in a room with 200 boxes, 112.5 ZEN average cost per attempt and only one grand prize in the room, how much does Cryptic make per ship? $225.
No, they won't, because after the ship is out of the box, the user is leaving the room with a lot of boxes unopened and thus Cryptic gets less than 225$ (on average it would be exactly half that).
If on the other hand you let other players enter that room, you will have the same effect as in the original setup: some people will be worse off because they always will enter the wrong room and thus pay hundreds of $$$ without getting anything.
Changing topic somewhat:
Of course, every site that uses random numbers created somewhere where we cannot see it, may try in theory to fiddle with the process for some benefit. And thus all of them get accused of doing precisely that. Be it poker pages, sites like MMOs, even just for fun game sites with no money involved at all. And some actually may do.
But if you're a large enough business, this would be quite risky, since the benefits are debatable (lock boxes are already kind of a cash cow if they work as advertised, getting 10$ more out of it isn't that much), while if you get caught your business may very quickly become an ex business.
Take that and the fact that none of us could by hand and feel distinguish between even the worst PRNGs around and real randomness, because even they break down on levels we cannot calculate in our head even if we had all data, and because the human is designed by evolution to recognize patterns and not describe stuff as random, because finding patterns betters your survival chances. The latter means: we will want to find patterns in anything and everything. And we will succeed. Even if there is no pattern in the first place.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
in a room with 200 boxes, 112.5 ZEN average cost per attempt and only one grand prize in the room, how much does Cryptic make per ship? $225.
No, they won't, because after the ship is out of the box, the user is leaving the room with a lot of boxes unopened and thus Cryptic gets less than 225$ (on average it would be exactly half that).
Assuming that gamblers walk away after they win.... which they don't.
Not that it is related to this topic... IMO 90+% of all lockboxes opened are opened by the same small handful of big openers. Of those Half buy keys, and the other half buy them with EC. Either way makes Cryptic money. Keeping the average EC cost of items up keeps people doing things like Buying Keys, ship upgrades ect to sell on the market for EC to buy what they want. Both types keep Cryptics $ wheel turning. Still I really don't think there are more then a handful of those players playing. (people that open more then a 100 boxes a day)
in a room with 200 boxes, 112.5 ZEN average cost per attempt and only one grand prize in the room, how much does Cryptic make per ship? $225.
No, they won't, because after the ship is out of the box, the user is leaving the room with a lot of boxes unopened and thus Cryptic gets less than 225$ (on average it would be exactly half that).
Assuming that gamblers walk away after they win.... which they don't.
I am sure they would in the scenario set up, because they would know they won't win anymore, or at least not for a very very long time, since there is only one price in stoleviathan's proposal. As it is - they don't, you're right (until their only interest was getting that one thing, in which case they're doing it wrong). But under this suggestion, it would be different.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
That's interesting. I used the calculator at the bottom of that page and found that a 1% drop chance gives you a 100% chance to get the item your looking for after exactly 1673 runs. Why that number? Why is 1672 runs one run to few to guarantee a drop?
As mentioned on the page, there is no guaranteed drop. It's only that the rounding takes the displayed chance to 100%.
For 1672 your chance is 99.99999496% (five millionth of a percent of non success)
For 1673 your chance is 99.99999501% (still around five millionth of a percent of failure, but the "5" that far in the back gets rounded up)
You can get as close as you want to 100% with enough boxes, but you will never reach 100% itself.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
I just queued up 8 Superior Weapons Tech Upgrades, with a 72% chance of Critical Success.
I crit 1/8 of them.
Using a standard binomial distribution, the odds of this happening are %0.07.
Don't tell me that these things aren't rigged.
The Chance for that happening is non zero, thus possible.
This reminds me of a recent bug report on the forums. Someone claims they have a 0% to fail/disaster on a doff assignment and yet it fails. I explained that even if you have a 0.1% chance it's still a chance and having it that low would make the bar look empty, thus giving the impression you have no failure chance at all.
And yes, when all R&D projects have a 20%+ chance of failure it is very possible they all won't crit.
As pointed out, the odds are individually based, not combined. Just like opening lock boxes you have a chance at a ship from each one and it doesn't mean the more boxes you open the higher your chance is. Each box has the same chance.
I agree with the people who see nothing odd here aside from an improbable event happening.
That said, if I were a systems designer, I'd investigate other methods of handling randomization because the current approach creates very unhappy outliers while generating negligible increased profits for Cryptic.
Odds of getting a grand prize from a lockbox are 1 in 200, roughly. But because each lockbox in a separate chance, some people will never get the grand prize regardless of how many they open. That's probability. There is an issue with limited sampling as well.
Now, does it benefit Cryptic that some people may spend $2000 and never get the grand prize? No. Because figuring out profitability from Cryptic's perspective, they are giving away one ship for every $225 spent. There is no sampling error from their POV. They would make exactly the same money if $225 guaranteed someone the ship. From their POV, the outliers are offset by the people who are lucky and the average acquisition cost is $225. Except they bear the brunt of dissatisfied customers who spend more than $225 which has a net negative on financials in the long run.
Now, let's look at a different model. Instead of a lockbox, imagine the player character is in a cargo bay with 200 boxes. Now imagine one of those boxes is guaranteed to contain the grand prize ship and it's a process of elimination which one has it; boxes reset once a week. Cryptic's profits in this system would be virtually identical to the current system but anyone who spends $225 in one sitting is guaranteed the ship. Cryptic's haul is the same but you avoid the disgruntled player. Because the acquisition cost of the ship on average remains the same which is what matters from Cryptic's POV. And the whale player is happier and less disgruntled which is GOOD because if somebody is willing to spend $225, you don't want a big spender to be a disgruntled statistical outlier. Costs Cryptic NOTHING except initial development costs. Improves longterm prospects.
Maybe they could put the grand prize ships in the lobi store, maybe for 2000 lobi or some such? That way you are guaranteed the best ship in the box if you are willing to spend enough lobi for it. It also roughly sets the exchange price at 2 and a half times the price of an 800 lobi ship, which IMO seems fair.
Maybe they could put the grand prize ships in the lobi store, maybe for 2000 lobi or some such? That way you are guaranteed the best ship in the box if you are willing to spend enough lobi for it. It also roughly sets the exchange price at 2 and a half times the price of an 800 lobi ship, which IMO seems fair.
If a company sets the price for a widget at $1000, a customer can look at that price and say, "I can't afford that", or "I can't afford that right now" and that business is gone. there is 0 chance to win that customer assuming their price range is south of the price tag.
But if a company says there is a chance for you to get this widget if you spend $200 then that customer now has a choice. Do they feel lucky? Well the guy next to him just got one, so why not give it a try right? Of course the customer gets nothing, but the company won the business. Doubly good since they didn't have to provide a product in return saving even more money. And who knows, maybe that customer has the gene, and can't wait to try again.
What you are suggesting is good for you yes, but bad business. Why would I sell you a guarantee when I can sell you a dream instead? Dreams have no upper value limit and I can sell them to you all day long.
Maybe they could put the grand prize ships in the lobi store, maybe for 2000 lobi or some such? That way you are guaranteed the best ship in the box if you are willing to spend enough lobi for it. It also roughly sets the exchange price at 2 and a half times the price of an 800 lobi ship, which IMO seems fair.
If a company sets the price for a widget at $1000, a customer can look at that price and say, "I can't afford that", or "I can't afford that right now" and that business is gone. there is 0 chance to win that customer assuming their price range is south of the price tag.
But if a company says there is a chance for you to get this widget if you spend $200 then that customer now has a choice. Do they feel lucky? Well the guy next to him just got one, so why not give it a try right? Of course the customer gets nothing, but the company won the business. Doubly good since they didn't have to provide a product in return saving even more money. And who knows, maybe that customer has the gene, and can't wait to try again.
What you are suggesting is good for you yes, but bad business. Why would I sell you a guarantee when I can sell you a dream instead? Dreams have no upper value limit and I can sell them to you all day long.
They still get a chance to win the grand prize with even a single master key. It's just if you go crazy and open hundreds of the things that you can finally, eventually, get enough lobi to buy one from the lobi store. Everything you said is still true if the grand prize is for sale in the lobi store.
It's bad for business to have disgruntled paying customers that don't get the grand prize after dropping hundreds of dollars into the game. You want your paying customers to be happy so that they they come back and pay more later. Having everything in the lobi store is good for business.
Maybe they could put the grand prize ships in the lobi store, maybe for 2000 lobi or some such? That way you are guaranteed the best ship in the box if you are willing to spend enough lobi for it. It also roughly sets the exchange price at 2 and a half times the price of an 800 lobi ship, which IMO seems fair.
If a company sets the price for a widget at $1000, a customer can look at that price and say, "I can't afford that", or "I can't afford that right now" and that business is gone. there is 0 chance to win that customer assuming their price range is south of the price tag.
But if a company says there is a chance for you to get this widget if you spend $200 then that customer now has a choice. Do they feel lucky? Well the guy next to him just got one, so why not give it a try right? Of course the customer gets nothing, but the company won the business. Doubly good since they didn't have to provide a product in return saving even more money. And who knows, maybe that customer has the gene, and can't wait to try again.
What you are suggesting is good for you yes, but bad business. Why would I sell you a guarantee when I can sell you a dream instead? Dreams have no upper value limit and I can sell them to you all day long.
They still get a chance to win the grand prize with even a single master key. It's just if you go crazy and open hundreds of the things that you can finally, eventually, get enough lobi to buy one from the lobi store. Everything you said is still true if the grand prize is for sale in the lobi store.
It's bad for business to have disgruntled paying customers that don't get the grand prize after dropping hundreds of dollars into the game. You want your paying customers to be happy so that they they come back and pay more later. Having everything in the lobi store is good for business.
But what happens to the draw probability if you already drew a ship? If you drew a ship on the 3rd $ you spend, does that mean you are guaranteed to need at least 197 $ before you have a chance that you get the next prize?
If instead the probabilities just reset and you have a chance to get another draw on the next 197 $ (and a guarantee for a draw at 200 $), how does that alter the business for Cryptic?
The "guaranteed draw after so and so many attempts" is already in the game - it's Lobi. It gives you a different ship than the one you could get buy a lucky draw, but you'll still get something out of it. (And often Lobi and Lockbox ship prizes are close together on the Exchange, so you might still be able to trade the one for the other.)
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
in a room with 200 boxes, 112.5 ZEN average cost per attempt and only one grand prize in the room, how much does Cryptic make per ship? $225.
No, they won't, because after the ship is out of the box, the user is leaving the room with a lot of boxes unopened and thus Cryptic gets less than 225$ (on average it would be exactly half that).
If on the other hand you let other players enter that room, you will have the same effect as in the original setup: some people will be worse off because they always will enter the wrong room and thus pay hundreds of $$$ without getting anything.
If it's one in 200 boxes even in my scenario then only one in 200 will have the prize which means with a large sampling POV (Cryptic's) they make $225 for every ship that drops. Right NOW somebody could get it in five boxes and walk away so that's no different.
Now if you're talking about someone gambling for multiples... Okay... Then when they get the grand prize in my prize vault setup, all the boxes in the room reset.
You don't need for anyone to spend more than $225 for the average to be extremely close to $225 if not $225 per ship exactly. The average will still skew that way because of people who give up sooner. If nobody gives up (which is unlikely because you can pay less on the exchange right now so it's not like the guarantee is a major enticement), then you should still see a net revenue increase because people do give up now.
1 in 200 is 1 in 200. Cryptic's revenue per ship is the same. You might arguably have more ships but you'll have the same average revenue per ship. Of course if you put a timer on the vault resetting, you can effectively require the player to spend it all in one sitting. And you can't buy that much in ZEN in one day which means days of planning.
Cryptic would have to keep a pre-randomized table of 100 occurences of any thing with a declared percentage for every character of every account in this game to make percentage guaranteed for say 100 times you do something. That's a whole lot of junk data in the database to make just one hardon go away so it's never going to happen. So randomizing something based on a single draw with pre-determined percentage is the only thing that's left, and there are no guarantees so other than publicly displaying the opener's amount of spare time, there's no real purpose for this thread because nothing will be proven and nothing will change, so why do you waste time on it when you could be out fighting dinoz with headz-lazerz?
You mean like the Rarity Upgrade chance in the Upgrade system?
Open a box. Roll the dice. Odds build with each attempt.
You could even have grand prize accelerators or catalysts designed to skew the odds towards a certain prize.
Slot the box in the item upgrade slot. Slot the key in the tech slot. 1 key = enough tech points for an upgrade. Upgrade locked box into unlocked box + Lobi. Chance of a quality improvement to a green reward pack. Open or attempt to upgrade into a blue reward pack. Upgrade to a blue reward pack. Upgrade to a purple reward pack guaranteed to contain ship. Eventually (like with tech upgrades) the chance hits 100%.
because the odds of independent events occuring in concert are equal to the product of all concerned individual events occuring, increasing the number of events increases the ratio of probability of success to failure.
In other words, try something enough times, and eventually, the odds of succeeding on a single try far outweigh the odds that you could possibly have failed that many times. While it is statisctally possible to roll snake eyes 20 times in a row on a pair of dice, the statistical probability is so low you should seriously wonder if the game is rigged.
and THIS is the real use of statistics, to examine a model of something and see if the way you think something works does work in that way.
More than anything, such critical thinking should reveal to you that not just this game, but virtually everything in the universe, doesn't work the way you think it does.
In other words, try something enough times, and eventually, the odds of succeeding on a single try far outweigh the odds that you could possibly have failed that many times. While it is statisctally possible to roll snake eyes 20 times in a row on a pair of dice, the statistical probability is so low you should seriously wonder if the game is rigged.
More than anything, such critical thinking should reveal to you that not just this game, but virtually everything in the universe, doesn't work the way you think it does.
This is exactly why the Gamblers fallacy is often called the Monty Carlo fallacy. In an early casino there a roulette table went on a streak of one colour... after awhile people assumed the universe owed that table a string the other way and for hours bet that way. They lost millions. The odds don't change no matter what the previous outcome(s) where.
Meldrithpw is right op, I don't think in this case that formula means what you think it means. lol
Just crafted 5 more Superior Beam techs...4 out of 5 were singles...the one that did crit was the last one with only 60 something percent chance to crit...
Can't have a honest conversation because of a white knight with power
I just queued up 8 Superior Weapons Tech Upgrades, with a 72% chance of Critical Success.
I crit 1/8 of them.
Using a standard binomial distribution, the odds of this happening are %0.07.
Don't tell me that these things aren't rigged.
You've fallen victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" but only slightly less famous, is "never forget how probability works when real money is on the line"! AHAHAHAHAHAH! AHAHAHAHAHAHAH! AHAHAHA-- *is beamed out*
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
No it's not. Well, of course 1 in 200 is 1 in 200, but your system is NOT 1 in 200 any more. (I am referring to the proposal of "200 boxes in a room, one contains the grand prize, reset after grand prize). It would be "1 in 100.5", so essentially double of what it was before thus halving revenue.
Let's assume we only have two boxes, "hit" and "miss". Your chances of getting "hit" in the first try are 50%. Your chances of getting "miss" are 50% as well, but then you would have a guaranteed "hit" the second time.
So you have half a chance of getting your stuff first time around, and half of getting it the second time. On average, you'll get "hit" after 1.5 times. After hit it resets, so the second "hit" for multiple hunters would also need 1.5 tries, and so on. Which effectively means that you do not have a chance of "1 in 2", because that only holds for the first box.
The same principle would happen with 200 boxes.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
This should also prove what I have said a few times in the past. If you are contemplating starting a thread about Lockboxes and the Grand Prize therein - DON'T. For the love of God save yourself the aggravation. The outcome is never good.
You will be called an idiot, a fool, or much worse, and be the subject of ridicule.
You will get lectures on Probability Theory with in-fighting on the meaning of all that.
You will be told to never spend real money on Keys, buy them with EC and open the Lockboxes that way if you are also looking to build up Lobi. OR
You will be told that if you buy Keys, sell them on the Exchange for EC and use the proceeds to buy the ship with 100% certainty off the Exchange (by the way this is the only time guaranteed is ever used in these type threads). [Annorax not withstanding, since you still can't get it there and only from Private transactions with the 'Captains of Industry' or 'Robber Barons'] YMMV.
You may be told that [Fill in the Blank] ship is a piece of junk and was way over-rated.
There will be one or two obligatory 'I feel for you man' posts thrown in for good measure.
These threads ALWAYS follow this script. It is a Predestination Paradox. Best advice - keep your pain to yourself and you will save yourself even more of the same.
P.S. You still didn't edit the Forum Subject from 'Impossible' to 'Improbable' rendering this thread as a magnet for the above.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
No it's not. Well, of course 1 in 200 is 1 in 200, but your system is NOT 1 in 200 any more. (I am referring to the proposal of "200 boxes in a room, one contains the grand prize, reset after grand prize). It would be "1 in 100.5", so essentially double of what it was before thus halving revenue.
Let's assume we only have two boxes, "hit" and "miss". Your chances of getting "hit" in the first try are 50%. Your chances of getting "miss" are 50% as well, but then you would have a guaranteed "hit" the second time.
So you have half a chance of getting your stuff first time around, and half of getting it the second time. On average, you'll get "hit" after 1.5 times. After hit it resets, so the second "hit" for multiple hunters would also need 1.5 tries, and so on. Which effectively means that you do not have a chance of "1 in 2", because that only holds for the first box.
The same principle would happen with 200 boxes.
Cryptic's revenue per box would be the same. They get 200 worth of keys for every one ship issued. Think about it solely from their perspective, ignore the player odds. Player odds go up. Revenue per ship is the same.
But like I say, as an alternative to the physical prize vault (which I think could be interesting in a number of ways like being able to pay for or earn hints as to where to look), the upgrade system provides a means for having culmative odds and could be structured on the backend to provide 100% success once a certain revenue target is reached.
1. So you place a box in a UI like the upgrade UI to open it. Slot the locked box into the item slot and key into the tech slot. An invisible item in player's inventory tracks cumulative probability and is the actual item being upgraded, with tech points assigned to it. The invisible item is assigned to an inventory location the player can't see like an inventory tab with one slot and no UI means of accessing it.
2. Slotting key plus box and hitting upgrade replaces locked box with unlocked box while increasing the tech points of the invisible item. On the backend, just like item color rarity has a chance at an upgrade, the box has a chance of upgrading to a box that contains the grand prize.
3. Now unlike the upgrade system, you don't display the upgrade chance to the player. They just slot in a box and a key. Box has an (invisible) chance to upgrade to a box that contains the grand prize ship.
4. Meanwhile, rarity chance builds on the invisible item in hidden inventory which is the actual item being upgraded.
5. Every time upgrade is selected, a script runs:
Let p_cumulative equal p_cumulative plus 0.005
If p_cumulative < 1.0, let p1 on box upgrade equal 0.005
If p_cumulative > 0.995, let p1 equal 1.0 and reset p_cumulative to 0
...
Random Number (1 through 1000)
If number is less than p1 * (1000+0.005), upgrade to grand prize box occurs and set p_culmative to 0.0
The net result here is that 1000 consecutive non-winners guarantee a win. Otherwise, the box has a 1 in 200 chance.
There is a slight loss for Cryptic here but what we're looking at is that it would cost them 0.67% of revenue from players whose spending exceeds 1000 keys. Around $7.53 in loss for Cryptic to keep a customer who spent $1125 happy.
Now, you can actually adjust this number to be more favorable to the player based on an analysis of retention and acquisition costs. Generally, rate of conversion to spending is fairly low (probably less than 5% of players) so you can do the math if you have the internal numbers but you should be able to estimate chances of losing a customer (either temporary burnout or longterm burnout), average income of players based on demographic data, acquisition costs, etc.
Generally, retaining a customer is cheaper than acquiring one. Stahl used to open up about the bucket theory in STO. Basically, as EP, he treated acquisition and retention as like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it. You can't patch the hole fully but you can patch it partially and you can also adjust the flow of water going into the bucket and you do a mix of trying to adjust water flow in and the amount of water leaking out to keep the bucket full at a certain level.
Now with F2P, churn among non-spenders is life. It happens. Churn among spenders is more costly, however, because spenders have an acquisition cost that is fairly high per spender in a F2P game because spenders are relatively rare.
And even at 1000 keys (I think the number could be much lower once the math is done) it could be VERY enticing if you can counter the bonomial probability argument against gambling by saying that Cryptic has a system that tracks culmative odds and rounds up to make sure that your odds eventually hit 100% as a counter to bad luck. And while implementation may have a cost, it seems like the tech could be deployed across their games and should pay for itself provided the demographic math behind it is good.
(...)
In other words, try something enough times, and eventually, the odds of succeeding on a single try far outweigh the odds that you could possibly have failed that many times. While it is statisctally possible to roll snake eyes 20 times in a row on a pair of dice, the statistical probability is so low you should seriously wonder if the game is rigged.
(...)
This is the rationalization gamblers use to justify their spending. Increasing the odds of "not failing" is just statistical play, it does not increase the chances of outcome x itself. One roll doesn't care how many times you rolled before, there is no thinking that could possibly change that. Statistics, if you don't know how to read and interpret them, are meaningless.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
You will be told that if you buy Keys, sell them on the Exchange for EC and use the proceeds to buy the ship with 100% certainty off the Exchange (by the way this is the only time guaranteed is ever used in these type threads). [Annorax not withstanding, since you still
The Annorax is not that "robber-baron" priced as you imply here. The price exceeds 500 Million EC, whichis why it doesn't make it to the Exchange (and probably now never will), but the price people are offering and people are willing to sell seems to be around 650 Million EC (that's what I paid) to 800 Million EC. The variance seems not that high.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
You will be told that if you buy Keys, sell them on the Exchange for EC and use the proceeds to buy the ship with 100% certainty off the Exchange (by the way this is the only time guaranteed is ever used in these type threads). [Annorax not withstanding, since you still
The Annorax is not that "robber-baron" priced as you imply here. The price exceeds 500 Million EC, whichis why it doesn't make it to the Exchange (and probably now never will), but the price people are offering and people are willing to sell seems to be around 650 Million EC (that's what I paid) to 800 Million EC. The variance seems not that high.
Well, in general, with trading cards and the like, rare draw prizes sell for significantly below acquisition cost, especially when first available. This has been true in MMOs and you can trace this with a site like WoW TCG loot. The same also frequently tracks with Comic-Con exclusive toys and the like. The profit is made from acquiring multiple exclusives in a truly competitive market.
That is to say, in a competitive market, it should cost less for a lockbox ship at resale than it would cost to acquire it by buying keys IF the market is competitive becauser the box opener receives value from the non-grand prize entries and competition drives the economic profit of the grand prize down to cost of acquisition minus value of other prizes.
In general, this holds true for lockboxes.
I think what we see with R&D prize ships (aside from the ships themselves being very desirable) is that the buy in per set of chances is higher, people JUST DON"T VALUE the other content of the boxes as highly as they value lockbox content, and extreme rarity allows wealthy people to manipulate markets by buying and relisting at a higher price, which is distortionary because there is no cost associated with bringing an item to market aside from the opportunity cost of one of the 40 exchange slots and the time spent doing it. In the real world, a "buy and relist" strategy has costs associated with it (listing fees, shipping, etc.) and most MMOs also have similar penalties which STO does not have. Other MMOs also have auctions which can guage the fair market demand value of an item easier.
I want you to stop and think what, on the other extreme, would happen to prices if listing an item meant it couldn't be delisted and that it would be vendored at the end of its listing with no takers. People would sell things for much less.
Now, I think the ideal price for items is going to be about halfway between THAT price and the price we have now, balancing the supply-side and demand-side value of goods.
You will be told that if you buy Keys, sell them on the Exchange for EC and use the proceeds to buy the ship with 100% certainty off the Exchange (by the way this is the only time guaranteed is ever used in these type threads). [Annorax not withstanding, since you still
The Annorax is not that "robber-baron" priced as you imply here. The price exceeds 500 Million EC, whichis why it doesn't make it to the Exchange (and probably now never will), but the price people are offering and people are willing to sell seems to be around 650 Million EC (that's what I paid) to 800 Million EC. The variance seems not that high.
Well, in general, with trading cards and the like, rare draw prizes sell for significantly below acquisition cost, especially when first available. This has been true in MMOs and you can trace this with a site like WoW TCG loot. The same also frequently tracks with Comic-Con exclusive toys and the like. The profit is made from acquiring multiple exclusives in a truly competitive market.
That is to say, in a competitive market, it should cost less for a lockbox ship at resale than it would cost to acquire it by buying keys IF the market is competitive becauser the box opener receives value from the non-grand prize entries and competition drives the economic profit of the grand prize down to cost of acquisition minus value of other prizes.
I think that is an important factor here -the items in a lockbox tend to include a few good things (at least later ones), and I think R&D Boxes also contain a lot of value. But the DOFF Promotion seemed to be the least attractive of all to me. Even though you can sell DOFFs, there are a lot of "duds" in them that aren't of that much interest.
Rare and Very Rare Crafting Materials are guaranteed in R&D Boxes, and fetch a decent prize on the Exchange. The Lockboxes also tend to contain traits, Dilithium Vouchers, DOFFs, and nowadays even BOFF powers (see Kemocite) that might easily be deemed very valuable. The newest lockbox does not even contain ground weapons anymore (they always sold the worst), and it also contains R&D Boxes.
The Annorax basicaly came with the worst type of promo item, and contained a science vessel that seems overpowered compared to other ships, after there haven't been any new science vessels in more than half a year, and no Romulan or Klingon Science Vessel in years. It's the ideal candidate for being expensive to acquisition, and highly desirable.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Comments
No, they won't, because after the ship is out of the box, the user is leaving the room with a lot of boxes unopened and thus Cryptic gets less than 225$ (on average it would be exactly half that).
If on the other hand you let other players enter that room, you will have the same effect as in the original setup: some people will be worse off because they always will enter the wrong room and thus pay hundreds of $$$ without getting anything.
Changing topic somewhat:
Of course, every site that uses random numbers created somewhere where we cannot see it, may try in theory to fiddle with the process for some benefit. And thus all of them get accused of doing precisely that. Be it poker pages, sites like MMOs, even just for fun game sites with no money involved at all. And some actually may do.
But if you're a large enough business, this would be quite risky, since the benefits are debatable (lock boxes are already kind of a cash cow if they work as advertised, getting 10$ more out of it isn't that much), while if you get caught your business may very quickly become an ex business.
Take that and the fact that none of us could by hand and feel distinguish between even the worst PRNGs around and real randomness, because even they break down on levels we cannot calculate in our head even if we had all data, and because the human is designed by evolution to recognize patterns and not describe stuff as random, because finding patterns betters your survival chances. The latter means: we will want to find patterns in anything and everything. And we will succeed. Even if there is no pattern in the first place.
Assuming that gamblers walk away after they win.... which they don't.
Not that it is related to this topic... IMO 90+% of all lockboxes opened are opened by the same small handful of big openers. Of those Half buy keys, and the other half buy them with EC. Either way makes Cryptic money. Keeping the average EC cost of items up keeps people doing things like Buying Keys, ship upgrades ect to sell on the market for EC to buy what they want. Both types keep Cryptics $ wheel turning. Still I really don't think there are more then a handful of those players playing. (people that open more then a 100 boxes a day)
I am sure they would in the scenario set up, because they would know they won't win anymore, or at least not for a very very long time, since there is only one price in stoleviathan's proposal. As it is - they don't, you're right (until their only interest was getting that one thing, in which case they're doing it wrong). But under this suggestion, it would be different.
That's interesting. I used the calculator at the bottom of that page and found that a 1% drop chance gives you a 100% chance to get the item your looking for after exactly 1673 runs. Why that number? Why is 1672 runs one run to few to guarantee a drop?
For 1672 your chance is 99.99999496% (five millionth of a percent of non success)
For 1673 your chance is 99.99999501% (still around five millionth of a percent of failure, but the "5" that far in the back gets rounded up)
You can get as close as you want to 100% with enough boxes, but you will never reach 100% itself.
Maybe they could put the grand prize ships in the lobi store, maybe for 2000 lobi or some such? That way you are guaranteed the best ship in the box if you are willing to spend enough lobi for it. It also roughly sets the exchange price at 2 and a half times the price of an 800 lobi ship, which IMO seems fair.
If a company sets the price for a widget at $1000, a customer can look at that price and say, "I can't afford that", or "I can't afford that right now" and that business is gone. there is 0 chance to win that customer assuming their price range is south of the price tag.
But if a company says there is a chance for you to get this widget if you spend $200 then that customer now has a choice. Do they feel lucky? Well the guy next to him just got one, so why not give it a try right? Of course the customer gets nothing, but the company won the business. Doubly good since they didn't have to provide a product in return saving even more money. And who knows, maybe that customer has the gene, and can't wait to try again.
What you are suggesting is good for you yes, but bad business. Why would I sell you a guarantee when I can sell you a dream instead? Dreams have no upper value limit and I can sell them to you all day long.
They still get a chance to win the grand prize with even a single master key. It's just if you go crazy and open hundreds of the things that you can finally, eventually, get enough lobi to buy one from the lobi store. Everything you said is still true if the grand prize is for sale in the lobi store.
It's bad for business to have disgruntled paying customers that don't get the grand prize after dropping hundreds of dollars into the game. You want your paying customers to be happy so that they they come back and pay more later. Having everything in the lobi store is good for business.
If instead the probabilities just reset and you have a chance to get another draw on the next 197 $ (and a guarantee for a draw at 200 $), how does that alter the business for Cryptic?
The "guaranteed draw after so and so many attempts" is already in the game - it's Lobi. It gives you a different ship than the one you could get buy a lucky draw, but you'll still get something out of it. (And often Lobi and Lockbox ship prizes are close together on the Exchange, so you might still be able to trade the one for the other.)
If it's one in 200 boxes even in my scenario then only one in 200 will have the prize which means with a large sampling POV (Cryptic's) they make $225 for every ship that drops. Right NOW somebody could get it in five boxes and walk away so that's no different.
Now if you're talking about someone gambling for multiples... Okay... Then when they get the grand prize in my prize vault setup, all the boxes in the room reset.
You don't need for anyone to spend more than $225 for the average to be extremely close to $225 if not $225 per ship exactly. The average will still skew that way because of people who give up sooner. If nobody gives up (which is unlikely because you can pay less on the exchange right now so it's not like the guarantee is a major enticement), then you should still see a net revenue increase because people do give up now.
1 in 200 is 1 in 200. Cryptic's revenue per ship is the same. You might arguably have more ships but you'll have the same average revenue per ship. Of course if you put a timer on the vault resetting, you can effectively require the player to spend it all in one sitting. And you can't buy that much in ZEN in one day which means days of planning.
You mean like the Rarity Upgrade chance in the Upgrade system?
Open a box. Roll the dice. Odds build with each attempt.
You could even have grand prize accelerators or catalysts designed to skew the odds towards a certain prize.
In other words, try something enough times, and eventually, the odds of succeeding on a single try far outweigh the odds that you could possibly have failed that many times. While it is statisctally possible to roll snake eyes 20 times in a row on a pair of dice, the statistical probability is so low you should seriously wonder if the game is rigged.
and THIS is the real use of statistics, to examine a model of something and see if the way you think something works does work in that way.
More than anything, such critical thinking should reveal to you that not just this game, but virtually everything in the universe, doesn't work the way you think it does.
This is exactly why the Gamblers fallacy is often called the Monty Carlo fallacy. In an early casino there a roulette table went on a streak of one colour... after awhile people assumed the universe owed that table a string the other way and for hours bet that way. They lost millions. The odds don't change no matter what the previous outcome(s) where.
Meldrithpw is right op, I don't think in this case that formula means what you think it means. lol
I've recently crafted over 50 superior tech upgrades with 93% crit chance. I've gotten close to 100 upgrades, as expected.
If the system is rigged to cheat you out of crits then I guess the devs like me more
op you should probably watch this ths system is not rigged RNG simply did not work out in your favor
How RNG works
You've fallen victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" but only slightly less famous, is "never forget how probability works when real money is on the line"! AHAHAHAHAHAH! AHAHAHAHAHAHAH! AHAHAHA-- *is beamed out*
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
No it's not. Well, of course 1 in 200 is 1 in 200, but your system is NOT 1 in 200 any more. (I am referring to the proposal of "200 boxes in a room, one contains the grand prize, reset after grand prize). It would be "1 in 100.5", so essentially double of what it was before thus halving revenue.
Let's assume we only have two boxes, "hit" and "miss". Your chances of getting "hit" in the first try are 50%. Your chances of getting "miss" are 50% as well, but then you would have a guaranteed "hit" the second time.
So you have half a chance of getting your stuff first time around, and half of getting it the second time. On average, you'll get "hit" after 1.5 times. After hit it resets, so the second "hit" for multiple hunters would also need 1.5 tries, and so on. Which effectively means that you do not have a chance of "1 in 2", because that only holds for the first box.
The same principle would happen with 200 boxes.
You will be called an idiot, a fool, or much worse, and be the subject of ridicule.
You will get lectures on Probability Theory with in-fighting on the meaning of all that.
You will be told to never spend real money on Keys, buy them with EC and open the Lockboxes that way if you are also looking to build up Lobi. OR
You will be told that if you buy Keys, sell them on the Exchange for EC and use the proceeds to buy the ship with 100% certainty off the Exchange (by the way this is the only time guaranteed is ever used in these type threads). [Annorax not withstanding, since you still can't get it there and only from Private transactions with the 'Captains of Industry' or 'Robber Barons'] YMMV.
You may be told that [Fill in the Blank] ship is a piece of junk and was way over-rated.
There will be one or two obligatory 'I feel for you man' posts thrown in for good measure.
These threads ALWAYS follow this script. It is a Predestination Paradox. Best advice - keep your pain to yourself and you will save yourself even more of the same.
P.S. You still didn't edit the Forum Subject from 'Impossible' to 'Improbable' rendering this thread as a magnet for the above.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Cryptic's revenue per box would be the same. They get 200 worth of keys for every one ship issued. Think about it solely from their perspective, ignore the player odds. Player odds go up. Revenue per ship is the same.
But like I say, as an alternative to the physical prize vault (which I think could be interesting in a number of ways like being able to pay for or earn hints as to where to look), the upgrade system provides a means for having culmative odds and could be structured on the backend to provide 100% success once a certain revenue target is reached.
1. So you place a box in a UI like the upgrade UI to open it. Slot the locked box into the item slot and key into the tech slot. An invisible item in player's inventory tracks cumulative probability and is the actual item being upgraded, with tech points assigned to it. The invisible item is assigned to an inventory location the player can't see like an inventory tab with one slot and no UI means of accessing it.
2. Slotting key plus box and hitting upgrade replaces locked box with unlocked box while increasing the tech points of the invisible item. On the backend, just like item color rarity has a chance at an upgrade, the box has a chance of upgrading to a box that contains the grand prize.
3. Now unlike the upgrade system, you don't display the upgrade chance to the player. They just slot in a box and a key. Box has an (invisible) chance to upgrade to a box that contains the grand prize ship.
4. Meanwhile, rarity chance builds on the invisible item in hidden inventory which is the actual item being upgraded.
5. Every time upgrade is selected, a script runs:
Let p_cumulative equal p_cumulative plus 0.005
If p_cumulative < 1.0, let p1 on box upgrade equal 0.005
If p_cumulative > 0.995, let p1 equal 1.0 and reset p_cumulative to 0
...
Random Number (1 through 1000)
If number is less than p1 * (1000+0.005), upgrade to grand prize box occurs and set p_culmative to 0.0
The net result here is that 1000 consecutive non-winners guarantee a win. Otherwise, the box has a 1 in 200 chance.
There is a slight loss for Cryptic here but what we're looking at is that it would cost them 0.67% of revenue from players whose spending exceeds 1000 keys. Around $7.53 in loss for Cryptic to keep a customer who spent $1125 happy.
Now, you can actually adjust this number to be more favorable to the player based on an analysis of retention and acquisition costs. Generally, rate of conversion to spending is fairly low (probably less than 5% of players) so you can do the math if you have the internal numbers but you should be able to estimate chances of losing a customer (either temporary burnout or longterm burnout), average income of players based on demographic data, acquisition costs, etc.
Generally, retaining a customer is cheaper than acquiring one. Stahl used to open up about the bucket theory in STO. Basically, as EP, he treated acquisition and retention as like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it. You can't patch the hole fully but you can patch it partially and you can also adjust the flow of water going into the bucket and you do a mix of trying to adjust water flow in and the amount of water leaking out to keep the bucket full at a certain level.
Now with F2P, churn among non-spenders is life. It happens. Churn among spenders is more costly, however, because spenders have an acquisition cost that is fairly high per spender in a F2P game because spenders are relatively rare.
And even at 1000 keys (I think the number could be much lower once the math is done) it could be VERY enticing if you can counter the bonomial probability argument against gambling by saying that Cryptic has a system that tracks culmative odds and rounds up to make sure that your odds eventually hit 100% as a counter to bad luck. And while implementation may have a cost, it seems like the tech could be deployed across their games and should pay for itself provided the demographic math behind it is good.
What's bad about this? That seems awesome to me.
This is the rationalization gamblers use to justify their spending. Increasing the odds of "not failing" is just statistical play, it does not increase the chances of outcome x itself. One roll doesn't care how many times you rolled before, there is no thinking that could possibly change that. Statistics, if you don't know how to read and interpret them, are meaningless.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Well, in general, with trading cards and the like, rare draw prizes sell for significantly below acquisition cost, especially when first available. This has been true in MMOs and you can trace this with a site like WoW TCG loot. The same also frequently tracks with Comic-Con exclusive toys and the like. The profit is made from acquiring multiple exclusives in a truly competitive market.
That is to say, in a competitive market, it should cost less for a lockbox ship at resale than it would cost to acquire it by buying keys IF the market is competitive becauser the box opener receives value from the non-grand prize entries and competition drives the economic profit of the grand prize down to cost of acquisition minus value of other prizes.
In general, this holds true for lockboxes.
I think what we see with R&D prize ships (aside from the ships themselves being very desirable) is that the buy in per set of chances is higher, people JUST DON"T VALUE the other content of the boxes as highly as they value lockbox content, and extreme rarity allows wealthy people to manipulate markets by buying and relisting at a higher price, which is distortionary because there is no cost associated with bringing an item to market aside from the opportunity cost of one of the 40 exchange slots and the time spent doing it. In the real world, a "buy and relist" strategy has costs associated with it (listing fees, shipping, etc.) and most MMOs also have similar penalties which STO does not have. Other MMOs also have auctions which can guage the fair market demand value of an item easier.
I want you to stop and think what, on the other extreme, would happen to prices if listing an item meant it couldn't be delisted and that it would be vendored at the end of its listing with no takers. People would sell things for much less.
Now, I think the ideal price for items is going to be about halfway between THAT price and the price we have now, balancing the supply-side and demand-side value of goods.
Rare and Very Rare Crafting Materials are guaranteed in R&D Boxes, and fetch a decent prize on the Exchange. The Lockboxes also tend to contain traits, Dilithium Vouchers, DOFFs, and nowadays even BOFF powers (see Kemocite) that might easily be deemed very valuable. The newest lockbox does not even contain ground weapons anymore (they always sold the worst), and it also contains R&D Boxes.
The Annorax basicaly came with the worst type of promo item, and contained a science vessel that seems overpowered compared to other ships, after there haven't been any new science vessels in more than half a year, and no Romulan or Klingon Science Vessel in years. It's the ideal candidate for being expensive to acquisition, and highly desirable.