Let's talk numbers.

Repth - Harshlands · June 2010

So I spent 12 gold on the sunshine envelopes; got nothing but tokens from every single one. Spent all the tokens on Jolly Old Jones's packs; got nothing but pills, candy, and ONE ornament pack and ONE armor pack.

The chances of getting something good are unreasonably low for the amount of money I just spent. I'm not QQing about it, I just feel that if you spend 12 gold on it, you should have a higher chance to get something good from either pack, statistically. I could have just sold the 12 gold for around 6 mil coins and would have been much better off.

With the 12 gold I spent on the Sunshine Envelopes I got nothing but Perfect Tokens. Now, I was not expecting to get one of the rare mounts, or even any of those high level stones. But one thing I did not count on was getting the same item 12 times in a row. That's a little off. How much money are they expecting us to spend? I understand that the other items are worth more and have a lower chance of coming up, but with 12 consecutive packs of tokens it makes me wonder. What are the drop rates of these items? PWI should release the drop rates for the items in these events/packs to us; the customers. How do we know that some of these items are even attainable? As far as I know, it could have been a lie. If the drop rates were up, those who care could look at it statistically and decide how much gold they want to spend. I understand that this could hinder their business, but I really doubt that most people would even bother to do the math. I know I would though.

I mean really? I took that blow in stride. Whatever, in the real world, it's just 12 dollars. 12 dollars is no big deal for anyone with a job, which is why I chose to spend it in the first place.

I had no luck with the envelopes and was left with all these tokens, so what was I going to do? I made my way over the Jolly Jones. I had 180 tokens, 5 for a pack, that's 36 of his packs. With those 36 packs I got nothing but the same 6 items over and over again. Pills, candy, and 2 packs. That's only 6 of the 20 possible items. I got about 50 or so of those candy packs and sold them all to some guy for roughly 500k.

TLDR? Too many words for you to process comfortably? Bottom line; I could have sold the 12 gold to players and received roughly 6 mil. Instead, I now have about 500k.

That's something like 12% of the full profit I could have received through just selling the gold.

Now before I get trolled faster than Mark in Ugly Americans, let me say that I am not QQing. This is merely a speculation. I love Perfect World, which is why I spent money on it and can confidently say I will in the future. I just checked my history and I have spent an even $250 over the course of 2 years or so. It doesn't phase me one bit. Reviewing the Terms of Service (Section 10, a-h), I can see that this post does not violate it. However, if this upsets GM's and/or developers I urge you to just delete it rather than ban a long time customer.

So that's my story, has any one else had a scenario similar to this? How much gold have you spent on these "gamble" events/sales and been disappointed? What has your outcome been in terms of potential gold-to-coin ratio and actual gold-to-coin ratio?

Brigid - Harshlands · June 2010

Assuming the chance of Tokens of Luck and non-Tokens of Luck in Sunshine Packs is the same 97% and 3% that it is in Year of the Tiger Packs, the chances of getting nothing but Tokens of Luck from a mere 12 packs is nearly 70%. The chance of getting anything other than Tokens, Tokens of Best Luck, and Platinum Charms in 12 packs is about 6%.

Basically, there's a reason the good prizes from the various packs and events are valuable. It's because they're rare. If it only took a few million to obtain one of them, then they wouldn't be selling for tens or hundreds of millions, now would they?

Miugre - Heavens Tear · June 2010

If you're going to spend $12 to gamble, don't be surprised if you get nothing back.

You do realize this is how PWE makes their money now, right? Just be happy you're getting anything at all; with conventional gambling, you don't get squat when you lose.

Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973 · June 2010

I totally agree.

I spent 1 Gold, bought a pack, opened it, and didn't get a Scroll of Tome like I deserve. WTF! I was already planning on selling the Scroll of Tome and needed the money... I'm filing a ticket.

HexOmega - Dreamweaver · June 2010

50 tigers - 50x token kkthxbai
a friend opened 200 tiger packs, 200x token

_:P

...well... luck... u have it or u dont have it
live with it, deal wit it, stop gambling

..
i think i stop trying to refine +3 with mirages too... i lost my luck

always end up with no mirages (worth millions -> orbs) and +0 refines :P

Elviron - Dreamweaver · June 2010

I think ive opened a total of ($103) 103 packs and got all tokens except for 3 tokens of best luck.

With tokens i made skill books (after buying tokens using ingame coins as well) and ended up with an extra Demon Quickshot (sold for 30 mils....couldve sold for more I guess

seeing as it was gone in like 10 mins)

I dont regret paying the amount here every once in a while since its meagre to what I actually get for my work. I could spend much more but then again its kinda stupid to spend that much on a game rather than a nice vacation

Repth - Harshlands · June 2010

The expected level of hostility and elitism I typically see in most PWI Topics. Like I said in my original post; I was not expecting to get any of the rare prizes. I bought 12 packs and only got tokens. To some of you who probably spend more money on the game, that doesn't seem like much. But realistically, to just spend 12 gold on a gamble and get one item is boring.

So why the extremes? Why is it that the perfect tokens are the only thing with a common "drop" rate from the packs? It's either tokens or ultra-mega rare expensive stuff. There's no in between; which I was expecting. I was expecting variety. Instead, I bought a pack which has an overwhelmingly high rate of tokens.

Why isn't there a range? For example; common items, uncommon items, and rare items?

Say the ratio was something like 7 : 2.9: .1
70% chance to get a common item (The tokens for example)
29% chance to get an uncommon item (maybe a mid-high grade socket stone)
1% chance, or even lower, to get a rare item (such as the mounts)

These figures are made up just to get my point across, which is, it shouldn't be that you either get **** or amazing stuff. There should be more of a bridge between the two.

To counter an argument made on how the rate for rare items is low because that's what makes them rare; either way PWI gets the same amount of money. Most people will not buy an unlimited amount of packs. Only some of the most hardcore players would spend a hundred dollars on one gamble item. Most casual players and even moderate players, such as myself, will give themselves a limit on how much gold to spend on a certain gamble sale.

If PWI continues to only make gamble items on a 9.9:.1 ratio with ****:rare, it will find that most moderate and casual gamers will lose interest in buying such packs. Which will ultimately lose business because there are far more casual/moderate players than hardcore players. If all the casual/moderate players get fed up and leave, all that will be left will be the hardcore players, which will eventually get bored because there will be no more casual/moderate players for them to pk or beat in pvp. A "hardcore" player is only defined in comparison to a casual player. Without any casual players, the hardcore players will cease to exist. This would cause the death of Perfect World.

TLDR again? Can't follow this post? Too complicated for you to comprehend?
PWI needs to acknowledge the casual/moderate players by increasing the chance for things of moderate level/rarity to drop from these packs. Otherwise people such as myself will cease to casually spend money on these things. This goes for both the Envelopes and Jolly Jones's item rate.

EDIT: Just read how people are reacting to this. http://pwi.perfectworld.com/news/?p=64601 Everyone is saying its a ripoff and a scam. I'm not only telling you how I feel about this, it seems as though most people feel that way as well. I bet that these negative comments litter most PWI update blogs. Just look it up. If this trend of frustration continues, people will simply stop caring about the sales/events and ultimately stop caring about PWI all together.

ThanosQRt - Dreamweaver · June 2010

Repth - Harshlands wrote: »

TLDR again? Can't follow this post? Too complicated for you to comprehend?
PWI needs to acknowledge the casual/moderate players by increasing the chance for things of moderate level/rarity to drop from these packs. Otherwise people such as myself will cease to casually spend money on these things. This goes for both the Envelopes and Jolly Jones's item rate.

EDIT: Just read how people are reacting to this. http://pwi.perfectworld.com/news/?p=64601 Everyone is saying its a ripoff and a scam. I'm not only telling you how I feel about this, it seems as though most people feel that way as well. I bet that these negative comments litter most PWI update blogs. Just look it up. If this trend of frustration continues, people will simply stop caring about the sales/events and ultimately stop caring about PWI all together.

oh my, your analysis is so much better and more accurate than those of the managers of pwi that just happen to do that for a living and actually know the goals and sstrategy of the company </irony>

Repth - Harshlands · June 2010

Oh dear God please get that condescending **** out of my topic. Good for you; you're a higher level than me. There, I said it. Now grow up and actually CONTRIBUTE to the topic at hand. Or how about you just go back to mindless grinding instead of lurking and trolling people with lower levels? If you have nothing to contribute to the discussion, just don't post. It's that simple. Go fulfill your need to empower yourself somewhere else. Go RPK or whatever it is you do, that high level bigotry won't pass here.

Brigid - Harshlands · June 2010

You realize, of course, that 14 Tokens of Luck = 1 Flawless Garnet or Flawless Citrine shard? Which means, in fact, that every single pack you open gets you the equivalent of, not just a mid-grade, but arguably a high-grade shard?

Tokens of Luck really aren't nearly as bad a consolation prize as you seem to view them. If you're looking at purely the resale value, at current Token and Gold prices, what you have is a guaranteed recovery of 1/3 to 1/2 of the cost of the pack. When's the last time you saw a lottery where the consolation prize is 1/3 of your money back?

Now, on the other hand you can use those Tokens for any of several dozen useful things. Some are worth the cost, others aren't. Just because you picked one of the worst of those options, statistically speaking, doesn't mean they're worthless.

Basically, what you did is turned 6m into 2m or so by gambling by opening those 12 packs. Then, you turned that 2m or so into 500k by continuing to gamble.

Now then, regarding adding "intermediate" prizes to the packs. Since you seem primarily concerned with the value of the items in question, I assume they will be worth more than Tokens of Luck. Thus, the average value of the pack goes up. Gold prices thus continue to rise, until a new equilibrium is reached due to a combination of the value of the "intermediate" prizes falling, and the price of a pack rising.

Oh and also, if you were around during the first Anniversary Pack sale, you'd realize that the only reason Tokens of Luck are so cheap now is because there's hundreds of thousands of them floating around, and inflation from Tokens of Best Luck and 2x drop events has had a significant effect on the economy. Tokens were easily in the 20-30k each range following the first sale, because they were useful and the supply wasn't nearly so great. Each following pack sale has dropped their coin value.

TL;DR: Tokens of Luck are hardly "****". They only seem that way because the massive supply of them has driven their prices, and the prices of a multitude of very useful items, down.

Repth - Harshlands · June 2010

I will admit that I was at fault for only considering Jolly Jones as an option for spending my lucky packs. Though I will stand by what I said earlier about the Jones packs specifically only having either very great items or hardly useful ones in them; regardless of what method you use to get them.

Blazing - Harshlands · June 2010

Yesterday I got really bored so me and my fiance decided, what the heck lets spam 3.1k tokens on the jolly jones!! This is what I got.

Black Raptor after 200th or so packs.
Flame Drill after 400th or so packs.
3 full sets of Headless, 2 extra Headless Belts.
1.2k candy boxes.
Enough common shards to make 1 beautiful sapphire.
Enough commons to make 2 average garnet and 1 average amber.
Over 10ish ornament and weapon packs.
The rest... enough mouth watering treats that I have to put some to my alt to hold (I don't have max inventory slots)

It took us over about an hour or more to click the npc and opening the packs afterwards. It was MIND NUMBING. I gave him 1.5k tokens and I had the rest. Imagine how long it'd take if I opened it by myself.

Repth - Harshlands · June 2010

Sweet Christmas, 3.1k? That's crazy! I bought another 10 envelopes just for the hell of it. Nothing but tokens once more. This time, though, I'll spend them a little more wisely.

Let's talk numbers.

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