Spiral Knights - Sneaky Iron Lockbox

Sneaky Iron Lockbox

4 replies [Last post]

Mon, 06/10/2013 - 18:01

Trail-Blaze

Hello!

I have a short question for You guys.
Here is the deal:
As I am observing the Prize Wheel lately, I can see that sneaky little Iron Boxie icon literally slipping out of my greedy grasps 1-2 wheel "ticks" (slots). Every. Time.

The Wheel turns and stops 1 slot AFTER Iron Lockbox, just to reveal my unique crown prize every single time.
Good thing about that is, there are 50 cr in about 9 out of 10 prizes. Money is money! ;)
I have asked my 3 friends about that and they are experiencing the same "randomisation" of Prize Wheel for about 2 weeks (we dont play a lot, about 150 levels a week)

So... I guess there is nothing abnormal about that kind of Prize Wheel behavior...?

But.. It is meant to be "random", isn't it?

Cheers :)

Mon, 06/10/2013 - 18:11

Fehzor

It does this on purpose because it likes to entice you into buy keys when you do get boxes.

Mon, 06/10/2013 - 18:27

Trail-Blaze

But.. But.. I don't get

But.. But..

I don't get any!
I would understand the mechanism You are suggesting, but only in this kind of conditions:

Prize Wheelie gives me box ---> me: "sweet lord! I cant wait to open it! Lets buy a key!" --> i am buying a key to open the box THAT I ACTUALLY POSESS.
What is the purpose of buying a key to open something non-existant..?
No boxez - no keyz

It's like making a baby - you wait about 9 months for the big moment to come, You buy all the girly-pink children-stuff to make HER new room nice and then BANG.
Congratulations. Its a boy.

I mean, crowns.
And You were waiting for box, not daughter.

Mon, 06/10/2013 - 19:09

Little-Juances

The price is determined before the wheel even spins. (with the old UI, you could see your crowns magically increasing before the wheel stopped at the coin icon).

So yeah, that lockbox that you 'almost' won is there to tease you, but it doesn't mean you actually were close to get it.

Tue, 06/11/2013 - 17:34

Trail-Blaze

ORLY!

ORLY! ;D

{TL;DR}

Thanks everyone for the answers.
I got some news! Today all of a sudden the wheel stopped right on the Box.

{/TL;DR}

@ Little-Juances:
You are fully right.
That mechanism is obvious - but only Devs do know when exactly a Prize is "randomised".
With the new UI You can see an icon of a material (or lockbox) being "sucked" into inventory icon, if You win one.
And that can be observed even BEFORE the darkish-blue background of level-ending debriefing appears on the screen.
So: (sad to say this obviously true thing) GUI of the Prize Wheel is fake.

Partially.

Because there is no Lockbox visible spinning in my Prize Wheel now.
I even recorded the game session window with maximum real-time possible fps (it came out with 80 in the beginning and around 97 in the end) i have slowed down the whole thing and carefully watched "every" single frame - no sign of that Iron looney.
My life may be a bit lazy, but it's way too short to decompile the game code itself + it's almost sure that the Prize is randomised server-side.

Am I crazy to do such things? Maybe. But I am just hilariously curious about the Prize Wheel and its purpose.
When I realised that there is something wrong about it for the first time, I was extremely disappointed.
"So awesome game, so lame way to give random prize."
It now seems that the Wheel may be (slightly) inaccurately designed (Prize in inventory way before spinning) but it is definitely not stupid.

Or the missing lockbox icon is just a coincidence...?

Anyway, every prize is free, isn't it? And the Prize Wheel is just a nice (not only nice looking) addon.
So I think I will just shut up now, since more things are clear.

Thanks again for Your time ;)

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