[Suggestion] How to fix the Implant Packs **** (salt+criticism)

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Coliax, Apr 17, 2018.

  1. Coliax

    I'm sick of it! I just dump another 2k on this and only get implants i already have. Dont get we wrong, i dont expect to get the super rares, but atleast something like nightmare or assasine!

    So we all agree that lootboxes are the biggest **** on this planets, and everybody do consider to add those is as ****y as the packs.
    #Saltoff

    Well after i get rid of my hate here is how we (and that means the dev's) can fix that.
    In World of Warcraft (and enought other games) there is something called Bad Luck Protection. You already guess it, this System increase the drop Chance for everytime you dont get it.
    For example, Catlike has a dropchance of 5% (idc if that is the real amount) and everytime you dont get the implant, the Chance will increase +0,5%. If you buy a deluxe bundle now and you dont get catlike, the Chance for the next time will be 8,5%


    If someone now have the idea to say "Yeah dude... we already have that" then here is my answer:
    I dont think that you can call that bad luck protection, because the increase is so tiny that not even a atom can fit on it.
    • Up x 5
  2. Callyste

    Cool system idea. Until you realize that with such a system, you'd break the space-time continuum because... that's just not how math works in our dimension.
    Unless the system somehow guesses WHICH implant you want.
  3. Coliax

    I think you dont understand the bad luck protection.
    When you open a normal 3x pack for 300 certs, you have a chance of (lets say) 5% to get catlike, or ammo Printer or Regeneration (and so on).
    But you will only get 3 implants. At this Point, the bad luck protection jumps in and increase the drop chance for every implant you dont get in this 3x pack. This will repeat until you get a implant (what will reset the dropchance of that implant you get back to Default)
  4. typnct

    loot boxes are the thing that keeps vets putting money in the next updates as well as asp
    its a good idea to put loot boxes that dont give too much of an advantage

    and their full extent can only be understood after a while

    but putting this karma... yeah its not a good idea as after a while(i guess a week or two)
    everyone will have every implant in the game
    • Up x 1
  5. Callyste

    I did understand what you meant. But such math just doesn't exist in our world!

    There's 24 implants you can get from packs. For the sake of simplicity, let's say each has an equal chance of dropping. That's about 4% per implant.
    You open a pack with 3 implants. What do you do? For the next pack, you keep those 3 implants with a 4% chance of dropping, but you increase all 21 other implants chance of dropping? You do realize that you'd go other 100%, which is theoretically, and practically, impossible. The increased chance of dropping you add there, have to be taken from somewhere else.

    The best you could do, is forbid your next pack to drop the 3 same implants you got, which means you'd redistribute 12% across 21 implants. You'd go from 4% chance to about 4.5% chance... but then, the pack that comes after this would stay at 4.5% anyway.

    So yes, I understand what you're suggesting, but it just doesn't work.


    (edit for clarification: my example clearly ignores that the same implant could drop multiple times in a same pack... I don't even know if they do)
  6. FateJH

    You have really weird math.

    Coliax's idea translates global categorical drop rates into the start of a character-local implant-specific drop rate and modifies the list of all implants. For example, common implants have a 67.8% drop rate in deluxe implant packs. We'll consider a universe of eight common implants - A through H - which start with the same drop rate of 8.475% each. The deluxe pack drops nine implants, all common, broken down into four groups of implants (A, B, E, H). We'll leave the potential for considering duplicates differently aside to keep it simple. Each of these implants loses a 0.25%drop chance, and the remaining implants in common are distributed that chance.

    In other words, before our first implant pack, all common implants have a 8.475% chance of appearing.
    After the first pack, two categories of common implants now exist:
    • A, B, E, and H, with 8.225% chance (change of -0.25%)
    • C, D, F, and G, with rates of 8.725% (change of +0.25%)
    Add them all up and the common implants in a deluxe pack still sit at 67.8%. Each implant pack continues to adjust these numbers based on which implants are acquired.

    If you wish to adjust implant rates across categories, that would also be possible, but I will not be demonstrating that here.
    • Up x 1
  7. Gustavo M

    It's kinda funny to read posts like these, like "Hey, devs!You guys missed something -this- obvious!" like the devs were never aware that lootboxes are gambling, in the first place.
    • Up x 1
  8. Callyste


    Yeah, that's pretty much what I said: odds you add somewhere, you have to remove somewhere else. His suggestion was to increase the odds of dropping of all implants you didn't get. In itself, that doesn't work. (My math was seriously rough, true. But in my defense, I'm at work, not caffeinated enough and definitely not supposed to do this xD)

    Really, a much simpler system would be to merely lower the chance of dropping implants you already own... but why would they do that? Their goal is to sell these packs after all. (Which is not to say I don't find think they're expensive...)
  9. Sazukata

    I don't think you understand how probability works. The same goes the other way: you remove somewhere, you add somewhere else, and vice versa.

    Now, randomized purchasable rewards is a cancerous anti-consumer practice designed to milk as much cash from the wealthy/unlucky/etc and I hope every company that utilizes it gets internationally legislated into oblivion.

    That said, let's look at the way some games have tried to make it slightly less inhumane: the pity rate (or bad luck protection, as OP has called it). FateJH has already explained it, but I'll give it a shot.

    Let's take a mobile game, Fire Emblem Heroes. The acquisition of characters is entirely a lottery with varying degrees of success and failure, known as summoning. When you summon, there is a potential for 3, 4, and 5-star characters. 5-star units are the best version of that character. 5-stars have a 6% chance of appearing. For every 5 summons without getting a 5-star, your chances of getting one increases by 0.5%. That 0.5% is proportionately subtracted from the 3 and 4-star pool.

    Base chance:
    5-star: 6%
    4-star: 58%
    3-star: 36%

    After 5 summons:
    5-star: 6.5%
    4-star: 57.75%
    3-star: 35.75%

    The same can be done for implants. And at the very least, DBG should display the chances as "informing the customer" is always a good practice.
  10. Liewec123

    i've been dumping certs into it every time i get the certs all because i want Nightmare on my main,
    i've dumped so many certs into it that i have almost every implant except nightmare!
    cloak, carapace, counter intel, i even have the damn "logistic specialist" and i only play solo!
    so many boxes but never getting the one damned implant that i want...

    ANY system that reduces the RNG or increases the chances of giving us the implants that we want is a good idea imho!

    also while we're on the subject of implants, "iso4" is way too low,
    it takes 3675 iso4 to rank up a single implant,
    if you grant that you already have every green implant you will be able to break down 9 implants per 750 certs into 225 iso4.
    so in short, to rank up a single implant it will cost you 12,750 certs!!!
    i've been playing for over 5 years and my main has accumulated just over 170,000 certs (most of this done with a membership)
    so ranking up a single implant will cost 7% of the certs that its taken me over 5 years to get...
    • Up x 1
  11. Callyste


    Edit: I was about to ask how the heck is what you said any different from what I stated, but now I just read the part of my comment you quoted - and I believe it's just a misunderstanding:

    When I said "lowering the odds of dropping the implants you already have", I of course implied this was to increase the odds of dropping the implants you don't own. I thought this was obvious; I suppose it wasn't.

    (otherwise, I do have a good understanding of (cumulative) probabilities and normal distributions :p)
    • Up x 1
  12. Stoet

    Sweet!! so after buying 200 (200x0.5% = 100% right??) implants in total, near 66(3 each) or just 22(9 each) packs, i 100% get the implant i want, included all other implant i haven't gotton yet. this is soo not going to ruin the whole implant system by people spending certs / iso-4 and even DBC into them by getting the implants they need.

    nah... i would say Give it a higher chance of getting implants you don't own yet in general. for my sake, even Double the chance of getting 1 you don't own yet.
    So for example, theres a 2% droprate on every implant and the ones you don't own yet will be 4%.


    Read this website, gives you an idea on how much to spend to get them all.
    http://iridar.net/planetside2/equipment/implants/
  13. raidneq

    I think they should just make it so you cant get the same implant twice, this would make a lot of people that arnt buying yhem actually buy them.
  14. JibbaJabba



    Maybe the system can take a wild ***** guess and figure out that the implants I want are the ones I don't have.

    Dunno just throwing that out there. Maybe that's a hard thing to program.
  15. Campagne

    Well really, the system could easily be told to assume players want implants they don't currently have and go according to previous suggestions without issue. :cool:
  16. Luicanus


    You know Locking continents nets you 300 ISO-4? Winning a defencive alert gets you 100 ISO-4, heck even losing any alert is still worth 50 ISO-4.

    Assume you lose 80% of Alerts and half the wins are defencive. Perhaps you only attend an average of 75% of each alert.

    10 Alerts is 500 + 100 + 300 = 900 ISO-4
    75% of that is 675 in only around , 6 hrs of actual playtime. Granted alerts aren't always on but you can see how someone could easily make that much ISO-4 or more in a couple of days.

    Technically, you should be winning 1/3 of alerts not 1/5 and based on the stats I've seen most won alerts lock the continent meaning it should be closer to 4:1 300 ISO-4 wins.

    In a week to ten days you have enough to max out an implant for zero certs.
  17. JibbaJabba


    Pretty generous assumptions in that napkin math.

    You need to initiate and win 12 alerts to max a single implant or lose 37 of them.

    If your timing was impeccable and you happened to log on each day right as an alert started that is still an entire work week of gameplay.

    It's all a bunch of BS calculated to slide in *just* below the pain threshold that makes players quit the game.
    • Up x 1
  18. Luicanus


    Sure it was fairly simple, but generous? How?

    I gave the hypothetical player a 20% win rate the VS on Cobalt usually sit at around 50%. while the TR and NC jockey for a 20-30% win rate. Then I made only one of those wins a lock. Seriously which part of that was generous?

    Bear in mind also, if you want to double or tipple the time to account for having to wait for the alerts to start it's fair to either remove the 25% loss from partials or at least slash it to 10%.

    5hr 40min x3 is 17 hrs of game play to make 810-900 ISO-4.

    Honestly, I got kinda lucky on implants, I'd not spent any energy under the old system I was just collecting the drops waiting. So when the Implant system came I had many days worth of energy translated into ISO-4 meaning I didn't have to wait around for a lot of them. Sadly I spent it all before realizing they had more to come out so I've had to grind a bit but typically I don't even think about ISO-4.
  19. JibbaJabba

    Mmm, probably the biggest fudge factor in the math I think was the timing. If I sit down and play a 2hr block of game, with a willingness to extend that by 30min to finish a started alert I'll simply not get a lot of alerts.

    Even during prime time. Either no alert will happen, or it will be on a continent that I'm not going to Queue to.

    I wouldn't even know where to begin estimating this, but the number of hours required to get one allocation of ISO (be that 100 or 300) is going to be much higher.

    Wild ***** guess: 50/50 chance of participating in a full alert during any 2hr block? It could be wildly worse but I don't think it's much better than 50/50.

    ISO from alerts is awful and deliberately so. This is the current "endgame" for this "MMO" that we're playing. That endgame content has to get stretched out over a thousand hours of gameplay or it won't serve it's purpose.
    • Up x 1
  20. DemonicTreerat

    Really the whole "random chance to get implant X" is stupid as hell but its a lazy way for lazy developers to get people to put money and/ or time into the game in time for it to show up on the quarterly balance that is the only thing management & shareholders even bother to actually look at anymore. Hence why they continue to use it - at least until they've exhausted all the options to appeal court decisions against them and they have to change it.

    Ideally we should be able to pick the implants we want then unlock them by putting a certain amount of certs and/or daybreak cash down directly. Upgrading would then be a matter of putting certs, daybreak cash, or ISO from alerts into that specific implant until its at the level we want.

    The biggest irony is that doing it that way would, if the implants had been done right the first time, encourage people to sink more time and/or money into implants than the current one-armed bandit system. Because when people know they can get something they want by doing something after X amount of a given investment they are more likely to see things through, instead of getting frustrated and quitting after the 10th time they've bought a major bundle and their "reward" is less ISO-4 than one gets by sitting in the warpgate stat padding while your side wins the alert due to the other side going completely stupid and ignoring the alert in favor of beating down the guys trying to play to the objective.