The Curious Case of Redulite

Do you believe MA made a mistake or was it intentional

  • The cap removal was intentional but volume was not

    Votes: 12 17.6%
  • It was a completely intentional move

    Votes: 17 25.0%
  • It was a mistake and not intentional

    Votes: 17 25.0%
  • I don't care

    Votes: 22 32.4%

  • Total voters
    68
Good, I'm glad if there is evidence showing that resource caps are not real. I also am more of a believer in drop rates then caps, but when you are told enough times by people who should know, then you start to believe them.

All of the other arguments in my post are still valid however, since, as Divinity stated, hoarding is still a thing and still works for some individuals who are controlling the supply and thus the markup.

Legends

I’ll just chime in to say I haven’t seen evidence of resource caps either. I’ve tried to do some modeling analyses to predict hit rate of things like pyrite, redulite, dianthus, etc. based on auction sales, MU, etc. Changes in those haven’t been a significant predictor of resource hit rate.

What seems more likely, (though more difficult to formally do a scientific test on), is that specific areas do have a certain overall average loot table, but the availability of certain resources in that table vary over time (i.e., a pseudo-loot table). Sort of like a two-tiered RNG. That can give the appearance of loot resource caps when in reality something like redulite just had a low chance of even making it into the loot table at any randomly selected time. I’m doing passive testing on such clustering, but I don’t expect to have results for at least half a year.
 
MA boss: Lets increase the current drop rate on Redulite by 100%, essentially doubling the rate and allowing more use out of it. We can then check to see the outcome tomorrow.

MA Tech #1: Got it boss, increasing drop rate to 100%

.....8 hours later:

MA Tech #2: :holyshit:
 
inception.gif


The poll results are interesting.


One thing I'm certain of. This will reoccur.
 
I’ll just chime in to say I haven’t seen evidence of resource caps either. I’ve tried to do some modeling analyses to predict hit rate of things like pyrite, redulite, dianthus, etc. based on auction sales, MU, etc. Changes in those haven’t been a significant predictor of resource hit rate.

What seems more likely, (though more difficult to formally do a scientific test on), is that specific areas do have a certain overall average loot table, but the availability of certain resources in that table vary over time (i.e., a pseudo-loot table). Sort of like a two-tiered RNG. That can give the appearance of loot resource caps when in reality something like redulite just had a low chance of even making it into the loot table at any randomly selected time. I’m doing passive testing on such clustering, but I don’t expect to have results for at least half a year.

I agree they seem to change the loot table hit rates for resources on a regular basis. But for everyone else, this is how i believe it all works.

Back in the day, I did a hit rate on resources. And it showed (not proves) that all areas have a hit rate chance on the available resources. E.G. (too keep it simple) a Belk and Lyst only area would have, 25% belk and 75% lyst. Which meant on average out of say 200 claims, 75% of those would be lyst e.g. 150 claims, and 50 claims would be belk (or 25%).

Now what always screwed the results (slightly, buts sometimes significantly) was the multiplier of each claim. For example, there might be 1% chance to hid redu. And you got your 1 redu claim out of 100 claims. But if you hit that with a large multipler, the tt back would be significantly higher than normal - but the hit rate hadn't changed.

So for me, with the redu it seems like the % hit rate has increased, or did increase, to be as available as lyst or something like that. When people saw it, they went out there with big amps and took advantage of this massively increased hit rate.


I wouldn't be surprised if MA work it out on the fly when someone drops a bomb. Something like this.

Avatar drops bomb: MA's simple algorithm, should it find a claim?
Look at % chance mining claim chance -> roll a dice -> choose what it lands on
No -> nothing found.
Yes -> Now work out what resource it should be.
Look at table of resources for that area (organised by chance out of 100) -> throw a random number between 1 and 100 -> choose the ore/enmatter that roll lands on
Look at multiplier table for that resource -> roll the dice -> choose multiplier it lands on
Work out how many whole stones (probably rounds down) of that resource -> Show avatar what they have found.

(various limits probably introduced. Like look at total loot available, make sure it doesnt go over that - ensuring MA arent out of pocket)


But i really do believe, fundamentally, it is this simple.


Rgds

Ace
 
I agree they seem to change the loot table hit rates for resources on a regular basis. But for everyone else, this is how i believe it all works.

Back in the day, I did a hit rate on resources. And it showed (not proves) that all areas have a hit rate chance on the available resources. E.G. (too keep it simple) a Belk and Lyst only area would have, 25% belk and 75% lyst. Which meant on average out of say 200 claims, 75% of those would be lyst e.g. 150 claims, and 50 claims would be belk (or 25%).

Now what always screwed the results (slightly, buts sometimes significantly) was the multiplier of each claim. For example, there might be 1% chance to hid redu. And you got your 1 redu claim out of 100 claims. But if you hit that with a large multipler, the tt back would be significantly higher than normal - but the hit rate hadn't changed.

So for me, with the redu it seems like the % hit rate has increased, or did increase, to be as available as lyst or something like that. When people saw it, they went out there with big amps and took advantage of this massively increased hit rate.


I wouldn't be surprised if MA work it out on the fly when someone drops a bomb. Something like this.

Avatar drops bomb: MA's simple algorithm, should it find a claim?
Look at % chance mining claim chance -> roll a dice -> choose what it lands on
No -> nothing found.
Yes -> Now work out what resource it should be.
Look at table of resources for that area (organised by chance out of 100) -> throw a random number between 1 and 100 -> choose the ore/enmatter that roll lands on
Look at multiplier table for that resource -> roll the dice -> choose multiplier it lands on
Work out how many whole stones (probably rounds down) of that resource -> Show avatar what they have found.

(various limits probably introduced. Like look at total loot available, make sure it doesnt go over that - ensuring MA arent out of pocket)


But i really do believe, fundamentally, it is this simple.


Rgds

Ace

This is basically how I believe the simplest algorithm that worked in the past: you drop a probe, the server rolls a dice to tell if you hit something and and in the 27-30% chance that you did, it calculates a depth based on your finder (a normal distribution with about 100m stdev from the avg. depth). The depth in combination of the area determines which resources can be hit (e.g. you need to pass below ~850m depth to be able to hit Redulite), then the server also rolls a multiplier to decide how big the claim you get. There are also some mechanisms added onto of it like tracking the last dropped bombs so you can't just stand at one spot and keep dropping, and probably some caps on certain rare resources so that Rugaritz tower can't happen again, or stupid stuffs like 30000x multiplier on Level 13s when such multipliers could still happen. Or at least it used to be like that, many years ago.

Nowadays I see a lot more patterns where resource distribution are completely shifted: For example, I have encountered an area that usually gives 40% A, 20% B, 10% C, 10% D, 5% E, 5% F, where none of them are Lyst/Oil. However, for a few occasional runs, A can be completely switched off leaving only B and C to be found, and after a while (which may depend on time or the resource mined), it switches completely to Lyst/Oil. Then, there are runs I find lots of D/E while never hitting any B/C. Even on normal runs, it is quite easy to notice that E/F hits are not really evenly distributed over the time, but instead they are usually (near) consecutive hits within a short timeframe.

This leads me to believe that these resources are now released in waves, which may be timed or depending on TT mined, and after the wave ends, you won't be able to find it anymore, and if all available resources are drained, you will only get lyst/oil as filler. I believe a lot of people noticed this behavior in hunting as well where most of the rare loots dropped at the beginning of an event, and then nothing for the next 30 minutes.
 
I’ll just chime in to say I haven’t seen evidence of resource caps either. I’ve tried to do some modeling analyses to predict hit rate of things like pyrite, redulite, dianthus, etc. based on auction sales, MU, etc. Changes in those haven’t been a significant predictor of resource hit rate.

The thing is that it is the other way around: You can use the hit rate to predict MU, but this is always an delayed effect. Some years ago when Dianthus was still at around 170%, I noticed that if my last few hundred drops produced very low hit rate of Dianthus, the MU would usually shoot up by 5-10% in the next day. But yeah, I also did some analysis on the consumption rate of various rare resources and the hit rate, and just couldn't find anything conclusive, so I'm inclined to believe that there isn't a global resource cap, or there is a much more complicated system behind this.
 
Nowadays I see a lot more patterns where resource distribution are completely shifted: For example, I have encountered an area that usually gives 40% A, 20% B, 10% C, 10% D, 5% E, 5% F, where none of them are Lyst/Oil. However, for a few occasional runs, A can be completely switched off leaving only B and C to be found, and after a while (which may depend on time or the resource mined), it switches completely to Lyst/Oil. Then, there are runs I find lots of D/E while never hitting any B/C. Even on normal runs, it is quite easy to notice that E/F hits are not really evenly distributed over the time, but instead they are usually (near) consecutive hits within a short timeframe.

This leads me to believe that these resources are now released in waves, which may be timed or depending on TT mined, and after the wave ends, you won't be able to find it anymore, and if all available resources are drained, you will only get lyst/oil as filler. I believe a lot of people noticed this behavior in hunting as well where most of the rare loots dropped at the beginning of an event, and then nothing for the next 30 minutes.

I agree, but i think it is just time based. I don't think anything changes for these time periods apart from a dynamic hitrate, to create waves of ores/enmatters. I doubt it is linked to how much has been mined / or is in existance.


Rgds

Ace

EDIT: this is my opinion only
 
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Maybe I am just cynical, but since the redulite increase was only seen on Calypso, it looks like just another sad attempt by MA to keep folk on Caly and screw the planet partner planets.
If they organise an event, Caly immediately has a bigger one.
Caly now has so many events there are few if any gaps in the calendar for the other planets to hope for increased revenue from an event. No wonder they seem to be giving up on them.

Come on MA, either play fair with the other planets and let this become the 'Universe' that is in the game name (which would ironically help Caly because it would make the game busier), or if it was not deliberate for goodness sake tighten up your Quality assurance and control
 
Maybe I am just cynical, but since the redulite increase was only seen on Calypso, it looks like just another sad attempt by MA to keep folk on Caly and screw the planet partner planets.
If they organise an event, Caly immediately has a bigger one.
Caly now has so many events there are few if any gaps in the calendar for the other planets to hope for increased revenue from an event. No wonder they seem to be giving up on them.

Come on MA, either play fair with the other planets and let this become the 'Universe' that is in the game name (which would ironically help Caly because it would make the game busier), or if it was not deliberate for goodness sake tighten up your Quality assurance and control

That is a completely different discussion Granny.... And Maybe we should be talking about this but as far as this thread is concerned, it is off topic.
 
Maybe I am just cynical, but since the redulite increase was only seen on Calypso, it looks like just another sad attempt by MA to keep folk on Caly and screw the planet partner planets.
If they organise an event, Caly immediately has a bigger one.
Caly now has so many events there are few if any gaps in the calendar for the other planets to hope for increased revenue from an event. No wonder they seem to be giving up on them.

Come on MA, either play fair with the other planets and let this become the 'Universe' that is in the game name (which would ironically help Caly because it would make the game busier), or if it was not deliberate for goodness sake tighten up your Quality assurance and control

Or maybe just maybe the other planets forgot to invest.Keep investing Planet Partners, bring new players, advertise , maintain that at the highest level possible and MAYBE at the end you get your share if you perform well in comparison to Calypso.
 
I think believing poll option two to be correct with a reason then given is absolutely fine. I've not seen an event advertised for Ark, but given the speed at which higher players can rush from one place to another, it would be quite possible for Caly to have simply wanted to get players' attention. It seems as likely to me as any other intentional action, but is obviously just another theory. I think there is plenty of room for a cynical reason, tbh, but I have no favoured option personally.
 
Or maybe just maybe the other planets forgot to invest.Keep investing Planet Partners, bring new players, advertise , maintain that at the highest level possible and MAYBE at the end you get your share if you perform well in comparison to Calypso.

who would nowadays still partner with mindark? :scratch2:
 
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