32 replies to this topic

[Dee Eight]

I finally pulled a mech from one, after probably a thousand caches opened.

[El Bandito]

Grats. I am saving most of mine for the rework, and opening only good ones. So far so good.

[meteorol]

El Bandito, on 15 September 2017 - 11:58 PM, said:

Grats. I am saving most of mine for the rework, and opening only good ones. So far so good.

I did always only open the good ones, and from like 40 caches i got the blue item out of about 39. Never opened a cache with more than 1 or 2 items i considered sh*t, got the sh*t items at almost a 100% rate. (By sh*t i mean weapons or consumables)

There is a small line between making caches too rewarding or making them just frustrating. PGI overshot into the frustrating area by a mile. I just stopped opening them, no matter how well the outcome could possibly be. I'll get nothing but the SRM 4 etc anyway.

Edited by meteorol, 16 September 2017 - 12:06 AM.

[Paigan]

It's not a curse, it's not a PGI scam, it's not the gods hating you or rewarding you for your behavior or whatever.
It is plain simply probability. Just a low one.
People really need to understand probability if they engage in a probability-based activity.

[meteorol]

Paigan, on 16 September 2017 - 12:05 AM, said:

It's not a curse, it's not a PGI scam, it's not the gods hating you or rewarding you for your behavior or whatever.
It is plain simply probability. Just a low one.
People really need to understand probability if they engage in a probability-based activity.

The vast majority of people understand it's probability. The point is PGI set the probability so low that it's just frustrating. The blew it by beeing too greedy.

Ever wondered why they are giving away countless keys lately? And why they are reworking the whole cache system? My guess is that they are selling close to no keys. Because the way they set up the system is just not fun.

Edited by meteorol, 16 September 2017 - 12:09 AM.

[El Bandito]

meteorol, on 16 September 2017 - 12:05 AM, said:

I did always only open the good ones, and from like 40 caches i got the blue item out of about 39. Never opened a cache with more than 1 or 2 items i considered sh*t, got the sh*t items at almost a 100% rate. (By sh*t i mean weapons or consumables)

There is a small line between making caches too rewarding or making them just frustrating. PGI overshot into the frustrating area by a mile. I just stopped opening them, no matter how well the outcome could possibly be. I'll get nothing but the SRM 4 etc anyway.

It is very possibile that PGI nerfed the % of good drops, post inclusion of decals in crates. I am still getting good stuff from good crates, but with much lower rate than the introductory period of supply crates.

Edited by El Bandito, 16 September 2017 - 12:18 AM.

[Zergling]

I'm saving my caches and keys for when PGI revamps the system, as there is likely to be some sort of 'compensation' that may be beneficial to those that hang onto their caches/keys.

[Paigan]

meteorol, on 16 September 2017 - 12:09 AM, said:

The vast majority of people understand it's probability. The point is PGI set the probability so low that it's just frustrating. The blew it by beeing too greedy.

[...]

Of course the vast majority understands it. The vast majority doesn't create cache-whining threads.

Also, you need to understand probability, too.
The ultra rare prices are REALLY valuable. 1000 MC, Mechs, etc. If they set the probability too low, they lose money in the process. A business that loses money is soon a dead business. They are not greey like some wallstreet gamblers who try to squeeze out a few more billions from Africa or whatever. They are a relatively small firm who introduced a gambling element into their game. Just as many other games have, too. Just as casinos do, too. With gambling, the bank ALWAYS wins in the end. Otherwise, it would be bankrupt and the gambling would stop.
Talking about the bank being "greedy" is just ignorant babbling.

Edited by Paigan, 16 September 2017 - 12:39 AM.

[meteorol]

Paigan, on 16 September 2017 - 12:39 AM, said:

Of course the vast majority understands it. The vast majority doesn't create cache-whining threads.

Also, you need to understand probability, too.
The ultra rare prices are REALLY valuable. 1000 MC, Mechs, etc. If they set the probability too low, they lose money in the process. A business that loses money is soon a dead business. They are not greey like some wallstreet gamblers who try to squeeze out a few more billions from Africa or whatever. They are a relatively small firm who introduced a gambling element into their game. Just as many other games have, too. Just as casinos do, too. With gambling, the bank ALWAYS wins in the end. Otherwise, it would be bankrupt and the gambling would stop.
Talking about the bank being "greedy" is just ignorant babbling.

Yeah. And they failed with their gambling business.

Why are they giving away free keys in droves?
Why are the reworking the whole system?

Because they are selling no keys. It is not a succesful source of funding, otherwise they wouldn't overhaul it completely.

Other games do sell keys in their gambling system. They are making a shi*tton of money from it.

That is the baseline you need to acknowledge before telling me i need to uderstand probability.

So, why are they not selling any keys? Because the product they are selling is not attractive to the customer. Why is a gambling system not attractive? Because the chances are simply too low. Every person right in his mind knows that gambling is set up to make the Bank win. What "working" gambling systems do though, is giving people a certain chance to win a rate that makes them think "if i keep playing, i will hit the jackpot". Or they have a jackpot so big that people don't care the chance of winning is like 1:149 Mio, because they are willing to spent money on such a small chance. That expectation keeps people spending money on gambling.

What PGI did is showing everyone quite obviously that the chances of winning something worthwhile are so low, that everyone quickly stopped using their system at all. The result is not worth enough to make people spent money on the chance that PGI gives them.

If you don't wanna call it greedy, call it incompetent, which probably fits PGI better. Fact stands that their system fell flat on its face, while gambling system in many other games work. They are all pretty similar, and MWOs doesn't differ too much from them. What differs, and makes MWOs system fail, is the probability/result ratio.

Edited by meteorol, 16 September 2017 - 12:58 AM.

[Roadbuster]

Paigan, on 16 September 2017 - 12:05 AM, said:

It is plain simply probability. Just a low one.
People really need to understand probability if they engage in a probability-based activity.

The probability of me probably joining some brobability-based activity is probably very low.

[Lorcryst NySell]

PGI is greedy.

PGI wants to sell keys.

And yet, in the revamp the keys will be gone.

Makes.

Perfect.

Sense.


Also, they don't sell keys, they sell that allow you to buy a truckload of things, keys being the lowest-priced of those.

Also also, 95% of the players don't whine on the forums and open their Caches.

Everyone quickly stopped using their system ? Please.

[meteorol]

Lorcryst NySell, on 16 September 2017 - 01:15 AM, said:

Everyone quickly stopped using their system ? Please.

They didn't?

If it's working, if 95% of the players are opening their caches, then why do they revamp the system and ditch the keys?

No, literally no business with the aim to create money (which PGI is), ditches a succesful source of funding for no reason.

Giving away keys in droves during events, and changing the system to caches being free basically means one thing:
They are not losing any considerable amount of money in doing so. Which, basically means: not enough people using their MC or buying MC for using them to create a noticeable stream of revenue.

The fact that they are changing it now is not an evidence of PGI not trying to make money off their keys. It's evidence for their attempt of doing so failed in spectacular fashion.

Edited by meteorol, 16 September 2017 - 01:31 AM.

[Appogee]

Over the course of a couple of hundred Caches I've won maybe 5 Mech Bays, which are useful, and maybe 300 or so MC.

I only open those that have three or more things that I'd actually value. (That does NOT include decals, omnipods, weapons or STD engines.)

Even when I do open one, it's in the expectation that I'll get one of the Blue common items shown. The probability seems very heavily weighted towards those items. (Did PGI ever disclose the actual odds?)

Edited by Appogee, 16 September 2017 - 01:54 AM.

[Lorcryst NySell]

I honestly don't think that the Caches&Keys system was ever made to rack in the big bucks.

Those are really minuscule income streams.

The MechPack/Collections/PreOrder has about the same "impact", coding-time and investment wise, but are MUCH more profitable.

And almost everyone I've spoke to, ingame, that don't visit these forums, WILL open each and every Cache they get, as soon as they get it.

Hoarding Caches for better result, "gaming the system" etc is a thing that I've ONLY seen on the forums.

You get 50 Keys for 7 bucks, you have a 1-in-12 chance to get a Cache each time you are on the winning side of a match, the maths dictate that Caches are rare ... those 7 bucks will last for months ...

This is NOT the cash-cow PGI needs. Hence, not greedy.

Now, the "collector" packs at 20 bucks for a single 'Mech with a fancy paint job are another story ... and the fact that you pay more and more RealCash when you go up in VIRTUAL tonnage of Hero 'Mech is also a bit strange to me ...

There isn't an engineer building a 'Mech with real metal and delivering it to you anywhere, why does the Kaiju costs 15 bucks more than the K9 ?

[Jay Leon Hart]

I would argue it's not the low chance of winning that discourages people from buying keys, but the lack in prizes worth the risk.

As much as I dislike the idea, having items exclusively tied to boxes *and* having those boxes available only for a limited time, tends to increase demand for keys. However, games I play/have played that do this, also have a player economy with trading and many have an exchange where players can sell premium currency (MC) for in game currency (C-Bills) at whatever rate the sellers deem fit.

So honestly, I don't think PGI can do much with lockboxes without adding new, exclusive content for them, at the very least.

[El Bandito]

Jay Leon Hart, on 16 September 2017 - 04:00 AM, said:

I would argue it's not the low chance of winning that discourages people from buying keys, but the lack in prizes worth the risk.

TBF, newer players would be able to get C-Bills cheaper than any other method, if they simply open all those event crates with keys earned and bought. Accidental mechbays/MC/mechs/cockpit items are simply bonus.

Edited by El Bandito, 16 September 2017 - 04:39 AM.

[TheFallOfTheReaper]

tldr its gambling>some have gotten better luck some get shafted, welcome to pgis casino :3

[qS Sachiel]

meteorol, on 16 September 2017 - 12:09 AM, said:

The vast majority of people understand it's probability. The point is PGI set the probability so low that it's just frustrating. The blew it by beeing too greedy.

Ever wondered why they are giving away countless keys lately? And why they are reworking the whole cache system? My guess is that they are selling close to no keys. Because the way they set up the system is just not fun.

Or they just want to condition people for the new release cache system? they want to advertise their availability and the 'benefits'?
ever been to a grocery center and seen free handouts with the product branding all over the rest of the store?

it's marketing plain and simple, as are 99% of things that go on here...

[Trissila]

Paigan, on 16 September 2017 - 12:05 AM, said:

It's not a curse, it's not a PGI scam, it's not the gods hating you or rewarding you for your behavior or whatever.
It is plain simply probability. Just a low one.
People really need to understand probability if they engage in a probability-based activity.

But rigging the probability to be hideously far into the "you get nothing, good day sir" territory is a PGI scam.

Thankfully, I'm immune to GambleBoxes and all the myriad forms they take in modern gaming. The only caches I've ever opened have been the ones that came with free keys alongside them in events. But holy cow, if the idea of those events was to convince me to buy more keys, they failed utterly. What they did was convince me that MWO's supply caches are quite possibly the scammiest GambleBoxes I've ever encountered.

[Angel of Annihilation]

meteorol, on 16 September 2017 - 12:05 AM, said:

I did always only open the good ones, and from like 40 caches i got the blue item out of about 39. Never opened a cache with more than 1 or 2 items i considered sh*t, got the sh*t items at almost a 100% rate. (By sh*t i mean weapons or consumables)

There is a small line between making caches too rewarding or making them just frustrating. PGI overshot into the frustrating area by a mile. I just stopped opening them, no matter how well the outcome could possibly be. I'll get nothing but the SRM 4 etc anyway.

I agree. I can't help but think about World of Warships and there Christmas Box program. You could buy any amount of boxes you wanted at a cost of $1, $3 and $5 but they guaranteed you that you would get at least slightly more value out of the boxes than you paid for them. Honestly they gave out alot of stuff that while technically worth more $$$ than you invested if you were to buy it for cash, were still just crap and useless. However, the boxes also gave out premium ships worth between $10-$60 like they were candy. Litterally about 1 in 10 boxes game me a premium ship. I got the bug and when the smoke cleared had spent roughly $300 on the program but I ended up with around $500 worth of premium ships. What kept me clicking the buy button was the simple fact I got a ton of good and useful things and to be honest, I hope they have the same program this year too.

My point obviously is that despite spending a ton of cash, I had fun and enjoyed the program because it actually rewarded me. With the Supply Cache program on the other hand, I know that all I am going to get is junk. I have opened probably 100 boxes since the program came out and guess what? No mech. Hell best I got was a decal I don't even like. Never got MC or premium time or a mech bay either.

So yeah, they really need the good stuff to pop more often. I mean hell, we have over 500 mech variants in the game so giving out mechs even 1 out of every 20-30 boxes wouldn't hurt their bottom line, especially since the mechs they award are only C-bill Variants. I mean hell they give up 10-12 million or more C-bills during events on a regular basis so a mech worth 5-15 million C-bills every 20-30 boxes wouldn't even put a dent on things.