Let's discuss the current state of chests and drop rates

Game Feedback & Ideas
62

Pass level has zero influence on the quality on Season chest drops. A player with the Free Pass gets the same chest drop rates at all chest rarity types as a player with a Platinum Pass.

That’s how the system is designed. Season Pass holders get access to additional quantities of Season currencies than non-pass holders in exchange for extra effort. How a player spends that currency makes all the difference in the world regarding what rewards are obtained in a given Season.

And there’s the problem right there.

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You bought ALL the skins. That’s 5 * 400 Season Currency = 2000 total Season Currency spent.

Instead, you could have invested in Season relics in the Rewards shop.

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Assuming you could supply the 6 needed Glyphs for both Legendary and Mythic ascensions, a Mythic of Choice (outside of the featured Legendary thing) costs:

  • 150 Gems for the Firecap Relic (0 Gems if you brute force Eveline until she rolls one, which can take multiple days to happen) for Rare.

  • 75 Anthrite * 2 Dire Tusk Relics (at 1 per week), for a total of 150 Anthrite needed for Epic.

  • 150 Anthrite * 3 Red Gear Relics (at 1 per week) = 450 additional Anthrite needed (+2 Glyphs) for Legendary. [600 Anthrite Total]

  • 350 Anthrite * 4 Ruby Chalice Relics (at 1 per week) = 1400 additional Anthrite needed (+4 Glyphs) for Mythic. [2000 Anthrite Total]

In the end, you bought 5 skins for the 2000 Anthrite instead of the parts (outside of Glyphs) for a Mythic thing from the Season.

As it takes 4 weeks to obtain all of the relics needed for Mythic, a player could obtain the parts for 3 Legendary things (assuming the shop resets for a partial 9th week, less needed Glyphs) or 2 Mythic things (again minus Glyphs) in a 8 week Season, presuming that can farm and/or buy sufficient Anthrite to buy relics from the Rewards shop by weekly reset to avoid missing a needed Mythic relic. No touching any Cache is needed at all to achieve this.

Of course, investing that much Season currency into relics places a significant hamper on the player’s ability to chase the Season featured Legendary thing. That’s a decision each player has to make on their own. The system, as currently designed, is not favorable towards players chasing everything in a given Season.

IMO, the season featured Legendary thing is bait and a trap for players to fall into. Unless you are really going to use the featured Legendary thing seriously on your main character, don’t go chasing it. You’ll get much better results picking and choosing specific Season things to pursue and focusing strictly on those things only. After obtaining and ascending the specific things you want from a Season, then and only then go after the Season featured Legendary thing or skins with any leftover Season currency you have at that point.

63

The way @Lyrian talks about the Season Pass is as if all players had all available information and it was their fault if they invested in the Gold Pass or the Premium Pass and didn’t get what they wanted. Instead, very little information was actually available and it turns out that there was actually information that was hidden from us and also changed during the Pass itself.

@Lyrian, rather than using 20/20 hindsight to tut-tut anyone’s unrealistic expectations why don’t you turn that analysis on to the bait-and-switch tactics of the developer that you so regularly talk about as if they are just doing their job and players are just stupidly falling victim to clear pitfalls that anyone with half a brain would be aware of.

For instance here’s a great bait-and-switch, one amongst many:

So how to evaluate investing in Seasons Gear if said gear inexplicably doesn’t have the same basis for stat progression as other gear.

Same thing with chests: Seasons chests clearly gave different contents (much less gear, a lot more food/ore) from normal dungeon chests, and this was even before the Shards change. How does one evaluate that value if it’s another bait-and-switch.

What about putting out a long list of goals with potential rewards in which there is obviously now no clear path to even reach? Shouldn’t they have been explicit about what a Pass holder can reasonably expect to obtain? Or is silence the acceptable approach and players just have to stupidly decide what to do, all consequences then be on them.

This isn’t about players making the right and wrong decisions about what to invest their limited resources on. This is about a constant lack of information upon which to actually make decisions and leaving players worse off and frustrated as a result.

3 Likes
64

I did prioritize the relics every week - (have used 2 Dire Tusks and are yet to buy this weeks)
AND
have been running Eveline a lot over the past few weeks

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So now I have the relics, but pretty sure I have not got a single glyph during the entire season period, so with only half the ingredients, no higher rarity items for me at this stage
(Independent of that, is any of the new gear worth evolving??)

And sure, getting the skins and relics is why I have not been able to buy many seasonal caches BUT not what has stopped me getting higher than Epic gear (and only 1 Epic gear piece from all the chests opened so far seems really low)

Yes, I realize that dungeon chests are not more likely to have better rewards based on the passes, HOWEVER I have opened literally twice as many as “normal” given the extra tokens provided by the pass, and have one (1) Epic piece of gear to show for it (Huge pile of salvaged minions and spells), it feels very underwhelming

My expectation when I bought the pass was that dungeon chest drops would provide significantly more gear (and thus some of higher rarity) than they did
1 Epic piece of gear in so many chests seems low

Given the changes to chests during the season, not sure if I would have changed my purchase but I might have had different expectations

3 Likes
65

Over 90 diamond chests lv 100 and a few worthless epics, no legendary and about relics and glypth I won’t even talk, really tiring and frustrating.Daily routine over 2000 xp points ( it’s a lot of gameplay, I was stupid and didn’t use the old way of scoring xp) and nothing to be happy about.

Without buying diamonds the average player needs two weeks to buy a glypth.

I’m just waiting for a new patch and if nothing gets better we’ll have to say goodbye to each other.

1 Like
66

Well, that changes things then. Thanks for providing the screenshot.

The problem isn’t chest drops (or changes mid-season to them), it’s the lack of Glyphs that are hindering the lack of rewards/value from the Platinum Pass for you.

And as Seasons do not drop Glyphs to enable use of the relics that you purchased, there is likely some sort of system that yet to be implemented that is meant to supply them. That system may very well be ~36 hours away from being implemented. If so, then at least you will be able to backfill your Platinum Pass season rewards. If not, and the game continues to insist on $30 weekend flash offers for a single Glyph, then the situation makes it rather difficult to recommend purchasing Season Passes going forward.

Nothing that screams “must-have”. The theme of the set tends to lean towards high-risk, high-reward for most of the pieces. Generating Big V (or better) gems in large quantities reliably is difficult and unreliable for most classes at this point in the game. The leggings (waistguard) might have a niche use as a source of Reflect, but is reliant on Purple matches which at this time is mostly restricted to Assassins (next Hero class maybe?). Shield basically allows the player to mostly ignore the +Block Citadel perk and reinvest points elsewhere.

Regardless, Mythic anything is highly useful for the raw stats and attributes on the piece. Currently, high-rarity raw stats is the greatest source of power and survivability for a player.

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I think the issue is: higher level items are generally better (due to raw stats) and even though I opened a very large number of dungeon chests I have now a total of two (2) Epic pieces of gear from chests (Just got a second one - Green Carriers)
My expectation, based on gameplay, at the time the season pass was introduced was not aligned with the actual likely outcome. There are several other issues, but the key one for me causing dissatisfaction is the difference between what I expected to be likely (allowing for variance) and what actually occurred (allowing for variance).

Yes, the glyph thing is a separate (and significant) issue, which is further compounded by lack of decent returns from salvaging items which is WAY worse at higher levels when you have invested a large amount of rare resources and get none of the back - making gear upgrading basically a one way street (this reduces options for experimentation with new gear setups and new classes/gear)
Perhaps it would have been a better design to upgrade your gear slots (not hero linked) and have the gear up-level/up-grade sync to your hero (once your hero hits L50)

68

What has been your experience with the Season Caches? I’ve had a very weird experience. I’ve probably used almost all my season currency to get 25 ultimate caches. Out of these, I’ve received:

  • a legendary weapon (0.25% probability)
  • a legendary minion (0.5% probability)
  • a legendary armor (1.25%)
  • two ruby chalices (2% probability)
  • at least two rare minions (7.5% probability)
  • red gears (18% probability)
  • and lots of shards (20% probability) …

but I have not received a Shield of Anthrite (5%). Now, I’m DEFINITELY not gonna complain about getting those legendary items, haha. However, what are odds of getting all three of those legendary items (0.5%, 1.25%, and 2% probabilities) in 25 draws compared to getting one Shield of Anthrite (5% probability) after 25 draws? I’m gonna guess that I’m FARRRR more likely to get 1 anthrite shield after 25 draws compared to getting 3 legendary items after 25 draws. And yet I can’t seem to get the one item that cannot be acquired by any other means. I wish I could magically get another 5000 anthrite gems just so I can test the statistics of how this game is picking items, haha.

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69

FYI, for everyone, no update today (or this week) per Kafka over on the GoW forums.

70

Thanks
Appreciate that the information can be shared

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71

The legendary Gravel Worm that I posted above came from an Ultimate Cache (also pulled an Epic Dark Hound as well). Pulled the shield in something like the 4th or 5th pull from the Ultimate Cache.

RNG is very, very streaky on both ends of the spectrum. Although in the very long run, everything averages out to the the expected posted odds. Same observation also applies to mark farming in Events. It’s heaven when RNG gets “stuck” and a Cache 3/4 player obtains 4+ Diamond Mark drops in that day. On the other hand, RNG can get “stuck” in the other direction and a player can go 1 (or even 0) for 26 or 36 for Diamond Marks on that day.

72

Thanks. I’ll have to create a GoW forum account so I too can get PQ3 news and information

2 Likes
73

Yeah, statistics has always boggled my brain even though I love math. Statistics is like the perfect storm of logic, abstractness, and concepts… if that even makes sense. I’ve always been bad at it, so please correct me if I’m wrong with the following calculation:

Assume these probabilities:

  • Open 25 seasonal Ultimate Caches
  • Legendary weapon (0.25% probability)
  • Legendary minion (0.5% probability)
  • Legendary armor (1.25% probability)
  • Shield of Anthrite (5% probability)
  1. [Scenario 1] Probability of getting at least 1 Shield of Anthrite: [1 - (1-.05)^25] = 0.723
  2. [Scenario 2] Probability of getting 1 each of legendary weapon, minion, and armor, but NOT getting a shield of Anthrite: [25 x 24 x 23 x 0.0025 x 0.005 x 0.0125 x (.93^22)] = 0.000437

This would mean that the odds of [getting Scenario 1 vs Scenario 2] are [0.723 / 0.000437], which is something like [1650 to 1]

Is my math correct here?

74

The formula for Scenario 2 is slightly off, as 93% would represent “not pulling the Shield of Anthrite or either of the three legendary categories” and not the 95% chance to not pull a shield.

That said,

Did you get extremely lucky with pulling three Legendaries? YES. There’s little question of that.

Does pulling those three Legendaries have anything to do with the pulling the shield? NO. Anthrite permitting, you could pull three more Legendaries and still not pull the shield. Because a rare sequence of events occurred does not any influence the probability of any other event occurring. This line of thinking is the Gambler’s Fallacy.

Similarly, in your Scenario 1 with 25 misses pulling the shield (with 1 in 20 odds of being pulled), there is a ( 1 - 72.3%) = 27.7% chance of that occuring, or 1 in 3.61 odds. That’s not even an uncommon-tier event. Can’t even call that “bad luck”.

1 in 4 (25%) odds of failing to pull the shield requires 27 pulls.
1 in 5 (20%) odds of failing requires 33 pulls.
1 in 10 (10%) odds of failing requires 45 pulls. (Could we call this uncommonly bad luck at this point? Can 9k total event currency even be earned with a Platinum Pass?)
1 in 20 (5%) odds of failing requires 59 pulls.
1 in 50 (2%) odds of failing requires 77 pulls.

At these odds, a lot of players are going to routinely fail to pull the Season Legendary even with a Platinum Pass, regardless of whatever else they pull along the way.

75

Formula 2 is fine since he specifically stated getting (only) 1 of each legendary.

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76

The Gambler’s Fallacy discussion is interesting!

Regarding my scenarios: It’s not so much that I’m thinking X events influenced Y outcomes. It’s not my assumption that pulling 3 legendaries means I’m more likely to get an Anthrite Shield. Rather, I’m comparing the probability of the two scenarios, noting the significant discrepancy, and wondering, “Hmmm… That’s interesting.” The “Non-Examples” section in the link you posted fits more closely with what I’m thinking than the Gambler’s Fallacy.

77

from the Gems of War forums:

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At least now we know, the numerous PQ3 issues brought up here and elsewhere are just not worth their time. Perhaps its not worth our time and money? :person_shrugging:

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78

While accurate, I am not sure it’s constructive

May I politely suggest asking some questions for Kafka in this forum as suggested?
And yes, you know I know you know this has already been done and responses have been lacking
But what do you have to lose?

79

Sorry @Mythos I appreciate your attempts to be fair minded and accord others respect, but they can only cry wolf about communications so many times before it loses validity. There are real issues that have been brought up repeatedly not only here in this thread but also since launch and many times before during early access and its always the same. “We are a small team”, “We make changes with other things in mind but we can’t talk about it”, “Here’s the exciting update!” but then anything that effects players negatively is not disclosed and ignored.

We all get on here and beg for fair treatment about these unannounced changes or some type of better communication about forthcoming changes and it never comes. It’s the same cycle over and over and over. It’s not on me to constantly have to excuse this behavior. It’s on them for improving their experience. We are constantly told this is a “live service model game”, but a core element of that is actual “live service” and it does not exist.

The better question is what do they have to lose and I would say its whatever player base is remaining at this point.

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80

Your points are fair and accurate

Communication has been a significant failing - especially as they keep saying they will/want to improve (or even ask for direct feedback)
Maybe there is more going on behind the scenes that helps explain the behaviour, but the user/customer experience is objectively sub-optimal

What’s the alternative?

81

That is the rub. What are our options? There has been objective evidence of regular unannounced changes that have impacted players brought up here. There is supposedly inquiry on these issues. But then it leads to a vacuum of nothingness. Do we just let these threads die and move on continuing to use a product which has no customer service responsibilities?

I personally feel that they have erred in this approach. This forum is the place where I can give voice to these issues because it doesnt just impact me, it impacts any player out there deciding whether to invest their time and money into this endeavor. Don’t they deserve some respect?

So I choose to be noisy because I can’t accept silence. If that rubs CX the wrong way, honestly good. They need to do better; first and foremost though, the lead developer and project manager need to do better. If that rubs other game players the wrong way, I apologize but I’ve done nothing but advocate for this game for over a year and objectively try to provide evidence how their choices are hurting the experience for existing and new players. If they were doing such a bangup job then we wouldn’t be here at this point on what arguably is a dying game based on the numbers.

EDIT:

Just another quick point: it’s one thing if the issue was just “lack of communication”, like we are not getting enough dev interaction or streams or pop-ins by the CX team in the game. The real issue is “lack of communication about changes in the game” in which things that are “positives” are highlighted even if there is no evidence that it actually is happening (relics?) and anything that is “negative” is undisclosed and undealt with and constantly covered up with “we are a live service game and we do things but we cant talk about it”.

1 Like