If I had a Sandbox and I wanted some Support

ZeroKarma

I know someone who has a sandboxed account. It's very useful for getting a first look at new characters, leveling them up to the max and seeing what they can do without affecting the environment. An MPQ holodeck if you will. 

Another thing these accounts are good for is testing RNG and seeing how long it would take you to get 550's from scratch using classic tokens for example. 

I asked my friend to run a test on support availability, specifically the new ones. Everyone wants some nice Infinity War supports after all, right? So I wanted to know what it would take to get a shiny 5* support. The results are underwhelming. 

Buying the vault using 40 packs, and resetting every time the purple support token was drawn, resulted in an expenditure of 500,000 HP to get 7(!) purple support tokens. That is 7 purple support tokens for the equivalent of 25 Stark Salaries or $2,500 if you are lucky enough to be in the US and not pay a higher price. 

Of those 7 purple tokens? A big fat ZERO 5* supports. In fact, it wasn't until the 25th draw that a 5* support showed up. Extrapolated out, my estimate is that getting that single support would have cost my friend $8,925. 

So, if you're wondering whether supports are valued highly by D3, the answer is yes, very much so. In fact, for that same amount spent in a buy club you could get 500 LT draws off the cp alone, which would be enough to champ 3 shiny 5* characters with extra levels to spare. These 5* characters are useable in both PvP and PvE, meaning double the usage potential as well. 

This is what we got for Infinity War from what I can see. It isn't even a money grab, because no sane person would spend that much money to get a 5* support, and even if they did they probably wouldn't have enough red iso to level the thing up!!!!!

The rockett

Do I know this friend by chance?   I am glad they did this to show how much of a terrible ploy this is for Demi/D3 to roll this out to use like this.  Do they even respect us as players?   It is crazy that we are at this spot with this game.  

ZeroKarma

The rockett said:

Do I know this friend by chance?   I am glad they did this to show how much of a terrible ploy this is for Demi/D3 to roll this out to use like this.  Do they even respect us as players?   It is crazy that we are at this spot with this game.  

Can we get an "incite"-full button for you? LOL

GKar

I know someone who opened 200 master tokens so far, got 11 unique 5* supports and 12 duplicates.  To get 200 tokens took over 800 40 packs at 14000 HP plus the resets.  Over 11 million HP ($56,000 USD) and still missing 7 of the 18 5* supports.

ZeroKarma

I can’t imagine getting duplicates of a 5* support. In your friend’s example @GKar , he would have essentially wasted $30,000.

Because the Supports are automatically rostered or sold, you can’t swap them. They’re good for 24,000 red iso! So selling those 12......still wouldn’t be enough to level ONE of them.

Kevmcg

Something has been bothering me about supports now that we have them - well beyond the ludicrous cost and totally broken red iso economy. At some point, the economy can be adjusted and fixed.  I can't quite sum it up, but I will try in this rant:

Many of us are completionists. We know it will take a long time to get every character covered and then raise to max level. I know I will never have all 5* at 550 since I spend minimal amounts of $$$, but I can still shoot to have them all champed. That to me would be winning and something to play daily and strive for.

Supports are kicking my completionist philosophy in the nether regions. I don't and can't have a goal to get them all and for the ones I have, progress is essentially zero. When characters come out, they have a package - artwork, skillset, PVP event with name, intro article..... These supports come out 10 at a time and are not composed of a "package." Any of us could spend a weekend and develop 20+ of them - all with some artwork on the front and a subset of stat adjustments on the back. It is content that overwhelms because you can't plan for it and the carrot is no longer just in front of my face, it is miles away. If I even got close, 20 more can come out and shoot the carrot miles in front again.

I don't want randomness from support stats, the board has enough. I want to win because I planned for it. They are only in PVE now, but I certainly don't want to lose from randomness if they were ever to apply for PVP.

I'm sure the development team has worked hard to make this work. Making all these adjustments with 160+ characters and all their special skills is a tough task. Too tough if you ask me, and not asked for - very inefficient use of resources when compared to what players have been asking for.

GIve us new game modes: PVE  / PVP / Gauntlet / Eliminator / Arena / Blitz / Pinball Scoring - there are a ton of ideas that players have thrown out.

Instead we get stat adjustments in only 1 of 2 game modes we have played for years.

Many of us are now migrating to other games with more variety, challenge, teamwork with your alliance - Strike Force anyone.

BlackBoltRocks

ZeroKarma said:

The rockett said:

Do I know this friend by chance?   I am glad they did this to show how much of a terrible ploy this is for Demi/D3 to roll this out to use like this.  Do they even respect us as players?   It is crazy that we are at this spot with this game.  

Can we get an "incite"-full button for you? LOL

I'd tap that button all day.

jamesh

You should be able to estimate average costs without using a sandboxed account.

You'd need to pull 150 items from the vault to have a 50% chance of getting the master token.  Each token has a 10% chance of a rank 5 support, so you'd expect to get one if you open 10 master tokens.

So that's an average of 1500 pulls and 10 vault resets.  Using 40 packs, this comes out to 371,500 HP.  In terms of the highest price US in app purchase, that'll cost US$1,857.50

So I think you were just unlucky: the probability of opening 24 master support tokens without getting a rank 5 is about 0.8% (0.9 ^ 24 * 0.1).  While it's possible, it is hardly going to be the common case.

Jonny1Punch

People are leaving the game in record breaking numbers. This whole thread shines a great big spotlight on why we all need to move on to better games and STOP spending. The whole supports / red iso fiasco + gambit never being addressed + being consistently Disappointed each season with no new buffs or reworks + horrible RNG/ dupe issues = epic failure by D3. I  haven’t even finished DDQ 100% in days, zero motivation. 

The rockett

jamesh said:

You should be able to estimate average costs without using a sandboxed account.

You'd need to pull 150 items from the vault to have a 50% chance of getting the master token.  Each token has a 10% chance of a rank 5 support, so you'd expect to get one if you open 10 master tokens.

So that's an average of 1500 pulls and 10 vault resets.  Using 40 packs, this comes out to 371,500 HP.  In terms of the highest price US in app purchase, that'll cost US$1,857.50

So I think you were just unlucky: the probability of opening 24 master support tokens without getting a rank 5 is about 0.8% (0.9 ^ 24 * 0.1).  While it's possible, it is hardly going to be the common case.

Yes we all can try and do the math but doing tests in a real world environment is always better to see what the results will be.  That’s why people do this to truly see what happens.  Live data is always better than theory data. Jonny1Punch said:

People are leaving the game in record breaking numbers. This whole thread shines a great big spotlight on why we all need to move on to better games and STOP spending. The whole supports / red iso fiasco + gambit never being addressed + being consistently Disappointed each season with no new buffs or reworks + horrible RNG/ dupe issues = epic failure by D3. I  haven’t even finished DDQ 100% in days, zero motivation. 

I agree Jonny but have you noticed nobody from D3/Demi is active here.  Make a post and walk
away.  Oh wait, Punisher got yelled at for his post.  Guess that was more important than the questions about supports or the major concerns of the lack of Infinity War tie ins.  Maybe it is time to make the Strike Force switch since so many are going that route. 

jamesh

The rockett said:

Yes we all can try and do the math but doing tests in a real world environment is always better to see what the results will be.  That’s why people do this to truly see what happens.  Live data is always better than theory data.

But what exactly do you think you're measuring?  One rank 5 support is not a very useful sample size if the aim is to extrapolate to what other people can expect to see.

On the free tokens thread, one person said they got a rank 5 support (which would assume they pulled the master support token).  Clearly it would be crazy to assume that everyone will manage that with three pulls from the vault, but why is that experience any less valid than @ZeroKarma's?

If the aim is to experimentally verify that the published odds for the tokens are correct (or incorrect), you'd need a much much larger sample size for these low probability outcomes.

The rockett

Why yes. 1 person doing this isn’t enough but do you have a sandboxed account to try this out?  Any of your friends?   So we should just use math only and never try it in the real world application. I don’t care if it was once or 1000 times, it is just to show the true dollar amount tied to this terrible vault. Plain and simple. 

Michaelcles

How does one get a sandbox account and simulate a couple thousand bucks spent in the game?

Quebbster

Michaelcles said:

How does one get a sandbox account and simulate a couple thousand bucks spent in the game?

Cheat hard enough that the devs notice.

ZeroKarma

I think the point here is of course there will be one guy who got a 5* support with his first draw from the vault. There will also be people that have awful luck. The point is, for an Infinity War tie-in, I would expect something game altering and obtainable if I wanted to spend money. For this I clearly can’t.

jamesh said:

You'd need to pull 150 items from the vault to have a 50% chance of getting the master token.  Each token has a 10% chance of a rank 5 support, so you'd expect to get one if you open 10 master tokens.

So that's an average of 1500 pulls and 10 vault resets.  Using 40 packs, this comes out to 371,500 HP.  In terms of the highest price US in app purchase, that'll cost US$1,857.50

Are you assuming a 40 pack for 9800hp? Because that deal is once a day. The price goes up ~50% after the first purchase. We’re impatient whales here!!!

So I think you were just unlucky: the probability of opening 24 master support tokens without getting a rank 5 is about 0.8% (0.9 ^ 24 * 0.1).  While it's possible, it is hardly going to be the common case.

Can I get a like from everyone here who has had at least one run on 15% LT’s of 20 or more with no purple? It has happened to me multiple times with better odds on standard LT’s. 

I could get 30 likes just from forum posts of people complaining about such streaks.

Ducky

**D3Go! does not condone cheating and does not encourage cheating behaviors. If you wish to continue the discussion of the monetization of Supports, please do so without discussing sandboxed accounts or the actions of those accounts.

Thanks!**