Chromium Pack Query (not what you think)
February 8, 2016 10:33PM
edited February 2016
Concerning the Chromium Packs and the hero shards that you can get from them as it relates to 7* and beyond, I have a theory that I'd like to share. Obviously I'd appreciate a Dev chiming in with a thought or two on debunking, confirming or "I don't know"ing it, but, I don't really expect that.
The thing is, after reading countless threads from spenders who talk about which characters they've pulled after throwing X amount of money at it, who all they have at 7* and how many extra shards they continue to pull as a result, I have this theory. I haven't seen it shared, but if someone has brought this up before please refrain from flaming me too hard and I'll go on my merry way.
Recently when the GW change was brought about, the Devs explained that there was a "seed code" or some such that was rolled that determined the course of every action within a match. You could retreat, but if you changed nothing in your line-up, nothing in your replay would change either. Every action is the same.
I wonder if the same concept holds true to accounts and Chromium purchases. People talk about consistently getting the same characters and having too many extra shards (thus the necessity of the shop probably sooner than the Devs expected needing one), and while this is obviously very very nice for those with money to throw at those packs, I wonder if it also explains why Player A consistently draws Toon A, B and C such that they have 50+ shards of each...while Player B might consistently draw Toon X, Y and Z and have never seen A, B and C outside of a much smaller percentage draw, or from the shard shops they collectively belong to....and Player C just might not get any particularly great pulls at all ever, much less the same great character enough to star them up.
For example, I seem to draw Leia quite frequently. I have her at 6*. Same with Kit Fisto. I have Cad, Kylo, Daka, HK and Phasma at 7* with around 200+ shards extra between them all. Meanwhile I may see on the forums folks who have bought shards in the shops alongside drawing characters to 7* and beyond that I have never looked at outside of the shop, such as Sidious, Anakin,Fives, etc.
Let me be clear; I'm not complaining. RNG is RNG and it's been good to me with many of my pulls...but I also wonder if there's not some coding in there somewhere that predetermines a, let's call it a favorability rating or predilection, towards certain characters over others. Might that explain why I have this handful of characters over someone who has that handful of characters at excess, and neither of us has much, if any, luck at drawing those other toons?
The thing is, after reading countless threads from spenders who talk about which characters they've pulled after throwing X amount of money at it, who all they have at 7* and how many extra shards they continue to pull as a result, I have this theory. I haven't seen it shared, but if someone has brought this up before please refrain from flaming me too hard and I'll go on my merry way.
Recently when the GW change was brought about, the Devs explained that there was a "seed code" or some such that was rolled that determined the course of every action within a match. You could retreat, but if you changed nothing in your line-up, nothing in your replay would change either. Every action is the same.
I wonder if the same concept holds true to accounts and Chromium purchases. People talk about consistently getting the same characters and having too many extra shards (thus the necessity of the shop probably sooner than the Devs expected needing one), and while this is obviously very very nice for those with money to throw at those packs, I wonder if it also explains why Player A consistently draws Toon A, B and C such that they have 50+ shards of each...while Player B might consistently draw Toon X, Y and Z and have never seen A, B and C outside of a much smaller percentage draw, or from the shard shops they collectively belong to....and Player C just might not get any particularly great pulls at all ever, much less the same great character enough to star them up.
For example, I seem to draw Leia quite frequently. I have her at 6*. Same with Kit Fisto. I have Cad, Kylo, Daka, HK and Phasma at 7* with around 200+ shards extra between them all. Meanwhile I may see on the forums folks who have bought shards in the shops alongside drawing characters to 7* and beyond that I have never looked at outside of the shop, such as Sidious, Anakin,Fives, etc.
Let me be clear; I'm not complaining. RNG is RNG and it's been good to me with many of my pulls...but I also wonder if there's not some coding in there somewhere that predetermines a, let's call it a favorability rating or predilection, towards certain characters over others. Might that explain why I have this handful of characters over someone who has that handful of characters at excess, and neither of us has much, if any, luck at drawing those other toons?
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Replies
Known as íN Quartus Ω in the game
Member of Team Instinct
A true "random" number means there's no algorithm to predict the next number, and that's all. So we can only say with some level of confidence that the generation is very close to random, or not close at all, through observation. Ex: if I run a generation 100,000 times and it gives me a number less than 10 on 2000 rolls, then there's some degree of confidence that your algorithm has a 2% chance of rolling less than 10.
BUT YOU CAN NEVER BE 100% SURE!
Likely drops: Leia, Kit Fisto, Qui Gon
Unlikely drops: Lando, Old Ben, Darth Maul
I'm sure they use a genuine (or as genuine as they can make it) RNG formula for the chromium packs. If they were pre-determined that would come back to haunt them in a bad way once people figured that out.
So I might think I have an inherent code on Profile Creation to "lean" towards this rarity or that rarity, whereas someone else might "lean" towards other characters...does that make sense?
I can only speculate, but I'm guessing they seed their pseudo RNG on the clock in some fashion. Time of day, hour of day, minute of hour, hour of second *may* play into it, but a good algorithm it would not play much into it. Also locale of the server can be a factor if they decide to include that somehow in their RNG. It's a lot of speculation, but what you say does make sense, is very believable that is the case, and very hard to "fix" if it is indeed not working as intended. But the folks at EA are sharp guys and gals. I have high confidence they know what they're doing and nothing is "broken", but perhaps slightly less rand than they want to believe.
That line of explanation led me to wonder if Chromium behaved the same way. Perhaps your RNG "luck" with this toon over that toon is tied to your account somehow.
Could be. It's hard to know what they use to seed the RNG. Player name could possibly be part of it. But you're not out of line in the thinking, I'm just trying to help explain why it might make sense. I would think that the algo takes some personal things (like name email address or whatever) along with some other thing completely unknown like "microseconds of the hour" to make a more non-repeatable but still probable random number.