The Shrine

So I noticed it's pretty hard to not see an Age of Ultron commercial recently, and a lot of the Marvel branded games have tie in events to Age of Ultron, including Marvel Puzzle Quest. Normally the top reward tier is set at 0.5% of the population, but during the Age of Ultron promotional event it's something closer to 50% and basically if you've a pulse you can probably get the best stuff. So I noticed a lot of people who normally can't sniff top 0.5% posting about how this is awesome and their hard work finally paid off, so I thought those guys are being funny so I posted they should thank the Marvel overlords for being so generous and of course everyone told me how I'm wrong and that they activated their innate Saiyan so that 50% of the playerbase made what's normally a strict 0.5% cutoff mark. After looking at the threads some more it seems like people really believe what they're saying, because it's not like any game has ever made a promotional event where everyone is a winner. You know those seasonal events in WoW? Clearly they're testing the limit of your MMORPG skills for the cool stuff you get because we wouldn't want people to actually be able to win anything in a Christmas or whatever holiday themed event.

I know they say stupidity can explain a lot of things, but I don't think it can quite explain this, unless you're someone who has never played in a promotional event of any kind. Kali mentioned gamble packs in the FF:Record Keeper thread and that's another one I see a lot. I keep on hear people say gamble packs are fair, and not like 'I once spent $5 and got lucky so it's fair" or "I approve of the money grabbing nature of gamble packs'. No this is literally like "I once bought $200 of gamble packs and pulled stuff that'd defy lottery odds by an astronomical margin'. I'm inclined to say these guys are lying, but why would you even lie about spending the money you never had pulling the super rares that you never had? Do people just have alter egos where they live out a F2P experience as a whale? Except a whale almost certainly knows that these things are bad deals, which is why they have to spend so much money in the first place.

I remember when I was young there's a show called Doug in Nickeldeon and one episode Doug got this mail saying he's been selected randomly against all odds to be a a super duper level 17 whatever winner and he only needs to send $100 for the next super ultimate final level to win $1 million so he had some money his parent saved up in a bond somewhere for when he grew up and he decided to take it all out for a shot at it, and as he's sending out the mail he's saying, "How many people can possibly be a super duper level 17 whatever winner?" and it shows a guy carrying a wheelbarrow of envelopes of super duper level 17 whatever winners. I guess the world probably does work like that.

If you're playing a F2P game with a lottery box item and let's say there's something in there that has a one in a thousand chance of being inside of the boxes (and a game would have to be UTTER trash to gate something behind that kind of ratio). Let's say that in order to celebrate the release of the box, you give your entire playerbase a free box with the standard drug dealing philosophy of getting someone going with something free. An active/successful F2P game these days is going to have tens if not hundreds of thousands of players. You've now given something like one in every thousand of these people that item for free. You've also got something like 7-10% of the playerbase who shell out actual cash for the game (amount based on what I've heard about successful F2P games in the past), some of whom will actually put $200 into some dumb lottery box if not more because they just have to have the rare item.

So, yeah, even in this scenario with something that's ten times rarer then what I typically hear the rarest items in a lottery box would be, would have a shit ton of 'winners'

If you gated shit behind as much chance as a real multi-million dollar lottery... well hell considering how much money those make it'd probably work out. But the lowest chance I've ever seen in a F2P game is like .5-1%

Well MPQ doesn't do much in lottery it's usually just a straight up placement. Get top 1% and you get 3 3* and get top 0.5% and you get 3 4* has beeen the norm. Of course, with the Age of Ultron going on you can multiply those odds by about 10 and maybe 50 in some cases. But what's funny is that all these people thought the game is finally recognizing their awesomeness because surely seeing ads for Age of Ultron couldn't possibly have meant that this is a promotional event where loot is being handed out like candy.

Then again, I remember I was at MGM Grand once and they were hyping some new slot machine called Cherry Jubilee and it was tuned extremely loose in the first three days or so that you're almost sure to at least break even which is saying a lot for a slot machine. I wonder if people really thought this slot is supposed to be this loose and end up losing a ton of money on it later, though I remember next time I come back I sure don't see too many people there anymore since it's pretty easy to notice when a slot machine is in its usual 'take all your money mode'... or maybe people didn't notice and just lost all their money which is why they can't play anymore.

Isn't the entire way you buy heroes (unless you're going directly for the skills for heroes you already own) basically lottery based? 2-10% chance elevated depending on the deal they're offering at the time for a random hero. It's basically the same thing. Unless you want to pay out the ass for specific skills, you have to go through their RNG based lottery boxes.

They got a new Age of Ultron event where you can get the new covers via alliance progression (just a sum total of points of everyone in alliance) and the requirement is set at some unbelievably low mark if you got 20 guys in an alliance.

Don, they are promoting the movie. A promotion/reward tier that only gave rewards to 0.5% of people would not be an effective promotion for the movie...but as much as I love the human race, you would be mistaken in expecting everyone who plays the game to understand this.

Marvel and Disney will be just fine with these people thinking THEY did something to earn all these virtual piles of shinola, as it creates good feeling and will make people more inclined to want to see Age of Ultron; and the people themselves are not going to magically wake up and realize how promotions work, overnight - particularly if they were not top-tier contenders or intellects to begin with.

Don Wang wrote:I know they say stupidity can explain a lot of things, but I don't think it can quite explain this...

Albert Einstein wrote:'Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.' --Einstein

You have to realize something, man, and I will keep on telling you this until it kicks in:

Your experiences with humankind are vastly colored and influenced by this board, as all of ours' are after fifteen to eighteen years here - and as many differences of opinion as I have had with people here - this is not a stupid community; nor will it fully prepare you for how greedy and stupid people out there in the larger world CAN BE.

I do not say this to diss the human race; just as "a lifelong optimist finally mugged by reality", to use a book cover quote I heard once and have enjoyed.

Are there people out there who are kinda not very bright, and don't understand they are promoting the movie and are just happy to be showered in virtual crap? Yes, there are people out there who are kinda not very bright, and don't understand that they are promoting the movie and are happy to be showered in virtual crap.

I remember when Kim Kardashian's $200m nightmare of a game went out for a few days. People were screaming about how they were gonna shank somebody if it didn't come back online soon.

THAT is the world you are living in, bro. By all means we should strive to love our species; but let's not have too many illusions about some of its individuals vis-a-vis IQ, avarice, and so on, either.

Replay wrote:Don, they are promoting the movie. A promotion/reward tier that only gave rewards to 0.5% of people would not be an effective promotion for the movie...but as much as I love the human race, you would be mistaken in expecting everyone who plays the game to understand this.

Marvel and Disney will be just fine with these people thinking THEY did something to earn all these virtual piles of shinola, as it creates good feeling and will make people more inclined to want to see Age of Ultron; and the people themselves are not going to magically wake up and realize how promotions work, overnight - particularly if they were not top-tier contenders or intellects to begin with.

Don Wang wrote:I know they say stupidity can explain a lot of things, but I don't think it can quite explain this...

Albert Einstein wrote:'Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.' --Einstein

You have to realize something, man, and I will keep on telling you this until it kicks in:

Your experiences with humankind are vastly colored and influenced by this board, as all of ours' are after fifteen to eighteen years here - and as many differences of opinion as I have had with people here - this is not a stupid community; nor will it fully prepare you for how greedy and stupid people out there in the larger world CAN BE.

I do not say this to diss the human race; just as "a lifelong optimist finally mugged by reality", to use a book cover quote I heard once and have enjoyed.

Are there people out there who are kinda not very bright, and don't understand they are promoting the movie and are just happy to be showered in virtual crap? Yes, there are people out there who are kinda not very bright, and don't understand that they are promoting the movie and are happy to be showered in virtual crap.

I remember when Kim Kardashian's $200m nightmare of a game went out for a few days. People were screaming about how they were gonna shank somebody if it didn't come back online soon.

THAT is the world you are living in, bro. By all means we should strive to love our species; but let's not have too many illusions about some of its individuals vis-a-vis IQ, avarice, and so on, either.

I am well aware of the power of stupidity but a lot of these statements sounds like they're from a guy who has never played any other game even though they sure don't sound like this is the first game they played, and while of course people can lie about anything online, it's actually not much of a credential to say that you have played say, any MMORPG or any mobile game out there. I mean it'd be like we're talking about RPGs and a guy will be asking 'what's this Hit Points stuff about?' on a guy you know that has participated quite heavily on multiple RPGs.

The only time I've seen a plausible scenario for something like this was FF14. I think they literally got people who have never played a MMORPG in the last 15 years because that's about how far behind you'd have to be to think the game was good as a MMORPG (it might be okay as a single player RPG if played like that). The again, the fact that someone both made FF14 and people still play it indeed backs up the notion that stupidity has no limits. I remember when they interview the developer on why you can't jump in the first incarnation of FF14 they're pretty much like 'people want to jump in MMORPG?' and not knowing that any MMORPG since EQ1 has had a jump function because it's actually pretty useful stuff to have. And those are the developers of a game with millions of budget, not some random Internet guy you get into an argument with! I can just see any of us appear like a visionary, Dr. Evil style, in front of the SQIX team, like:

Me: "I got this great idea for our new game, it's called jump. You push a button, say the spacebar, and this increases the vertical elevation of your character. Nobody else could possibly have come up with this idea!"

I know that this high level design is likely harder than it looks, but they also manage to have some pretty incompetent guys doing these things. It makes me wonder if I could've made millions had I been the one that presented the jump feature to SQIX.

I take it you missed it when the Wall Street analyst suggested re-releasing Mario and making the jump height proportional to how much players paid.