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Hearthstone | Posted by | 6 years, 3 months ago
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Should the pity timer be lower?

Right now the pity timer for Hearthstone packs is 40, which means that players have the ability to hypothetically get only 3 legendaries from their first 90 Packs. This doesn't affect me much (since I only open around 40 packs per expansion) but I imagine that it causes some players a lot of frustration and could cost Blizzard money because of angry players who were screwed over by pack RNG. A solution to fix this would be to reduce the pity timer to only every 30 or even 20 packs. Because there is usually only an average of 1 legendary per 20 packs, a change of the pity timer to 30 packs would not affect the vast majority of Hearthstone players, only the ones who got especially unlucky that expansion. I think this could actually make Blizzard more money by helping make the player experience better and by retaining players who are angered by RNG. so what do y'all think? Would this change make you happy? Do you think it'd cost Blizzard too much money? Do you think it's likely?

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  • Right now the pity timer for Hearthstone packs is 40, which means that players have the ability to hypothetically get only 3 legendaries from their first 90 Packs. This doesn't affect me much (since I only open around 40 packs per expansion) but I imagine that it causes some players a lot of frustration and could cost Blizzard money because of angry players who were screwed over by pack RNG. A solution to fix this would be to reduce the pity timer to only every 30 or even 20 packs. Because there is usually only an average of 1 legendary per 20 packs, a change of the pity timer to 30 packs would not affect the vast majority of Hearthstone players, only the ones who got especially unlucky that expansion. I think this could actually make Blizzard more money by helping make the player experience better and by retaining players who are angered by RNG. so what do y'all think? Would this change make you happy? Do you think it'd cost Blizzard too much money? Do you think it's likely?

  • It should totally be lower. Opening 40 packs just to get a single crappy Legendary will never feel good.

  • I wouldn't mind seeing more legendaries but I don't think this is a very strong argument or a very good solution. The pity timer is a backstop, a condition that will hardly ever be met. In my experience the average frequency of getting a legendary is about once per 20 packs, which means you have to open twice the expected number of packs for the pity timer to kick in. In other words, suppose they changed it to 35 packs: in practice it'd hardly ever matter because it's still a lot more likely you'll open a legendary naturally before you get pitied.

     

    I'd rather see the base rate of legendaries increased a little, which would make sense considering how the total number of legendaries per set has increased and considering how many legendaries are critical centerpieces in specific decks.

    • I have been counting my pack openings for almost 2 years now, and I can say that in my case, opening over 25 packs without legendary is more common than obtaining one within the first 20 packs (guaranteed legendary within 10 packs at the start of any expansion excluded).

      • Quote From pietske

        I have been counting my pack openings for almost 2 years now, and I can say that in my case, opening over 25 packs without legendary is more common than obtaining one within the first 20 packs (guaranteed legendary within 10 packs at the start of any expansion excluded).

        That seems unlucky but certainly not impossible if the 1-in-20 stat is true, unless you've bought inordinate numbers of packs. I don't know in what form you've collected the data but I'd be very interested to see a distribution of the intervals between legendaries and how closely it reflects the bell curve you'd expect.

         

        I looked into it and according to the wiki Blizzard has confirmed a 1-in-5 average drop rate for epics and 1-in-20 for legendaries in order to comply with a chinese law regarding lootboxes, although that announcement may only apply to the Chinese region. https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Card_pack#Statistics

        • Quote From AliRadicali
          Quote From pietske

          I have been counting my pack openings for almost 2 years now, and I can say that in my case, opening over 25 packs without legendary is more common than obtaining one within the first 20 packs (guaranteed legendary within 10 packs at the start of any expansion excluded).

          That seems unlucky but certainly not impossible if the 1-in-20 stat is true, unless you've bought inordinate numbers of packs. I don't know in what form you've collected the data but I'd be very interested to see a distribution of the intervals between legendaries and how closely it reflects the bell curve you'd expect.

           

          I looked into it and according to the wiki Blizzard has confirmed a 1-in-5 average drop rate for epics and 1-in-20 for legendaries in order to comply with a chinese law regarding lootboxes, although that announcement may only apply to the Chinese region. https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Card_pack#Statistics

          Obviously not that person but I for the first time have started documenting my packs with DoD and my intervals (post the one in the first 10 packs - which I got on pack 9 so that's sort of pity-timer-ish in itself) are:

          Legendary 2 - 18 packs

          Legendary 3 - 4 packs

          Legendary 4 - 32 packs

          Legendary 5 - 38 packs

          Legendary 6 - 16 packs

          Legendary 7 - 22 packs

          Legendary 8 - 10 packs

          So that's exactly the average of 1:20 (7 legendaries in 140 packs). But have to tell you those two times I got over 30 packs between legendaries had me bummed, especially since they were back-to-back. I guess that's kind of the crux - lowering the timer would make people "feel better" since it really sucks when you hit the pity timer (or come very close) more than once in a short period.

          To the anecdote from phiL up there - if I ever bought an expansion bundle and only opened for this example say 3 legendaries that would absolutely be enough to make me never spend another dollar on this game, if not quit it outright. That's the fine line any product - let alone a "loot boxy" game - has to walk: balancing getting the most money from your customers without alienating them when the odds bank against them and losing them as customer entirely. I obviously don't have any of Blizzard's data, but I can't imagine they'd lose that much money by lowering the pity time to 30 or 35 packs, which would lower the average to around 15-18 packs. Not a big swing, and would quell at least some of the bad feelings about the general lopsided value of the dusting system/duplicate epics/etc.

          Now if we want to get really crazy, my thought was: Conditionally lowering the pity timer. For example, if you open 30/35/40 packs without a legendary, your next pity time is lowered to just 20/25/30 packs (pick whichever numbers you like). That way you wouldn't run into my situation where I had multiple 30+ pack opens in a row and would again lower the overall average by a little without "giving away something for free" since the majority of players rarely experience that kind of thing.

           

           

          • Quote From ArngrimUndying

            So that's exactly the average of 1:20 (7 legendaries in 140 packs). But have to tell you those two times I got over 30 packs between legendaries had me bummed, especially since they were back-to-back. I guess that's kind of the crux - lowering the timer would make people "feel better" since it really sucks when you hit the pity timer (or come very close) more than once in a short period.

             

            To the anecdote from phiL up there - if I ever bought an expansion bundle and only opened for this example say 3 legendaries that would absolutely be enough to make me never spend another dollar on this game, if not quit it outright. That's the fine line any product - let alone a "loot boxy" game - has to walk: balancing getting the most money from your customers without alienating them when the odds bank against them and losing them as customer entirely. I obviously don't have any of Blizzard's data, but I can't imagine they'd lose that much money by lowering the pity time to 30 or 35 packs, which would lower the average to around 15-18 packs. Not a big swing, and would quell at least some of the bad feelings about the general lopsided value of the dusting system/duplicate epics/etc.

            Now if we want to get really crazy, my thought was: Conditionally lowering the pity timer. For example, if you open 30/35/40 packs without a legendary, your next pity time is lowered to just 20/25/30 packs (pick whichever numbers you like). That way you wouldn't run into my situation where I had multiple 30+ pack opens in a row and would again lower the overall average by a little without "giving away something for free" since the majority of players rarely experience that kind of thing.

            " lowering the timer would make people "feel better" since it really sucks when you hit the pity timer (or come very close) more than once in a short period."

            I'm not sure it would, though. Suppose the pity timer were at 35 in the example above: Would it have been a better experience to actually hit the pity timer for legendary #5? Or would that have made opening that legend even more bittersweet? That's the problem with a pity timer: if you know about it and especially if you keep track of it, it lessens the joy of getting a legend to know it was guaranteed by the pity system. To give a more extreme example to illustrate the point: suppose instead of randomness you were guaranteed a legend every 20ieth pack, but only every 20ieth pack. It'd completely ruin the experience of opening packs because you know with certainty that the 19 packs in between are guaranteed filler, and you also know no luck was involved in opening any legendaries.

             

            I absolutely understand that a long streak of not opening legends is a real bummer, but I don't think drastically reducing the pity timer would be a satisfying fix. I think increasing the drop rate for legendaries would similarly reduce the occurrence of long dry spells while at the same time increasing the number of very positive player experiences, like getting back-to-back legendaries.

            • Quote From AliRadicali
              Quote From ArngrimUndying

              So that's exactly the average of 1:20 (7 legendaries in 140 packs). But have to tell you those two times I got over 30 packs between legendaries had me bummed, especially since they were back-to-back. I guess that's kind of the crux - lowering the timer would make people "feel better" since it really sucks when you hit the pity timer (or come very close) more than once in a short period.

               

              To the anecdote from phiL up there - if I ever bought an expansion bundle and only opened for this example say 3 legendaries that would absolutely be enough to make me never spend another dollar on this game, if not quit it outright. That's the fine line any product - let alone a "loot boxy" game - has to walk: balancing getting the most money from your customers without alienating them when the odds bank against them and losing them as customer entirely. I obviously don't have any of Blizzard's data, but I can't imagine they'd lose that much money by lowering the pity time to 30 or 35 packs, which would lower the average to around 15-18 packs. Not a big swing, and would quell at least some of the bad feelings about the general lopsided value of the dusting system/duplicate epics/etc.

              Now if we want to get really crazy, my thought was: Conditionally lowering the pity timer. For example, if you open 30/35/40 packs without a legendary, your next pity time is lowered to just 20/25/30 packs (pick whichever numbers you like). That way you wouldn't run into my situation where I had multiple 30+ pack opens in a row and would again lower the overall average by a little without "giving away something for free" since the majority of players rarely experience that kind of thing.

              " lowering the timer would make people "feel better" since it really sucks when you hit the pity timer (or come very close) more than once in a short period."

              I'm not sure it would, though. Suppose the pity timer were at 35 in the example above: Would it have been a better experience to actually hit the pity timer for legendary #5? Or would that have made opening that legend even more bittersweet? That's the problem with a pity timer: if you know about it and especially if you keep track of it, it lessens the joy of getting a legend to know it was guaranteed by the pity system. To give a more extreme example to illustrate the point: suppose instead of randomness you were guaranteed a legend every 20ieth pack, but only every 20ieth pack. It'd completely ruin the experience of opening packs because you know with certainty that the 19 packs in between are guaranteed filler, and you also know no luck was involved in opening any legendaries.

               

              I absolutely understand that a long streak of not opening legends is a real bummer, but I don't think drastically reducing the pity timer would be a satisfying fix. I think increasing the drop rate for legendaries would similarly reduce the occurrence of long dry spells while at the same time increasing the number of very positive player experiences, like getting back-to-back legendaries.

              Yes I agree increasing the drop rate would be great, but I also think that's probably the least likely thing to happen.

              And to your question (and broader point) - yes that definitely a fair point: knowing about the pity timer does impact how people feel about pack openings. On my pack openings, once I get to 20 packs without a legendary I start thinking "okay I'm on the downslope of the bell curve; any pack now." And then it doesn't come and doesn't come and doesn't come and by the time I'm at pack 35 it "feels" just as bad as if it were pack 40 itself. 

              But I would then argue that's even MORE of a reason to lower it at least a little - saying "hey we increased the drop rate, so boy if you hit the pity time now you must be REALLY unlucky" would feel even worse. Fundamentally there's no "right" answer here because everyone gets more upset by different things (i.e. I find the duplicate Epics somewhat annoying given the dust value, but for others that seems to be their #1 issue) and ActBlizz is still a public company trying to keep shareholders happy so profit profit profit. This is why I'm really waiting for more news on their new orb/rune currencies - it seems like maybe they're planning some sort of true overhaul of the game's economy, so this discussion may well be moot in a month idk.

               

  • Question: Should the pity timer be lower?

    Answer: yes. 

    I couldn't understand why any player wouldn't want to see more glowing orange card-backs

    Friendly

  • <In response to AliRadicali> My point was precisely that it wouldn't affect the majority of players, just the ones who got unlucky. I just thought that it is kind of unnecessary to allow for players to get exceedingly unlucky, as it seems to piss people off more than the Hearthstone devs should really want. Also, if players were guaranteed to have a legendary for every 20 packs they buy I think people would feel a lot better about buying lots of card packs, which I think would help Blizzard too

  • The legendary cards distribution is fine what is not fine is the epic card distribution.. Epics are too rare for how many you need.. There are too many bad epics for them to be as rare as they are now..

    Or you know make common cards yield more dust just a small increase from 5 to 10 will go a long way... 

    • Quote From DoubleSummon

      The legendary cards distribution is fine what is not fine is the epic card distribution.. Epics are too rare for how many you need.. There are too many bad epics for them to be as rare as they are now..

      Or you know make common cards yield more dust just a small increase from 5 to 10 will go a long way... 

      Agreed, rather than focusing on legendary drops alone, some kind of overhaul of the crafting system as a whole is needed. Im not sure if Blizzard will ever do that, but players would surely appretiate it.

      Staff
      • Quote From sinti
        Quote From DoubleSummon

        The legendary cards distribution is fine what is not fine is the epic card distribution.. Epics are too rare for how many you need.. There are too many bad epics for them to be as rare as they are now..

        Or you know make common cards yield more dust just a small increase from 5 to 10 will go a long way... 

        Agreed, rather than focusing on legendary drops alone, some kind of overhaul of the crafting system as a whole is needed. Im not sure if Blizzard will ever do that, but players would surely appretiate it.

        We don't really need to completely rework the disenchanting/crafting system. Just changing the dusting cost of commons from 5 to 10 would be more than enough.

        Friendly
    • Quote From DoubleSummon

      The legendary cards distribution is fine what is not fine is the epic card distribution.. Epics are too rare for how many you need.. There are too many bad epics for them to be as rare as they are now..

      Or you know make common cards yield more dust just a small increase from 5 to 10 will go a long way... 

      I cannot agree to this more.  Having the Legendary cards is great.  But when most decks that are competitive need 2 copies of epics, often times more than 1 epic in the deck, this is problematic.  Especially when you only get a small fraction of dust from cards.

      Friendly
    • Quote From DoubleSummon

      The legendary cards distribution is fine what is not fine is the epic card distribution.. Epics are too rare for how many you need.. There are too many bad epics for them to be as rare as they are now..

      Or you know make common cards yield more dust just a small increase from 5 to 10 will go a long way... 

      I have often thought the same thing especially when you see the purple glow and are disappointed by the crappy card you get.

      Only thing is though, if epics are always great then they kind of become must have which actually makes the game more expensive.

      • That's right, that's why epics should be more common.. The likely hood of a 40 dust packs is too high.. I really think that the worst value should also be a rare case... Opening packs is exciting, but most of them being the worst case suck. 

  • Yes, it should be much lower. Sure you can get really lucky (I got 3 in a row during the descent of dragons pack openings) but most people only remember the times when they get unlucky and that can leave a sour taste. It's fairly ludicrous to spend the same amount of money on hearthstone as a AAA game and only be guaranteed 2 out of 23 legendaries. Also, epics should not have duplicates. I feel like Blizzard deliberately make certain class specific epics OP in order to drive up the deck-building cost (I'm looking at you dragon's pack), while making the neutral epics junk.

  • Buying 100 packs preorder and only opening 3 legendaries is a devastating experience. One friend totally quit Hearthstone from one day to another because of this

  • Yes, the current pity timer is pretty ridiculous. Let's say a free to play player earns about 80 gold per day thanks to daily quests and 10 gold for 3 wins, it will take 4000 gold/80 gold per day = 50 days to get one legendary if they are unlucky enough to hit the pity timer. FIFTY. DAYS. And that's assuming that they have the time to play every single day and win at least 6 to 9 games per day (depending on whether they get 50 or 60 gold quests).

    And like others have already mentioned, the cost of epics is stupidly high as well. The fact that you can still open duplicate epics while people have been asking for that change for years makes Blizzard seem incredibly greedy (whether they actually are or not).

  • It‘s not that easy guys. The entire business model is is based around those probabilities and Dust values. Lowering the pity timer is a bigger difference than you would think. I got there twice this expansion....

    You essentially ask if HS should be cheaper. Everyone would like to see that. But is it realistic? I doubt it. 

    Don’t forgett, there was a time with duplicate legendaries.... 

     

  • Well i do hope for the time to come when there is a limit to epic card. Getting an epic card three times or maybe even four times is not the best feeling, especially if it is bad.

  • It Won't happen as long as people keep spending money on this game.

  • Personally, I'd be happy if they lowered it to 30.

    Or made epics impossible to get dups (like legendaries).

  • I'm pretty sure there is a reason for having so many of these complicated trashy meme-y cards as epics, namely limiting their impact/occurrence in the actual game and keeping them out of the hands of total beginners. Magic has a very similar pattern, with most of these types of cards being printed as "trash/crap rares". While it's not exactly analogous, because drop rates in arena are not based solely on rarity, nevertheless I don't think it's a coincidence that most convoluted janky cards are released as epics.

     

    Edit: Here are two of many articles by Magic head honcho mark Rosewater explaining the need for bad rares in Magic. The situation isn't identical, but a lot of the arguments do translate to HS.

    https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/good-bad-and-ugly-truth-2005-07-18-0

    https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/rare-well-done-2002-02-25-0

  • The packs in between don't have to be pack fillers. I can also enjoy pulling some good epics which are similarly crucial for all decks.

    But it feels brutal to open the same pack filler epic for the third or fourth time. Therefore any change to the chances of opening better cards should include a no duplicate rule for epics. 

  • I will probably spend more money with a better pity timer, me like many others players = more money to blizzard. How many people pre order? Less every year, people are quitting. 

  • Even improving the pity timer, say from 40 to 30, we have so many legendariesper release that your chances to drop a card you couldn't care less about would still be pretty high.

    I actually think the dust income from commons and rares should be adjusted to 1/4 of their crafting cost. At that point buying packs is more rewarding, and you end up with more dust to craft that fancy legendary card you really wanted.

     

  • Yeah, I believe it should be lowered. Would definitely be a very nice thing and a good gesture from Blizzard, that's for sure.