What to do if you're fed up with ridiculous draws

So if the probability of draws are uniform by class (excepting featured heros), then WFT is up with getting always the same dupe 3*'s. Even in challenge, where there are no S1s, it’s far more dupes.

The first shrubbear was cool. He’s kinda novel. He has a peculiar use. Fine. I enthusiastically leveled him and gave him a node. The second was like, “Well, that’s too bad… I could have really used something different.” But in the last challenge summon, I drew 3 shrubbears! As well as dupe Jackals and Flacon. And a new Lancelot. Nice you say. Well, not particularly. Because those are ALL heros that I can get from the Level 8 HA summon. Meaning I will inevitably be getting more dupes of them if I choose to research that. Although I have no way to prove it, I am convinced that the stuff that you can earn in game with effort - i.e., trainings, etc. – end up getting higher draw probabilities in the summons even within a class. And I am sick of it.

So sick of it that I started to contemplate walking away. Since there is nothing for me to do but level a Lancelot that will only marginally improve my teams. I am already choking on unique red epic’s and have stopped wasting resources on them. And even more S1 epic red dupes have been fed to other heros along the way.

But to quit doesn’t really punish SG. Even though I am F2P, they got what they wanted - I watched lots of their ads for gems (cost them nothing) and they were paid for serving those ads. So I am going on a strike – and ad strike – and I encourage anyone who is fed up with the summons and lack of availability of good heros through build to join me.

This strike involves doing the following:

  1. Stop watching ads in game. No mystic vision. No summon-for-ad. Zero. Ziltch.

  2. Take 3 of your dupe heros and set them as your defense. Doesn’t matter if they are unleveled or whatever. This will demonstrate you are part of the strike. And it will also mess with the raid algorithm.

  3. When your cups drop to a low number, start consecutive attacks and the algorithm will quickly pair you with people who are high up; use your good heros to beat them for > 50 points a shot. They will get so mad but although they will want to revenge they won’t get their 50 cups back or anything close to it. Nor will they get good value for their raid flag. They will get fed up too.

With enough pressure, maybe SG will decide to make the game fun and balanced again in terms of giving folks a reason to play again. I could stack up my camps for several months and just walk away right now, and it would be the same as if I played every day. That’s how ridiculous the situation is.

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Been like this forever. 3 star heroes are always going to be the majority of the draws you get. If they haven’t even contemplated fixing it by now, it’ll be too late if they ever do.

The “strike” you propose will do absolutely nothing…only less money spent or people removing the app will cause some type of consideration. And if you already believe in the big invisible algorithm in the sky, you have no chance in being happy with this game.

Best of luck

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I set my expectations low and to the point of “I know” what I will get, so then if I do get them still, oh well, it’s expected, but if I get BETTER, then amazing, I take it

Usually in portals, I get the same heroes. For example in Atlantis, I typically get rigard and Proteus… I think mostly I get purple/dark heroes more than others, or maybe greens. I will get Renfeld a lot more than Dawa or other 3/ where as other people get Holy/Dawa a lot more often than me and my renfeld.

Set your bar low, then you will never be disappointed… oh and, don’t spend much money also helps

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The more you draw, the bigger this effect is. You can’t fight that with gacha mechanics. Same way for anything using this distribution model. Random is going to give you clumps of things and deny you other things. Always. Just play with what you have.

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Throw tables at SG. Works everytime.

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Go on the Forum and make another thread because obviously there’s not plenty others that a disgruntled player can add to… :roll_eyes:

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I thought about this quite a bit, and if that was the case, they wouldn’t have made the game the way it is. I suspect their business model derives quite a lot of revenue from ads. Think: there are some games like this that exist soly from ad revenue. Yes, there is a large inflow of money from the gamblers. But it’s a question of covering costs. If they lost the ad revenue from F2P, they would feel it.

So rather than just say there is nothing to do about it, consider taking the actions outlined above. And don’t fall for the “make fun of the complainer” crowd. There is something wrong here. Do you think they randomly picked those particular “oldest and most out-of-date” heros randomly to be available in HA 8? Nah, this is deliberate. There are so many ways to fix it without undermining the advantage of going for a jackpot hero - we aren’t even talking about jackpot heros, just the ridiculous dupes. Of over 100 4* I’ve variously summoned and trained, there is still 1 S1 I don’t have. In the healer department, it took a whole year to draw a second 4* healer, and then suddenly there were 3 Rigards dropped in my lap all at once.

Pseudo random number generation doesn’t work like this when the algorithm is tuned for the right level of uniformity. In this case the level of uniformity seems to be about 1,000,000 draws. Which nobody will do individually. So you can say that with respect to an individual, the game isn’t using a uniform random distribution… and that needs to change.

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There is a reason that games like these have psychologist as part of their staff. They lean on them and use their knowledge within the field to discover which kind of game mechanism and just how much frustration will eventually push F2P to become PTP.

It’s not particularly nice to think about and I’m sorry the game has brought you down. Games are meant to provide you with fun and good times and certainly not frustration.

But - and I’m really sorry it’s like this - the game will not change no matter how many negative posts you might make. As long as there are people spending thousands of dollars every month, it will remain the same - and possibly just continue to get worse.

Pick your battles and whatever you decide I wish you the best of luck :four_leaf_clover:

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Eh? Is it random or uniform? This is the very definition of mutually exclusive. You want it to be fair - random is not fair, it’s, er, random. So you want it to be tuned, or are you saying it shouldn’t be?

The odds are horrendously low, I don’t think anyone’s going to argue about that.

Sorry, but you apparently haven’t taken probability theory. When you look at a distribution of independent random events, the law of large numbers dictates that depending on the type of random variable, you MAY have what is known as a uniform distribution. That is what you should get when you are not weighting one outcome more than the other. It is not the only type of random distribution. There is a specific distribution known as the Poisson distribution that is more like what we see in this game. Both in the appearance of tiles, and the appearance of specific heroes. That distribution is used to predict when, for example, a light bulb is going to fail, or (this is seriously how it originally was developed) the probability of a mule kicking someone in old Napoleonic logistics situations.

Now, as to the point of “they won’t change as long as people are still spending thousands of dollars a month…” Sorry, have to disagree. The game has a relatively high production cost. There are obviously many artists, gameplay designers, and coders who all take away bits of those P2P funds. In the end, they need to also have ad revenue otherwise it wouldn’t be in there. And, if you were paying attention, within the past couple of months, they increased the frequency of mystic vision ads. What does that tell you? It IS a critical component of their business model, and if F2P players stop watching ads in a specific protest, then either they will have to change things (i.e., give us uniformly distributed random variables instead of whatever kind of weighted algorithm they are using now) or the income shrinks enough that, while they won’t go out of business, the will have less money to put into production of new heros, new events, etc.

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Ah, that’s all right then. I’m not ftp so I can carry on watching those ads with a clear conscience.

You’re right, I haven’t studied probability theory beyond a statistical module in a certificate course in social sciences - certainly not in depth, and I’ve forgotten most of it. However, I’m confident enough to suggest that your own experience simply can’t provide enough volume of data to demonstrate the distribution you’re talking about. You even say so yourself in your second post.

I’d phrase it a strong hunch supported by anecdotal observations.

It’s a very sad thing how statistical theory has completely fallen off the map in the age of “computers that can figure that.” I ask my kid about whether they taught this stuff in AP Statistics and the answer is “huh? what are you talking about?” … followed by, “Oh, yeah, sure, I learned that.” (Not very convincing.)

Anyway, in the world of coding, generating pseudo-random numbers isn’t sexy work. Nobody every showed up to play a game because the spaces on the roulette wheel were manufactured to a higher tolerance of uniformity than any other roulette wheel in the world. No, they show up because the fun and excitement, and they stick around because of the buzz and hype and greed, and maybe cocktail waitress’s cleavage. (Seriously, for a game that held up “Choose to Challenge”, the design of female characters has strayed a bit from Joan of Arc (Sojna) and the other S1 women.

Good old shrubbear doesn’t have that problem, of course. I love the character. I just don’t need 12 of him!

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When I was at school we weren’t even allowed to use calculators in exams! (A very, very long time ago.)

Yes, the pull rates are pretty streaky. I summoned 3 x Chao last time, and more than my fair share of certain 3* I’ve had for years. It feels sad and wasteful when they’re excellent heroes that other people would love to have but no, they get dupes too, just different ones. I hold onto the thought that event 3* I don’t want give the same amount of xp when fed away as s1 3* I don’t want - which is all of them, basically. I’ve even had my fill of Treevils. Now how about a nice costumed Panther?

I respect your opinion but I’ll never believe there is tile manipulation as you say. I don’t believe in ghosts either, but there is no way I’d waste my time trying to sway those that believe.

Again I’m not saying there is NO way to change things how they are, but the forum has a very tiny percentage of the actual players in here often. To think rallying by getting everyone to not click the ads so they’ll raise the odds is not going to happen,

My belief is those who believe the boards are rigged will never be happy. It’s some deep seeded mechanism that allows you to think you never really lose, there are outside forces that are the only reason you don’t have a 99% win rate.

We all have the right to think what we want, but I’m just here to better my game and enjoy my time with like minded people who have a passion of playing this game.

Keep on keeping on.

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Throwing tables while throwing tantrums :slight_smile: I like this idea

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“We won’t pull dupes if we drop cups and quit watching ads” is quite the leap of logic.

To your point, you’re getting more heroes you can train because the odds of getting them are higher in most portals, not because summons are rigged.

This is a gacha game. House always wins. Always.

Your advocated Ad boycott should work. Financial impact will be small but it will show eventually.

Gacha games make most of their money from summon portals. That’s why the summon odds are so low.

Adding on to that strategy are deliberate Hero Levelling obstacles: scarcity of 4AM, aethers and emblems. This drives impatient players to buy offers, micro transactions that bring in a fair bundle of $$$ too.

Zynga/SGG will listen more to the whales who threaten to withhold spend, than F2P who threaten to boycott watching Ads.

This was proven when there was a no-spend movement initiated by top tier in response to lousy CoK loot, notably no Aether III, for all the top performers.

So … if you want to make a bigger impact, add on other stuff including Boycotting events like MT, Leaving a 1* rating and a negative review. Exiting the game works too.

@NicoX Nope, not at all. That’s not the position of the thread at all, it’s that there is a way for F2P players (and others also upset with this nonsense) to exert some leverage on the game’s bottom line, but you’re middle school logic teachers wants to have a word with you.

@Chadmo I might have believed in coincidence as well… except when I took the time to study what is available in the HA8 trainings. Funny, my epic dupes line up pretty well with what I could actually procure in-game through effort with no $$$. As for rare, well, I applaud you getting multiple treevils. But it won’t help much unless you are in a low alliance, because 3* in war is a non-starter for most, tower and tavern events jump pretty quickly to where your 3* become usless, and even treevil’s skill doesn’t stack IIRC.

@BlackZed the streakiness applies to non-farmable mats as well. I basically get a compass every day. Meanwhile I haven’t had fine gloves drop as a randomized reward for months. This is one of the reason why the opportunity cost of boycotting adds and dropping cups to lower loot tier doesn’t matter that much. As for leaving the game, while that reduces ad revenue, it also reduce cost somewhat. As players depart, it means less load on the servers (if you don’t think their servers are stretched, remember the kingdoms events). I does decrease their ad metric when they go to advertisers and say “we have XYZ active users playing N times/day”… so it could make more impact. I start to consider seriously walking away. Call me OCD, but the main reason I don’t is I do find the game to be a nice escape from the RW grind, but frankly there is just no reason to keep playing if all I’m doing is matching tiles. There are better match-3 games out there with more cooler match power-up’s.

You’re suggesting that we quit watching ads and set up a weak defense in order to pressure SGG into changing their algorithm, which you believe to be skewed towards pulling dupes (without proof, by your own admission).

So yes, it is. And no, it doesn’t make much sense.

I’m on it! While we’re at it, perhaps we should invite you and your elementary school English teacher. There will be cake, it’ll be a lot of fun.

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Play as long as this game is still a nice escape. Otherwise go explore other games.

There are indeed better match-3 games out there, with more generous Developers, who are not obsessed with meeting monthly profit targets. I hope you find one to your liking.

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