 

[Bamb00cha]

I don't think waves are problem. Problem is frequency of waves. So add more waves and problem solved

 

[messi91]

There are at most 10 players who can have a grasp of how waves behave in large part.That means nothing in the large scale since nobody can point a finger of what drops when and where.Best you can do is to farm as much a possible and be more competent in the scale of mindar's system.
Its completely irrelevant to make a poll about something people can't explain and each person have a theory of their own.

 

[Mega]

There are at most 10 players who can have a grasp of how waves behave in large part.That means nothing in the large scale since nobody can point a finger of what drops when and where.Best you can do is to farm as much a possible and be more competent in the scale of mindar's system.
Its completely irrelevant to make a poll about something people can't explain and each person have a theory of their own.

Is your friend Linzey one of them messi91 ?

 

[Legends]

There are at most 10 players who can have a grasp of how waves behave in large part.That means nothing in the large scale since nobody can point a finger of what drops when and where.Best you can do is to farm as much a possible and be more competent in the scale of mindar's system.
Its completely irrelevant to make a poll about something people can't explain and each person have a theory of their own.

When 81% of people agree on a particular statement, it's never irrelevant, I don't care what the subject is. 81% agreeing on something is HUGE and should NOT be ignored.

 

[messi91]

When 81% of people agree on a particular statement, it's never irrelevant, I don't care what the subject is. 81% agreeing on something is HUGE and should NOT be ignored.

Only 70 players responded out of what 35000 50000, 1 million?
Having an opinion about how a mechanic works in game is one thing, forcing Mindark to change something where maybe 0 out of 70 who answered don't know what they are talking about is a different topic.I can have an opinion about bears in north pole , it doesn't mean i know anything about them.
1 out of 3 people millennial in US think earth is flat.Its free to have dumb opinions thats one of the purpose of internet to post dumb shit and don't be responsible for your actions, it doesn't mean society or mindark should bend to such demands.
I'm fine talking nonsense for the sake of conversation as long as everything stay within the rules of conversation but here is something different where you trying to gather force to change game mechanics because you have a feeling it doesn't suit you or your needs or you find them complicated or whatever.
I don't care if there are waves or no waves, i let mindark decide that.

 

[jetsina]

something where maybe 0 out of 70 who answered don't know what they are talking about

Sounds like a pretty informed group, or have I read that wrong?
But yeah, it's not ideal when people who have little idea think they know loads. Isn't that the Krunning-Duger thingie?
Oh, it's not the players' fault to not know a lot of what the devs know, which is why such poor results are particularly frustrating for people who DO know about development and programming in general, just not MA's code. Edit: parts of the code work really well and have been remarkably solid over the years; it's the balancing that is often way way off and the mistakes that reek of incompetence or alterior motives (take your pick). That's more than just annoying.

 

[Mega]

When 81% of people agree on a particular statement, it's never irrelevant, I don't care what the subject is. 81% agreeing on something is HUGE and should NOT be ignored.

You should never ignore the fact that I asked a question four hours ago and I didn't get a reply.

I still would like a reply.

messi91, is Linzey one of the 10 players who undersands waves?

 

[messi91]

I still would like a reply.

You can't afford one.

 

[Mega]

You can't afford one.

I just got one.

And it confirmed what I already knew. Right?

 

[TheOneOmega]

I feel like all of the options miss the most important dimension of the topic question. What we should definitely not do about loot waves is replace them with something even worse. For example, we should not replace a system in which individual players have at least some agency over their own outcomes with a system in which players have little or no agency, and then go on to complain that Entropia has become a boring F-mashing RNG-fest. Rather, if we don't like loot waves as they are, we should either improve their properties (i.e., by fixing any existing time zone advantages), or replace them with a better system. The language used in the options of "removing" rather than "replacing" loot waves is concerning, as it seems to take for granted that we don't have anything better in mind.

 

[jetsina]

Well, time zone advantages have more to do with when fewer people are playing: competing for the goodies in the waves.
If MA were to try and improve the loot wave properties somehow for zimezones, this strikes me as being tricky to say the least. It could be that loot waves can be tweaked to tune in to some elements of turnover on the fly maybe, occurring less often during quiet periods, but aiming to stay aligned overall to some carrier wave that regulates totals.
Overall, however, I'd prefer to see the wave frequency shortened. Any loot injections that cannot simply be divided up into shorter periods could be given some fractional probability per period, or follow some 'interesting wave' function designed to have the right area beneath it as its integral.

 

[aVaLON_52]

Why is it waves and not RNG?

 

[Legends]

I feel like all of the options miss the most important dimension of the topic question. What we should definitely not do about loot waves is replace them with something even worse. For example, we should not replace a system in which individual players have at least some agency over their own outcomes with a system in which players have little or no agency, and then go on to complain that Entropia has become a boring F-mashing RNG-fest. Rather, if we don't like loot waves as they are, we should either improve their properties (i.e., by fixing any existing time zone advantages), or replace them with a better system. The language used in the options of "removing" rather than "replacing" loot waves is concerning, as it seems to take for granted that we don't have anything better in mind.

This poll is designed to answer only 1 question: "Does the current loot system of waves have any merit at all? I.e. to what extent do we want it to be present in the game?"

I probably could/should have designed a poll that goes deeper and also looks at alternatives, but this would have distracted from the first and primary question of do we even want this system and to what degree should it remain.

Having settled that question first, then we can move forward from that and poll for what exactly would people prefer instead. However that will always be a lesser question because it is only a hypothetical; people have to imagine something which doesn't exist and they won't actually know what that will actually be like in reality until they experience it.

 

[R4tt3xx]

I feel like all of the options miss the most important dimension of the topic question. What we should definitely not do about loot waves is replace them with something even worse. For example, we should not replace a system in which individual players have at least some agency over their own outcomes with a system in which players have little or no agency, and then go on to complain that Entropia has become a boring F-mashing RNG-fest. Rather, if we don't like loot waves as they are, we should either improve their properties (i.e., by fixing any existing time zone advantages), or replace them with a better system. The language used in the options of "removing" rather than "replacing" loot waves is concerning, as it seems to take for granted that we don't have anything better in mind.

But you do have agency, you have a choice every split-second you play. Do you wish to continue ?

 

[R4tt3xx]

Why is it waves and not RNG?

"Entropia Universe is a SKILL BASED SYSTEM... blah blah blah.." This has been stated many times by Mindark themeslves...

 

[Legends]

Only 70 players responded out of what 35000 50000, 1 million?
Having an opinion about how a mechanic works in game is one thing, forcing Mindark to change something where maybe 0 out of 70 who answered don't know what they are talking about is a different topic.I can have an opinion about bears in north pole , it doesn't mean i know anything about them.
1 out of 3 people millennial in US think earth is flat.Its free to have dumb opinions thats one of the purpose of internet to post dumb shit and don't be responsible for your actions, it doesn't mean society or mindark should bend to such demands.
I'm fine talking nonsense for the sake of conversation as long as everything stay within the rules of conversation but here is something different where you trying to gather force to change game mechanics because you have a feeling it doesn't suit you or your needs or you find them complicated or whatever.
I don't care if there are waves or no waves, i let mindark decide that.

You don't know anything about my motivations actually, you think you know, but you don't.

I could type a really long answer and explain a bunch of things but I'm getting lazy these days.

The only thing I care about is that EU becomes more popular and has more players and better retention rates. That's all. And everybody wins if that happens; the hunters, the investors, the crafters, miners, etc... Everyone would benefit is some way or other, MA too.

So, it's not about me and trying to change the game mechanics so that MY gaming experience is better, I don't even care. If there's ganeplay I don't like or find too grindy or too expensive for my liking, I just don't engage in it, so I really don't care, trust me. I just want this game to have more players.

Polls/Surveys can go a long way to help figure out what's working and what's not, that's why I'm doing them.

Instead of finding fault with what others are trying to do to contribite to the success of EU, why don't you figure out what YOU can contribute. You're not participating in my efforts to generate some feedback from the community through these polls/threads, and that's your right, but I don't really see any contribution from you in any threads about how this game could be made better, more popular and more successful.

Maybe you think that it's not your place to provide this feedback but you are wrong. MA would very much value your honest feedback about how your game experience has been and what you think could be done to make the game better so that more people would stick around and the community would actually grow.