Player's Notes vol 1 - Hunting Loot Mechanics

Like so many of you out there, I have played this game for years and have loads of ideas and concerns about the game we love. It has been an idea of mine for awhile to finally put all these thoughts, however big or small out there in some sensible fashion..

Originally, I had planned to start these player's feedback notes off lightly: concerning some small things, bugs/annoyances, simple feature requests, while getting into deeper topics in later notes. The timing of the end of the year, Merry Mayhem, and Mindark's new roadmap (in which even they are admitting to loot returns being an issue that needs to be addressed) as well as quite a lot of hunters reporting some depressingly bad returns lately has changed my precedent a little. So i will now focus this post on sharing with everyone some things i have dicscovered about hunting loot mechanics:

Notes:
I have read these forums religiously for years, even though i don't post much, and what I am about to say is in no way common knowledge and I want it to now be.

This is NOT a loot theory.. these are insights about how the hunting loot mechanics work and can be in no way taken advantage of or otherwise abused. The sole purpose of this post is to help the game as a whole, not me you or any other group of players. As such, the info is more about the way hunting loot works now and hopefully can gain some insight on how it can be improved and not just in loot returns but i feel more importantly the hunting experience.

One last note before i get on it is that this is a bit of a rabbit hole.. so please be careful with how much further you read on.. I do not want this to be a flame fest nor do i want to upset or frustrate people with Midark or the game in any way, but i do realize the info can lead to some upsetment possibly but it is for the good of the game and I am trying my best part to help improve it, so I'm asking the same of all of you, try to be constructive!

and here we go.. there are 2 points of how the loot system pays out, these 2 points play together to create our hunting experience

Hunting Loot Mechanic #1 - Min/Max Loots

Every mob's normal loot will have a set range: A normal loot consists of all loots that are not No Loots/fragments and are not multipliers (what many call minis)

A very handy formula i use is 300 hp damg per ped spent (roughly ofc) this is derived merely by taking 3.0 damg per pec and simply moving the decimal out to get 300 damg per ped.. this is a reasonable and easy enough number to use for the EU community on avg. This number also helps to set the Max loot in the min/max loot range.. the minimum loot u can receive will be a fraction of that (seemingly around 1/10)

Example: An Argonaut young has 300 hp.. this is the classic 1 ped mob.. 300 hp damg per ped, it costs roughly 1 ped to kill an argo young. When you hunt argo youngs all normal loots you will receive (not frags, not minis/multipliers) will have a tt value range somewhere in the min/max range.. The max being the cost to kill - 1 ped while the minimum i haven't nailed down yet but something like 1/10 we will say.. so that's 10 pecs, all argo young loots will be between 10 pecs and 1 ped (min/max) - These are also essentially "losing" mobs, at best breaking even.. this range can be applied to any mob in game.. 600 hp? 2 ped per kill 2 ped max loot/ 20 pec min loot etc.

So how about those multipliers? (now it gets interesting)

Hunting Loot Mechanic #2 - Loot Multipliers, Where are They?

I am defining a multiplier as loots that you get over the min/max range,, a loot that gives you back more in tt than it costs to kill.

Here it comes..

Does anybody know that a 2x multiplier doesn't exist??(!!) - you cannot loot 2 peds off an argo young (1 ped to kill)

Does anyone know that a 3x mutiplier doesn't exist???(!!!) - it is also impossible to loot 3 peds off an argo young..

In fact: a 3.5x Multiplier is the minimum multiplier you can get in hunting! - you can get a 3.5 ped argo young

Hmm crazy right? Oh, but you probably want some proof right? (I would) well thanks to Stafinder's awesome tracker/E-Life we have all the info we could need..

Examples in proof:

We have some very large HP mobs in game that when you apply these formulas of 300 hp per ped, min/max loots and the 3.5x multiplier minimum.. they generate predictable global minimums (they cannot global under a certain amount because of the minimum multiplier)

A few mobs display this very well:

Longtooth have 4890 hp.. divide this by 300 hp per ped and you get 16.3 peds (we will call this 17 peds for ease of use) so 17 peds per kill is the cost to kill and the max loot you get in the min/max range..

now take the 17 ped and apply the 3.5x multiplier minimum - this gives 59.5 ped minimum multiplied loot (again we will round this up to 60 ped) so basically a 60 ped global is the minimum global u can get on a LT..

Tracker verifies this.. you can click through as many pages as you need to, but you will not see a single global of 50-59 peds in there... i believe the smallest global was 61 peds..

Daspletor have so much hp that they can verify both the min/max as well as the 3.5x minimum multiplier

a Dasp young has 7800 hp. /300 hp per ped gives 26 ped per kill.. its minimum global should be around 91 peds

a Dasp Stalker has 16990 hp! /300 hp per ped is actually almost 57 ped per kill! so they have so much hp that a normal min/max loot can generate small globals (up to about 57 ped) and then their 3.5x would jump all globals up to 200 ped and up..

You can also see the pattern change on mature rhino beetles from when the beefed up the hp back in May, they now have 6khp and cant global in 50-59 ped range where b4 they were often (when they had less hp)

How it Plays Out

Not only are the returns often a big issue, but so is the entire experience psychologically..

Lets take my recent runs in MM as a good exmpl because it has some nice round #s..
I was in Cat 2. at lvl 49 just giving it a reasonable go, i shot for the whole hour, using a L1100/a104 (lvl 45 to max) so 1 full hour hunting and i was averaging 100 kills per run on the spiders. So the round numbers are 1 full hr hunting, killing 100 mobs..

of these 100 mobs.. 90+ of my loots on avg are going to be the min/max loots (cost to kill or below), then there will be 3-4 novas/no loots, and 3-4 minis/multipliers to round out the 100 kills. This is the avg experience over and over. The returns are frustratingly bad but also the entire experience you feel frustrated as you wade through 90+ losing mobs . Good runs are solely dictated on just how good those 3-4 minis you get are ( how high above 3.5x you get)

The best way to describe how the min/max loot operates is think of your weapons.. Both the high(max damg) and the low (min damg) are in practice rare, resulting in an avg damg range..

min/max loots are seemingly like this as well, this results in the avg loot being rather far below the cost to kill, and near closer to 50% of cost to kill in practice. And as such if you go on a hunt and dont get any multipliers at all, you will be looking at a near 50-60% return..

I want to stop here because i just wanted to lay these things down as they are for the moment. without trying to attempt any solutions or fixes..

But at first take, I will only say it does seem that the absence of say, 1.5x, 2x, 2.5x multipliers in our hunting loot could be something to be looked at both for overall returns reasons, as well as the overall psychological experience of hunting. Also the min/max range,, maybe the min is too low on that (and again i'm not sure what it is, but can probably be tested and verified easily, i only used 1/10 as an exmpl, tho its close to that)

Stefan 008 Bond