Drop rates

aesith

I have now ranted on twitter, facebook and now here. I love the game and support it. I just spend like $60 with two of the red/white/500 crystal packs. "Increased chance of rare".....$60.....and not a single rare, let alone a Mythic. $60 should f'in guarantee SOMETHING.

Very sad that I have income I spend here but like others (borderline whale?), the payback seems like a couple of middle fingers to me and my wallet.

Please consider drop rates. $60 should net more than a bunch of uncommons.

Carl

HunMike

I've got over 600 crystals with the generous gift from yesterday, so i decided to save it for some cool stuff. then i came upon the new event. Make no mistakes, it forces the player to buy some SOI decks in order to get the additional points from cards with the new abilities (which is a good thing, new stuff and $ to the devs, it's well played, not too agressive, just a little push). But, when I've opened a big box (which i wasn't intend to buy yet otherwise), out of the 14 decks i've got one ........... HAUNTED CLOAK. Oh, the bonus rare was the ever useful Always watching.

Is this (****) drop rate a common thing?
Because i usually get far better cards (i only buy big boxes for 600, because the drop rate and the additional rare - best ROI).
In a significant occasions they are duplicates (mostly the mithics, one time i've got a double void winnover in the same big box).

It is irritating, because unlike earlier, in this event one simply cannot get good results without the new cards.
For the common/Uncommon ones: 14 deck is 70 cards, 13(c)+6(uc) were duplicates, wich isn't that bad. It seeemed worse, because the duplicates tend to appear in the same deck...

Then i thought that i can afford a few losses if i act fast and begin the event: The server went down. Not my best day in the game, that's for sure...

Daddystyx

Did the same big box trap on SOI......only the garantee rare was my non common our uncommon. The only card out of the entire box that was playable is the rare. I did get to turn in 2/3 of the box for duplicates though. The thing is other then the beginners event I didn't have any other cards so quite the dupe pull from one big box.

I was drinking later and went ahead and jumped on the new planeswalker with her fatpack of red and white......not a single rare again and 2/3rd dupes. I have never had such bad pulls from a set. I think this set has some serious issues on the pull department.

Theros

I think the system is set so that cards you already own have higher drop rate. that or them packs drop specific rates or mythics depending on rarity , I doubt things are random. you normally get dupes if you own many cards of a particular set, making it difficult to get something new.
but in this game it seems to be different, it does not matter. even if you don't have many cards in a particular set, you always get dupes. it is like packs are programmed to drop specific cards for each rarity and what drops is being regulated by the devs.
this is why I don't know how to spend my crystal except on pws.
the drop rate can be assumed to have 2 parameters: 1. rare or mythis drop rate, and 2. rate of actually getting something different. if 2 is low you will get dupes even if 1 is high. of 2 does not exist or is not programed, you will get less dupes.
regardless, the boxes are not fun to open

majincob

MADAFAKA wrote:

I think the system is set so that cards you already own have higher drop rate. that or them packs drop specific rates or mythics depending on rarity , I doubt things are random. you normally get dupes if you own many cards of a particular set, making it difficult to get something new.
but in this game it seems to be different, it does not matter. even if you don't have many cards in a particular set, you always get dupes. it is like packs are programmed to drop specific cards for each rarity and what drops is being regulated by the devs.
this is why I don't know how to spend my crystal except on pws.
the drop rate can be assumed to have 2 parameters: 1. rare or mythis drop rate, and 2. rate of actually getting something different. if 2 is low you will get dupes even if 1 is high. of 2 does not exist or is not programed, you will get less dupes.
regardless, the boxes are not fun to open

I am highly skeptical of the claim that they skew the probability towards duplicates. I think the problem is that it is TRULY random and since humans are creatures defined by finding patterns and telling stories we can't naturally see and feel randomness.

For example a booster box of packs of paper magic is NOT RANDOM they collate the print runs so that the cards within a rarity are fairly evenly spread out. If you pull a certain mythic from the box, you are not going to see another one in there, excepting foils of course. It feels random, because you get a wide variety of cards and you don't know what card is going to be in each pack, but it is very much a curated randomness that people can connect to.

In MTG:PQ each card is randomly determined which means that the chance exists that you could get the same mythic two cards in a row (which has happened to me) or you could not get any rares or mythics (which has also happened to me). On average, say over 1000 big boxes, you will start getting close to an even distribution of mythic cards, but that isn't going to happen in a sample size on the order that most people buy.

The solution that people would feel best about would be to make it pseudo-random by adding in additional rules to create packs of cards more like the cardboard version.

Barrelrolla

majincob wrote:

In MTG:PQ each card is randomly determined which means that the chance exists that you could get the same mythic two cards in a row (which has happened to me) or you could not get any rares or mythics (which has also happened to me).

I doubt they are truly random. I am 99% certain they use algorithms to determine whether you should get a Mythic or not. For example, if you've opened 100 cards, and none were Rare or Mythic, you'll have a very high chance to open a Mythic in your next pack.
Duplicate cards in the same pack happen because their random algorithm is not good enough. And that's hard to make actually. I was making a match 3 game for practice and the first time a ran the field generation it created a block of two gems for every color.
I immediately saw my mistake and fixed it, but that was an easy setup. Computers don't make up numbers, so nothing is truly random. There are algorythms that return a number based on some formula.
So, when you open 3-4 mythics in a BB it's beacuse your Mythic chance has gotten very high.
Or something like that

HunMike

Oh, i don't think the drops are that bad in general. What bothered me last time that I thought the first couple drops after the new patch would be essential in order to win something (which proved to be wrong, a couple uncommons were fairly useful in the new event). By my surprise it was still winnable, it was clearly my own fault that i didn't end up in top 5.

majincob

Barrelrolla wrote:

For example, if you've opened 100 cards, and none were Rare or Mythic, you'll have a very high chance to open a Mythic in your next pack.

But is this true? The sample size for one individual is probably not high enough to verify that with any certainty, plus you'd have to run the statistical analysis because of confirmation bias etc.

HunMike wrote:

Oh, i don't think the drops are that bad in general. What bothered me last time that I thought the first couple drops after the new patch would be essential in order to win something (which proved to be wrong, a couple uncommons were fairly useful in the new event). By my surprise it was still winnable, it was clearly my own fault that i didn't end up in top 5.

I guess you weren't playing pre-drop rate nerf. It's probably mostly a function of expectations among people at this point. The drop rate for rares and mythics seemed to be about double. Meaning you'd expect to get 2 rares in a fat pack and 2 mythics in a big box on average.

I'm still a proponent of putting in a system similar to what Barrelrolla thinks already exists to make sure the "random" cards favor getting at least x number of mythics every 100 cards and at least y number of rares every 50 cards and weighting down the chances for getting duplicates based on current collection.

Barrelrolla

majincob wrote:

But is this true? The sample size for one individual is probably not high enough to verify that with any certainty, plus you'd have to run the statistical analysis because of confirmation bias etc.

I don't know, I have absolutely no proof. But I opened a Big Box with 0 mythics and 2 rares and 2 days later I open a pack of 5 cards and draw 1 mythic 1 rare. I open a big box with 3 mythics and 5 rares and don't see a rare or mythic in weeks
It could be chance, but I doubt any developer will make such thing totally random. That would mean you can play months and never get a mythic and that should not be the case. Most system like that use algorithms so they can make sure the drops are kinda evenly spread around for your invested time.