**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Comments
Are you sure about that?!
This sentiment presupposes that Apple is stupid enough to let App Devs skirt their rules by using in game currency purchases as a shield. Apple knows that virtually every game uses an in game currency. In fact if you read the Apple regs they specifically acknowledge that an in game currency exists. In game currency can bought with real life dollars. Apple is well aware of this and it would be astounding if that was a way to get around their rules. This highly unlikely.
wouldn't surprise me if apple over looked this
but one thing I am curious about if I read and understood things properly is if they drop a deal that instead of using units to buy u need to use money wouldn't those crystal drop rates need to be published under the current guidelines?
@Hubris_hater the difference there is the "increased odds" they advertise.
He has a point, it might help a tad bit. But it wont change the fact of loot boxes
* only items bought with currency would be covered by these new rules. Only them. If you buy units, they are covered. If you use those units to buy something in game, that purchase is not covered by the new rules so no DRs are needed. Not me saying this, this is actually the case, the facts
-What is your source for these "facts"? The spirit of the rule is to protect consumers from unknown drop rates when they put down cash. Units can be bought with cash. Thus, they too would count I would think.
* Apple have assed the IAPs in this game several times in the last 3 years, every time they said in-game purchases are not counted as loot boxes, every time
-Again, source please?
* This is not gambling in any way at all according to law, in any country in the whole world, apart from China. Even there, games simply changed what they sold and added "free" items that didnt need DRs
_ I do not disagree that is not gambling. If it was the U.S. government would have shut it down long ago.
* If you get a reward in this game, that is free and DRs dont have to be shown at all
-Agreed. However, we are not talking about free in game items.
* If you pop a crystal of a certain level, ie say a 5*, the DR is 100% that you get a 5*. Thats it, no DR will be shown per character
-This is where I think they can get around revealing drop rates. However, it will not permit them to get around Featured crystal drop rates.
* You will only see the DRs (if shown) that you have, you wont see other peoples. Kabam (and all games) are allowed to offer different DRs to different people if they want to
[-I don't see a difference here.
* There are currently no items that we can purchase with currency (apart from PHCs and Daily specials) that would even require DRs if they had to show them
-Refer to my first point. In game currency is not a mechanism to get around the rule. Apple would be stupid to allow such an easy loophole. It kills their entire intent which is consumer protection. You pay real cash for units. that is where the revenue comes from. Apple is well aware of this.
* Apples deadline was 15 days ago, nothing has changed at all
- This is the most interesting point. I have a feeling that they gave Apps a deadline of next update. This would explain the lack of an update this month. Others in this thread have reported games revealing the drop rates after their most recent update.
Sure, you can believe the January updates were bundled into the November update to avoid a guideline change that came out several weeks after the update was released and over a month after it was feature-closed, because sure why not? Let's not let a little thing like space-time causality violations get in the way of a good conspiracy delusion.
They wouldn't be obligated to share that information. But if they figured out how to do that, they couldn't keep it a secret for long. We're talking about compliance with a public set of guidelines, enforced by hundreds of Apple employees that have to be given published directives on applying them. I could probably make a phone call to a friend to figure out how they managed that trick if they somehow figured out how to do that. And separately from that Apple itself would have to figure out how to respond to all of the complaints by players of games that somehow avoided this very publicly debated field. The press coverage would be significant, and Apple would have no specific incentive to keep Kabam's (or any other company's) "secret" about how they managed to make a fool out of Apple.
Again, this is all very hypothetical. If Apple is not serious about these guidelines, they will have to answer to a lot of gamers who will feel they've been scammed by Apple. If Apple is serious, there's no such thing as loopholing Apple. Apple is not a court of law. Apple doesn't have to make laws that get adjudicated. The app store guidelines are HINTS to developers to help them get their apps approved. If Apple wants to force developers to disclose lootbox odds, they don't have to play word games with their developers. They can just start rejecting apps until they comply with the spirit of the rule as Apple sees it. Apple holds the only opinion that matters. And developers playing word games with Apple always, always lose.
If Apple did not give App Devs a heads up about these regulations in advance then I suppose you might have a point. Just because we learned about them when we did does not mean that is when Apple told App store partners about it. I doubt that though.
Were you playing last year? There was no Update then either. You can believe that Dorothy is in a Tornado right now, if you'd like, I guess.
If they told developers ahead of updating their guidelines pages, it wasn't apparently very many of them. From what I've been hearing, Apple updated the guidelines without a lot of advance warning. And that's consistent with Apple's history: they rarely give advance warning. In fact, the lootbox clause is itself uncharacteristic advance warning from Apple. Normally, Apple decides they don't want something in the app store anymore and starts rejecting apps for that reason, then later adds wording in the guidelines telling app developers about this new thing they are starting to reject.
If you are not familiar with this guideline page, it is actually originally a response to app developers asking for more clarity on why different apps were being rejected from the app store. Apple started putting in the most common things that were causing problems into the guidelines in order to give app developers some kind of guidance as to what to avoid. In other words, nobody gets advance warning when the guidelines are changed because the guidelines *are* the advance warning.
Among the many things you keep misstating, this one seems to be the most random. What deadline are you talking about? The only current communication about the policy change I'm aware of is in the app store guidelines document, and that document is a document for the app approval process. It isn't retroactive, nor is there any "deadline" associated with it.
Also, while nothing has changed in MCOC yet, because Kabam hasn't submitted an update for MCOC to the app store yet, other companies have begun making changes to their game as they submit them. At least two I've heard of so far. So changes are happening because of the new guidance.
It would take longer than the forums would allow to explain why game designers keep drop odds a secret. But its pretty much not what anyone thinks. The closest explanation that will fit in a forum post is: politics.
But there's a much simpler reason why game designers love to make things random. If you make things work on a system, that system will be figured out pretty quickly. But if you make things random, everyone will start seeing whatever they want to see in those Rorschach blobs. In general, video game designers don't study this and don't think deeply about this, but the people paid big money to study the psychology of gaming know that every game with purely random sequences always, and I mean always, draws the most speculation on what is "actually" going on. And that speculation is what actually *drives* people to keep playing, whether they admit it or not.
You're not generally allowed to use smartphone or even pencil and paper at the blackjack table. But casinos actually *display* the sequence of numbers that win on roulette tables. That information is 100% worthless because roulette tables are designed to be as random as possible, but they show it because everyone believes they can see through the randomness.
Deep down, most game designers who think about this at all, want players to disbelieve the random number generator. Because if you think it isn't random, then you start to think you can beat it. And since statistically speaking you cannot beat the random number generator, every system someone creates to try to do so will only cause them to spend more and lose more.
And that's why all casino slot machines are designed to be very strongly random. Anything that is not random can theoretically be beaten. But a well-designed PRNG cannot be beaten, not even in theory, not with any amount of mathematical skill. No casino wants to take a chance on a machine designed to "cheat" the players when statistically random mathematically guarantees they will win in the end.
They just don't advertise it on the forums.
Yes it is easy to rig the odds against a particular player, just like how it is very easy for a McDonald's burger flipper to spit in 3/20 of the burgers he make. But he doesn't do it because it has no point.
The answer I got to this very specific question limited to non specialty crystals only. was “Drop rates are intended to keep balance in the game and the chances Of pulling a specific champion are the same with each crystal”.
They could have simply answered (Yes each crystal has the Same probability Of awarding every champion from the pool of available champions) , but they chose to reference the purpose of drop rates in their response. Kabam support has never claimed that champ drops are determined by UnModified RNG or any RNG. There is always an undefined modifier in every answer I’ve received.
If Miike of another Moderator wishes to offer any clarification, please do.
3.1.1 In-App Purchase:
Apps offering “loot boxes” or other mechanisms that provide randomized virtual items for purchase must disclose the odds of receiving each type of item to customers prior to purchase.
Actually, they are required to do so.