When are covers decided exactly ?

BlixTheFrog

Ok, bear with me.

Today, daily ritual with my kids, they draw the tokens and spend my Command Points. Since Season ended this morning there was a lot to do.

Long story short we ended up after many tokens with one LL token left and 30 CP to use. We don't have Apocalypse so kids want to use 25 CP in the LL shop. We draw a Bishop with the LL token and a Iron Man Hulkbuster with the 25 CP.

But while we were finishing this, my wife actually cut the power on the Internet to do some work on the electricity, so we weren't actually online when we did our last tokens. Surprise, a bit later when I open the game again : The LL token is back, so are the 30 CP, so are the handful of other tokens we had left before the power was out.

So I use the tokens again, and it appears I get exactly the same covers. I use the LL token, Bishop is drawn.

So I figured, hey, why lose 5 CP on a four stars ? So I use 20 CPs on a Classic Legend instead. Got a Sandman, but ended up with 5 more CP than I used to.

So I take from this that the "result" of the tokens is already decided when you get the token, but what about the CP ? Does this mean my next LL draw will be Iron Man Hulkbuster whatever I do ? Should I wait to get it with a LL token and spend CPs on Classic Legends till then ? Are those things reset at some point ? Is it something I can do on a regular basis, cut off the Internet, try spending 25 CP in the LL Vault then reconnect and spend 20 CP in Classic if the draw was bad ? Or do I misunderstand how all this work ?

Waddles_Pines

Token draws in stores are predetermined so you can't game the system.  Any talk of gaming the system and the mods will descend upon this thread...

BlixTheFrog

Waddles_Pines said:

Token draws in stores are predetermined so you can't game the system.  Any talk of gaming the system and the mods will descend upon this thread...

That's really not the main point of this, I just want to understand how it works. I understand tokens are predetermined, I can't wrap my head around the concept of CP purchases being predetermined.

KGB

BlixTheFrog said:

Waddles_Pines said:

Token draws in stores are predetermined so you can't game the system.  Any talk of gaming the system and the mods will descend upon this thread...

That's really not the main point of this, I just want to understand how it works. I understand tokens are predetermined, I can't wrap my head around the concept of CP purchases being predetermined.

A CP purchase is no different than opening a token. What's predetermined is what happens the next time you 'draw' from the store/vault etc.

As a simple way to understand things, imagine that the numbers range from 1-1000. The first 150 numbers are 5* (50 numbers per 5*) and the other 850 are split among the 4*. The game pre-rolls your future numbers for each store/vault. So lets say the next 2 numbers in your Latest Legends are 200 and 220. It doesn't matter whether you use 2 LT token, 50 CP or 1 LT and 25 CP, the next 2 draws are going to be 200 and 220.

KGB

BlixTheFrog

KGB said:

BlixTheFrog said:

Waddles_Pines said:

Token draws in stores are predetermined so you can't game the system.  Any talk of gaming the system and the mods will descend upon this thread...

That's really not the main point of this, I just want to understand how it works. I understand tokens are predetermined, I can't wrap my head around the concept of CP purchases being predetermined.

A CP purchase is no different than opening a token. What's predetermined is what happens the next time you 'draw' from the store/vault etc.

As a simple way to understand things, imagine that the numbers range from 1-1000. The first 150 numbers are 5* (50 numbers per 5*) and the other 850 are split among the 4*. The game pre-rolls your future numbers for each store/vault. So lets say the next 2 numbers in your Latest Legends are 200 and 220. It doesn't matter whether you use 2 LT token, 50 CP or 1 LT and 25 CP, the next 2 draws are going to be 200 and 220.

KGB

Ooookay... So the 1:7 chances of getting a 5 stars, in the long run, is actually a guarantee ?
And I guess for the Latest Legends Vault, to use your example, 200 or 220 will be « first cover for Latest 5 stars available » and not « First cover for Apocalypse » ?
Thank you, I have a clearer vision of this now.

KGB

BlixTheFrog said:

Ooookay... So the 1:7 chances of getting a 5 stars, in the long run, is actually a guarantee ?

Actually in my example 1-50 would be a cover for the latest 5 star (Apoc). 51-100 would be second latest 5 star (Yelena) and 101-150 the 3rd latest 5* (IHulk). 151-1000 would be a 4* cover. But yes, you understand the gist of it now that the pre-rolled numbers are per store and not by how you pay for the draw (LT, CP).

KGB

Vhailorx

As a cheating prevention system, draws are predetermined for each store (independent of the resources used to make a purchase from the store).  There are a ton of quirks and details that we could discuss at great lengths (see KGB's post for some clarification) but for purposes of your question:

Your next latest legendary purchased will be the same whether you use CP or LT.  In fact, if I read your post correctly, your next latest store purchase is very likely to be IMHB no matter what else you do in the meantime.

pheregas

Ooookay... So the 1:7 chances of getting a 5 stars, in the long run, is actually a guarantee ?

On a long enough timeline, yes, you should be guaranteed a 15% pull rate.  However, take that with a giant grain of salt as the amount of pulls you can take is nowhere near the sample size required to get enough data points for just yourself.

What that means is that you may have a 10% pull rate over 200 pulls and another player may have a 20% pull rate over 200 pulls.  The next 200 may be swapped so that it's always 15% across the board.  But you never know where you are in that scheme of things.

Occasionally though...  They reset and it starts over.  So if you were at 10% hoping for that big run of 5s because you were "due," it may just start all over.

Personally, I usually just pull as I go and not worry about it.  I can't change the predetermined odds, so why stress about it?  The only manipulation I employ is to start hoarding resources after I've fully covered the oldest 5* in latest, then spend out that hoard after they character leaves and the new one arrives.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  

pheregas

Vhailorx said:

A In fact, if I read your post correctly, your next latest store purchase is very likely to be IMHB no matter what else you do in the meantime.

There is a small chance it could change depending on what 4*s are added between seasons though, right?

abmoraz

BlixTheFrog said:

Waddles_Pines said:

Token draws in stores are predetermined so you can't game the system.  Any talk of gaming the system and the mods will descend upon this thread...

That's really not the main point of this, I just want to understand how it works. I understand tokens are predetermined, I can't wrap my head around the concept of CP purchases being predetermined.

It's a programming concept called "Random Repeatability".  It's a way to get a sequence of random numbers, but to also get the same random number sequence in the future if needed.  It's used mainly in debugging, testing, and simulations.  In this case, it was put in to stop people from "gaming the system" in the very way you accidentally discovered.  There was a point where players found out if they opened a token and didn't get what they wanted, they could kill it and retry.

The simple explanation of the process is this:

Let's say you want a way to get a random number between 1 and 10.  The game enters a number (called the "seed") into that function and the function uses that seed to determine the outcome (in this case, a number from 1 to 10).  These functions have to follow a few rules:

  1. They have to be deterministic.  For any seed, there is only 1 outcome.  I can't get a different number for the same seed.

  2. Every possible outcome must be possible.  For our example, If the function I use can never return the number 7, then it fails the criteria.

  3. Every possible outcome has to be equally present along the possible span of valid seeds.  That means if our function accepts 1000 different seeds, 100 of those seeds should output "1", 100 should output "2", 100 of them should output "3" and so on

Now, this is all just to set up the function to generate random numbers.  We haven't touched on how to make them repeatable yet.  To accomplish that, we need to add a few more rules to the above:

  4. To form the sequence, the output of any given seed becomes the seed for the next number.

  5. The function cannot output sequences that form closed loops of members that are less than the total possible out comes.

Now, #5 is a tough one to explain.  Lets say that our function is output = remainder((seed + 13) / 10).  In English: take the seed, add 13 to it, divide by 10 and the remainder is our number (for this case, if the remainder is 0, we'll call it 10).  That means if we input:

   1 we get 1 + 13 = 14 / 10 = 4

   4 -> 4 + 13 = 17 /10 = 7

   7 -> 10

  10 -> 3

  3 -> 6

  6 -> 9

  9 -> 2

  3 -> 5

  5 -> 8

  8 -> 1

so we get a repeating chain of 1,4,7,10,3,6,9,3,5,8,1,4,7,10,3,6,9,3,5,8,1,4,7,10,3,6,9,3,5,8,1,...

So no matter what seed we choose, we can always figure out what the next number will be and we will always get an even distribution in the long run.   (this is the important concept here)

If I had instead chosen this function: output = remainder((seed + 5) / 10)  This would happen:

1 -> 1 + 5 = 6 / 10 = 6

6 -> 6 + 5 = 11 / 10 = 1

We get a closed loop of 2 numbers that would repeat.  The other 8 numbers would never appear.  In order to prevent this, the "Seed offset" (the number added to the seed) and the modulo (the number we divide by afterwards to get the remainder) cannot have any factors in common.  In the good example: 10 and 13 have no factors in common.  So it works.  In the bad example: 10 and 5 both have a factor in common (5).  So it fails.

Now, the good function I chose here is VERY simplistic.  It's probably pretty easy to tell that it just "counts by 3".  That's because I kept the numbers small so the concept was clearer.  Real random number generators use numbers in the billions to quintillion ranges.  The number they return is then "normalized" to the output range.  So if we were using numbers up to a billion, we might say: randomNumber = roundUp(output / 100,000,000).  So that any value returned between 0 and 99,999,999 will be "1".  100,000,000 to 199,999,999 would be "2".  and so forth.  This allows for the "random number sequence" we referenced earlier to have repeat numbers and local areas where some numbers are more/less frequent than others and still be overall consistent in the long run.

In reality when programming, RNGs (random number generators) output decimals in the range of 0 >= output > 1, which is the same as my last example above, but just divide the output by 1 billion and the randomNumber becomes roundUp(output * 10)

tl;dr (summary)

So, the answer to your question, when you drew from the LL shop, that returned your cover and kept the output number of that card in the background.  No matter what happens, the next time you draw from that store, you will get the output of that number in the RNG.  The only way you will get a different cover is if the shop changes, in which case, you will get whatever cover is assigned to that number now.  Either way, the number isn't going to change.

abmoraz

pheregas said:

Vhailorx said:

A In fact, if I read your post correctly, your next latest store purchase is very likely to be IMHB no matter what else you do in the meantime.

There is a small chance it could change depending on what 4*s are added between seasons though, right?

Each card in the shop is assigned a number range.  His number for the next pull has already been determined.  The only way for him NOT to draw the IMHB is if that (hidden) number gets assigned to a different cover when the shop changes

pheregas

abmoraz said:

pheregas said:

Vhailorx said:

A In fact, if I read your post correctly, your next latest store purchase is very likely to be IMHB no matter what else you do in the meantime.

There is a small chance it could change depending on what 4*s are added between seasons though, right?

Each card in the shop is assigned a number range.  His number for the next pull has already been determined.  The only way for him NOT to draw the IMHB is if that (hidden) number gets assigned to a different cover when the shop changes

BlixTheFrog

pheregas said:

abmoraz said:

pheregas said:

Vhailorx said:

A In fact, if I read your post correctly, your next latest store purchase is very likely to be IMHB no matter what else you do in the meantime.

There is a small chance it could change depending on what 4*s are added between seasons though, right?

Each card in the shop is assigned a number range.  His number for the next pull has already been determined.  The only way for him NOT to draw the IMHB is if that (hidden) number gets assigned to a different cover when the shop changes

Lol.
Actually, that indicates me that I should use a LL token for this IMHP instead of spending 25 CPs for it. I'll try explaining that long post from abmoraz to my kids, should be fun.