Items And Loot Archive
Thread: Negative Loot Cycles
Antello wrote:
/agree
the only decent loots left are from npc bounties...
and they are decent at best... ill get 10 reactive micro platings before i get a SEA... and it willbe less than +5... occasionally ill get a good one... but its get ridiculuos..... ill have to travel 8kmeters on mount to get to the bounty.... and 8k back.... not counting the time it takes to pull the mission and kill the bounty...
that can be 20 mins per bounty... with a crappy loot drop rate, thats hours of my time spent deleting reactive micro platings.....
needs to be fixed... asap
as all the smuggler components stack why spend hours deleting you only need
I spend the past 2 weekend hunting krayts, and it does seem like the loot drops off after a time, like in the morning I might loot 2-5 pearls, then as the afternoon crawls on I get nothing, not even smuggler loot.
But, if I go do something else and come back, theloot seem to return. I'm guessing it's to discourage farming, not for anything so noble as to keep the market stable but to keep down complaints about spawn camping. I never noticed this in anything but krayts, so it may just be my imagination.
Its to discourage farming. If every Bh and krayt dropped uber tissues and SEAs, the loot would cease to be loot. Prices on "loot" would become inflated, people would be discouraged from hunting for loot, and one less "thing" in the game to keep a player occupied would be removed.
Rare loot pisses people off but that doesn't stop them from hunting. Common loot does. Whens the last time you got into a group of 7 to pull broken datapad parts from alkhara missions?
Famas wrote:Its to discourage farming. If every Bh and krayt dropped uber tissues and SEAs, the loot would cease to be loot. Prices on "loot" would become inflated, people would be discouraged from hunting for loot, and one less "thing" in the game to keep a player occupied would be removed.
Rare loot pisses people off but that doesn't stop them from hunting. Common loot does. Whens the last time you got into a group of 7 to pull broken datapad parts from alkhara missions?
OK, first off, I don't think you understand the concept of supply and demand. With greater supply, at or near the level of demand, prices would not become inflated -- on the contrary, they would level off. Secondly, you are confusing useless loot with common loot. You seem to buy hook, line and sinker the basic premise SOE has for running the game - to forever dangle a carrot in front of everyone with the hope of keeping them hooked indefinitely. It does *not* have to be that way. You can create a compelling world where certain items are rare, but not super rare, and where even casual players have a decent chance to loot them themselves, rather than being force to pay tens of millions to the uber powergamers, farmers and ninja-looters.
I would not have one less "thing" to do in the game to keep me occupied if there was more and better loot -- in fact, it would be the exact opposite. It would probably encourage me to get a 2nd account. I could do so many more things with my toons, and would likely have a better time. Loot rates, as they are right now, are one of the things that constantly keeps me considering the benefits of simply canceling the account - who wants to play a crooked game where the odds are always stacked against the customer?
pussycat wrote:
What is really puzzling is why SOE would deliberately do this. They would gain so much in client satisfaction with more and better loot... and it doesn't cost them a single penny. It's as easy as programming the servers so that - for example - 100 jetpack bases drop instead of just 5.
It could be done very easily, yet they do not do it. Customer satisfaction means nothing to them, nothing at all.
Uh no, then the clients would complain about the lowered value of loot and then clamor for better/more loot that they could sell for more credits.
This is a game that the devs won't win and you won't win.
bluejanus wrote:
pussycat wrote:
What is really puzzling is why SOE would deliberately do this. They would gain so much in client satisfaction with more and better loot... and it doesn't cost them a single penny. It's as easy as programming the servers so that - for example - 100 jetpack bases drop instead of just 5.
It could be done very easily, yet they do not do it. Customer satisfaction means nothing to them, nothing at all.
Uh no, then the clients would complain about the lowered value of loot and then clamor for better/more loot that they could sell for more credits.
This is a game that the devs won't win and you won't win.
and some things should remain rare but with the ease at which people are doing dwb nowadays you will soon see many more jetpacks and madalorian armor
Baltraseic wrote:
bluejanus wrote:
pussycat wrote:
What is really puzzling is why SOE would deliberately do this. They would gain so much in client satisfaction with more and better loot... and it doesn't cost them a single penny. It's as easy as programming the servers so that - for example - 100 jetpack bases drop instead of just 5.
It could be done very easily, yet they do not do it. Customer satisfaction means nothing to them, nothing at all.
Uh no, then the clients would complain about the lowered value of loot and then clamor for better/more loot that they could sell for more credits.
This is a game that the devs won't win and you won't win.
and some things should remain rare but with the ease at which people are doing dwb nowadays you will soon see many more jetpacks and madalorian armor
I don't buy that. Why would anyone complaint about the lowered value of loot, if nobody needs huge piles of credits to buy stuff they want, when it's easier to loot it for themselves? I'm not saying there shouldn't be rare loot... just not as rare. Enough so that even casual players could loot it themselves without searching for months; instead of having to buy it from the uberlooters/powergamers/ninja-stealers.
If the supply of loot pretty much equals the demand... then you don't have people hoarding/farming/camping. And nobody *needs* to have millions of credits because nothing would sell for millions of credits. Maybe then the highest prices would be for crafted items which really stood out due to the crafter's efforts. But not for the stuff that ninja-looters can stockpile.
As for stuff like jetpacks or Mando armor... you can only argue for it being super duper rare if you do not believe in a more egalitarian game, if you want to keep it more or less divided between the haves (uberlooters/ninja-stealers/farmers/other scum) and the have-nots (the casual player). Why couldn't the game still be fun if everyone had more or less equal access to the goods in the game, and then the people who spent most time in-game.... simply played more doing the things they like, whether it be PVPing, GCW, hunting, etc.
Only problem, of course, is that it would make it more difficult for SOE to conceal the lack of more story-driven content.
Message Edited by pussycat on 08-30-2005 09:59 PM
Famas wrote:OK, first off, I don't think you understand the concept of supply and demand. With greater supply, at or near the level of demand, prices would not become inflated -- on the contrary, they would level off. Secondly, you are confusing useless loot with common loot. You seem to buy hook, line and sinker the basic premise SOE has for running the game - to forever dangle a carrot in front of everyone with the hope of keeping them hooked indefinitely. It does *not* have to be that way. You can create a compelling world where certain items are rare, but not super rare, and where even casual players have a decent chance to loot them themselves, rather than being force to pay tens of millions to the uber powergamers, farmers and ninja-looters.
I would not have one less "thing" to do in the game to keep me occupied if there was more and better loot -- in fact, it would be the exact opposite. It would probably encourage me to get a 2nd account. I could do so many more things with my toons, and would likely have a better time. Loot rates, as they are right now, are one of the things that constantly keeps me considering the benefits of simply canceling the account - who wants to play a crooked game where the odds are always stacked against the customer?
.......
Thing about this game is that demand is finite for a lot of stuff. Its not like the real world where people have to continuely buy food to live or buy gas to get to work. Once someone has their gun, they ADK it and never have to buy again. Once someone gets perfect pearls for their saber, the need to buy premos dies. Look what happened to smuggler loot. When reactive micro platings were only lootable in space, some people were paying upwards of 1mil for one. Now since they drop off of everything, you are lucky to even get 2k for one. If SOE was to even out the high end loot drops, many would simply quit due to the lack of having the ability to make loads of credits off of one item. People would not invest time into playing the death watch bunker or killing black suns in space if there was only a moderate incentive to do so.
This game really needs some more mid-ranged loot drops however. Thats where the problem is. You either loot a piece of crap 980 times or something uber 20 times out of1000 baddies.
I dont think you understand that the whole carrot dangling is what keeps people subscribed to MMRPGs. Yea, i agree it sucks but its all a marketing thing to keep people playing. Tweak the incentive too much to the point where everything is easy to get and then people will just not bother to play. Until SOE adds more mid and high end lootables, drops need to stay where they are at.
You still don't grasp the concept of supply and demand, I don't think. You say that demand is finite.... that's not completely accurate, although it's not infinite, either. You are forgetting about new players. But even more importantly, you cannot grasp the concept (at least I don't think you can) of a situation where supply was more or less equal to demand.... it's as simple as that. If people always knew that supply and demand were going to be more or less matched, nobody would be farming or trying to stockpile huge quantities of rare or quasi-rare loot. This in turn would largely counteract any inflationary pressure on the player economy. That's not altogether a bad thing, although some people would have you believe that it is. Nor is it completely accurate that once you have a great ADK'd gun you'll never want another one again. If a new model comes out that is more appealing, you'll problably think about upgrading. I don't think anyone wants their toon to remain 100% static for years and years.... new stuff is good.
I also don't buy that anybody would quit over not being able to make a lot of money from loot - if there is not much stuff that sells for millions, then all that extra money would be useless. Nor do I believe that it would lead to a "moderate incentive" to do certain stuff... I think it is the other way around; the lack of good loot is what makes a lot of people giving up on DWB/Avatar/Black Sun ships/what have you. If your chances of getting what you want are astronomical.... why waste so much time into something that is not going to leave you with any tangible benefit? I believe most reasonable people would just find other stuff to do in-game...... except those that are acting out of greed and just want to make a killing from the loot. They benefit from its rarity, and greed is their only motivation. If it were less rare, they would stand to lose. And that may be the reason some people here are defending the loot rates as they are -- they are afraid that they won't be able to make large amounts of money from rare loot if SOE were to change it.
It's like scalpers - if the supply for tickets is enough to meet demand, then they get stuck with the tickets they were hoping to scalp.
Kaque wrote:
I have noticed a pattern in loot cycles that seems to pertain to all looting. I can loot any MOB for a given amount of time and then the cycle stops. I have noticed this with any MOB that I kill. There are times that I can kill a MOB and get a loot drop every third time and it stays that way for about 30 minutes. Then there is a stall of about one or two hours that I can't get anything but credits. I have observed this with just about every MOB in the galaxy from Meatlumps to Corsairs and Higher up. There is a definate frequency of loot drops and I think SOE is doing this to purposly limit the amount of drops so the world is not saturated with certain kinds of drops.
Some kinds of loot drops are purposely delayed I am sure for reasons that SOE can only explain. Like Spinner Blades from Hidden Daggers orexceptional Pearls from Krayt Dragons. The loot cycle seems to be down later in the day I have noticed and earlier, closer to a server reset it is superior.
Why is it that you can hunt a MOB earlier and do great and later all you get is credits for hours on end? I think there is a cycle but I can't figure it out. Usually when I get in a negative loot cycle I will just log out and do something else because it is totally rediculous to kill 500 mobs and just get credits.
Anybody have any same experiences that they would like to share?
I think you might be right. I get into loot groups fairly often with friends and do aakuans or krayts. Here are a couple of examples..
1) Normally when we are hunting aakuans the SEA loots (which are basically the high end loot they give) typically happen close together. I will normally go on a hot streak of looting several SEAs within a short time frameormy friend will have a run of good luck.
2) I had a dry spell on krayts for several days... I think maybe 1 pearl in 3 days. Thenlater that week when I went hunting I looted 7 pearls within about 1-2 hours of hunting... but I killed about 10 more krayts after the 7th pearl and didn't even get crappy loot.
3) The lvl111 npcs on Dantooine have normally dropped nothing for me... but today I killed6 of them in about 30mins or so of travelling around. I got a loot from every single one of them (1 crystal, 2 dh17 pistols, 1 cdef pistol, 1 other junk loot that I forget).
I'm not one to jump to conclusions. This could all merely be coincidence. Itis still kind of interesting whether you are right or not.