It's not a mass conspiracy. It's a window into the possibilities. It's a randomly-generated representation of what you can get, and it's meant to have some top outcomes because the actual Drop Rates can't reflect in that spin. There's not enough time.
Lol, where did you hear anyone talking about mass conspiracy?
When it's implied that it's made to entice people to spend more and keep trying, I'm going to challenge that theory if I disagree.
The Near Miss Effect isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s a well documented feature in mobile gaming.
The funniest example in this game is when you notice how often the reel shows you 6* Punisher considering he’s in 1/5000 crystals.
That's a subjective theory. It's based on the perception of the user, and hasn't been proven at all in this case. I'm quite sure I described the process of randomly generating a variety of outcomes in the pool, and that it's impossible to be a true reflection of the Drop Rates in that spin within that amount of time. Considering some Rates are 0.1% or lower. You'd never see them come up. It's the same as accusing the game of trying to get you because you got excited about what you "almost" got, but as we've pointed out here and Kabam has explained many times, you never "almost" got anything.
A near missis a special kind of failure to reach a goal, one that comes close to being successful. A shot at a target is said to hit the mark, or to be a near miss, or to go wide. In a game of skill, like shooting, a near miss gives useful feedback and encourages the player by indicating that success may be within reach. By contrast, in games of pure chance, such as lotteries and slot machine games, it gives no information that could be used by a player to in- crease the likelihood of future success. Of course that does not imply that the player's behaviour will be unaffected. Gamblers frequently act as if they think they can influence chance outcomes. Whispering to dice, throwing gently for a low number, choosing a lottery number carefully by using family dates of birth or consulting books of lucky numbers, are common examples of inef- fective actions of this kind. In such cases, the occurrence of a near miss may be taken as an encouraging sign, confirming the player's strategy and raising hopes for future success. There’s nothing subjective about this.
You literally just supported my assertion that the theory is subjective. You have yet to prove this is their intention.
I like the emotional rollercoaster of spinning them, even though the reel is a lie. The whole “stop stop stop…. No keep going! Stop! Yes yes yes No! No! No! Dammit!” Even though it hurts so bad,I love the rush.
It's not a mass conspiracy. It's a window into the possibilities. It's a randomly-generated representation of what you can get, and it's meant to have some top outcomes because the actual Drop Rates can't reflect in that spin. There's not enough time.
Lol, where did you hear anyone talking about mass conspiracy?
When it's implied that it's made to entice people to spend more and keep trying, I'm going to challenge that theory if I disagree.
The Near Miss Effect isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s a well documented feature in mobile gaming.
The funniest example in this game is when you notice how often the reel shows you 6* Punisher considering he’s in 1/5000 crystals.
That's a subjective theory. It's based on the perception of the user, and hasn't been proven at all in this case. I'm quite sure I described the process of randomly generating a variety of outcomes in the pool, and that it's impossible to be a true reflection of the Drop Rates in that spin within that amount of time. Considering some Rates are 0.1% or lower. You'd never see them come up. It's the same as accusing the game of trying to get you because you got excited about what you "almost" got, but as we've pointed out here and Kabam has explained many times, you never "almost" got anything.
A near missis a special kind of failure to reach a goal, one that comes close to being successful. A shot at a target is said to hit the mark, or to be a near miss, or to go wide. In a game of skill, like shooting, a near miss gives useful feedback and encourages the player by indicating that success may be within reach. By contrast, in games of pure chance, such as lotteries and slot machine games, it gives no information that could be used by a player to in- crease the likelihood of future success. Of course that does not imply that the player's behaviour will be unaffected. Gamblers frequently act as if they think they can influence chance outcomes. Whispering to dice, throwing gently for a low number, choosing a lottery number carefully by using family dates of birth or consulting books of lucky numbers, are common examples of inef- fective actions of this kind. In such cases, the occurrence of a near miss may be taken as an encouraging sign, confirming the player's strategy and raising hopes for future success. There’s nothing subjective about this.
You literally just supported my assertion that the theory is subjective. You have yet to prove this is their intention.
The whole reason for a wheel is to create this response. This isn't a slam on Kabam for using that kind of psychology, I would have done the same thing. If this "near miss" kind of psychology was not wanted spinning crystals wouldn't be an option and they would simply just pop open with a champ (or whatever type of crystal it is).
You literally just supported my assertion that the theory is subjective. You have yet to prove this is their intention.
What are you calling a theory actually? The theory that’s presented in the paper I linked, is that the near miss effect exist. It is not a subjective theory, it’s been proven. What is subjective is the perception of the users that they can influence the outcome, when they cannot because it’s been design this way. So you agree that the subjective perception that people can influence the outcome is real, and that’s the psychological mechanism used by Kabam and most game companies. If you refuse to see it, nothing will, but I suggest you read up on Near miss effect and the psychology of gambling as well as Gâcha games mechanics.
The game assigns the champion when you 'tap to stop' (for spin) or 'open crystal' for pop.
I spin the important the crystals out, pop the rest.
I read somewhere a long time ago (from a Kabam person) that the champion is actually chosen when you get the crystal itself, so that spin/pop has the same result because it was already assigned.
This is why the pool of champs is fixed for the crystal based on when the crystal was created, and not whatever the current pool is when the crystal is opened.
No it's the opposite. The pool depends on the time of opening, hence a lot of people save their crystals until a specific champion enters the pool. The only exceptions here (that I can think of) are event cavs and featureds, which have a set pool that won't change.
Each crystal is assigned a crystal pool.
Shards on other the hand is another thing.... they become a crystal assigned to a crystal pool when you trade the shards in for a crystal.
It has been shared before that the pull is drawn as soon as the Cristal is set and starts spinning. Proof of this is that if you don't own the champ in any rarity you get the "1" on the profile icon because you get the new profile picture AS SOON AS the crystal starts spinning.
There is wide speculation on the supposed effect that the way you draw the Cristal in the socket matters. It doesn't. The pull is done on the server.
In fact if the game crashes, stops or disconnects while the crystal spins, you find the character in your collection at the next login.
It has been shared before that the pull is drawn as soon as the Cristal is set and starts spinning. Proof of this is that if you don't own the champ in any rarity you get the "1" on the profile icon because you get the new profile picture AS SOON AS the crystal starts spinning.
There is wide speculation on the supposed effect that the way you draw the Cristal in the socket matters. It doesn't. The pull is done on the server.
In fact if the game crashes, stops or disconnects while the crystal spins, you find the character in your collection at the next login.
On my minis that I have been playing the last month the profile pic doesn't actually change to the new champ until after the champ pops up and I close the window. I have been watching this particular profile change because it is discussed so much on here. Not arguing about the randomness, just that my profile doesn't change before hand.
It's not a mass conspiracy. It's a window into the possibilities. It's a randomly-generated representation of what you can get, and it's meant to have some top outcomes because the actual Drop Rates can't reflect in that spin. There's not enough time.
Lol, where did you hear anyone talking about mass conspiracy?
When it's implied that it's made to entice people to spend more and keep trying, I'm going to challenge that theory if I disagree.
The Near Miss Effect isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s a well documented feature in mobile gaming.
The funniest example in this game is when you notice how often the reel shows you 6* Punisher considering he’s in 1/5000 crystals.
That's a subjective theory. It's based on the perception of the user, and hasn't been proven at all in this case. I'm quite sure I described the process of randomly generating a variety of outcomes in the pool, and that it's impossible to be a true reflection of the Drop Rates in that spin within that amount of time. Considering some Rates are 0.1% or lower. You'd never see them come up. It's the same as accusing the game of trying to get you because you got excited about what you "almost" got, but as we've pointed out here and Kabam has explained many times, you never "almost" got anything.
I’m not saying the game is sentient. But I am saying that the reel falsely represents what’s really happening.
I’m saying the crystal reel is designed to create the illusion that you almost got something. Which stimulates dopamine the same way as actually getting something. That’s why it’s described as an emotional rollercoaster sometimes. The effect goes away when one switches to pure popping.
Another example of gaming the dopamine system are the current mutant events, where one rewards 250 points and the other 300 points. As soon as hit a milestone in one, you’re nearly there for the other, and it keeps you playing.
The spin means nothing, if you're with a friend who plays on the same alliance, it already appears on their cell phone which champion will come out on the alliance tab, before finishing your spin, on your cell phone
Maybe another question to ask is whether the ‘spinning’ reel is curated to place more desirable champs next to those least desirable.
It's not a mass conspiracy. It's a window into the possibilities. It's a randomly-generated representation of what you can get, and it's meant to have some top outcomes because the actual Drop Rates can't reflect in that spin. There's not enough time.
Lol, where did you hear anyone talking about mass conspiracy?
When it's implied that it's made to entice people to spend more and keep trying, I'm going to challenge that theory if I disagree.
The Near Miss Effect isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s a well documented feature in mobile gaming.
The funniest example in this game is when you notice how often the reel shows you 6* Punisher considering he’s in 1/5000 crystals.
That's a subjective theory. It's based on the perception of the user, and hasn't been proven at all in this case. I'm quite sure I described the process of randomly generating a variety of outcomes in the pool, and that it's impossible to be a true reflection of the Drop Rates in that spin within that amount of time. Considering some Rates are 0.1% or lower. You'd never see them come up. It's the same as accusing the game of trying to get you because you got excited about what you "almost" got, but as we've pointed out here and Kabam has explained many times, you never "almost" got anything.
I think what’s getting lost here is the difference between intention and effect. Some crystal reels over-represent your chances of a “good” outcome - in the case of the Goldpool crystal, the reel dramatically (even comically) over-represents the Goldpool drop rate. You’re right that having the reel exactly represent the odds of all outcomes is not necessarily feasible in cases like that. It’s fun to see Goldpool in there after all. This kind of visual over-representation of odds is common across the gaming and gambling worlds, so we can’t really single out Kabam for it or accuse them of nefarious motives. But research is pretty clear that this sort of thing leads people to gamble and spend more. People would almost certainly buy less Goldpool crystals if the visual reel corresponded to the actual drop rate.
Has any one here watched the million year old video where a YouTuber was streaming his arena crystal opening and the reel changed from 4* punisher to something else right as it was appearing on the screen because that was the spot it was going to land on 🤣 Like I said, it is a million years old, so 4* champions were big thing then. We used to only get 1 or 2 of them a month.
The game assigns the champion when you 'tap to stop' (for spin) or 'open crystal' for pop.
I spin the important the crystals out, pop the rest.
I read somewhere a long time ago (from a Kabam person) that the champion is actually chosen when you get the crystal itself, so that spin/pop has the same result because it was already assigned.
This is why the pool of champs is fixed for the crystal based on when the crystal was created, and not whatever the current pool is when the crystal is opened.
No it's the opposite. The pool depends on the time of opening, hence a lot of people save their crystals until a specific champion enters the pool. The only exceptions here (that I can think of) are event cavs and featureds, which have a set pool that won't change.
Not saying you are wrong because I clearly don't work there, but from a programmatic standpoint that seems weird. It would make more sense to have 1 root crystal behavior instead of multiple crystal behaviors.
Also, if it is the time of opening then that would indicate that the spin and pop would have different results potentially if the decision is made at 2 different times instead of already being decided before either action happens.
The crystal results are determined when the crystal is "opened." At that moment the game servers randomly choose the drop based on the crystal's drop tables. The moment a crystal is "opened" depends on player actions. If the player "pops" the crystal the crystal is opened at that moment. If the player spins the crystal the crystal is opened either when the player taps the crystal to stop it, or after a maximum amount of time has elapsed.
There aren't two different behaviors. There's just one behavior. Randomly choose the drop based on the drop tables when the crystal is opened. When the crystal is technically opened is different depending on player actions, but that is irrelevant to the crystal opening systems.
Not only is this the most reasonable way for these crystals to work, it is how the vast majority of lootboxes work in every game everywhere. Nobody predetermines lootbox contents when they are first generated because that would require saving a lot of extra data for no reason. It doesn't matter to the game servers if they roll at crystal formation time or at crystal opening time, but if they roll at crystal formation they then have to save that data until the player opens the crystal. That just doesn't make practical sense.
We also have unambiguous proof that crystal contents are not determined at crystal formation time. Basic crystals that are formed then kept for months or even years can and do drop champions that did not exist when the crystal was formed or awarded. This is literally impossible if the crystal's drop was predetermined at formation or award time.
Absolutely no one cares about the notion that the crystal might be different based on when it is opened. The crystal's content only need to be generated randomly. It doesn't matter when that random result is generated, and it doesn't matter if that random result "would have been different" given different circumstances. Random is random.
It's not a mass conspiracy. It's a window into the possibilities. It's a randomly-generated representation of what you can get, and it's meant to have some top outcomes because the actual Drop Rates can't reflect in that spin. There's not enough time.
Lol, where did you hear anyone talking about mass conspiracy?
When it's implied that it's made to entice people to spend more and keep trying, I'm going to challenge that theory if I disagree.
The Near Miss Effect isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s a well documented feature in mobile gaming.
The funniest example in this game is when you notice how often the reel shows you 6* Punisher considering he’s in 1/5000 crystals.
That's a subjective theory. It's based on the perception of the user, and hasn't been proven at all in this case. I'm quite sure I described the process of randomly generating a variety of outcomes in the pool, and that it's impossible to be a true reflection of the Drop Rates in that spin within that amount of time. Considering some Rates are 0.1% or lower. You'd never see them come up. It's the same as accusing the game of trying to get you because you got excited about what you "almost" got, but as we've pointed out here and Kabam has explained many times, you never "almost" got anything.
I’m not saying the game is sentient. But I am saying that the reel falsely represents what’s really happening.
I’m saying the crystal reel is designed to create the illusion that you almost got something. Which stimulates dopamine the same way as actually getting something. That’s why it’s described as an emotional rollercoaster sometimes. The effect goes away when one switches to pure popping.
Another example of gaming the dopamine system are the current mutant events, where one rewards 250 points and the other 300 points. As soon as hit a milestone in one, you’re nearly there for the other, and it keeps you playing.
Of course it falsely represents what is happening. It's an immediate generation from a pool on the server. What I'm debating is that said reel is strategically created to incentivize people to buy more. It's no more than a random generation of a range of outcomes.
From a programming standpoint there is no real such thing as random, random generators still pull in information to use in their algorithms. If the champion is chosen at tap vs pop then one of the things that is often used in that algorithm, system clock time, would be different so while the wheel itself makes no difference that would imply that tap vs pop would actually have a different result for that single crystal. I was under the impression from what I had read in the past that spin/pop would have the same champion result for that crystal.
When Kabam says it doesn't matter if you pop or spin, they mean that the drop odds are the same regardless, and which ever one you do doesn't influence the drop in any predictable way. Because the crystal drop is determined by random number generator, the precise moment when you open a crystal does have some effect on what drops, but it is an unknowable effect.
This is basically a colloquialism. When someone asks what can influence an MCOC champion crystal drop, we we assume the question refers to influences that allow the player to skew the results into a direction they would prefer. Any change that is itself random is essentially no change.
We could say that had the game been launched on December 11, 2014 instead of December 10, 2014, everyone's crystal results from then until now would have been completely different. This is a true statement, but in a more meaningful sense this is also saying something completely meaningless to the players of the game.
It's not a mass conspiracy. It's a window into the possibilities. It's a randomly-generated representation of what you can get, and it's meant to have some top outcomes because the actual Drop Rates can't reflect in that spin. There's not enough time.
Lol, where did you hear anyone talking about mass conspiracy?
When it's implied that it's made to entice people to spend more and keep trying, I'm going to challenge that theory if I disagree.
The Near Miss Effect isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s a well documented feature in mobile gaming.
The funniest example in this game is when you notice how often the reel shows you 6* Punisher considering he’s in 1/5000 crystals.
That's a subjective theory. It's based on the perception of the user, and hasn't been proven at all in this case. I'm quite sure I described the process of randomly generating a variety of outcomes in the pool, and that it's impossible to be a true reflection of the Drop Rates in that spin within that amount of time. Considering some Rates are 0.1% or lower. You'd never see them come up. It's the same as accusing the game of trying to get you because you got excited about what you "almost" got, but as we've pointed out here and Kabam has explained many times, you never "almost" got anything.
I’m not saying the game is sentient. But I am saying that the reel falsely represents what’s really happening.
I’m saying the crystal reel is designed to create the illusion that you almost got something. Which stimulates dopamine the same way as actually getting something. That’s why it’s described as an emotional rollercoaster sometimes. The effect goes away when one switches to pure popping.
You are correct that the reel does not accurately depict what is actually happening, but I'm not sure you're correct that it is *designed* to create the near miss effect directly. For one thing, if such a design intent exists in general, it doesn't seem to be applied in the right way. For example, the TB daily crystal display reel shows almost exactly the opposite of what you would expect if this were true.
It is more likely that the design rule for the reels is designed to display results absent odds altogether, so that everything that can happen shows up with equal probability, to show people what is possible. When this is applied to a champion crystal, the higher rarities show up more often than they actually appear in crystal drops, which makes them seem more likely than the drop odds state. But when this happens with something like the TB daily crystal, you get 90% of the displayed results be 5* champions and everything else be much less common because each 5* champion is a different "drop" and is being individually displayed equally among all other possibilities. There's 150+ of those, and only a few of everything else, so they take up a lot of display slots.
That doesn't look like the work of a designer trying to exploit the "near-miss" reel phenomenon. That looks more like a very simple display rule that has never been changed since the beginning of time, and only coincidentally sometimes operates in a way that makes rare valuable things seem more likely to drop, and sometimes does the exact opposite.
It's not a mass conspiracy. It's a window into the possibilities. It's a randomly-generated representation of what you can get, and it's meant to have some top outcomes because the actual Drop Rates can't reflect in that spin. There's not enough time.
Lol, where did you hear anyone talking about mass conspiracy?
When it's implied that it's made to entice people to spend more and keep trying, I'm going to challenge that theory if I disagree.
The Near Miss Effect isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s a well documented feature in mobile gaming.
The funniest example in this game is when you notice how often the reel shows you 6* Punisher considering he’s in 1/5000 crystals.
That's a subjective theory. It's based on the perception of the user, and hasn't been proven at all in this case. I'm quite sure I described the process of randomly generating a variety of outcomes in the pool, and that it's impossible to be a true reflection of the Drop Rates in that spin within that amount of time. Considering some Rates are 0.1% or lower. You'd never see them come up. It's the same as accusing the game of trying to get you because you got excited about what you "almost" got, but as we've pointed out here and Kabam has explained many times, you never "almost" got anything.
I’m not saying the game is sentient. But I am saying that the reel falsely represents what’s really happening.
I’m saying the crystal reel is designed to create the illusion that you almost got something. Which stimulates dopamine the same way as actually getting something. That’s why it’s described as an emotional rollercoaster sometimes. The effect goes away when one switches to pure popping.
Another example of gaming the dopamine system are the current mutant events, where one rewards 250 points and the other 300 points. As soon as hit a milestone in one, you’re nearly there for the other, and it keeps you playing.
It's no more than a random generation of a range of outcomes.
That’s false. The “reel” has a couple components. Iirc it was Otriux who showed this years ago on Reddit. The generic spinning wheel is a series of sets of champions (like CM, MM, Doom, NF. Or DS, Blade, Psylocke.) randomly placed together which gives the illusion of randomness. When the reel is told to stop there is another set of champions where the prize awarded is placed in between of; and which are, more often than not, popular or sought after champions giving players the illusion of a “near miss”.
It's not a mass conspiracy. It's a window into the possibilities. It's a randomly-generated representation of what you can get, and it's meant to have some top outcomes because the actual Drop Rates can't reflect in that spin. There's not enough time.
Lol, where did you hear anyone talking about mass conspiracy?
When it's implied that it's made to entice people to spend more and keep trying, I'm going to challenge that theory if I disagree.
The Near Miss Effect isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s a well documented feature in mobile gaming.
The funniest example in this game is when you notice how often the reel shows you 6* Punisher considering he’s in 1/5000 crystals.
That's a subjective theory. It's based on the perception of the user, and hasn't been proven at all in this case. I'm quite sure I described the process of randomly generating a variety of outcomes in the pool, and that it's impossible to be a true reflection of the Drop Rates in that spin within that amount of time. Considering some Rates are 0.1% or lower. You'd never see them come up. It's the same as accusing the game of trying to get you because you got excited about what you "almost" got, but as we've pointed out here and Kabam has explained many times, you never "almost" got anything.
I’m not saying the game is sentient. But I am saying that the reel falsely represents what’s really happening.
I’m saying the crystal reel is designed to create the illusion that you almost got something. Which stimulates dopamine the same way as actually getting something. That’s why it’s described as an emotional rollercoaster sometimes. The effect goes away when one switches to pure popping.
Another example of gaming the dopamine system are the current mutant events, where one rewards 250 points and the other 300 points. As soon as hit a milestone in one, you’re nearly there for the other, and it keeps you playing.
It's no more than a random generation of a range of outcomes.
That’s false. The “reel” has a couple components. Iirc it was Otriux who showed this years ago on Reddit. The generic spinning wheel is a series of sets of champions (like CM, MM, Doom, NF. Or DS, Blade, Psylocke.) randomly placed together which gives the illusion of randomness. When the reel is told to stop there is another set of champions where the prize awarded is placed in between of; and which are, more often than not, popular or sought after champions giving players the illusion of a “near miss”.
I don't recall Otriux (or anyone else) demonstrating this or mentioning direct evidence for this (i.e. from data mining) but I could simply not remember (or not seen ti) and, unfortunately, it is worth testing. I spun out a 4* basic and let it stop on their own, went frame by frame, and recorded every champ that showed up in the reel.
It is definitely not random. The reel showed 209 portraits, including the drop. There were 30 different champions (including the drop). That's basically impossible if the reel was showing all possible drops randomly.
I wouldn't say it is the most hype set of champions either though. It seems ironically random:
Agent Venom Annihilus Ant Man Black Bolt Black Widow DO Dr. Strange Electro Gambit Hulk Ragnarok Hyperion IMIW Kamala Khan King Groot Magneto Now Mangog Medusa MODOK Moleman Nightcrawler Sabertooth Scarlet Witch She Hulk Silver Surfer Starlord Stryfe Symbiote Spiderman Tigra Venom the Duck War Machine Warlock
Gambit was the actual drop. He dropped between Sabertooth and Starlord. This is just one crystal, but while it is definitely not random, it doesn't look like anyone explicitly intended to load the reels either. Maybe the crystal reel works differently now than in the past, and maybe it does some sort of prefetch to save resources (i.e. the crystal picks about thirty champs randomly and loads them into the reel, so the game client doesn't have to dynamically burn more graphics resources with 200 portraits in the spinner.
I'll try to investigate further, but watching crystal reels frame by frame is making me go blind.
PS: I recorded a second 4* crystal and while I haven't gone frame by frame on it yet, it very obviously contains a different set of champs in the visual reel.
It's not a mass conspiracy. It's a window into the possibilities. It's a randomly-generated representation of what you can get, and it's meant to have some top outcomes because the actual Drop Rates can't reflect in that spin. There's not enough time.
Lol, where did you hear anyone talking about mass conspiracy?
When it's implied that it's made to entice people to spend more and keep trying, I'm going to challenge that theory if I disagree.
The Near Miss Effect isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s a well documented feature in mobile gaming.
The funniest example in this game is when you notice how often the reel shows you 6* Punisher considering he’s in 1/5000 crystals.
That's a subjective theory. It's based on the perception of the user, and hasn't been proven at all in this case. I'm quite sure I described the process of randomly generating a variety of outcomes in the pool, and that it's impossible to be a true reflection of the Drop Rates in that spin within that amount of time. Considering some Rates are 0.1% or lower. You'd never see them come up. It's the same as accusing the game of trying to get you because you got excited about what you "almost" got, but as we've pointed out here and Kabam has explained many times, you never "almost" got anything.
I’m not saying the game is sentient. But I am saying that the reel falsely represents what’s really happening.
I’m saying the crystal reel is designed to create the illusion that you almost got something. Which stimulates dopamine the same way as actually getting something. That’s why it’s described as an emotional rollercoaster sometimes. The effect goes away when one switches to pure popping.
You are correct that the reel does not accurately depict what is actually happening, but I'm not sure you're correct that it is *designed* to create the near miss effect directly. For one thing, if such a design intent exists in general, it doesn't seem to be applied in the right way. For example, the TB daily crystal display reel shows almost exactly the opposite of what you would expect if this were true.
It is more likely that the design rule for the reels is designed to display results absent odds altogether, so that everything that can happen shows up with equal probability, to show people what is possible. When this is applied to a champion crystal, the higher rarities show up more often than they actually appear in crystal drops, which makes them seem more likely than the drop odds state. But when this happens with something like the TB daily crystal, you get 90% of the displayed results be 5* champions and everything else be much less common because each 5* champion is a different "drop" and is being individually displayed equally among all other possibilities. There's 150+ of those, and only a few of everything else, so they take up a lot of display slots.
That doesn't look like the work of a designer trying to exploit the "near-miss" reel phenomenon. That looks more like a very simple display rule that has never been changed since the beginning of time, and only coincidentally sometimes operates in a way that makes rare valuable things seem more likely to drop, and sometimes does the exact opposite.
Regarding design and intent you seem to be describing pretty much the same thing as @GroundedWisdom. And indeed I do not have empirical evidence that this specific game is designed one way or the other. Nor can I prove that the Near Miss Effect is being intentionally exploited.
If I wanted to study it properly I’d conduct two experiments:
1. Spin 500 cavalier crystals. Record the result along with the two champions/rarities either side. Use tier lists to assess whether or not a near miss occurred and rate its quality - some of these judgments may be subjective but generally there is some agreement over what constitutes a good pull. Calculate whether or not the frequency of high quality near misses is different to low quality near misses e.g. Doom sandwich and Juggernaut sandwich should be equally frequent if there is no intent to exploit the effect.
2. Same as above but spinning 500 basic 6* crystals. This experiment removes the rarity variable and only considers desirability.
3. Same as above but spinning 500 featured 6* crystals. This removes the rarity variable but introduces the new vs old variable and should prove whether or not new champs have different drop rates to old champs within the featured crystal.
@Aburaees another way to test it (not scientifically correct, but easier to test), would be to open x amount of crystal including items with different drop rate and compare. For example: 1000 Arena crystals (no matter the type, since the drop rates are the same), and see what comes on either sides of the drop, and how often, then check that against the actual drop rate. That would give a picture if some items are over represented in the reel or not.
Even though I have no evidence of it, I would be very surprised if a successful mobile gaming company such as Kabam wouldn't to some extent use well documented psychological mechanism in their game design decision. That's not having a tin foil hat, as I think most online mobile company operating on loot box model and gacha uses the same method, because it works.
Spin vs pop doesn't matter, the champ is chosen when you form/receive the crystal. For instance you're not gonna get a phc, hold onto it til a new champ hits the pool then open the phc and you get said champ. Spinning is just a way to hype yourself(and others if you're a youtuber) like its christmas morning. Popping is just the logical "What'd i get!?"
Spin vs pop doesn't matter, the champ is chosen when you form/receive the crystal. For instance you're not gonna get a phc, hold onto it til a new champ hits the pool then open the phc and you get said champ. Spinning is just a way to hype yourself(and others if you're a youtuber) like its christmas morning. Popping is just the logical "What'd i get!?"
Ähm Bro what? I think this isn’t how it works. For example: You have now a 6* nexus (congrats) but Herc isn’t in the basic pool today right?
When Herc will be available in the basic pool, you can pull him from that “old” nexus. The crystal is just the gate to the (in this exact moment) crystal pool.
But maybe i totally misunderstood you haha, have a nice weekend
"random" and "odds" can mean many things... no different than how "4 out of 5 dentists recommend"... depend on which 5 dentists you ask, and the statistic may be meaningless.
For example, take lottery scratch-off tickets.
If on Day 1, there were 10M tickets made, and 10 1-Million dollar winners... then your odds of getting a Million Dollars on one is at its core on any single tickets: 1 in a million.
but... what if a month goes by. Some of those tickets are sold. Do we know how many? No? Do we know how many of the Million dollar tickets are left? Well... depends on how much research we do. But reality is... without more information... we really don't know what our odds are of winning.
Maybe all 10 were already sold, and our odds are 0. Maybe all 10 are left, 5 Million were sold, and our odds just doubled to 1:500,000. We don't know.
That's easy to understand... but now to the question of spin or pop. This gets into how random is random.
again starting with lottery scratch tickets... they are usually sold in a line, in numerical order. They are typically ordered in such a way that there are guaranteed to be certain numbers of low-level winners, with maybe 1-slot for a high level winner. They aren't going to put say all 10 million dollar tickets in a row, sold from the same store, possibly to the same person who just went in and dropped $100 on some tickets all at once. Thus the fact that you "hit it big" on a ticket really does mean that the odds of you hitting it big on the next ticket, or even any one ticket in that sheet, are effectively zero.
So... does this relate to MCOC? If I hit pop 10, how does it work? Will MCOC pick 10 random numbers, and independently decide whether or not each one is a "winner"? If so, then I would argue... no, the 10 events are not independent. Computers are virtually incapable of making an independent random event, and most often will use the milliseconds of an event + some complicated math functions to "look random" and in the long term, generate "valid drop rates", however... If at 14:12:01.123456 seconds you hit the button... I would argue you are not going to get 10 truly independent events. Yes, you can find repeats in random numbers, and your first event picking the digits in question should find a "fairly random set", in that it isn't something you can predict and game around... but is it truly independent? Well, that depends on just how good of a random number generator is chose, how large the seeds and exponents and modulo divisors are in the calculation... and unless Kabam is prepare to provide that algorithm... I'm going to say that at best "we don't know", but the most likely answer is... no... they aren't purely independent events.
Will the difference be significant? Again Don't know without the algorithm, but I suspect the answer is probably not.
Comments
The theory that’s presented in the paper I linked, is that the near miss effect exist. It is not a subjective theory, it’s been proven. What is subjective is the perception of the users that they can influence the outcome, when they cannot because it’s been design this way.
So you agree that the subjective perception that people can influence the outcome is real, and that’s the psychological mechanism used by Kabam and most game companies.
If you refuse to see it, nothing will, but I suggest you read up on Near miss effect and the psychology of gambling as well as Gâcha games mechanics.
Shards on other the hand is another thing.... they become a crystal assigned to a crystal pool when you trade the shards in for a crystal.
There is wide speculation on the supposed effect that the way you draw the Cristal in the socket matters. It doesn't. The pull is done on the server.
In fact if the game crashes, stops or disconnects while the crystal spins, you find the character in your collection at the next login.
I’m not saying the game is sentient. But I am saying that the reel falsely represents what’s really happening.
I’m saying the crystal reel is designed to create the illusion that you almost got something. Which stimulates dopamine the same way as actually getting something. That’s why it’s described as an emotional rollercoaster sometimes. The effect goes away when one switches to pure popping.
Another example of gaming the dopamine system are the current mutant events, where one rewards 250 points and the other 300 points. As soon as hit a milestone in one, you’re nearly there for the other, and it keeps you playing.
Dr. Zola
Maybe another question to ask is whether the ‘spinning’ reel is curated to place more desirable champs next to those least desirable.
BUT
@Kabam Vydious made a post a while back stating the crystal is determined as tku enter the screen. The reel is just for fun.
Maybe Vydious can reply here and state the same as I can’t find that post anymore.
There aren't two different behaviors. There's just one behavior. Randomly choose the drop based on the drop tables when the crystal is opened. When the crystal is technically opened is different depending on player actions, but that is irrelevant to the crystal opening systems.
Not only is this the most reasonable way for these crystals to work, it is how the vast majority of lootboxes work in every game everywhere. Nobody predetermines lootbox contents when they are first generated because that would require saving a lot of extra data for no reason. It doesn't matter to the game servers if they roll at crystal formation time or at crystal opening time, but if they roll at crystal formation they then have to save that data until the player opens the crystal. That just doesn't make practical sense.
We also have unambiguous proof that crystal contents are not determined at crystal formation time. Basic crystals that are formed then kept for months or even years can and do drop champions that did not exist when the crystal was formed or awarded. This is literally impossible if the crystal's drop was predetermined at formation or award time.
Absolutely no one cares about the notion that the crystal might be different based on when it is opened. The crystal's content only need to be generated randomly. It doesn't matter when that random result is generated, and it doesn't matter if that random result "would have been different" given different circumstances. Random is random.
This is basically a colloquialism. When someone asks what can influence an MCOC champion crystal drop, we we assume the question refers to influences that allow the player to skew the results into a direction they would prefer. Any change that is itself random is essentially no change.
We could say that had the game been launched on December 11, 2014 instead of December 10, 2014, everyone's crystal results from then until now would have been completely different. This is a true statement, but in a more meaningful sense this is also saying something completely meaningless to the players of the game.
It is more likely that the design rule for the reels is designed to display results absent odds altogether, so that everything that can happen shows up with equal probability, to show people what is possible. When this is applied to a champion crystal, the higher rarities show up more often than they actually appear in crystal drops, which makes them seem more likely than the drop odds state. But when this happens with something like the TB daily crystal, you get 90% of the displayed results be 5* champions and everything else be much less common because each 5* champion is a different "drop" and is being individually displayed equally among all other possibilities. There's 150+ of those, and only a few of everything else, so they take up a lot of display slots.
That doesn't look like the work of a designer trying to exploit the "near-miss" reel phenomenon. That looks more like a very simple display rule that has never been changed since the beginning of time, and only coincidentally sometimes operates in a way that makes rare valuable things seem more likely to drop, and sometimes does the exact opposite.
The hero u get is the same
The hero u was gonna get is when you open it
Can I have what a lot of ppl here has been smoking
Kabaam has already said this was the case
It is definitely not random. The reel showed 209 portraits, including the drop. There were 30 different champions (including the drop). That's basically impossible if the reel was showing all possible drops randomly.
I wouldn't say it is the most hype set of champions either though. It seems ironically random:
Agent Venom
Annihilus
Ant Man
Black Bolt
Black Widow DO
Dr. Strange
Electro
Gambit
Hulk Ragnarok
Hyperion
IMIW
Kamala Khan
King Groot
Magneto Now
Mangog
Medusa
MODOK
Moleman
Nightcrawler
Sabertooth
Scarlet Witch
She Hulk
Silver Surfer
Starlord
Stryfe
Symbiote Spiderman
Tigra
Venom the Duck
War Machine
Warlock
Gambit was the actual drop. He dropped between Sabertooth and Starlord. This is just one crystal, but while it is definitely not random, it doesn't look like anyone explicitly intended to load the reels either. Maybe the crystal reel works differently now than in the past, and maybe it does some sort of prefetch to save resources (i.e. the crystal picks about thirty champs randomly and loads them into the reel, so the game client doesn't have to dynamically burn more graphics resources with 200 portraits in the spinner.
I'll try to investigate further, but watching crystal reels frame by frame is making me go blind.
PS: I recorded a second 4* crystal and while I haven't gone frame by frame on it yet, it very obviously contains a different set of champs in the visual reel.
If I wanted to study it properly I’d conduct two experiments:
1. Spin 500 cavalier crystals. Record the result along with the two champions/rarities either side. Use tier lists to assess whether or not a near miss occurred and rate its quality - some of these judgments may be subjective but generally there is some agreement over what constitutes a good pull. Calculate whether or not the frequency of high quality near misses is different to low quality near misses e.g. Doom sandwich and Juggernaut sandwich should be equally frequent if there is no intent to exploit the effect.
2. Same as above but spinning 500 basic 6* crystals. This experiment removes the rarity variable and only considers desirability.
3. Same as above but spinning 500 featured 6* crystals. This removes the rarity variable but introduces the new vs old variable and should prove whether or not new champs have different drop rates to old champs within the featured crystal.
I’d do it now if I were a whale 😆.
another way to test it (not scientifically correct, but easier to test), would be to open x amount of crystal including items with different drop rate and compare.
For example:
1000 Arena crystals (no matter the type, since the drop rates are the same), and see what comes on either sides of the drop, and how often, then check that against the actual drop rate. That would give a picture if some items are over represented in the reel or not.
Even though I have no evidence of it, I would be very surprised if a successful mobile gaming company such as Kabam wouldn't to some extent use well documented psychological mechanism in their game design decision. That's not having a tin foil hat, as I think most online mobile company operating on loot box model and gacha uses the same method, because it works.
When Herc will be available in the basic pool, you can pull him from that “old” nexus. The crystal is just the gate to the (in this exact moment) crystal pool.
But maybe i totally misunderstood you haha, have a nice weekend
For example, take lottery scratch-off tickets.
If on Day 1, there were 10M tickets made, and 10 1-Million dollar winners... then your odds of getting a Million Dollars on one is at its core on any single tickets: 1 in a million.
but... what if a month goes by. Some of those tickets are sold. Do we know how many? No? Do we know how many of the Million dollar tickets are left? Well... depends on how much research we do. But reality is... without more information... we really don't know what our odds are of winning.
Maybe all 10 were already sold, and our odds are 0. Maybe all 10 are left, 5 Million were sold, and our odds just doubled to 1:500,000. We don't know.
That's easy to understand... but now to the question of spin or pop. This gets into how random is random.
again starting with lottery scratch tickets... they are usually sold in a line, in numerical order. They are typically ordered in such a way that there are guaranteed to be certain numbers of low-level winners, with maybe 1-slot for a high level winner. They aren't going to put say all 10 million dollar tickets in a row, sold from the same store, possibly to the same person who just went in and dropped $100 on some tickets all at once. Thus the fact that you "hit it big" on a ticket really does mean that the odds of you hitting it big on the next ticket, or even any one ticket in that sheet, are effectively zero.
So... does this relate to MCOC? If I hit pop 10, how does it work? Will MCOC pick 10 random numbers, and independently decide whether or not each one is a "winner"? If so, then I would argue... no, the 10 events are not independent. Computers are virtually incapable of making an independent random event, and most often will use the milliseconds of an event + some complicated math functions to "look random" and in the long term, generate "valid drop rates", however... If at 14:12:01.123456 seconds you hit the button... I would argue you are not going to get 10 truly independent events. Yes, you can find repeats in random numbers, and your first event picking the digits in question should find a "fairly random set", in that it isn't something you can predict and game around... but is it truly independent? Well, that depends on just how good of a random number generator is chose, how large the seeds and exponents and modulo divisors are in the calculation... and unless Kabam is prepare to provide that algorithm... I'm going to say that at best "we don't know", but the most likely answer is... no... they aren't purely independent events.
Will the difference be significant? Again Don't know without the algorithm, but I suspect the answer is probably not.