Playing EU on a low budget - possible or not - a math exercise

What was supposed to be a math exercise turned into a discussion of free speech, trolling, monarchy, tyranny and whatnot.

So familiar. In the last approximately 143 threads devoted to discussion of loot mechanics I've seen perhaps two mentions of binomial distribution and none of Markov chains, forget about more complex concepts.

To bring it back to the topic, here's a little exercise in modeling variance:
* open Excel, OpenOffice.org Calc or whatever your favorite spreadsheet software is
* in A1, type 144.10
* in A2, type =A1*RANDBETWEEN(50;130)/100 (in reality, it's not a uniform distribution between 50% and 130% (with average being 90%), but still this is one step closer to real thing than set 90% return)
* pull down for another thirty rows or so
* chart the resulting numbers
* recalculate a couple of times

Some times you'll get something like this:

and sometimes the graph will take a nosedive immediately. But always it will head down sooner or later.

Often you'll "see" "good streaks" and "bad streaks" even in this.

 

Look people. Yes you all are very right here. But all she was trying to say is that one can play this game and have fun on any budget.

 

I would like to add;

When I click those BPs you mention, if I do below a thousand clicks while on condition I always do it with the expectation to come out at 50% due to variance.

Mining planetside gives you on average a hit per three drops if I am not mistaken. You can do the coinflip thingy to see the variance on that as well, but you'll need two coins.

I am quite certain you are trolling, but the part about variance is an important point to make. Understanding it will help people understand the need of proper bankroll management.

 

Also, looted weapons introduced in VU15.2 have the same stats on all planets, just the names and looks are different. For example, Scott & Barlow LR-3 (L) is the same Isis LLC 3 (L) is the same Ozpyn LRS - P3 (L).

I bought some of the latter at 102%; with an A102, it equals about 2.97 dpp ("about" just because they were not full tt). A well-organized team of two of those could easily slaughter Longu Young (310 HP); defense bill however was unacceptably high, around 1.1% (adj musca, s.i. heart)

On small hadraada or bokol I'd expect defense bill to be below 1% with the above setup. (range of 62.something m certainly helps)

 

Wow a lot can happen overnight. I haven't seen all that was written as some has been moderated. If I understand Alex's next thread, we've collectively just managed to help another new enthusiastic player to the exit. This is not a smart move. An personally it offends me because I really like Alex. I find her to be a lovely girl who takes responsibility for the challenges that autism brings and asks for no special treatment other than the common courtesy we all deserve in our dealings with other people. I can identify with that. I have my own issues that I need to manage and take responsibility for.

I will be very sorry to see Alex go, if that is what she chooses to do.

When I first got into this game I got heavily into the numbers because that's the sort of person I am. Armour vs fapping. The best gun for the various low level mobs. Enhancer break rates. All those good eco things. Because numbers are my thing. Because I wanted to be able to spend my peds wisely, no matter what my budget. So (on pre-PCF) I posted questions in the noob section. Responded to numbers based discussions. And others supported or shot me down based on their info. I was a member of a society that focussed on teaching profitable low level play. And so I became a better player. These days I only track what is critical for me (my business) and just enjoy the other aspects, but I hope I make good decisions based on what I learned in that first year.

So when I see someone posting ideas about how to play based on analysis, looking for ways to meet the goals they set for themselves, I really like that. There's a good chance they will be around for a few years if we can avoid killing their enthusiasm. And we need thoughtful players who aren't caught up in the conspiracy theories that run rife in this game. Sometimes they need a reality check. Sometimes their analysis is flawed or amounts to an unprovable loot theory. And I am often one to post a rebuttal or alternative view point. But you can do that without shitting on the poster. You can be blunt and still focus on the ideas rather than the person. And even then, with the newer players I think you need to consider pulling your punches, point out some issues and then step back to let them draw their own conclusions.

Player retention is our number one challenge in EU. And we've failed that challenge here today.

 

Skeptic... for the whole 8 years I've played EU, my EL will show inversely proportionate loot compared to my total peds deposited, earned, and cycled. Ive done hundreds of clicks on beacins at 45 peds a pop and hardly a success. I've done thousands of level 2's without anything over 200 ped and a miserable success rate. I've burned hundreds of big amps on caly, on foma, in hell, perhaps thousands, and no hope of a tower. 120K skill (had I not chipped out quite a bit of what I had it would have been closer to 180K), I can't break the 300 ped mark on hunting loot, I cant break the tower barrier on mining, and my crafting cap is about 1700 ped. I've had many nights where Ive lost 5K ped like water through a sieve, not just a few, but many. My point of my remark was, even in a casino, you can spend $40 any way you like, and you will have SOME success. EU is NOT a casino or something would have came out along the way, and I firmly believe that is the one thing MA was honest about in their EULA. The loot is neither random, nor is it stacked, it is just what it is, inconceivably facked up. Guarantee if loot were to go back the way it was in VU9 and earlier a lot of complaining would stop.

<DELETED: Forum Rule 3.k>

 

40 consecutive straights @ $1 (American double zero roulette):

* 0 successes - 33.4% probability =BINOMDIST(0;40;1/37;0)
* 1 success - 37.1% probability
* 2 successes - 20.1% probability
* 3 successes - 7.1% probability
* 4 successes - 1.8% probability
* 5 successes - 0.4% probability
* 6 or more successes - 0.07% probability

As you can see, it's not much different from crafting on condition

 

Hey Snape do we have that GTFO rating ready yet?

 

removed earlier posted info, this thread is lost.

 

My eyes are bleeding. What the hell happened? Oh, I made a booboo and the boss noticed. Mopped up a little, hope that's okay. Now just starting with the caffeine infusion and sorting through the rest. Written communication can be more dynamic than an evening at the corner pub. So easy to get riled up unnecessarily when you don't see the other one's face.

 

Too bad a good discussion point got ruined by some jerks. Am impressed how quickly this went into the wrong direction. Especially seeing indeed that its making someone leave the game now. Good job.

To mr Goldman specifically, I agree with the fact both sides of an opinion should be shown. However the way you are trying to get it done is just wrong. I didnt get to read the moderated post, but I know darn well it doesnt give you the right to be such a douche in your posts. Freedom of speech does mean you say any type of message you want as long as its done in a respectful way, that seems to be something people tend to forget.
Regarding the Europe comment you made. Yes I am from Europe, no I cant relate to the comments you made about how people are there. But if it means we treat others with respect then I'd rather live there then where ever you tend to be from.

 

I do not know why I even bother. I just pointed out one thing, that for someone claiming to suffer for some serious illness, the discourse is pretty coherent. If that is rude in your book, fine. I already received 2 PM's from the OP, I must recognize much more polite than I am, even explaining the conundrum. I was just disappointed the lengthy messages were also in English and not in our native language.

As for the Romanian school system, I fight every day with it, I will send my kid into it. I think I can make an accurate assessment about its degradation in the last 2 decades from my own experience, thank you very much. Now the censorship is so bad, than I cannot even badmouthing the education system of my country, with 60% graduation rate on the first baccalaureate exam?

As for the 90% MYTH... yes, players keeping accurate logs since 2005 have around 90%, that because in the first years they had probably 200% return rate and loads of skills. I would ask them chopping up the data around 2012 when the loot was "improved" drastically, and also take out the loot from the mobs where MA practically is stuffing items manually - the ones reserved for certain elites and so on.

The idea is for the REGULAR, NORMAL player to get 90%, without spending hundreds of dollars per month, by playing few hours a day (not 30 min, not 10 hours)

Someone said the game lost a player today - I doubt. What I know is that my FL list which was all green and active in 2011, 2012 even is all dark now.

And to the elitists breaking thousands of dollars into the game, let me loosely quote Mindark CEO in a recent youtube video from Liquidity summit: "If a player choose to deposit 100 USD into the game and he choose not to spend it, he can take that 100 USD out"

Would be rude to call that a lie? 100 USD does not net you 1000 PED in game, it never did. With the advent of bound universal ammo, the webshop offers are even worse than a bank transfer, PED wise. Besides that... to take them out you need 1100 PED in order to pay the minimum 100 ped fee... after 3 months.

So I put these 2 things together: 90% return rate is as true today as put 100 take 100 the next day claim.

I already asked for my account to be banned on PCF due to excessive censorship, maybe I will do the same here so everyone can hold hands and sing kumbaya. I did not curse, I did not used profanity - just voiced my opinion that the self description OP gave to the forum (with too much personal info even, I dare to say, a real pic too??) and all the know-all math after 2-3 months of playing does not pass my BS meter.

Thanks for the support GB, hopefully you'll read this before getting deleted

 

For GMC, I record all the mining runs for a number of players. We mine unamped. When mining properly (yes you can do it improperly), the long term average TT return is about 98% minus tool decay. These records are post-2012 and almost 3 million individual drops, with the largest loots (loots which bring your average up above 90% or so occuring pretty infrequently). Assuming your bankroll is sufficient, you can mine indefinitely without deposits (unless you use high MU amps, which kill profits). Currently, resource MUs are down but there are still a few opportunities out there. The key is having *sufficient* bankroll, which is going to be a couple thousand peds minimum. For hunting, your bankroll wouldn't have to be so high, since smaller mobs cost a lot less to kill than dropping one probe. I have no reason to believe that hunting returns are not 100% minus armor/item decay, of course factoring in the efficiency of your weapon as well.

If you want to succeed at sticking to a budget with hunting, the 3 keys are: 1) know your budget and adjust your mob hp so you can kill many mobs (thousands in a single ped cycle), and 2) use eco setup, 3) go for as much MU as you can

For crafting, same thing... craft what you can sell for MU to cover as much of your costs as possible and plan to make at least 10k clicks (not all in one run) before you can expect to get above 90% average return. Crafting returns can be very erratic and seem to depend on many factors including day of week and time of day, so limit the high ped per click crafting you do to high profit items.

 

Not the point of the thread, but i agree with neil, without being to uneco in the long run you have higher returns then 90%.

The sad thing is that people who don't get that much always blame the game and categorically refuse any help by 'the blessed' avatars that magically do get better returns.

@Kiddoo I can only quote what wauspaus said in another thread:

"Have to agree here. Picking up your stuff and bail after a bump in the road is something which will prevent you for getting things done, here ingame but also IRL. Doesnt matter what it is or how it was created."

 

I forgot to point out... There are two kinds of uneco... TT uneco which is fine because the system compensates only on TT cycled. Uneco on markup is suicide for any bankroll. However, the efficiency of ore amps are not linear as they increase, and depending on the amp, it may have higher markup but the cost to efficiency ratio is better. Efficiency of course is the power of the amps multiplier. People do not realize that when any game is stated to have a return, such as a slot machine, that the percentage return INCLUDES hitting jackpots. If you never hit the jackpot, you most likely are not going to be close to that return on the long run. And that is my problem, there are no jackpots, in 8 years. (A hit that can't even pay for the days losses that looks big isn't a jackpot.)

 

On the comment of 90% loot return, my overall return lands roughly at 85%, with some extreme returns at times.
On the comment of numbers, delving too deep can ruin the fun (as seen in this thread) so it might be wise to losen up a little.
On the overreaction of some parties here I think we should all do it the Voltair way...

 

dont want to attack anyone just hoping to help out to find the answer "why people got angry with the post".

red colored text: you posted here in a way as if you where actually hunting in the field to get the numbers, but you obviously didnt hunt at all. you just took the first ammount of ped and lowered it to exactly 90% each step. before that you told people that you include MU. so they think you post results based on a real field test.

green colored text: you write here that their 15$ WILL lead to the result you meantion. thats written like a guarantee and people will read it that way and believe that your info is what awaits them.

yellow colored text: you make a disclaimer at the end of the post that you dont want to give exact values but still call it a proof. -some people freak naturally out if they get braintwisted like that. theory is never a proof.

hope that helps to understand.

greets,

 

While I do appreciate that you came with arguments on your post (really thank you for that), I'm afraid I'll have to disagree.

I haven't mentioned even a single time that those numbers come from the field (and, to be honest, any numbers coming from the field from a practical run of 150 PED would probably be far worse in term of realism than pure theory, since they would represent a too small sample) - words like "we could eventually get", "simple math", "we should have", "should allow us to" clearly show that is a hypothetical, theoretical discussion.

The disclaimer says clearly that everything said is just a theory, and while it sounds about right, practice might (and probably would) be different (btw different doesn't necessarily mean worse, it can also mean better - since my estimations were not for the worst or best case scenario, but for a conservative average one).

While I can agree that some things could have been better worded, please remember that English is not my native language and that I considered that a friendly post on the forum, not an academic paper. And really, even after reading it now again, it's obvious that the message it sends is the one I intended and pointing at some specific words (like prove) is just taking things out of context.

My intention was to point that by keep recycling money, one actually can keep playing for much longer than its initial deposit might suggest - for myself I know that when I started I didn't expected that my 10 PED to allow me to hunt ON AVERAGE about 100 PED worth of mobs. Also, even if I would have know that when I started, I still had absolutely no idea about how many mobs I could kill with said 10 or 100 PED. So the goal was to show the new player that even a small deposit can give them much more fun time than it apparently looks like. Other than that, of course, numbers are up for debate and I stand corrected, but I really think that you (and many others) focused on some details and missed the forest because of the trees.

 

Ok while im downloading new VU i want to input my 5 cents.

First yes all is a theory developed around 90% return rate. Now since you are making this theory plz try including what happens if your returns are 50%, 85% or 98% all this resoults are claimed by some players in this post.

To me biggest authority in this post is GMC boos Greenleaf who said 98% returns... sorry but yeah he is the one who acctualy collect info so he for sure knows what he talks about.
For anyone else claiming to have some data plz explain how you collect it... what ammount of data u have?? From my knowledge of similar post people erase big hofs from their data sheets becouse hofs feel lucky? And they still keep terrible runs.

It is all a theory so plz develop it to make it better and yeah i think that return rate cant be just picked out of hat.

Also it was allready mentioned before in this post... similar posts like this allready exists on other forums where players who have been playing for 3+ years depositing 10-15$ show how far they have come... whats their total Skill count. So hopefuly someone like that will post inhere and share his experience so we can compare theory/practice