Infinity War Support Monetization

ZeroKarma
ZeroKarma Posts: 513 Critical Contributor
in MPQ General Discussion
@jamesh  Sorry to copy and paste much of what you’d written. I appreciate your input and, while the numbers of the 40’s seem to be off a tidge, it is still significant. 

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 a massive amount of HP for something that is your #1 tie-in to the biggest Marvel movie since the last biggest Marvel movie. No one is going to spend money on it, I’ve asked. It’s a wasted opportunity.

the probability of opening 24 master support tokens without getting a rank 5 is about 0.8% (0.9 ^ 24 * 0.1)

Give me a thumbs up if you have personally had this happen to you with LT’s that post higher odds.
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Comments

  • The rockett
    The rockett Posts: 2,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    I still remember the Purple Reign vault. That one almost made me quit this game.  2 for 58 for Thanos and CS told me too bad so sad in your “luck”.  Had an ally mate with a 0 for 70 pull streak before.  It happens.   
  • scottee
    scottee Posts: 1,610 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'm not sure how quickly people expect to get a level 250 rank 5 support, but the expectation of the forumites and developers are definitely different, and I think that's the source of all the angst.

    My guess is they want this to be a months/years type of objective, and that players shouldn't be running around with several maxed supports within the first year or so.
  • ZeroKarma
    ZeroKarma Posts: 513 Critical Contributor
    scottee said:
    I'm not sure how quickly people expect to get a level 250 rank 5 support, but the expectation of the forumites and developers are definitely different, and I think that's the source of all the angst.

    My guess is they want this to be a months/years type of objective, and that players shouldn't be running around with several maxed supports within the first year or so.
    That’s fine, but then don’t make that your big toe-in for IW. 

    Unless the expectation is on is the support you get now will be useable by the 2nd movie.
  • scottee
    scottee Posts: 1,610 Chairperson of the Boards
    ZeroKarma said:
    scottee said:
    I'm not sure how quickly people expect to get a level 250 rank 5 support, but the expectation of the forumites and developers are definitely different, and I think that's the source of all the angst.

    My guess is they want this to be a months/years type of objective, and that players shouldn't be running around with several maxed supports within the first year or so.
    That’s fine, but then don’t make that your big toe-in for IW. 

    Unless the expectation is on is the support you get now will be useable by the 2nd movie.
    Yeah, I definitely think they haven't communicated well on whatever their vision is. At least with the forums.

    There is speculation that the upcoming PVP season will be a big push and tie-in. I could see that with the release of an infinity stone support as the prize for it. Alliance reward? Individual placement? Maybe they release more tokens for the vault that way as well.

    The movie release was pushed up a week. I wonder if they had the PVP season schedule set to align with the original date (next week), but then didn't adjust it for the change of date.
  • Hadronic
    Hadronic Posts: 338 Mover and Shaker
    I wrote a computer simulation that pulled the token out of the vault, opened it, reset the vault and did this till it got the 5*.
    I then did this 10million times and got the average cost and spread of buying a 5* from this vault.

    Average 594461 hp or 2972.3 USD
    Std Dev 572823 hp or 2864.12 USD

    I used the higher price, not the daily deal price cause obvious reasons
  • jamesh
    jamesh Posts: 1,600 Chairperson of the Boards
    aesthetocyst said:
    It only takes approx. 120 pulls* to have a 50/50 shot of pulling a particular, unique item from a 300-item vault.

    The vault gets smaller with each pull.

    So yes, its bad. But not quite that bad. Merely gawdawful.

    ____________

    * The math has been done before and it was within 1 or 2 of 120, not 120 exacrly, IIRC.
    How do you get the 120?  It seems pretty obvious that you'd need to pull half the items to have a 50% chance of winning one particular item.

    We can also calculate it by looking at the probability of not getting your item after a certain number of pulls, which shows we can cancel out most of the numerators/denominators to a simple fraction:

    1 pull: 299/300
    2 pulls: (299/300) * (298/299) == 298/300
    3 pulls: (299/300) * (298/299) * (297/298) == 297/300
    4 pulls: (299/300) * (298/299) * (297/298) * (296/297) == 296/300
    ...
    N pulls: (300 - N)/300

    From this sequence we can take the complement to find the probability of getting our one desired item: N/300.  So the 50% mark is clearly 150/300.
  • ZeiramMR
    ZeiramMR Posts: 1,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    jamesh beat me to the canceling fractions math.
  • Hadronic
    Hadronic Posts: 338 Mover and Shaker
    Corrected my simulation to account for the one time purchase of the daily deals, this dropped the average and Std deviation of the PDF marginally

    Average 589928 hp or 2949.64 USD
    Std Dev 572625 hp or 2863.13 USD

    Since I have access to the PDF, I can ask the big question. Say I have X amount of money to blow on this vault, What is the probability I will get a 5* Support with that money?

    # Stark Salaries Cost (USD) Probability of 5* Support
    1 100 0.013306
    2 200 0.0447709
    3 300 0.0634998
    4 400 0.0978823
    5 500 0.137604
    6 600 0.158696
    7 700 0.195177
    8 800 0.215571
    9 900 0.251027
    10 1000 0.273966
    11 1100 0.291282
    12 1200 0.323001
    13 1300 0.341511
    14 1400 0.370407
    15 1500 0.388654
    16 1600 0.411401
    17 1700 0.430996
    18 1800 0.446197
    19 1900 0.470263
    20 2000 0.485743
    21 2100 0.506014
    22 2200 0.522382
    23 2300 0.53531
    24 2400 0.554391
    25 2500 0.567993
    26 2600 0.585904
    27 2700 0.598677
    28 2800 0.613608
    29 2900 0.626972
    30 3000 0.637085
    31 3100 0.65211
    32 3200 0.6629
    33 3300 0.675304
    34 3400 0.686575
    35 3500 0.696258
    36 3600 0.707601
    37 3700 0.716708
    38 3800 0.727762
    39 3900 0.736507
    40 4000 0.74591
    41 4100 0.755042
    42 4200 0.762045
    43 4300 0.771389
    44 4400 0.778918
    45 4500 0.78698
    46 4600 0.794119
    47 4700 0.800889
    48 4800 0.807944
    49 4900 0.813877
    50 5000 0.821051
    51 5100 0.826948
    52 5200 0.832885
    53 5300 0.838926
    54 5400 0.843878
    55 5500 0.849487
    56 5600 0.854566
    57 5700 0.859752
    58 5800 0.864366
    59 5900 0.868999
    60 6000 0.873593
    61 6100 0.877568
    62 6200 0.882049
    63 6300 0.88603
    64 6400 0.889965
    65 6500 0.893812
    66 6600 0.897224
    67 6700 0.900881
    68 6800 0.904249
    69 6900 0.907767
    70 7000 0.910869
    71 7100 0.913945
    72 7200 0.91706
    73 7300 0.919636
    74 7400 0.92254
    75 7500 0.925206
    76 7600 0.927816
    77 7700 0.93032
    78 7800 0.932684
    79 7900 0.935054
    80 8000 0.937181
    81 8100 0.939456
    82 8200 0.941522
    83 8300 0.943504
    84 8400 0.945515
    85 8500 0.947257
    86 8600 0.949128
    87 8700 0.950905
    88 8800 0.952607
    89 8900 0.95428
    90 9000 0.955809
    91 9100 0.957358
    92 9200 0.958688
    93 9300 0.960126
    94 9400 0.9615
    95 9500 0.9628
    96 9600 0.964104
    97 9700 0.965255
    98 9800 0.966428
    99 9900 0.967565

  • madoctor
    madoctor Posts: 292 Mover and Shaker
    May be, the point is to not have all maxed supports within a week of their release. The devs maybe want players to have actually played a long while, rather making the system Pay2Win. The way I see it, the CP system was designed to be hard to be p2w, but instead it turned out to be "pay a lot to win". So maybe the point is, to make the p2w aspect so ridiculous, that players would rather earn it than spend. Look at the ISO prixes in the store? Not many buy it. It also makes the HP deal look lucrative in comparison (it's related to bargaining against yourself, where instead of arguing whether you should buy or not, you argue that the HP is a much better purchase than ISO, thus never thinking whether you needed to spend that money in the first place or not)

    Maybe they want the players to "have a sense of pride and accomplishment". That however comes with the territory of completionists and whales feeling alienated because of the inability to max stuff days after it's release.

    I do think there obviously need to be more avenues to earn red ISO and definitely more tokens available to be earned in events, but that's a different point of discussion IMHO. The while support feature, as it stands, does seem a bit half baked, but I have no problems with the excessive monetisation aspect. It prevents new features from simply being P2W. The frustration of the community is largely stemming from the fact that an incomplete feature was released. But I would also prefer (and may be that's the reason why supports were released in this state) to have at least some new feature released, rather than complain about no character rebalances, no new feature added, the whole nine yards in the past months
  • madoctor
    madoctor Posts: 292 Mover and Shaker
    edited April 2018
    BTW there was no attack on spenders @Daiches , please do not try to misconstrue clearly lined out thoughts for a discussion. A simple [/snip] would suffice.

    To add to it, my point was it might be intentional for the initial supports system/red ISO rollout to be slow, because the devs want it to be a long term goal for players to work on, rather than be something which we can complete in a week and then start waiting impatiently for the next new feature. Think about champing - yes people champed some characters when champing was released, a very few handful people managed max champs on day 1 of champing release, but the majority player base took about an year to 18 months to start max champing 4s (talking about players who were initially in 4* land when champing came). The duration was higher for people in the lower tiers. So maybe supports is intended to be like that. However I reiterate that there need to be more sources to earn red ISO and support tokens. 100% support that fact.

    EDIT - also am on the bandwagon that the IW tie-in's have been super lacklustre.
  • Daredevil217
    Daredevil217 Posts: 3,967 Chairperson of the Boards
    madoctor said:
     I reiterate that there need to be more sources to earn red ISO and support tokens. 100% support that fact.
    And here’s where your logic fails. You say that maybe the developers are making them so rare that they can’t be pay to win. But you yourself admit supports and the resources needed to level them aren’t really plentiful in game. So if you can’t win by earning, how else does one earn them?  Paying!  So the optics of this make it look like supports have been hidden behind a huge paywall. Just because that wall is out of my tax bracket doesn’t mean other whalier whales who are bad at maths aren’t climbing it in an attempt at those shinies!
  • LavaManLee
    LavaManLee Posts: 1,435 Chairperson of the Boards
    I guess one question I have is, even if one had money, why would whales buy the supports now?  Wouldn't it be better to make sure they come to PVP before buying?  Having a support now is a little bonus but if I am whale with already covered 5*s, aren't I doing SCL 9 PVE nearly fast enough anyways?  Would the supports help THAT much?

    Now, open supports to PVP and it's a whole new ballgame.  And one in which, I imagine, many people will leave and find another game.

    Supports are flawed at best and detrimental to the game at worst, IMHO.
  • The rockett
    The rockett Posts: 2,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    Daredevil217 said:
    madoctor said:
     I reiterate that there need to be more sources to earn red ISO and support tokens. 100% support that fact.
    And here’s where your logic fails. You say that maybe the developers are making them so rare that they can’t be pay to win. But you yourself admit supports and the resources needed to level them aren’t really plentiful in game. So if you can’t win by earning, how else does one earn them?  Paying!  So the optics of this make it look like supports have been hidden behind a huge paywall. Just because that wall is out of my tax bracket doesn’t mean other whalier whales who are bad at maths aren’t climbing it in an attempt at those shinies!
    None of the whales are.  In fact some of the biggest ones have move to MSF. 
  • madoctor
    madoctor Posts: 292 Mover and Shaker
    edited April 2018
    Daredevil217 said:
    madoctor said:
     I reiterate that there need to be more sources to earn red ISO and support tokens. 100% support that fact.
    And here’s where your logic fails. You say that maybe the developers are making them so rare that they can’t be pay to win. But you yourself admit supports and the resources needed to level them aren’t really plentiful in game. So if you can’t win by earning, how else does one earn them?  Paying!  So the optics of this make it look like supports have been hidden behind a huge paywall. Just because that wall is out of my tax bracket doesn’t mean other whalier whales who are bad at maths aren’t climbing it in an attempt at those shinies!
    I think that's EXACTLY what they were going for. They do not want the feature to be buyable, but rather earnable. (My logic being that buying the support tokens from current wall is not the final form of supports. I mean come on, getting one token 40 pulls at a time is just unreasonable. I understand that) the feature was half baked. The intention must be for support tokens to be only "earnable" in the future via progression and placements. That is why there is no support store page available when you don't have tokens.

    I realize I might be able to get across what I am trying to say. I have trouble materialising my thoughts into explainable words
  • madoctor
    madoctor Posts: 292 Mover and Shaker
    aesthetocyst said:
    jamesh said:
    How do you get the 120? 
    Was a senior moment mental misfire. That was a different vault pulling question, sorry.

    Yes the math here is simple. To get a particular thing, its min 1 pull, max 300, simple sliding scale in between, average of 150.5 ((300+1)÷2.

    The devs are just randomly salting supports out there.

    Look at the cost of building a 5 from such a vault. Ludicrous of course, but we have other sources of LTs. So far we dont for MSTs, but we will ... Right devs? (Right, eh? *wink, wink ... nudge, nudge, I ask you knowingly ....)
    I would agree. As of right now, I do not believe the current form will be final form of how we will earn supports. This is just a way of devs testing the waters as to how they are affecting gameplay, see if they are balanced, what the earn rate should be etc (a beta testing if you will). They will be served well to be given feedback that there does need to be more sources of earnable red ISO and support tokens, and they should be actively looking for it on the forums. This is probably not the way we are supposed to get them. If it is, then it's CRAZY 
  • Dragon_Nexus
    Dragon_Nexus Posts: 3,701 Chairperson of the Boards
    madoctor said:
    May be, the point is to not have all maxed supports within a week of their release.
    Which makes them feel like I deleted my account and started over again at 1* level.

    Which was fun back when 4* Wolverine was the hardest character to obtain, but the way the game works now having a whole new system of stuff to level up and obtain that's as hard as 3*s were when the game began feels really bad to play.

    Hoo boy, can't wait to spend another 4 years levelling everything up again!

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