ANSWERED:Can We Please Have Prizes Available in the Market

[osmarks]

You can - if you actually have the data - calculate how likely it is for a person to win over X amount of time, but you can't just say with 100% certainty "you will win in X years" (unless X is infinite). I think you can also calculate how long it will take to win the the thing with X% certainty, where X is below 100%, but again, not just "you will win in X years".

 

@Kaini Also, there's a huge difference between "people should be able to get them with effort (shard earnings) and not just RNG" and "let's give everyone one!!!!!!!!!"

 

Anyway, the precise numbers don't really matter a huge amount; it will still take ages for players who want prizes to get prizes.

Edited August 28, 2018 by osmarks

[olympe]

9 minutes ago, osmarks said:

You can - if you actually have the data - calculate how likely it is for a person to win over X amount of time, but you can't just say with 100% certainty "you will win in X years" (unless X is infinite). I think you can also calculate how long it will take to win the the thing with X% certainty, where X is below 100%, but again, not just "you will win in X years".

My point, exactly. You cannot calculate when a certain (random) user will win. That's maths. (Which I happen to understand well enough, thank you very much.)

 

15 minutes ago, Fiona said:

I crossed out the thing that is not true there. Which calls into question your whole argument, really. Your second probability is also questionable. There are too many factors, including personal choice, to say that ones chance of catching a CB gold changes with number of times you spend hunting. Your first probability is true, of course, just as hazeh said.

 

The number of players who entered the tree decoration contest was around 8000. It is not a safe assumption though that there are more active users now than there were then. In fact, you would probably be safer assuming that there are less active users now than there were then, as browser based games appear overall less popular now than they were then.

 

The answer to how hazeh calculated that is math. Statistical analysis is not something I personally can do but there's a whole college class often required for various science and math majors. I have assumed that hazeh has taken this (wildly unpopular) course and knows how to correctly compute probability.

 

hazeh, I like the idea of what you suggested earlier. I don't know if we could talk TJ into doing it but it'd be great fun for me (as a sprite artist to design and submit prize dragon concepts. )

Maybe I should have specified: The probability of getting pregnant increases for a woman with every time she has *** with a (potentially fertile) human male. In general. Doesn't mean a woman who meets the "requirements" every chance she gets actually gets pregnant at all.

While there are many factors influencing your general chances of being able to catch a CB gold, your chances do increase with every hour you spend hunting the biomes. Whether you actually manage is an entirely different matter. (And, yes, people have caught them on dial-up. And it is possible to click on an egg while refreshing, and getting a gold instead of what you aimed for. Despite personal choice to not hunt for golds.)

[DuskOfTheStars]

Anyone mind if I talk probability?

 

I'm going to use a genetics example because the numbers are smaller, BUT the principle applies in other places.

 

Let's take the chance of inheriting a certain gene, 1/2. 

 

Now, let's say someone has 4 children.

 

The chances of each inheriting the gene is ALWAYS 1/2. However, the chance that one of the 4 will not can be calculated like so:

1/2*1/2*1/2*1/2, which comes out to 1/16. 

Notice that each INDIVIDUAL event has the same probability and is NOT influenced by any prior event - which is likely how the raffle RNG works since it's a RNG!

 

Yes, with more repeats the total probability appears to go up/down depending on what you're talking about l.

 

EG: if 5 children, chance of one not getting the gene is 1/32.

 

That's because you have more individual events, more INDEPENDENT chances with the same probability, and with more events there's more chances to get a result in the sense of each event is a chance.

 

Considering the raffle is random, I believe it's safe to say these principles apply. So therefore, more months entered = more raffles you could win, but each individual result is NOT affected by prior results. So therefore yes - it's very unlikely to win. (I'm of the camp that winning by RNG isn't special personally - someone who won just got lucky.)

Edited August 28, 2018 by DuskOfTheStars

[hazeh]

54 minutes ago, Fiona said:

I crossed out the thing that is not true there. Which calls into question your whole argument, really. Your second probability is also questionable. There are too many factors, including personal choice, to say that ones chance of catching a CB gold changes with number of times you spend hunting. Your first probability is true, of course, just as hazeh said.

 

The number of players who entered the tree decoration contest was around 8000. It is not a safe assumption though that there are more active users now than there were then. In fact, you would probably be safer assuming that there are less active users now than there were then, as browser based games appear overall less popular now than they were then.

 

The answer to how hazeh calculated that is math. Statistical analysis is not something I personally can do but there's a whole college class often required for various science and math majors. I have assumed that hazeh has taken this (wildly unpopular) course and knows how to correctly compute probability.

 

hazeh, I like the idea of what you suggested earlier. I don't know if we could talk TJ into doing it but it'd be great fun for me (as a sprite artist to design and submit prize dragon concepts. )

Ah, that was @Kaini that did all the math stuffs, not me x) I'm an English major, I don't touch math (especially gross stuff like probability and statistics or whatever) unless it involves my paycheck. 

 

But! I would love to explore the idea I had re: circulating prizes from raffle to market to introduce new prizes, if that's something the userbase would be supportive of. 

[olympe]

For simplicity's sake, let's assume that there's a 1% chance to win. As a consequence, there's a 99% chance to not win.

Now, if you look at two months in a row, the chance of not winning is 98.01%.

Add a third month, and it's still 97.03%.

...

Even after 100 raffles (with the chances mentioned before), the chance of not winning anything is a whopping 36.60%. (That's a full 8 years and 4 months worth of raffles.)

 

The problem is that the chances of actually winning are considerably lower than 1%.

Edited August 28, 2018 by olympe
Rounded to the second decimal.

[hazeh]

If the amount of winners was adjusted to award prizes based on, say a 5% chance to win gold, 7% silver, 10% bronze (literally just grabbed these numbers out of the air, don't mind me) per month according to the number of users who actually submitted into the raffle, would that help?

[DragonLady86]

1 hour ago, olympe said:

Define active. On an unrelated note, does anybody remember how many trees got entered into the Tree Decorating Contest? I think it's safe to assume that there are more users now than there used to be then.

 

We weren't given exact numbers but it was over 9000 (insert dragonball z joke here.)

[Fuzzbucket]

It would help, but would not address the fact that many of us want the chance to WORK for a prize, not just wish/hope for one.

Edited August 28, 2018 by Fuzzbucket

[Fiona]

1 hour ago, hazeh said:

Ah, that was @Kaini that did all the math stuffs, not me x) I'm an English major, I don't touch math (especially gross stuff like probability and statistics or whatever) unless it involves my paycheck. 

 

But! I would love to explore the idea I had re: circulating prizes from raffle to market to introduce new prizes, if that's something the userbase would be supportive of. 

Oops. I should be more careful to check who said what, it seems. Still, maths. I'm ok with the raffles continuing as they are, but hazeh's idea of retiring prizes to the market and introducing a new raffle prize every x years would be very exciting to me.

 

Probabilities can be calculated precisely, if all the variables are known. Unfortunately we don't know all the variables, since we don't know how many users actually enter each month. We can only guess at that. Unlike some of the other examples above, we do know the rest of the factors involved: how many prizes per period.

 

I sympathize with people who want a sure way to get one eventually. I'd really like a shiny CB prize too. It just seems to me that TJ isn't very open to that idea.

[Fuzzbucket]

I could live with the retiring to the market thing. At least we could all work for them.

[purplehaze]

13 hours ago, hazeh said:

But! I would love to explore the idea I had re: circulating prizes from raffle to market to introduce new prizes, if that's something the userbase would be supportive of. 

I actually found that idea kind of interesting. I'm not sure how introducing new Prize breeds would affect trading, though. The introduction of the original prizes sort of sent the whole system into a tailspin that it hasn't recovered from yet.

[hazeh]

3 hours ago, purplehaze said:

I actually found that idea kind of interesting. I'm not sure how introducing new Prize breeds would affect trading, though. The introduction of the original prizes sort of sent the whole system into a tailspin that it hasn't recovered from yet.

This is true, but under the assumption that we would go forward with a rotating system, I assume that the trading would stabilize-- not stagnate, as it seems to have, because there would then be a guarantee that the prizes, new and old, would eventually be obtainable in a way that everyone can achieve one if they want. The raffle stays to introduce the new prizes and gives them a "coveted" status, but with the intention to retire to the market after x amount of time (such as a year, in my example). They are supposed to be valuable, so I can't say for sure how much of an uproar it would cause to introduce a new prize for the duration of its "raffle only" status, but my hope is that with retiring to the market we'd see some healthy fluctuation in trade demands since they will be purchasable after a certain date. The only thing that remains as unique for those raffle prizes are the dates in which they were distributed (and maybe biome?). If we can retire old prizes to the market after a certain period, that tailspin should *hopefully* settle into a more manageable trade system. 

[Guillotine]

I believe a similar retire-to-cave system was suggested and widely supported in the past, and I suspect that retire-to-market would have a similar degree of support. I'm all for it, at least, although Prizes would probably need to be cheaper then (closer to 2000-2500ish shards? which would still take several months of work; I've maxed out every week since shards were introduced and only have 1500) to compensate for the constant input of new prize breeds...

 

e: To clarify, I'd price them at gold level or a bit higher if no new prizes were planned to be introduced.

 

Edited August 29, 2018 by Guillotine

[osmarks]

We've now had the raffle, about 35 minutes ago. It appears that at least the challenges aren't too ridiculous, but they still won't fix the core problem of tiny winner numbers.

[Sazandora]

I still think it could be a good idea to increase the odds of winning the raffle every time you don't win. It's like this system in World of Warcraft's Legion expansion, where they had these super-good legendary items that would randomly drop from just about everything you do in the game. Every time you do something that could earn you one of these legendary items and you didn't get one, your chances of getting one go up by a small percent, and once you do win, your chances of obtaining one reset back to normal (very low) levels. But I doubt this will ever be a thing in the game but... whatever.

 

Maybe the best solution would be the simplest one -- increase the amount of winner numbers every raffle. 60 is WAY too tiny. Maybe bump it up to 100 or even 200?

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

36 minutes ago, Sazandora said:

Maybe the best solution would be the simplest one -- increase the amount of winner numbers every raffle. 60 is WAY too tiny. Maybe bump it up to 100 or even 200?

 

+1, I really agree - that’s very much how I feel about this

[animatedrose]

I wouldn't mind a boost in the number of winners. And @Sazandora's suggestion about the odds rising every time you lose could be useful...but would it work if spread across so many people? It sounds good in theory...

[Suzumiya]

16 hours ago, Sazandora said:

I still think it could be a good idea to increase the odds of winning the raffle every time you don't win. It's like this system in World of Warcraft's Legion expansion, where they had these super-good legendary items that would randomly drop from just about everything you do in the game. Every time you do something that could earn you one of these legendary items and you didn't get one, your chances of getting one go up by a small percent, and once you do win, your chances of obtaining one reset back to normal (very low) levels. But I doubt this will ever be a thing in the game but... whatever.

 

Maybe the best solution would be the simplest one -- increase the amount of winner numbers every raffle. 60 is WAY too tiny. Maybe bump it up to 100 or even 200?

 

Yay! Another WoW player! And that's an excellent idea. I really wish we could CHOOSE which Prizes to enter for. I really want a CB Silver tinsel. I don't like shimmers and I have too many bronze tinsels (no CB though). Let's not go there with golds. The odds of winning 1st place are really high. But...it would be cool if a 1st place winner could choose what color/type prize they wanted (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Shimmer, Tinsel)

[osmarks]

100 or 200 are still too small and would not fix the actual problems. See Olympe's great analysis.

 

I would support a raffle then market format as a good middle ground between market prizes and the existing system.

 

Anyway, I think that currently prizes are a bit overvalued. If we assume golds drop 10 times a day (this seems high to me, but it's a nice round number) then that makes 300 a month, compared to 60 prizes. Prizes also breed more prizes than golds breed golds. And yet a 2G prize is somehow considered worth a CB Gold or two? Is there a historical reason for this?

[Sazandora]

Yeah, 100-200 is still a really small number but I went for a more modest approach, something that I thought was more likely to happen.

Personally I've just kinda given up on trying to save for some of the really high-price eggs on the Market, it's disheartening to see how insanely costly stuff like Golds and Silvers and Dinos and such are. Having to save for months or nearly a year, never EVER spending even a single shard on anything on the market because every purchase means you got to wait even longer for that Gold or whatever you want, when the Market is full of interesting things like dirt-cheap Xenowyrms and Kingcrownes and Siyats and so on. This is the biggest reason why I'm not all that into adding Prizes to the market, because their price would inevitably require you to save for at the very least a year.

 

But with that said, I wouldn't really mind if Prizes were actually added to the market. I'd still try my luck on the raffles because all those nice and lovely low-cost things on the market tempt me way more than an overpriced, horribly overrated Gold.

[DragonLady86]

37 minutes ago, osmarks said:

100 or 200 are still too small and would not fix the actual problems. See Olympe's great analysis.

 

I would support a raffle then market format as a good middle ground between market prizes and the existing system.

 

Anyway, I think that currently prizes are a bit overvalued. If we assume golds drop 10 times a day (this seems high to me, but it's a nice round number) then that makes 300 a month, compared to 60 prizes. Prizes also breed more prizes than golds breed golds. And yet a 2G prize is somehow considered worth a CB Gold or two? Is there a historical reason for this?

The reason is players want short lineages so they can build their own.  CB's are nearly impossible so a second gen is the closest most can get.

[DarkEternity]

44 minutes ago, osmarks said:

100 or 200 are still too small and would not fix the actual problems. See Olympe's great analysis.

 

I would support a raffle then market format as a good middle ground between market prizes and the existing system.

 

Anyway, I think that currently prizes are a bit overvalued. If we assume golds drop 10 times a day (this seems high to me, but it's a nice round number) then that makes 300 a month, compared to 60 prizes. Prizes also breed more prizes than golds breed golds. And yet a 2G prize is somehow considered worth a CB Gold or two? Is there a historical reason for this?

I don't own a CB prize per se but I definitely feel that there are no rares even on par with 2g prizes and I definitely would not trade a 2g prize for a CB metal if I won.

 

CB metals have been around for a long time and have always been in the cave. In some months of specific years they were much more common. Also, they are now in the marketplace so while you can save up for a CB metal you cannot save up for a 2g prize. You always see a lot of people offering a bunch of CB metals for 2g prizes but never the other way around because you're not getting anything back of equal value. And assuming you were to retrade those metals for other stuff, there is nothing you can equivalently trade a CB metal for, because the value drops off crazily after gold and even harder after silver. Also, after a person acquires a certain load of CB metals they are bound to stop trading for them eventually.

 

If you think about it in the reverse, it can be really hard to get CB metals if you're not making NDs/own some other prize like an HM or have a spriter alt etc. So if a person wins the raffle, your only way of getting other 2g prizes is probably going to be swapping other 2g prizes for other 2g prizes and a proportion of those players is always going to be swapping because it's so hard to get one without doing that so those don't get traded for CB metals either, then the value goes up. 

 

And that's just the prizes that you see on the hub or in trading threads. Historically all 2g prizes were traded on an IOU basis with IOU breeding slots reserved for years. I'm not generalising but I have found that some people won't ask for as much in case by case IOUs than you do in the crazy lists you see in the trading hub. Those breedings are taken up and don't make it onto the trading hub or trading threads so the number of 2g prizes that are publically circulated go down again. 

 

Also I think that there's at least one person trading for available 2g prizes on the hub from prices and then marking it up and retrading it for a profit because they know that other people will pay more than what the original person gave it to them for. Which is a perfectly valid way of playing I guess, but it again drives the perceived value up. Take this example: a store is selling carrots at $2. A person buys every single carrot up at $2 so that no one can get it at that price and sells the carrots at $4 each which drives the value up. If they buy up enough carrots, people will only be able to get it from that person. This sort of thing happens on MMOs and other games all the time. 

Edited September 1, 2018 by DarkEternity

[Ruby Eyes]

Now I crave a carrot-coloured Shimmerscale.

[DarkEternity]

Orange with a slightly green highlight tint would go really well honestly. 

But I present to you the idea of:

The carrot flavoured animated shimmerscale.

Shards can be used to defy static image-ness of dragons.

Edited September 1, 2018 by DarkEternity

[Dohaerys]

9 hours ago, Suzumiya said:

 

Yay! Another WoW player! And that's an excellent idea. I really wish we could CHOOSE which Prizes to enter for. I really want a CB Silver tinsel. I don't like shimmers and I have too many bronze tinsels (no CB though). Let's not go there with golds. The odds of winning 1st place are really high. But...it would be cool if a 1st place winner could choose what color/type prize they wanted (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Shimmer, Tinsel)

Yeah I think this would be so much better than our current system!

the 10 first place winners choose their prize of choice first

then the 20 nd place winners choose the prize they want if there are any remaining of that prize

and then the 3rd place winners get to choose their prize of choice from whatever is remaining.