Hypernet

[ANormalPie]

Scan or profitable?

[Dark_Lord_Trump]

Depends on which side you’re on. Like all gambling the hypernet generally has negative expected value, i.e. it would cost you more ISK on average to get an item from a hypernet vs just buying it normally.

[Gerard_Amatin]

If you’re selling tickets overpriced, profitable.

If you’re buying tickets underpriced and win, profitable.

If you’re buying overpriced tickets and happen to win, you took a gamble with an expected negative gain but turned out to be lucky. Not profitable in that case, just lucky. So don’t do that as buying unprofitable tickets will not be profitable in the long run even if you happen to win a few times. You would need to be consistently lucky to profit that way and luck doesn’t work like that.

If you want profit from the hypernet you’ll have to keep making lots of profitable choices as with enough random rolls you will average out to a profit that way.

If you ignore the factor of luck, it’s kind of like the market: buy low and sell high. It’s hard to sell overpriced as other players usually won’t buy overpriced tickets and it’s going to be hard to buy underpriced unless the thing you buy happens to be for example a freighter in a permanently camped low sec asset safety station or something like that, which means the real price of the item is actually much less than in Jita because of the much less useful location.

As it is hard to sell all tickets overpriced some people buy up the last few of their own overpriced tickets in order to get the raffle going. This isn’t a scam though, it’s going to eat into their own profit a lot if they buy their own overpriced tickets.

The hypernet is not a scam: you know exactly what you’re buying when you get a ticket. So it’s up to you to calculate whether that particular chance of an item is worth it to you.

Personally I bought a ticket once, just to try it out. Gambling is not really my thing, neither is hunting for sales. But if you enjoy such things, give it a try.