Forum Thread

aesthetocyst

Forum Thread

DTStump

You should submit this to "Journal of Applied MPQology"

El Satanno

DTStump wrote:

You should submit this to "Journal of Applied MPQology"

Agreed. Well played, Aes.

You should also make me one of them nice sig banners.

KrisPWales

But... But... But I had three red Moonstone covers in a row so it can't be random!

In all seriousness, great effort!

OneLastGambit

Great post. Confirming what many people familiar with odds and statistical analysis already knew.

Now if only we can get the devs to read this post they might start understanding the forum frustration with the rng system.


Incidentally it's interesting to read that hoarding is an ineffective tactic (to a certain degree) however that (as stated) is only under the assumption that new characters are introduced to the pool, if the devs took a break for 2 seasons from making new characters then hoarding might a cost effective way for devs to allow people (vets mostly) to increase their odds of getting something useful.

h4n1s

Aes - you have a great future and potential career! You should quit playing MPQ and invest your potential and time elsewhere, where it truly matters!

(I like Aes's post - just in case someone would misunderstand my message)

Vhailorx

Nice post aesth!

Sadly, I think people who play the game and already understand statistics already knew all of this. And I doubt many other players will learn from it. So I don't know what the net effect of this post will be. Some players will still complain about demi cheating with token pulls, or asking for compensation after 10 LTs with no 5*s.

I really don't get it. People complain that demi is scamming them with biased tokens or ai cascades. But that's crazy. That's like accusing a casino of cheating at blackjack or **** or roullette. Why would they bother? The stated odds already clearly favor the house and people still want to play!

h4n1s

Vhailorx wrote:

Nice post aesth!

Sadly, I think people who play the game and already understand statistics already knew all of this. And I doubt many other players will learn from it. So I don't know what the net effect of this post will be. Some players will still complain about demi cheating with token pulls, or asking for compensation after 10 LTs with no 5*s.

I really don't get it. People complain that demi is scamming them with biased tokens or ai cascades. But that's crazy. That's like accusing a casino of cheating at blackjack or **** or roullette. Why would they bother? The stated odds already clearly favor the house and people still want to play!

I would say that comparing MPQ to casino is a big out of line. In casino you pay the price for a chance to multiply your money (gambling), in MPQ you use artificial currency in exchange for a chance to obtain artificial (and in real life useless) and virtual reward. Yes, you may say, that you can buy this artificial in game currency for real money, but still have no chance at all to monetize it back.

People tend to complain, because they buy a product for green dollars (or effort spent), but the product is then further subject of random and in XY% of cases totally useless to them (they threw their money out of window). No one is pushing them to do so, one may say, but the whole free2play system is designed in a way that you pay significant amount of money for low value - hence the ongoing frustration.

simonsez

aesthetocyst wrote:

Hoarding is a way to get ahead, to partially "defeat" RNG via the brute force of sheer quantity

This isn't correct. Hoarding is not a way to get ahead. If we assume that the RNG is fair, and the internal probability tables are constant, it doesn't matter if you open 1 token a day for a month, or hoard for a month and open 30 in one day. Your expected outcome of the 30 pulls is the same either way.

Hoarding only helps if you're waiting for a character to get added to the token pool, or if you don't have ISO and don't want to risk pulling extra covers you'd have to sell.

simonsez

aesthetocyst wrote:

Plotting the distribution of characters by quantity pulled (that is, disregarding colors entirely) yields a non-normal distribution.

This comment deserves follow-up...

MPQ_Daywalker

simonsez wrote:

Hoarding only helps if you're waiting for a character to get added to the token pool, or if you don't have ISO and don't want to risk pulling extra covers you'd have to sell.

Or if you don't have a bunch of 4* and 5* and have no HP for new slots (e.g., someone who isn't yet in the 4* or 5* transition).

simonsez wrote:

aesthetocyst wrote:

Plotting the distribution of characters by quantity pulled (that is, disregarding colors entirely) yields a non-normal distribution.

This comment deserves follow-up...

I'm not aesthetocyst, but the way I read this is that as MPQ players/humans we like to think of the characters as the unique element in a token pull. So when we pull three Cho Hulk covers in a row, we curse the game and question the reality of MPQ RNG. But as aes pointed out, "Each of a character's 3 colors are completely separate possibilities." We didn't have 34 possibilities (total possible 4* and 5* characters) for pulls in LTs in June -- we had 34 (characters) x 3 (colors for each character) possibilities: 102. The colors are completely separate data points. So getting a blue Cho followed by a green Cho followed by a black Cho is actually showing RNG diversity; we got three completely different covers out of the 102 possibilities we had. Whereas our brains just interpret that as "I just got 3 useless Cho covers in a row."

Edit: Fixed my numbers for possibilities above.

DTStump

_Daywalker_ wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Hoarding only helps if you're waiting for a character to get added to the token pool, or if you don't have ISO and don't want to risk pulling extra covers you'd have to sell.

Or if you don't have a bunch of 4* and 5* and have no HP for new slots (e.g., someone who isn't yet in the 4* or 5* transition).

Or if it's a vault system where you can actually calculate probabilities and stop when favorable outcomes become more improbable than in a new vault. E.g. if you pull all good rewards in a DDQ vault, it should pay to hoard tokens for a new vault.

Fightmastermpq

simonsez wrote:

aesthetocyst wrote:

Hoarding is a way to get ahead, to partially "defeat" RNG via the brute force of sheer quantity

This isn't correct. Hoarding is not a way to get ahead. If we assume that the RNG is fair, and the internal probability tables are constant, it doesn't matter if you open 1 token a day for a month, or hoard for a month and open 30 in one day. Your expected outcome of the 30 pulls is the same either way.

Hoarding only helps if you're waiting for a character to get added to the token pool, or if you don't have ISO and don't want to risk pulling extra covers you'd have to sell.

Or if characters rotate out of the draw pool faster than you can get them covered - like in Latest LTs. Aes had another great thread that illustrated that even a veteran player that spends a bit still needs about 8 months or more to gather enough LTs/CP to fully cover a 5* assuming stated draw rates.

simonsez

DTStump wrote:

Or if it's a vault system

That's why I said "If we assume that the RNG is fair, and the internal probability tables are constant". A vault doesn't meet the latter criteria.

simonsez

_Daywalker_ wrote:

I'm not aesthetocyst, but the way I read this is that as MPQ players/humans we like to think of the characters as the unique element in a token pull. So when we pull three Cho Hulk covers in a row, we curse the game and question the reality of MPQ RNG. But as aes pointed out, "Each of a character's 3 colors are completely separate possibilities." We didn't have 34 possibilities (total possible 4* and 5* characters) for pulls in LTs in June -- we had 34 (characters) x 3 (colors for each character) possibilities: 102. The colors are completely separate data points. So getting a blue Cho followed by a green Cho followed by a black Cho is actually showing RNG diversity; we got three completely different covers out of the 102 possibilities we had. Whereas our brains just interpret that as "I just got 3 useless Cho covers in a row."

None of that explains why the distribution of characters wouldn't be normally distributed, if they each have the same probability of getting drawn.

Vhailorx

H4n1s:

Yes, casinos pay in cash and,p
Mpq oays in digital goods. The psychology that makes casinos and mpq (and collectible card games) profitable is exactly the same. If people value digital goods, then for psychological purposes they is the same as money (which is just an abstract symbol for value that society agrees to use).

As for the value of hoarding, I think there are two different elements to consider in that front.

(1) as aesth says, hoarding allows players to choose which loot table they prefer (e.g. should I poo my LTs now, or wait until black bolt, or peggy, or whoever joins the pool). This isbespecually true with 5is in latest legends tokens. I am trying to hoard lLTs until I have several dozen stored up AND like all 3 5*S in the pool. That should give me a better chance of getting a functional number of covers for new 5s. If in open them as I get them, I end up with a random selection of 1-2 covered 5*s that do nothing but eat up roster space. This tactic is possible as long as lLTs drop an older 5* every time a new one comes out; it doesn't work with cLTs, where pool just gets diluted.

(2) the other reason to hoard is expiring covers. When LTs have a high probably of dropping useless covers, it becomes a reasonable tactic to hoard until either the player can champ more 4*s to make more covers useful, or the pool diluted itself enough that risk of a useless cover is diminished.

rkd80

"Best and least radical solution is to roll back dilution by offering more types of LTs, each with far fewer possibilities, allowing players to target fewer characters at a time."

That is an elegant proposal and will actually create a lot of decisions for players making the game more fun, while not impacting the bottom line in any way.

Bowgentle

rkd80 wrote:

"Best and least radical solution is to roll back dilution by offering more types of LTs, each with far fewer possibilities, allowing players to target fewer characters at a time."

That is an elegant proposal and will actually create a lot of decisions for players making the game more fun, while not impacting the bottom line in any way.

Of course it will impact the bottom line.
The only players who will open anything with less/no chance of OML are the ones with a champed OML.
Anyone else will only open the sort of token that gives them the best odds on OML.

simonsez

aesthetocyst wrote:

I hope the above helps

Yes, your explanation confirms what I thought you meant, but I don't understand why you don't find this to be odd. Reducing the number of possible outcomes means less variability, so you should get a smoother distribution, not one that looks more biased, no?

hodayathink

Bowgentle wrote:

rkd80 wrote:

"Best and least radical solution is to roll back dilution by offering more types of LTs, each with far fewer possibilities, allowing players to target fewer characters at a time."

That is an elegant proposal and will actually create a lot of decisions for players making the game more fun, while not impacting the bottom line in any way.

Of course it will impact the bottom line.
The only players who will open anything with less/no chance of OML are the ones with a champed OML.
Anyone else will only open the sort of token that gives them the best odds on OML.

That assumes everyone that plays this game cares about the meta, which is a mistake that many people on this forum seem to make. There are more than likely quite a few players that care more about their favorite characters than about competing in the meta. So, for example, if they were to make some affiliation Legendary tokens [an X-Men legendary (PX, Teen Jean, Cyclops, Phoenix, OML, etc.), an Avengers legendary (Hulkbuster, Peggy, FalCap, IM46, Cap:FA, etc.), Team Cap/Team Iron Man legendaries, Spider-Family legendaries (Spider-Gwen, Miles, Venom, GG, BSSM, etc.)], there are people out there that would buy for their favorite characters as opposed to chasing OML, and I don't think it would be an insignificant number. And that says nothing of possibly buying from one of the groups to attempt to finish off a particular character that you may be close on.

mohio

Bowgentle wrote:

rkd80 wrote:

"Best and least radical solution is to roll back dilution by offering more types of LTs, each with far fewer possibilities, allowing players to target fewer characters at a time."

That is an elegant proposal and will actually create a lot of decisions for players making the game more fun, while not impacting the bottom line in any way.

Of course it will impact the bottom line.
The only players who will open anything with less/no chance of OML are the ones with a champed OML.
Anyone else will only open the sort of token that gives them the best odds on OML.

Honest question...do you (or others?) think people would actually spend up to 100 cps for a token that had 15% chance at OML? That would be equal to current odds at pulling OML on a per cp basis. How about "just" 50 cp? I think people are a little more savvy than that, but I certainly could be wrong.

Now I know you're more addressing the idea of breaking all LTs into groups of 3s at 5% each (or something similar) and that everyone would pull from the group that had OML. Even if we assume this is true why would that have an effect on their bottom line? Isn't it possible people would be willing to spend more money chasing after his covers if they knew they had decent odds of getting him?