How have shards impacted your spending?

tiomono

I spend at the same level.

Daredevil217 said:

Vhailorx said:

tiomono said:

blankcanvas said:

Daredevil217 said:

Vhailorx said:

Daredevil217 said:

I’ve said this before, but for me, shards promotes more hoarding.  More hoarding leads to less spending. 

This is very true for me.  I never know which 4* I will want to prioritize (because it will very much depend on which 5*s I am trying to feed), so opening as I go is less attractive than ever. 

And when hoarding aggressively, I don't think it makes a lot of sense for me to spend much on other offers.

Yeah for me it is which 5 to chase via feeders or if I’ll need a cover for shield training. Currently I have 259 Heroics, 2 ten packs, 11 mighty tokens, and 64 PVP event tokens stockpiled. So... enough shards there for TWO covers lol. That seems crazy low for the amount I've stockpiled. 

I also have I believe over 200 each of standard/elites (no idea why, just stopped opening) and over 300 of each taco vault. 

If this doesn't prove we're exponentially worse off post BH, I don't know what does.

Part of my issue with this thinking always goes back to the rng of bonus heros. We can say how many bonus heros we should get from opening "x" tokens. If someone had a bad streak people would offer comfort and say it will even out eventually.

My question is how long is the eventually? Is it with 1000 pulls? 1 million? 5 million? 1 billion? No player knows that data. If your pulls for tokens are generated randomly across 10 million pulls you could be that poor slob that got blasted into oblivion and have your full percentage of 5* pulls be in the last 15% of that 10 million. But hey it evens out eventually right? 

With shards you know exactly how much progress you get on every token you open. Every player gets equal results from every token from the word go. That to me is worth the "perceived" loss of 20% of your bonus heros you would have gotten. I say percieved because no player knows how large the token spread was to guarantee your rate on bonus heros. The devs however do have that data. For all we know the targeted hero rate is better for the player base as a whole over shorter span of time than bonus heros was.

No, tiomono, it's a real loss of 20% for the playerbase.  Across the whole game, demi is giving out 20% fewer covers.  That's why they implemented shards this way. 

Sure, there is some individual variation, but for any player who opens enough tokens for this system to actually matter (i.e. long time vets well into 4* land), they should be pretty close to the target rates.  (Also, your question is not unknowable.  I am not enough of a statistician to do the math quickly, but it should be easy enough for someone who is to calculate "after X pulls at the stated BH rates, 95% of players should be at the target rate +/- 2%".  I would guess that several thousand pulls should be sufficient to get the vast majority of players very close to the target.)  And while fixing the downside of RNG is valuable for players, I don't think it is worth losing 20% of from the BH rate AND all the lost champion rewards.

Very very well put. It’s not some bad feeling. It’s not emotion. It’s just math. If after 6 years of tens of thousands of players opening tokens every single day we’re not very very very close to 15%, then we could probably cry false advertising. So taking that, then yes, we players as a whole are getting significantly less rewards than before, and that’s before taking into account lost champ rewards. 

Ok. Then get me actual math that proves that taken from every players pull data from when bonus heros started. If you cannot do that then how do you know for sure you lost 20% of your bonus heros across "x" pulls compared to shards?

tiomono

I spend at the same level.

blankcanvas said:

I think what you are asking for @tiomono is impossible for most people to provide but understand your point. In my case (and I obviously cannot speak for anyone else), it just 'feels' like I'm worse off since BH ended.

Keep up the good work devs and looking forwards to the 5* meta magneto I have blindly convinced myself is coming at month end 😁

And that's my point. It seems every time the devs give us actual numbers or stats on most popular pvp, or character, etc,etc. We as forum goers say "Huh, I wouldnt have guessed that." So without the hard data on how many pulls the rng of bonus heros was started on we as players have incomplete data to math off of. We can give estimated percentages across so many pulls but they are not fully accurate without that number.

How many people on these forums pulled a hoard and were nowhere near the 15% of pulls they were supposed to get on 5*'s? Then it was rng on top of that too to pull a 5* bonus hero. 

I do hope we get that 5* metaneto as well.

Daredevil217

I spend less in the game than I used to, before shards.

Well I’m going to assume the developers are not falsely advertising their stated odds.  That would get them into a lot of trouble legally. That’s the math I’m going off of because what you are asking for (pull data for every single player throughout the history of the game) is impossible. So we are going by the stated odds when we talk about the numbers being worse for the playerbase as a whole. They are either absolutely giving out less covers overall or were flat out lying about BH odds. If you don’t understand that I don’t know what to tell you. 

Also, I know for me the numbers are way worse for shards. At least for the over 1,000 5* pulls ive tracked. But that’s anecdotal and why I’d prefer going with the developer stated odds.  

Vhailorx

tiomono said:

And that's my point. It seems every time the devs give us actual numbers or stats on most popular pvp, or character, etc,etc. We as forum goers say "Huh, I wouldnt have guessed that." So without the hard data on how many pulls the rng of bonus heros was started on we as players have incomplete data to math off of. We can give estimated percentages across so many pulls but they are not fully accurate without that number.

How many people on these forums pulled a hoard and were nowhere near the 15% of pulls they were supposed to get on 5*'s? Then it was rng on top of that too to pull a 5* bonus hero. 

I do hope we get that 5* metaneto as well.

Speak for yourself.  For me, every time the devs show us real numbers my response has been ", why are they even looking at that number at all?" Or "huh, that seems like a really cherrypicked stat being used retroactively to justify whatever change they are announcing."

And what you are asking for is impossible in an absolute sense.  It's probability.  it doesn't provide exactly the same outcomes for everyone, especially over the short term.  That doesn't mean that, in the aggregate, we are unable to make broad statements like "everyone is a little worse off with the new system."

And that is without even considering other issues like confirmation bias and selective recall (every 0/70 steak is proof that rng is out to screw us, but every 4/4 steak is just what we had "earned."), or the increased opportunity cost of stranded shards. 

Shards, as implemented, gives us more control over a noticeably smaller pile of resources.  And the extra control we get only ever matters in edge cases (5/5/2 builds etc).  It is not a good trade off overall.

I might feel differently if we didn't have saved covers, or if we didn't lose champ rewards or the whole bh system.  But we do, and we did, and it sucks.

tiomono

I spend at the same level.

Daredevil217 said:

Well I’m going to assume the developers are not falsely advertising their stated odds.  That would get them into a lot of trouble legally. That’s the math I’m going off of because what you are asking for (pull data for every single player throughout the history of the game) is impossible. So we are going by the stated odds when we talk about the numbers being worse for the playerbase as a whole. They are either absolutely giving out less covers overall or were flat out lying about BH odds. If you don’t understand that I don’t know what to tell you. 

Also, I know for me the numbers are way worse for shards. At least for the over 1,000 5* pulls ive tracked. But that’s anecdotal and why I’d prefer going with the developer stated odds.  

Yes it is on stated odds. Take 5* odds for example. 1 in 7 latest legends tokens should be a 5* right? How many players get a 5* every 7 pulls? That's the stated odds. If a player does not get 1 in 7 they are told it will even out eventually. But in truth no player can say when that would even out unless they had access to the information the devs have.

Pull data for every player is not impossible for the devs. Everything we the players have about bonus heros is anecdotal. Shards on the other hand are clear solid numbers. But maybe I'm just way off base and not seeing something.

Vhailorx

tiomono said:

Vhailorx said:

tiomono said:

blankcanvas said:

Daredevil217 said:

Vhailorx said:

Daredevil217 said:

I’ve said this before, but for me, shards promotes more hoarding.  More hoarding leads to less spending. 

This is very true for me.  I never know which 4* I will want to prioritize (because it will very much depend on which 5*s I am trying to feed), so opening as I go is less attractive than ever. 

And when hoarding aggressively, I don't think it makes a lot of sense for me to spend much on other offers.

Yeah for me it is which 5 to chase via feeders or if I’ll need a cover for shield training. Currently I have 259 Heroics, 2 ten packs, 11 mighty tokens, and 64 PVP event tokens stockpiled. So... enough shards there for TWO covers lol. That seems crazy low for the amount I've stockpiled. 

I also have I believe over 200 each of standard/elites (no idea why, just stopped opening) and over 300 of each taco vault. 

If this doesn't prove we're exponentially worse off post BH, I don't know what does.

Part of my issue with this thinking always goes back to the rng of bonus heros. We can say how many bonus heros we should get from opening "x" tokens. If someone had a bad streak people would offer comfort and say it will even out eventually.

My question is how long is the eventually? Is it with 1000 pulls? 1 million? 5 million? 1 billion? No player knows that data. If your pulls for tokens are generated randomly across 10 million pulls you could be that poor slob that got blasted into oblivion and have your full percentage of 5* pulls be in the last 15% of that 10 million. But hey it evens out eventually right? 

With shards you know exactly how much progress you get on every token you open. Every player gets equal results from every token from the word go. That to me is worth the "perceived" loss of 20% of your bonus heros you would have gotten. I say percieved because no player knows how large the token spread was to guarantee your rate on bonus heros. The devs however do have that data. For all we know the targeted hero rate is better for the player base as a whole over shorter span of time than bonus heros was.

No, tiomono, it's a real loss of 20% for the playerbase.  Across the whole game, demi is giving out 20% fewer covers.  That's why they implemented shards this way. 

Sure, there is some individual variation, but for any player who opens enough tokens for this system to actually matter (i.e. long time vets well into 4* land), they should be pretty close to the target rates.  (Also, your question is not unknowable.  I am not enough of a statistician to do the math quickly, but it should be easy enough for someone who is to calculate "after X pulls at the stated BH rates, 95% of players should be at the target rate +/- 2%".  I would guess that several thousand pulls should be sufficient to get the vast majority of players very close to the target.)  And while fixing the downside of RNG is valuable for players, I don't think it is worth losing 20% of from the BH rate AND all the lost champion rewards.

So some statistician that does not have all the base numbers to input on an rng system can come up with an accurate model? Some statistician has the exact pull data from a large enough sample of the playerbase to ensure an accurate calculation?

I doubt it. But I could be wrong.

You are wrong.  We know the drop rates of 4*a and 5*s from each LT (85% and 15% respectively), we know the drop rate of bonus covers (5% for every token).  The number of pulls is the active variable.  That is definitely enough to plot a distribution showing the proability of different outcomes based on the number of pulls.  it's only a little more complicated that calculating the distribution of outcomes when rolling 2d6.

tiomono

I spend at the same level.

Vhailorx said:

tiomono said:

And that's my point. It seems every time the devs give us actual numbers or stats on most popular pvp, or character, etc,etc. We as forum goers say "Huh, I wouldnt have guessed that." So without the hard data on how many pulls the rng of bonus heros was started on we as players have incomplete data to math off of. We can give estimated percentages across so many pulls but they are not fully accurate without that number.

How many people on these forums pulled a hoard and were nowhere near the 15% of pulls they were supposed to get on 5*'s? Then it was rng on top of that too to pull a 5* bonus hero. 

I do hope we get that 5* metaneto as well.

And what you are asking for is impossible in an absolute sense.  It's probability.  it doesn't provide exactly the same outcomes for everyone, especially over the short term.  That doesn't mean that, in the aggregate, we are unable to make broad statements like "everyone is a little worse off with the new system." 

And shards gives us exactly the same outcomes for every player without needing to make broad statements in aggregate. I for one am ok with rng on top of rng being reduced. But also realize I'm in a minority on that one on these forums.

tonypq

I spend at the same level.

I spend at the same level. It really boils down to how good the deal is or if one of the characters I'm chasing is part of it, which were the same parameters for me to spend before shards were introduced. 

Although I'll admit the amount of shards plays a big factor if I spend or not. The 5 shard stacks in the daily store are way too expensive for how many you get, especially as the cost gets higher as you buy more stacks. They shouldn't more than twice as much as 4s shards cost IMO. If it's one of their random limited offer deals, how many shards you get play a big factor. I've passed on at least one deal because it offered too few shards for a 5 I wanted and the deal cost too much not to get full cover. I've also bought one of the offers when it included enough covers for the 5.