The Flesh Horror Battlecrasher

[Mithran]

Thank you for your response.

@Kafka

There is no limit, the chance does drop off sharply each time you defeat The Flesh Horror so it’s less and less likely you will encounter another each time you do so. The Devil is one of our rarer Tarot cards, so the Soul Harvest event is making this Troop much easier to obtain for the overall playerbase than it normally will be (ie. playing Vaults, which need Vault Keys as a cost for entry, while pvp and Explore don’t have a cost of entry).

I’ve been playing the event and like you, I find it simple to earn 2. However, as with opening Chests, or finding Gnomes, some players will be luckier than others and possibly find 3 or more without too much effort just due to luck, others will find it harder, but the chance is the same for each player at each number of The Flesh Horror’s they have defeated.

If you could provide me some numbers (even in DM, I won’t reveal the hard numbers unless you say so) I would be glad to get a gather data started to see if it aligns with what we have been experiencing. But the issue isn’t really with how common or rare The Devil is, but rather the way the drops are communicated up front as simply that the chance lowers every time you encounter one.

Most people are going to take this at face value and assume the drop rate reduction takes the same fraction of the remaining drop rate each iteration. But so far we are observing the opposite. There is a “cliff” between the third and second drops.

Translate this into any other scenario involving a game of chance. Even a ticket game at a barcade or something, that allows you unlimited plays per day but at a lower chance to win after each successive jackpot. Now, the entire place is lit up with people hitting that second jackpot over and over. But a few determined players, frustration mounting, are still attempting to hit that third jackpot. They play 10, 20, even thirty times as long as it took them or anyone else, the people hitting the first and even second jackpot, and they don’t hit that third daily prize. And they really want that third daily prize because you need five of them for the big prize. Of maybe they just came in on the weekend and they have to get that third daily prize to get the big one.

Their most likely takeway would be that the game is rigged. Or a scam. Even if it was eventually revealed that someone sat there until closing time and came back on every day of a week long event and eventually hit that third daily jackpot and so it was technically possible all along.

I’m not saying “this is a scam”, I’m saying this to tell you just how severe the observed drop off in encounter rates is between the second and third copy. That is, being that the second copy per day comes relatively quickly, and we have still yet to have a single report of the third daily Flesh Horror encounter with Devil Drop, after multiple hundreds of battle. So if intentionally configured like this, it certainly feels like a scam, and it will moreso to the people coming in later this week.

There is also fact that if there is an intentional cliff is after the second copy I’m sure you realize is all the more insidious because of a pattern and expectation being set by the first two. To be clear, I’m not saying having a cliff after the first one is that much better, I’m saying you should place some emphasis on what is expected, if it is intended for this drop “cliff” to be here.

As with many things, the issue is how up front you were in the communication. Also, because this happens so often, I’m not entirely convinced still that something isn’t broken. And if it is, none of this feedback is going to be accurate, because you intended (and though you implemented) one thing but players experienced something else entirely. It bothers me (and it probably should bother you) that the playerbase legitimately can’t tell if something is bugged or not based on the information provided about the mechanic. There is a point in keeping some things a mystery which I can appreciate but we are at a point where we really need transparency when we legitimately can’t tell if something is broken or not.

@Kafka

This is a brand new mechanic/feature/event type we’re trying, so as with all new mechanics we will review how the event went before we go ahead and use this sort of mechanic in future.

At the end of the event we’d be glad to hear how you felt about it, was it fun? Did it feel good? Did you want more rewards (I mean judging by the comments I’ve seen that’s a yes), if you have insights into why the amount you received didn’t feel like enough we’d love to know why you feel that way, do you like battlecrashers in general? What makes a good/bad battlecrasher event for you?

Speaking for myself personally, I thought the idea was novel but anything that reaches into the hundreds of battles territory is simply too much for me. But the idea of hunting battlecrashers for a big prize over the course of the week is actually something I think works as an event, so good job there

@Kafka

The Devil is a Legendary Troop so we obviously can’t give a copy guaranteed for every battle, so if you didn’t like how this event ran but you like the concept of the event, then what sort of compromise would you make? ie. have a higher battlecrasher appearance rate but use a common Troop instead for the reward? Actually set a cap on number of battlecrashers you can see in one day? If so, how is that better than having the chance to find more if you play more but at a lesser chance? (ie, this current way is potentially rewarding people for playing more than other more casual players, while still allowing our casual players to participate and earn the reward too, but also stops the most hardcore players from getting 500 copies of a special legendary Troop that will normally only be available from the Vault).

I don’t think if anyone would have objected if there was a hard cap on encounters with enough to get the event prize and ascend it (even if you did it in the wrong order, so, say 10 over the course of the week then they don’t even need to appear anymore, which is also enough to field a team full of them if you wanted). I also think that very little people care if they have more than 10 of ANY legendary troop. If the weapon took 1 to craft, most people would have been happy with one copy total. (Speaking personally, I was happy with The Ghost Queen last year, even if limited to one copy) But I’m really not seeing the concern here even if they happen to have 100 of this one “rare legendary”… there is practically zero no impact on any of the game’s systems. You are already giving away the potential for more than 10, which is already “enough” to be “finished” with this troop for all time and never have to worry about it again. Unless they, what, disenchant them for 100 souls each, for 50 more per encounter than the other battlecrasher?

But again, the issue isn’t the absolute amount of rewards. Having an exclusive weapon for a weekly event is definitely preferable over having it in a paid event, which I can appreciate. Integrating hunting the prize into normal gameplay, also a huge bonus. Even the diminishing daily returns to ensure that the hunting (more or less) is spread out over a week isn’t that bad even though in its current form excludes a lot of the weekend players who will be scrambling for that “third daily copy” near the end and not getting it.

The issue is without this discourse, people logging in on the weekend would have no idea that they probably won’t see enough copies to ascend the troop OR get the special weapon craft even if they play ALL their available time. And I think that is a bit disingenuous that all communication asserts that “it is possible” which could mean that even if they played 12 second battles for every minute of the day that there is a statistically non-zero chance for them to get that third copy if it is not bugged. And whatever “fun” that could be gleaned by the event is quickly stamped out if you end up having to endlessly chase your tail for a prize that looked like you had a very good chance of obtaining out of the gate but by the end of never came.

@Kafka

Any of these sorts of questions you can answer or constructive criticism you want to share would be great. Feedback is welcome at any point, although, I think waiting until the event is over or at least near the finish is better before we have these sorts of discussions as then you have the experience of the full event to base your opinions and ideas on. Unless there’s a bug we’re not likely to change any details of an event while it’s still running, we would prefer to make sure we have all the data and feedback so we don’t make snap decisions (unless of course there’s a bug! - Totally different matter).

The reason I am bringing it up now is, again, I’m not entirely convinced it is working correctly. Bringing it up now means there is a chance to fix it for the people coming in on the weekend. Waiting until the event is over means there isn’t even a way for the player side to gather live data anymore, and we never even know if it was operating correctly at the whole time.

So, please, can you work with us and see if there is any way to verify that you can get a third daily encounter of The Flesh Horror with The Devil drop (not a repeat encounter that was “lost” before), on live?

Edit: Highlighting this because it is important.

@Kafka

I’ve been playing the event and like you, I find it simple to earn 2.

It isn’t just “me” that is experiencing the cliff after the second drop specifically. There are multiple posts on the forums. There are guild members and leaders of entire guild networks reaching out to their guilds with no positive hits. Thus far, the consensus is no third daily copy. And most people find that second copy so quickly that it is hard to even conceive a single mathematical model where the rate dropped sharply between the first and the second where the first is already not 100% but fairly common, the second second is still fairly common but the third is (nearly?) nonexistent.

Maybe the issue was that the cliff is supposed to be after the first drop and is actually broken in such a way that are giving more than intended? Knowing that at this point would at least give us some peace of mind, especially if you decided to leave that as is for the remainder of the event. I’d have some issues with such a sharp cliff still… but the way you described not getting the third copy so far as “unlucky” just doesn’t track with the information we have.