Who pays for Ubers & ATHs? Answer:

[ruslan]

90% average return is about right (see my blog for another sample of data).
But firstly, the funds have to be inside the system in order for it to be redistributed/awarded as a HOF, MA is not a charity so someone else has to pay for it. How does MA do that is the real question.

Anyway, nothing new here, but I guess it is helpful to reaffirm that even the most extreme returns eve out in the long run. Or as support puts it "loot is dynamic, the average return hasn't changed".


Some

 

[DoubleWolf]

which begs the question, were do the Peds go? is decay=revenue all just a simple lie and there's a 5% cut on activity. for me, it would be simpler if this were the case and MA admitted it.

Also anyone who quits before hitting their rebalancing uber will be pure profit for MA.

These two statements make me think of something that not too many people realize. PEDs are a fairy tale currency. They have no real value AT ALL. We pay Mindark when we "deposit" and in return, they give us Monopoly money. The only function that decay performs is reducing the amount of Monopoly money in the economy. This reduction requires people to continue to "deposit" (in reality it's just buying more Monopoly money), and this is where Mindark really makes their revenue. So they could hand out PED all day long, if they really wanted to. Only problem with that is people could request this PED to be withdrawn, and it also doesn't create a need to deposit.

If PEDs were a real currency that Mindark was truly concerned about, then they would have all the value in PED set aside somewhere, in the case that everyone wanted to withdraw at once. Fact of the matter is, they don't have this value any where. They've kept a reserve of cash on hand, but now they don't even have enough in assets to settle us all out. They've started to dip into that value to continue to fund the company's expenditures and now we have the rule where they only guarantee your last 6 months worth of deposits.

Another thing that clues me in to this fact is that their "contingent liability" (the amount of ped value in the game) is not really listed in the balance sheet. It's listed at the end, as a kind of footnote, but not included in the actual balance. It's simply there for information, so MA knows that this amount COULD potentially be requested to be refunded at any given time. If this was a real value, it should be in the ACTUAL liability section, and there would be enough in assets on the other side to balance this out. But there isn't. This tells me again, that PEDs are simply a made up currency that has no value. It just represents an amount that Mindark may have to refund to you, if you request it.

So basically what I'm getting at here is that, despite what Marco has said in the past (and his comments are always up for interpretation) decay doesn't really "go to MA". Some amount of peds get cycled back into the economy and some disappear into the system but they don't actually make money on this. Decay just acts as a reason to cause depositing.

If everyone stopped depositing and simply played with the remainder of what they have left, would MA still have a revenue stream? If you believe the answer to this is yes, then where is the REAL money coming from to create this revenue?

 

[XeroX2]

yes the tt return on the long run will be arround 90% no matter if you get an uber/ath loot or not. The only difference is that you have a MUCH higher chance these days to get an ultra high MU item in uber/ath since they are almost all ul sib (high tt) now. Thus you still have to try to get hof/ath to profit big time.

 

[EMW]

the main point of this thread is simple: Everything I've learned says those who've got ATHs paid for it themselves. Your peds are not going to them.

What about those who have never depoed one cent and have had Ubers and had ATH

 

[XeroX2]

What about those who have never depoed one cent and have had Ubers and had ATH

hmm i would guess they where able to amass so many ped with trading in the old days where stuff was constantly increasing in value that they actually qualify for an ath and still stay within 90% tt return.

 

[wizzszz]

What about those who have never depoed one cent and have had Ubers and had ATH

Deposit =/= cash spent, i thought this is obvious.

 

[sicc]

ATH profit

I can attest that when i hit my levi ATH 98k peds... I had less than 5k usd of deposits. Not sure if timing was correct or what. But i was able to take out more than i had put in at that point.
Prior to that ATH, one month earlier i had hit a 15k Allo and those peds out.

Was certain this would damn my avatar to the no loot for eternity place in MA books.

Guess i was wrong....

But some do ATH and profit on top of paying back past deposits for the years...

 

[~CHOPPER~]

There are the folks who routinely withdraw..
you remember the "I pay my rent playing a game" crowd?

The 90% average return is only for only for a small percentage of players at a given time.

The ubers and ATH's come from most people loosing their asses...plain and simple.

 

[falkao]

However, the main point of this thread is simple: Everything I've learned says those who've got ATHs paid for it themselves. Your peds are not going to them.

It’s not always easy to say what is cause and what is effect. Your statement “that those spending PED’s are paying for their ATH” implies that spending PED is the cause for an ATH and I'm not sure if this holds.
Jimmy, Noodles and me were able to confirm, that mean payback in mining is above 90% and we didn’t need to include ATH’s.
The probability for an ATH is very very low, below 1/100,000. With every attempt you have the same chance to get one. As those spending more PED’s are doing more attempts, they will get more ATH’s and we will also have a limited number of ATH’s in noobs.

In your summary you depict exactly this picture.

 

[Corey 'Greyfox']

90% average return is about right (see my blog for another sample of data).
But firstly, the funds have to be inside the system in order for it to be redistributed/awarded as a HOF, MA is not a charity so someone else has to pay for it. How does MA do that is the real question.

Anyway, nothing new here, but I guess it is helpful to reaffirm that even the most extreme returns eve out in the long run. Or as support puts it "loot is dynamic, the average return hasn't changed".


Some

Well actually MA does it with an unspoken agreement with me, I depo and it's added to a ATH fund for other players. Much the same way the Canadian Pension Plan(CPP) works.

 

[ermik]

but if this is true then dam/pec dont have any value at all.....just use an high dam/sec unlimited weapon to reduce defensecosts....


if this is true an noob at would be better of using an doa or maddox4 then an kors400

some ppl get 85% avg and some 95% , guess that difference has to do with gear , skills and choice of mobs

cheers

ermik

 

[Joker]

some ppl get 85% avg and some 95% , guess that difference has to do with gear , skills and choice of mobs

cheers

ermik

i wish i could get 85% returns right now i am sitting at a strong 20-30% return... and that is a good run after decay its much worse... dont know what happened to loot these last 11k peds but its almost all gone... i must be due for something big

8 years in game and i have never seen it so bad... my luck that is... not the game.. the game seems fine... and has improved amazingly... hopefully my loot pool is just building for a nice fat hof and payback

 

[Jimmy B]

And yes, there are cases such as this: 3 day old noob gets 27,000ped HOF (01-29-2006) That I can't explain. However, the main point of this thread is simple: Everything I've learned says those who've got ATHs paid for it themselves. Your peds are not going to them.

Surely there's a contradiction in these two statements "Everything I've learned says those who got ATHs paid for it themselves" and "3 day old noob gets 27000 PED HOF"?

Anyway, let's argue hypothetically that loot is random and expected return in the long run is say 95%, but 5% of that comes from extremely rare megahofs. For uber players who have cycled huge amounts of PED and got an ATH would probably be pretty close to that 95%. It doesn't need to be forced in some individual loot tracking manner, it's just the law of large numbers in action. On the other hand a lucky noob who hits a megahof early on is likely in TT profit at that point. If he carried on playing a lot for years to come he'd still also approach the 95% TT return point.

Personally that's how I'd guess it works, it fits in with everything you've said (including the 3-day noob HoF).

 

[Kristoliquid]

My wallet?

 

[humanwoman]

A few things to consider:

MA lives off of deposits, not recycled peds, so why the recycled PED amount should matter or be tracked by the system?

If you have 90% TT return, you recycle about 10 times more PEDs than you actually deposit before you go bankrupt, but...

...if you have 90% TT return, you most likely break even or profit since 110% MU is not that hard to get, so you are playing for free (in case you decide to withdraw), so your recycled PED amount can be any

If you are not paying for the game, who is paying?

 

[Infinity01]

Everything I've learned says those who've got ATHs paid for it themselves. Your peds are not going to them.

Thank you for the post... I'm so happy... I'm right in my thinking about TT returns....

So, here is my somewhat similar coment on this issue:

.....The reason is, according to MA's principle of loot system.... in the longer term the return rate is 90% of decay...... and based on this principle Uber players X is going to have a dry spell for a long time and would whine a lot...but would be able to keep hunting coz of the uber loot he got earlier...it'd be an indeed a long period of painful hunting and whining.......

Again the only way to make profit is taking adventage of MU and by trading! it's really as simple as that...

(+) rep for the hard work ....I wish I could give you double (+) rep

 

[Infinity01]

.....On the other hand a lucky noob who hits a megahof early on is likely in TT profit at that point. If he carried on playing a lot for years to come he'd still also approach the 95% TT return point.

It'd be interesting to see if any of these lucky newbie players get items with high MU... my best guess is all of them get TT food.

As a newbie (4 months old) I got an uber HOF (24K)... it was thyroid oil..... and I did have a dry spelll afterwards...I was so frustrated ...ppl arround me were globalling and i was not getting anything.... made me really angry...

I'd be interested to see what other players got in their uber HOF as a newbie (<4 months old in eu)...

 

[Wolverine Queen]

Almost daily I see towers on entropiatracker from ppl who have never had a global before.

Who pays for those?

 

[Joat]

Imo, everyone pays for the value that is paid out, individual pays for the
value in the buildup process before they get the big loot.

One thing about these big ones. I often see some are affected quite
heavily in loot before these comes, others aren't at all.
Imo those who are "granted" to get these, are affected.
I.e, the avatar must be in right "phase" in their progress in EU, to
be able to even have a chance to get it. Then you must be at
right place, hunting right mob, with right stuff.
So it's a competition between avatars who are "granted" these.
I guess this is one of all reasons EU isn't judged as gambling, due to
the (imo) odd reasoning they had when they did the "investigation" of EU.
This "phase" is controlled of avatars skillprogress, not value spent.

 

[Jimmy B]

...if you have 90% TT return, you most likely break even or profit since 110% MU is not that hard to get, so you are playing for free (in case you decide to withdraw), so your recycled PED amount can be any

If you are not paying for the game, who is paying?

Anyone making whose net markup is positive must be compensated for by other players whose net markup is negative, since all markup paid comes from players.

 

[Theren Strange]

What then happens to the ped owed to someone who has been on a long loss streak over an extended period and quits before he gets it returned? Could that be the noob hof?

 

[lilac]

Surely there's a contradiction in these two statements "Everything I've learned says those who got ATHs paid for it themselves" and "3 day old noob gets 27000 PED HOF"?

Anyway, let's argue hypothetically that loot is random and expected return in the long run is say 95%, but 5% of that comes from extremely rare megahofs. For uber players who have cycled huge amounts of PED and got an ATH would probably be pretty close to that 95%. It doesn't need to be forced in some individual loot tracking manner, it's just the law of large numbers in action. On the other hand a lucky noob who hits a megahof early on is likely in TT profit at that point. If he carried on playing a lot for years to come he'd still also approach the 95% TT return point.

Personally that's how I'd guess it works, it fits in with everything you've said (including the 3-day noob HoF).

I've mentioned this before, but I think alot of these two seemingly disconnected ideas kinda fit together if you consider that in both cases, the player's expenditures in game have undergone a rapid increase- a spike if you will...

In other words, the player who hits a 100k hof after losing 10k in a short period, and the player who hits a 4k berycled while grinding away their first 20$ deposit both have in common that they're spending a whole lot more in game than they did in previous time periods. A further example would be someone who hits a big one after a long break... the "welcome back" global, or the player who just deposited 200$ and is "letting loose" after a long period of being broke.

I'm not saying that any of these things are "likely", but they do seem to constitute a larger portion of the good loots than those of us who have developed a "normal" style of gaming and stick to it... I think it's more than coincidence...

it would make sense that there's a "see what happens if you spend more", built a bit into the algorythm.

The fact that the noob is likely to lose the 4k, or the person who just lost 10k has lost 10 times that amount during the course of his gaming, well that's just a matter of folks each gaming in their typical style and being subject to normal odds.

 

[humanwoman]

Anyone making whose net markup is positive must be compensated for by other players whose net markup is negative, since all markup paid comes from players.

My point exactly
And the answer to the question "Who pays for Ubers & ATHs" (since here we discuss those who's TT return is around 90%)

 

[ancientrd]

Your theory is almost true with some exceptions : noobs that win after 3 days or players that can loose all after 4 years... like my case...
I deposited ofer 6000$ , cycled all , sold my skills cycled again peds ... and guess what : after doing that in 4 years i have 2 ped on my ped card. never withdrawed . that means pure loss of 60k ped in 4 years.
So based on what you sayd of an average return of 90% guess how much you pay to play
and yes when i played i never did it eco just had fun , big weapons for killing big stuff , big amps on minnig , and amps crafting ..... it was fun , had lots of globals and hofs , even a tower .
The fun provided didn;t make me cry for the money ofcourse i wish to had an ath or an uber item like other did but is still ok ... when i have money i depo 4-500$ and have a week of fun wich it totally deserve it .... you cannot compare eco hunting pew pew a small mob with a nice well deserved relax to see the swirless around u couple of times per day

so my point is : evryone loose (if you take all based on TT not markup)
now to brake even or make profit means to trade . now that return depend ... if u spend 1000 ped to hunt on decay and loot a 900 ped tt esi .... on u;re theory is a lost but overall is profit ....

Conclusion : you are true only reporting to TT and as the game system

 

[edeanp]

I agree with JC's theory. Keep in mind many losses may be incurred via vanity expenses, markup, non-looting profession training, etc... are these detractors removed from the equation?

I still have dreams of the Matrix scene between Neo and the Machine creator... except it takes place in EU and the creator is Bernie Madoff.

 

[Dr.D.C.]

......................

To all who've cycled massive amount of peds, and complain they haven't hit their ATH yet, that doesn't mean you're being robbed. Try to track your long term TT spend/returns. If you're in the ballpark of the above logs, then you're just like most of us.

And yes, there are cases such as this: 3 day old noob gets 27,000ped HOF (01-29-2006) That I can't explain. However, the main point of this thread is simple: Everything I've learned says those who've got ATHs paid for it themselves. Your peds are not going to them.

consideration 2: the loot is avatar based and indipendent of other factors?????

 

[wizzszz]

I think some people took the return % word-for-word...

There are always stories about "hey, i depo'ed xx thousand of US$ and got nothing to show for it", but a simple "'Deposits vs. PEDs-on-Card" is bullshit.

• A lot of deposited money goes into gear (that may have lost a lot of markup over time)
• Chipping skills in is 100% loss (at least in the TT only calculation)
• Cash spent on clothes, vehicles, customization (paint & texture) is gone
• Crafting OreAmp-101s or similar stuff is a dead sure way to destroy cash, too... (markup from sale will never cover markup on ingredients)
• 200% markup spent on that kewl 110+ dmg (L) gun, again and again (hunting mobs that drop TT food only)
• Amped mining & expensive (L) finders... some areas simply DONT hold rare ores, mining them with high markup (L) gear is a clear loss
• many, many things more...

So, playing the "FUUUN!!!" way is nice, but do not expect that MA will compensate you for cash you have clearly lost to OTHER PLAYERS, and not to the loot system, because the loot system counts TT only.

 

[Parlog]

I think some people took the return % word-for-word...

There are always stories about "hey, i depo'ed xx thousand of US$ and got nothing to show for it", but a simple "'Deposits vs. PEDs-on-Card" is bullshit.

• A lot of deposited money goes into gear (that may have lost a lot of markup over time)
• Chipping skills in is 100% loss (at least in the TT only calculation)
• Cash spent on clothes, vehicles, customization (paint & texture) is gone
• Crafting OreAmp-101s or similar stuff is a dead sure way to destroy cash, too... (markup from sale will never cover markup on ingredients)
• 200% markup spent on that kewl 110+ dmg (L) gun, again and again (hunting mobs that drop TT food only)
• Amped mining & expensive (L) finders... some areas simply DONT hold rare ores, mining them with high markup (L) gear is a clear loss
• many, many things more...

So, playing the "FUUUN!!!" way is nice, but do not expect that MA will compensate you for cash you have clearly lost to OTHER PLAYERS, and not to the loot system, because the loot system counts TT only.

must spread rep before reping you again!

This is for sure one of the most important posts in EUs history!

 

[Infinity01]

I think some people took the return % word-for-word...

There are always stories about "hey, i depo'ed xx thousand of US$ and got nothing to show for it", but a simple "'Deposits vs. PEDs-on-Card" is bullshit.

• A lot of deposited money goes into gear (that may have lost a lot of markup over time)
• Chipping skills in is 100% loss (at least in the TT only calculation)
• Cash spent on clothes, vehicles, customization (paint & texture) is gone
• Crafting OreAmp-101s or similar stuff is a dead sure way to destroy cash, too... (markup from sale will never cover markup on ingredients)
• 200% markup spent on that kewl 110+ dmg (L) gun, again and again (hunting mobs that drop TT food only)
• Amped mining & expensive (L) finders... some areas simply DONT hold rare ores, mining them with high markup (L) gear is a clear loss
• many, many things more...

So, playing the "FUUUN!!!" way is nice, but do not expect that MA will compensate you for cash you have clearly lost to OTHER PLAYERS, and not to the loot system, because the loot system counts TT only.

Just add those info to the OP....that's all you need to do to understand.....

But to make EU an emotional roller coaster MA added another factor "EU is Dynamic"
....So enjoy the ride

 

[PopFuzz]

90% tt return means you loose 10% of all peds spent over time (not just once on deposit etc)

What that means is you deposit say 1000 peds and go on a hunt and come back with 900 peds TT value in loot
you then spend that 900 again and come back with 810 peds tt in loot
you then take the 810 on a hunt and come back with 729

If you keep repeating this you will eventually give 100% of your money to MA even if you had a 90% tt return.
Of course its not 90% on every run, its more variable then that, but for those who track they tend to see 90% on the long run when you Track just the TT you send vs the TT you loot.

If you spend more on MU to do your activities then you will loose it faster. And if you tt your loot and not sell it for MU you loose those peds to MA.

The amount you deposit and how much has been lost or gained over time has nothing to do with TT return. You can profit on bad TT return (80% TT) and you can loose big time with strong tt Return (95%) its all about how you manage your MU costs and returns.