Why keep playing when "RNG" is the enemy?
DalBot
Member Posts: 1,632 ★★★★★
Between deals, gifting events, daily events and AW I've pulled 10 5* crystals since December 6. My pulls in order: Nebula, Iron Patriot, Archangel, Rocket, Hulk, Karnak, King Groot, Yellow Jacket, Ultron and just today Black Panther (Civil War). 10 pulls, 10 different champs, 9 of them mostly useless (AA being the exception) and, get this, NOT ONE PULL OF A CHAMP RELEASED AFTER MAY 2017. What are the odds that in 10 pulls there wouldn't be a single champion released in the 18 months prior? Not even a bad one, not a single newer champ at all.
But, you know, RNG...
But, you know, RNG...
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For me (I have 16 5 stars), the first 8 were mostly exciting and the second 8 were more meh than exciting.
Just keep on keeping on, and your luck will improve.
Ultron is a relic champ who hasn't been decent since 2016. Pillow fisted and his only saving grace is double immunity, which isn't rare anymore.
Nebula is meh at best. See Ultron in really only being good for double immune and for fighting robots.
Hulk is just poison immune and can hot hard if fully ranked up and at high sig. Even then he's middle of the pack for heavy hitters.
My bigger issue is not a single champ post-May 2017
The majority of post 2017 4* champs on my roster are there because I ground arena for them.
My 5* post-2017 champ has just recently changed. I pulled a 5* Void and Red Skull out of regular shard crystals.
I don't know when Blade came out, but I bought a four featured 5* crystals before than and pulled 2 Blades and two scrubs.
Champ pull luck has been my largest beef to date. When you put up a lot of arena points, you pull a bunch of PHC shard crystals. When I keep adding signature levels to champs I never use that are 3+ years old and almost never pull a 'modern' champ out of a 4* or 5* crystal, it feels like an RNG that's tilted against new champs.
And unless someone knows how their seed generator works or confirms that the game's RNG is regulated by some legal entity (a la slot machines) where there are ramifications for violations, no one can tell me for sure how the game's RNG works.
Do you actually care? It doesn't really sound like you do.
Appreciate the insightful reply that clearly adds to the conversation.
I'm curious if anyone knows what the actual algorithmic odds are of this happening or can show verifiable evidence that this isn't somehow a total fluke occurrence... or that the odds aren't stacked.
Nebula can be a situationally useful champ when needed with her immunities and her recent buff might also come in handy..plus she can be a useful option against robots if u don't have the usual options
Hulk too becomes good with his dupe...I use my 5* r3 in aq map 5 and I am happy with the amount of work he puts in
And AA is well amazing even unduped..yea he doesn't have his AAR but his DOT damage against non immunes is godly
Yes u didn't get good champs,yes it sucks...but this game is based on luck and this is how it's gonna be
Now I'm saving for Blade as he's really the only champ I still kinda want that I don't have so hope the RNG remains good to me.
On the flip I can't pull a 6* God Tier to save my life in 7 crystals. Decent ones but no game changers yet but I'll keep trying.
I couldn't care less about Gods, I don't even get a Taskmaster or a Masacre or anyone of the ilk in 10 pulls. So if the odds are 31.8% per pull, then you would think in 10 pulls it would have hit at least once or twice for a modern era champ right? Not a Sentry or a Sentinel or a Sabretooth or...
So the theme here seems to be "spend money if you want any newer champs and get only old champs from the 5* basic crystals". Plenty of new champs have come in to the basic crystals from May 2017 on and yet I've pulled none of them from those crystals 🤷🏻♂️
I know your pain. I've pulled him 5x and only threw a few sig stones on there to keep them from expiring in inventory. Up until recently I didn't have a single mutant worth putting sigs in to and have over 110 mutant sigs sitting in my inventory
Spider Gwen!!!
A champ I've never ever quested with... never took into AQ... never set as an AW defender... nada...
At least now every time I pull her 4* again I'll get 550 5* shards. This may be the only way anyone ever hopes to pull a Gwen...
The odds against something like this happening are about one in 60-ish, except that this is what's known as a post-hoc binning problem. First you pulled the champs, then you looked for the anomaly. Because you weren't looking for that specific anomaly before pulling, you can't state the actual odds against this happening in a statistically proper way, because you can only calculate what the odds would have been before the pull. After the pull you have to calculate the odds of something happening that would cause you to complain about it.
That's not a direct stab at you although I suspect it almost certainly sounds like it to you. Rather, it is a known problem with looking for statistical anomalies after the data is collected that has even brought down peer-reviewed scientific articles. The odds are small that all the pulls would be for champs that came out prior to May 2017. But if all the pulls were for champs that came out prior to June 2017 instead, you'd probably still be pointing that out. Ditto if they all came out prior to August 2017. And if they all came out *after* May 2017 you'd also be pointing that out.
The odds of you finding something that *seems* statistically weird is actually very high in ten pulls, because while by definition a statistical anomaly has a low probability of occurring, there are so many different possible anomalies that the odds of seeing one of them after the fact is actually much higher than you might otherwise calculate. The odds of a sequence of pulls "looking weird" is actually very high.
This is also why casinos often post the last twenty or so spins of the roulette wheel on an electronic board. Because they know that when people look at twenty random spins, they will see a pattern to them and bet on it. It is almost impossible for there to not be some apparent pattern in the spin results, even when they are entirely random.
Luck runs in streaks.
the thing about the Vegas comparison to this is there is no direct comparable in FTP vs PTP. By that I mean Vegas (with very few exceptions)doesn't have places where you can play for free and win money in any games. That's the difference here. In this game I've always done ok in the pay to play in that I've essentially spent good money to get good champs, however my ratio of pulling a good champ from a free crystal has always been MAYBE 10% of the time and clearly 0% of the time on pulling modern era champs. I mean, I have yet to pull a single champ from version 15.0 onwards from a shards crystal, every single one has been from a paid crystal. At some point you have to consider whether or not that's just borderline incalculably bad luck or something else altogether.
While I recognize the odds didn’t promise recent champs, I can echo your frustrations about failing to get them. I have 2 5*’s from 2018–Proxima (pulled twice) and Sentry (once) and no new 5* champs released since late 2017. Love Prox but I duped her via a pricey purchased 5* deal this summer that had a 11/13 chance to pull a new-to-me 5* (including most of the so-called god-Tier champs at that time—Cap3, IWIM, ST, Domino, KM, Void, etc). That’s not 100%, obviously, but in the upside down world that is MCoC odds it’s pretty strong.
Do I have solid 5* champs? Of course. I’ve been playing for a long time and I have periods I don’t mind spending on what I consider to be good deals. But it can be nauseating to see the way pRNG punishes some with the same results over and over even as it showers others with ridiculously great pulls. This summer to fall saw me knock dupes on 16 of 20 5* pulls (and before someone cries “but 6* shards!!!” I should add they netted me a 6* Thor Rags, who can be a great synergy partner IF you have the constituent parts).
All of which is why I did a backflip when I pulled 6* Angela today. No—not a 2018 champ, but a new one to me, and when I look at so many dismal 6* crystal options and my most recent pulls and see almost zero progress since summer, it feels like a lottery win.
Given the degree of my Angela celebration, most of my MCoC friends think I’ve lost my mind. She’s top half of the 6* pool, maybe top 15-20, but she’s no [fill-in-the-blank-with-amazing-2018-champ-now-in-6*-pool].
Guess that’s what happens to you when you are desperate.
Dr. Zola
Yes well unfortunately my main account suffers from that very problem. Yes it has a few good champs, but only because I spent to get them. Literally every basic/featured shard crystal I opened was complete garbage. I stopped spending in August after getting Heimdall. After a few months of trashy pulls I decided to get some Cyber Monday 5* crystals. Got Red Cyclops, Spider Gwen, and OG Cap. That was the moment I said Kabam will never see another dime from me ever again and I lost most of my excitement for this game. RNG is too much of a **** in this game.
Also, people perceive and remember streaks more.
A paradox of randomness is that in a perfectly random sequence of coin flips these two sequences have exactly the same chance to occur:
H T H T H T H T H T H T H T H T H T H T H T H T H T H T H T
H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H
Thirty consecutive heads is just as likely to occur as a thirty sequence run of alternating heads and tails. They are both about one in a billion. The reason why human beings think the second one is far less likely is because only one sequence "looks like" all heads: the sequence of all heads. However, human beings tend to think the sequence "heads-tails" repeated fifteen times is basically the same as "tails-heads" repeated fifteen times, and this sequence:
H T H T H T H T H T H T H T T T H T H T H T H T H T H T H T
with just one head changed to a tail is "almost" the same. Meanwhile this sequence:
H H H H H H H H H H H H H T H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H
is no longer a sequence of thirty heads in a row, and isn't even "almost" a sequence of thirty heads in a row; it is thirteen heads in a row followed by sixteen heads in a row with a tail in the middle.
No one comes to the forums to report an alternating sequence of "good" and "bad" pulls, even though a perfectly alternating sequence would be just as randomly improbable as all good or all bad pulls. People only remember and report on what they think is significant, except that intuition is essentially worthless.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/has-anyone-ever-flipped-heads-76-times-in-a-row/
Food for thought...and I think the issue isn’t that the odds of any two particular 30-flip sequences are equivalent, but that the odds of an all single outcome run are astronomically low. But that’s not the crystal result the OP takes issue with anyway...
Dr. Zola
Exactly. The issue isn't good champ/bad champ or even anything related to consistency probabilities, my issue is that I have pulled countless 5* crystals since 13.0 and not pulled any champ who has come out since that release. The only champs I've pulled that have been released post 13.0 have been champs I paid real money for. The odds would be astronomically slim that I wouldn't pull at least a few newer champs with all of the 5* crystals I've been able to pop. It's suspicious is all and makes you question the system when you see others who would reasonably have the same odds as you getting completely different rewards at a frequency that defies explanation.
This is two different overlapping subjects. The post above directly responds to the idea of "streaks" and that idea alone. I'm responding to him directly. Second, I would be surprised by 76 heads in a row, but *exactly* as much as I would be surprised by 76 alternating heads and tails in a row: the odds against are exactly the same.
The OP is saying that he looked back at ten pulls and noticed something weird: none of the champs were released after May. But that's a separate issue I took up in an entirely different post which contains a related idea: the notion that "unusual" is not something you can judge *after* generating results in the same way as you can when testing for them *before* generating results.