Documentation of drop rates - where is it??

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
1

Someone mentioned that a new law somewhere required all apps that had a lottery function must list the drop rates.

Does anyone know if the law also requires the developer to document the drop rates in some manner.

I’m asking because my results from opening Premium packs are so abysmal that I have a nagging suspicion that there is a mistake in the code.

Someone (I think Volrak) wrote that someone had seen the code a while back and it looked alright. My gut-feeling has always been that the seed for generating the randomness is flawed so the seed is not really generating random results.

Can anyone provide a link or something?

2

Here is some wonderful results for you. I opened 4 Premium Dominara (5x) packs and received 1 new rare, no mythics (no dupes either) and all other cards were dupes, including the guaranteed rares! I have like 35% of the rares and 5% of the mythics for the record.

3

Drop rates are published (as required by law) by clicking the “%” on the pack you want to open. They line up pretty much with the sheet @Volrak maintains.

Also just a reminder; any discussion of datamining (looking at the code) is forbidden on the forum.

4

Also please look up random number generation and confirmation bias before you post about drop rates

5

Thank you, @bken1234 but is that documentation of the drop rates?

What you refer to is the specification of the drop rates, what I’m asking for is the documentation of the drop rates. Basically, if I make a claim I must also provide proof of said claim.

volrak has done some great work collecting the drop rates, but as far as I understand this is unconfirmed by D3, though it does seem to corresponds to the specified drop rates.

@bken1234 - Are you warning me that the content in my post is over the line regarding the part about the flaw in the code? I’m not asking for the code, I’m just stating a suspicion concerning the app. Otherwise thank you for highlighting a code of conduct I was unaware of.

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Bhahahahahaha

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It sounds like you’re asking for either proof that the rng isn’t rigged, or proof that the drop rates provided by law are accurate. Rng never ever guarantees good results . It’s random. It also doesn’t take into account how many times you’ve tried . It just picks a number. You win some, you lose some . The rng is ,in fact , random. As for documentation, what are you even asking for. A spread sheet? Everyone ,including you, seems to feel that the overall numbers line up with the actual drop rates. Opening packs is frustrating. It always will be, but them’s the breaks.

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It’s funny how certain keywords trigger specific reflexes, even if the initial post clearly asks for something related, but different from the usual.. So, I’ll be the first trying to actually give an answer to the question. I’m not an expert, so please correct me if I’m wrong.

The law is not a law, but a requirements made by Apple (well.. There’s something like that at least in China, but it’s not a law but an “order” ) . Devs have to publish drop rates of lootboxes. It might be possible that they have to prove the stated odds, but in that case it’s between them and Apple, so no public documentation can expected to be accessed as far as I know. D3, who generally prefer to say as little as possible, haven’t provided anything like a documentation to the audience. Before they had to, they ignored the calculated drop rates by the community as well, never commented on whether they were right or wrong.

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@Tremayne to your first question; as a volunteer forum mod, I cannot answer that.

I can tell you mine have been much, much higher.

To your second when you receive a forum warning it comes via direct message. I am merely reminding everyone that discussions of anything found through data mining are not allowed.

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The game has pretty horrible drop rates to begin with. Add the bugs and the admission that they “forgot” to add masterpieces to packs at one point, it would be hard to find any consistent values.

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As others have said, you’ll find no “documentation” of drop rates from D3 or Oktagon. It’s up to us if we want to check them, and the only way to do that is statistically. And that’s been the main purpose of the community drop rates spreadsheet ever since drop rates were published.

Isolated results, and even small runs of extreme luck, are easily explained by randomness. An error could only be demonstrated by sustained results which deviate from the published rates over a huge number of drops, ideally tens of thousands. To give you an idea, if you had 25,000 card opening results from a given pack type, you would be able to narrow down the true mythic drop rate to a window of around 0.3% (e.g. between 0.9% and 1.2%), and that would only be with 95% confidence.

You can probably see by now that any proof sufficient to justify you raising a ticket would also be proof enough to justify every single other player also raising a ticket.

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@Tremayne If you are looking for the official drop rates of booster packs, then bken1234 is correct in stating that they are listed in-game, and can be seen by clicking the % icon next to each of the booster pack options.

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Thank you all for your comments. I haven’t been able to respons due to RL, but here goes.

Disclaimer - I do not accuse anyone of wrong doing, since I have no proof of that. If you think that I‘m to critical, then that was not my intention. All I would like is a clarification to remove the sour feelings I have due to poor luck.

I asked my original question, since I wanted to know where to look for the “law” since Apple did not have a page (That I could find). @Laeuftbeidir thank you for stating what I should have know. There is only a useless rule from Apple, which is not enforced, so any developer in the App-store can write whatever drop rate they want. Should they get “caught” by Apple they have 30 days to fix the “error”.

How any developer is supposed to be caugth by Apple, if Apple do not collect any documentation is anyone’s guess. I suppose we have to hope for a disgruntled worker.

@nerdstrap - I know there is something called selection bias, that is why I asked for documentation. By looking at data for all drops I could see if the specification was valid, e.g. that the actual drop rates are consistent with what several of you have pointed me towards - the %-part of the vault.

Here is my problem with the % in the vault. If that was documentation, then I would assume there would be some kind of fluctuation in these numbers, since if truly random there would be bad/good streaks. However, once set the rates seem to remind fixed. So the % is not documentation of a correctly working functionality. It describes the “goal” or expected behaviour.

Let us assume that software developers can make mistakes! I know that is a bit far fetched but humor me please. For my part I think that it is entirely possible that Octagon could make a mistake during coding. If you have played MTGPQ, I think you know what I mean.

Now is Octagon changing code that relates to the drop rate?
Well I would like to turn your attention to the release of Ixalan, where we got abysmal drop rates, at something between 2-3 % Those drop rates was changed once most of the hoarded crystals was spent (or Apple had made D3/Octagon aware of the mistake).
Recently Brigby confirmed that an error had occurred in the Pink+ pack, so one Masterpiece was not lootable!
So my assumption that Octagon is altering in the packs and the drop rates from time to time Is not invalid.

@brigby has stated around the time Ixalan was released that the drop rates in some way is related the number of cards there is in each rarity. But this seems to be a misconstrued perception, when the drop rates for Ixalan is definitely different now as opposed to release.

So I ask D3/Octagon - How do you test/validate the drop rates internally?
How do you arrive at the drop rates in the UI?
I assume that you must have some sort of data collection performed to prove to Apple that your drop rates in the %-part of the vault are reseasonably correct.
How often is that report generated?
Who recieves this report in D3/Octagon and outside of these firms?
What is you policy for correcting errors and compensating users if/when errors are found?

Post script - Sorry this became such a long response, but I got inspired. :smiley:

Post Post script - @Volrak - I think that your work for the community is recommendable, thank you for your hard work and thank you to all who helped collect the data. I have never participated, because I think that your results should be coming from Octagon not you. :frowning:

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“”“Post Post script - @Volrak - I think that your work for the community is recommendable, thank you for your hard work and thank you to all who helped collect the data. I have never participated, because I think that your results should be coming from Octagon not you. :frowning: “””

Part of the point, though, is that we can never ever ever trust what comes from any company (or individual), only external validation is acceptable.

15

I’m puzzled by your statement that you are unable to trust any company. Why would you play an app or buy a product from a company if you did not trust the quality or contents?

I trust D3/oktagon to be able to respond truthfully to my questions above. What have been difficult for many is to get D3 to answer even simple questions. Why that is, is for others to speculate over.

The major problem with the work of Volrak is that it is invalidated the moment a new release comes out.

if D3 supplier the documentation continuously, both the players and D3/Oktagon could see that no errors had crept into the code of the new release.

Sadly, we are participating in a lottery without proof said lottery is fair. Mistakes happens for everyone, see this example from a few years back - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/national-lottery-players-binned-winning-tickets-app-technical-issue-a7386186.html

Apparently we have to get our politicians to make laws that requires Apple to enforce this before we a change. :s

16

I respect your opinion but i dont agree. I do not trust D3Go because of how they convey themselves and the things i have seen. I want to trust them but sometimes its hard.

For instance, the elite pack masterpiece mis-advertising (slaughterpact), the lack of masterpieces being available within IXL or RIX (i believe?) for an extended period of time, the lack of actual drop rates for the longest time in this game, the excessive overpricing of pay cards, the lack of communication/explanation of certain issues, etc etc etc

Did you know D3 makes extremely quick changes when it can hurt their profit margins, especially refunds pertaining to pay cards like the most recent palladia elder dragon one; yet an update of any kind is impossible to see?

Businesses are in it for the money in many cases unfortunately. Did you know hospitals use rebate medications that you don’t need to make more money? Did you know grocery stores in the U.S. repackaged expired meats with seasonings or by dabbing new fresh blood from newer meats to cover up the color change of meats? Did you know businesses spend inordinate amounts of money on lobbiest to “spin” and manipulate public opinion (look at big tabacco)? Have you ever heard of “pink slime” used in many fast food chains as a meat alternative? Did you know theres a reason why chicken nuggets (will not disclose brand) doesnt taste meaty like real chicken? Do you know how your food is stored and handled prior to being butchered (antibiotics, diseases, living in their own manure, overcramped, highly stressed)? Do you know about the sugar industry and their manipulation of information to make “fats” out to he the enemy? Did you know “low fat” usually means “high sugar” in foods? Man i could go on. Google it, it will change your world

How am i suppose to trust companies? How do i know? Well in some cases there are other companies or organizations like the FDA is there to regulate things. There are independent research companies. Etc etc. Even governments have multiple branches to ensure the other is in check. But then again what is to say that they are not paid off? Shrug.

So yes i feel there is a need for this company as well as many others to ensure/prove their promises.

P.S. Though i respect that they are trying and understand their situation as a business as well.

17

“Trust” always has to be followed up with “Trust them to do what?”, you trust people and companies in different ways for different things. “Trust” is overused as just a “good” word, but if you know someone really deceitful then you “Trust them to stab you in the back”. Trust just means you’ve built up a mental model of someone that you personally consider accurate, it means the model is good, not that their behaviour is good.

And you break up how you trust people, like I trust a babysitter with my kids but not my bank PIN, I trust the bank with my money (partly because I’m forced to) but not my kids.

It’s not an all or nothing thing.

From what I’ve observed I trust D3Go to slowly work towards becoming a more customer focussed company after years of only caring about money. (They still care about money, but I see more signs that they want long term customers rather than when they used to want to raze the village and salt the ground.)

I trust Oktagon to keep up to date with new sets and to slowly work towards a good long term game enviroment. I do not trust them to respond to any bugs quickly.

I trust that neither will deliberately allow incorrect drop rates because that is too big of a timebomb.

The initial post had some weird ideas in it, it was talking as if companies were meant to report on what does drop, rather the percentages of what could. This is not how drop rates and random numbers work and part of why things can never ever be perfectly matched up!

18

I support transparency when it comes to things like drop rates, but it’s actually quite difficult to see how D3 or Oktagon could prove with documentation that their published drop rates are correct.

The results of a billion simulated drops wouldn’t do it, because there’s no proof that what generated drops in the simulation matches what the live game does. They could publish the average drop rates for the actual drops that have occurred for all players in the game, but they can’t prove those averages were genuinely calculated from the real drops. Even something as extreme as making the whole game open source wouldn’t do it, because they can’t prove that the server that’s running at any point in time is built from the same version of the code as what’s published.

Only thing I can think of would be for them to have a live website which updates in real-time with combined stats of actual drops as people open packs. When you opened a mythic you’d be able to see the counter increment immediately. But that would be a pretty large effort to set up and maintain, for something that I don’t think would really improve the player experience. I’d rather see that effort go to fixing bugs and developing game content.

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@Volrak

related question here. Do we have anything on m19? The % speak favorably of pulls, but the general consensus from the collective here has been poor results (granted small sample, relativity, etcetc).

I didn’t see m19 when I checked the database, but might have missed it…haven’t had my coffee yet so my brain is running about as fast as a tipped-over snail.

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https://forums.505go.com/discussion/comment/776196/#Comment_776196