Guild Wars 2

Then I would like to know the percent chance of getting that weapon skin ticket/mini pet/etc. Its kinda obvious by now that rng chests are here to stay despite the immense hate on forums, so why not at least tell us what our odds are for getting those items we want? Like hell if I’ll ever play some rng with real money again if I cant even tell how bad those odds are stacked against me, not even for penguin skins. Not showing the odds of getting an item seems a little more than fishy to me.

It is actually VERY unusual for companies to give exact drop rates (or numbers over all for that matter) so I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Yeah because usually it is an embarrassingly low number of getting anything good. Still, it does feel as we should be able to know considering real money can be spend here.

Why?
If I go out and by a lottery ticket in real life I have no idea about my chances of winning the jackpot.

As for “getting anything good” that is rather personal don’t you think?
I have opened LOADS of BLCs and in 95% of the cases I have gotten useful stuff out of them, even if they did not contain a skin or such.

lordkrall.7241:

Why?
If I go out and by a lottery ticket in real life I have no idea about my chances of winning the jackpot.

As for “getting anything good” that is rather personal don’t you think?
I have opened LOADS of BLCs and in 95% of the cases I have gotten useful stuff out of them, even if they did not contain a skin or such.

On the contrary, you do know if you read the back of the lottery ticket. Plus I’m not talking about blc chests. I’m talking more about future event chests. Most people did not buy southsun crates for the passion fruits in them, they went looking for those certain skins. Look at all the posts about people thinking if they spend enough they would surely get it then get bummed out afterwards when they don’t get jack. It would surely help them from overspending if they knew the drop rate for items.

Knowing a drop-rate is however rather pointless. Since a 10% drop rate does not guarantee that you will get one with each 10 chest you buy. No matter how high the drop-rate is (unless it is 100%) it is IMPOSSIBLE to know how many chests you would need to buy to get one.

You could be lucky and get one on the first try, but you could also be unlucky and not get one on 20 chests. IF they offer an exact drop-rate and people don’t get the drops after x amount of chests, they will simply claim that ArenaNet lies in order to sell more chests and so on.

We know that there is a low chance to get a skin or whatever, that is all we will know and also all we actually need to know.

lordkrall.7241:

Why?
If I go out and by a lottery ticket in real life I have no idea about my chances of winning the jackpot.

lordkrall.7241:

Knowing a drop-rate is however rather pointless. Since a 10% drop rate does not guarantee that you will get one with each 10 chest you buy. No matter how high the drop-rate is (unless it is 100%) it is IMPOSSIBLE to know how many chests you would need to buy to get one.

This is some reaaaaaaaally facepalming bad argument.

I really hope you weren’t serious about the “knowing a drop-rate is rather pointless”, if you were at least do yourself a favor and never get much into gambling for the sake of your wallet. Or at least inform yourself about statistics before.

You DO know your chances at the lottery, in any lottery system, you can always know the rules and the chances. In fact I have to check but I believe it’s illegal if the buyer of the lottery can’t know the chances. In game rng is different because technically you spend gems which have no IRL value despite you can buy them with real life money.

If you know an item has a 50% chance of droping something, and another one has a 10%, I’m sure you wouldn’t spend the same on both.

If you knew there was a 0.005% chance of getting the skin I’m sure you would never spend anything on it unless you would get loads and loads of chests for the money.

If someone knows the chances of those chests, the first thing he has to think is “how much would I pay for the skin?” and then consider the price given the chances of getting it (and then lowering it a litle bit as there are always risks and outliers when gambling).

Btw chances are not aditive, they act as products. If the chance was 10% (the example you gave), as you said it doesn’t guarantee that you get 1 each 10 open chest. On average the chance of NOT getting the skin on 10 chests at 10% chance per chest is 34.86%, so more or less 1 of each 3 times you open 10 chests you won’t get the skin, you’re right on that 10 won’t guarantee you a drop, but statistically 2/3 of people opening 10 would get the token.

Knowing the real percentages would allow many players to decide if it’s worth it or not to spend real life money (or even they hard earned in game gold) on them. There are always outliers, of course, but you can stimate your risks and gains knowing the percentages.

Of course from the seller side it could be a bad thing because if the chances are really low and they reveal they were selling smoke no one would try anymore. On the other hand if the chances per chest turn out to be reasonable enough, people knowing it will see all those “I opened 100 chests and nothing” threads as just outliers and will be happy to buy them.

So knowing the real percentages, while not being a guarantee, at least give you an stimation of how many chests you will need on average to get a skin.

Personally I would like for those skins to simply being available without gambling (there are people funding you with their money, at least guarantee them they get something for their money instead of tons of random items that most times they won’t have a use for) and if they want keep the chests as something that can drop in game and very rarely drop a skin so someone farming hard enough would get them. They could keep the drop rates secret for that matter, but at least let those who want to spend on those skins, spend on the skins instead of hundreds of most times useless items. I think real life money transactions (and the equivalent in hard earned gold, with the gem prices in gold rising and rising each day) shouldn’t involve luck, but that’s just my opinion.

lordkrall.7241:

Knowing a drop-rate is however rather pointless. Since a 10% drop rate does not guarantee that you will get one with each 10 chest you buy. No matter how high the drop-rate is (unless it is 100%) it is IMPOSSIBLE to know how many chests you would need to buy to get one.

While my response is not as well thought out as Lokheit’s, I’ll simply say this…

If I were to offer 2 kinds of loot boxes that had a chance for an epic sword skin:

Box A had a 1/10 chance for the skin
Box B had a 1/1,000,000 chance for the skin

Which one would you rather spend your money on? Or, would it really not matter to you? If I was set on spending real (or fake) currency to buy such boxes, I know which one I’d pick…

lordkrall.7241:

Knowing a drop-rate is however rather pointless. Since a 10% drop rate does not guarantee that you will get one with each 10 chest you buy. No matter how high the drop-rate is (unless it is 100%) it is IMPOSSIBLE to know how many chests you would need to buy to get one.

You could be lucky and get one on the first try, but you could also be unlucky and not get one on 20 chests. IF they offer an exact drop-rate and people don’t get the drops after x amount of chests, they will simply claim that ArenaNet lies in order to sell more chests and so on.

We know that there is a low chance to get a skin or whatever, that is all we will know and also all we actually need to know.

That’s a poor argument. Knowing the odds allows players to make an informed decision on whether they want to chase the odds in the first place. RNG means you could spend a lot more or a lot less than the average, but if the odds are 1 in 100, people should know that before they set down with the intention of spending until they get the item they are chasing.

If the odds were actually 1 in 10, I might chase a ticket. I have to assume that the odds are closer to 1 in 100 or 1 in 500 or 1 in 1,000. I really don’t know, but with Arenanet and RNG chests, I just have to assume by default that the odds are very steep.

So, I boycott the chests. The only way RNG will be phased out or the odds will at least be made more fair would be if pretty much everyone boycotts the chests. As long as people continue to prove P.T. Barnum correct, ANet will continue the crass practice of long odds RNG chests.

If we could stomp out RNG chests as viable revenue generators, then maybe they’d actually work on providing the kind of cash shop they promised prior to launch, which was a store chock full of cool weapon and armor skins, other cosmetics and items of convenience. So far we have three premium armor sets, one of which is among the worst PC armors ever made for an MMO, the very rarely available, limited time, direct purchase weapon skins and a bunch of town cloths that I never, ever actually see anyone wear around town.

RNG chests were the worst compromise on integrity the company could have made while still sticking to their pledge not to sell power in the cash shop. It also has made them extremely lazy on producing armor/weapon skins sold directly to players for a fair price. Not to mention that it de-incentivizes them from selling direct purchase skins, because those skins might lessen demand for their RNG scam chests.

I have to believe that they could have made more money with a continual stream of direct purchase skins, but it seems as if some at the company much prefer the “thrill” of fleecing suckers than the concept of making an “honest living” selling desirable goods at a fair price. IRL, those people are usually called criminals, but I guess virtual currencies and virtual items provide a sense of cover for an otherwise obvious lapse of ethics.

Fiontar.4695:

I have to believe that they could have made more money with a continual stream of direct purchase skins, but it seems as if some at the company much prefer the “thrill” of fleecing suckers than the concept of making an “honest living” selling desirable goods at a fair price. IRL, those people are usually called criminals, but I guess virtual currencies and virtual items provide a sense of cover for an otherwise obvious lapse of ethics.

Ignoring the slur against the company here, but lets talk about the bolded part: Each skin they produce is bringing them more money if thrown into the RNG box as opposed to sold directly – otherwise they wouldnt be doing it. So a ‘continual stream’ of new skins would still be better, revenue-wise, if sold in RNG boxes.

You say you have to believe to the contrary, and at that point it cant really be discussed any further. But I question your beliefs here. Their aim is to max profits, not antagonize customers. If direct sales would max profits they would do it that way. Having yet another RNG box coming out today is all the proof you would need to question your ‘belief’ if think about it rationally.

Not that I think ethics or fairness figure in the decisions of large corporations these days.

lordkrall.7241:

If I go out and by a lottery ticket in real life I have no idea about my chances of winning the jackpot.

Sure you do. Pretty much every lottery is legally required to provide the exact odds of winning.

Stormy Dragon.9210:

lordkrall.7241:

If I go out and by a lottery ticket in real life I have no idea about my chances of winning the jackpot.

Sure you do. Pretty much every lottery is legally required to provide the exact odds of winning.

or at least state that odds of winning depend on the number of contestants

This type of activity (RNG box lottery/gambling) shouldn’t be a part of a game that is marketed to a wide age range of players. If there is a lottery, then I agree with the OP that the participants should know the numerical odds/chance of winning.

Would people accept it more (whine less) if anet gave the exact odds? Then I’m all for it.

butch.8136:

Would people accept it more (whine less) if anet gave the exact odds? Then I’m all for it.

They wouldn’t.
And it would probably just end up with people shouting about ArenaNet lying about the odds.

Also giving the exact odds would kill the revenue stream from RNG boxes because most of the suckers (I mean, customers) only fall for it by assuming “it cant possibly be that bad”. Truth is it IS that bad and giving the odds would mean far fewer people buy into it.

lordkrall.7241:

Why?
If I go out and by a lottery ticket in real life I have no idea about my chances of winning the jackpot.

Errr…yeah you do, the odds at the same for everyone since the numbers of balls and the chance to pick any given ball in X order always remains exactly the same. It’s completely transparent and just requires math to figure out. The RNG here isn’t transparent since everything is skewed to worthless, it’s not really random.

If you wait a few days you can generally get an idea of the drop rates from the wiki.

Although it’s not always 100% reliable, at the moment the reported drop rate for tickets from Rich Coffers is 0.00% and for the regular ones it’s 0.03%, but that’s probably because only about 300 Rich Coffers have been recorded vs. nearly 40,000 normal ones.

But IMO the important thing is that it will always be a random, very low chance, and therefore not worth spending the money. I wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole.

lol people been saying the same things since the first RNG box appear in GW2 in the Halloween events.

But people will still buy them. I will wager you will talk yourself in buyimg them again too once you see that shiny new weapons/armour skins.

I bet the developers smile everytime they see a message like this.

Mastruq.2463:

Ignoring the slur against the company here, but lets talk about the bolded part: Each skin they produce is bringing them more money if thrown into the RNG box as opposed to sold directly – otherwise they wouldnt be doing it. So a ‘continual stream’ of new skins would still be better, revenue-wise, if sold in RNG boxes.

I’d say they haven’t given direct sales a fair chance.

YMMV, but the Wintersday skins weren’t exactly the most exciting set of skins that they have ever produced. Furthermore, they were also handicapped by being released around Christmas, when a lot of potential buyers are likely to have spent money on gifts, or be saving it for the New Year sales, and thus have less to spare on MMO accessories. That may be feeding the confirmation bias of whichever executive is pushing RNG chests, but the Winter’s items just don’t represent a good yardstick on how many people might be prepared to directly buy weapons that they’d actually be willing to be seen dead with.

Another thing they haven’t tried that they probably should is having the gems per skin be a bit lower. $10 for a weapon skin is hardly what you’d call a microtransaction that anyone with any kind of restrictions on their budget can easily justify, and in gold terms that’s about 24 gold at current conversion rates. The gem system means that ArenaNet isn’t getting slugged by the banks with every transaction – I reckon that if they’d put, say, jade dragon tickets o the market for 200, 100, or, heck, even 50 gems each, they’d make a killing from people buying them up while they’re available to have a stockpile for later use. The thing about supply and demand curves is that they mean that you can often end up making bigger overall profits by decreasing the price, and when the supplier can supply billions at no greater cost than supplying one, there’s no practical limit to how low the price can go. At the moment, though, the price of those weapon skins that have gone up have been quite dear for what is, ultimately, a piece of artwork to use in a game.

Sure, they’d lose the profits from exploiting the gamblin-addicted, but if the skins were to be made available at a low price, they might make up for it by people who buy entire sets because now they can… when they wouldn’t touch RNG boxes with their proverbial 10-footer.

Not to mention that most valuable of resources that ArenaNet has been hemorrhaging away all year – customer goodwill.

People seems to be under the impression that getting these new skins out are free and require no work whatsoever. This is very much false.

lordkrall.7241:

Knowing a drop-rate is however rather pointless. Since a 10% drop rate does not guarantee that you will get one with each 10 chest you buy. No matter how high the drop-rate is (unless it is 100%) it is IMPOSSIBLE to know how many chests you would need to buy to get one.

You could be lucky and get one on the first try, but you could also be unlucky and not get one on 20 chests. IF they offer an exact drop-rate and people don’t get the drops after x amount of chests, they will simply claim that ArenaNet lies in order to sell more chests and so on.

We know that there is a low chance to get a skin or whatever, that is all we will know and also all we actually need to know.

That is ridiculous. Knowing the drop rate gives us a great deal of information. For example if the drop rate were 10%, you know that opening 22 chests gives just over 90% chance of giving (at least) one ticket. You know that opening 50 chests gives over 99% chance of giving (at least) one ticket. This helps you make an informed decision as to whether buying chests is worth it.

Don’t gamble when you don’t know the odds. UNLESS you’re getting all your enjoyment out of the act of gambling.

Anet will never release the odds. They are very very low. On the gw2 wiki, players have aggregated statistics and the rate seems to be 0.04% (sample size of 40000).

I’d rather ANet keep the numbers a secret. How would knowing the numbers help you?

Lord Kuru.3685:

That is ridiculous. Knowing the drop rate gives us a great deal of information. For example if the drop rate were 10%, you know that opening 22 chests gives just over 90% chance of giving (at least) one ticket. You know that opening 50 chests gives over 99% chance of giving (at least) one ticket. This helps you make an informed decision as to whether buying chests is worth it.

No, opening 50 chests give 50 separate 10% chances in the example you provide. These separate chances are in no way cumulative

You can calculate the odds of not receiving something after x tries by raising the odds of not receiving something in one try by x. So for an example of a 10% chance, the odds of not getting it after 50 tries is 0.9 raised to the power of 50 – which comes to about half a percent. So with a 10% chance of receiving an item after each try, 50 tries will give you a 99.5% chance of getting at least one.

lordkrall.7241:

People seems to be under the impression that getting these new skins out are free and require no work whatsoever. This is very much false.

No, but once they’re made, it doesn’t cost ArenaNet or NCSoft any more money (well, maybe a few cents) to spawn fifty million of them than to spawn one.

Out of all the items in the gem store, only three represent an intrinsic cost to ArenaNet – bank slot expansions, bag expansions, and slot expansions, each of which requires more data capacity on ArenaNet’s servers. Everything else is effectively free from ArenaNet’s perspective after the development cots, which is fixed. Furthermore, since gems are bought in lots of at least 800 for $10, ArenaNet does not need to worry too much about the fees involved with receiving payments in the first place.

With no intrinsic cost to spawning a single item, what ArenaNet should be looking to do is maximise the function PxN, where P is the price of a single item, and N is the number of items sold – and as any economist will tell you, there is usually an inverse relationship between P and N that peaks at a particular point. With no intrinsic cost of producing a single item, selling sixty items at fifteen gems apiece is still netting the company more profits than selling a single item at eight hundred gems.

Now, I don’t know where that ‘sweet spot’ is likely to be, but I’m darned sure it’s not going to be at the 600-800 gems (equivalent to seven and a half to ten dollars) that they’ve been asking for what is essentially a small piece of artwork that will be missed most of the time and may not even be the active weapon. I can get a Warhammer figurine for that price, and when an Australian* is comparing something unfavourably on value-for-money stakes to Warhammer, you know there’s a problem.

For the equivalent of a dollar or two, though, there are probably going to be a lot more people who go “why not? I’ll get the full set!”

*Context: Games Workshop stuff in Australia is generally double the price of the same thing in the US, despite currencies being around parity.

Ashen.2907:

Lord Kuru.3685:

That is ridiculous. Knowing the drop rate gives us a great deal of information. For example if the drop rate were 10%, you know that opening 22 chests gives just over 90% chance of giving (at least) one ticket. You know that opening 50 chests gives over 99% chance of giving (at least) one ticket. This helps you make an informed decision as to whether buying chests is worth it.

No, opening 50 chests give 50 separate 10% chances in the example you provide. These separate chances are in no way cumulative

But the “total chance” of getting at least one in 50 tries with 10% chance per try can be calculated:

- In the firts chest ou have a 10% chance.
- If the first one didn’t drop anything we place ourselves in an scenario that has a 90% chance of happening, here opening a second chest has a 10% chance of droping something inside the 90% chance that the first one didn’t drop anythin.
- We sum the 10% chance of the first one and add 9% (the 10% inside 90%) for a chance of 19% of a ticket opening 2 chests with 10% chance each one.

At the end the formula is 1 – chance of not getting a ticket. The chance of not getting a ticket is the decimal number of the chance (in this case 0.9) elevated to the number of tries (in this case 50) which results in 0.0051.

1 – 0.0051 = 0.9949 so he was right sayin that with 50 chests and 10% chance per chest, the chance of getting at least 1 ticket is over 99% or which is the same, the chance of not getting any ticket with hose 50 chests is 0.51%