How many panther covers do you get from the 10pk?

Unknown

Hello all!
I was wondering if anyone out there has had any luck with buying the panther hulk 10pk. I need a panther because the stupid rubber banding belping out new players cause me to lose out of the panther event. Rant over.
I need a panther to compete in the hulk event since they are FORCING PANTHER and now they took out the hulk comic pack where I still has a small chance of getting one.

Unknown

You get one cover garanteed, plus 15% chances of getting one for every other covers. You you might get 2, 3 if lucky, 1 if not lucky.

Unknown

Thanks. My luck with cover and pack is not very lucky.

Nighthawk81

I forked over the HP to by a 10-pack when Psylocke was the guaranteed pull and got ONE. And the rest of the covers were mostly for characters I don't use. I know what we can pull is all random but I was not happy.

Unknown

Jdberia wrote:

I forked over the HP to by a 10-pack when Psylocke was the guaranteed pull and got ONE. And the rest of the covers were mostly for characters I don't use. I know what we can pull is all random but I was not happy.

This. I stupidly (last time ever) forked over the money for the HP to buy a ten pack after being frustrated at being locked out of Hulk nodes.

I got one Blue BP, 2 Thors and SEVEN Modern Hawkeye covers. I was honestly £&@#ing disgusted at that. There are no 2* covers I need, but to throw 7 M Hawkeye covers at someone is taking the piss. I resolved then and there that MPQ isn't getting another penny from me.

Unknown

I have the worst luck with covers. It seems I have a knack for pulling the most useless covers (as far as I'm concerned). You just have to take a look at my Daredevil (4/2/1) or Black Panther (3/1/2). The useful covers came as rewards, the useless (2/0/0 in both cases) came from tokens. So I don't even bother with special/event tokens.

Spend HP for more frustration and for an 85% chance I will pull 2* tokens or 15% worthless 3*? No thanks. I'll just be patient and level the abilities I want with HP. My roster is 32/32 now so I doubt I will increase the size. From now on it's 450 HP per hero and it means I can level one 3* for each 3 worthless heroes I will have to keep around knowing I will never level them. In the near future, if I have to make some space I will just delete Bagman, Modern Hawkeye and quite possibly Iron Man 35.

HailMary

allorin wrote:

Jdberia wrote:

I forked over the HP to by a 10-pack when Psylocke was the guaranteed pull and got ONE. And the rest of the covers were mostly for characters I don't use. I know what we can pull is all random but I was not happy.

This. I stupidly (last time ever) forked over the money for the HP to buy a ten pack after being frustrated at being locked out of Hulk nodes.

I got one Blue BP, 2 Thors and SEVEN Modern Hawkeye covers. I was honestly £&@#ing disgusted at that. There are no 2* covers I need, but to throw 7 M Hawkeye covers at someone is taking the piss. I resolved then and there that MPQ isn't getting another penny from me.

Ouch. I'm really curious as to the probability breakdown for specific packs during specific times. M.Hawkeye, specifically, seems to be given out like candy in current Heroics, much as Cap seemed to be during Brotherhood. Perhaps they tweak cover-pull probabilities from event to event, in order to increase the chances of specifically pulling the worst buffed character. Or, maybe it's just a lot of reporting bias. I dunno.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

allorin wrote:

Jdberia wrote:

I forked over the HP to by a 10-pack when Psylocke was the guaranteed pull and got ONE. And the rest of the covers were mostly for characters I don't use. I know what we can pull is all random but I was not happy.

This. I stupidly (last time ever) forked over the money for the HP to buy a ten pack after being frustrated at being locked out of Hulk nodes.

I got one Blue BP, 2 Thors and SEVEN Modern Hawkeye covers. I was honestly £&@#ing disgusted at that. There are no 2* covers I need, but to throw 7 M Hawkeye covers at someone is taking the piss. I resolved then and there that MPQ isn't getting another penny from me.

Ouch. I'm really curious as to the probability breakdown for specific packs during specific times. M.Hawkeye, specifically, seems to be given out like candy in current Heroics, much as Cap seemed to be during Brotherhood. Perhaps they tweak cover-pull probabilities from event to event, in order to increase the chances of specifically pulling the worst buffed character. Or, maybe it's just a lot of reporting bias. I dunno.

Probability is the same as it always is for a heroic pull - 1 in 6.

That being said, event tokens exhibit a very narrow window of obtainable characters, unless stated otherwise on the token description. For this event, the Hulk Comic Pack generates "Powered-Up" heroes, which limits the character possibilities for 2**s to just three: Modern Hawkeye, Thor, and Original Black Widow. As one of these three characters has an approximately 83% chance of being pulled, many copies of a single character are not uncommon.

For none of the other 9 characters to be any of the 3*** characters, the probability is (5/6)^9 = 19.38%

Thus, there is a 1 in 5.16 chance in every 10-pack that none of the pulls beyond the guaranteed one will contain any 3***s at all.

Tough odds to chew on, when essentially buying a $30 lottery ticket for 3800-4000 hero points.

HailMary

Lyrian wrote:

Probability is the same as it always is for a heroic pull - 1 in 6.

That being said, event tokens exhibit a very narrow window of obtainable characters, unless stated otherwise on the token description. For this event, the Hulk Comic Pack generates "Powered-Up" heroes, which limits the character possibilities for 2**s to just three: Modern Hawkeye, Thor, and Original Black Widow. As one of these three characters has an approximately 83% chance of being pulled, many copies of a single character are not uncommon.

For none of the other 9 characters to be any of the 3*** characters, the probability is (5/6)^9 = 19.38%

Thus, there is a 1 in 5.16 chance in every 10-pack that none of the pulls beyond the guaranteed one will contain any 3***s at all.

Tough odds to chew on, when essentially buying a $30 lottery ticket for 3800-4000 hero points.

Fair enough. I suppose it's reporting bias, then: there seems to be a lot of people getting a preponderance of MHawkeyes from Hulk tokens. It doesn't help my subconscious perceptions that I've pulled 3 MHawkeyes out of 5 Hulk tokens (which admittedly is statistically meaningless).

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

Probability is the same as it always is for a heroic pull - 1 in 6.

That being said, event tokens exhibit a very narrow window of obtainable characters, unless stated otherwise on the token description. For this event, the Hulk Comic Pack generates "Powered-Up" heroes, which limits the character possibilities for 2**s to just three: Modern Hawkeye, Thor, and Original Black Widow. As one of these three characters has an approximately 83% chance of being pulled, many copies of a single character are not uncommon.

For none of the other 9 characters to be any of the 3*** characters, the probability is (5/6)^9 = 19.38%

Thus, there is a 1 in 5.16 chance in every 10-pack that none of the pulls beyond the guaranteed one will contain any 3***s at all.

Tough odds to chew on, when essentially buying a $30 lottery ticket for 3800-4000 hero points.

Fair enough. I suppose it's reporting bias, then: there seems to be a lot of people getting a preponderance of MHawkeyes from Hulk tokens. It doesn't help my subconscious perceptions that I've pulled 3 MHawkeyes out of 5 Hulk tokens (which admittedly is statistically meaningless).

Assuming equal weighting for the three 2** heroes, and the 5 in 6 chance of pulling a 2** from a event heroic, the odds in each pull of obtaining a specific 2** hero (MHawkeye) is (5/6) * (1/3) = 27.78% or 1 in 3.6.

A 3 in 5 pull is a bit above the norm here, but with a sample size of only 5, reasonably possible to occur. With the small sample size, any solid conclusions are unlikely (as you mention, statistically meaningless) with any real level of certainty.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

Probability is the same as it always is for a heroic pull - 1 in 6.

That being said, event tokens exhibit a very narrow window of obtainable characters, unless stated otherwise on the token description. For this event, the Hulk Comic Pack generates "Powered-Up" heroes, which limits the character possibilities for 2**s to just three: Modern Hawkeye, Thor, and Original Black Widow. As one of these three characters has an approximately 83% chance of being pulled, many copies of a single character are not uncommon.

For none of the other 9 characters to be any of the 3*** characters, the probability is (5/6)^9 = 19.38%

Thus, there is a 1 in 5.16 chance in every 10-pack that none of the pulls beyond the guaranteed one will contain any 3***s at all.

Tough odds to chew on, when essentially buying a $30 lottery ticket for 3800-4000 hero points.

Fair enough. I suppose it's reporting bias, then: there seems to be a lot of people getting a preponderance of MHawkeyes from Hulk tokens. It doesn't help my subconscious perceptions that I've pulled 3 MHawkeyes out of 5 Hulk tokens (which admittedly is statistically meaningless).

The google doc mitigates some of the bias: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... REE#gid=45

HailMary

gobstopper wrote:

The google doc mitigates some of the bias: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... REE#gid=45

Oh nice!

I didn't notice that you had a separate sheet for each event token. Just added myself.

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

Probability is the same as it always is for a heroic pull - 1 in 6.

That being said, event tokens exhibit a very narrow window of obtainable characters, unless stated otherwise on the token description. For this event, the Hulk Comic Pack generates "Powered-Up" heroes, which limits the character possibilities for 2**s to just three: Modern Hawkeye, Thor, and Original Black Widow. As one of these three characters has an approximately 83% chance of being pulled, many copies of a single character are not uncommon.

For none of the other 9 characters to be any of the 3*** characters, the probability is (5/6)^9 = 19.38%

Thus, there is a 1 in 5.16 chance in every 10-pack that none of the pulls beyond the guaranteed one will contain any 3***s at all.

Tough odds to chew on, when essentially buying a $30 lottery ticket for 3800-4000 hero points.

That's the probability if a truly random draw were occurring, which it almost certainly isn't

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a math guy, so please try to contain any nerd rage and accept my apologies in advance!

I'm gonna start by saying that computers themselves are unable to generate truly random numbers. There are many advanced algorithms out there that use a seed to generate what appears to be a random integer, but really it's just part of a larger sequence we can't perceive. Unless Demiurge has Skynet running their servers, the computer has no free will to choose. The only other alternative would be a correlate the number with naturally occurring random event. A well cited example involves hooking a computer up to a Geiger counter which is monitoring a piece of Uranium. Since radioactive decay is a completely random naturally occurring event, the data received from the counter allows the computer to make an uniformed, and truly random number. Unfortunately (fortunately?) it's also pretty unlikely that there is a piece of weapons-grade plutonium in the Demiurge server farm.

The system used for MPQ is likely far less sophisticated than even a complex algorithm. The computational requirements would effect performance, bandwidth, and ultimately the bottom line. I suspect that the client polls the server to find out the draw pool (characters available), takes a sample following a simple sequence, and then delivers the results in the form of our winnings. In the case where the pool is more limited, like with special event tokens, the likelihood of repeated draws of the same object increase. Then take in consideration the frequency of the server poll , the refresh time of the sample pool, and then factor in the rate of occurrence (ie *3 @ 20% vs. *2 @ 80%) and our chances of getting the same character increase exponentially.

Just as an example, let's take the Amazon Cloud player, which I have running on my PC right now. Currently I have 31045 songs in the cloud. If I choose to play them at "random", you better believe I'm going to get a few songs from a particular artist in a row. If that were a truly random pull, those odds would be close to winning the Powerball. Instead, it's following a system similar to what I mentioned above.

That being said, if the sample pulls in your favor you might get multiple BP covers -- but probability is not on your side. Over the course of the game, I've purchased a few ten packs. I've had much better fortune with the cheaper Heroic packs than I have ever had with the special packs. This is because the size of the draw pool is much larger and offers more room for variance. In fact, one of the first packs I bought gave me 3 X-Force covers (R/G/Y) on top of the 3*. I also recently (and stupidly) bought the Psylocke pack. I did get 2 Psylockes, but the other 8 covers were Captain America (seriously). This may be anecdotal, but I also believe you have better odds when purchasing a Heroic 10-pack rather than the cheaper alternative of buying 10 covers separately via the daily deal. My reasoning is that the server is forced to poll a particular segment of the pool to deliver your guaranteed 3*, increasing the likelihood that the sample includes adjacent draws.

tl;dr
Don't buy Special Event 10-Packs
If you want to purchase a cover, it's smarter to spend 3750 for x3 covers you can choose rather than 3800 for 10 at 'random'
If you want to buy a random pack, wait until the characters you want have been added to the Heroic pool and buy that instead
+grain of salt

Unknown

Just want to note that I got a GSBW and Bullseye from my PvE Heroic tokens, vs. the 9 out of 9 Modern Hawkeyes I got from the Special Event tokens we've been getting the rest of the week.

Unknown

Completely agree with your statements, Jachdo.

However, in this situation, the OP paid the 3800 HP because he/she didn't have any Black Panther covers and wanted the guaranteed cover through the 10-pack. Heroic tokens can't pull a Black Panther at the moment.

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

Completely agree with your statements, Jachdo.

However, in this situation, the OP paid the 3800 HP because he/she didn't have any Black Panther covers and wanted the guaranteed cover through the 10-pack. Heroic tokens can't pull a Black Panther at the moment.

I know, I got a little off track

Ideally, I would say wait until BP gets added to Heroic pull and purchase that. It's cheaper, and even if you don't get BP, you'll likely get other things you need.

If you desperately want a certain character that you have no covers for, the next best bet would be to try to place in a tourney offering him/her as a prize.

If that isn't possible due to level / roster limitation, then you probably would be better off with a Heroic pack anyway

But yeah, the only guaranteed way to purchase a cover for a hero you don't have at all is pony up for their featured 10-pack. I'm just saying it's worst method given your odds vs. the expense.

I completely understand though -- I've done it myself!

Unknown

Ug, this is a personal pet peeve of mine, but the whole 'random is not really random' is totally meaningless in the context of a game. Let's say that the cover generated is simply a sequence that still satisfies the fact that all 2* are equally rare, and 3* appears 1/6. If you buy the 10-pack they give you a random Black Panther first and then just read the next 9 covers on the sequence, while buying 1 at a time it just gives you the next cover in the sequence. Such a sequence might look something like:

Hawkeye, BP, Thor, Thor, OBW, Punisher, Hulk, Hawkeye, Thor, Hawkeye, etc., etc.

Let's say this sequence is only 1000 covers long (even though it's trivial to generate a much longer sequence) and you were handed the list, and you noticed that Black Panther appears on cover #16 and cover #10-#15 are all Thors and this is the only sequence of 6 Thors in a row in the overall sequence. So you know if you get 6 Thors in a row the next one is Black Panther. What good does this do for you? Absolutely nothing because you have no idea where on this sequence you're at, as this sequence is handed out to all the players of MPQ. On average you're nowhere near the '6 Thors in a row' position. Even if say a guy just posted like "I got 6 Thors in a row this is messed up!" (and this guy doens't know about the trick), as long as there is more than you that knows this secret, there's no guaranteed you'll beat any other guy who just read this. For that matter, someone may have bought that cover #16 before the guy with 6 Thors even let you know of his misfortune. This is a system that isn't random at all, and yet the outcome of this system, to any observer, is effectively random because you simply have no way of knowing what position on the sequence you're in.

The whole 'pseudorandom doesn't approximate reality' is because no one is sure if the decay of an Uranium atom can be captured by a formula. We know the half life of Uranium is X years but that's an observation. We don't know what exactly causes the atoms to decay at that rate so we're not sure if you can simply just say '1 atom decays every Y seconds' even if that's what math predicts. But there's nothing you are trying to approximate in the cover distribution. Getting 1/6 cover being 3* is a defined criteria, not an observation.

Unknown

Jachdo wrote:

That's the probability if a truly random draw were occurring, which it almost certainly isn't

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a math guy, so please try to contain any nerd rage and accept my apologies in advance!

I'm gonna start by saying that computers themselves are unable to generate truly random numbers. There are many advanced algorithms out there that use a seed to generate what appears to be a random integer, but really it's just part of a larger sequence we can't perceive. Unless Demiurge has Skynet running their servers, the computer has no free will to choose. The only other alternative would be a correlate the number with naturally occurring random event. A well cited example involves hooking a computer up to a Geiger counter which is monitoring a piece of Uranium. Since radioactive decay is a completely random naturally occurring event, the data received from the counter allows the computer to make an uniformed, and truly random number. Unfortunately (fortunately?) it's also pretty unlikely that there is a piece of weapons-grade plutonium in the Demiurge server farm.
...

Thank you for this information. I learned about the first part when I was learning C++ and had to create randomly generated numbers, but not about the Geiger alternative and the rest you explain. It's great to know a solution to a problem. Now, where did I put the radioactive isotopes?

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Ug, this is a personal pet peeve of mine, but the whole 'random is not really random' is totally meaningless in the context of a game. Let's say that the cover generated is simply a sequence that still satisfies the fact that all 2* are equally rare, and 3* appears 1/6. If you buy the 10-pack they give you a random Black Panther first and then just read the next 9 covers on the sequence, while buying 1 at a time it just gives you the next cover in the sequence. Such a sequence might look something like:

Hawkeye, BP, Thor, Thor, OBW, Punisher, Hulk, Hawkeye, Thor, Hawkeye, etc., etc.

Let's say this sequence is only 1000 covers long (even though it's trivial to generate a much longer sequence) and you were handed the list, and you noticed that Black Panther appears on cover #16 and cover #10-#15 are all Thors and this is the only sequence of 6 Thors in a row in the overall sequence. So you know if you get 6 Thors in a row the next one is Black Panther. What good does this do for you? Absolutely nothing because you have no idea where on this sequence you're at, as this sequence is handed out to all the players of MPQ. On average you're nowhere near the '6 Thors in a row' position. Even if say a guy just posted like "I got 6 Thors in a row this is messed up!" (and this guy doens't know about the trick), as long as there is more than you that knows this secret, there's no guaranteed you'll beat any other guy who just read this. For that matter, someone may have bought that cover #16 before the guy with 6 Thors even let you know of his misfortune. This is a system that isn't random at all, and yet the outcome of this system, to any observer, is effectively random because you simply have no way of knowing what position on the sequence you're in.

The whole 'pseudorandom doesn't approximate reality' is because no one is sure if the decay of an Uranium atom can be captured by a formula. We know the half life of Uranium is X years but that's an observation. We don't know what exactly causes the atoms to decay at that rate so we're not sure if you can simply just say '1 atom decays every Y seconds' even if that's what math predicts. But there's nothing you are trying to approximate in the cover distribution. Getting 1/6 cover being 3* is a defined criteria, not an observation.

Jachdo wrote:

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a math guy, so please try to contain any nerd rage and accept my apologies in advance!

I think you missed the first part of my post

Joking aside, I completely agree that the concepts of 'true random' and 'perceived random' are arbitrary. I probably should have left that whole bit out, stuck to the tl;dr, and called it a day.

Just to clarify though, I'm not trying to espouse any kind of philosophy that the game is all an illusion and we can never truly be sure of the results of a token draw. Put simply, something clearly ain't right. Whatever method they are using obvious needs a little work.

Leaving the 3* characters out, we have twelve 2* heroes. 10 of these heroes have 3 unique covers each, and two have 2 unique covers each -- that's 34 potential covers that could drop. If my math is correct (and it may very well not be), the chances of pulling the same Blue Hawkeye 10x is... very, very unlikely. 10 drawn from a pool of 34 gives up approximately 131,000,000 combinations.

C(n,r)
n= 34 (total covers)
r= 10 (number of samples)

34!/(10!(34-10)!) = 131,128,140

I couldn't even find an online calculator with enough decimal places to calculate the probability of drawing the same exact cover 10x in a row. Whatever the case, it's about 100x more probable that you would win the lottery.

This isn't selective memory as its happened to us all. Perhaps not always 10 times in a row, but enough to safely say that they draws are not random (pseudo or otherwise)


EDIT:

On reflection, the total number of permutations is actually smaller since that sample was pulled from a smaller pool of 2* characters. Regardless, it's damn unlikey

Unknown

Source: http://xkcd.com/221/

A result of 4 gets you a mHawkeye right now.

Unknown

At least you guys aren't getting Moonstone, Daken, and 2
* Wolvie from almost EVERY pull.