So like many players I'm sure, I took advantage of the crowns sale to get 80k crowns and then proceeded to buy packs since they were half off. I only bought from one pack, Ghulture's Hoard, as I have wanted the fire one since the pack was first released. I got it but only after something happened that I thought was quite frankly ridiculous if what mount you get from the pack is truly random with an equal chance of getting any of the 7 different mounts when the pack decides you have pulled one as one of your 7 items.
First I'll start with saying I only spent 57k on this pack before getting the fire ghulture but since packs are half off that means I got a total of 286 packs that equals out to 2,002 items in total. Out of 2,002 items I got 10 mounts. Not too bad to be honest when it comes to how many mounts I got in total. Here's where it makes no sense though if what mount you get is truly random.
Out of these 10 mounts I got 7 Balance Ghultures 2 Life and the one Fire. With 7 possible schools for the pack to choose from I should have gotten at least 4 or 5 different school mounts not just 3 different schools. Getting 7 of the same school is flat out proof that the pack is rigged to give you the balance ghulture mount more often than any other school.
I have literally spent hundreds of dollars on this pack over the years its been out and I get balance ghulture more often than anything else. I have literally only ever gotten one storm, one fire, and one death ghulture out of definitely hundresd, possibly a couple thousand packs. I've only gotten 2 ice and 2 myth. The only other ghulture I seem to get as often as balance is life and lets be honest it's useless most of the time as life focuses on healing not damage.
This pack needs to be made truly RNG so that when you get a mount you actually have a chance to get something other than the balance ghulture. Its the only pack that gives a mount with 3% damage for a specific school and has been out long enough that it shouldn't be rigged to give out basically only the balance ghulture.
I've gotten what I want from this pack but for the sake of others I hope that something is done so that it doesn't take hundreds of dollars or years to get one mount other than balance or life from it.
So like many players I'm sure, I took advantage of the crowns sale to get 80k crowns and then proceeded to buy packs since they were half off. I only bought from one pack, Ghulture's Hoard, as I have wanted the fire one since the pack was first released. I got it but only after something happened that I thought was quite frankly ridiculous if what mount you get from the pack is truly random with an equal chance of getting any of the 7 different mounts when the pack decides you have pulled one as one of your 7 items.
First I'll start with saying I only spent 57k on this pack before getting the fire ghulture but since packs are half off that means I got a total of 286 packs that equals out to 2,002 items in total. Out of 2,002 items I got 10 mounts. Not too bad to be honest when it comes to how many mounts I got in total. Here's where it makes no sense though if what mount you get is truly random.
Out of these 10 mounts I got 7 Balance Ghultures 2 Life and the one Fire. With 7 possible schools for the pack to choose from I should have gotten at least 4 or 5 different school mounts not just 3 different schools. Getting 7 of the same school is flat out proof that the pack is rigged to give you the balance ghulture mount more often than any other school.
I have literally spent hundreds of dollars on this pack over the years its been out and I get balance ghulture more often than anything else. I have literally only ever gotten one storm, one fire, and one death ghulture out of definitely hundresd, possibly a couple thousand packs. I've only gotten 2 ice and 2 myth. The only other ghulture I seem to get as often as balance is life and lets be honest it's useless most of the time as life focuses on healing not damage.
This pack needs to be made truly RNG so that when you get a mount you actually have a chance to get something other than the balance ghulture. Its the only pack that gives a mount with 3% damage for a specific school and has been out long enough that it shouldn't be rigged to give out basically only the balance ghulture.
I've gotten what I want from this pack but for the sake of others I hope that something is done so that it doesn't take hundreds of dollars or years to get one mount other than balance or life from it.
Even if we assume packs are not 'truly RNG' and we assume you were not just 'unlucky' in getting multiple ,ounts the same, I don't think the pack needs to be made 'truly RNG'. I think it would make a whole lot more sense for crown items to be able to be either selected when they are won, or for the player to be able to trade them back for a new currency to be able to purchase the item separately.
The first option is clear - you won a mount, you get to select which one. I'm not sure KI would do this because to make the same revenue they would probably lower the drop rate even further...which is bad for everyone, both customers and KI (IMO)
The second is less clear so I'll give an example - individual pack items are available to purchase for crown tokens. We can trade unwanted crown gear back for 'crown tokens' so even though we don't always get what we'd like or is useful to us, it still brings us closer to the items we do want. The exchange would have to be reasonable (on both sides), so a mount would not be sold for the same amount of gems as it costs to buy, but it would be reasonable to expect to be able to trade 2 mounts for 1. Trading back at 50% value sounds about right, perhaps slightly less...but it wouldn't take much lower than 50% to feel like it is imbalanced. This currency would not be able to be bought, it would be from selling back crown items only.
It would also help to resolve/appease some of the controversy surrounding packs, 'gambling' and children. I want to point out that what KI is currently doing is not legally considered 'gambling' and IS acceptable within current legislation. However, the community is very much divided on the ethics of packs and I think this would help without damaging revenue...it's possible it could increase revenue as many people avoid pack-opening because it makes them feel 'unlucky'. If opening packs always results in people feeling good, they will open more not less!
What do you think? Could a new currency and trade-back system work well?
Even if we assume packs are not 'truly RNG' and we assume you were not just 'unlucky' in getting multiple ,ounts the same, I don't think the pack needs to be made 'truly RNG'. I think it would make a whole lot more sense for crown items to be able to be either selected when they are won, or for the player to be able to trade them back for a new currency to be able to purchase the item separately.
The first option is clear - you won a mount, you get to select which one. I'm not sure KI would do this because to make the same revenue they would probably lower the drop rate even further...which is bad for everyone, both customers and KI (IMO)
The second is less clear so I'll give an example - individual pack items are available to purchase for crown tokens. We can trade unwanted crown gear back for 'crown tokens' so even though we don't always get what we'd like or is useful to us, it still brings us closer to the items we do want. The exchange would have to be reasonable (on both sides), so a mount would not be sold for the same amount of gems as it costs to buy, but it would be reasonable to expect to be able to trade 2 mounts for 1. Trading back at 50% value sounds about right, perhaps slightly less...but it wouldn't take much lower than 50% to feel like it is imbalanced. This currency would not be able to be bought, it would be from selling back crown items only.
It would also help to resolve/appease some of the controversy surrounding packs, 'gambling' and children. I want to point out that what KI is currently doing is not legally considered 'gambling' and IS acceptable within current legislation. However, the community is very much divided on the ethics of packs and I think this would help without damaging revenue...it's possible it could increase revenue as many people avoid pack-opening because it makes them feel 'unlucky'. If opening packs always results in people feeling good, they will open more not less!
What do you think? Could a new currency and trade-back system work well?
The first option would be nice but as you said would likely lower the drop rate which for packs with one mount instead of 7 like ghulture would be a nightmare when it comes to spending your money. As much as I'd like to have a choice when it comes to packs with multiple mounts it's not worth what would happen should this option come to pass even with the packs being rigged in my opinion.
The second option I would love to see happen and have seen it floating around on the forums before. I also agree a system like this would make more money for KI as people would still need to buy packs to trade in items for the currency to get things they want.
As much as I like it though I also don't think it will ever happen. Suggestions like that have been around for many years and KI hasn't even hinted that they'll consider putting a system like that in place. The closest we've seen to it is the 3 recent crowns events the first of which was majorly bad considering the amount of crowns would need to buy and then spend to get the highest prize equaled about 700$. The other 2 got you a free pack after spending a certain amount of crowns which was awesome, though I thought the 2,500 crowns amount for the second event was more reasonable than the third event's amount since 5$ or 2,500 crowns is the minimum amount you can buy.
This is why for packs like ghulture I say fix the RNG so it's actually RNG. It's true you can be unlucky I've had friends spend 100$ on a pack and not get a piece of gear or the single mount out of pack. But in my case that's not the full story. This time with 80K crowns my results were those 10 mounts that had 7 balance. But as I mentioned before I've done this same pack multiple times this way. I literally save up my money buy crowns in bulk then use them on this one pack several times throughout the year. While I don't remember specific numbers I can say with complete confidence that I've gotten the balance ghulture more than any other school mount in the pack. Unlucky would be having my scenario happen once. When something similar happens every single time I try to get a fire ghulture out of this pack then something is wrong other than bad luck.
And again I'm talking about hundreds of packs in a year. Ghulture has been out since January 2017. That means for 2 years every couple of months or so I've bought about 100 to 200 packs at once plus packs in smaller amounts in between when I had only 5-25$ extra to spend on crowns. So after 2 years I've more than likely opened at least a thousand packs if not more. In all that time and all those packs I've gotten only one of 3 of 7 schools, 2 of 2 other schools, probably about 10 life school, and the rest were all balance. And I got quite a few mounts in all those packs because while what mount you get isn't as random as it seems whether or not you get one is, and I sometimes got up to 5 mounts in bigger openings.
So again I like your second suggestion I just don't think it will ever happen, I don't really take a stance on the gambling thing as I'm not sure I consider it gambling but that's just my opinion if people think it is then that's up to them. But packs like ghulture should truly be made random on what mount you get so your not encountering what I have in the last 2 years trying to get one mount out of a pack that should drop several different schools fairly often if which one you get truly is RNG.
So like many players I'm sure, I took advantage of the crowns sale to get 80k crowns and then proceeded to buy packs since they were half off. I only bought from one pack, Ghulture's Hoard, as I have wanted the fire one since the pack was first released. I got it but only after something happened that I thought was quite frankly ridiculous if what mount you get from the pack is truly random with an equal chance of getting any of the 7 different mounts when the pack decides you have pulled one as one of your 7 items.
First I'll start with saying I only spent 57k on this pack before getting the fire ghulture but since packs are half off that means I got a total of 286 packs that equals out to 2,002 items in total. Out of 2,002 items I got 10 mounts. Not too bad to be honest when it comes to how many mounts I got in total. Here's where it makes no sense though if what mount you get is truly random.
Out of these 10 mounts I got 7 Balance Ghultures 2 Life and the one Fire. With 7 possible schools for the pack to choose from I should have gotten at least 4 or 5 different school mounts not just 3 different schools. Getting 7 of the same school is flat out proof that the pack is rigged to give you the balance ghulture mount more often than any other school.
I have literally spent hundreds of dollars on this pack over the years its been out and I get balance ghulture more often than anything else. I have literally only ever gotten one storm, one fire, and one death ghulture out of definitely hundresd, possibly a couple thousand packs. I've only gotten 2 ice and 2 myth. The only other ghulture I seem to get as often as balance is life and lets be honest it's useless most of the time as life focuses on healing not damage.
This pack needs to be made truly RNG so that when you get a mount you actually have a chance to get something other than the balance ghulture. Its the only pack that gives a mount with 3% damage for a specific school and has been out long enough that it shouldn't be rigged to give out basically only the balance ghulture.
I've gotten what I want from this pack but for the sake of others I hope that something is done so that it doesn't take hundreds of dollars or years to get one mount other than balance or life from it.
When will players understand that random is RANDOM? ( Or at least as random as a computer program makes it? ) You didn't say how often you got a mount. How many packs between mounts and in what order you received mounts. My math teacher introduced us to percentages by having us flip a coin and record the results. First time 10 flips then proceeding until we reached 100. You would expect a 50% result but this wasn't so. One side of the coin was favored, regardless of how often we flipped that coin. Face it, it's whether you get lucky or not.
When will players understand that random is RANDOM? ( Or at least as random as a computer program makes it? ) You didn't say how often you got a mount. How many packs between mounts and in what order you received mounts. My math teacher introduced us to percentages by having us flip a coin and record the results. First time 10 flips then proceeding until we reached 100. You would expect a 50% result but this wasn't so. One side of the coin was favored, regardless of how often we flipped that coin. Face it, it's whether you get lucky or not.
considering what time this was posted you wrote this after I posted my reply to Victoria but before my reply got put up. If you want even more specifics than what's in that comment then how about this. In a normal ghulture pack opening for me with 60k or 80k crowns I usually got at least 3 mounts. But as I said in my second post whether or not you get a mount does seem to truly be random just not which school of mount you get, which led to me sometimes getting as many as 5 mounts in one go.
Out of 3 mounts except for the 2 times each I got myth and ice and the one time I got death, storm, and fire every mount I got was balance or life. Most of the time all 3 mounts were balance. If it was one of the times where I was lucky enough to get 4 or 5 mounts instead I could expect to receive 3 or 4 balance and one life mount. Or it was one of the exceptions that I just listed where I actually got something else.
Considering my pack buying was spaced out over a 2 year period I don't remember exact dates when I got them but I know at least one myth and ice were gotten around christmas this year since I bought over 120,000k crowns when they went on sale and the fire and storm I got just in the last week with pack-a-palooza plus the sale going on. That's 4 out of 7 that were actually different from everything else in a very short period of time. The other 3 that weren't balance or life school were at random times throughout the 2 years.
On average with 60K crowns you can open 150 packs. I usually got my first mount about 30K in more or less so around 75 packs opened. When I got the next 2 varied. Sometimes I would then receive another 2 mounts with in the next 10,000 crowns or 25 packs or so. Other times I'd get a second mount within another 5k crowns and would not get a third until I was almost out of crowns. As I said when I'd get mounts was truly random luck past I did always seem to receive at least one within the first 30K spent.
Doing 80K crowns was not much different except that seems to be the times I would get 4 or 5 mounts thx to the 50 extra packs it allows making it 200 packs in one opening instead of 150.
So for how often I got a mount that's really the best I can do. As I've said multiple times now whether or not you get a mount from the pack seems to be pretty much random. It's just what type of school you get that isn't.
As for what order I received them in I don't remember exact details for the 3 that weren't in the last few months but for the hundreds of packs that were basically all balance with maybe a life thrown in it usually went I got a balance at the 30K mark. The next one I received would be life or balance (I've gotten about 10 life ghultures possibly more but naturally I don't need 10 of them so I have deleted all but 3 of them but more often than not it was a balance not a life). The third was more likely to be a different school it seems and it was the third ghulture where I got my death,storm,fire, some of the lifes, one of the ice, and one of the myth. On most pack openings though it was all balance ghultures every time.
As I said in my second post I would believe unlucky and random was the case if I hadn't been opening over 100 packs at a time multiple times over a 2 year period where the same situation played itself out so often that I can pretty much predict what I'm going to get mountwise when I open the pack. First 2 mounts balance ghulture possibly a life for the second. Third mount best chance at getting something different but still not probable.
After all think about it, in 60K crowns you get 1,050 items. In 80K crowns you get 1,400 items. That means even if I only bought 80k crowns 3 times in a year I still got 4,200 items. I spent way more than that therefore got in my estimation probably triple that number in one year. Now you have to take that times the second year the pack has been out. That's 37,800 items roughly.
Doesn't it seem odd to you that out of that many items in 2 years that one particular item only showed up one time, even though there aren't even close to that many items in the pack? And by one item I do mean the four schools I only got 1 of. Even the ones I got 2 of are odd for a number that high. If you have gotten 37,800 items from a pack that only has about (I tried to count them may be a little off but not enough to detract from this) 246 items you can expect that all 246 items should be making several appearances including all 7 school mounts.
Yes some items are gonna show up more than others but taking 37,800 divided by 246 it comes out to 153 of each if each item was to show up the same number of times. That means every item should show up a lot even if you have the worst luck in the world. At the very least I would expect to see at least 30 of every item including ones that like the school mounts are ultra rare simply because of the sheer number of items I bought.
The numbers speak for themselves. Only seeing an item drop once when you've bought over 37,500 items is not just bad luck with RNG. I know for a fact that I got close to at least 100 ghultures if not more since I didn't count every time I received yet another balance ghulture. If what school ghulture you get really is random then even in the smaller number 100 you should see more or less 14 of each ghulture. I got one of 4 different ghultures and only 2 of 2 others. The only school that I got about as much as I should have for getting around 100 mounts that wasn't balance is the life ghulture, which I've gotten at least 10 of. Again I say more or less than 14. Like the quarter experiment you mentioned one or 2 of the 7 schools is likely to be picked more often.
However with 7 choices and that many mounts if what school you got really is random I would still expect to see at least 5 mounts from every school. As it stands only around 5% or less of the mounts I received were not balance ghultures. That's more than just bad luck with RNG and more than enough proof that what school ghulture you get is NOT random.
I apologize for this very long post and hope people take the time to read all of it anyway as it explains pretty much my whole thought process on why I believe the pack does not give you a random ghulture when you receive a mount.
Hopefully it gets posted a little faster to prevent anymore misunderstandings in how I came to my conclusion as well.
The first option would be nice but as you said would likely lower the drop rate which for packs with one mount instead of 7 like ghulture would be a nightmare when it comes to spending your money. As much as I'd like to have a choice when it comes to packs with multiple mounts it's not worth what would happen should this option come to pass even with the packs being rigged in my opinion.
The second option I would love to see happen and have seen it floating around on the forums before. I also agree a system like this would make more money for KI as people would still need to buy packs to trade in items for the currency to get things they want.
As much as I like it though I also don't think it will ever happen. Suggestions like that have been around for many years and KI hasn't even hinted that they'll consider putting a system like that in place. The closest we've seen to it is the 3 recent crowns events the first of which was majorly bad considering the amount of crowns would need to buy and then spend to get the highest prize equaled about 700$. The other 2 got you a free pack after spending a certain amount of crowns which was awesome, though I thought the 2,500 crowns amount for the second event was more reasonable than the third event's amount since 5$ or 2,500 crowns is the minimum amount you can buy.
This is why for packs like ghulture I say fix the RNG so it's actually RNG. It's true you can be unlucky I've had friends spend 100$ on a pack and not get a piece of gear or the single mount out of pack. But in my case that's not the full story. This time with 80K crowns my results were those 10 mounts that had 7 balance. But as I mentioned before I've done this same pack multiple times this way. I literally save up my money buy crowns in bulk then use them on this one pack several times throughout the year. While I don't remember specific numbers I can say with complete confidence that I've gotten the balance ghulture more than any other school mount in the pack. Unlucky would be having my scenario happen once. When something similar happens every single time I try to get a fire ghulture out of this pack then something is wrong other than bad luck.
And again I'm talking about hundreds of packs in a year. Ghulture has been out since January 2017. That means for 2 years every couple of months or so I've bought about 100 to 200 packs at once plus packs in smaller amounts in between when I had only 5-25$ extra to spend on crowns. So after 2 years I've more than likely opened at least a thousand packs if not more. In all that time and all those packs I've gotten only one of 3 of 7 schools, 2 of 2 other schools, probably about 10 life school, and the rest were all balance. And I got quite a few mounts in all those packs because while what mount you get isn't as random as it seems whether or not you get one is, and I sometimes got up to 5 mounts in bigger openings.
So again I like your second suggestion I just don't think it will ever happen, I don't really take a stance on the gambling thing as I'm not sure I consider it gambling but that's just my opinion if people think it is then that's up to them. But packs like ghulture should truly be made random on what mount you get so your not encountering what I have in the last 2 years trying to get one mount out of a pack that should drop several different schools fairly often if which one you get truly is RNG.
We can't assess the drop rate from one person's experience. If we look at my experience with that pack I also opened a ton and got a load of mounts...I wanted the balance/life mount and did not get either. If we used my experience to assess the chances of the balance mount we could argue the rng is against the balance mount and it's harder to get. I got multiple each of fire, storm and ice, one myth and zero death, life or balance.
We really can't tell from one person's experience or even a small number of people. It is a probability across ALL packs opened. I honestly don't see why KI would put time and effort into rigging a pack when RNG gives such a mix without the need to rig it
Finding a middle ground where items that should be high value don't lose ALL of their value when they're won by a player who already has it or doesn't have use for it would be good for everyone
We can't assess the drop rate from one person's experience. If we look at my experience with that pack I also opened a ton and got a load of mounts...I wanted the balance/life mount and did not get either. If we used my experience to assess the chances of the balance mount we could argue the rng is against the balance mount and it's harder to get. I got multiple each of fire, storm and ice, one myth and zero death, life or balance.
We really can't tell from one person's experience or even a small number of people. It is a probability across ALL packs opened. I honestly don't see why KI would put time and effort into rigging a pack when RNG gives such a mix without the need to rig it
Finding a middle ground where items that should be high value don't lose ALL of their value when they're won by a player who already has it or doesn't have use for it would be good for everyone
While I get what your saying as my extremely long post mentioned it's not really just one experience with the pack its multiple experiences buying many, many packs over a 2 year period. I also have seen posts on this pack more than once with complaints from people that they have gotten one school mount more than every other school mount when buying in large amounts.
Complaints about this pack being rigged have been on several websites as well other than here and more often than not it's a complaint that the balance ghulture is given out way more often than any other school. Compared to the community as a whole this is probably still a small group of people. But not everyone in the community buys packs and an even smaller percentage probably buy this pack at all let alone in bulk.
When you consider that, even though it doesn't seem like a lot of people, I'm inclined to think that the multiple complaints over the last 2 years are a pretty good representation of what commonly drops from the pack. Especially when almost every complaint I saw mentioned that like me they used upwards 30K crowns meaning they were opening a lot of packs not just a few at a time.To be honest your experience sounds like the odd one out.
I'm not only drawing on my experience either though that is my main reason for the request to fix the RNG on what school you get. I am part of a chat group where multiple people have bought this pack in bulk as well at least once or twice and all of them have had pretty much the same experience. They got multiple balance ghultures and maybe one different school if they were lucky.
I honestly have just seen too many instances of "All I got was balance ghulture" from too many people and from my openings too many times to count for me to believe that something isn't off with this pack one way or another.
