Latest Token or Classic Token needs to give more shards

jamesh

HoundofShadow said:

The downsides of shards are pretty much established. As for the pull rate, it was mentioned in the beginning of the year that getting something guaranteed will involve increasing the number of token pulls needed.

Assuming that the cap system would want to have the same overall pull rate you would have to lower the base pull rate to do that. What you're advocating is simply raising drop rates overall, which is another discussion altogether. Not a poor discussion to have, but outside the bounds of this thread.

I think that continuing to ask for shard system to deliver the same base rate as BH based on pulling tokens alone is a futile effort. It's not going to happen. Even in the real world, the cost of getting guaranteed stuff (such as direct purchase) is higher than those gotten via luck (such as claw crane).

That developer quote you've used is about an entirely different system to the shard system that was rolled out: it instead seems to be for a randomised bonus hero system with an "streak breaker" to guarantee at least one bonus cover every N pulls.

With such a system, the long term average bonus cover rate will necessarily be higher than the base probability (since it is still possible to beat the odds), so if the aim was to keep parity with the old 5% bonus hero rate you'd need to reduce the base probability.

The shard system is quite different though: while it gets rid of bad luck like a streak breaker does, it also gets rid of good luck.  There is no need to reduce the base rate in order to maintain parity because you can never do better than the base rate now.

HoundofShadow

I think the discussion was guaranteeing a 5* cover within x pulls or implementing a streak breaker.

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/76938/5-pull-rates-amp-capping-futility/p1

The idea is similar: a streakbreaker for BH and bad luck of getting unusable covers. It will ultimately involve more pulls. It was revealed that 33% of the playerbase will not pull a BH even at the 167th pull. Of the 67%, some will pull a cover that would be unusable.

Next, I think dilution is a big problem for players who are completionists. However, the objectives of TH is not to solve dilution. It was meant to solve other problems.

Based on data revealed, the playstyle of majority of players is to BH a character until they are max champed or until they reach certain milestones or for other reasons, despite them "needing" covers for other characters. This might imply that dilution isn't a big problem for them. To max champ a character 3* and above, you need 100 covers. That's equivalent to champing 7 extra characters. Let's say each player have 3 favourite characters, they are foresaking champing 21 extra characters. The fear of catching up seems to affect completionists more than your typical/average players.

As for not stopping new characters every two weeks, I think the developers have already spent a few hundred thousands on licensing and royalties of those characters to Marvel. Each character has incurred a cost in their financial and each character, I supposed, have an expected ROI. Asking them to stop releasing new characters as part of a strategy to slow down dilution is as good as asking them to incur a couple hundred thousand losses just to make the players happy. Probably, how about the players in the forum crowdfund together to pay the losses incured by the dev for stopping or delaying the releases of new characters? Let's say each character's ROI is expected to be 200,000, players in the forum will crowdfund 200,000 to delay the release of new characters. Would it be fair?

DAZ0273

How about the players, if they are increasingly unhappy, just stop playing the game altogether? Would that assist the Devs? I think the losses might run to more than 200,000...

HoundofShadow

It will definitely run pass 200,000 if majority of the players in the game are increasingly unhappy. Let's say if these few months of data monitoring show that  majority of the players are unhappy with shard systems, the devs will definitely do something about that. You will see major changes being made to shard systems before the end of next quarter. 

Remember, the players in this forum doesn't represent the majority of the players in the game. Data revealed has proven that most of the players in the game play MPQ differently, that is not the same as the majority of players in this forum. 

I  think the best improvement to shards are still bonus shards. It's much more feasible than increasing rate to match BH. Instead of pushing for the unlikely to happen, why not spend the energy on solution that are more feasible?

Given the amount of effort invested in TH, I think it's highly unlikely that they will move the current system from a character specific shard system to rarity/tier specific shard system in the short term. It took them probably 5-6 years to implement colourless covers. I think it will be another 3-5 years before they implement a permanent character neutral shard system.

DAZ0273

The players in this forum definitely don't represent the majority, I agree. However, having seen other MPQ associated places such as the Facebook page, the difference in attitudes and complaints are not miles apart. In fact the Facebook page REALLY wants more 3* characters every time I look at it!

jamesh

HoundofShadow said:

The idea is similar: a streakbreaker for BH and bad luck of getting unusable covers. It will ultimately involve more pulls. It was revealed that 33% of the playerbase will not pull a BH even at the 167th pull. Of the 67%, some will pull a cover that would be unusable.

The difference is that under a "bonus hero plus streak breaker" system, it is possible to receive bonus covers for two consecutive pulls.  It's the fact that good luck is still possible while bad luck has been eliminated that increases the long term average over the base probability.

With shards, you will always have to make the same number of pulls to redeem the bonus cover.  One system says "you will get at least one bonus every N pulls" and the other says "you will get exactly one bonus every N pulls".

HoundofShadow

Yes, I agree. It is also possible that you won't get any BH after 166 pulls. It's hard to reconciliate the differences.

Someone posted changes in the layout of placement and progressiom rewards. Perhaps, this is to get ready shards?

DAZ0273

Those shards will be character specific I feel, although of course they might surprise us. However it just makes the most logical sense coding wise to introduce shards based upon featured and essentials. The only interesting thing will be what happens in off season for PvP which doesn't have a unique character theme. The Wolverine PvP for instance would be reasonably easy to deal with but what about something like Balance of Power? Maybe we get 550 shards!!!

jamesh

A streak breaker system would guarantee at least one cover after a certain number of pulls.  That's the entire point.  I don't think you understand the material you're quoting/linking.

HoundofShadow

The general idea is guaranteed stuff will cost more than random stuff. In this case, a guaranteed bonus at a fixed rate for every player means that the rate will not be as good as BH. 

For that thread,  assuming that guaranteeing a 5* after a certain number of pull is implemented due to unlucky streak, the odds won't stay at 1:7 but it will probably be decreased to 1:10 or even worse overall. That's the idea. Sure, you might get 2 5* consecutively but the chances will decrease due to a decrease in odds.

Edit: BRB HP Store gives 5* shards.

Comparison:

Normal/PvP HP Store:
          3* / 4*
 1x : 10 /  3
10x:120 / 40
40x: 485 / 168

BRB HP Store:
          3*         / 4*      / 5*
 1x :  10        /  4       /  0
10x:  110     / 50     /   0
40x: 459     / 201   /    9

jamesh

You still don't seem to get what that other thread and quote from the developer are saying: in a streak breaker system, the base probability (i.e. chance of success for the pull immediately after a prior success) would need to be lowered in order for the long term average to be the same as the system without a streak breaker.  That's to balance the fact that the success probability for some pulls will be as high as 100%.

None of that has any relevance to the shard system as implemented, and you are just confusing matters by claiming that it justifies the bonus cover rate that came with the current system.

thedarkphoenix

All I know is that for me there is NO excitement in opening packs now.

And there isn't much excitement in any other part of the game let alone fun now.

With that said I still enjoy the game and see a ton of potential. They are just stuck in the old school model of mobile games.

And I'm not sure if they have the man power or desire to catch up with the times.

Kolence

HoundofShadow said:

 It was revealed that 33% of the playerbase will not pull a BH even at the 167th pull. Of the 67%, some will pull a cover that would be unusable.

Where was this revealed? 
These numbers don't match the previous odds of 15% chance of a 5-star and 5% chance of a bonus hero in legendary store(s). 
That gives 0.75% chance of a bonus 5-star, and in 167 pulls odds should be ~28% of players would still be without a bonus 5-star. 
But it's moot for this discussion anyway, as @jamesh was saying... 

Wonko33

people used to complain about the randomness of it... give people what they want and they will just complain more.

ThaRoadWarrior

Yeah, there is some questionable "get what you get and don't get upset" logic happening here I feel. Particularly that "crane game" analogy - you overwhelmingly get nothing from those, and in fact the likely hood you will "win" is selectable from within the machine. Essentially the economy of the game needs a "cost of living" overhaul to keep pace with the general character inflation that's happened. 

KGB

It's still somewhat random now even with shards.

The only way you get fixed rate TH is if you only favorite 1 hero in a tier. If you favorite 2 or more then the amount of time between TH doubles/triples etc followed by a short burst of 2/3 TH in a row as they all finish sharding approximately at the same time.

This system isn't really better than the one we had unless you are just setting 1 favorite hero per tier and never changing it until they max-champ (which according to D3 is what most players do even though it appears most forumites don't do).

KGB

broll

Kolence said:

HoundofShadow said:

 It was revealed that 33% of the playerbase will not pull a BH even at the 167th pull. Of the 67%, some will pull a cover that would be unusable.

Where was this revealed? 
These numbers don't match the previous odds of 15% chance of a 5-star and 5% chance of a bonus hero in legendary store(s). 
That gives 0.75% chance of a bonus 5-star, and in 167 pulls odds should be ~28% of players would still be without a bonus 5-star. 
But it's moot for this discussion anyway, as @jamesh was saying... 

I believe it was from a on Discord from actual dev player data spread across the entire playerbase.

Kolence

broll said:

Kolence said:

HoundofShadow said:

 It was revealed that 33% of the playerbase will not pull a BH even at the 167th pull. Of the 67%, some will pull a cover that would be unusable.

Where was this revealed? 
These numbers don't match the previous odds of 15% chance of a 5-star and 5% chance of a bonus hero in legendary store(s). 
That gives 0.75% chance of a bonus 5-star, and in 167 pulls odds should be ~28% of players would still be without a bonus 5-star. 
But it's moot for this discussion anyway, as @jamesh was saying... 

I believe it was from a on Discord from actual dev player data spread across the entire playerbase.

If that's the case, I can only hope Hound is misquoting or the devs gave a "rough" estimate  "[almost] a third" or something like that.
Or game's rng is seriously trolling ...

ThaRoadWarrior

Multi-tapping on favorites seems like the slow boat for progress to me, same as bonus heroes. I always found focusing fire on a single target to completion ended up being better for my own roster.

HoundofShadow

It was stated in the Shards thread. Here is the link to the quote:

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/comment/900791/#Comment_900791

But, I missed out that the % comes from LT pulls and I missed out "about".

Statistically on say, Legendaries, about 33% of players would fail to pull a single BH from 167 pulls. Some of those players that pull a BH would pull a cover they don't need. With this system, 100% of players get the character and cover they want (assuming they've fav'd one character anyway).