Phoenix Boxes

deviantwar · December 2016

Can a Dev answer this 3 questions!
How can someone spend 3million dil on boxes and not get an Epic from it?
How do i see lots people getting them in System Announcements are these people computer generated?
What Actually is the Percentage you have in your Algorythm

Please Dont Flame this post
Thank You

taylor1701d · December 2016

I'm not a Dev. But one is not likely to respond to this thread so, I'll take a crack at it;

1. Because you had a poor run of RNG

2. Many people are opening many boxes, which in turn produces what would seem like many winners, when in fact many of us have opened hundreds and hundreds, but just didn't luck out. Myself 800 boxes, no UR or Epic. Which is fine, I own all those ships anyway except the bulwark, which I wouldn't object to owning, but really doesn't interest me. I'm happy with Upgrade tech for the next two years taken care of, plus all the other goodies that were in Very Rare/Rare/ and uncommon stores.

3. Differing opinions on odds have been floating around. Some are getting multiple epics or ultra rares in very few boxes, while others have opened anywhere from 1000-5000 boxes with no Epic or Ultra tokens.
Not sure if they have announced "Official" odds. I wasn't concerned enough to bother searching around for that info.

It's just the way it is with these types of events. Some get lucky, while some sink many resources and never luck out.
Doesn't seem fair when you're the one losing, but sure feels good when the inverse is true. And we're all facing the same odds in the end. So sometimes you gotta "Know when to fold em", as the song goes.

Feel bad for ya if you had a bad run...but try to think of the positives. You now have Upgrade Tech for life at the very least.
Especially if you spent 3+ mil Dil. You should be literally swimming in them.

I spent about the same as you if it makes you any feel better.

Edit: There is also another Pheonix thread where people have been posting their success rate if you're curious. It's not official but should give you some idea.

warpangel · December 2016

How can someone play the lottery every week for their entire lives and never win the jackpot?

indyshark · December 2016

Buy the phoenix boxes for fun and the tech upgrades and you won't be disappointed. I got a few items I wanted that were very rare for a couple of toons, so this was a good promotion even if it took most of my dilithium. I hope they do it again next year.

tarran61 · December 2016

warpangel wrote: »

How can someone play the lottery every week for their entire lives and never win the jackpot?

How do you know what I've been doing. LOL,

OP, its a game of chance, one I like better then the LockBox. I hope they do it again. I'll be ready.....

gaevsman · December 2016

I opened, in total, 60 Phoenix boxes and guess what, 3 ultra rare, and a lots of very rare and rare tokens, so, it's just that the RNG gods hate you, they used to hate me, but for some reason, they decided to smile at me, and i have almost all ships from events, so, i was actually going for the upgrades, mostly, now i'll go after some of the new R&D promotion ships, thou i'm more interested in the lobi.

huijian · December 2016

70 boxes - 0 epic, 0 ur, 3 vr and rest rare/uncommon

smokebailey · December 2016

warpangel wrote: »

How can someone play the lottery every week for their entire lives and never win the jackpot?

lotteries are only won by 80 year olds.

starmanj · December 2016

Got a lot of nice stuff on all 12 toons LOL no Epic Tokens though

duncanidaho11 · December 2016

Probability problems give no guarantees. Say (for the sake of demonstration) the odds of an epic are about a quarter of one percent per box. Open 750 prize packs in sequence (3 million dil's worth) and the probability of getting no Epics is 15.3%. That's unlikely, but for every 100 people who buy 3 million dil's worth of Phoenix packs 15 of them (on average) will receive no epics. You have no way of guaranteeing you that won't be one of them.

The OP should take this as a lesson, always gamble with the expectation that you might not buy your way into your desired grand prize. Even when the odds are good, they aren't certain. You may simply end up with a lot of tech upgrades.

If that's a problem for people then they should look into the C-store or Exchange for whatever ship or item is the best compromise to what they originally wanted.

huijian · December 2016

duncanidaho11 wrote: »

If that's a problem for people then they should look into the C-store or Exchange for whatever ship or item is the best compromise to what they originally wanted.

Some of those event ships have consoles to complete sets which cannot be obtained any other way. But considering the ships were FREE in the first place, (and none of them particularly "epic") it seems a bit unreasonable that when they do become available, the chance of getting one is incredibly improbable.

tecbull · December 2016

First day, 3 UR and 10 VR. A few Rare and uncommon. Second and subsequent days, all Rare and Uncommon.

crm14916 · December 2016

I opened a total of 127 boxes. It was what my current Dil stash would allow me to open combined with the 7 free boxes. Most of my millions of Dil I've had has been spent on the fleet projects, as I'm currently in a solo one...

Of all the boxes I opened:
84 Uncommon
32 Rare
11 Very Rare
0 Ultra Rare
0 Epic

So, unlike some other lucky people, I didn't get the ship(s) I wanted either. I have all the Epic ships, but would love to have gotten the Risian Corvette and the Voth Bulwark (the only 2 ships I don't have out of those listed). No go foe me, but there is a good chance this will come back around. If so, I'll invest about the same. I'm an LTSer and didn't sink any more into this event than I had sitting around and available from playing. I'm happy with the tribbles, emotes, Red Matter Capacitors, and upgrades I got from the boxes.

CM

duncanidaho11 · December 2016

huijian wrote: »

Some of those event ships have consoles to complete sets which cannot be obtained any other way. But considering the ships were FREE in the first place, (and none of them particularly "epic") it seems a bit unreasonable that when they do become available, the chance of getting one is incredibly improbably.

That's why I said you had to reach a compromise. This is how things are. Would better odds to more favorable? Sure would, specifically for those who have only set top-tier prize objectives, but consider that the Phoenix prize pack isn't about handing out "free" ships, free of an event grind. See. how low they specifically set the odds. It's more fair to say that the pack is an acute adjustment to the dilithium economy.

Therefore, it's unreasonable to expect Cryptic to change their current policy by merely pointing out the situation as they intended it to be. Doubtless, we're telling them nothing new by complaining about how these ships still aren't truly accessible. You need a different approach, such as "by setting the odds so low too much dilithium has been siphoned out of the game!" but there's a few problems with those alternatives:

1. We don't have enough data to make the point
2. We don't know what Cryptic's expectations are
3. We don't long what the long term effect are going to be
4. I don't think there are many who are upset by cratered Zen prices.

So, there's not a whole lot pushing for a change in the base odds to the Phoenix prize pack. It is what it simply is, "feedback" doesn't have the necessary weight to force a change to the game.

That leaves the problem I outlined above. You can gamble for a chance at a ship (and many other lower prizes) or put your dilithium/zen into something reliable (ie. c-store or exchange). It may not be your first choice, but if the odds are a problem then (regardless of all other factors) it'll be a much better alternative for you.

tobiashirt · December 2016

A simpler (though untested) way to think about it might be that, in order to get better than even odds of getting a ship, you have to put in the dil equivalent of a new ship in the c-store. Myself, I opened 18 packs/day for the event and was aiming for UR. Trying to get a rare ship for the zen equivalent of ~half a new ship meant, though, that I never seriously expected to win.

jaguarskx · December 2016

Thus far, I have only opened the free daily Phoenix boxes.

I guess I will open the 300 Phoenix boxes I purchased tonight. If the end result is 300 uncommon tokens, then I can live with that since I can use 'em to purchase upgrade kits.

bobbydazlers · December 2016

on a side note, I thought the phoenix boxs (most notably the free one) was going back into retirement with todays update but they are still active apparently.

from the news blog "The Phoenix will return to retirement on December 8th"

gavinruneblade · December 2016

@duncanidaho11 had a solid write up, but let me give an example using a 50% chance not s .5% to show just how common bad luck can be (credit to blogger greedy goblin):

-------------------------
The secret lies in skewness of the chance distribution. This means that the individual outcomes aren't evenly distributed around the average. Skewness does not mean being rigged: it is not biased against any participant, nor its average result is wrong. Let me explain it with coinflips where you want to get a head. You have 50% chance for it, so on average you need 2 tries. However if you give coins to 1024 people and ask for their experience about this "game":

512 will tell "I did it in one toss"
256 will tell "I did it in 2 tosses"
128 will tell "I did it in 3 tosses"
64 will tell "I did it in 4 tosses"
32 will tell "I did it in 5 tosses"
16 will tell "I did it in 6 tosses"
8 will tell "I did it in 7 tosses"
4 will tell "I did it in 8 tosses"
2 will tell "I did it in 9 tosses"
1 will tell "I did it in 10 tosses"
1 will tell "I did it in 12 tosses" (bonus internet points for those who understand why not 11)
So if you are a social, who makes decisions not by facts but by the opinions of "friends", you will be convinced that you need less than two tries to get a head. After all half of your friends said it can be done in one try, 1/4 of them did it in two and only 1/4 needed more. If you are good at maths or just don't give a damn about the opinions of people, you realize that this game has lots of small winners and few big losers.
----------------------------------

That is at 50%. Our Phoenix boxes seem to be close to the .5% Duncan gave the math for. When rng is involved, nothing is guaranteed no matter how many boxes you buy.

johnnyray14 · December 2016

Here are the odds I recorded:

9 Epic ( 0.072%, or 1 in 1400)
26 Ultra ( 0.208%, or 1 in 480)
1569 Very (12.525%, or 1 in 8)
3754 Rare (29.967%, or 1 in 3)
7169 Unco (57.291%, or 1 in 2)
----
12,527 tries

fluffymoof · December 2016

Random rewards are RANDOM.

If there is a 1 in 10,000,000 chance of getting an Epic, then EVERY SINGLE BOX has that same 1 in 10,000,000 chance. That's how statistics work with disparate attempts to accomplish something.

It's also, strangely enough, how quantum physics work. The only time the outcome is known for sure is when you open the box to measure the results. Until that point, everything is on the table.

Now as you approach an infinite amount of boxes, the chances of getting an Epic approach 100%, but that's simply because you have an infinite number of boxes. However, every single box you have STILL has the same chance as any other box.

capemike4 · December 2016

Was only able to open 23 boxes here(including the free daily ones)...; yeah, I'm dirt poor, but, for the record, here were my results....

12 UC
7 Rare
4 Very Rare

Quite a few of the R/VR boxes were converted to UC, simply so I could clean out the emotes, snag the Radan tribble, and get a ton of upgrades...though I -did- get the automated defense console and crystalline one, as well....

Not a big deal for me, as the only UR/Epic ship I really wanted was the Risan Corvette...maybe next time!

taylor1701d · December 2016

johnnyray14#4257 wrote: »

Here are the odds I recorded:

9 Epic ( 0.072%, or 1 in 1400)
26 Ultra ( 0.208%, or 1 in 480)
1569 Very (12.525%, or 1 in 8)
3754 Rare (29.967%, or 1 in 3)
7169 Unco (57.291%, or 1 in 2)
----
12,527 tries

Thanks, nice sample size.
Cheers

tigeraries · December 2016

not dev but yeah you can spend X amount and never see 1.... each box has the same chance and if your not lucky then "oh well"... you should just focus on VR and lower... getting UR is unlikely or Epic is unrealistic.

boachev · December 2016

Random truly is random, I'm afraid. Some folks snagged an Epic token with their very first (free) box. Others spend millions of dilithium before they get what they're after, if at all.

I honestly feel fortunate that I was only truly hoping for at least one UR token and managed to get it in ~250 boxes. Which is good, because I honestly couldn't have afforded too many more boxes. And if I never got my Bulwark, I'd definitely be salty and sad over it.

warpangel · December 2016

bobbydazlers wrote: »

on a side note, I thought the phoenix boxs (most notably the free one) was going back into retirement with todays update but they are still active apparently.

The usual event start/end time (10 AM PST IIRC) is usually some time after the maintenace downtime, not during it, except for major content releases or otherwise extended maintance.

They are not available anymore.

rickskynight · December 2016

Its random OP... I've had really good lucky streaks in this game and really bad ones. When the Wells came out, I litterally got it on the 4th box I opened on the first day.

As far as the phoenix boxes go, here's my story..
Day 1.. Opened 400 boxes. Got 1 UR..
Day 2.. Opened 11 boxes (10 from refining and the 1 daily free box), got 1 UR and 1 Epic from those 11 boxes!

Then I come on here and read that people opened over 1k or 2k boxes and didn't get a UR or Epic and that seems crazy.

sauron90805 · December 2016

At least you got to participate. The whole week of the event graphics didn't load properly for me, assets were missing, only hair and teeth and cuffs were visible on toons, running lights on ships, etc....event ends and magically the problem is solved.

kontarnus · December 2016

I opened ~70-80 boxes. I got 1 Epic, 1 UR, maybe 10 VR, ~20 Rare, the rest uncommons.

Luck of the draw.

officerbatman81 · December 2016

[Unnecessary jab at the OP modded out]

ichaerus1 · December 2016

Sad that I didn't get a Rezreth for my main to go with his cold/ice theme, but I got emotes, crystal torpedoes, the crystal AP console for my alts, and now my main has 3/4 of the breen space set as gold. I hope they bring the pack out next year, and I can try again. I'll keep trying until I get my Rezreth, or they shutter the game down. Just means that the Chel T6 is the first step to my main owning each Breen ship. I'll make it work.

duncanidaho11 · December 2016

[Reaction to previously moderated post removed]

Phoenix Boxes

Comments

When I think about everything we've been through together,

maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,

and if that journey takes a little longer,

so we can do something we all believe in,

I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.