RNG, But Also Not?? Feels Sketchy.

What's the deal with the "guaranteed" pulls in the featured crystal tab (that we all love so much 🙄).. It's supposed to be, from my understanding, legally, RNG, yet they can guarantee you pull a certain pull within so many crystals? Feels sketchy, like if they can manipulate your pulls that way, who's to say they can't also prevent you from pulling something? Not saying they are of course, but something about it just rubs me the wrong way..

Comments

Jake303AoS

Too bad the disagree'rs didn't chime in as to why they disagree, would have liked to hear people's opinions on this..

LordSmasher

There is a chance to get the guanteed pull. If that fails you get the standard pull.
Just two sets of RNG.

You're overthinking it.

Zeraphan

There is nothing sketchy about this at all, unless you consider it sketchy to introduce a mechanic that in some ways encourages more gambling.

Jake303AoS

There is a chance to get the guanteed pull. If that fails you get the standard pull.
Just two sets of RNG.

You're overthinking it.

It guarantees you a specific pull within a certain amount of crystals. And it tiers up, guaranteed 6* within x amount of crystals, guaranteed 7* within x amount.., and then a guaranteed pull of the featured champ within 120 crystals (if I remember correctly).That's not RNG, that's literally controlling what you pull within a certain amount of crystals.

spiderknight616

There is a chance to get the guanteed pull. If that fails you get the standard pull.
Just two sets of RNG.

You're overthinking it.
It guarantees you a specific pull within a certain amount of crystals. And it tiers up, guaranteed 6* within x amount of crystals, guaranteed 7* within x amount.., and then a guaranteed pull of the featured champ within 120 crystals (if I remember correctly).That's not RNG, that's literally controlling what you pull within a certain amount of crystals.

Not particularly. You have a chance to pull the featured Champ, you could get them out of the 1st or 10th or 50th crystal you pop. The pity system guarantees that if you open x number of crystals for whatever reason, regardless of your previous pulls you will get a guaranteed copy of the featured Champ

Jake303AoS

There is nothing sketchy about this at all, unless you consider it sketchy to introduce a mechanic that in some ways encourages more gambling.

That's what's sketchy about it, it is not really gambling/RNG anymore when they guarantee you the pull within x amount of crystals. So what's stopping them from preventing you from pulling the champ so that you buy more crystals? And the closer you get to the limit the more enticed you'll be to reach it for the guarantee.

Again, I'm not saying they're doing anything sketchy, I'm just saying it feels sketchy. They're advertising a guaranteed pull within a specific amount of attempts, which means they'd have to manipulate the "RNG" to deliver that. It would feel less sketchy if they just said "hey, we'll send you this champ if you don't pull it within x amount of crystals", but saying you'll pull it from the crystal with x amount of tries, sounds to me like they can control what you can (or can't) pull from crystals. Aka, sketchy.

Jake303AoS

There is a chance to get the guanteed pull. If that fails you get the standard pull.
Just two sets of RNG.

You're overthinking it.
It guarantees you a specific pull within a certain amount of crystals. And it tiers up, guaranteed 6* within x amount of crystals, guaranteed 7* within x amount.., and then a guaranteed pull of the featured champ within 120 crystals (if I remember correctly).That's not RNG, that's literally controlling what you pull within a certain amount of crystals.
Not particularly. You have a chance to pull the featured Champ, you could get them out of the 1st or 10th or 50th crystal you pop. The pity system guarantees that if you open x number of crystals for whatever reason, regardless of your previous pulls you will get a guaranteed copy of the featured Champ

Exactly, that's what's sketchy about it. It means they can control what you can (or can't) pull from crystals. That's not how RNG is supposed to work.

Zeraphan

Ok, let's break it down:
Before this, you had X% chance to get a certain champ (6*, 7*, featured, whatever).
Say you open a crystal and get a 5*, boo sad face.
Open a new crystal, same odds, as before, nothing changes.

Now here is what happens with the new system, you have those exact same base chances for each crystal, just like before.
Say you get a 5* champ, boo sad face. The following happens:
6* counter goes up by 1.
7* counter goes up by 1.
Featured 7* goes up by 1.
Open a new crystal, the following happens:
Does featured counter = 120? If yes, you get the featured champion.
If not, does the 7* counter = 25? If yes, you get a 7* champion.
If not, does the 6* counter = 3? If yes, you get a 6* champion.
If not, then you get a random champion based on the exact same odds as the very first crystal and the process repeats.
If you get a champion that fits one of those three categories, either by chance or through bad luck, that counter goes back to 0.

They are not in fact changing the odds of the crystals at all, these counters are not part of the crystal themselves and the reward isn't from the crystal, it is from the counter selection.

So again I say, the only "sketchy" thing about this (and I don't think it is sketchy personally) is that this kind of bad luck protection (present in so many games) encourages more gambling because there is a known point that you will get the desired reward. If you buy 120 crystals you are guaranteed to get the featured champion if you didn't manage to get it before that point just from the normal RNG. Before this feature, without that guaranteed point, many people would probably stop log before the 120 point because the bad luck felt bad.

Jake303AoS

Ok, let's break it down:
Before this, you had X% chance to get a certain champ (6*, 7*, featured, whatever).
Say you open a crystal and get a 5*, boo sad face.
Open a new crystal, same odds, as before, nothing changes.

Now here is what happens with the new system, you have those exact same base chances for each crystal, just like before.
Say you get a 5* champ, boo sad face. The following happens:
6* counter goes up by 1.
7* counter goes up by 1.
Featured 7* goes up by 1.
Open a new crystal, the following happens:
Does featured counter = 120? If yes, you get the featured champion.
If not, does the 7* counter = 25? If yes, you get a 7* champion.
If not, does the 6* counter = 3? If yes, you get a 6* champion.
If not, then you get a random champion based on the exact same odds as the very first crystal and the process repeats.
If you get a champion that fits one of those three categories, either by chance or through bad luck, that counter goes back to 0.

They are not in fact changing the odds of the crystals at all, these counters are not part of the crystal themselves and the reward isn't from the crystal, it is from the counter selection.

So again I say, the only "sketchy" thing about this (and I don't think it is sketchy personally) is that this kind of bad luck protection (present in so many games) encourages more gambling because there is a known point that you will get the desired reward. If you buy 120 crystals you are guaranteed to get the featured champion if you didn't manage to get it before that point just from the normal RNG. Before this feature, without that guaranteed point, many people would probably stop log before the 120 point because the bad luck felt bad.

Yea, I fully understand all that, and the reason why they've implemented this fail safe ($$). What I don't understand is the part where the guaranteed champ isn't from the crystal. So do the guaranteed champs come in the mail or something? Cause it sure seems like it comes from the crystal. If it doesn't, then I've misunderstood the advertising and retract my statement. But if it does in fact come from the crystal, then I would like to know how they achieve that.

GroundedWisdom

This was at the request of Players for years. There's nothing sketchy about it. People asked for a system that would guarantee an outcome after so many tries. They gave it. That's about it.

Zeraphan

Let me say just in case there was any confusion from anyone who reads this, I do not work for Kabam so I can not say with 100% certainty what is happening in the code. I have however taught advanced programming and video game design for over 20 years so I have good idea of how the code would probably work.

Visually it looks like it comes from a crystal sure (although remember that the wheel is just a visual and not actually the RNG happening).
It would make way more sense from a code stand point to simply do the check as I described and when one of the 3 counters is met show you a wheel with the reward or it just pops up like any other crystal if you pop instead of spin.
It would take more work to go into the actual code of an individual crystal and manipulate it.

Imagine there are 4 buckets.
a) only has 7* featured champ
b) only has random 7* champs (non featured)
c) only has 6* random champs
d) the crystal itself with the full range of random RNG

Your champ is chosen from the appropriate bucket based on the counters.

Just trying to explain in a different way there.

Jake303AoS

This was at the request of Players for years. There's nothing sketchy about it. People asked for a system that would guarantee an outcome after so many tries. They gave it. That's about it.

I'm not talking about the feature itself, I'm talking about how they achieve it.

Jake303AoS

Let me say just in case there was any confusion from anyone who reads this, I do not work for Kabam so I can not say with 100% certainty what is happening in the code. I have however taught advanced programming and video game design for over 20 years so I have good idea of how the code would probably work.

Visually it looks like it comes from a crystal sure (although remember that the wheel is just a visual and not actually the RNG happening).
It would make way more sense from a code stand point to simply do the check as I described and when one of the 3 counters is met show you a wheel with the reward or it just pops up like any other crystal if you pop instead of spin.
It would take more work to go into the actual code of an individual crystal and manipulate it.

Imagine there are 4 buckets.
a) only has 7* featured champ
b) only has random 7* champs (non featured)
c) only has 6* random champs
d) the crystal itself with the full range of random RNG

Your champ is chosen from the appropriate bucket based on the counters.

Just trying to explain in a different way there.

That's what concerns me, if even just visually, controlling what appears to come from a crystal doesn't sit right with me. Just send it in mail or something..

GroundedWisdom

This was at the request of Players for years. There's nothing sketchy about it. People asked for a system that would guarantee an outcome after so many tries. They gave it. That's about it.
I'm not talking about the feature itself, I'm talking about how they achieve it.

Besides the fact that it would be a breech of contract with their partners, they're not preventing people from getting pulls unbeknownst to us. They don't care if Joe Schmo gets the Top Tier Champ. The only rates are the ones indicated.
If you're going on the idea that they CAN, they always could. You either trust them or you don't, and if you don't, no conversation here will change your mind.

smdam38

Let me say just in case there was any confusion from anyone who reads this, I do not work for Kabam so I can not say with 100% certainty what is happening in the code. I have however taught advanced programming and video game design for over 20 years so I have good idea of how the code would probably work.

Visually it looks like it comes from a crystal sure (although remember that the wheel is just a visual and not actually the RNG happening).
It would make way more sense from a code stand point to simply do the check as I described and when one of the 3 counters is met show you a wheel with the reward or it just pops up like any other crystal if you pop instead of spin.
It would take more work to go into the actual code of an individual crystal and manipulate it.

Imagine there are 4 buckets.
a) only has 7* featured champ
b) only has random 7* champs (non featured)
c) only has 6* random champs
d) the crystal itself with the full range of random RNG

Your champ is chosen from the appropriate bucket based on the counters.

Just trying to explain in a different way there.

Managed to take up a screen of text without really saying anything?

Your bucket analogy is dumb.

Raiden01

Feels sketchy, like if they can manipulate your pulls that way, who's to say they can't also prevent you from pulling something?

"They" are literally the devs of the game sitting with the complete game code, ofcourse they can manipulate anything. Any game dev can.

You just have to believe that they are not doing this. They are not gonna expose their code to have you feel safe.

Jake303AoS

Feels sketchy, like if they can manipulate your pulls that way, who's to say they can't also prevent you from pulling something?
"They" are literally the devs of the game sitting with the complete game code, ofcourse they can manipulate anything. Any game dev can.

You just have to believe that they are not doing this. They are not gonna expose their code to have you feel safe.

Odd choice to not just deliver the champs by mail or pop up, rather than show they can manipulate the crystals. RNG is supposed to be random regardless of the code, which I'm sure it is in this case as well. But what they can do is manipulate the odds to be 100% (or 0%) for something, and of course we all put our trust in their advertised odds.. I'll say again, I'm not accusing them of anything here, but it still rubs me the wrong way that this is how they chose to deliver these guaranteed champs.

ahmynuts

This just in. The company that makes the game can control what's in the game 🤯

Jake303AoS

This just in. The company that makes the game can control what's in the game 🤯

This just in, edgy forum guy makes another irrelevant comment 🤯

DNA3000

Feels sketchy, like if they can manipulate your pulls that way, who's to say they can't also prevent you from pulling something?
"They" are literally the devs of the game sitting with the complete game code, ofcourse they can manipulate anything. Any game dev can.

You just have to believe that they are not doing this. They are not gonna expose their code to have you feel safe.
Odd choice to not just deliver the champs by mail or pop up, rather than show they can manipulate the crystals. RNG is supposed to be random regardless of the code, which I'm sure it is in this case as well. But what they can do is manipulate the odds to be 100% (or 0%) for something, and of course we all put our trust in their advertised odds.. I'll say again, I'm not accusing them of anything here, but it still rubs me the wrong way that this is how they chose to deliver these guaranteed champs.

To be honest, this is the weirdest idea I’ve seen in a very long time, not just on these forums but just plain anywhere. What you call an odd choice is what pretty much every system designer and game developer would call “normal” if they called it anything at all, because what you’re describing as sketchy and weird is not even noteworthy.

Kabam does not “manipulate the odds” to cause the crystal to generate a particular result. Kabam keeps counters to track how long it has been since the player has had a particular drop, and if that counter reaches a threshold they simply redirect the drop from the original weighted random reward table to a modified one that excludes the lower tier rewards, so that the player is guaranteed to get rewards of a certain type. This is literally no different than when you open a PHC and there’s a low chance for. 4* champ. That happens with random weighted tables, such that if the RNG determines you’re supposed to get a 4*, the game directs the random result to a reward table that only contains 4* champs. This guarantees you actually get a 4* champ as intended. The mechanic for guaranteeing higher tier rewards when the player doesn’t get one for a certain number of drops is a trivial modification of the way all the random crystals already work. They just require tracking more data.

I can guarantee you no one at Kabam “chose” to drop the reward normally instead of, say, sending the modified reward using in-game email because that thought never crossed the mind of any of the designers. And if you gave me a million years to consider all possible objections to the pity crystals, I probably still would not have come up with this one.

SirGamesBond

It's all rigged

Rayven5220

These threads have "all online poker is rigged" vibes.

Jake303AoS

Feels sketchy, like if they can manipulate your pulls that way, who's to say they can't also prevent you from pulling something?
"They" are literally the devs of the game sitting with the complete game code, ofcourse they can manipulate anything. Any game dev can.

You just have to believe that they are not doing this. They are not gonna expose their code to have you feel safe.
Odd choice to not just deliver the champs by mail or pop up, rather than show they can manipulate the crystals. RNG is supposed to be random regardless of the code, which I'm sure it is in this case as well. But what they can do is manipulate the odds to be 100% (or 0%) for something, and of course we all put our trust in their advertised odds.. I'll say again, I'm not accusing them of anything here, but it still rubs me the wrong way that this is how they chose to deliver these guaranteed champs.
To be honest, this is the weirdest idea I’ve seen in a very long time, not just on these forums but just plain anywhere. What you call an odd choice is what pretty much every system designer and game developer would call “normal” if they called it anything at all, because what you’re describing as sketchy and weird is not even noteworthy.

Kabam does not “manipulate the odds” to cause the crystal to generate a particular result. Kabam keeps counters to track how long it has been since the player has had a particular drop, and if that counter reaches a threshold they simply redirect the drop from the original weighted random reward table to a modified one that excludes the lower tier rewards, so that the player is guaranteed to get rewards of a certain type. This is literally no different than when you open a PHC and there’s a low chance for. 4* champ. That happens with random weighted tables, such that if the RNG determines you’re supposed to get a 4*, the game directs the random result to a reward table that only contains 4* champs. This guarantees you actually get a 4* champ as intended. The mechanic for guaranteeing higher tier rewards when the player doesn’t get one for a certain number of drops is a trivial modification of the way all the random crystals already work. They just require tracking more data.

I can guarantee you no one at Kabam “chose” to drop the reward normally instead of, say, sending the modified reward using in-game email because that thought never crossed the mind of any of the designers. And if you gave me a million years to consider all possible objections to the pity crystals, I probably still would not have come up with this one.

Odd take. Especially when you said they don't manipulate the odds, then literally described how they manipulate the odds by switching to a "modified table that excludes lower rewards" aka 100% odds at a specific reward, aka, manipulating the odds.. I didn't say they were doing it nefariously or that it wasn't even perhaps common practice in some games, just that it sits sketchy in my mind. But thanks for your input anyway.

CheeseMaster482

They don't manipulate the odds but they definitely do mislead/bait you. I opened 10 valiant crystals and in every single one the crystal landed in between two seven star nexus. It's the same for the daily crystals, when I spin it I always see a full row of seven star champs but as soon as it stops, it's lands on some random fodder.

The reel is just for show so they are doing it on purpose hoping some dude falls for the bait and keeps buying more crystals.

Demonzfyre

They don't manipulate the odds but they definitely do mislead/bait you. I opened 10 valiant crystals and in every single one the crystal landed in between two seven star nexus. It's the same for the daily crystals, when I spin it I always see a full row of seven star champs but as soon as it stops, it's lands on some random fodder.

The reel is just for show so they are doing it on purpose hoping some dude falls for the bait and keeps buying more crystals.

Or you can just pop the crystals open instead of rolling them out.

MrNoname

I wonder how can i track how many crystals I already opened before reaching the guarantee one. Cant find this info. Other games seem to have this features. But now i dont know how many I already opened (across several features)

willrun4adonut

I wonder how can i track how many crystals I already opened before reaching the guarantee one. Cant find this info. Other games seem to have this features. But now i dont know how many I already opened (across several features)

It's only for certain features champs and the chances don't roll over from one features champ to another. They have their own crystal tab, and I believe it tell you on there (though I could be very wrong, because even with the guarantee pull after xxx times, it's still a terrible offer).

Average_Desi

They always could do whatever. They didn't because it was illegal

Roth

What's the deal with the "guaranteed" pulls in the featured crystal tab (that we all love so much 🙄).. It's supposed to be, from my understanding, legally, RNG, yet they can guarantee you pull a certain pull within so many crystals? Feels sketchy, like if they can manipulate your pulls that way, who's to say they can't also prevent you from pulling something? Not saying they are of course, but something about it just rubs me the wrong way..

saying it’s “sketchy” kind of misses the point — if anything, this is one of the more player-friendly mechanics they’ve added in a while. you're not being manipulated more — you're actually getting a guaranteed result, which is exactly what people have been asking for.

Jake303AoS

What's the deal with the "guaranteed" pulls in the featured crystal tab (that we all love so much 🙄).. It's supposed to be, from my understanding, legally, RNG, yet they can guarantee you pull a certain pull within so many crystals? Feels sketchy, like if they can manipulate your pulls that way, who's to say they can't also prevent you from pulling something? Not saying they are of course, but something about it just rubs me the wrong way..
saying it’s “sketchy” kind of misses the point — if anything, this is one of the more player-friendly mechanics they’ve added in a while. you're not being manipulated more — you're actually getting a guaranteed result, which is exactly what people have been asking for.

Not trying to sound sarcastic here, but ironically you missed my point. This isn't about the mechanic at all. It's great, if you spend 36,000 units with no luck, you should get the champ lol.. It's about the delivery. If you read back through my previous replies you'll get a better idea of what I'm talking about.