Card Keg Distribution Oversights

[PrincessMassacre]

Since most of the high value cards >6 recruit are now golds, kegs are mostly dropping low-strength bronze cards.

Upon checking the Deck Builder after opening ~50-100 free kegs (60 kegs = $70), all new cards were 6 recruit bronzes and a single 7. Only 3 golds in the entire package (no duplicates).

40 of the duplicates were 10 mill value (30 scraps to craft) common bronzes, 1 was epic at 50 mill value (200 scraps to craft). The epic was a card I had already crafted previous (Reinforcements), as were 10 of the commons. Therefore, only 30 common x30 scrap value (10 mill value) duplicates.

This may have been an oversight, or intentional product design; ahem... cough... to sell kegs.

Although, who would want to buy kegs filled with <7 recruit bronzes? Poor player experience.

 

[4RM3D]

In old Gwent, you needed 4 gold and 6 silver cards. This average remains the same for Homecoming. As such, there is little difference in terms of drop-rate or the requirements for building a good deck.

 

[PrincessMassacre]

Then it would appear you cannot build a good deck with $70; even $350 is questionable. Thanks for the info.

Someone made this joke on Twitch though: Save all your kegs until prestige 10 (sarcasm was implied).

Actually, now that I recall, someone yesterday bought 60 kegs and said the same thing: Only 3/4 golds.

Post automatically merged: Nov 5, 2018

@4RM3D Btw, CDPR has to release keg drop rates in China, don't they? Do you have those figures, for reference? Thanks.

I've seen the 2016 player-created posts; not interested, looking for official figures. I've also heard approx 1 legendary every 15 kegs multiple times, which approximates the 2 player experiences I documented here. 3-5 golds in 60 kegs approx. (4 average).

 

[Archan6el]

Of these golds, how many were epic and how many were legendary? A big question is if the drop rate of epics (pre-HC silvers) is still higher than legendaries now that epics have become gold as well. It would make sense that it is, otherwise the terminology for epic and legendary no longer makes sense.

 

[4RM3D]

Then it would appear you cannot build a good deck with $70; even $350 is questionable.

You can still make a competitive deck fairly quickly. The only difference is that you can no longer mill the starter decks to more quickly get the scraps you need to craft a deck. Regardless, you still get a lot of ore and reward points for just doing dailies and contracts. This should allow any new player to create a decent deck within 2 weeks of playing and without paying a dime.

@4RM3D Btw, CDPR has to release keg drop rates in China, don't they? Do you have those figures, for reference? Thanks.

I have read that Chinese law requires companies to disclose the drop-rates of "loot boxes". I am not sure about the legal ramifications for CDPR. Every country has their own rules and what constitutes as gambling. In Belgium, EA was sniped for their loot box shenanigans, while the CCG genre remains untouched. As such, I am not going to comment on that.

 

[PrincessMassacre]

Well, I see this discussion is over. Apparently, that's more information I'm not 'entitled' to. You know there are laws in the US and Canada concerning misleading business practices? Not releasing drop rates qualifies, but nobody has ever been prosecuted for it, as far as I know.

Know this: In my book, you're all crooks, as consumers have no idea what they're actually buying.

This is common sense, although some people have absolutely no idea what that is.

Honesty and integrity are human qualities; and those who lack them aren't exactly human.

 

[Void_Singer]

A 25 card deck averages 6.6 recruit cost per card Max. so 6-7rc is bread and butter

PS

Spoiler: Base Set Drop Rates (per card)

• First Four
  • 90.0% Bronze Common (white triangle)
  • 8.00% Bronze Rare (Blue triangle)
  • 1.60% Gold Epic (Pink Triangle)
  • 0.40% Gold Legendary (Gold Triangle)
    • ~2.0% Premium
• Three Pick One
  • 80.0% Bronze Rare (Blue triangle)
  • 16.0% Gold Epic (Pink Triangle)
  • 4.00% Gold Legendary (Gold Triangle)
    • ~4.0% Premium
• Combined
  • 72.0% Bronze Common (white triangle)
  • 22.4% Bronze Rare (Blue triangle)
  • 4.48% Gold Epic (Pink Triangle)
  • 1.12% Gold Legendary (Gold Triangle)
    • ~4.0% Premium (Best Rate)

I will bet the value of Thronebreaker on the accuracy of all but Premium values. (not including prestige modifiers or special promotions)

• Per Keg that's
  • 3.6 Commons
  • 1.12 Rares
  • 0.224 Epics
  • 0.056 Legendaries
    • ~0.2 Premiums
• or
  • ≈ 4 Commons / Keg
  • ≈ 1 Rare / Keg
  • ≈ 1 Epic / 4 Kegs
  • ≈ 1 Legendary / 18 Kegs
    • ≈ ~1 Premium / 5 Kegs

 

[antlers]

Thanks for thorough and scientific statistic gathering.

One thing to remember: with a Legendary every 18 kegs, it is not uncommon to go 60-70 kegs with no legendary. It's happened to me more than once, and it is frustrating. Then you'll get two legendaries in a keg, or legendaries in adjacent kegs, so it usually balances out.

Some people are just unlucky though. For every 100,000 players that open 100 kegs, there are going to be more than 300 that get no legendaries at all. People think that CDPR is cheating or something, but it is just the roll of the dice. For every 100,000 players that open 200 kegs, there is going to be one who gets no Legendaries at all.

 

[Archan6el]

Thanks for the numbers Void_Singer. Those premiums are hard to get. Need some of that green powder!

 

[Void_Singer]

[...]
One thing to remember: with a Legendary every 18 kegs, it is not uncommon to go 60-70 kegs with no legendary. [...]

Yup, I've gone over a hundred myself without getting one... the rule is the lower the odds, the less consistently they balance out... so for high odds things like commons, very high consistency.

If I remember my stats right it should take close to 180 kegs for legendaries to start leveling out to average, whereas it should only take ~2 kegs for the commons to average out, ~3 for rares to stabilize, and ~25 for Epics to start stabilizing

ETA:
My personal lifetime drop rate for legendaries is actually a bit low at 1.04%-ish, the pattern I detected for drop rates is
Total * 90% : common
(Remainder 10%) * 80% = 8% [*10 for pick 1/3] : Rare
(Remainder 2%) * 80% = 1.6% [*10 for pick 1/3] : Epic
(Remainder 0.4%) = 0.4% [*10 for pick 1/3] : Legendary

 

[PrincessMassacre]

People think that CDPR is cheating or something, but it is just the roll of the dice. For every 100,000 players that open 200 kegs, there is going to be one who gets no Legendaries at all.

Casinos are cheats, so they're probably right. Probabilistically speaking, 1 gold (not Legendary, as has been my experience) in 15/20 kegs is a lot higher than 1 in 100,000.

 

[Void_Singer]

Casinos are cheats, so they're probably right. Probabilistically speaking, 1 gold (not Legendary, as has been my experience) in 15/20 kegs is a lot higher than 1 in 100,000.

forgetting for a moment that you're mixing up the number of people and the number of kegs...
for every person that gets below the average, another will get above it, as is the nature of probabilistic outcomes over large scales. It follows a gaussian distribution or in more simple terms, a bell curve.

if there were a percentage in it for CDPR to cheat their own numbers in an F2P game, they'd want to do it in purchased kegs... but I've compared rates between them and they look the same, so there's no house advantage going on there. You could characterize the grind to gain cards as inducement to buy kegs, and I might even agree, but the pretense that they're massaging drop rates to gain money is just silly. in fact if they were to artificially depress drop rates that would be an inticement to avoid buying kegs since it wouldn't represent a good investment.... no one buys things they don't think are worth it.

 

[AKA.MIKe]

I've opened at least 60-70 kegs and I've observed that most of the cards were the same old ones and there were rarely any of the new ones added after the update. Kindly look into this matter.