Spiral Knights - More weapons in prize boxes

More weapons in prize boxes

6 replies [Last post]

Fri, 03/27/2015 - 23:58

Fangel

What? Fangel? Why do you want this?!

See I'm pulling a buzzfeed and making a clickbait title, but this isn't just to shove more exclusive items inside prize boxes, hear me out.

Instead of putting confetti in specific prize boxes (or in addition to), add a special material that can be used to craft an item from that box. Not costumes, as those are cosmetic, but say, you get a celestial shard from the equinox promo box. You use this shard to craft a 3* celestial blade from a 2* calibur. Each level of the item requires one of these materials, so if you spend $20 on an equinox promo you'll get 5 celestial shards.

Box materials would always be in each box so you'll always be getting at least one of them, and makes boxes with unfavorable odds more fun to buy (if they have special gear in them) as you will for sure be making progress with them, or you can sell this material to other players who just want that shiny sword.

Is it pay to win? In a way yes, but it's as pay-to-win as the current energy market is... That is you can buy energy directly from players who have paid for energy.

Reskinned items can still be included in the boxes as is, however new weapons with new mechanics/stats can be crafted via this method... And in fact, reskinned items could as well if RNG just really hates you. Want that squirt gun? Here, go get it - have a water balloon fragment. Want a mixmaster? Have a battle-worn batter beater.

Overall I think a system like this one would make prize boxes a more desirable item as they bring us new weapons that we as a community work towards (whales buy the boxes, sell the materials, we get fun weapons!... Or the whales can sell the fun weapons, either way it's a win!) instead of a limited number of rich individuals get to have all the fun. I don't want to pay 20k CE for a mixmaster... I want to craft one myself. I can do that by buying $20 worth of prize boxes and getting some fun costumes I can also sell to make back some of my money I spent. Now I have a mixmaster and some more in-game money. I'm happy. I didn't spend $20 to get what I didn't want anyways.

Mon, 03/30/2015 - 12:06

Holy-Nightmare

.........

I'd be happy if it was materials to make cool reskins, SK gets a good bit of flak when they release box exclusive items. Yes it would make them more desirable and would be especially nice if this material was in every box. Then SK could make it so that players have to buy a certain number of boxes before they can craft these items.

Mon, 03/30/2015 - 16:01

Fehzor

Not having to gamble to get weapons would be a huge plus and this would really be a kind notion, but guaranteeing me what I want would be contrary to what is being accomplished in the first place.

Number opened = my odds of getting at least one mixmaster
1 = .0500
2 = .0975
3 = .1426
5 = .2262
10 = .4012
15 = .5367 (more likely than not at ~50 dollars)
20 = .6415 (expected value of 1)
30 = .7853 (>100$, still >20% chance of failure...)
50 = .9230
70 = .9724

The point of this is to keep the high paying whale players gambling until the cows come home.. and if you give them what they want, they aren't going to buy another 30 prize boxes when they fail 1/5 of the time, because the demand runs out when they get what they want. Rather, we need for them to want and buy into something that isn't a unique weapon.

This curve is what I would call phase two of operation whale-- the first phase was something like the spiralhorn box, which was 100% guaranteed a win of some magnitude from the start. You wanted a spiralhorn? You get one no matter what or you get a spiralhorn battle sprite which is even more worthwhile. Then comes along a box like this one- you see something you want and you can get it if you pay a bit more, and it was your choice. Phase three is the celestial prize box- the coolest thing you've seen and all you have to do is buy more prize boxes. The big gets will spawn tons of excess prizes (since they are very nice big gets) and those excess prizes need somewhere to be sopped up into- Punch.

Your suggestion just doesn't fit into tearing people apart for their cash.

Mon, 03/30/2015 - 16:51

Autofire

You are experiencing a PICNIC ERROR!

I support the OP, but Fehzor has me convinced that we'll never have better boxes because this game has become a game for whales.

Which is sad. I wonder if OOO would...nah.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 11:14

Holy-Nightmare

@ Fehzor

Actually your chances of getting an item out of a box do not increase since each box opening is independent of the others.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 11:36

Zincamania-Forum

Thats not what fezor was

Thats not what fezor was saying

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 11:43

Fehzor

That would be exactly what I was accounting for. Those are your chances of getting one or more mixmasters prior to opening any boxes, but provided that you will open that many boxes without stopping when you get one. As in- if I open X boxes, what are my odds of getting one or more mixers? If it's a 5% chance and you open 20 boxes, you aren't guaranteed a box, you'll have a .64 chance of it.

To do this, I assume that prize boxes are a binomial distribution- you either get what you want, or you don't. In the case of something like the mixmaster or celestial sabre, this is how it pans out if you're buying them- you either get something or you don't. It is admittedly more complicated than this (as players are free to sell what they get and don't want to buy more prize boxes meaning that each loss would get more trials and that further, players can trade for what they do want, but I really can't account for all of that because it's dependent on economic forces that I cannot measure. The other bit of logic behind using this model is that it measures directly what is being sold rather than bought- if I'm selling and they want to buy it, these are the odds I'm presenting.

See-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_distribution

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More weapons in prize boxes