More Probability Whining (Legendary Token Pulls)

OneLastGambit

simonsez wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

If enough of us actually presented the devs with empirical evidence to support this claim then perhaps it would be looked into further

Not going to hold my breath on that. Ice says he's fine with the data he's seen, and he has access to all the data we'd have. I just don't know what their background is re: statistical analytics. For all I know, all they've done is look at aggregated data that shows something like 100,000 token have been redeemed, and 10,000 5*s have been rewarded. But just because the aggregated hit rate is 10%, that doesn't mean it's random.

Agree with you on both points there, I doubt that they review the data in the same kind of detail as I'm accustomed to in my job and I also don't expect anything to change. If people are dropping 10k plus per person (for the whales anyway) then I sure as hell wouldn't change anything until that userbase of whales stops spending - much as we don't like it they are the reason the game exists.

simonsez

OneLastGambit wrote:

If people are dropping 10k plus per person (for the whales anyway) then I sure as hell wouldn't change anything

Exactly. From their perspective, THAT'S the most important number. And it certainly would seem to help their cause if there were stories of people being able to whale out a 5* via spending far, far less than what would be expected.

DC1972

If the RNG is working correctly then mine must be stuck. Opened 10 legendary when Phoenix was available early. Three MF. Opened legendary the next day and got MF. 4/11 ignoring the fact of whether usable or not.

How about a system where we could sell back 4/5* for CP? Even 1 CP would be better than selling off a useless 4* for A measly 1000 ISO.

CallTheStorm

DC1972 wrote:

If the RNG is working correctly then mine must be stuck. Opened 10 legendary when Phoenix was available early. Three MF. Opened legendary the next day and got MF. 4/11 ignoring the fact of whether usable or not.

How about a system where we could sell back 4/5* for CP? Even 1 CP would be better than selling off a useless 4* for A measly 1000 ISO.

I totally agree with this idea. They can set the buy back 4/5* for CP should be only pulled from LT.

Pylgrim

OneLastGambit wrote:

The reason why we want better odds, or a lesser impact of luck is precisely because the progression is almost nonexistant compared to progressing from 1* to 3*. For example, in a week, in average, a player can get up to around 32 certain 3* covers and as many, if no more, random chances of getting more. In that same time, only up to around 8 certain 4*s (and for most of those you need to place top 1-2 in PVE and PVP) and up to around 7 random ones (again, most of those by reaching the final progression reward in each event). So not only there are several times fewer opportunities to grab a 4*, those opportunities also come at the expense of great effort and expenditure. So when you open a 3* cover that you already have in a random token, the loss is minimal; you have dozens more to open and if you still don't get lucky you just need to wait a bit until the corresponding PVP, PVE or DDQ event that rewards exactly the covers that you need comes around. But when one of the precious, rare, hard-to acquire chances to open a 4* fizzles, it's a significant loss and a terrible feeling.

OneLastGambit wrote:

Just for edifications sake - the people who are keeping track of how many times they have received the same pulls are you also keeping track of how many times the entire userbase does not?

It can feel as though the RNG is personally skewing your odds but it is not however, because the RNG does not operate on a single user level, it works on the entire user base and therefore in order to accurately decide whether or not it is broken you need to track the entire data set and not just 9 pulls from one user.

Incidentally even IF it did function per user (not per user base) then you would still need to track every single legendary token you have ever pulled to decide if the RNG was broken... and even then you would have to track it over a sufficient enough timespan to determine true random generation (in reality this time period is infinity - however this isn't practical).

Just food for thought.

I work in the field of statistical data analysis so I'm used to looking at these kind of issues from a research stand point... and even still the game convinces me that it's picking on me sometimes when it gives me a near 75% MHawkeye pull rate on Heroic tokens

Every time you post this, every time I post this same rebuttal, and every time, apparently, you ignore it. We all (or most of us) understand luck, odds and chance. We understand "runs" and we understand statistics and probability. The problem is that the highest, rarest, harder-to-get tier of rewards should not rely on luck for prize handling (or at least minimise its impact). Yes, some people will draw the expected averages, some people will enjoy "good luck runs" and some wretched people will suffer of "terrible luck runs", and yes, that's how luck works. But NO ONE at this level of play and effort should get to feel what it is felt in a "terrible luck run". It's simply not fair, even if statistically correct. So yeah, chance works like this, there's no way to change it... except by removing chance from the equation or minimising the part it plays! That's what we are asking for here.

Right so the crux is then that you want an absolute certainty of obtaining the best covers in the game with the appropriate level of effort. Is that correct? You don't want any element of chance in it.

So, for example, if they made it so that you cannot obtain the best covers via token pulls and could only get it via placing first or second in the PVP end of season rankings that would be better? This would be a fair exchange of effort/reward yes? Best cover in game goes to best player in game.

You want to know why random chance is the best and fairest way? Whales. If the best covers only go to the best players guess who they are going to be? Whales. The people who already have the best maxed out rosters that nobody else can compete with. With random chance everyone has the chance to get the best covers.

I can see why people are frustrated, I honestly do. I never ignored your rebuttals, its that everytime this issue pops up the question/complaint is never "please change RNG to a non RNG system", the issue is always "Why do I only get rubbish tokens" - which is the issue that I answered.

Personally if they are to not use RNG (as you suggest) then for me the best and fairest way to obtain these covers would be to hand them out in Shield Re-supply to the people who have played longest. But as annoying as the RNG is (and trust me I find it annoying - I've pulled 5 MHawkeyes today from 3 heroic tokens and 2 event tokens) I'd rather stick with that system because it prevents the top of rankings from completely running away from the rest.

See, the thing is that I don't want "absolute certainty" of drawing the "best covers". I'd be happy enough to get covers of Mr. Fantastic, a reportedly weak character, just because mine is 2/2/1 and I need covers, while I'm positive I could already have completed a second IW if I wanted. I only want progress, and drawing the few covers that I have maxed over and over is the anti-thesis of progress, it is worse than not drawing anything. I don't want the best covers to go only to the best (or richest) players, but I want everybody who is at my level of play to progress. You are concerned about whales gaining an advantage? So consider how whales get every character maxed within minutes of its release while non whales will spend ages trying to fruitlessly catch up, drawing IW over and over when they need covers for all the other 15+ characters languishing at 4 covers or less.

So no, I don't want to get exactly whatever I want, and served in a silver tray. I'm fine with chance playing a role in how I progress (i.e. allowing me to finish first, say, JG before HB or whatever), but I don't want it completely stopping my progress, and that's what it has been doing.

Unknown

Pylgrim wrote:

See, the thing is that I don't want "absolute certainty" of drawing the "best covers". I'd be happy enough to get covers of Mr. Fantastic, a reportedly weak character, just because mine is 2/2/1 and I need covers, while I'm positive I could already have completed a second IW if I wanted. I only want progress, and drawing the few covers that I have maxed over and over is the anti-thesis of progress, it is worse than not drawing anything. I don't want the best covers to go only to the best (or richest) players, but I want everybody who is at my level of play to progress. You are concerned about whales gaining an advantage? So consider how whales get every character maxed within minutes of its release while non whales will spend ages trying to fruitlessly catch up, drawing IW over and over when they need covers for all the other 15+ characters languishing at 4 covers or less.

So no, I don't want to get exactly whatever I want, and served in a silver tray. I'm fine with chance playing a role in how I progress (i.e. allowing me to finish first, say, JG before HB or whatever), but I don't want it completely stopping my progress, and that's what it has been doing.

I get the feeling that their solution to this issue is, well.

Release more 4* characters.

The more new 4*s there are, the less likely you'll draw IW, the more likely you'll draw characters you don't have.

Proooobably not the best solution, since I wager you just want no more Susan Storms, but it does help overall, I guess.

PriceCzech

I'm not really going to whine much in this post, but I will say that my odds are probably close to the middle of the bell curve. I do want to know if the odds for a specific color of a cover have the same odds, because based on my pulls, I'd say there is a bias. I didn't like probability and statistics, so if someone wants to correlate my pulls to hard numbers, please feel free. I'd like to know as well.

30 Legendary Token Pulls:


x2

(already at 5)
x2 (already at 5)



x2
(already at 3)
x2
x2
x3 (already at 3)
(already at 3)
x2
(already at 3)
(already at 5)



x2 (already at 3)
(already at 3)

2 Legendary Token Pulls from Command Points:
(already at 5)
(already at 5)

Of these, I was able to use 17 of the 30, so overall, pretty good.

On a side note: Seriously? 3 bag-lady? All the same color? This is where I question some of the odds.

simonsez

PriceCzech wrote:

II do want to know if the odds for a specific color of a cover have the same odds, because based on my pulls, I'd say there is a bias.

The odds of getting any particular 4* three or more times out of 32 token pulls, is about 1.4%. So, while unlikely, it's not the sort of thing that'll set off major red flags. However, if a couple of your alliance-mates also got 2 or 3 yellow bag ladies the same day you did, that's the sort of thing that would (and these sorts of runs are exactly the sort of thing I'm seeing all the time)

editing for clarity: "The odds of getting any particular 4* three or more times out of 32 token pulls, is about 1.4%." is correct, but since there are currently 66 possible covers, the probability of getting ANY set of 3 or more out of 32 pulls, is more likely than not. But on the subject of overall clustering, there were 8 sets of 2 or more covers. The probability of getting at least that many dupes was only 10%.

Dauthi

IceIX wrote:

In regards to the more general feeling: We've looked at our odds. We've looked at drops. We continue to look at odds and drop runs. We have yet to find anything anomalous. The numbers of covers of all types from all cover packs have been and still are dropping in the displayed ratios, give or take very much within statistical variations. I totally get that it sucks that you see 3-4 covers in a row, but that's random being random. As was stated above, you never notice when you pull 12 Standards and they're all varied. You *do* notice when you pull 5 Venoms in a row though. Looking at it from a 100 foot view, that's a little streak blip in the otherwise very homogenous statistical run. Just as often, Venom doesn't pop out of 300 pack pulls in a row. But for you personally, that was signs that something is rigged. It really really does come down to being human nature to notice that. I mean, I sure as heck know better and *I* still have a hard time fighting down that feeling when Moonstone pops up 4 times on my 10x Heroic in a season pull.

I need 50% of the covers out there and started tracking my pulls because I felt like I was doing terrible, and I tracked recently 13 covers in a row I didn't need, this is like flipping tails 13 times in a row! Right now I am 4/19 tokens for covers I need, and that is terrible. To compound this it is starting to negatively effect me. Today I did the 4* DDQ with my Thing, who could have been better equipped. Unless I get a lucky streak, it will take a very long time for my bad luck to average out, and it will start effecting my ability to progress in the game itself as I run into DDQs I can't do.

You have to realize there are people who are going to beat the odds, and the ones who are getting unlucky want to quit when they are handed their 5th unneeded Invisible Woman for a 6 day event.

---19 legendary tokens---
Not in chronological order.

2 x Nick Fury (blue)
2 x Nick Fury (Purple)
2 x Invisible Woman (blue)
1 x Invisible Woman (yellow)
1 x Invisible Woman (green)
1 x X-Force (green)
1 x X-Force (black)
1 x Thor (yellow)
1 x Kingpin (black)
1 x Kingpin (purple)
1 x Kingpin (yellow) Needed
1 x Thing (green)
1 x Deadpool (red)
1 x Jean Grey (green)
1 x Antman (purple) Needed
1 x Mr. Fantastic (blue) Needed
1 x Cyclops (yellow) Needed

Progress rate 21% (should be 50%)

I would like to note that during this run my girlfriend pulled four 5*s with roughly half that amount of tokens. She plays half as much as me and due to good/bad luck I am going to get lapped by her?

Pylgrim

Dauthi wrote:

Progress rate 21% (should be 50%)

21% success rate instead of 50% is pretty bad. Worse, mine is 26% when it should be 81%. In other words, there's quite a big range of how people can get screwed by luck, when we shouldn't be getting screwed at all, at this level of play. People who don't understand what we're claiming for here think that we want a 100%, all the time, every time. No, I just want my freaking 81% odds. If I did get it, then I wouldn't complain when I get screwed a 19% of times.

Sadly, that's how chance behaves and not something that can be coded, so the whole system needs to be overhauled.

Pongie

Not related to legendary token pulls, but my Juggernaught heroic token gave me a 4* cover and what do you know? It's one of the three 4* covers I have maxed already, Reed blue.

Just hurts that much more when you thought you hit the jackpot but then be totally disappointed.

Dauthi

Pylgrim wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

Progress rate 21% (should be 50%)

21% success rate instead of 50% is pretty bad. Worse, mine is 26% when it should be 81%. In other words, there's quite a big range of how people can get screwed by luck, when we shouldn't be getting screwed at all, at this level of play. People who don't understand what we're claiming for here think that we want a 100%, all the time, every time. No, I just want my freaking 81% odds. If I did get it, then I wouldn't complain when I get screwed a 19% of times.

Sadly, that's how chance behaves and not something that can be coded, so the whole system needs to be overhauled.

The thing is, I strongly believe your pull rate will iron itself back to average because it should. The problem is how long will it take? Legendary tokens are few, and it will take you months to get back what you have lost. In the mean time you are losing out since your roster isn't where it should be.

There has to be a mechanism to counter bad luck, because these players are getting screwed pretty badly.

Pylgrim

Dauthi wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

Progress rate 21% (should be 50%)

21% success rate instead of 50% is pretty bad. Worse, mine is 26% when it should be 81%. In other words, there's quite a big range of how people can get screwed by luck, when we shouldn't be getting screwed at all, at this level of play. People who don't understand what we're claiming for here think that we want a 100%, all the time, every time. No, I just want my freaking 81% odds. If I did get it, then I wouldn't complain when I get screwed a 19% of times.

Sadly, that's how chance behaves and not something that can be coded, so the whole system needs to be overhauled.

The thing is, I strongly believe your pull rate will iron itself back to average because it should. The problem is how long will it take? Legendary tokens are few, and it will take you months to get back what you have lost. In the mean time you are losing out since your roster isn't where it should be.

There has to be a mechanism to counter bad luck, because these players are getting screwed pretty badly.

Well put. At this rate it would take around 20 successes in a row (my maths may be a bit screwy, but I don't think I'm too far), just to get to the point where good and bad luck have reached a sort of balance. At my current rate of acquisition of LTs, that would be 3-4 months, and every time I don't get a success will set me back around a week or so. As it is, I don't think I'd ever reach a balance, but since in the meantime I'll be slowly earning 4* covers, I'll be diminishing my good odds of opening anything useful, making the instances of "good luck" weigh more and more. But even in the best conditions, it will be months and months in which I, a loyal and dedicated player, semi-regular spender, and active member of the community get to feel as though the game is giving me the finger. And so does every body who is suffering in big or small measure of back luck with their own LTs.

simonsez

Dauthi wrote:

---19 legendary tokens---
Not in chronological order.

2 x Nick Fury (blue)
2 x Nick Fury (Purple)
2 x Invisible Woman (blue)
1 x Invisible Woman (yellow)
1 x Invisible Woman (green)
1 x X-Force (green)
1 x X-Force (black)
1 x Thor (yellow)
1 x Kingpin (black)
1 x Kingpin (purple)
1 x Kingpin (yellow) Needed
1 x Thing (green)
1 x Deadpool (red)
1 x Jean Grey (green)
1 x Antman (purple) Needed
1 x Mr. Fantastic (blue) Needed
1 x Cyclops (yellow) Needed

You got 4 Nicks and 4 Bag Ladies. The odds of getting 2 or more sets of 4 or more of the same character out of 19 pulls is about 1.2%. Again, not the sort of thing that will irrefutably debunk the notion of randomness, but it's yet another item to add to the long, long list of people who are reporting results that are highly unlikely if these pulls were truly random. And I can't help but notice that your dupes were two of the three oldest 4*s, not something like Iceman and RHulk.

jackstar0

Pulled my third OML this morning from a CP-derived Legendary.

He's at 0/0/3 now. Oh well.

Dauthi

simonsez wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

---19 legendary tokens---
Not in chronological order.

2 x Nick Fury (blue)
2 x Nick Fury (Purple)
2 x Invisible Woman (blue)
1 x Invisible Woman (yellow)
1 x Invisible Woman (green)
1 x X-Force (green)
1 x X-Force (black)
1 x Thor (yellow)
1 x Kingpin (black)
1 x Kingpin (purple)
1 x Kingpin (yellow) Needed
1 x Thing (green)
1 x Deadpool (red)
1 x Jean Grey (green)
1 x Antman (purple) Needed
1 x Mr. Fantastic (blue) Needed
1 x Cyclops (yellow) Needed

You got 4 Nicks and 4 Bag Ladies. The odds of getting 2 or more sets of 4 or more of the same character out of 19 pulls is about 1.2%. Again, not the sort of thing that will irrefutably debunk the notion of randomness, but it's yet another item to add to the long, long list of people who are reporting results that are highly unlikely if these pulls were truly random. And I can't help but notice that your dupes were two of the three oldest 4*s, not something like Iceman and RHulk.

Getting dupes of the older characters was infuriating, I actually pulled 3 of those nicks in a row. You can ask my alliances, who had to hear me rage about it I was almost willing to accept conspiracy theories that it was more likely to get older covers. When it comes to odds, it would be a phenomenon if we didn't get people with weird odds popping up here and there. It's just terrible when you are hit with the bad phenomenon and just wish you could be average

Ruinate

Dauthi wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

Progress rate 21% (should be 50%)

21% success rate instead of 50% is pretty bad. Worse, mine is 26% when it should be 81%. In other words, there's quite a big range of how people can get screwed by luck, when we shouldn't be getting screwed at all, at this level of play. People who don't understand what we're claiming for here think that we want a 100%, all the time, every time. No, I just want my freaking 81% odds. If I did get it, then I wouldn't complain when I get screwed a 19% of times.

Sadly, that's how chance behaves and not something that can be coded, so the whole system needs to be overhauled.

The thing is, I strongly believe your pull rate will iron itself back to average because it should. The problem is how long will it take? Legendary tokens are few, and it will take you months to get back what you have lost. In the mean time you are losing out since your roster isn't where it should be.

There has to be a mechanism to counter bad luck, because these players are getting screwed pretty badly.

A mechanism that reduces streaky bad luck to individual players would be amazing, but that would only work if a mechanism that increase streaky bad luck doesn't currently exist. I personally think it's rng being rng, but I pulled 9 Captian Falcons from legs and that's seems kind of weird.

A long time ago in League of Legends, players were getting very angry because far too often, enemy players would escape with 1 hp because they would dodge 4 times in a row with only 1% dodge chance. Players were also angry because they would get 4-shot from back to back to back to back crits when the enemy player only had 5% chance to crit. Riot, the developers for League realized rng in this manner is simply not fun. They tweaked the system so that you would still only crit 5% of the time (if that was your character's crit rate) but you would see a lot less streaks of crits or non-crits. MPQ can really learn a lot from that game. From design choices, business model, game play, and timely responses. I know mobile games and pc games are very different, but one is the biggest game in the world for a reason, and the other needs a LOT of help. Both F2p.

alphabeta

My two cents.

Mathematical facts:

Clumping in a sign of randomness - a totally even distribution across all options is absolutely not random and is in fact less likely than any sort of grouping occurring.

The sample sizes people are quoting are pathetically small in mathematical terms - 5k plus minimum needed to be even approaching robustness.

It is impossible for a truly random sequence to be programmed - there is always a 'pattern' because it's a computer programme and it needs to be programmed with some sort of a sequence - the number of steps determines how close to 'random' it is but given it applies to the entire player base your individual outcomes are as close to random as is likely to be practicable unless you are conspiracy theorist enough to believe someone is staying awake night and day specifically to spoil your pulls personally in a darkened room somewhere in the second between clicking on the token and the reward being revealed.

That said some sort of ability to spend CP in microtransactional format to covert cover a colour 1 to cover a colour 2 for say 2 cp would be very welcome.

Darknes21

Feel ur pain pheregas!!!! My last 4 pulls LT were all Xforce Wolerine...2 yellow and 2 green! Too bad he is maxed out! What r the odds or that? Random my @s$

Darknes21

pheregas

Question since I'm not a programmer:

Are the mathematical formulae that are applied to random pulls for LT's affected by number of redemptions at a time?

For instance, at a certain time, XYZ tokens are currently the random token. If I redeem 10 tokens, is my pull rate biased by what is in that time slotted pool of covers?

Are the sequencial bad lucks due to redeeming them all at once?

I've redeemed several LTs since my original post and have not gotten a sequential pull since, but I've spaced them out every few days and no redemptions have been back to back.