How loot works

Very good post, I think it is very likely that the system is close to what you describe.

I have one comment regarding lowering the Hof sizes: Yes, it might take longer for some players to recoup their losses. But on the other hand, it will address the game's biggest problem right now which is the high cost to skill up and advance. For a new player that lost all the 200 ped he deposited after one week of playing it doesn't matter that the system evens out in the long run, he has already quit the game. Also for the level 15 player who now wants to start killing mobs bigger than snables, the long periods of low returns that drain all his deposited peds too quickly frustrate him and force to go back to lower mobs or simply quit. The current system is good for players with decent initial budgets and/or lots of time and patience, but I think we lose many potential depositing players like that (I know I have seen friends leaving over the years because of the cost to play).

Very nice thread, lightened up a few things i didn't think about.
And i LOVE that picture!! made me crack up! LOL

yeah lovely picture and a theory which is prolly quite close to reality. So good post! ;)

interesting...for me globals came usually within a max of 2 days after I deposited....if I sell loot a month after i deposit and go hunting I'll lose almost everything. I don't really play eco(well not at all) but I only go hunting/mining sporadically, don't go evvery day for 2 weeks, maybe once every few days(sometimes with month long brakes)...from what I can tell the more you hunt, the more you spend the more you can global/hof (kinda logical - more mobs killed, more chances to hof)

I think it is a system with random elements and controllable elements.
For example; your lvl0 chance to get a global is 0.05%, and your lvl10 chance is 0.1%. But the %'s come from random number draw.
Or where doing a specific action gives you something like a slot machine.
This way it is controllable by the avatar, but still random enough for us not to find out.

Also, they removed PED in loot some years ago, because this violated gambling rules - I believe.
Maybe it is still a completely random system, but because no money is handed out it isn't violating gambling laws.

So.. explain to me why in the last 5 months ive lost some 15K PEDs in hunting..... If thats 15K PEDs in decay only.. MA owes me about 1982K skills...

very nice post ,
but i keep seeing it like a fruit machine.

a fruit machine in holland for instance is set to give out 85% of what is put in.
how it's managed and how the time counter is set in those machines i will not tell :P

this is one of those "but it doesn't follow" moments. delaying the payback to some undetermined or uncertain future time is still gambling. will i play long enough to see the big pay back? fruit machines, if not blatantly rigged, will pay out their stated amount in a small finite time, still gambling. over the long run we the whole player base will always lose, auction pool cannot make money appear.

though i do like the idea of the auction fees going into a seperate bonus prize pool. we know they did this with the advertising revenue (though not the exact distribution).

sometimes i look at the idea of personal track loot and i like it. some versions, lets call it the strong accounting school, are too complex imo to work in a live environment with thousands of players. on the other hand a light tracking school where "losses" trickle into a pool seems quite practical.

However, team hunting spoils the whole concept. i dont see how the two can work. are you stealing from each others loot pool? take someone on a hunt whos been losing badly for weeks and get a 5k tt Hof, was they due to them? for me team hunting and shared loot blows a great big hole in personal loot theory. is it an independent pool, in which case is it an advantage/disadvantage to team?

easily solved, you'd simply have a period of increased smaller hofs/ath as individual players pool is rebalanced. ie, increase Hof frequency variable and lower hof amount/multiple variable

I knew it!!

All this time and years of wondering through all the games I played.... How did animals give items and money to people?? The picture is the answer!
We shoot tem for their money bags

In all sincerity I always wondered about a personal history for every account.

But does it need to be a rare item? Doesn't it just need to be a value back?

LMAO, Love it!!!!!!

Now if the PED tracking theory is true, every global/hof I have ever gotten is tallied and is going to be eventually squeezed out of me along with my very life essence... that seems pretty grim.

Maybe the system works more like one of those coin push machines, where the quarters keep stacking and pushing closer and closer to the edge. Then someone comes along a drops in a quarter, and gets some loot, e.g., a quarter falls off here, or a few quarters there, and maybe even a bigger stack of quarters.... This would explain the Uber Noobers. If your theory is true of ped tracking, if you get one uber noober, you are screwed from here to eternity.

The question is, do we keep playing on the same push machine no matter where you go? Or, can others win your push, so you lose out. I would think that is the latter, as this is how it appears to operate with mining. If an Avatar mines an area before you come running along 20 minutes later, your loot will be much less.... unless, they contributed to the coin push, and you come along after them, and HoF.

My experience is like this.... recall visiting Las Vegas, Nevada USA.... or a casino anywhere. Go to one of those linked "Fruit Machines" that has the large LED display with how much the accumulated loot is in there... you keep putting in dimes/quarters/dollars, and the Jackpot keeps getting bigger and bigger. You keep loosing and loosing with little jackpots here, or a small global there; always in hopes of a bigger jackpot or winning the pooled pot.

I do a lot of crafting, and it kinda behaves more like a combination of roulette + 5 card stud.

The ultimate question: How do I get the odds in my favor? Last summer, I was breaking even or maybe 10% loss in crafting.
After 3 months off because of medical issues (August 2010 - Dec 2010), came back during MM, and loss is closer to 70-90%.
Maybe, some big ATH or HoFs came about, and now, all my peds are going to the edge, waiting for a new push winner.

I believe that your skills improve how accurately you drop your quarter in.
Now with such a large universe, keeping track of everyones personal ped card would be nearly impossible (well, with the lag we have been getting lately). I would tend to lean towards the idea that when you hit a loot return, a number of items are factored in, including your skill set (this would be much easier to track, i.e, all your skills are tallied up to a single number. This would explain why you are grinding on your BP with a QR of 100 with tons of failures, near success, some successes or even a global here or there while the avatar next to you is spamming globals left and right with the same blueprint.

Do you remember the old, original videos where all of the mobs had numbers over their heads? Of course, so much has changed since then, but the popular belief was that every generated mob is given a predestined loot value. Now, if you take a number of other factors related to your Avatar's skills, weapon, non-chipable skills, and maybe armor to produce a single multiplier modifier... This number is multiplies with the returned loot to produce a modified loot return. This is more in line with what I have experienced personally. Now, if we were to go hunting in a field, and there were 1200 mobs with zeroes above there head, we would think twice about going in. Now, if there was a big number floating above them, 1.2mil ped jackpot, them "Hell Ya", all in!!!!


HAPPY FRUITING,

~Savya

On the other hand if all I looted were items with a mu of ~120% I would hunt ALOT more than I already do. :P

A bold post regarding how loot works, this is a valid THEORY. I doubt that the personal loot card is proved by anyone. IMO this shouldn't be on the first page since it will be read by newcommers and be treated like it's facts presented here. I think you should ad a big disclamer on this post.