Apple Now Requires Game Developers to disclose odds on "Loot Boxes" [MERGED THREADS]

Thatweirdguy wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Thatweirdguy wrote: »

There are RNG truthers out there who believe the official statements from Kabam stating that drops rates are not manipulated. That is fine if you want to believe that. Then you have the group who believe that they are manipulated. As long as Kabam fights to keep these drop rates away from consumers then the manipulation theories are valid. If you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by.

Conspiracy theories are not valid due to the absence of disproval. For that matter, to those who believe that the odds are manipulated, having them posted won't make a difference. Suspicion feeds off itself.

Yes but the fact that they refuse to release the drop rates certainly fuels those "conspiracy" theories. If it is truly RNG...then why not simply reveal them?

Technically, Kabam has made statements about the drop rates already. They've stated that within a specific rarity and outside of specific and described alterations in odds (i.e. crystals explicitly stated to have "increased odds" at certain drops), all champions are equally likely. That means within a rarity, if you know how many champs are in that rarity, they have specified the relative odds of those champions dropping. What they haven't stated are the relative odds of *different* rarities dropping, i.e. the difference in odds between a 2*, a 3*, and a 4* champion dropping from a PHC.

When you say "if it is truly RNG" you understand that even if Kabam were to be manipulating the relative odds of certain champions dropping that would have nothing to do with the random number generator or with the drops being "random." Hypothetically speaking, if I wanted to give one group of people a one in a hundred chance for 4* from PHC and a different group of people a one in ten chance for 4* from PHC, I wouldn't touch the random number generator at all. The way a reward drop table works in games like this is there is a reward table, like a spreadsheet, and the computer generates a random number, like a dice roll, to determine which reward you get. For some reason a lot of people think that the reward table looks like just a list of rewards, say a list of a hundred champions, and Kabam somehow manipulates the random number generator to make the number "8" come up more often than "12" to manipulate the odds. That's not how this works.

Conceptually, the way this works is closer to this. Imagine a table with one hundred entries. The first one says "4* champ" and the rest don't (I don't want to bother with 3* and 2* odds now). The computer rolls a number from one to one hundred, and whichever number comes up that's your rewards. Since only the number "1" contains a 4* champion entry, you have a one in a hundred chance to win that champ.

If I like you, I give you a different crystal that looks the same but contains a different table. This one has ten entries that say "4* champ" and the rest don't. The computer rolls the same random number from one to one hundred, but this time ten entries contain 4*, so you have a one in ten chance of getting that champion.

If you were going to manipulate odds, that's how you would do it. Every champion would be randomly drawn, and the random number generator would generate completely unbiased unskewed random numbers. Whether you manipulate the odds or not, the drops are "truly random." In fact focusing on the "randomness" of the drops is itself rather missing the point of how these things work. Randomness is how the drops are selected: in an unbiased and unpredictable fashion. But odds is a completely different thing. Odds are determined by how the reward drop table is constructed. The odds specify the ratio of one kind of drop to another, and odds have nothing to do with the random number generator.

The fact that all crystal openings are done ONLY from the server end, and never the client end is why these % have never been determined. There is no data buried in the game files. It is all on kabam servers.

Spera

It's pretty obvious that's they aren't biased. .. it's rng . However they have given us a behind the curtain look at how it works with the release of the new featured champ crystal .
The pool isn't all the champs. .. I think it's 3 pools a day eachpool containing a specific number of champions that you can pull

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Thatweirdguy wrote: »

There are RNG truthers out there who believe the official statements from Kabam stating that drops rates are not manipulated. That is fine if you want to believe that. Then you have the group who believe that they are manipulated. As long as Kabam fights to keep these drop rates away from consumers then the manipulation theories are valid. If you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by.

The position "my theory is valid until it is proven otherwise" takes the word "theory" and pulverizes it, then sets it on fire.

The evidence I have to the contrary is two-fold. First, when we actually possess information about how a game engineers their lootboxes, in most cases manipulation of the kind most MCOC players believe occurs turns out to be both absent and impossible to implement. The rare cases where something remotely close to it exists, it was acknowledged to exist by the game operator. In no case has such manipulation been denied and then turned out to be occurring as far as I'm aware.

Second, most manipulation theories predict statistical variations so huge they would be trivial to detect, and none of those have been detected consistent with rigorous statistical analysis. So while it is impossible to prove no manipulation goes on, it is possible to prove that the vast majority of speculation of manipulation doesn't go on.

That qualifies as "preponderance of evidence." It makes any idea of manipulation an unsupported conjecture, and not a valid theory.

Pretty much the very definition of an invalid statistical conjecture is encapsulated in your statement "if you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by." In the world of statistics, this is called "guaranteed to be wrong."

Also, the term "truther" is generally used in the opposite sense you do. RNG truthers are the ones that do not believe the official statements about the randomness of lootboxes, and believe there is a conspiracy to deny them the truth about how the lootboxes actually work that is completely different from the official story.

Long and thought out. I read and agree with most of it. But do you really think a company, who was recently acquired would not make small “unprovable” changes to Crystal odds that have been algoryhtmically proven to increase profit?

It is more that I believe they cannot. This is extremely difficult to retrofit into an existing game. It was either there from day one, or it is highly unlikely to be there now.

Let me just ask you. Do you believe it is a flat %, and has always been so, for all players equally regardless of lifetime spend? Because every time you write a support ticket the URL arhat generates the email logs your account creation date, most previous purchase date, and total lifetime spend. Why would it do this, if it made no difference?

Actually, I don't know why they would do that because that's incredibly dumb if they are. There's no reason for that information to be sent back and forth in that way, and it can get them into trouble.

Now a question for you. The presumption to improving the crystal odds for players that spend more is to encourage players to spend more. In fact, the Kabam patent that some players keep mentioning also references this specific line of thinking. If you want players to spend more, incentivize spending by offering better crystal odds when you spend money in certain ways. However else one might feel about the practice, it is at least logical. But it is only logical if you tell players you are doing it. The patent itself explicitly states that the intent of the invention is to incentivize behavior and make certain loot boxes more valuable simultaneously. Two birds with one stone. And that incentivization requires a mechanism to tell players how to get the better odds, to make the incentive something the players are aware of. So the question, which I've asked many times over the last two years, is: how does an invisible incentive that you deny you're even doing actually work?

If such an incentive exists in the game, it is sufficiently subtle so as to escape detection by any reasonable analysis. I've looked. *Big* incentives would be caught. *Small* incentives could be small enough to evade detection. But such a small incentive is also too small to definitively detect by essentially all players. That's illogical. Making a small incentive that is too small to immediately detect and also denying even doing it seems entirely nonsensical if the point is to offer players an incentive.

For an app that makes 900k PER DAY. a small change in odds could be millions of dollars. It would be too easy, especially after a disappointing quarterly report, to manipulate odds that assure investors.

You haven't stated how changing odds can directly increase revenue. Crystal odds are not a revenue knob you can just turn to get more and less revenue because there's no direct correlation between drops and spending. It is easy to make the trivial connection that if you give out less stuff, players will then spend more money to get the same stuff. But that's not how that works.

But you didn't answer my question. My question was: why put an incentive in the game and not tell anyone about it? You're saying hypothetically an incentive is worth putting in since it can significantly affect revenue. My question stands. Why put an incentive into the game and not tell the players about it, removing the ability for it to directly affect behavior? It can't be because they think telling players is unnecessary, they filed a patent that explicitly extolled the benefits of telling players about incentives to alter loot box odds.

MattScott wrote: »

The fact that all crystal openings are done ONLY from the server end, and never the client end is why these % have never been determined. There is no data buried in the game files. It is all on kabam servers.

They haven't been reverse engineered, but they have been measured. Some crystals, like PHCs, have enough streamed data on Youtube and in other places to be pretty certain what the drop rates are to within small margins, and also very certain those odds do not change depending on the player. The recent GMC survey generated results that seem consistent with other crystals, and the drop rates for 5* featured have been studied since when the crystal first came out (I'm one of the early sources for the "20% - 25%" figure of merit).

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Thatweirdguy wrote: »

There are RNG truthers out there who believe the official statements from Kabam stating that drops rates are not manipulated. That is fine if you want to believe that. Then you have the group who believe that they are manipulated. As long as Kabam fights to keep these drop rates away from consumers then the manipulation theories are valid. If you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by.

The position "my theory is valid until it is proven otherwise" takes the word "theory" and pulverizes it, then sets it on fire.

The evidence I have to the contrary is two-fold. First, when we actually possess information about how a game engineers their lootboxes, in most cases manipulation of the kind most MCOC players believe occurs turns out to be both absent and impossible to implement. The rare cases where something remotely close to it exists, it was acknowledged to exist by the game operator. In no case has such manipulation been denied and then turned out to be occurring as far as I'm aware.

Second, most manipulation theories predict statistical variations so huge they would be trivial to detect, and none of those have been detected consistent with rigorous statistical analysis. So while it is impossible to prove no manipulation goes on, it is possible to prove that the vast majority of speculation of manipulation doesn't go on.

That qualifies as "preponderance of evidence." It makes any idea of manipulation an unsupported conjecture, and not a valid theory.

Pretty much the very definition of an invalid statistical conjecture is encapsulated in your statement "if you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by." In the world of statistics, this is called "guaranteed to be wrong."

Also, the term "truther" is generally used in the opposite sense you do. RNG truthers are the ones that do not believe the official statements about the randomness of lootboxes, and believe there is a conspiracy to deny them the truth about how the lootboxes actually work that is completely different from the official story.

Long and thought out. I read and agree with most of it. But do you really think a company, who was recently acquired would not make small “unprovable” changes to Crystal odds that have been algoryhtmically proven to increase profit?

It is more that I believe they cannot. This is extremely difficult to retrofit into an existing game. It was either there from day one, or it is highly unlikely to be there now.

Let me just ask you. Do you believe it is a flat %, and has always been so, for all players equally regardless of lifetime spend? Because every time you write a support ticket the URL arhat generates the email logs your account creation date, most previous purchase date, and total lifetime spend. Why would it do this, if it made no difference?

Actually, I don't know why they would do that because that's incredibly dumb if they are. There's no reason for that information to be sent back and forth in that way, and it can get them into trouble.

Now a question for you. The presumption to improving the crystal odds for players that spend more is to encourage players to spend more. In fact, the Kabam patent that some players keep mentioning also references this specific line of thinking. If you want players to spend more, incentivize spending by offering better crystal odds when you spend money in certain ways. However else one might feel about the practice, it is at least logical. But it is only logical if you tell players you are doing it. The patent itself explicitly states that the intent of the invention is to incentivize behavior and make certain loot boxes more valuable simultaneously. Two birds with one stone. And that incentivization requires a mechanism to tell players how to get the better odds, to make the incentive something the players are aware of. So the question, which I've asked many times over the last two years, is: how does an invisible incentive that you deny you're even doing actually work?

If such an incentive exists in the game, it is sufficiently subtle so as to escape detection by any reasonable analysis. I've looked. *Big* incentives would be caught. *Small* incentives could be small enough to evade detection. But such a small incentive is also too small to definitively detect by essentially all players. That's illogical. Making a small incentive that is too small to immediately detect and also denying even doing it seems entirely nonsensical if the point is to offer players an incentive.

For an app that makes 900k PER DAY. a small change in odds could be millions of dollars. It would be too easy, especially after a disappointing quarterly report, to manipulate odds that assure investors.

You haven't stated how changing odds can directly increase revenue. Crystal odds are not a revenue knob you can just turn to get more and less revenue because there's no direct correlation between drops and spending. It is easy to make the trivial connection that if you give out less stuff, players will then spend more money to get the same stuff. But that's not how that works.

But you didn't answer my question. My question was: why put an incentive in the game and not tell anyone about it? You're saying hypothetically an incentive is worth putting in since it can significantly affect revenue. My question stands. Why put an incentive into the game and not tell the players about it, removing the ability for it to directly affect behavior? It can't be because they think telling players is unnecessary, they filed a patent that explicitly extolled the benefits of telling players about incentives to alter loot box odds.

Here is the answer. Say the algorithm has a 80% success rate in guessing which player would spend more money if they “missed” their feature pull. Have a f2p player, or nearly, f2p in their ally pop a crystal and get an amazing pull. Turn down the spenders odds and watch the money come rolling in.

Just one of MANY possible ways data and these games are set up to feed into your subconscious.

In that example.
Whale goes fishing,
And maybe nearly f2p player decides to try and drop an Odin to dupe his new pull, to no avail.

https://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/9653/marvel-contest-of-champions/

juST4fUN

Zuko_ILC wrote: »

.

This image got me jailed

i didnt check the comments before posting.

-.-

unknown

This content has been removed.

Zuko_ILC

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Ozzieont wrote: »

This won't guarantee anything posting a drop rate , you still are going to get whatever comes out of spin imagine kabam posting a fomula how many crystals you have to open to get a blade is not going to happen , be real is a business

What makes MCOC so wildly different of a game than all other games that have published loot box drop rates?

Nothing. Except many people have suspected it’s not purely a flat % based system across all users. This would be interesting to find it it’s true.

This is also something not unique to MCOC. There are people who think this in every game with lootboxes. So far, those players are not batting a very high average.

China was the first to step in on the loot box fight, European nations (Germany for one) are now stepping up as well as the United States. I feel like loot boxes will be going away in the near future. Just from what I've read on news reports. I'd rather have a game where you pay for content and not pay for a chance at content. I tend to have an "entertainment budget" that I use and to be honest from poor pulls I tend to not use it on this game more times than when I open my wallet. But thats just me.

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Thatweirdguy wrote: »

There are RNG truthers out there who believe the official statements from Kabam stating that drops rates are not manipulated. That is fine if you want to believe that. Then you have the group who believe that they are manipulated. As long as Kabam fights to keep these drop rates away from consumers then the manipulation theories are valid. If you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by.

The position "my theory is valid until it is proven otherwise" takes the word "theory" and pulverizes it, then sets it on fire.

The evidence I have to the contrary is two-fold. First, when we actually possess information about how a game engineers their lootboxes, in most cases manipulation of the kind most MCOC players believe occurs turns out to be both absent and impossible to implement. The rare cases where something remotely close to it exists, it was acknowledged to exist by the game operator. In no case has such manipulation been denied and then turned out to be occurring as far as I'm aware.

Second, most manipulation theories predict statistical variations so huge they would be trivial to detect, and none of those have been detected consistent with rigorous statistical analysis. So while it is impossible to prove no manipulation goes on, it is possible to prove that the vast majority of speculation of manipulation doesn't go on.

That qualifies as "preponderance of evidence." It makes any idea of manipulation an unsupported conjecture, and not a valid theory.

Pretty much the very definition of an invalid statistical conjecture is encapsulated in your statement "if you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by." In the world of statistics, this is called "guaranteed to be wrong."

Also, the term "truther" is generally used in the opposite sense you do. RNG truthers are the ones that do not believe the official statements about the randomness of lootboxes, and believe there is a conspiracy to deny them the truth about how the lootboxes actually work that is completely different from the official story.

Long and thought out. I read and agree with most of it. But do you really think a company, who was recently acquired would not make small “unprovable” changes to Crystal odds that have been algoryhtmically proven to increase profit?

It is more that I believe they cannot. This is extremely difficult to retrofit into an existing game. It was either there from day one, or it is highly unlikely to be there now.

Let me just ask you. Do you believe it is a flat %, and has always been so, for all players equally regardless of lifetime spend? Because every time you write a support ticket the URL arhat generates the email logs your account creation date, most previous purchase date, and total lifetime spend. Why would it do this, if it made no difference?

Actually, I don't know why they would do that because that's incredibly dumb if they are. There's no reason for that information to be sent back and forth in that way, and it can get them into trouble.

Now a question for you. The presumption to improving the crystal odds for players that spend more is to encourage players to spend more. In fact, the Kabam patent that some players keep mentioning also references this specific line of thinking. If you want players to spend more, incentivize spending by offering better crystal odds when you spend money in certain ways. However else one might feel about the practice, it is at least logical. But it is only logical if you tell players you are doing it. The patent itself explicitly states that the intent of the invention is to incentivize behavior and make certain loot boxes more valuable simultaneously. Two birds with one stone. And that incentivization requires a mechanism to tell players how to get the better odds, to make the incentive something the players are aware of. So the question, which I've asked many times over the last two years, is: how does an invisible incentive that you deny you're even doing actually work?

If such an incentive exists in the game, it is sufficiently subtle so as to escape detection by any reasonable analysis. I've looked. *Big* incentives would be caught. *Small* incentives could be small enough to evade detection. But such a small incentive is also too small to definitively detect by essentially all players. That's illogical. Making a small incentive that is too small to immediately detect and also denying even doing it seems entirely nonsensical if the point is to offer players an incentive.

For an app that makes 900k PER DAY. a small change in odds could be millions of dollars. It would be too easy, especially after a disappointing quarterly report, to manipulate odds that assure investors.

You haven't stated how changing odds can directly increase revenue. Crystal odds are not a revenue knob you can just turn to get more and less revenue because there's no direct correlation between drops and spending. It is easy to make the trivial connection that if you give out less stuff, players will then spend more money to get the same stuff. But that's not how that works.

But you didn't answer my question. My question was: why put an incentive in the game and not tell anyone about it? You're saying hypothetically an incentive is worth putting in since it can significantly affect revenue. My question stands. Why put an incentive into the game and not tell the players about it, removing the ability for it to directly affect behavior? It can't be because they think telling players is unnecessary, they filed a patent that explicitly extolled the benefits of telling players about incentives to alter loot box odds.

Here is the answer. Say the algorithm has a 80% success rate in guessing which player would spend more money if they “missed” their feature pull. Have a f2p player, or nearly, f2p in their ally pop a crystal and get an amazing pull. Turn down the spenders odds and watch the money come rolling in.

Just one of MANY possible ways data and these games are set up to feed into your subconscious.

Just because you can write it, doesn't mean anyone can or does do it. Why say the algorithm has an 80% success rate; why not say it has a 100% success rate? Do you believe 80% is more plausible?

Zuko_ILC wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Ozzieont wrote: »

This won't guarantee anything posting a drop rate , you still are going to get whatever comes out of spin imagine kabam posting a fomula how many crystals you have to open to get a blade is not going to happen , be real is a business

What makes MCOC so wildly different of a game than all other games that have published loot box drop rates?

Nothing. Except many people have suspected it’s not purely a flat % based system across all users. This would be interesting to find it it’s true.

This is also something not unique to MCOC. There are people who think this in every game with lootboxes. So far, those players are not batting a very high average.

China was the first to step in on the loot box fight, European nations (Germany for one) are now stepping up as well as the United States. I feel like loot boxes will be going away in the near future. Just from what I've read on news reports. I'd rather have a game where you pay for content and not pay for a chance at content. I tend to have an "entertainment budget" that I use and to be honest from poor pulls I tend to not use it on this game more times than when I open my wallet. But thats just me.

I'm not sure why you're quoting me here, because this seems to have nothing to do with what I said.

I suppose it is possible you might think what I said was something like "players have had no success in making changes to how lootbox monetization systems operate" or something like that. But if you look at the post I was replying to, what I said was that people often believe that lootbox odds are rigged to operate in a manner other than what the game operators says they operate at, and the players with that belief tend to turn out to be wrong when proof eventually emerges.

It is obvious that people have been pushing back on certain aspects of how lootboxes and other kinds of microtransaction monetization systems work, and have had some successes recently. That has nothing to do with what they *think* about how the systems function. If anything, part of the purpose of disclosure rules is to dispel many of the misconceptions about how they work.

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Thatweirdguy wrote: »

There are RNG truthers out there who believe the official statements from Kabam stating that drops rates are not manipulated. That is fine if you want to believe that. Then you have the group who believe that they are manipulated. As long as Kabam fights to keep these drop rates away from consumers then the manipulation theories are valid. If you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by.

The position "my theory is valid until it is proven otherwise" takes the word "theory" and pulverizes it, then sets it on fire.

The evidence I have to the contrary is two-fold. First, when we actually possess information about how a game engineers their lootboxes, in most cases manipulation of the kind most MCOC players believe occurs turns out to be both absent and impossible to implement. The rare cases where something remotely close to it exists, it was acknowledged to exist by the game operator. In no case has such manipulation been denied and then turned out to be occurring as far as I'm aware.

Second, most manipulation theories predict statistical variations so huge they would be trivial to detect, and none of those have been detected consistent with rigorous statistical analysis. So while it is impossible to prove no manipulation goes on, it is possible to prove that the vast majority of speculation of manipulation doesn't go on.

That qualifies as "preponderance of evidence." It makes any idea of manipulation an unsupported conjecture, and not a valid theory.

Pretty much the very definition of an invalid statistical conjecture is encapsulated in your statement "if you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by." In the world of statistics, this is called "guaranteed to be wrong."

Also, the term "truther" is generally used in the opposite sense you do. RNG truthers are the ones that do not believe the official statements about the randomness of lootboxes, and believe there is a conspiracy to deny them the truth about how the lootboxes actually work that is completely different from the official story.

Long and thought out. I read and agree with most of it. But do you really think a company, who was recently acquired would not make small “unprovable” changes to Crystal odds that have been algoryhtmically proven to increase profit?

It is more that I believe they cannot. This is extremely difficult to retrofit into an existing game. It was either there from day one, or it is highly unlikely to be there now.

Let me just ask you. Do you believe it is a flat %, and has always been so, for all players equally regardless of lifetime spend? Because every time you write a support ticket the URL arhat generates the email logs your account creation date, most previous purchase date, and total lifetime spend. Why would it do this, if it made no difference?

Actually, I don't know why they would do that because that's incredibly dumb if they are. There's no reason for that information to be sent back and forth in that way, and it can get them into trouble.

Now a question for you. The presumption to improving the crystal odds for players that spend more is to encourage players to spend more. In fact, the Kabam patent that some players keep mentioning also references this specific line of thinking. If you want players to spend more, incentivize spending by offering better crystal odds when you spend money in certain ways. However else one might feel about the practice, it is at least logical. But it is only logical if you tell players you are doing it. The patent itself explicitly states that the intent of the invention is to incentivize behavior and make certain loot boxes more valuable simultaneously. Two birds with one stone. And that incentivization requires a mechanism to tell players how to get the better odds, to make the incentive something the players are aware of. So the question, which I've asked many times over the last two years, is: how does an invisible incentive that you deny you're even doing actually work?

If such an incentive exists in the game, it is sufficiently subtle so as to escape detection by any reasonable analysis. I've looked. *Big* incentives would be caught. *Small* incentives could be small enough to evade detection. But such a small incentive is also too small to definitively detect by essentially all players. That's illogical. Making a small incentive that is too small to immediately detect and also denying even doing it seems entirely nonsensical if the point is to offer players an incentive.

For an app that makes 900k PER DAY. a small change in odds could be millions of dollars. It would be too easy, especially after a disappointing quarterly report, to manipulate odds that assure investors.

You haven't stated how changing odds can directly increase revenue. Crystal odds are not a revenue knob you can just turn to get more and less revenue because there's no direct correlation between drops and spending. It is easy to make the trivial connection that if you give out less stuff, players will then spend more money to get the same stuff. But that's not how that works.

But you didn't answer my question. My question was: why put an incentive in the game and not tell anyone about it? You're saying hypothetically an incentive is worth putting in since it can significantly affect revenue. My question stands. Why put an incentive into the game and not tell the players about it, removing the ability for it to directly affect behavior? It can't be because they think telling players is unnecessary, they filed a patent that explicitly extolled the benefits of telling players about incentives to alter loot box odds.

Here is the answer. Say the algorithm has a 80% success rate in guessing which player would spend more money if they “missed” their feature pull. Have a f2p player, or nearly, f2p in their ally pop a crystal and get an amazing pull. Turn down the spenders odds and watch the money come rolling in.

Just one of MANY possible ways data and these games are set up to feed into your subconscious.

Just because you can write it, doesn't mean anyone can or does do it. Why say the algorithm has an 80% success rate; why not say it has a 100% success rate? Do you believe 80% is more plausible?

I was simply stating a way it COULD work, as you had asked.
And i was throwing a figure out (80%) just a number from thin air, as i doubt that anything could have a 100% success rate.

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Thatweirdguy wrote: »

There are RNG truthers out there who believe the official statements from Kabam stating that drops rates are not manipulated. That is fine if you want to believe that. Then you have the group who believe that they are manipulated. As long as Kabam fights to keep these drop rates away from consumers then the manipulation theories are valid. If you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by.

The position "my theory is valid until it is proven otherwise" takes the word "theory" and pulverizes it, then sets it on fire.

The evidence I have to the contrary is two-fold. First, when we actually possess information about how a game engineers their lootboxes, in most cases manipulation of the kind most MCOC players believe occurs turns out to be both absent and impossible to implement. The rare cases where something remotely close to it exists, it was acknowledged to exist by the game operator. In no case has such manipulation been denied and then turned out to be occurring as far as I'm aware.

Second, most manipulation theories predict statistical variations so huge they would be trivial to detect, and none of those have been detected consistent with rigorous statistical analysis. So while it is impossible to prove no manipulation goes on, it is possible to prove that the vast majority of speculation of manipulation doesn't go on.

That qualifies as "preponderance of evidence." It makes any idea of manipulation an unsupported conjecture, and not a valid theory.

Pretty much the very definition of an invalid statistical conjecture is encapsulated in your statement "if you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by." In the world of statistics, this is called "guaranteed to be wrong."

Also, the term "truther" is generally used in the opposite sense you do. RNG truthers are the ones that do not believe the official statements about the randomness of lootboxes, and believe there is a conspiracy to deny them the truth about how the lootboxes actually work that is completely different from the official story.

Long and thought out. I read and agree with most of it. But do you really think a company, who was recently acquired would not make small “unprovable” changes to Crystal odds that have been algoryhtmically proven to increase profit?

It is more that I believe they cannot. This is extremely difficult to retrofit into an existing game. It was either there from day one, or it is highly unlikely to be there now.

Let me just ask you. Do you believe it is a flat %, and has always been so, for all players equally regardless of lifetime spend? Because every time you write a support ticket the URL arhat generates the email logs your account creation date, most previous purchase date, and total lifetime spend. Why would it do this, if it made no difference?

Actually, I don't know why they would do that because that's incredibly dumb if they are. There's no reason for that information to be sent back and forth in that way, and it can get them into trouble.

Now a question for you. The presumption to improving the crystal odds for players that spend more is to encourage players to spend more. In fact, the Kabam patent that some players keep mentioning also references this specific line of thinking. If you want players to spend more, incentivize spending by offering better crystal odds when you spend money in certain ways. However else one might feel about the practice, it is at least logical. But it is only logical if you tell players you are doing it. The patent itself explicitly states that the intent of the invention is to incentivize behavior and make certain loot boxes more valuable simultaneously. Two birds with one stone. And that incentivization requires a mechanism to tell players how to get the better odds, to make the incentive something the players are aware of. So the question, which I've asked many times over the last two years, is: how does an invisible incentive that you deny you're even doing actually work?

If such an incentive exists in the game, it is sufficiently subtle so as to escape detection by any reasonable analysis. I've looked. *Big* incentives would be caught. *Small* incentives could be small enough to evade detection. But such a small incentive is also too small to definitively detect by essentially all players. That's illogical. Making a small incentive that is too small to immediately detect and also denying even doing it seems entirely nonsensical if the point is to offer players an incentive.

For an app that makes 900k PER DAY. a small change in odds could be millions of dollars. It would be too easy, especially after a disappointing quarterly report, to manipulate odds that assure investors.

You haven't stated how changing odds can directly increase revenue. Crystal odds are not a revenue knob you can just turn to get more and less revenue because there's no direct correlation between drops and spending. It is easy to make the trivial connection that if you give out less stuff, players will then spend more money to get the same stuff. But that's not how that works.

But you didn't answer my question. My question was: why put an incentive in the game and not tell anyone about it? You're saying hypothetically an incentive is worth putting in since it can significantly affect revenue. My question stands. Why put an incentive into the game and not tell the players about it, removing the ability for it to directly affect behavior? It can't be because they think telling players is unnecessary, they filed a patent that explicitly extolled the benefits of telling players about incentives to alter loot box odds.

Here is the answer. Say the algorithm has a 80% success rate in guessing which player would spend more money if they “missed” their feature pull. Have a f2p player, or nearly, f2p in their ally pop a crystal and get an amazing pull. Turn down the spenders odds and watch the money come rolling in.

Just one of MANY possible ways data and these games are set up to feed into your subconscious.

Just because you can write it, doesn't mean anyone can or does do it. Why say the algorithm has an 80% success rate; why not say it has a 100% success rate? Do you believe 80% is more plausible?

I was simply stating a way it COULD work, as you had asked.
And i was throwing a figure out (80%) just a number from thin air, as i doubt that anything could have a 100% success rate.

I was looking for a plausible way. I'm unaware of any game that currency uses predictive algorithms like that, although I concede it is only a matter of time before such things happen. The technology to do that didn't exist when MCOC was first created, and it likely doesn't currently exist at a price point to make the technology available to most mobile game companies yet. My guess is that such a thing is at least technologically feasible within the next year or two.

You'd be surprised, though, just how backward game companies are when it comes to technology. Remember: most game companies outsource almost all of the technological infrastructure that is used to power their games, from the frameworks to the networking to the server back ends. It wasn't too long ago that most games were written in C. Not C++, C. And it is still extremely common in the game industry for text assets to be built in Excel, as in literally Excel the spreadsheet. And by text assets, I mean things like the abilities and statistics for all the champions in MCOC.

CreeperWhisper7 wrote: »

I was looking for a plausible way. I'm unaware of any game that currency uses predictive algorithms like that, although I concede it is only a matter of time before such things happen. The technology to do that didn't exist when MCOC was first created, and it likely doesn't currently exist at a price point to make the technology available to most mobile game companies yet. My guess is that such a thing is at least technologically feasible within the next year or two.

You'd be surprised, though, just how backward game companies are when it comes to technology. Remember: most game companies outsource almost all of the technological infrastructure that is used to power their games, from the frameworks to the networking to the server back ends. It wasn't too long ago that most games were written in C. Not C++, C. And it is still extremely common in the game industry for text assets to be built in Excel, as in literally Excel the spreadsheet. And by text assets, I mean things like the abilities and statistics for all the champions in MCOC.

Chill pill

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Thatweirdguy wrote: »

There are RNG truthers out there who believe the official statements from Kabam stating that drops rates are not manipulated. That is fine if you want to believe that. Then you have the group who believe that they are manipulated. As long as Kabam fights to keep these drop rates away from consumers then the manipulation theories are valid. If you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by.

The position "my theory is valid until it is proven otherwise" takes the word "theory" and pulverizes it, then sets it on fire.

The evidence I have to the contrary is two-fold. First, when we actually possess information about how a game engineers their lootboxes, in most cases manipulation of the kind most MCOC players believe occurs turns out to be both absent and impossible to implement. The rare cases where something remotely close to it exists, it was acknowledged to exist by the game operator. In no case has such manipulation been denied and then turned out to be occurring as far as I'm aware.

Second, most manipulation theories predict statistical variations so huge they would be trivial to detect, and none of those have been detected consistent with rigorous statistical analysis. So while it is impossible to prove no manipulation goes on, it is possible to prove that the vast majority of speculation of manipulation doesn't go on.

That qualifies as "preponderance of evidence." It makes any idea of manipulation an unsupported conjecture, and not a valid theory.

Pretty much the very definition of an invalid statistical conjecture is encapsulated in your statement "if you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by." In the world of statistics, this is called "guaranteed to be wrong."

Also, the term "truther" is generally used in the opposite sense you do. RNG truthers are the ones that do not believe the official statements about the randomness of lootboxes, and believe there is a conspiracy to deny them the truth about how the lootboxes actually work that is completely different from the official story.

Long and thought out. I read and agree with most of it. But do you really think a company, who was recently acquired would not make small “unprovable” changes to Crystal odds that have been algoryhtmically proven to increase profit?

It is more that I believe they cannot. This is extremely difficult to retrofit into an existing game. It was either there from day one, or it is highly unlikely to be there now.

Let me just ask you. Do you believe it is a flat %, and has always been so, for all players equally regardless of lifetime spend? Because every time you write a support ticket the URL arhat generates the email logs your account creation date, most previous purchase date, and total lifetime spend. Why would it do this, if it made no difference?

Actually, I don't know why they would do that because that's incredibly dumb if they are. There's no reason for that information to be sent back and forth in that way, and it can get them into trouble.

Now a question for you. The presumption to improving the crystal odds for players that spend more is to encourage players to spend more. In fact, the Kabam patent that some players keep mentioning also references this specific line of thinking. If you want players to spend more, incentivize spending by offering better crystal odds when you spend money in certain ways. However else one might feel about the practice, it is at least logical. But it is only logical if you tell players you are doing it. The patent itself explicitly states that the intent of the invention is to incentivize behavior and make certain loot boxes more valuable simultaneously. Two birds with one stone. And that incentivization requires a mechanism to tell players how to get the better odds, to make the incentive something the players are aware of. So the question, which I've asked many times over the last two years, is: how does an invisible incentive that you deny you're even doing actually work?

If such an incentive exists in the game, it is sufficiently subtle so as to escape detection by any reasonable analysis. I've looked. *Big* incentives would be caught. *Small* incentives could be small enough to evade detection. But such a small incentive is also too small to definitively detect by essentially all players. That's illogical. Making a small incentive that is too small to immediately detect and also denying even doing it seems entirely nonsensical if the point is to offer players an incentive.

For an app that makes 900k PER DAY. a small change in odds could be millions of dollars. It would be too easy, especially after a disappointing quarterly report, to manipulate odds that assure investors.

You haven't stated how changing odds can directly increase revenue. Crystal odds are not a revenue knob you can just turn to get more and less revenue because there's no direct correlation between drops and spending. It is easy to make the trivial connection that if you give out less stuff, players will then spend more money to get the same stuff. But that's not how that works.

But you didn't answer my question. My question was: why put an incentive in the game and not tell anyone about it? You're saying hypothetically an incentive is worth putting in since it can significantly affect revenue. My question stands. Why put an incentive into the game and not tell the players about it, removing the ability for it to directly affect behavior? It can't be because they think telling players is unnecessary, they filed a patent that explicitly extolled the benefits of telling players about incentives to alter loot box odds.

Here is the answer. Say the algorithm has a 80% success rate in guessing which player would spend more money if they “missed” their feature pull. Have a f2p player, or nearly, f2p in their ally pop a crystal and get an amazing pull. Turn down the spenders odds and watch the money come rolling in.

Just one of MANY possible ways data and these games are set up to feed into your subconscious.

Just because you can write it, doesn't mean anyone can or does do it. Why say the algorithm has an 80% success rate; why not say it has a 100% success rate? Do you believe 80% is more plausible?

I was simply stating a way it COULD work, as you had asked.
And i was throwing a figure out (80%) just a number from thin air, as i doubt that anything could have a 100% success rate.

If you open a 5* Basic, you have a 100% chance to gain a 5*. XD

BitterSteel

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Thatweirdguy wrote: »

There are RNG truthers out there who believe the official statements from Kabam stating that drops rates are not manipulated. That is fine if you want to believe that. Then you have the group who believe that they are manipulated. As long as Kabam fights to keep these drop rates away from consumers then the manipulation theories are valid. If you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by.

The position "my theory is valid until it is proven otherwise" takes the word "theory" and pulverizes it, then sets it on fire.

The evidence I have to the contrary is two-fold. First, when we actually possess information about how a game engineers their lootboxes, in most cases manipulation of the kind most MCOC players believe occurs turns out to be both absent and impossible to implement. The rare cases where something remotely close to it exists, it was acknowledged to exist by the game operator. In no case has such manipulation been denied and then turned out to be occurring as far as I'm aware.

Second, most manipulation theories predict statistical variations so huge they would be trivial to detect, and none of those have been detected consistent with rigorous statistical analysis. So while it is impossible to prove no manipulation goes on, it is possible to prove that the vast majority of speculation of manipulation doesn't go on.

That qualifies as "preponderance of evidence." It makes any idea of manipulation an unsupported conjecture, and not a valid theory.

Pretty much the very definition of an invalid statistical conjecture is encapsulated in your statement "if you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by." In the world of statistics, this is called "guaranteed to be wrong."

Also, the term "truther" is generally used in the opposite sense you do. RNG truthers are the ones that do not believe the official statements about the randomness of lootboxes, and believe there is a conspiracy to deny them the truth about how the lootboxes actually work that is completely different from the official story.

Long and thought out. I read and agree with most of it. But do you really think a company, who was recently acquired would not make small “unprovable” changes to Crystal odds that have been algoryhtmically proven to increase profit?

It is more that I believe they cannot. This is extremely difficult to retrofit into an existing game. It was either there from day one, or it is highly unlikely to be there now.

Let me just ask you. Do you believe it is a flat %, and has always been so, for all players equally regardless of lifetime spend? Because every time you write a support ticket the URL arhat generates the email logs your account creation date, most previous purchase date, and total lifetime spend. Why would it do this, if it made no difference?

Actually, I don't know why they would do that because that's incredibly dumb if they are. There's no reason for that information to be sent back and forth in that way, and it can get them into trouble.

Now a question for you. The presumption to improving the crystal odds for players that spend more is to encourage players to spend more. In fact, the Kabam patent that some players keep mentioning also references this specific line of thinking. If you want players to spend more, incentivize spending by offering better crystal odds when you spend money in certain ways. However else one might feel about the practice, it is at least logical. But it is only logical if you tell players you are doing it. The patent itself explicitly states that the intent of the invention is to incentivize behavior and make certain loot boxes more valuable simultaneously. Two birds with one stone. And that incentivization requires a mechanism to tell players how to get the better odds, to make the incentive something the players are aware of. So the question, which I've asked many times over the last two years, is: how does an invisible incentive that you deny you're even doing actually work?

If such an incentive exists in the game, it is sufficiently subtle so as to escape detection by any reasonable analysis. I've looked. *Big* incentives would be caught. *Small* incentives could be small enough to evade detection. But such a small incentive is also too small to definitively detect by essentially all players. That's illogical. Making a small incentive that is too small to immediately detect and also denying even doing it seems entirely nonsensical if the point is to offer players an incentive.

For an app that makes 900k PER DAY. a small change in odds could be millions of dollars. It would be too easy, especially after a disappointing quarterly report, to manipulate odds that assure investors.

You haven't stated how changing odds can directly increase revenue. Crystal odds are not a revenue knob you can just turn to get more and less revenue because there's no direct correlation between drops and spending. It is easy to make the trivial connection that if you give out less stuff, players will then spend more money to get the same stuff. But that's not how that works.

But you didn't answer my question. My question was: why put an incentive in the game and not tell anyone about it? You're saying hypothetically an incentive is worth putting in since it can significantly affect revenue. My question stands. Why put an incentive into the game and not tell the players about it, removing the ability for it to directly affect behavior? It can't be because they think telling players is unnecessary, they filed a patent that explicitly extolled the benefits of telling players about incentives to alter loot box odds.

Here is the answer. Say the algorithm has a 80% success rate in guessing which player would spend more money if they “missed” their feature pull. Have a f2p player, or nearly, f2p in their ally pop a crystal and get an amazing pull. Turn down the spenders odds and watch the money come rolling in.

Just one of MANY possible ways data and these games are set up to feed into your subconscious.

Just because you can write it, doesn't mean anyone can or does do it. Why say the algorithm has an 80% success rate; why not say it has a 100% success rate? Do you believe 80% is more plausible?

I was simply stating a way it COULD work, as you had asked.
And i was throwing a figure out (80%) just a number from thin air, as i doubt that anything could have a 100% success rate.

If you open a 5* Basic, you have a 100% chance to gain a 5*. XD

Except when it’s a 4* Psylocke

BitterSteel wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Thatweirdguy wrote: »

There are RNG truthers out there who believe the official statements from Kabam stating that drops rates are not manipulated. That is fine if you want to believe that. Then you have the group who believe that they are manipulated. As long as Kabam fights to keep these drop rates away from consumers then the manipulation theories are valid. If you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by.

The position "my theory is valid until it is proven otherwise" takes the word "theory" and pulverizes it, then sets it on fire.

The evidence I have to the contrary is two-fold. First, when we actually possess information about how a game engineers their lootboxes, in most cases manipulation of the kind most MCOC players believe occurs turns out to be both absent and impossible to implement. The rare cases where something remotely close to it exists, it was acknowledged to exist by the game operator. In no case has such manipulation been denied and then turned out to be occurring as far as I'm aware.

Second, most manipulation theories predict statistical variations so huge they would be trivial to detect, and none of those have been detected consistent with rigorous statistical analysis. So while it is impossible to prove no manipulation goes on, it is possible to prove that the vast majority of speculation of manipulation doesn't go on.

That qualifies as "preponderance of evidence." It makes any idea of manipulation an unsupported conjecture, and not a valid theory.

Pretty much the very definition of an invalid statistical conjecture is encapsulated in your statement "if you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by." In the world of statistics, this is called "guaranteed to be wrong."

Also, the term "truther" is generally used in the opposite sense you do. RNG truthers are the ones that do not believe the official statements about the randomness of lootboxes, and believe there is a conspiracy to deny them the truth about how the lootboxes actually work that is completely different from the official story.

Long and thought out. I read and agree with most of it. But do you really think a company, who was recently acquired would not make small “unprovable” changes to Crystal odds that have been algoryhtmically proven to increase profit?

It is more that I believe they cannot. This is extremely difficult to retrofit into an existing game. It was either there from day one, or it is highly unlikely to be there now.

Let me just ask you. Do you believe it is a flat %, and has always been so, for all players equally regardless of lifetime spend? Because every time you write a support ticket the URL arhat generates the email logs your account creation date, most previous purchase date, and total lifetime spend. Why would it do this, if it made no difference?

Actually, I don't know why they would do that because that's incredibly dumb if they are. There's no reason for that information to be sent back and forth in that way, and it can get them into trouble.

Now a question for you. The presumption to improving the crystal odds for players that spend more is to encourage players to spend more. In fact, the Kabam patent that some players keep mentioning also references this specific line of thinking. If you want players to spend more, incentivize spending by offering better crystal odds when you spend money in certain ways. However else one might feel about the practice, it is at least logical. But it is only logical if you tell players you are doing it. The patent itself explicitly states that the intent of the invention is to incentivize behavior and make certain loot boxes more valuable simultaneously. Two birds with one stone. And that incentivization requires a mechanism to tell players how to get the better odds, to make the incentive something the players are aware of. So the question, which I've asked many times over the last two years, is: how does an invisible incentive that you deny you're even doing actually work?

If such an incentive exists in the game, it is sufficiently subtle so as to escape detection by any reasonable analysis. I've looked. *Big* incentives would be caught. *Small* incentives could be small enough to evade detection. But such a small incentive is also too small to definitively detect by essentially all players. That's illogical. Making a small incentive that is too small to immediately detect and also denying even doing it seems entirely nonsensical if the point is to offer players an incentive.

For an app that makes 900k PER DAY. a small change in odds could be millions of dollars. It would be too easy, especially after a disappointing quarterly report, to manipulate odds that assure investors.

You haven't stated how changing odds can directly increase revenue. Crystal odds are not a revenue knob you can just turn to get more and less revenue because there's no direct correlation between drops and spending. It is easy to make the trivial connection that if you give out less stuff, players will then spend more money to get the same stuff. But that's not how that works.

But you didn't answer my question. My question was: why put an incentive in the game and not tell anyone about it? You're saying hypothetically an incentive is worth putting in since it can significantly affect revenue. My question stands. Why put an incentive into the game and not tell the players about it, removing the ability for it to directly affect behavior? It can't be because they think telling players is unnecessary, they filed a patent that explicitly extolled the benefits of telling players about incentives to alter loot box odds.

Here is the answer. Say the algorithm has a 80% success rate in guessing which player would spend more money if they “missed” their feature pull. Have a f2p player, or nearly, f2p in their ally pop a crystal and get an amazing pull. Turn down the spenders odds and watch the money come rolling in.

Just one of MANY possible ways data and these games are set up to feed into your subconscious.

Just because you can write it, doesn't mean anyone can or does do it. Why say the algorithm has an 80% success rate; why not say it has a 100% success rate? Do you believe 80% is more plausible?

I was simply stating a way it COULD work, as you had asked.
And i was throwing a figure out (80%) just a number from thin air, as i doubt that anything could have a 100% success rate.

If you open a 5* Basic, you have a 100% chance to gain a 5*. XD

Except when it’s a 4* Psylocke

She was never in the Crystal. That was only the visual. I get what you're saying though. Lol. It was just a little humor on my part.

FingerPicknGood

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

If you open a 5* Basic, you have a 100% chance to gain a 5*. XD

I swear this is probably what Kabam is trying to argue they need to provide: "if you open a 5* crystal that's 100% chance of getting a 5*!"

If the champs they designed were entirely equal, then yeah, everyone would be pretty happy that. But gawd, most champs are kind of disappointing, which makes even opening a 5* crystal feel like a gamble.

I'm guessing it's actually these kinds of details getting argued. That Kabam could leave room to say, select a random subset of available 5* champs at any period in time, and just report "it's a 100% chance for a 5*".

I suspect there will be "games within the game" played for a while before this is truly public.

FingerPicknGood wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

If you open a 5* Basic, you have a 100% chance to gain a 5*. XD

I swear this is probably what Kabam is trying to argue they need to provide: "if you open a 5* crystal that's 100% chance of getting a 5*!"

If the champs they designed were entirely equal, then yeah, everyone would be pretty happy that. But gawd, most champs are kind of disappointing, which makes even opening a 5* crystal feel like a gamble.

I'm guessing it's actually these kinds of details getting argued. That Kabam could leave room to say, select a random subset of available 5* champs at any period in time, and just report "it's a 100% chance for a 5*".

I suspect there will be "games within the game" played for a while before this is truly public.

You could also raise the point of Confirmation Bias. "The odds are manipulated because we roll the disappointment more than anything.", when in reality, the sheer number of Champs people consider disappointing make it a viable certainty. It's a perception thing. If people are only going for a small number of Champs and consider the rest garbage, that leaves little room for favorable rolls. TL:DR - When you narrow the window of what you want, you open the window of what you don't want, and disappointment makes people think it's rigged.

FingerPicknGood

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

You could also raise the point of Confirmation Bias. "The odds are manipulated because we roll the disappointment more than anything.", when in reality, the sheer number of Champs people consider disappointing make it a viable certainty. It's a perception thing. If people are only going for a small number of Champs and consider the rest garbage, that leaves little room for favorable rolls. TL:DR - When you narrow the window of what you want, you open the window of what you don't want, and disappointment makes people think it's rigged.

Yeah, I don't really think it's anything but a straight percentage, but I could totally see some PHB in a meeting just trying to keep things as flexible as possible "just you know, in case".

I'm just bracing for the first reveal of "odds" to basically be meaningless lol. And then everyone says "WTF does this mean" and it goes back and forth for a while.

FingerPicknGood wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

If you open a 5* Basic, you have a 100% chance to gain a 5*. XD

I swear this is probably what Kabam is trying to argue they need to provide: "if you open a 5* crystal that's 100% chance of getting a 5*!"

So long as the odds of each individual 5* champ are equal, that is in fact all they would need to provide for that crystal. Except I'm not sure they would actually need to provide the odds of the drops within a 5* basic crystal because those are not normally purchased with cash or units. That's a bit of a grey area.

BitterSteel

DNA3000 wrote: »

FingerPicknGood wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

If you open a 5* Basic, you have a 100% chance to gain a 5*. XD

I swear this is probably what Kabam is trying to argue they need to provide: "if you open a 5* crystal that's 100% chance of getting a 5*!"

So long as the odds of each individual 5* champ are equal, that is in fact all they would need to provide for that crystal. Except I'm not sure they would actually need to provide the odds of the drops within a 5* basic crystal because those are not normally purchased with cash or units. That's a bit of a grey area.

They’ve had 5* basic crystals for sale before. And 5* shards.

BitterSteel wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Thatweirdguy wrote: »

There are RNG truthers out there who believe the official
If you open a 5* Basic, you have a 100% chance to gain a 5*. XD

Except when it’s a 4* Psylocke

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

BitterSteel wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

MattScott wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Thatweirdguy wrote: »

There are RNG truthers out there who believe the official statements from Kabam stating that drops rates are not manipulated. That is fine if you want to believe that. Then you have the group who believe that they are manipulated. As long as Kabam fights to keep these drop rates away from consumers then the manipulation theories are valid. If you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by.

The position "my theory is valid until it is proven otherwise" takes the word "theory" and pulverizes it, then sets it on fire.

The evidence I have to the contrary is two-fold. First, when we actually possess information about how a game engineers their lootboxes, in most cases manipulation of the kind most MCOC players believe occurs turns out to be both absent and impossible to implement. The rare cases where something remotely close to it exists, it was acknowledged to exist by the game operator. In no case has such manipulation been denied and then turned out to be occurring as far as I'm aware.

Second, most manipulation theories predict statistical variations so huge they would be trivial to detect, and none of those have been detected consistent with rigorous statistical analysis. So while it is impossible to prove no manipulation goes on, it is possible to prove that the vast majority of speculation of manipulation doesn't go on.

That qualifies as "preponderance of evidence." It makes any idea of manipulation an unsupported conjecture, and not a valid theory.

Pretty much the very definition of an invalid statistical conjecture is encapsulated in your statement "if you do not have info to the contrary, then your own anecdotal experience is what you will go by." In the world of statistics, this is called "guaranteed to be wrong."

Also, the term "truther" is generally used in the opposite sense you do. RNG truthers are the ones that do not believe the official statements about the randomness of lootboxes, and believe there is a conspiracy to deny them the truth about how the lootboxes actually work that is completely different from the official story.

Long and thought out. I read and agree with most of it. But do you really think a company, who was recently acquired would not make small “unprovable” changes to Crystal odds that have been algoryhtmically proven to increase profit?

It is more that I believe they cannot. This is extremely difficult to retrofit into an existing game. It was either there from day one, or it is highly unlikely to be there now.

Let me just ask you. Do you believe it is a flat %, and has always been so, for all players equally regardless of lifetime spend? Because every time you write a support ticket the URL arhat generates the email logs your account creation date, most previous purchase date, and total lifetime spend. Why would it do this, if it made no difference?

Actually, I don't know why they would do that because that's incredibly dumb if they are. There's no reason for that information to be sent back and forth in that way, and it can get them into trouble.

Now a question for you. The presumption to improving the crystal odds for players that spend more is to encourage players to spend more. In fact, the Kabam patent that some players keep mentioning also references this specific line of thinking. If you want players to spend more, incentivize spending by offering better crystal odds when you spend money in certain ways. However else one might feel about the practice, it is at least logical. But it is only logical if you tell players you are doing it. The patent itself explicitly states that the intent of the invention is to incentivize behavior and make certain loot boxes more valuable simultaneously. Two birds with one stone. And that incentivization requires a mechanism to tell players how to get the better odds, to make the incentive something the players are aware of. So the question, which I've asked many times over the last two years, is: how does an invisible incentive that you deny you're even doing actually work?

If such an incentive exists in the game, it is sufficiently subtle so as to escape detection by any reasonable analysis. I've looked. *Big* incentives would be caught. *Small* incentives could be small enough to evade detection. But such a small incentive is also too small to definitively detect by essentially all players. That's illogical. Making a small incentive that is too small to immediately detect and also denying even doing it seems entirely nonsensical if the point is to offer players an incentive.

For an app that makes 900k PER DAY. a small change in odds could be millions of dollars. It would be too easy, especially after a disappointing quarterly report, to manipulate odds that assure investors.

You haven't stated how changing odds can directly increase revenue. Crystal odds are not a revenue knob you can just turn to get more and less revenue because there's no direct correlation between drops and spending. It is easy to make the trivial connection that if you give out less stuff, players will then spend more money to get the same stuff. But that's not how that works.

But you didn't answer my question. My question was: why put an incentive in the game and not tell anyone about it? You're saying hypothetically an incentive is worth putting in since it can significantly affect revenue. My question stands. Why put an incentive into the game and not tell the players about it, removing the ability for it to directly affect behavior? It can't be because they think telling players is unnecessary, they filed a patent that explicitly extolled the benefits of telling players about incentives to alter loot box odds.

Here is the answer. Say the algorithm has a 80% success rate in guessing which player would spend more money if they “missed” their feature pull. Have a f2p player, or nearly, f2p in their ally pop a crystal and get an amazing pull. Turn down the spenders odds and watch the money come rolling in.

Just one of MANY possible ways data and these games are set up to feed into your subconscious.

Just because you can write it, doesn't mean anyone can or does do it. Why say the algorithm has an 80% success rate; why not say it has a 100% success rate? Do you believe 80% is more plausible?

I was simply stating a way it COULD work, as you had asked.
And i was throwing a figure out (80%) just a number from thin air, as i doubt that anything could have a 100% success rate.

If you open a 5* Basic, you have a 100% chance to gain a 5*. XD

Except when it’s a 4* Psylocke

She was never in the Crystal. That was only the visual. I get what you're saying though. Lol. It was just a little humor on my part.

I love it. Lol. They said it was only visual, but then said for anyone to write in if they actually got her. Seems like they were opening up the chance that it was in fact possible.

BitterSteel wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

FingerPicknGood wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

If you open a 5* Basic, you have a 100% chance to gain a 5*. XD

I swear this is probably what Kabam is trying to argue they need to provide: "if you open a 5* crystal that's 100% chance of getting a 5*!"

So long as the odds of each individual 5* champ are equal, that is in fact all they would need to provide for that crystal. Except I'm not sure they would actually need to provide the odds of the drops within a 5* basic crystal because those are not normally purchased with cash or units. That's a bit of a grey area.

They’ve had 5* basic crystals for sale before. And 5* shards.

They have had them before, but these requirements are not retroactive and the requirement itself only says that the odds need to be disclosed to the player "before purchasing." They would only need to disclose the drop rate for the crystal if and when it was offered for sale like that again.

Fragment sales are, I believe, a legitimately odd grey area. Kabam could argue that the vast majority of fragments are earned in game and not sold and they can only be used to purchase one set of items, 5* crystals, and that could be a legitimate exception to the disclosure requirement if Apple accepted that idea. I don't think that line of thought extends to units because units are obviously an in-game currency used to purchase a multitude of in-game items: that's what makes it a legitimate in-game currency. But 5* shards are not an in-game currency as people normally think about them.

I'm not saying that they are definitely in or out, just that I can see a legitimate argument surrounding them that Apple would listen to.

MattScott wrote: »

I love it. Lol. They said it was only visual, but then said for anyone to write in if they actually got her. Seems like they were opening up the chance that it was in fact possible.

The display is in fact only visual. There's definitive proof that the contents of the spinner are independent of what the crystal contents actually are. In asking if anyone got her, they were trying to determine if the error was *only* in the spinner or if the error was also made in the reward table separately.

Speeds80

Here’s my truther post, I actually don’t mind if some champs are rarer, I think that’s smart business and as a card collector since childhood it made sense to have rarer collections/champs, however kabam mike has said the odds of all champs in the crystal is the same, how is it that after playing since nearly the beginning, I finally pulled Kamala Khan last week to complete my collection of bad/meh/ ok champs, I even have both iron fists and punisher I’m still missing a lot of god tier/great champs, ww2, iceman, dormammu, mephisto, Morningstar, gwenpool, blade, ghost rider, green goblin, medusa. I maybe wrong but I can’t think of any of the mediocre champs that I don’t have... I’m close to 500k I know several of these are later champs and I don’t have time to win champs from arenas, most people won’t have this discrepancy as they have won the god tiers from arena.

To summarise: I don’t mind hustle, I do mind deception, I think this is why the odds haven’t been released, they aren’t that simple