About loot and Lootius
I will start with some facts that we all know about EU. Oficial claims and general observations that lead to my conclusions.
1. Loot is random.
2. EU is dynamic.
3. Loot "happens" fast (instantly) when you loot a mob. If it is later, is a bug.
4. A bug noticed on TI and in different places is that if you kill a mob, radar is empty, is loot lag, then when you get the loot, a massive re-spawn will start.
5. Loot is in cycles.
6. Camping is a good option for those who do it right.
7. EU is not a game.
8. EU is dynamic
9. EU passed the verification and is not gambling.
10.. Random=gambling
11. Loot means more that just get loot:
a) kill mob
b) check the total damage
c) claim loot
d) update inventory
e) update weight
f) update total number of items
g) update speed
12. EU has many servers.
13. At one time, in one place, some avatars are more successful than others.
Now, starting from those claims, we can start thinking. We need to consider technical, psychological, economical and common sense reasons in explaining how things work.
If EU is not a gambling, then, as Legion figured out, loot is predeterminate. But how.
We know that loot must happen fast. That means that data needs to be processed fast. And the fastest way to do it is to have in RAM all you need at all time. That means that all must be in there. Using function with complex operations, is not an option, because it will kill the processing power of the server. So the only option is to have full and direct access to memory. And to be more specific, to memory address.
So all the loot, at all times is in ram. And it is so for each mob. That happens for each loot server. Each server has a limited number of mobs, so this is not a problem.
Now, how things work.
At each address in memory, we have a number that represents the loot of that mob. The memory is filled like a matrix with numbers with one rule in mind. The sum of those numbers is the total loot for the mobs that will pay. For example, if we consider an always looter like hogglo, if you kill 1024 of them, then each one of them has the loot in one specific memory address. When you loot, you simply get what is in the next place. But not directly. It all has to be the same for mining, crafting, hunting or whatever may involve loot in EU.
People must know that it is activity in EU. The matrix is filled with common values. For the beginning, it starts with the average cost to kill the mob, and with some coefficients, is spread to fill the matrix, keeping the total equal to the theoretic cost to kill all those mobs. I think this is how EU was at beginning. But as the system become more complex, number had to be bigger in order to keep people interested, and in order to have more no loot's, to have a lower pressure on the loot server and bigger hof's. Because no loots never reach the loot server. For a good reason.
As the activity is increased on a server, memory access become more critical and difficult. This is the reason no loot had to be implemented. Many people hunt small mobs. All of them need to get loot from server, but server has a physical limit of users that can get loot in real time. Another server, the one that parse the loot and request the size from the loot server, will send a request to the server only if that will not exceed the number of operations the loot server can perform in real time. No loot message is displayed in other circumstances, and the fact that it was no loot is recorded in avatar stats.
No loot is only for small mobs, and it will the notion of "smaller mobs" will always be updated, as the level of the player base will go up and will tend to deal sufficient damage to push to the limits the servers with mobs that used to be considered big (like CP or TI) No loot are compensated with globals and hof's. Because when the parse server figures out that is not so overloaded it will compensate for the no loots.
Back to loot cycles.
When you hunt, you notice that are good periods, then not so good ones, then medium, then good, then bad, and so on. That is because when you get the loot from the loot server, which is fixed number over time, but that is altered with some coefficients that reflect the reality. As I've said, it all starts with the theoretic cost to kill the mob as base. But it will always be a different cost, and all has to go near the real average cost of killing that mob on that server. And it will.
When a player finishes a cycle thru the memory, the system can compare the expected costs to the real costs, and it will result the real coefficient that will adjust his loot factor for future. Having more players, it will make the coefficient help tu update the matrix with new values. New_value=Old_value*Coefficient. So the matrix, after some iterations will reflect the real average cost to kill that mob.
Now, we can't have all the people making money in the same time, and we can't have all the people losing money at the same time. So if we have more people on the same server hunting, some will profit and some will lose. All have the same matrix. So how to make this possible? A new coefficient. The "luck factor" as some like to call it on the forum. The luck factor is a number assigned when you join a server and it can not be 1. (I would put this condition, but they may not do so). The rule would be that the sum of all coefficients on that server is equal with the number of players. This is how you make some hof and some pay in a simple and random way with only one use of random function.
The random coefficient is stored for each avatar, and on average it will be 1 in a longer period of time, after sufficient iterations. So the succes or loss is just a temporary option.
After each iteration (when the matrix is finished and the looting restarts) the matrix is recreated using the coefficient, that is recreated using the stats that tell the difference of the expected total loot and the real loot based on real spending. When this happens, we experience loot lag, and loot lag is for all players, not just for one, because all have the same matrix. EU is dynamic, so this is a part of the way the dynamism works.
All this mambo jambo was about the loot SIZE. How much we get in TT. Not the nature of loot. What we get.
The problem starts now. The balancing manager will decide what, where and how items and resources are looted. The nature of loot is determinate by loot parser, based on the loot server. He gets a value from the loot server, and the parser will update the avatar with the loot based on mob, server, size. We all know that some size of loot on some mobs have a specific structure. For some items, you have to be there and kill the mob when those are on the list. And this is a place where abuse can occur, as I'm sure that the amount of items in game is manual regulated. So the balancing manager knows what item will drop on what mob and when. But not on what player. But if a player knows all that, he will defiantly profit, as it counts to loot shadow armor or mod merc instead of oil residue. TT loot is all the same, but items are a mystery, as is to hard to manage a database and access a hard drive for that, or to keep them all in ram or... whatever...
So, as you all can see, is all about coefficients and items.
Some conclusions that come directly from that theory...
1. Over time, you will get in TT the same amount whatever you do, based on your spending. The profit or loss comes only from the economy of your setup.
2. You can profit more if you manage to hit the servers that are hot and have a coefficient that may compensate for the small coefficient on your avatar at some points. hunting globals can be an option, but it may not always work.
3. Is easy to take advantage from this system by people that know what items will drop where and when. So it helps to be on the same street with the balancing manager.
4. System is almost random.
5. Items, gear and skills are very important, because the really important thing is to control your cost.
6. Lootius can't give good loot, but it can give good items.
7. Is to hard to abuse the system in events, but considering the coefficients, the events for people with similar skill/gear and loot based are pure lotery.
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