Character Crystals: Is There A Hidden Drop Rate Within The Standard Drop Rate?
profezzor_x
Member Posts: 3
Seems like whenever a 4, 5, or 6 star specific featured crystal is made available, there almost always seems to be a high number of reports through YouTube, Reddit, the forums, on the general alliance screen in MCOC, or elsewhere, that people are getting the bottom dweller champions more often than some of the top champs that are advertised. This isn't to say that it happens to everyone, but it made me question if there's a hidden drop rate whereby you have a greater percentage rate of getting that bottom tier champ than one of the top champs. For instance, all things being equal within a crystal where there are 20 champs, theoretically, you're suppose to get 20 equal chances for any one of those champs... But when a wide number of people end up with the same bottom dweller champs, it's either highly coincidental, or something's fishy...
Yes, the drop rate will always say 100% if it's specific to a star rating, but I feel that within that drop rate, there's one that isn't being listed. One recent example of this scenario is MCOC summoner and YouTube personality COW (Crystal Opening Whale), when he opened those 5 star Recap crystals. He spins three different Recap crystals on three different accounts of his, and all three accounts get Sentry... Even I opened that same 5 star crystal and got Sentry. What are the odds of that?
YouTube Link:
https://youtu.be/kCOEp2QjLtM
What are your thoughts?
Yes, the drop rate will always say 100% if it's specific to a star rating, but I feel that within that drop rate, there's one that isn't being listed. One recent example of this scenario is MCOC summoner and YouTube personality COW (Crystal Opening Whale), when he opened those 5 star Recap crystals. He spins three different Recap crystals on three different accounts of his, and all three accounts get Sentry... Even I opened that same 5 star crystal and got Sentry. What are the odds of that?
YouTube Link:
https://youtu.be/kCOEp2QjLtMWhat are your thoughts?
2
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Unless otherwise stated in the crystal description, the chance of getting any particular Champion in a crystal is the same.
That might be why things seem bad
I myself am more likely to complain than compliment, I feel it’s natural
Given how many crystals COW opens? It is essentially inevitable that something like that would happen to him eventually.
The rest is confirmation bias. I tend to watch a lot of crystal openings, looking for anomalies. There always are anomalies, but no more than I would expect. The key is that these anomalies never seen to affect the same people consistently, never seem to happen to the same crystals consistently, and never seem to be repeatable on camera prior to selection bias at a higher than expected rate.
There was actually a thread on the forums asking people to post what they opened. There was no significant trend towards Sentry or any other champion. Heck, several people pointed to a trend that supposedly existed in the actual poll for the cinematic crystals and the data in the thread didn't even show that skew. People literally see what they want to see, even in the actual data they claim to read.
Or: great pull, worst pull in this game, great pull
Like DNA said, polls even underline the normalcy in drops, as in no conspicious things happening.
Emotion will make people remember the less than awesome pulls more than the great ones. That's just human nature. We have been conditioned to maintain more vivid memories of bad things, as those used to imply danger. We, as a species, will not change in that regard I think. Not in our life time anyway.
And I'm not saying people have spells of bad luck, of course that plays into it. But going by just what you view on YouTube will only leave a nasty aftertaste, as it will only make you think you have all the rotten pulls and everyone else gets great stuff.
It's like the alliance tab. Noone notices what is opened, until it is something great. The rest you just blot out. So everyone pulls great champs.
The odds are fair, as in equal all around. Whether you like the chances of those drops, is an entirely different subject.
I also got a Sentry in the 5 * and saw several people who also picked up at the same time.
Crystal opening whale is the last person you should ever use as an example. Hes opened more crystals than everyone on these forums combined (exaggerating....maybe). There is no hidden agenda at all. Its luck and bad luck.
People still fall for the luck meme? ;-)
Why not just go all the way and believe that every drop is specifically chosen by a committee for each and every crystal for each and every player? That's actually more likely to be true, insofar as it is at least theoretically possible and fits the observed facts. You got three Ant-Man drops in a row because Kabam specifically wanted you, and only you, to get three in a row. I never got three in a row, because they didn't want me to get three in a row. They wanted me to specifically get a Colossus, Ronan, and Sentry in that specific order.
I tell *people* that all evidence is the system is random. I don't try to convince people who are absolutely certain the system isn't random that it actually is random, because in my experience no evidence convinces such people. It is only worth helping those that can actually be helped.
Is it possible there are anomalies in the drop system? Sure, that's possible. But just because a glitch is possible, doesn't mean every glitch is possible. Skews like you're describing are not possible. They would produce overwhelmingly obvious evidence everywhere not just in a few corner cases. Anomalies in a few corner cases is part of the definition of randomness. They have to happen in a system genuinely random.
When I asked support, they told me below.
That's the boilerplate answer support always gives. The people sending it out don't even know what those words actually mean. To be frank, customer support doesn't even consistently know how many hours are in one day on Earth (I've seen them literally get this wrong: I'm not making this up).
Trying to calculate the odds of this happening before the crystals are opened.
You win more than me. Missing a few 4☆ shards, opened PHCs hoping for 3☆. After a few tries, obtained 3☆, Jane - great. Open the 4☆ hero crystal, guess what ... I won that champ in basic twice recently.
I think that what support said and what @Kabam Lyra said were slightly different.
Considering game balance, there should be some hidden rate about characters. But Lyra said so, I’m really confused about Kabam...
This is 100% fake.
There's no game balance reason I can think of for requiring "hidden rate" odds in the crystals. The game balance factors that the support message refers to refers to the rarity tiers. Those are designed around reward proliferation factors intrinsic to the overall reward system.
It seems similar to other things they've said in the past, so I have no reason to believe it is fake.
There is actually a game knowledgebase article about crystal openings and crystal odds, and it was (eventually) updated when crystal drop odds were added to the game. For reference, it is here: http://kabam.force.com/PKB/articles/en_US/FAQ/Crystals-Spin-system
There are other articles that discuss drop rates or drop odds. One of them contains a passage similar to the one quoted above: http://kabam.force.com/PKB/articles/en_US/FAQ/I-don-t-have-any-luck-Why-is-the-drop-rate-so-low-for-me
I've seen variations of that statement over the years in lots of other places.
The one major thing I should point out in using Crystal Opening Whale as an example is that we can all agree that he opens hundreds of crystals at one time... But in this instance when he only a half dozen Recap crystals, and half of them are Sentry, it kind of makes you wonder.
When I open crystals, I recognize the good and the bad. It's when there's an increase of people that get the exact same character (good or bad) that I take notice. This thing with people mostly getting Sentry is just one of them...
This is a very common fallacy. In statistics, this is a form of postdiction. You cannot say after the fact that a single rare occurrence has a low probability out of context. When he opens thousands of crystals, some string of openings will appear to be rare events. After the fact saying that a particular sequence should be considered separately from all other events because they have "special properties" has no statistical value. It would not be considered proof of anything in any legitimate analysis.
This thing with people mostly getting Sentry I didn't notice in any of the threads with actual data. In the thread on these forums (not scientific and not being offered as scientific, only as evidence of what was reported) by my count there were only a couple of Sentry pulls in the thread. The most common pull reported was a four-way tie between Corvus, Kilmonger, Void, and IMIW. There were people moaning about Sentry pulls on the Reddit, but once again, in actual threads with self-reporting Sentry did not come out anywhere near dominating the pulls.
My battlegroup pulled three 5* IMIW from the gwenpool crystals. That's three out of ten. I don't believe Kabam skewed the crystal towards IMIW. I believe that's what happens when you watch random numbers long enough. Human beings are simply absolutely worthless at observing this kind of thing. I'm a trained observer with literal decades of experience, and I'm not immune to statistical bias, which is why whenever I *think* I'm seeing something, I make a spreadsheet. When I do, those statistical oddities disappear very quickly once subjected to real data collection.
Most recently, a poster made the claim that the informal polls on the forums for the 5* gwenpool goes to the movies crystal "clearly showed" that most of the pulls were Iron Patriot. At the moment he made that claim, my spreadsheet showed that IP had 17 pulls. Out of 185. That did tie him for first place with Ultron. His final pull count was 54 in the poll out of 670 recorded votes. That put him in third place behind Stark Enhanced Spiderman and Iron Man Infinity War (both with 55). How does someone see 17 out of 185 as being "most?" Because they are human, and humans are bad at this. All humans, everywhere.
Maybe I'm reading it wrong. The 2nd paragraph to reads as if the rates aren't equal and can vary and the passage is confirming it even though they've said other wise.
It proves nothing. I've been playing since 2-3 weeks after launch and Hiemdall is the first time I bought 1 FGMC and got a featured from just 1 Crystal. Not only that, you don't know many they opened before that one etc... It's just chance. There aren't better drops for newer or who buys more.