5* Pull Rates & Capping Futility

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
41

Why 20, not 16?

Why is 4.6% the break point? Why not 8.5%? Why not 2.3%?

Doesn’t it come down to metrics? How do different percentages affect overall player spending differently? How can profit be maximized? Or if strict short term profit is not the sole consideration, what about player satisfaction leading to player retention leading to more favorable word of mouth advertising leading to more players leading to more monetization?

What, to your mind, are the priorities? Short term profits? Long term profits? Player satisfaction? What are you basing 20, not 16, on?

I don’t mean to put you on the spot, just to advance the discussion.

It’s really smart to consider the dev viewpoint. But I think the devs might support capping - even “generous” capping for purely practical reasons.

The way I read KGB’s argument is, the developers by default don’t want to hand out more rare loot, because the more rare loot players have, the less incentivized they are to spend. Although I could be misinterpreting KGB’s posts.

But the way I think on it, roster slots are the big selling point. Players get a rare cover, they don’t want to sell it for iso, they want to keep it. But they also don’t want to discard what they already have, so they end up wanting to buy roster slots. So if anything, I’d say the devs may want to INCREASE the 5* drop rate, because it may INCREASE spending.

More, if players do have the perception that 5* covers are “progress” towards an end game state (and why not, because they sort of are right?), then player perception of progress is satisfied each time they get a 5*. So they’re encouraged to stay with the game rather than leaving &c.

There’s a lot of speculative back and forth I won’t get into now, but I think capping wouldn’t necessarily mean potential decrease in revenues. It might. It would be interesting to look at the metrics on this.

Though of course the developers won’t publish the metrics because the metrics amount to trade secrets is my guess. B)

42

Consider the current offering:

  1. an average of 7 pulls for any 5*
  2. an average of 21 pulls for a specific 5* in latest or an average of 196 pulls for a specific 5* in Classics
  3. 500 CP or 20 pulls for a guaranteed cover in HfH
  4. 720CP or 36 pulls

Streak breaker rarely looks better than displayed odds.

Besides, history has proven time and time again that whenever the devs make changes to existing system, they will usually add something “negative” or remove something “positive”. If you add in a streakbreaker at 16th pull, but the cost of LT will cost you 40CP instead, would you be fine with that?

43

The negative with the addition of the streakbreaker would be the decrease in pull rate from 15% to 12.5%. Note the 12.5% also assumes the increase in bonus hero rate from 5% to 10%. If the BH rate stayed the same at 5% then implementation of the streakbreaker at 16 would still necessitate a drop in the pull rate from 15% but not as low as 12.5%.

@HoundofShadow , it sounds like you don’t see it as a marked improvement, but at the very least, you don’t see it as worse. So can I count you as “indifferent” in which case there’s still more movement in favor?

44

That does make me think, what if the “Streak Breaker” were… optional?

16 LT pulls with no 5’s, you unlock the Streak Breaker LT Store. Yeah, maybe it costs 40CP (I imagine it would also be “Classics Only” to avoid interfering with the “new character release treadmill” that keeps the game going). But if you have that 40 CP, you can still crack two Classics instead. Or if you don’t want the characters available in the Streak Breaker, you can keep pushing Latest tokens to chase those characters. And maybe you change your mind around the 20th pull, and go for the Streak Breaker.

Basically, make it something that is available as a way to “alleviate” bad luck, but let players keep pressing on the way they do now if that’s the route they’d rather take (and obviously, you’d want to balance out the cost/contents of a Streak Breaker in order to make that a “meaningful” choice to the player).

Ideally, it would mean you don’t have to break the current system to make it happen, and some people could play the entire game without using the Streak Breaker at all, if they so choose.

45

There is a solution in place already. It’s saved covers. When you factor the time it takes to earn 113 5* covers, it doesn’t matter what the distribution of the first x covers are. Eventually, you’ll get 13 covers and you’re back were you are supposed to be with those saved covers. The only way this doesn’t work is, if you pulled 113 covers and the distribution is so poor that you have over 100 covers saved. What is the probability of this?

46

I suspect the game will shut down long before most people collect 113 covers of any/many 5* characters. Or if it doesn’t, that they’ll lose interest.
So saying the variance is acceptable at that scale isn’t particularly relevant.

47

Your close. I’m sure the Dev’s have no problem with ‘generous’ capping. But imagine trying to sell that to the players on the Forum: “We are implementing streak breakers” followed by Forum cheering. Then the details come out that says you’ll also get positive streak breakers if you over draw so players will suddenly realize they are about to undergo a forced 0-30 streak to get their 5* rate back in the 15% range. The backlash would be worse than Gambit’s Nerf.

That’s why I don’t think they can implement streak breakers. Because what it does (as others here have pointed out) is raise the overall 5* draw rate to >15%. The reason is that you suddenly only have players drawing at 15% or more (the lucky ones). That would sort of invalidate the whole posted 15% rate since it would now be something greater than that (probably 16-17%) since no one could have <15%.

The way I see it, their only choices are to leave it as is or go to a purely fixed system as I described. I don’t believe Players would vote streak breakers if it meant they also capped over drawing by forcing you into negative streaks as I described above.

KGB

48

Human nature is to be drawn to random. Removing that component by some of these suggestions such as a 20 pack of pulls that always contains 3 5*'s is great for those that plan everything out, but at the end of the day, the unpredictability is what keeps things “interesting” overall.
I understand why people like streak busters, and it’s certainly no fun to go 40 pulls without pulling a 5* but I am in favor of true randomness. Sometimes things break your way, sometimes they don’t. Nothing makes me more suspicious than finding out there’s some super complicated method for guaranteeing some result (limiting ai cascades are another example), and I expect I’d lose interest if I knew exactly what it would take to achieve the results I want.

49

I think folks are missing the part where we say a streakbreaker would necessitate a drop in the pull rate so the effective pull rate stays at 15%. No mention of a “negative” streakbreaker…

50

I definitely favour this streakbreaker. It benefits me and it benefits every player. However, it’s going to be a tough sell to the bean counter.

Should this be implemented for Heroics as well?

51

If it could help into knowing that RNGESUS is particularly stingy, Yesterday I opened 17 Legendary tokens and got ZERO 5stars,
so for me the percentage is ZERO! >:)

52

Question: By any chance, have you recently purchased in game content or are a VIP member; before you opened 17 tokens?

I’m doing some research because I opened close to 30 tokens with no 5 pull. At the time I stopped in game purchases.

53

So if I don’t spend I won’t get any 5 stars?
Good to know… Then I will be defenitely a F2P until I will bored enough to quit for good :slight_smile:

54

I made a purchase in January and it didn’t affect my 0/30 5* streak throughout January, so I don’t think that is a hard and fast rule (and would almost certainly be illegal as a not clearly stated term and condition of use of in-game currency).

55

0/30 is nothing.
My worst run was 3/105, and I’ve been on multiple 0/40s.
While being VIP all the time.

Take off your tinfoil hat.

56

Chance of going 0 for 40 with 15% pull rate and no streakbreaker: 1.5%
Chance of going 0 for 40 with 12.5% pull rate and streakbreaker at 15: zero

Chance of getting 3 or less in 105 pulls with 15% pull rate, 5% BH rate, and no streakbreaker: 0.005%
Chance of getting 3 or less in 105 pulls with 12.5% pull rate, 10% BH rate, and streakbreaker at 15: zero

57

How does this help me again, unless the overall 5* rate is increased? I’m fine with leaving the random in rng

58

Purchases most definitely do not have an impact on pull rates. A pull from a store is a pull from a store whether you’ve spent 0 or an undecillion dollars. Also, Chrome thinks undecillion is not a word. Chrome needs to play more idle games.

59

Im just doing some of my own research, relax.
I remember when shield intercepts were introduced and given without in game purchase. Then I stopped receiving shield intercepts. Why?
Then I made an in game purchase; my shield intercepts started to work again.
Then months later D3 announces that shield intercepts will only start working for people who help with in game purchase.
So with my own trouble shooting I figured out and solved my own problem, even before D3 announced a change!
My 5 Star pull rate has always been “average”, but now it has not.(not for the past 2 months)
Guess what I’ve stopped doing for the past two months?
That’s right, I stopped in game purchase$. So it’s just a hypothesis.
Now an Admin says that’s not something D3 would do. So now I have gotten my answer, you see, you just have to ask the right questions.
Well I hope my 5 star pull rate goes back to normal and not stuck at “above average”(that’s what D3 refers to it as) for long. I will make a video, pulls, once my hoard looks good. And before doing that I’ll make an in game purchase, just for more conclusive evidence to my skeptical hypothesis.
BTW D3 keeps track of which characters are being used most: 3* Strange being used 3,000,000 times or so, what makes you think they aren’t keeping track of how many 5 pulls you get and then, possibly adjust your pull rate?
”Average” “Above Average” “Below Average”

60

I fully expect there is likely a way that the development team can track how many pulls an individual gets, but I don’t see the reason to why they would bother to adjust it? What possible benefit can they gain for micro-managing the results of individuals? Think about a casino full of slot machines. They don’t care when individuals win big at a certain game, because they know that in the big picture the odds are so stacked in their favor that the sum total of all games played will work out handsomely for them. In fact, what happens when someone wins big at the slots? Sirens and flashing go off to draw attention to it, so that it can draw more people’s interest into testing their own luck.

Now, MPQ is a far cry from a casino, but provided that the vast majority of users fall within one standard deviation of the advertised percentages, why micromanage? …and if they don’t, you have some serious coding problems on your hands, so again, why micromanage when the problem would be so much bigger?