[h=3]Developer Notes #14 - Loot 2.0 Update[/h]
One of MindArk’s primary long-term goals is to make Entropia Universe as affordable and entertaining as possible for all participants. Toward that end, MindArk is continually experimenting with various adjustments to in-game systems, with an eye toward lowering cost to play while maintaining a reasonable level of revenue that enables continued development and marketing of Entropia Universe.
Reductions in Cost to Play
On September 11th, we initiated a temporary test in which the MindArk fee for hunting was lowered significantly. In the long term, we hope that a lower MindArk fee will result in increased overall activity and new participant retention, and thereby compensate for the lower short-term revenue. We plan to continue experimenting with these revenue settings in the near future to gather more data.
Early data show positive results from those experiments:
[ul]
[li]Hunters with turnover of more than 50000 PED since Sept. 11 have enjoyed returns of 98.6% on average. [/li][li]Hunters with turnover between 10000 and 50000 PED since Sept. 11 have enjoyed returns of 97.05% on average. [/li][li]Accounts created in 2017 have enjoyed returns of 96.94% on average since the changes implemented on Sept. 11. [/li][/ul]
As noted in a previous Developer Notes, Loot 2.0 drastically lowered the costs for armor decay and healing, which we can now confirm has led to a substantial increase in the usage of those mechanics. This is an example of the type of positive changes we are hoping to identify and implement in other systems: changes that benefit participants (in terms of lower cost to play) as well as MindArk’s revenue, resulting in a better overall gameplay experience and growth of Entropia Universe.
Loot Distribution Changes
As many participants have already noticed, changes have recently been made to hunting loot distribution, specifically regarding loot volatility and loot sizes. The overall net hunting return was not affected by these changes, but rather the frequency and size of various loot outcomes as a means of promoting more interesting and exciting loot outcomes and removing some of the more frustrating outcomes that were previously possible (especially on larger creatures).
Effects of Critical Hits/Damage on Loot
Finally, we have noticed several misconceptions in recent community discussions regarding Critical Hits that we would like to clarify. Critical Hits do not have a direct impact on loot value calculations per se. Since loot is now based on the actual cost to kill a creature in Loot 2.0, dealing more damage via critical hits (or by having higher damage per pec) does result in smaller loot events for a given creature, but this effect is directly proportional to the lower cost to kill and allows more creatures to be killed (i.e. more loot events) for a given amount of PED spent. Also, the composition of loot improves in such cases and results in a lower proportion of Shrapnel in loot. In other words, the use of items or consumables that provide increased Critical Hit Chance or Critical Damage can never have a negative effect on loot returns.
funny. today i make a thread about asking and they deliver a few hours later. ty MA
and thank you very much for stating what my observations have shown and what i was preaching since quite some time (in regards to how dpp is working now). my observations were correct in every single point.
This just shows that the people who grind the hardest are usually the ones running the better setups because they’ve invested more in their setup and are savvier, and as a result are also experiencing higher returns on average than players who have invested less, are less savvy, and usually are less dedicated as well.
Seems pretty straight forward to me, they’re trying to show that the uber grinders are, in fact, experiencing very fair return rates considering the kind of markup they can hunt for, not to mention shrapnel making up most of the loot and converting directly at 100:101 ratio..
Seems more you play the game is trying to compensate you more or that Hunters with turnover of more than 50000 PED since Sept. 11 (16 days) are most efficient hunters in the game.
Any comments on whats going on with the bad lag on many servers ingame? As a daily user this is the worst lag i have experienced since i can remember.
No its not my internet, I am playing on 350MBs/sec and latency of ~20msec or less outside of the game.
Usually ingame lag would directly show under spikes in latency. However this past week it is different. Switching tools is super laggy and no apparent latency spikes along with lag issues. Or at least its not showing with ingame latency meter.
Hunting is barely doable on many servers. And many other players are reporting the same results over the last week or so.
Help would be greatly appreciated and probably urgently needed on this as many participants are logging out or simply not playing until this is fixed.
Actually, this doesn’t read like “most efficient hunters = highest returns” at all.
I know plenty of people with low dpp setups turning over high ped, whom would fall into this >50k bracket. If (as you assume) this would be pure high efficiency, they would artificially skew the return % lower.
What the statement actually reads (to me) is that, MA are identifying what cycle amounts are appropriate in identifying loot. I.e. >50k turnover, they expect >98, >10k >97, and all >96.
They’ve been pretty clear that dpp (or eff, whatever you wanna go with) only affects loot composition (by 7% min/max) and now they’ve highlighted that crit bonuses only boost this composition factor.
http://www.entropialife.com/TopHunters.aspx
if you go to this page and look at the top hunters you will note almost all of them are running very eco setups for their heavy grinding
there are exceptions, just like there are also some very eco players who grind less, but overall, the players grinding the hardest are on average running setups that are more efficient, and getting slightly higher average returns as a result.
dpp, excluding crit, does not only affect loot composition, it affects avg return rate by 7%, from 0-100% eff is what they said.
Great changes!! Team and solo hunts has been alot more fun the last couple of weeks.
Overall return may not have been better then normal, but sharing a few 4-digits with friends beats that usual 90-95% dull experience. Keep it up. This loot system is a much better advertisement for the game
First off, thanks for the update!
Just a slight point about that list; there are presumably a huge number of players who don’t fit any category there, namely those with a daily turnover of less than 600 peds or so a day since the test began, but have been around a lot longer than just this year!
I wonder what those returns are ???
It’s also nice to see discussion on critical hits, for example, being commented on by MA to clear up some misunderstandings :). Please continue to show you have been reading our discussions MA, ty!!!
still no definition of what the hell turnover means… Is that the amount of ped they deposited, the number of ped they spent in decay, the amount of ped spent in ammo, or the amount of tt value they turned in when they ‘turned it over’ to the tt?
Also, where the hell did #13 go? We got #12 and a #12 Follow Up but no #13 Dev Note?
Guys, great to see you’re doing and trying and experimenting, but can you please double check if the servers themselves can actually carry this new calculations? Maybe something was overlooked, otherwise I can’t explain myself the sudden change in performance once 2.0 was introduced.
It doesn’t affect avg return rate by 7%, you misunderstood it. The impact of eff is 7%, that doesn’t equal a variation of return itself of 7%. I’ve posted before this example: if a party has 7% of places in parliament (among other parties ofc) and the parliament is discussing a tax modification of 2,5%, respective party has a power of 7% influencing where the tax level will go, within the respective bracket of 2,5%. From published stats in these dev notes, the bracket seems to be of around 3% min_max, mainly turnover based, which would translate into a combination of dpp and dps, going to one or the other based on mob, skill level etc
That is to mean, you don’t need to be afraid that an eff of say 50 would decrease your avg return rate by.. what?.. compared to an eff of 70 (which is anyway out of reach until a certain skill level). What you should be afraid of is unmaxed weapons and too low turnover per respective cathegory. So the worst hunter ever nowadays would use karma killer at lvl20, naked with ek-2600 to kill 10 argos 30 drones and 2 leviathans, and then logout.
You can’t seriously be asking this. Decay+ammo, where ammo is in fact decay too. Shot in mobs, not in the sky in pvp area.
I spoke to Support on the website chat and was told they have received several reports of lag. I expected to hear of many more than “several” and would encourage others to also use the webpage based chat or submit a ticket explaining just how bad the lag is.
