New 'Loot Box' Regulations in China
China has just passed new regulations concerning to online games that includes some interesting clauses relating to 'loot boxes' and other similar systems. The new law requires developers to be transparent about the exact 'draw probabilities' of these items.
What this means for Hearthstone is that Blizzard will be required to reveal what the exact chances are of opening specific card rarities in your card packs, as well as confirm the existence of other systems and algorithms related to this. For example the 'pity timer' that was discovered by players but has as of yet never been officially confirmed / talked about.
While we already know fairly accurately what the average chances are for Hearthstone it will still be nice to have it officially confirmed.
Blizzard will be required to display this information either on a dedicated page on their (Chinese) website or on a prominent spot inside the game.
You can read the relevant sections of the new law below that was translated by /u/czhihong over on reddit:
- Online game publishers (who provide virtual goods or services with any form of random mechanisms) shall not directly request gamers to to indulge in such activities through a direct injection of cash or virtual credits.
They shall promptly and publicly announce information about the name, property, content, quantity, and draw/forge probability of all virtual items and services that can be drawn/forged on the official website or a dedicated draw-probability web page of the game. The information on draw probability shall be true and effective.
- Online game publishers shall publicly announce the random draw results by customers on the official website or in a prominent spot in-game, and keep records for government inquiry. The records must be kept for at least 90 days. When publishing the random draw results, appropriate measures should be taken to protect user privacy.
- When online publishers are providing virtual goods and services with any form of random draw properties, they shall provide players with an avenue to trade for other virtual goods, either using virtual cash or any other ways to obtain similar virtual goods and services.
It is not certain how China will act on developers who do not comply to these new rules, and so far Blizzard has not yet commented if they are planning to.
These regulations only apply to the Chinese market but because Hearthstone is identical across regions everyone benefits from it! So far people around the internet have reacted very positively about the new law. Tell us how you feel about it!
Aaaaaand then, Blizzard stopped selling packs in China.
Because absolutely noone at Blizzard knows the exact chance, and nobody knows how to figure the formula out.
Kappa
They better release ALL the hidden ingame random adjustments (but probably it will be little shame on BLizzards).
Lets think about how many times Warrior has Fiery War Axe on T2 when no coin or T1 with coin.
T2 no coin means 5 cards out of the deck plus 3 to muligan hard into Axe which is together 8 out of 30, where only 2 are Fiery war axe.
T1 coin means 5 cards out of the deck plus 4 to muligan hard into Axe which is together 9 out of 30, where only 2 are Fiery war axe.
Same as if it would be 8(9) out of 15 or 16(18) out of 30, which is only 53% (60%).
Are 60% of Warriors have Fiery war axe on T2 or MORE ? What do you think about it ?
When one says something and then "What do you think about it ?"
This does not mean that Pirate warrior must come and downvote, this means I am interested in community thoughts on fair drawing probabilities.
While not officially confirmed the "Pity timer" - is a hidden adjustment which actually benefits the game (in my opinion).
What we can definitely say is that Balancing mechanics that complex as in Hearthstone is not an easy task.
I assume that particular random based outcomes which are core for particular class and archetype can possibly be adjusted to allow the archetype to keep up.
While we all clearly understand that statistics gathered by community through different game logging tools can reveal any of those adjustments, showing weird offset of the numbers - it is not an easy task however for someone to detect the discrepancy and bring it on to public.
In general I am not discussing any conspiracy. I am discussing an assumption that there may be some adjustments aimed to fill the gaps in the game design, for the reason that any direct adjustments of card numbers would distort balance even more.
As an example I provide the importance of having Fiery War Axe in starting hand for Warrior and the occurrence of that event.
I haven't made my own precise researches on similar cases, but I wonder if anyone does.
The "salty experience" and negligence are the reasons of downwoting the posts ("oh here is another salty fool" - is a salty experience itself).
I seek for people who want to share some numbers or their own observations.
Limited result but out of 20 games I have had 0 have that start. So I guess that means that 0% of happening... I'm not kidding I normally have them open without the war axe but as you can clearly see this is just getting lucky. Tbh I wouldn't trust a stats test until it was over 100k trails. With a sample size as small as 30 I wouldn't trust a thing. Combined we have a size of 50 even then that's so few. I have yet to see a warrior open Fiery War Axe this expansion. The earliest i have seen a warrior with a fiery war axe so far is turn 3/4. I know this is not a likely event. But I also know the mullagain highly increases the odds of any one event draw. I don't know the numbers on it off hand but I promise you that if you have an unusally high/low number of games happen like that then you are merely experiencing an outlier in the probality. In the end I don't think blizzard is rigging card draws for certain decks. If that is not what you are implying then I fully misunderstand your original point
Well, I've seen plenty of them, always to remove my Northshire Cleric or my whelps.
Really good news, hopefully other countries will implement similar laws. I don't think Blizzard would screw the players but they should still be transparent on exact drop probabilities.
Fantastic!
we will maybe have some data bout the gadgetzan scam where everybody got complete shit even after fix
I got 8 legendary minions out of 100 packs, two of them golden, no duplicates.
I was not aware that some people considered that "complete shit."
i dont give a fuck your personal experience as like i said "most of the people" got complete shit, learn how rng works
all my friends, me, and a majority of comments said that they got shitty amount of legendary and/or epic, which is for someone that is playing since the beta the first time that it arrives, this is what i can call "most" , so keep smiling im happy for you, but you experience isnt worth anything
When you buy physical cards you have odds on the back of packs, so it should be the same for digital.
I'd be willing to bet that Blizzard would rather change the entire loot/pack/reward system for its China region than reveal those figures... Publicly revealing the fact that, for example, legendary cards have a 1% chance to show up in a pack (regardless of the fatigue timer) would be a PR nightmare for them, at least on social media and the internet. Info like that tends to snowball when it's known to be "confirmed" or "fact" straight from the company, which is why it would be worse than the speculation is now, even if that speculation is fairly accurate. Nothing would turn-off and dishearten new or casual players more than learning true drop rates like that, because it seems like an insurmountable barrier, even if it's truly not.
Mark my words; they're going to change how they do business in China. They did it with WoW. And even though that was due to different reasons, it illustrates that Blizzard isn't beyond changing fundamental aspects of its games for the sake of its bottom line (like most businesses). I think it'll probably be something like a crafting-only system, where dust is rewarded for everything and can also be bought for real money.
Actually I don't think it would discourage players. In Germany (I don't know how it is in other countries) in every lottery ad there is told "chances to win the Jackpot are 1:114.000.000" and people are still buying lottery tickets.
Btw even before we had the pity timer statistics showed that there is a legendary in 20 packs on avg, so the chance is 5%, not 1% ;)
For what i know the chance of getting a legendary is about 1 in 30 packs, and more or less i haven't moved far from that figure in 2 years of play. I doubt we are gonna get crazy revelations about pack drop chances if they do in fact release them.