Suggestion: How about a little incentive to keep playing this game?

jambon

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James Jambon Zidane
Loss, loss, loss, loss, loss.... up 50 peds.... loss, loss, loss, loss, loss... lose 15,000 peds in a couple weeks hunting. Try and double-down on something larger or a different profession thinking maybe get lucky to balance out - nope just increases the loss. Get 15% hit rate mining with a terramaster 6 planetside and 15% success rate qty crafting. Seems legit.

Oh well who cares, there's always someone who can boast bigger losses right? That's the real measure of your virtual penis. How big you can lose before tilting, right?

In the last couple weeks I was solid grinding hard on Araneatrox to complete the 10k mission. I killed well over 10,000 which included a range of young - olds. Mostly like 95% youngs to avoid maturity volatility. And I hunted on untaxed land using high eff Ar-Matrix rifles with the lowest markup that still allowed me to kill the things before they reach me. Mostly lr-45's but also threw a fen L FEN editions in there too. So practically no excess loss in armor or fap decay.

Returns at the best of times were 120% (rare) and the worst of times 59% with my average being in the 75% return range. My runs were done in chunks of 1000 peds in ammo but I was doing runs back to back. I'd only stop to look at my returns after 1000 peds in ammo was spent.

During this time while grinding 8+ hours a day. I witnessed a number of people hitting HoFs of 2k - 7k. Some people that appeared to have just started working on those mobs. Had a very limited number of globals logged total in EL and no more than a couple globals logged on them in the month.

After a couple days of grinding one person was lucky enough to hit a 7k about 35m away from me just minutes into their run. Essentially close enough to practically be hit with their hof swirls like a nice slap in the face. So that was nice.

All the while gritting down thinking "it's ok, I'm bound to get some sort of decent hit to balance out if I keep at it". Balance is in the numbers and playing efficient". I kept this manra for weeks and while I did get a bunch of globals that allowed me to bounce up closer to the 75% return area when I was dipping really low my best loot was like 300 peds. Whoopty-fucking-do.

Last year I really cut back on my deposits. This year I decided that instead of doing smaller deposits throughout the year I would start off by depositing most of my years budget up front and really invest in some decent gear and making some solid progress with my avatar.

So far it's been nothing but solid losses that constantly have me think "why the fuck am I forking money over for this crap? It's bringing more stress than joy.". If this is what can be expected this year in game, count me out.

Big losses are way to common, while good loots are impossibly rare. Too few and far between to keep interest for the average player. Especially when the average player just wants a decent loot so they can maybe upgrade their gear and/or continue to play for a bit without having to deposit every 15 fucking minutes.

Getting a little tired of it is all. My story is nothing unique, I'm sure there are many others that have similar stories.

We deserve something better than this!
...and sometime soon someone else is going to give it to us if you don't step up.
 
Sorry, I just couldn't resist ;)

I'm sorry about your string of shitty luck though...

There isn't anything I can say to change that but I have a hunch, it seems that a fundamental principle of Entropia has been changed, it seems to me that it no longer works to mindlessly grind a mob, mine an area, just stay on the same thing, over and over and over, day after day, week after week...

It used to work before, but it doesn't seem to work anymore. Something was changed to force players to move around and try different things. Look at your situation, and the other guy with all the threads about making Entropia free to play, he said he killed millions of Oros and has been having poor returns. Look at recent mining changes, used to be you could mindlessly just drop and drop and drop in indoor mining and you knew that eventually you'd hit something to cover your losses over time, but that doesn't work anymore, again, gotta move around, you have to change things up.

I also look at the way the new Repeatable Codex missions are designed as an indication of this; in the repeatable stages, you have to kill more and more in order to progress, it's very design is intended to discourage hunters from continuing to hunt the same mob endlessly.

I move around, never hunt the same mob twice, usually do a 3-5 hour hunt on something, tabulate the results, then go hunt something else with a completely different setup, different gun, armor everything, calculating what's best to use for that mob. It's called 'experimenting' and MindArk alluded to exactly that in their Dev Notes:

From VU 15.15.0 where Efficiency on weapons was introduced:
Notice
[*] Loot value calculations and the composition of the items in loot will be affected by properly matching avatar skills and gear to the creature being hunted, rewarding efficient kills with more interesting loot. For optimal loot, it will be important to avoid inefficiencies such as low damage output compared to creature health, excessive time and cost to kill, overkill damage, unmaxed weapons and other factors. This system is intended to reward game knowledge, which has traditionally been an important and unique aspect of success in Entropia Universe, and to provide opportunities for participants to improve their loot returns via experimentation, optimization and specialization.

Originally Posted Here

For some reason on Drones, I've done 3 hunts over the last couple weeks, and all 3 have had poor returns. My 2 Allo/Esto hunts on the other hand have both been good returns. So this has me thinking at this point, I must be doing something right on the Allo/Esto, and obviously I haven't figured out the right setup for the Drones... And this is most likely the type of thinking that MA wanted to stir.

Anyway like I said, it's just a hunch...
 
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I spend probably 20xtimes on crafting mashine that you have spend and my max is 3 k . Go take a beer and chill out ...... sick of this threads
 
I spend probably 20xtimes on crafting mashine that you have spend and my max is 3 k . Go take a beer and chill out ...... sick of this threads

Guess that means you've got a bigger virtual penis cause you spend more? :laugh:

I suppose I also missed the memo where it was decreed that your spend sets the bar as to what amount of peds is considered significant - anything less than what you spend and "BAH that's peasants chump change", right? Forgive me masterful lord, may I have another whipping please? I am not worthy to bow in the shadow cast by the stack of your lost peds! :bowdown::whip:


You know, sometimes I wish I never hit that ATH... I'd have preferred it doled out in the same form as other avatars that have had substantial returns. Not paid out all at once with some flashy, community resented loot - but in dribs and drabs of smaller 4k - 10k hofs and ultra-rare items and fat ESI's over time. Cause that shit flies under the radar. No one questions the avatar that's only getting the occasional 2k - 4k hof. No one questions or sees when an avatar sneaks away a full TT ESI's from a shared mob event. No one questions or seems to notice when avatars loots multiple seasonal rings over a couple months with a net value over 100k peds. No one is aware of the avatars that routinely are pulling out 5 times that single ATH's value over the last couple years in these covert ultra-loots. No one knows, and no one resents it because it's not broadcast in a single loot tatooed on the EL profile and hof board. (Yes I'm aware I uploaded it to YouTube, at the time I didn't think it would be thrown in my face in the future.)

You get those numbers showing in a single loot though... all those digits and that's it. Resented. People have decided for life that you've gotten more than your fair share and are not allowed to get a cent more. You should be so lucky and GRATEFUL to get 60% returns. Doesn't matter that I gave nearly 16,000 peds of that loot away to random players and noobies to help them along. Doesn't matter my investment before or after, cycle, time in game, losses up to that point, the fact it's a completely different profession than hunting.... literally nothing else matters. I had that one-off loot in the game - that's it. Never mind that some players here have 500,000 peds worth of gear on them at any time, I'm foolish to have not taken all the money and run.

After I hit that loot I was branded. Branded in the sense of no longer being able to hit decent loots (not like they were flowing like crazy prior to this). And condemned that I am forbidden to even speak of loots and returns ever again. My opinion on the subject is invalid. Unless perhaps I can show that I'm at least in the hole... what?.. $30k USD? Then and only then will MAYBE the community allow me to speak about loots/returns because then I will have re-joined the ranks of the rest of the entropians out there that have "paid their dues". But if you haven't lose at least a car's worth of cash in USD you're not allowed to speak of returns. If you are up $15 you are an enemy to the people!!

To clarify, my complaint here is that I feel despite MA's best efforts, they have failed to remove volatility for those with a reasonable budget. Or rather the required budget for reasonable returns is still too high. And I'm not the first to make this observation. If I cycle $5,000 USD in 2 weeks and I'm not close to a reasonable return % - something is wrong with the system. Entropia shouldn't only cater to off a 95% return to the super rich that can afford a $500,000USD cycle in 2 weeks.

Whatever... it's clear people can't see past my branding as described so I don't see the point continuing to debate further. The reason for this post was to have MA see it in a public manner that didn't bog down the support ticket system. I'm sure that has been accomplished.

Where things go from here... we'll see.
 
Whatever... it's clear people can't see past my branding as described so I don't see the point continuing to debate further. The reason for this post was to have MA see it in a public manner that didn't bog down the support ticket system. I'm sure that has been accomplished.

Where things go from here... we'll see.

Well you shouldn't really blame people for the picture you are painting, you are complaining about getting losses while those around you get hits of 7K, etc and that you must be expected to hit one soon but end up not getting it.
Yet you received a 160K hit in the past, imagine what those who were on the crafting machine just across from you were thinking...

And no that doesn't mean you should be getting low return %, but i'm sure the system is designed in some way to lower your odds of hitting big multipliers after something like that, who knows when those odds go back to normal.
Its just pure speculation though, we don't really know how the system work's in that way.

That puts into another question though, at what point after hitting a big multiplier are you allowed to start complaining again? If you hit 1K this week, does that mean you can't complain for the month? until the next week? etc? What if, you received a big multiplier like you got, but had lost double that over a month prior? Who is going to know about that unless you make it a huge big thing on forums...even then they will see you hit it big and judge, without knowing the true story.

Just things to ponder while the popcorn is warming.
 
100% agree, the 'base' loot return is way too fuckin low, I should not be getting under 70% tt returns on a 3K+ PED cycle. Most people have been averaging 90-94% tt return for past couple months, which if you're cycling 2K PED an hour comes out to $12-$20 USD per hour for... what?
 
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