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Arena Crystals Awarding Less Units
LOSS_MAN
Member Posts: 32 ★
I am an admitted data nerd. This affliction caused me to begin recording the results of all my Battle Chip usage for Arena Crystals, and the rewards that they yielded, back in August of 2022. Over this time, I have diligently recorded the transaction of 11.9M Battle Chips. I have noticed a change in the crystal rewards that began in March of 2024. I’m going to lay out the results here. I’m interested in hearing from you, Summoners. Have any of you noticed the same, and do you also have data to support it? And I am interested in hearing from you, Kabam. What changed and why? Before I continue, I want to be clear – I am coming at this from a place of curiosity and the search for understanding. I am not directing an accusation at you. However, data does not lie. Something changed.
Before getting into the results, I want to explain my methodology. All of my crystal purchases were in 100K increments. I have purchased a mix of crystals with the following percent distribution: Arena – 72%, Uncollected – 20%, and Thronebreaker – 8%. Despite the mix, I have ensured that all my results are equalized since the three crystals have different costs. My mathematical output is apples-to-apples, as if all the crystals were base Arena Crystals. I am excluding the results of Energy Refills and Punishers, as their drop rates are minute. Those two rewards are statistically insignificant in this evaluation. There were also two 100K Battle Chip crystal purchases in August of 2023 that never showed me the results of the Arena Crystal opening, so those Battle Chips are excluded.
In comparing the reward results from August 2022 through February 2024 versus March 2024 through June 2025, my data shows the following changes: The amount of gold yielded per equalized crystal dropped 0.8%. This is the type of small change to be expected given the amount of data I have. However, the number of units yielded per equalized crystal dropped 14.3%. That is a considerable change. Both my data volume and the consistency of the gold yield on either side of March 1, 2024 eliminate the possibility of RNG as a driver. Something else is happening here. We are being rewarded fewer units over the last 16 months than years prior. I would expect that if the unit return declined 14%, the gold return would increase at an offsetting percentage. However, the result is that Arena Crystals have a lower value than in the past. I do not recall seeing a notification of this change, but perhaps I missed it? I would appreciate having this issue explained and addressed. Most of us grind Arena only for the units. It feels horrible to learn that our time and efforts have been devalued. Thank you in advance for your feedback on this important issue.
Before getting into the results, I want to explain my methodology. All of my crystal purchases were in 100K increments. I have purchased a mix of crystals with the following percent distribution: Arena – 72%, Uncollected – 20%, and Thronebreaker – 8%. Despite the mix, I have ensured that all my results are equalized since the three crystals have different costs. My mathematical output is apples-to-apples, as if all the crystals were base Arena Crystals. I am excluding the results of Energy Refills and Punishers, as their drop rates are minute. Those two rewards are statistically insignificant in this evaluation. There were also two 100K Battle Chip crystal purchases in August of 2023 that never showed me the results of the Arena Crystal opening, so those Battle Chips are excluded.
In comparing the reward results from August 2022 through February 2024 versus March 2024 through June 2025, my data shows the following changes: The amount of gold yielded per equalized crystal dropped 0.8%. This is the type of small change to be expected given the amount of data I have. However, the number of units yielded per equalized crystal dropped 14.3%. That is a considerable change. Both my data volume and the consistency of the gold yield on either side of March 1, 2024 eliminate the possibility of RNG as a driver. Something else is happening here. We are being rewarded fewer units over the last 16 months than years prior. I would expect that if the unit return declined 14%, the gold return would increase at an offsetting percentage. However, the result is that Arena Crystals have a lower value than in the past. I do not recall seeing a notification of this change, but perhaps I missed it? I would appreciate having this issue explained and addressed. Most of us grind Arena only for the units. It feels horrible to learn that our time and efforts have been devalued. Thank you in advance for your feedback on this important issue.
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Comments
Anyways you are incorrect
Then again Arena crystal are not Rigged. They are not out to get you. This type of thread we get every sales event.
@DNA3000 also got arena crystal data since the beginning. I'm sure he will share his findings.
ThroneBreaker per 1m battlechips:
12/20 - 3k units
1/23 - 4,125 units
2/14 - 1,875 units
3/6 - 375 units (this one hurt)
3/27 - 1,875 units
4/15 - 1,125 units
5/6 - zero units. Almost threw my phone against a wall. This is where I shifted to Uncollected.
Uncollected per 1m battlechips:
5/27 - 1,800 units
6/16 - 2,175 units
You say about 12 million BC worth of data across about 34 months (August 2022 to present). Assuming roughly even amounts of BC over time, that would mean the data from March 2024 to now would be about four out of the 34 months, or about 1.4 million BC worth of data. Depending on which crystals you're opening, that's not a lot of data. It is 28 TB crystals, 140 UC crystals, or 700 basic crystals. Even 700 is a relatively small sample size. Here's all of my UC crystals, opened from February 2020 to April 2021, in terms of units per batch of one hundred crystals:
The units per batch swing up and down, as you'd expect. On average only 15% of crystals contain units, so even in a batch of a hundred you'd only expect about 15 unit drops. Very small changes to that number due to random chance are going to cause the units per batch to also change by a lot. And if you look at the seven batch moving average, you can also see that the average units per 700 crystals also changes within that data set, from a high of over 2200 to a low of about 1500. This is all statistically normal.
Since I only open TB crystals these days, I've only opened two batches of arena crystals since then, one for 2250 units and one for 375. The average of the two is only about 1300 units, but I wouldn't conclude anything from just 40 crystals. In another thread I posted a chart of all my TB crystals from 2021 to present. Here's that chart with some better annotation:
As far as I can tell, that seems reasonably random, and if anything until the very last batch (May 10) the moving average was trending upward. However, I don't have enough data to completely rule such a thing out. But conversely, without actually seeing data, given the past history of claims about the crystal odds eventually turning out to be nothing, I would need a lot more evidence to convince me there's anything other than random variations going on. In particular, I take note of this statement of yours:
That's suspicious, because there's no way to do that. Statistically speaking the expected average value of units per battlechip is independent of which crystal you open, but the expected statistical variation is highly dependent. To put it another way, seeing an average of 3000 units from a million BC worth of basic arena crystals is statistically significant, but seeing an average of 3000 units from a million BC of TB arena crystals is statistically meaningless. The fact that you're reporting blended averages across different crystal types means there's no way to ascertain whether your results are statistically meaningful.
You should buy Uncollected or normal crystals for safer openning
Also, small correction. I misread the OP as stating that the unit yield for arena crystals is lower as of March 2025, not March 2024. I do have enough data to look at that more accurately. Including the batch I opened after posting, which was actually a bit below average (1125 units), my calculated average for unit yield per million BC worth of arena crystals is, coincidentally, 1875. Which is precisely the statistical average, if the drop rates were what they always have been.
Keep in mind the fact I hit the bullseye is a coincidence: had I calculated this average before opening my most recent batch, it would have been 1937.5, slightly above average. Its simply not dramatically lower than the expected value.
As mentioned above, while this is 13 million BC worth of drop data, it is only 260 crystals. 260 crystals is not enough to prove the drop rates are unaltered. It is enough data to suggest they haven't been modified downward by a substantial amount.