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When is the contents of a lockbox determined ?
twikitwiki
Member Posts: 5 Arc User
(Updated: Opening chances for possibility 1 corrected, see *)
Hello,
My question is basically:
When is the contents of a lockbox determined ?
Some possibilities:
1. The contents of the lockbox is determined when it drops.
2. The contents of the lockbox is determined when it is opened by a key.
Example for possibility 1:
200 boxes drop, 1 box contains the valuable ship.
User A opens 195 boxes and finds nothing, remaining 5 boxes are posted on the exchange.
User B buys the 5 boxes opens them and finds the valuable ship.
Example for possibility 2:
User A opens 195 boxes and finds nothing.
User B opens 5 boxes and finds nothing.
I think statistically there is a difference between possibility 1 and possibility 2.
The opening of the boxes in possibility 1 influences what could be in the remaining boxes. There is a dependence.
While possibility 2 is less dependent and the dependency is based on something else, for example the state of the current random number generator.
So possibility 1 is based on a historical generation of chances.
So possibility 2 is based on current/dynamic generation of chances.
For the player possibility 2 would be worse.
It's a bit like rolling dice.
If the dice was rolled 6 times, the user has 1/6 chance. (6 boxes, each box contains on average one number of the dice).
However if the dice is re-rolled every time the user opens the box the chance changes.
*
incorrect: The user has 1/6 chance each time instead of: 1/6, 2/6, 3/6, 4/6, 5/6, 6/6.
correct: The user has 1/6 chance each time (for possibility 2) instead of (possibility 1): 1/6, 1/5, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 1/1.
Therefore my question is very important to understand what the winning chances are for picking boxes from the exchange.
There is a player who picks the boxes from the exchange and is making a profit so it seems.
I want to know if it's true or false.
To know if it is true or false it requires me to know the answer to my question.
I hope that some developer can confirm if it's possibility 1 (which would cost some harddisk space to store all generated contents) or if it's possibility 2 (which would be space efficient but a bit more lame ?).
So far startrek online seems to have huge ammounts of storage space, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually possibility 1 ?
(In short it probably has to do with statistical distributions ? is it possible for a postman to pick the right postings ?
the postman thinks so game theory also confirms the postman, game master has 3 doors, pick a door, game master opens a door, game theory says: switch doors.)
Hello,
My question is basically:
When is the contents of a lockbox determined ?
Some possibilities:
1. The contents of the lockbox is determined when it drops.
2. The contents of the lockbox is determined when it is opened by a key.
Example for possibility 1:
200 boxes drop, 1 box contains the valuable ship.
User A opens 195 boxes and finds nothing, remaining 5 boxes are posted on the exchange.
User B buys the 5 boxes opens them and finds the valuable ship.
Example for possibility 2:
User A opens 195 boxes and finds nothing.
User B opens 5 boxes and finds nothing.
I think statistically there is a difference between possibility 1 and possibility 2.
The opening of the boxes in possibility 1 influences what could be in the remaining boxes. There is a dependence.
While possibility 2 is less dependent and the dependency is based on something else, for example the state of the current random number generator.
So possibility 1 is based on a historical generation of chances.
So possibility 2 is based on current/dynamic generation of chances.
For the player possibility 2 would be worse.
It's a bit like rolling dice.
If the dice was rolled 6 times, the user has 1/6 chance. (6 boxes, each box contains on average one number of the dice).
However if the dice is re-rolled every time the user opens the box the chance changes.
*
incorrect: The user has 1/6 chance each time instead of: 1/6, 2/6, 3/6, 4/6, 5/6, 6/6.
correct: The user has 1/6 chance each time (for possibility 2) instead of (possibility 1): 1/6, 1/5, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 1/1.
Therefore my question is very important to understand what the winning chances are for picking boxes from the exchange.
There is a player who picks the boxes from the exchange and is making a profit so it seems.
I want to know if it's true or false.
To know if it is true or false it requires me to know the answer to my question.
I hope that some developer can confirm if it's possibility 1 (which would cost some harddisk space to store all generated contents) or if it's possibility 2 (which would be space efficient but a bit more lame ?).
So far startrek online seems to have huge ammounts of storage space, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually possibility 1 ?
(In short it probably has to do with statistical distributions ? is it possible for a postman to pick the right postings ?
the postman thinks so game theory also confirms the postman, game master has 3 doors, pick a door, game master opens a door, game theory says: switch doors.) Post edited by twikitwiki on
0
Comments
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
the contents are not stored in a lucky box. its just a random gen on open
just like when you kill an NPC/finish a STF and get a loot bag
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
The lock boxes are directly linked to a counter that tells Perfect World how many keys have been purchased. It has a set number, every 10,000 dollars spent on keys, the next open box is a ship. That way they make sure they are always making crazy amounts of money and never have to worry about the market being flooded!
Eisaak
If that's true then I wouldn't have been able to get three advanced escorts in a row. Unless $10k was spent during the few seconds it took me to open the next lockbox.
"Hah! You are doomed! You're only armed with that pathetic excuse for a musical instrument!!!" *the Savage Beast moments before Lonnehart the Bard used music to soothe him... then beat him to death with his Fat Lute*
No I am talking about the .4% ships, not the mirror/advanced ships.
Also the 10,000 is a made up example. But you are fooling yourself if you don't think there is a value attached to supply. If you made a game and were not subject to gambling laws, wouldn't you make sure that you made x amount of dollars per "win"? The lock boxes are just digital slot machines, without the payouts clearly written on the cover. And since there is no law or legislation against this practice, it is human nature to be greedy and abuse this format. Throw on top of that, a world wide base of younger gamers who aren't educated enough to see it for what it is. Add a parent base who don't care enough about games to look any deeper than their kid saying "for my allowance can you just buy me this ship, or give me a game card for my birthday."
(this is not a complaint) Perfect World has created, as so many other games these days an environment of gambling, that using gambling psychology and tricks to keep a percentage of players coming back for more. Look up all the rules that Casinos are controlled by and you will see all the things that they can't do being wrapped up here in Perfect Worlds business model. You get pop up across the screen of other winners that make you feel like you are missing out, on a slow day they can create bot winners to keep the idea of reward fresh in the minds of players. When lockbox events are coming to an end you get daily updates to make you feel as though you are missing out. When the next lockbox event is coming they create hype, like a big banner that says "14 more days" to get the player base itchy for it. Perfect World can monitor spending habits and adjust quantity of box, quantity of win, quantity of item, or anything else they want to monitor to hit a corporate price point that each of their games needs to meet. Just like there was a 15% off week after the new Andorian Escort release because not enough people raced out and bought them. So they put up a sale to get people to spend money that way to hit their price point.
I am willing to bet that they adjust the winning payouts based on sales. Like when the keys are 15% off, I bet the winning percentage on a limited ship is moved to keep the same value. Every time there is a new ship added to the roster there is a new one sitting outside Earth Space doc and DS9 to make players jealous that hey don't own one yet. It is gambling psychology at work to get you to break down and spend money. To feel left out, to create need.
There is nothing wrong with this tactic but you are only kidding yourself it you don't think it is employed against you in 100 different ways in this game.
Eisaak
I saw this in D3, where players were able to judge the number of properties on an unidentified item. Since the value of an item generally grew exponentially in relation to the number of properties, this gave them a tremendous advantage. Worse, buying and selling unIDs on the auction hall was a common practice (much in the same way lock boxes are bought and sold), and with the presence of the real money auction hall, being able to access that data could lead to actual real world profit.
Thankfully, I would imagine lock box contents are determined when opened, because Cryptic has a very real financial interest in keeping it such.
There's no law against it, yet.
Just wait for e-scatch offs and there will be one, presumably sufficient to cover even things like lock boxes, because you know the government will want its share.
We know this because some players, due to a bug, were able to open the same box multiple times in a ten second window or so and get different contents.
Now, in WoW, loot (including boxes) is pregenerated. This is known because people started analyzing their file cache after server restarts. There, the system knows all dungeon loot possible when you enter the dungeon... and people who copied to the test server (as long as there were no hard code resets and the test server was using the same code version) were able to determine the content of boxes. (However, there were certain DB updates that would trigger all boxes to repropagate content. Hence, smart people there would copy to the test server, open a box, and if they were unhappy with it, wait for a DB refresh which would repropagate the contents of all issued boxes.)
Incidentally, this may vary by game engine but boxes containing different contents doesn't mean that they cannot be stacked in inventory. The system just has to know which box to pull from in what order. WoW allows some containers to be stacked while predetermining the contents.
STO... eh... I'm not sure. Snowballs can have unique timers (ie. one with 10 minutes of duration and one with 15) and be stacked together. And each snowball in the stack, I believe, melts according to its timer. Meanwhile, binding seems to be "by the stack" meaning that if you have bound and unbound versions of an item, they all become bound when placed into the bound stack.
I don't think it would be impossible in STO to stack boxes that had predetermined contents. Tricky, maybe, but not impossible.
However, we know that lockboxes generate loot upon opening because of the people who had one lockbox in inventory, opened it multiple times, and got different results.
As for them adjusting odds on the fly...
It might be possible to do this but why would they? They'd benefit the most from just keeping the odds low. They wouldn't raise the odds if sales went up and there's no need to lower the odds if sales go down because the number released will go down anyway. The only reason to arrive at this theory is if you're in denial about literally how many lockboxes are being sold and how many people are playing the game, particularly on new lockbox launch days.
Plus, Kestrel outright said they don't do this and I don't think Kestrel is a liar or is ignorant of practices. And there's no advantage in it. Like I say, if they ever raise the number available, it would work against their own sales. The only reason to believe this is disbelief over the number of people playing and buying lockboxes and/or that number of people playing and buying waxes and wanes by that much.
If you honestly believe they have repeatedly lied to you before, why would you be here on these forums?
I believe, at worst, they have little ability to follow through or accurately plan.
I think anyone who HONESTLY believes they have repeatedly lied should not only not spend money but should not play, even as a free player, and should uninstall the game and leave the community. I say this not as some kind of punishment.
I think this is the only appropriate response to repeated lies from a developer. I am here ONLY because I do not believe they have lied repeatedly.
But if a developer lies repeatedly, you should not only stop giving them money, you shouldn't play or be a part of their community. My participation in this community hinges on my belief that Cryptic has seldom if ever deliberately lied to its players.
But I think it's pretty much the moral duty of any player who thinks a developer is doing this to stop spending money, tune out, uninstall, and permanently abandon ship. Even continuing to play without spending money is unacceptable in that scenario as far as I'm concerned.
And, again, there would be no financial benefit in doing so. If this practice were done, its sole benefit that I can see would be sacrificing thousands of dollars in sales to create a false impression about number of players.
This would require some kind of diabological and arbitrary conspiracy that is executed far more flawlessly than any of the actual content they've released.
It is rude and absolutely inappropriate to assume ulterior motives of strangers online. Either you accept the conceit that they have none or you don't deal with them. It's daft, masochistic, and rude all at the same time to have interactions (even free ones) with people or businesses you accuse of ulterior motives. Either you choose to trust people and take them at their word or you really ought to cut ties with them totally.
Just my $.02 but I see no room for a middle ground on that and personally think seeking any kind of middle ground on that point is a recipe for becoming a miserable crackpot. Said from experience.
Either you trust that someone is generally honest or you cut them off and treat them like they don't exist. There's not really any safe middle ground, for me anyway.
It's much easier for me to believe that the game is incredibly volatile and that major features change several times a day and that when Cryptic says they're working on something, it means a five minute conversation has covered that topic (and that's all "working on something" means). That most "lies" come from simply failing to read developer comments *LIKE A LAWYER, DISSECTING WORDS*. I'm not always happy with the game.
But accusing anyone of habitual lying is unacceptable. It renders all discussion moot. Discussion can only exist between people with the assumption of general honesty. Accusing people of dishonesty doesn't allow for any kind of discussion. It's just a context for talking without discussion.
I can accuse you of shooting JFK or faking the moon landing or stealing $50 from my wallet without a basic assumption of general honesty.
Honesty does not require being accurate or truthful. But it does require the assumption that inaccuracy is the result of withholding information, error, or incompetence.
And on this kind of subject, frankly, for Cryptic to be lying would require them to be UNUSUALLY competent.
As-in, Borticus has database fixes that he wants to make but is too busy, what? Coding some kind of lockbox mechanism that provides no financial gain for Cryptic?
Because they'd make more money just leaving the droprate at whatever the minimum is. There's no advantage in adjusting it up when sales go up. There's no advantage in adjusting it down when sales go down. If there were a conspiracy, the only thing that would make sense is to tie it to a TIMER to adjust the reward cycle to be like slot machines and that would, again, require tech and a competency that we would see elsewhere if they could do that.