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

GapToothWitch wrote: »

I understand the "There is a lot of time and work involved in making this happen" but there is no excuse why they can't publish the drop rates in a forum post - they already know the rates! No visual design, production time, or engineering time involved.

People keep saying there's no excuse for this, but if I was the producer in charge I would in many circumstances recommend not doing this, and I've been in favor of releasing drop rates from the very beginning. And I say this as someone that knows precisely what would be involved in doing that, because I've seen it first hand.

420sam

Yeah, this thread is getting closed.

Corso wrote: »

As someone who has gotten kabamed multiple times by dropping a $100 On an "increased chance" for a specific character and did not received it... I would love to know the drop rates!!! Probably would not have spent that $100. Lol. So they will either raise the drop rates, or make less money... kabam is just crooked. This will definitely benefit us!!

What crystal did you spend a hundred dollars on, that we players don't already have a pretty good idea what the drop rates are?

DNA3000 wrote: »

GapToothWitch wrote: »

I understand the "There is a lot of time and work involved in making this happen" but there is no excuse why they can't publish the drop rates in a forum post - they already know the rates! No visual design, production time, or engineering time involved.

People keep saying there's no excuse for this, but if I was the producer in charge I would in many circumstances recommend not doing this, and I've been in favor of releasing drop rates from the very beginning. And I say this as someone that knows precisely what would be involved in doing that, because I've seen it first hand.

why would you recommend not doing this?

and what exactly is involved based on your experience?

RehctansBew

yall make me laugh, it takes time to remove targeting drop rates. You can't simply recode it over night. Amazingly since the apple guidelines release, we have seen very little unit offers that gave bonus units for those newer players or the ones that haven't spent much in the past few months. This may just be a coincidence. Why would the game need to rework anything, they could simply post drop rates in the legal or terms of service tabs. That wouldn't require any extra coding.

Zuko_ILC

Kabam Miike wrote: »

ArmandStar wrote: »

Vydious, you have to admit, the conspiracies and etc are because of the lack of answers.

Miike said there's a lot of work involved, visual designs, production and etc.

and that is fine, we understand.

however, what is NOT fine is the fact that you guys took over a month (or who knows how long) to give this very simple and acceptable response.

someone said maybe you guys (forum mods) were forbidden from speaking, but couldn't you say so? "hey guys, our bosses don't want us to give any statement yet".

whether the solution is ready or not, the customers have requested to know about the progress and for a whole month the only response was silence. you can't blame players for going paranoic in this case.

I can see where you're coming from, but I think you're reaching a bit here. There was no need to say more than we did. There is no reason to believe that we were looking for ways around this, or working on changing Drop Rates. That's just needless paranoia, and we don't reply to conspiracy theories.

We are not going to update this thread until there is something to update you with. Repeatedly posting "we don't have anything new to share yet" is not a good use of anybody's time, and giving progress updates is not always possible, because there are lots of moving parts.

Now, let's get this thread back on track, or we're gonna close it down.

Miike I think for the most part people get worried that things are forgotten. Even though Kabam states they will provide information when they have it I think most people hear just want someone to check in. I have no idea what the requirements are or what you guys have to do and there's no reason for me or anyone else to know. I do appreciate it though when someone checks in and says sorry guys still no update after a few days. I think Kabam has been doing a better job of keeping people updated but there are still a lot of topics that are months old with no official update (skill mastery for example) that tends to build up.

It can be quite a difficult job being a moderator, and I think the players also have to understand that you can only provide what your company allows you to. So taking it out on you or other mods isn't acceptable.

Anyways thanks for the update!

GapToothWitch wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GapToothWitch wrote: »

I understand the "There is a lot of time and work involved in making this happen" but there is no excuse why they can't publish the drop rates in a forum post - they already know the rates! No visual design, production time, or engineering time involved.

People keep saying there's no excuse for this, but if I was the producer in charge I would in many circumstances recommend not doing this, and I've been in favor of releasing drop rates from the very beginning. And I say this as someone that knows precisely what would be involved in doing that, because I've seen it first hand.

why would you recommend not doing this?

and what exactly is involved based on your experience?

There are lots of reasons for potentially recommending not doing this. One of them is the fact that while people seem to think that all it takes is just copying a bunch of numbers and pasting them into a forum post, that doesn't work in the real world. First of all, the drop tables themselves are not likely to be easily human readable, and there's the separate problem of "human readable" is ill-defined. Without text explanation, the raw numbers could easily be more confusing than informative. I see it all the time where most people don't seem to even have the correct conceptions for what any numbers actually mean.

Once you decide you actually have to take the raw numbers and write text descriptions and explanations surrounding them, the amount of work increases a lot. And you can't just tell someone to do this randomly either. Look at all the text explanations in the game now. Most of them are horrible and those were written by the people who's job it is to write things. Those people have limited time. If you just tell a random content creator to write up an explanation for the statistical odds of the drop tables, that can easily go from horrible to incomprehensible. And I'm ignoring localization (translation) work.

It is a lot of work and there's many places for it to go wrong. You might think that work is necessary regardless, but that's not 100% true. Depending on how you choose to display the odds, displaying odds in-game with the UI and in-context can be easier than writing an entire odds-sheet. You don't have to explain all of the situational background information for a particular drop, you can simply display only the odds information relevant to that specific lootbox in that specific circumstance. You don't, for example, have to clearly explain what crystal means what, what it looks like, and how to connect the text information in the forum post to a specific lootbox. And separate from the amount of work, the specific *kinds* of work are different.

The game has all of the numbers in databases: those numbers are "authoritative" meaning they cannot be wrong. They are what the game actually obeys. A developer could write a set of templates that pulled the numbers from the game itself and displayed them with boilerplate text. In fact, that's how many of the champion character sheet descriptions work. When you read something that says a particular ability has a certain chance to happen and the chance is in green, those numbers aren't in the text: they are pulled from the game itself and filled in by the game interface. If you do it right, the numbers you display to the players will always be right. But a forum post can be wrong: it can contain typos, it can contain errors.

All of those things are challenges I would have to evaluate, and weigh the resources required to address them, before committing internal resources to doing this.

As to what is required to do this. If someone ordered me to make a forum post with all of the odds, I could do it. I would need the drop table spreadsheets first. Those would contain the numbers. I might need some of the details explained to me, if the tables were constructed in a non-standard way. I would need someone to make the decision on which specific rewards were being disclosed. I would then do a compilation of a traversal of all the appropriate reward tables. And then I would translate the weighted odds into percentage odds and write them up in English, then hand that to the translators for localization into all supported languages.

What does "compilation of a traversal of all the appropriate reward tables" mean? Well, suppose that "PHC" was one of the lootboxes on the list of lootboxes whose odds were authorized for release. I would need to find the PHC in the reward spreadsheets. It might not be actually called that: sometimes what developers call things internally is different from what the content designers call them in the game. So I would have to find it. Then it is very likely the reward table contains tiers segmented by rarity. In other words, the PHC reward table itself contains reward tables. "Basic 2*" for example. I would need to find these tables also and ensure they themselves did not contain further indirection to make sure their odds were flat. I would then flatten the odds into a single table I could then write up.

Rinse and repeat for every lootbox authorized for disclosure. Someone would, of course, have to double check my work. It would then pass through the hands of some English major editor that would mess it up, because editors don't understand math. I would have to then fix it, whereupon I would get edited into errors again.

Also, internal procedures would have to be put in place to ensure this information doesn't become dated. If the content developers ever change the odds, I would have to edit this document. There would have to be documented procedures for what I did, so someone else could maintain the work if I decided to go work for Disney tomorrow. Or alternatively if the intent was always to do this only once, there would have to be a way to expire and invalidate the forum post as soon as odds changed, so it wasn't referenced incorrectly. Of course, no matter what you do, it will be referenced incorrectly, and used as proof that Kabam tried to mislead the players because the numbers changed and they didn't just edit the document to fix the numbers, because it is inconceivable that anyone couldn't just do that on their lunch break.

This doesn't include the many, many, many meetings I would have to endure where all the grey areas were hammered out by managers, producers, lawyers, and the monetization vampires designers. For example, the PHC has about a 90%ish chance to drop a 2* champion. But not just any 2*, because many 2* champions aren't in the normal crystals. Do you have to say that? If some 2* champions are indeed rarer than others, then doesn't that have to be specified? That sounds like a two hour meeting right there.

It would actually be faster if I just hacked into the game servers and leaked the odds on Reddit.

RehctansBew wrote: »

yall make me laugh, it takes time to remove targeting drop rates. You can't simply recode it over night.

Ironic statement of the day, because the notion that drop rates involve code is pretty funny.

Even if Kabam was doing odds manipulation in the code, which they are not, and even if they wanted to eliminate that feature, which they don't need to, you wouldn't reprogram the game to stop doing that. You would instead zero out everyone's profile, making them look identical to the game engine and reverting everyone to the same odds profile.

You never rewrite the game to *remove* a feature. Every time you touch the code you take a chance of introducing bugs. If you don't want a feature any more, you don't remove it from the code, you simply stop using it. You save editing out the feature from the code for that big refactor that everyone talks about but everyone hopes doesn't happen until after they leave the company.

DNA3000 wrote: »

GapToothWitch wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GapToothWitch wrote: »

I understand the "There is a lot of time and work involved in making this happen" but there is no excuse why they can't publish the drop rates in a forum post - they already know the rates! No visual design, production time, or engineering time involved.

People keep saying there's no excuse for this, but if I was the producer in charge I would in many circumstances recommend not doing this, and I've been in favor of releasing drop rates from the very beginning. And I say this as someone that knows precisely what would be involved in doing that, because I've seen it first hand.

why would you recommend not doing this?

and what exactly is involved based on your experience?

It would actually be faster if I just hacked into the game servers and leaked the odds on Reddit.

Please do.

Valid points, but Miike did not say any of this was (except time).

Again - he stated "No visual design, production time, or engineering time involved" ... it feels like they already have those exact drop rates just taking their sweet time posting it.

From the get go, they have always been secretive about the drop rates, not being transparent even once. So now it's been close to 3 months and we are in the same position.

It doesn't take a genius Kabam loathes the idea of being transparent on this topic.

DNA3000 wrote: »

RehctansBew wrote: »

yall make me laugh, it takes time to remove targeting drop rates. You can't simply recode it over night.

Even if Kabam was doing odds manipulation in the code, which they are not,

Source?

KABAM cannot simply put down the drop rates as they are flexible and change based on spending habits of the player.

"The distribution probabilities of the individual potential awards associated with probability item bundles vary depending on the purchase history of the user activating a probability item bundle."

https://www.google.com/patents/US9744446

GapToothWitch wrote: »

Valid points, but Miike did not say any of this was (except time).

Again - he stated "No visual design, production time, or engineering time involved" ... it feels like they already have those exact drop rates just taking their sweet time posting it.

That's the opposite of what he said: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/306230/#Comment_306230

This is correct. We're not looking for a workaround, nor did we ever try to look for a "way around this". We've been working on how we are going to make them visible in game. There is a lot of time and work involved in making this happen, including visual design, production time, engineering time, among other requirements.

Note, he was talking about making the information available in-game, not what the requirements would be to construct a forum post with the odds. His comments are therefore not strictly relevant to your questions or my answers.

GapToothWitch wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

RehctansBew wrote: »

yall make me laugh, it takes time to remove targeting drop rates. You can't simply recode it over night.

Even if Kabam was doing odds manipulation in the code, which they are not,

Source?

Such manipulation would be visible in the crystal opening data we have publicly available, and statistically proper analysis of that data shows no such signs of manipulation.

DNA3000 wrote: »

GapToothWitch wrote: »

Valid points, but Miike did not say any of this was (except time).

Again - he stated "No visual design, production time, or engineering time involved" ... it feels like they already have those exact drop rates just taking their sweet time posting it.

That's the opposite of what he said: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/306230/#Comment_306230

This is correct. We're not looking for a workaround, nor did we ever try to look for a "way around this". We've been working on how we are going to make them visible in game. There is a lot of time and work involved in making this happen, including visual design, production time, engineering time, among other requirements.

Note, he was talking about making the information available in-game, not what the requirements would be to construct a forum post with the odds. His comments are therefore not strictly relevant to your questions or my answers.

Right so let's have them respond to why a simple forum post won't do, instead of these back and forth essays.

They engaged in the conversation about this so they can respond to our reasonable questions.

DNA3000 wrote: »

GapToothWitch wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

RehctansBew wrote: »

yall make me laugh, it takes time to remove targeting drop rates. You can't simply recode it over night.

Even if Kabam was doing odds manipulation in the code, which they are not,

Source?

Such manipulation would be visible in the crystal opening data we have publicly available, and statistically proper analysis of that data shows no such signs of manipulation.

Here's a sign of manipulation: https://www.reddit.com/r/ContestOfChampions/comments/7nv9gh/mcoc_pity_timer_on_crystals_w_proof/

Bosley wrote: »

KABAM cannot simply put down the drop rates as they are flexible and change based on spending habits of the player.

"The distribution probabilities of the individual potential awards associated with probability item bundles vary depending on the purchase history of the user activating a probability item bundle."

https://www.google.com/patents/US9744446

There's a patent, ergo Kabam must be doing it. Okay:

US8851978B1: Invention for providing tiered stochastic rewards based on timed events where the timer for the rewarded event begins after the successful completion of a prerequisite event. Ironic: since this is something Kabam can't actually do for legends runs: time events from end of one event to the end of another event.

US8968067B1: Invention for providing personalized leaderboards specific to a player to encourage them to compete in a narrow competitive field. Not yet, apparently.

US20150031440A1: Invention for providing a mechanism whereby in lootboxes with multiple items, the latter items have higher value if the earlier items have lesser value to guarantee players do not receive a sequence of low value items. Yeah, I would like to see the day someone accuses Kabam of doing that.

US9172697B1: Invention for obfuscating login credentials. Interesting, but I don't see this one happening any time soon.

Here's one of my favorites:

US8764534B1: Invention for increasing player engagement through realm construction.

Yes: this is a patent for building bases.

Here's a really interesting patent:

US8636591B1: "System and method for facilitating virtual item rewards based on a game of chance."

This is a patent for multi-tier rewards in a slot machine. Which, to the best of my knowledge, have existed for decades now. But not in MCOC.

GroundedWisdom

GapToothWitch wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GapToothWitch wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

RehctansBew wrote: »

yall make me laugh, it takes time to remove targeting drop rates. You can't simply recode it over night.

Even if Kabam was doing odds manipulation in the code, which they are not,

Source?

Such manipulation would be visible in the crystal opening data we have publicly available, and statistically proper analysis of that data shows no such signs of manipulation.

Here's a sign of manipulation: https://www.reddit.com/r/ContestOfChampions/comments/7nv9gh/mcoc_pity_timer_on_crystals_w_proof/

Circumstantial observations are not evidence of manipulation.

GapToothWitch wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GapToothWitch wrote: »

Valid points, but Miike did not say any of this was (except time).

Again - he stated "No visual design, production time, or engineering time involved" ... it feels like they already have those exact drop rates just taking their sweet time posting it.

That's the opposite of what he said: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/306230/#Comment_306230

This is correct. We're not looking for a workaround, nor did we ever try to look for a "way around this". We've been working on how we are going to make them visible in game. There is a lot of time and work involved in making this happen, including visual design, production time, engineering time, among other requirements.

Note, he was talking about making the information available in-game, not what the requirements would be to construct a forum post with the odds. His comments are therefore not strictly relevant to your questions or my answers.

Right so let's have them respond to why a simple forum post won't do, instead of these back and forth essays.

They engaged in the conversation about this so they can respond to our reasonable questions.

You give me the impression of someone who asked two questions that had no interest in the answers.

DNA3000 wrote: »

GapToothWitch wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GapToothWitch wrote: »

Valid points, but Miike did not say any of this was (except time).

Again - he stated "No visual design, production time, or engineering time involved" ... it feels like they already have those exact drop rates just taking their sweet time posting it.

That's the opposite of what he said: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/306230/#Comment_306230

This is correct. We're not looking for a workaround, nor did we ever try to look for a "way around this". We've been working on how we are going to make them visible in game. There is a lot of time and work involved in making this happen, including visual design, production time, engineering time, among other requirements.

Note, he was talking about making the information available in-game, not what the requirements would be to construct a forum post with the odds. His comments are therefore not strictly relevant to your questions or my answers.

Right so let's have them respond to why a simple forum post won't do, instead of these back and forth essays.

They engaged in the conversation about this so they can respond to our reasonable questions.

You give me the impression of someone who asked two questions that had no interest in the answers.

I directed the question to someone but someone else responded.

I'd like to hear it from the horses mouth.

rogueKlyntar

Bosley wrote: »

KABAM cannot simply put down the drop rates as they are flexible and change based on spending habits of the player.

"The distribution probabilities of the individual potential awards associated with probability item bundles vary depending on the purchase history of the user activating a probability item bundle."

https://www.google.com/patents/US9744446

BULL! They can still tell us how often any particular Champ ought to drop in a pool of s people with y crystals each!

GapToothWitch wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GapToothWitch wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

RehctansBew wrote: »

yall make me laugh, it takes time to remove targeting drop rates. You can't simply recode it over night.

Even if Kabam was doing odds manipulation in the code, which they are not,

Source?

Such manipulation would be visible in the crystal opening data we have publicly available, and statistically proper analysis of that data shows no such signs of manipulation.

Here's a sign of manipulation: https://www.reddit.com/r/ContestOfChampions/comments/7nv9gh/mcoc_pity_timer_on_crystals_w_proof/

It is a sign of something, but not odds manipulation. If it was some kind of pity timer, then it would be forcing a crystal to reward something specific (or a specific rarity). But if it was a force, then the one 3* champion would be a counter-example that suggests something else.

There's no reason to believe the game doesn't contain bugs or oddities: in fact I myself have reported a higher than statistically likely example of duplicate rolls in large runs of crystal openings. But that's not manipulation as most people mean.

GapToothWitch wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GapToothWitch wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GapToothWitch wrote: »

Valid points, but Miike did not say any of this was (except time).

Again - he stated "No visual design, production time, or engineering time involved" ... it feels like they already have those exact drop rates just taking their sweet time posting it.

That's the opposite of what he said: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/306230/#Comment_306230

This is correct. We're not looking for a workaround, nor did we ever try to look for a "way around this". We've been working on how we are going to make them visible in game. There is a lot of time and work involved in making this happen, including visual design, production time, engineering time, among other requirements.

Note, he was talking about making the information available in-game, not what the requirements would be to construct a forum post with the odds. His comments are therefore not strictly relevant to your questions or my answers.

Right so let's have them respond to why a simple forum post won't do, instead of these back and forth essays.

They engaged in the conversation about this so they can respond to our reasonable questions.

You give me the impression of someone who asked two questions that had no interest in the answers.

I directed the question to someone but someone else responded.

I'd like to hear it from the horses mouth.

If you quote me, I have to presume any question of the form "what do you think" is directed at me.

Kabam Miike

Hey Guys,

I know that you think that posting them in the Forums is quick and easy, but it is not, and doesn't satisfy what we are trying to do, which is make Drop Rates available in game. We will not be posting them in the forums, so I just want to shut that conversation down right now.

DNA3000 wrote: »

There's a patent, ergo Kabam must be doing it.

Why would KABAM create these patents without the intention of using them? That's just bad business and a waste of time and money. Sure, changes are made and bases may not have developed as they intended (for example) but I find it hard to believe that they create this probability relationship to spending and not use it. They haven't outright denied it either. Just that they don't talk about drop rates, blah, blah, blah....

rogueKlyntar wrote: »

Bosley wrote: »

KABAM cannot simply put down the drop rates as they are flexible and change based on spending habits of the player.

"The distribution probabilities of the individual potential awards associated with probability item bundles vary depending on the purchase history of the user activating a probability item bundle."

https://www.google.com/patents/US9744446

BULL! They can still tell us how often any particular Champ ought to drop in a pool of s people with y crystals each!

No, because according to the patent each persons drop rate is different based on their previous spending habits. It's not static and tied to specific amounts of crystals because some of those could have been rewarded and not purchased.

Kabam Miike

Bosley wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

There's a patent, ergo Kabam must be doing it.

Why would KABAM create these patents without the intention of using them? That's just bad business and a waste of time and money. Sure, changes are made and bases may not have developed as they intended (for example) but I find it hard to believe that they create this probability relationship to spending and not use it. They haven't outright denied it either. Just that they don't talk about drop rates, blah, blah, blah....

Actually, that happens A LOT. Just because a patent is filed doesn't mean something is used, or even ever developed by any given company. It's extremely common.

BitterSteel wrote: »

It’s always nice when you ask a question that the only answer that matters would be from a Kabam official representative but instead we get a kabam wannabe representative, isn’t it?

This sort of thing used to sting a little. In 2005. In reality, it turns out to be a very good filter for determining whose judgments really matter. There will always be people who support you, and those who denigrate you. But the only ones on both sides that really matter are the thoughtful ones. When it comes to any subject, in this case game development, I would rather everyone who knows nothing disagree with me and only 50% of those who do know something agree with me, than 100% of those who know nothing agree with me and all of those who do know something disagree with me.

This sort of thing is the price I willingly pay. And it is a very small price.

Bosley wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

There's a patent, ergo Kabam must be doing it.

Why would KABAM create these patents without the intention of using them? That's just bad business and a waste of time and money. Sure, changes are made and bases may not have developed as they intended (for example) but I find it hard to believe that they create this probability relationship to spending and not use it. They haven't outright denied it either. Just that they don't talk about drop rates, blah, blah, blah....

They did deny that MCOC was using the patent in question more than once on the forums. I recall a post by Adora, and I believe another on a separate occasion from Miike.

Bosley wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

There's a patent, ergo Kabam must be doing it.

Why would KABAM create these patents without the intention of using them? That's just bad business and a waste of time and money.

Actually, companies often patent every remotely original idea they can come up with, not just to use them directly but also to build up an intellectual property portfolio that can have value, and defensively to ensure no one else comes along and patents it later.