Tokens - show us upcoming pulls

Moon Roach

To prevent abuse of token pulls, they were made deterministic.  It doesn't matter where on the screen you click, or on what device, you open a token you'll get the same predetermined result.  So, why not let us see what's coming up, maybe the next 10 draws?  At least for tokens that give us a chance at a 5*.

Then I'll know whether it's worth saving up for Homecoming tokens because there are 3 5* covers coming up at pulls 5, 8 and 10.  Or that the final 4* R&G cover I need is only 6 away in Classic Legendary tokens.

And if it's all sub-optimum (from my perspective), let me shuffle each deck for 10 CP a go. 

Jaedenkaal

Yikes. Then the forums will be filled with threads complaining about the non-random or really unlikely streaks of covers that players haven't even drawn yet.

Moon Roach

Players complain about RNG treating them badly, but (IMO) there's a misperception about how it works.  It's not random in the "pick a card, any card" sense.  It's random in the "we have an algorithm so know what every single pick from now on will be" sense.

(I presume there's a mechanism for handling rotation of characters into and out of packs; it's pointers to covers rather than actual covers.)

:edit: clarified the manner in which it's random.

Wumpushunter

Don't give them ideas, tomorrow they will announce a 100 CP RNG booster item and with out it you only get 2 stars. No more shuffling, fixing or helping based on cp, hp, or anything else

jamesh

Moon Roach said:

Players complain about RNG treating them badly, but (IMO) there's a misperception about how it works.  It's not random in the "pick a card, any card" sense.  It's random in the "we have an algorithm so know what every single pick from now on will be" sense.

(I presume there's a mechanism for handling rotation of characters into and out of packs; it's pointers to covers rather than actual covers.)

:edit: clarified the manner in which it's random.

The "algorithm" is a pseudo-random number generator.  Assuming they've chosen a strong cryptographically secure PRNG, the output should be indistinguishable from real random data, and you shouldn't be able to determine the PRNG's internal state from the output sequence (since determining the internal state would let you predict future numbers).

Often a PRNG is preferable to a real random source because you know the characteristics of the output.  With a real random source, you need to be careful how you handle its output: while you might not be able to predict the exact values it will produce, it most likely isn't producing a uniform distribution of random numbers (i.e. if you asked it to produce a number between 1 and 10, some numbers might be more likely).

Back when draws were not deterministic, they would most likely have come from a PRNG too.  I suspect the only change they made to add determinism is that each user gets their own PRNG with its own internal state (in fact, it is probably one PRNG per token type).

Now it certainly would be possible to provide a look ahead service: just save the internal state of the PRNG, ask for 10 numbers, and then reset the state.  That said, 10 CP seems incredibly low price to discard 10 pulls from the sequence.

It costs me 720 CP to buy a 5* cover.  My chance of pulling that same cover from a latest LT is 1/(7*3*3), so on average I would expect to see that cover after 63 pulls, costing 1575 CP.  If I can look ahead and discard sets of 10 pulls without the cover, that price drops down to 6 * 10 + 3 * 25 = 135 CP.  You could skip through an enormous number of pulls before you'd get anywhere close to 720 CP.