@ItsSherlock I agree with the concept, but not in this context. That’s basically what I said at the end of my post.
People aren’t casually spending hundreds of dollars so they’re not going to suddenly now there’s a guaranteed at 10% threshold. I don’t think gambling addiction is going to overcome that barrier to entry.
We were aligned when it came to the fortune shrine requiring 500 gems hoarded. That preys on your average player who can’t control their spending. This pity timer simply will not affect your average player and even for the people it could affect it won’t do anything roughly 80% of the time. I mean, what actually is the logic for the case you’re making? Who are being affected and how?
My english is not the best but I have degree in psychology and I gotta state that sherlock is right.
Killerdog I will try to explain I hope you understand my words.
You have a mistaken way of thinking. You think that people make rational choices. They dont suddenly overspend their budget just because there is timer of pity. And you are right when it comes to people with good control of impulse and rational thinking.
But I dont know maybe you are aware of roulette bias? In Roulette the most common strategy is to double when you lose. So when you bet 2 Dollar on red and you get black. Next time you place a four dollar bet on red. So when red comes, you made up for your losses. In case you lose again, you double again. This gives you the false illussion of being just one bet away from going out with money earned and it makes people spend money they cant afford to spend or worse: Do not even own.
Neo monsters is not roulette but the developers have just added a feature that encourages to continue spending. Because with every pack the desirable outcome comes closer. Even when you technically get outcome unlucky and not hatch the mythic.
Also: Theres an effect called anchoring. The more you spend, the more you become emotionally invested. You feel the need to justify your spending. This combines with the loss aversion sherlock mentioned. If I have spent 20 packs and not get the featured mythic. I have already spent almost 500 dollars worth of gems. Without getting the desired outcome. If I stop now I will not only have wasted the 500 gems, I will also lose my pity timer. So an impulsive person or a person with gambling personality will overspend at this point. Its not a rational choice. Its impulsive. And it doesnt matter if the decision from rational point of view would be financially ruining. Thats the whole point of gamble addiction. It makes people spend money they do not own or cannot afford to spend.
So yes: For people like you and me i can see why you have problems to understand what sherlock means. We wouldnt suddenly spent a ton just because there is a pity timer. But for people being in danger of gambling addiction this is a feature that will encourage behavior that will harm their financial situations and their lifes. Therefor I dislike.
I’ll just show a few messages I sent to sherlock about this. I have another huge response to a bunch of ppl that I was typing then I thought of some things to change and took a nap before finishing them.
Right, but it takes a certain kind of person to spend 500 dollars in the first place. These people could have already been continuing to spend maybe even another 500 dollars to get that featured mythic. We’ve seen DonT do this before, opening a crazy amount of packs because he’s determined to get something and he’s already invested too much.
So my point is that yes the concepts are real but the number of people who are spending enough money to get close to the pity counter is very small and I’m doubtful whether it will actually affect them negatively because they may have already invested so much they’d spend more whether there was something guaranteed coming or not, plus it won’t even impact them 80% of the time because they’ll get the mythic before the 20-25 packs (the point in hatching when they’ll be tempted to keep going for the pity mythic).
Just going to throw my two cents in here by bringing up a slightly older game called Star Wars Battlefront 2 by EA. A few years ago when it came out, there was apparently a big uprising in the UK due to the mechanics of the game being Pay To Win by using actual money to open loot crates which would then unlock certain characters and give them buffs via different rarities of the buffs. This gacha mechanic was introduced to the game and implemented by EA (Gears of War sequels had a similar mechanic) and the backlash was enormous. Parents were freaking out because their kids were using their parents bank cards to spend money on this game for untold amounts for chances to acquire buffs and characters, and parents having already paid the $60 price tag of the game for their kids felt cheated by the majority of the content being locked behind a paywall and a player basically being unable to compete without spending this real world money.
The story was taken to court and ruled as enticing children to gamble, and since then EA had to deal with the backlash and remove the gacha mechanic from several of the games in order to prevent them losing their licenses to publish said games, specifically the contract with Disney where EA was the only company allowed to produce licensed Star Wars Games.
This is just an interesting tidbit I figured I would throw in. I definitely see both sides of the argument here, but I also have to have my own opinion and say that as a mechanic in general, gacha is indeed and has been ruled as a gambling mechanic and has since been placed under heavy scrutiny and restriction for gaming companies.
I think KD is arguing that the pity timer just won’t make it that much worse. The hatching system in general is built to take advantage of some players’ psychological vulnerabilities but honestly I don’t think the pity timer is gonna make things that much worse since they’re already quite awful lol.
In any case, I don’t think players should be spending a lot less than 1200 gems for mythics that they need two or more copies of anyway. I’d like to hope this would encourage more rational mythic targeting decisions while players with smaller collections can feel free to simply ignore the pity timer altogether.
edit: yeah I worded this reply really poorly lol. I made another one below that explains my thoughts a lot better. the part that made me write a reply in agreement with him was when he said he didn’t think the pity timer would make that much of a difference. I agree with that but for difference reasons than him I think
DonT on the other hand is aware of how much he can spend and when he can go crazy or not, many times I awoken mythics over 2-3 banners except when I could actually go freely, so I do have some kind of impulse control, however the feeling of anger after so many packs without anything is a real feeling and many times I felt like wasting my money without a reward, so for me pity timer is actually good.
Who has the biggest disadvantage is who is unable to be rational and will just invest to reach that pity timer amount.
This is where you are wrong (again). Gambling addiction isnt something that only wealthy people got a problem with. Actually its the opposite being true: Its mostly people who struggle financially.
See, KD, this is where you and Duck are wrong. You are still picturing a rational spender. You still think: a guy who just spent 500 will surely be able to spend another 500. Or that you shouldnt roll with less than 1200 gems. Thats all true. But thats not the problem here. The problem are people who can be manipulated into very unhealthy decisions by mechanics like this pity timer.
KD, it has been explained to you several times now and you keep missing the point. As long as you base your assumptions on a rational individual, we will not get anywhere.
Yeah, that’s what I am feeling too.
Indeed. Thanks for showing empathy and having the emotional intelligence to understand what this is about.
I worded that part about rolling less than 1200 gems poorly. While I’d like to hope it would encourage smarter gem spending based on how low the odds are, I know it won’t happen for most players. Hell, I know a few who still can’t save up enough gems for the shrine. They’d rather spend all their gems on some measly 15% chance of getting some featured legendary instead of getting literally thousands of free gems.
You’ve seen plenty of players drops thousands on mythics when they got a streak of bad luck. They’d do it with or without some pity timer that won’t even do anything the majority of the time.
Your complaints about the game exploiting gambling addictions, while 100% correct, are 1000% stronger when made towards this entire hatching system instead of just the pity timer . You said it to me earlier in our DMs. Hitting a 0.75% chance four times is absurd.
Rather than spending 500 dollars to reach the pity timer, they’ll have already spent thousands trying to awaken more mythics. This was the point I thought killerdog was trying to make. After reading things over again, I think he was emphasizing it less than I thought he was.
That would be good. Lowering it to 20x would eliminate something like the bottom ~22% of all hatching outcomes which would be pretty crazy.
Sherlock mentioned they should change the pity timer to carry over from different banners. The devs would have to do rework the whole timer, otherwise it would essentially be three mythic tickets every time you go 29 packs without a featured mythic (9 mythic tickets for me in the past year ). That would solve the problem of the pity timer providing an additional incentive for one to to waste all their money on another gacha game.
I think this would be a great analogy for the x4 0.75% chance required to awaken a mythic. I just don’t see the pity timer being the new mechanic that makes everyone acknowledge how bad this game is for gambling addictions. The only reason I haven’t spent thousands on awakening mythics is because of good hatching luck at key points in time and some irl limits in place to prevent me from going nuts on a banner.
Honestly, I think the idea of responsible gem spending when money is involved is kind of a joke lol. Not a single person so far on this thread so far on this thread does this. The only reason I haven’t spent thousands on this game is sheer luck. The pity timer can either make it slightly worse or slightly better, but I really doubt it can do anything significant in the grand scheme of things without killing the game. I know I’m said it a lot, but that would be the x4 0.75%’s responsibility.
From my personal experience, I think the sunken cost fallacy that comes from the abysmal mythic hatching rates far eclipses anything the pity timer is capable of. Thinking back to the 4-5k gems I spend aiming for the final shards for suikenshi and satomi, I’m so thankful the vast majority were “free” gems. Ironically, the pity timer actually would’ve helped quite a lot.
Try 70.
I have a slightly different take on this. People are already casually spending thousands of dollars and the pity timer won’t do a damn thing to affect this. Blaming the pity timer for gambling addictions is like blaming nauticruiser when skeleviathan and the rockoids (0.75% for 1/4 mythic copies in this analogy) are the root of the problem.
Regardless of whether the pity timer is good or bad.
I would like to know if it affects the drop rate.
Because I think that after the packs were reduced from 50 to 40, the drop rate got significantly worse.
If the pity timer also had a negative impact on the drop rate, that would be really bad for the devs.
Of course, the developers only improve a game if it is financially worthwhile for them, they only make it look like they are doing it for love of us - that’s psychology - and is driven forward with the help of very good computers with algorithm calculations - as in every casinoalso .
I just think if this continues, they should definitely age-restrict the game in the near future.
I don’t want to know how many children or young people are robbed of their pocket money.
In this respect, I can completely understand the concerns that Sherlock has.
Since the majority of a population is not able to think rationally after a certain point in time, this pity timer is really a no go.
I’ve really let everything go through my head now and carefully read what sherlock said.
And I really have to admit that he’s right.
It’s not about someone getting better or getting better monsters that you could be jealous of.
But sherlock thinks especially of the money that many will spend which they would never do if it weren’t for this pity timer.
Do you mean like hidden chances to the hatching rates? If that’s the case, there’s no proving it at this point.
DonT’s recorded hatches should reliably corroborate the current hatching odds. Same with some others I think. If you’re wondering about the pity timer indirectly changing the odds of certain outcomes of 30 pack hatches then this should clear things up.
@GMagic@ItsSherlock@DonT89
I must not be explaining myself correctly because the only one getting my points here is Duck. You guys just want to make me look dumb with some of your posts in this thread.
I’ll make my point crystal clear:
The theory of pity timers effect on gambling is correct, but you’re not applying it to this context properly. It will only affect whales negatively (risk aversion) because 30 packs is unreachable for most people. Also, the majority of the time people will get the mythic before the 30 packs and that instantly resets the pity timer so eliminates any risk aversion.
I mean, where were you when they gave 10th pack guaranteed mythic at the anniversary? I didn’t see you throwing up a fuss and saying it’s encouraging bad habits or getting people into gambling problems. That’s something which I’m sure genuinely gets a lot of people in the community spending to get to the 10th/20th pack on a banner.
EDIT: So I just found out that in Epic7 they have the pity timer at 12 packs, with the featured “mythic” being 1% (10th pack is the average). Now THAT is a predatory pity timer. It’s very logical there that people who start investing a few packs will feel fully committed to doing the 12 packs even if they can’t afford it. The game only needs to encourage them to start opening packs and they’ll be hooked. That’s simply not the case here in NM. The “6th pack guaranteed” was the closest thing we had in NM and that was beloved by the community lol.
Sorry to ask, but how is a 12 pack guaranteed “predatory”?
Let’s try to bring this in Neo Monsters, people will save for their hatches exactly how they saved for things such anniversary.
Because a 10 pack guaranteed from a 12 pack guaranteed is not such a big difference.
Now let’s see the 30 packs guaranteed in Neo Monsters:
Considering 500 gems as the new 0, F2P will need to gather 1700 gems in shrines and events to activate the pity timer (not realistic), small spenders can get their expenses out of control to reach the pity timer.
And trust me buying 1200 gems is very very different from buying 480 gems. (30 packs vs 12 packs).
So the only “predatory” thing in Epic7 or similar is that such a small pity timer will push some F2P to do little expenses, while with a 30 packs pity timer, you will push little spenders to do crazy expenses.
For the exact reason Sherlock was talking about. 12th pack guaranteed would catch people doing, say, 5 or 6 packs on an egg and push them to go all the way to 12. It also will come up A LOT, since 10th pack is the average then the point they’re choosing whether to commit to the 12 (e.g. let’s say 5th-8th pack) there’s a good chance they haven’t had the drop yet.
On the contrary, 30th pack guaranteed is so far out of reach for most people that it won’t catch people in the same way. People aren’t casually doing close to 20 packs, it’ll be when they’ve saved up lots or are whaling. You could argue that the point they get hooked and would start spending is as low as 10-15 packs but that’s what I’m unconvinced by. It’s also low enough (bottom 10%) that the majority of people will get the featured mythic before they get close to the pity mythic so it’s far rarer than the 12th pack example above that it’s the driving factor behind people opening their wallets to spend money for the sake of their gambling addiction.
Yes I understand that but a 12 pack pity timer will more likely push most of F2P towards saving 480 gems (3-4 shrines), and will be applicable by the whole community (there is a chance that some F2P will get into doing little investments, this risk is present).
But 30 packs since is not applicable easily by F2P will psychologically push the limit of little spenders towards a 1200 gems shop which is very very expensive for the average, putting in danger economical stability.
Edit: a lower pity timer is LOGICALLY better then a higher one. I don’t think there is an argument on this.
). That would solve the problem of the pity timer providing an additional incentive for one to to waste all their money on another gacha game.