@Dev_VKC thanks for adding a pity timer! When implementing a pity timer this late into the game, it’s understandably difficult to find the right balance where it doesn’t change the hatching odds too much but still helps out the unluckiest of players. Guaranteeing a featured mythic every 30 packs is fantastic!
The main thing everyone should know about the pity timer is that 1200 gems should be the minimum amount spent at a time when targeting a mythic for obvious reasons. We also won’t have suckers like me spending 70 packs for their last mythic shard anymore lol.
Some might initially think that the pity timer won’t make that much of a difference since 30 packs is a lot but it really can make quite a difference if you’re good at saving/purchasing enough gems. Here are the adjusted odds for how many mythics you hatch in 30 packs.
Last note, do keep in mind that the average amount it takes for one featured mythic copy is 533.3 gems. Since the legendary pool was increased last October, the average for a specific featured legendary is 566.6 gems.
The best part is guaranteed mythic being the featured one and if you hatch a non featured mythic, it will not reset the pity. As everyone else said, great addition to the game. Maybe could’ve reduced to per 20 but I’ll take it over a non-pity. Very nice.
Thats really delusional. Its not fantastic. Its the absolute bare minimum in terms of what a pity timer should do. Its the bottom 10 % that get boosted. So for everybody to understand: 90 % of the time the pity timer would save you, you’d have the mythic anyway. And at the point the timer comes into play you already have wasted 700 Dollars worth of gems.
Also note: The pulls are not carrying over. So this forces players with no/small/medium budgets to go all in on a single banner without the reasonable opportunity to stop. This is because gacha games (and bad pity timers in general) highly push two cognitive biases. 1.) Loss aversion 2.) anchor effect. I wont explain them now to limit the post length but you can google them. If you now have spent 15 packs on a banner (and you didnt get the mythic), stopping to spend will be automatically harder because the game just added the fear that you will lose your pity timer and also it will make you think that you are already halfway there (in terms of the pity timer) so it would be stupid to stop now. However, halfway there only applies to: You are halfway there to belong to the bottom 10%. Thats not a desirable outcome. Thats very unlucky.
Also: This will make spending for legendaries even more complicated for non/small/medium spenders because what do you do when you have no use for the mythic?
Before you buy gems, consider the following:
Do you have the money to throw away? Everyone’s got a different wallet. This game is not worth losing food or financial security over, no matter how much you end up loving it. Ask yourself, “If I don’t get what I was after, am I comfortable having spent this?”. You’re not getting that money back.
Would you be comfortable to spend 699 Dollars for nothing? If your answer is yes, then this pity timer is good for you. If your answer is no, this pity timer wont save you anything. It only further encourages unhealthy spending habbits.
The player base has wanted this for a really long time. We’re happy the people who make decisions about the game came around to it.
However, that’s a pretty astronomical number to slap on it. Especially for it to not carry over between eggs. Is there data to support picking the number 30?
Basically, the reaction from many is “Oh awesome, pity timer! Wait, THIRTY!?” It stops feeling like a pity timer at that high of a number.
I doubt people will throw 1200 gems at something and not get the featured mythic at least once. As Duck stated in his very 1st post for this topic in another thread somewhere, the odds increase exponentially after a long time and only the unluckiest of players will ever reach the 30 x mark before getting one copy of the mythic. If it actually carried over between banners and reset every 2 weeks or so it would actually have been a proper pity system without making it exclusive for the huge whales.
Also the fact that the counter resets when you finally do get 1 copy, even if it is the 29th pack really feels more like overspending rng than a pity system.
Pity timer as it is implemented now will potentially scare medium spenders encouraging them to spend more in a single banner to get a copy of the featured mythic, and this can lead to unhealthy money management.
So my suggestion is that each monster should have his own pity timer.
Legendaries 1 every 15
Mythics 1 every 30
I did more than once so for me this pity timer works, but would be very unfair for others.
I’m someone who would’ve benefitted from this, maybe even twice. DonT and other big spenders surely would’ve too.
I think Sherlock and a couple of others are overthinking it. Yes this system will only benefit either big spenders or those targeting specific mythics. However, it does EXACTLY what is good for them.
Also, the game has shifted in the last 1-2 years to give us enough gems that we can awaken mythics for free, but not many. Hence, arguably the best strategy is to focus on awakening a small number of the best mythics. This pity system aids with that.
As for drawing people in to get 30 packs when they normally wouldn’t…
Firstly, 30 packs is expensive enough that it surely won’t get people opening their wallets. People are only going to do it if they’re already 20-25 packs in, at which point it’s more affordable.
Secondly, the type of people who have enough gems saved to get 20-25 packs I’d argue are the ones who are likely more responsible with gem spending. They’re clearly committed to hatching this mythic and invested a lot so at the point it starts looking like it’ll go to pity they’ll probably just be glad the guaranteed is coming and accept the cost.
Honestly, I don’t think the pity timer will affect the vast majority of people at all. There’s definitely a group it will be positive for. There’s a group who can now choose to save up a few more gems to cover themselves from that 1 in 10 bad luck. The group of people who will suddenly decide to have bad spending habits based on the bottom 10% luck I really cannot agree exists.
Where I think the points would be valid is if they had the pity timer at, say, 15. That would look incredible on paper and people would rejoice but in practice it would catch lots of casual / light spenders who do a few packs on an egg then talk themselves into buying the remaining packs over and over. Only affecting the bottom 10% and after a high upfront cost I don’t see it impacting those people.
There is this very good keynote from one of the big gacha companies CEO on YouTube in which he reveals how to milk peoples wallets with gacha games. It’s really interesting because he kind of gets carried away in revealing a lot of stuff he probably shouldn’t talk so openly about.
Loss aversion is one of the worst elements of gacha and with the pity timer not carrying over they made the decision to specifically target people with bad spending habits at one of their weakest points.
Gambling addiction patterns are not rational. Like with every addiction. It’s not like the sheer amount of money spent (or the money you‘d have to spend) would actually deter an addict from spending it. If that would be the case, gambling addiction wouldn’t be a thing at all.
I sit on Sherlock’s side in this, I know for a fact how difficult is giving up on stopping hatching until the target is met, many times I found myself frustrated from overspending even without touching my economical stability, just being upset about opening 30+ packs from a shard.
So if you reflect this behaviour on someone that is not economically stable at all, you will create some serious problems of gambling, and having a pity timer will push this person towards spending the 1200 gems that he probably can barely afford.
This game got a purchase limitation. You can buy a maximum of 5000 diamonds, thats equivalent of about 100 to 120 Euro. After that you are not able to buy any more diamonds.
It is not a gacha game, so a comparison is difficult due to the different pay mechanics, but I just like to show that there are also games with payment barriers available.
