Let's talk numbers

Gameplay Chat (PC/Mobile)
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… and more precisely, percentages. In a game that is flooded by what is supposed to be randomness (percentages, gem drops, unit drops), I’ve thought that it would be a good idea to track something that can be tracked and see the results. In that case, I tracked the devour percentage against me. I tracked the 40% devour chance of Kerberos and Kraken over about 3 weeks, on PC, PvP only (no GW) and battles against teams that are 8k+ in strength.

I did not do this just for fun. Multiple times, I’ve spoken with people saying that they tracked the numbers and each time, I got the same answer. The numbers are higher than expected, way higher. That was also my feeling, but I wanted to see if it was not recall bias or just a false idea created by the frustration.

This is an interesting point to track and discuss because the results are not subject to recall bias, which seems to be the main excuse/reason each time something goes wrong. These numbers are exactly what is happening in the game, considering this is done with all the serious needed.

I decided to stop after 110 devours, here are the results.

Number of tries | Number of devours | Number of devours for the last 10 tries | Overall percentage
30 | 21 | - | 70,00%
40 | 27 | 6 | 67,50%
50 | 31 | 4 | 62,00%
60 | 35 | 4 | 58,33%
70 | 39 | 4 | 55,71%
80 | 43 | 4 | 53,75%
90 | 52 | 9 | 57,78%
100 | 56 | 4 | 56,00%
110 | 63 | 7 | 57,27%

Even we consider an average of 55% for these results, that’s still 37.5% more devour than expected. This is a lot, but these are only my numbers. If I consider that the numbers provided to me by others are reliable, I can say that some have experienced up to 50% more devours than expected.

Another thing I found with these numbers is that “series” exists. Often when you speak about bad luck on something, someone comes and say it’s just a bad moment, that’ll change. That’s true, but these numbers show that it never changed in my favor. It went from terrible luck to normal, I never got really lucky. For the first 40 tries I had a terrible luck, the 40 next were normal, and again terrible luck on the last 30.

I haven’t talked with the support about this for one precise reason. Some I know already did it and they received the same answer. It’s random. That’s still a possibility, maybe we are just unlucky and others have an overall devour chance of 25%. This is also why I don’t draw conclusions from these numbers. But what if a lot of numbers were going in that direction?

So… How’s your randomness doing with devour? Are you experiencing the same issues as me/us? Or are we simply unlucky?

7 Likes
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Just a couple questions about your data:

You say that you had 8000+ battles over 3 weeks, but in that time, there were only 110 devour attempts against you? Did you also track your own devour attempts? If not, was there any reason?

1 Like
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It’s the strength of the opposite team, not the numbers of battles I played. I edited the first post to make this clearer. :smiley:

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Ok… Thanks for tracking devours and sharing your results. I have a few questions…

  1. Did you include times when kraken or kerby killed the target with spell damage?

  2. Did you include times when target had impervious?

  3. Do you see a trend?

  4. Do you think 110 events is a large enough sample size?

  5. Did you also track other events with the same proc% ?

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I asked my first question more because I was surprised by how large the number of battles were to generate even a modest sample of 110 devour events. You obviously don’t want to seek them out in PVP if you actually want to win, so this is a difficult thing to do…

Edit - I see what you mean now. Do you know approximately how many battles you actually fought in that time?

1 Like
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That’s the only percentage I tracked. Tracking more things could have disturbed me and I could have missed something. I played only with my dragon team and none of them has impervious. I also didn’t include the occurrences where my unit was destroyed by the damage of the spell. I think that 100 events are a large enough sample to ask the question, a lot of statistics are often calculated with way less samples.

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No sorry, I did not track the numbers of battles. I simply played the way I usually do and used my paper and my pen when a unit used devour against me.

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Do you notice the downward trend? I would say if you use your numbers and project the trend further, by the time you have tracked 250 attempts you would be at 40% or near to it

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I don’t share your opinion. To me, the trend is not showing something like this. If you look at the numbers, for any 10 given events, I never had less than 40% devour chance. 40% was the bare minimum. So if it’s never under 40%, that won’t go down to 40%.

That’s part of what I’m showing, the results were never in my favor. I had series, sometimes they were normal, sometimes terrible, but that’s not what the trend is showing in my opinion. The downward trend is only a result of what statistics are. More numbers for more accurate results. This downward trend exists because my numbers started with a very bad luck. Maybe that will go a bit lower with more numbers, but maybe that’ll go higher. If you look at the numbers, the percentage I have after 60 events is almost the same as the one for 110 events. That is something that says something. So there’s no downward trend. it’s just the normal way numbers works to me, the more you have, the more they show a decent value.

2 Likes
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You contradicted yourself brudda… More numbers for more accurate results… Then more numbers wont go down…

Both cant be true simultaneously and btw “luck” should not even considered when talking stats…

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I was never good at maths but based from my own experience (impression no data recorded) and from the results you posted. Random or not - the 40% stated on the card is a fallacy unless it averages out to 40 by the amount of time they don’t devour when you use them. Cause my impression is that when I use them they are far low than 40% but once again it’s an impression.

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I do not contradict myself at all. That’s simple maths. If you never have a value under 40, you’ll never have an average of 40 unless all your values are 40. This is what the numbers are showing right now.

Looking for tendencies when speaking of statistics is THE thing you should not do. The concept of statistics is to find the point where you start to have a value that seems to be accurate. In other words, a value that is consistent over the time, for a large number of events, which is the case for the last 50. Of course, we can always go further in the analysis with more values, but I’ll let you do this.

And yeah, I think I can speak of luck. According to the devs, the percentages are random. So as long as it’s not proven that it’s the contrary, I can consider myself unlucky with the devours, no matter the fact I’m doing statistics or not.

1 Like
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See… This is why things like this irritate me…

Someone posts some numbers and present it in such a way as to make it seem to support their point when it actually does not

Let me put it like this… If i roll a 100 side die once, what is the chance that any particular number comes up? Give up? Its 1%. Easy huh? Now watch this…

@discobot roll 1d100

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Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.

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Oops lets try that again

@discobot roll 1d100

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:game_die: 85

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Ok now if i do it 100 times since every possible outcome has an equal 1% chance i should get every number 1-100 one time each right? Lets see…

@discobot roll 100d100

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I only have 20 dice. Shameful, I know!

:game_die: 87, 37, 90, 37, 91, 10, 50, 71, 63, 37, 57, 4, 26, 68, 75, 26, 77, 97, 86, 39

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@discobot roll 80d100

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I only have 20 dice. Shameful, I know!

:game_die: 93, 18, 29, 24, 21, 97, 1, 71, 25, 60, 43, 86, 29, 73, 26, 38, 96, 83, 62, 75