The question is what kind of auditing and quality control is there going to be?
What if DB says there's a 10% chance, but the crew is omitted, wrong crew is in place, or loot tables are messes up and it's really 0%, or 3%? Who carries the burden of proof, how is it achieved, and how is it handled if it gets updated mid-stream? What method will there be to determine that the declared rate is the actual presented rate?
And, as was mentioned, they may be able to get away with worst chance of packs saying 5% chance for 5*, 15% chance for 4*, 80% chance of something else.
These are some murky waters that are going to take a while to clear out, and you can darn well bet developers will look for creative ways to skirt the requirements.
The question is what kind of auditing and quality control is there going to be?
Unless Apple is also spending millions of dollars to hire people whose sole job it is to check all the various games to test whether the reported percentages are correct or not, my guess is "almost none".
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
If Apple gets enough complaints they will pull the game first and ask questions later. They will force DB to prove their data is accurate. And Apple won't just accept Shan's word for it.
If Apple gets enough complaints they will pull the game first and ask questions later. They will force DB to prove their data is accurate. And Apple won't just accept Shan's word for it.
Think the Play store and Steam will follow along, just to keep the event leaderboards fair?
I am an adult, i know what i get into if i gamble for crew in best chance packs, pulls or whatsoever. I take responsability for my free actions. Nobody forces me to spend money and pull/buy packs.
I am an adult, i know what i get into if i gamble for crew in best chance packs, pulls or whatsoever. I take responsability for my free actions. Nobody forces me to spend money and pull/buy packs.
I don t need anyone else to play my babysitter.
That's an awfully reductive and dismissive mischaracterization of the concerns and reasoning for this move on Apple's part. You can't make a responsible informed decision if you lack all the pertinent information. You may be perfectly contented with the results of the decisions you've made with the game to date--I have been myself--but that's not the issue.
Think the Play store and Steam will follow along, just to keep the event leaderboards fair?
Steam has just the lowest quality control ever concieved of. Just look at their Greenlight system (or whatever it's called). I'd be surprised if Steam raises even a finger: their approach is basically anarchy.
However if DB has to do it for one plaftorm they probably have to do it for all of them, unless they accept the game being different for Apple players.
Think the Play store and Steam will follow along, just to keep the event leaderboards fair?
Steam has just the lowest quality control ever concieved of. Just look at their Greenlight system (or whatever it's called). I'd be surprised if Steam raises even a finger: their approach is basically anarchy.
However if DB has to do it for one plaftorm they probably have to do it for all of them, unless they accept the game being different for Apple players.
I think he meant pull the app because Apple did even though Google, et al. didn't get the complaints. And no, I don't think there will be any proactive action or shared guilt like that. However, I do think they'll follow along and make similar guidelines if they see this getting any traction in the apple environment.
I also agree essentially nothing would probably happen on Steam.
But since all these run on a shared back end with the same assets behind the scenes, I think making the change that would affect one platform will automatically display on all the other. I think the way this game is designed DB would have to actively rewrite a LOT of code to discriminate in platforms.
I must admit, I'm surprised Apple jumped on the bandwagon over such irrelevant politicians making noise that would have just gone quiet when the new news cycle picked up.
I must admit, I'm surprised Apple jumped on the bandwagon over such irrelevant politicians making noise that would have just gone quiet when the new news cycle picked up.
Remember that Apple would like for some politicians to stop making so much news about their taxes
While I understand and agree with transparency for odds, I find the unintended consequences aspect fascinating.
If Apple were to pull an application, would the spenders just move to Google? A device to run the game is probably less than they've invested in the game itself.
And would it harm Apple's market share of the overall gaming community? The people who aren't activists could view it as getting caught in the middle and seek a provider such as Steam. They get all the benefits from Apple's stance without the risk.
I would personally suffer for this. I play on my iPhone. I don’t have a computer, iPad, just my phone. If Apple pulled the game I couldn’t play. And yes, I have spent WAY more on this game than my phone. Work bought and pays for my phone but that’s not the point
I do not think Apple has thought this through. Are they prepared for the millions of emails across thousands of games from players saying I bought 10 of a 10% loot box and I did not get the item.
DB is nothing in the gaming world. The question is what does EA and Supercell do. DB will just do whatever the big companies do.
Isn't it possible to have the game data put through some kind of check to see the actual accounts of players reflect the disclosed odds?
Money resources in, virtual content out. Just balance the books, so to speak. DB would already be doing this for their own use.
My note and IPad mini both have the game installed running the same account. Dil bought through the Play store is available for use on the iPad. Portal draws from an event deal bought through the iPad can be used on the Note.
Point being, the real cash transaction is completely severed from the content payout. A new, much larger data transfer process would need to be put in place to implement your suggestion.
While I understand and agree with transparency for odds, I find the unintended consequences aspect fascinating.
If Apple were to pull an application, would the spenders just move to Google? A device to run the game is probably less than they've invested in the game itself.
And would it harm Apple's market share of the overall gaming community? The people who aren't activists could view it as getting caught in the middle and seek a provider such as Steam. They get all the benefits from Apple's stance without the risk.
A couple spenders might move to Google or Facebook. Most won't. Apple still has too large a user base for a game developer to ignore. And Apple has more to gain from the reputation here. Apple's pitch for the App store to users is that they police it. The app store is safe. There are no shady developers claiming A and selling you B like there is on the internet. If you buy through the App store, Apple protects you.
What about shuttles during events, do you think DB could get booted for these? We all know the displayed shuttle success percentages are inaccurate.
These have a chance to return items and claim to be enhanceable, thus purchasable, with in game currency, both by applying boosts and speeding up with dil.
Could somebody get fed up running 0/4 90+% shuttles during an event, track a hundred or two shuttles, show apple the consistently lower returns, and get the game booted? How is DB going to prove their innocence?
And there's another problem, we're put into a guilty by default stance proving innocence.
As we go on, I do begin to wonder if some marketing genius (^_^) was reading the news and thought this would be a great selling point, but Apple as a whole didn't actually think everything through.
Isn't it possible to have the game data put through some kind of check to see the actual accounts of players reflect the disclosed odds?
Money resources in, virtual content out. Just balance the books, so to speak. DB would already be doing this for their own use.
This is technically possible, but might not be in place. DB would have to write an API to query the database, and possibly rewrite or retag items so the could be counted, and would need a query-able log. There are also probably plenty of apps out there that would have to be almost-re-written from the ground up to provide accounting. Especially if you're getting what equates to an expendable item, what's the point of keeping track of it's history and why would you want to take on the accounting burden of logging the life cycle of millions or billions of ephemeral items?
Apologies if this has already been brought up, I did read through most of the thread, but stumbled across some interesting discussion on the arstechnica article that I wanted to raise here for other players thoughts.
What could be interesting with Apple's decision is that it may highlight a shady practice that some mobile game studios use to profile players and maximise spend through customised drop rates/special offers. The playing field is likely not level in many freemium games like STT.
I found this link interesting:
www.scientificrevenue.com/scientific-revenue-pricing-cloud
Being forced to advertise odds could either highlight that DB use this profiling practice OR they may decide to stop use it so all players see and get the same odds. That's if DB use this tactic at all.
Considering where profiling and user-adaptive drop rates could be in STT currently might explain much of the frustration and debates over the last 2 years. What if the following are based on user spend and spend habits:
- Locutus/Guinan drop rates.
- Event shuttle failure rates.
- Gold drops in standard pulls
- Dabo top shelf
Good point Admiral Pasty, and interesting SDK. I didn't know that level of screw you was offered as a service, and I hope you didn't just give DB a new idea and tool to use against us.
However, given DBs history and mishaps, I don't think they're using this or are competent enough to have implemented it yet.
Also, they don't have to declare individual drop rates, only rates of "types". They can still say the worst chance of packs have a 10% chance of dropping a legendary. They don't have to say this 5* crew has a .000001% chance of dropping, this 5* crew has a .03% chance of dropping, and this 5* ship schematic has a 3% chance of dropping. And don't have to say BTW we read your inventory so swapped drop rates between A and B for you.
And how are you going to catch mistakes or misleadings? Apple's not going to hire 1000 developers to comb through the code of every app and see if your presented evaluations are correct and accurate.
I'm sorry to say it, but until we get more clarification and see this in action, it looks like a mostly cosmetic move.
Edit: Or "Guaranteed event crew". As this is already classified as base Type in the game.
If I had to guess, I would suspect that the iOS client is on borrowed time. Many businesses are likely to try and live off other platform sales than modify their behavior for existing games. Apple will probably succeed given their market position, but the greater part of that change will be for new or relaunched games. I hope I’m wrong because I’ll have to find some other distraction if there’s no iOS client.
I can only speak for myself, but as an iOS customer I am thrilled at this change. It's about time that someone tried to rein in this type of sales behaviour.
The 'worst chance' packs are probably the best example of something that needs to be regulated, as the information assymetry present is enormous and the likely victims are all newer players who have even greater information deficits. And where these type of informational phenomena exist then we aren't in a free market situation, we are in a market failure position (free markets can only achieve the optimum outcome when everybody is equally informed).
However, given DBs history and mishaps, I don't think they're using this or are competent enough to have implemented it yet.
Also, they don't have to declare individual drop rates, only rates of "types". They can still say the worst chance of packs have a 10% chance of dropping a legendary. They don't have to say this 5* crew has a .000001% chance of dropping, this 5* crew has a .03% chance of dropping, and this 5* ship schematic has a 3% chance of dropping. And don't have to say BTW we read your inventory so swapped drop rates between A and B for you.
In my opinion the new Apple guidelines would force DB to display the drop rate for the certain advertised crew member in a "best chance" pack. So "best chance*" *1% drop rate. But I agree that this will be topic of lots of arguements. But the intended sense behind it should be exactly this.
No one is going to pull their apps off of the Apple store over this.
It’s too big of a market share and any developer who did pull it off would then be slammed by the media/social networks as proof that there is something shady about the game/company for not wanting to comply. This would then cause the other platforms to drop the game so as to not be associated with something being publicly criticized as predatory.
The gaming companies are going to comply purely to stay in business. It might mean they need to tighten their belts and get a grip on reality and actually show some morals, but they will continue.
In the long term, I don't think displaying the odds is going to affect anything.
Everyone already knows that the odds of getting anything good is very slim, but people keep doing it because they think "this time, I can beat the odds". "It's my turn to get lucky!"...
It's the same with any form of gambling. With card games or any kind of number lottery, anyone can figure out the odds if they can be bothered, but at the end of the day, the exact odds don't really matter. In fact, there wouldn't be any fun in winning if the odds were in your favour.
The odds of winning could be infinitesimal, but if enough people play, there will always be winners, and that motivates everyone else to keep playing, hoping that they will be the next winner.
In the long term, I don't think displaying the odds is going to affect anything.
Everyone already knows that the odds of getting anything good is very slim, but people keep doing it because they think "this time, I can beat the odds". "It's my turn to get lucky!"...
It's the same with any form of gambling. With card games or any kind of number lottery, anyone can figure out the odds if they can be bothered, but at the end of the day, the exact odds don't really matter. In fact, there wouldn't be any fun in winning if the odds were in your favour.
The odds of winning could be infinitesimal, but if enough people play, there will always be winners, and that motivates everyone else to keep playing, hoping that they will be the next winner.
True but some folks might have initial sticker shock and not start down the road of packs in the first place.... So yeah some people won't be warded off, but some will.
In any case, more honesty and transparency is good. (Dishonest 'transparency' leads to pitchforks.)
I don't think DB has the resources to fight it. After cutting so much staff, I'm guessing they can't afford a long, extended, expensive legal battle against Apple.
DB - Bug
Apple - Thanatos
Who do YOU see winning this fight?
DB will be forced to toe the line, or they will be done in the Apple store. And shortly thereafter in the Google Play store, and Zuckerfacebook will follow along, just to avoid any potential backlash.
So either DB will follow the rules, or we are about to see the end of STT (and DB)
Comments
What if DB says there's a 10% chance, but the crew is omitted, wrong crew is in place, or loot tables are messes up and it's really 0%, or 3%? Who carries the burden of proof, how is it achieved, and how is it handled if it gets updated mid-stream? What method will there be to determine that the declared rate is the actual presented rate?
And, as was mentioned, they may be able to get away with worst chance of packs saying 5% chance for 5*, 15% chance for 4*, 80% chance of something else.
These are some murky waters that are going to take a while to clear out, and you can darn well bet developers will look for creative ways to skirt the requirements.
Unless Apple is also spending millions of dollars to hire people whose sole job it is to check all the various games to test whether the reported percentages are correct or not, my guess is "almost none".
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Think the Play store and Steam will follow along, just to keep the event leaderboards fair?
I don t need anyone else to play my babysitter.
That's an awfully reductive and dismissive mischaracterization of the concerns and reasoning for this move on Apple's part. You can't make a responsible informed decision if you lack all the pertinent information. You may be perfectly contented with the results of the decisions you've made with the game to date--I have been myself--but that's not the issue.
Steam has just the lowest quality control ever concieved of. Just look at their Greenlight system (or whatever it's called). I'd be surprised if Steam raises even a finger: their approach is basically anarchy.
However if DB has to do it for one plaftorm they probably have to do it for all of them, unless they accept the game being different for Apple players.
I think he meant pull the app because Apple did even though Google, et al. didn't get the complaints. And no, I don't think there will be any proactive action or shared guilt like that. However, I do think they'll follow along and make similar guidelines if they see this getting any traction in the apple environment.
I also agree essentially nothing would probably happen on Steam.
But since all these run on a shared back end with the same assets behind the scenes, I think making the change that would affect one platform will automatically display on all the other. I think the way this game is designed DB would have to actively rewrite a LOT of code to discriminate in platforms.
I must admit, I'm surprised Apple jumped on the bandwagon over such irrelevant politicians making noise that would have just gone quiet when the new news cycle picked up.
Remember that Apple would like for some politicians to stop making so much news about their taxes
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/12/apple-now-requires-app-store-games-with-loot-boxes-to-list-odds/
While I understand and agree with transparency for odds, I find the unintended consequences aspect fascinating.
If Apple were to pull an application, would the spenders just move to Google? A device to run the game is probably less than they've invested in the game itself.
And would it harm Apple's market share of the overall gaming community? The people who aren't activists could view it as getting caught in the middle and seek a provider such as Steam. They get all the benefits from Apple's stance without the risk.
DB is nothing in the gaming world. The question is what does EA and Supercell do. DB will just do whatever the big companies do.
Money resources in, virtual content out. Just balance the books, so to speak. DB would already be doing this for their own use.
My note and IPad mini both have the game installed running the same account. Dil bought through the Play store is available for use on the iPad. Portal draws from an event deal bought through the iPad can be used on the Note.
Point being, the real cash transaction is completely severed from the content payout. A new, much larger data transfer process would need to be put in place to implement your suggestion.
A couple spenders might move to Google or Facebook. Most won't. Apple still has too large a user base for a game developer to ignore. And Apple has more to gain from the reputation here. Apple's pitch for the App store to users is that they police it. The app store is safe. There are no shady developers claiming A and selling you B like there is on the internet. If you buy through the App store, Apple protects you.
These have a chance to return items and claim to be enhanceable, thus purchasable, with in game currency, both by applying boosts and speeding up with dil.
Could somebody get fed up running 0/4 90+% shuttles during an event, track a hundred or two shuttles, show apple the consistently lower returns, and get the game booted? How is DB going to prove their innocence?
And there's another problem, we're put into a guilty by default stance proving innocence.
As we go on, I do begin to wonder if some marketing genius (^_^) was reading the news and thought this would be a great selling point, but Apple as a whole didn't actually think everything through.
This is technically possible, but might not be in place. DB would have to write an API to query the database, and possibly rewrite or retag items so the could be counted, and would need a query-able log. There are also probably plenty of apps out there that would have to be almost-re-written from the ground up to provide accounting. Especially if you're getting what equates to an expendable item, what's the point of keeping track of it's history and why would you want to take on the accounting burden of logging the life cycle of millions or billions of ephemeral items?
What could be interesting with Apple's decision is that it may highlight a shady practice that some mobile game studios use to profile players and maximise spend through customised drop rates/special offers. The playing field is likely not level in many freemium games like STT.
I found this link interesting:
www.scientificrevenue.com/scientific-revenue-pricing-cloud
Being forced to advertise odds could either highlight that DB use this profiling practice OR they may decide to stop use it so all players see and get the same odds. That's if DB use this tactic at all.
Considering where profiling and user-adaptive drop rates could be in STT currently might explain much of the frustration and debates over the last 2 years. What if the following are based on user spend and spend habits:
- Locutus/Guinan drop rates.
- Event shuttle failure rates.
- Gold drops in standard pulls
- Dabo top shelf
However, given DBs history and mishaps, I don't think they're using this or are competent enough to have implemented it yet.
Also, they don't have to declare individual drop rates, only rates of "types". They can still say the worst chance of packs have a 10% chance of dropping a legendary. They don't have to say this 5* crew has a .000001% chance of dropping, this 5* crew has a .03% chance of dropping, and this 5* ship schematic has a 3% chance of dropping. And don't have to say BTW we read your inventory so swapped drop rates between A and B for you.
And how are you going to catch mistakes or misleadings? Apple's not going to hire 1000 developers to comb through the code of every app and see if your presented evaluations are correct and accurate.
I'm sorry to say it, but until we get more clarification and see this in action, it looks like a mostly cosmetic move.
Edit: Or "Guaranteed event crew". As this is already classified as base Type in the game.
Check out our website to find out more:
http://tenforwardloungers.freecluster.eu
The 'worst chance' packs are probably the best example of something that needs to be regulated, as the information assymetry present is enormous and the likely victims are all newer players who have even greater information deficits. And where these type of informational phenomena exist then we aren't in a free market situation, we are in a market failure position (free markets can only achieve the optimum outcome when everybody is equally informed).
In my opinion the new Apple guidelines would force DB to display the drop rate for the certain advertised crew member in a "best chance" pack. So "best chance*" *1% drop rate. But I agree that this will be topic of lots of arguements. But the intended sense behind it should be exactly this.
It’s too big of a market share and any developer who did pull it off would then be slammed by the media/social networks as proof that there is something shady about the game/company for not wanting to comply. This would then cause the other platforms to drop the game so as to not be associated with something being publicly criticized as predatory.
The gaming companies are going to comply purely to stay in business. It might mean they need to tighten their belts and get a grip on reality and actually show some morals, but they will continue.
Everyone already knows that the odds of getting anything good is very slim, but people keep doing it because they think "this time, I can beat the odds". "It's my turn to get lucky!"...
It's the same with any form of gambling. With card games or any kind of number lottery, anyone can figure out the odds if they can be bothered, but at the end of the day, the exact odds don't really matter. In fact, there wouldn't be any fun in winning if the odds were in your favour.
The odds of winning could be infinitesimal, but if enough people play, there will always be winners, and that motivates everyone else to keep playing, hoping that they will be the next winner.
True but some folks might have initial sticker shock and not start down the road of packs in the first place.... So yeah some people won't be warded off, but some will.
In any case, more honesty and transparency is good. (Dishonest 'transparency' leads to pitchforks.)
You mean "DB transparency"
Captain level 50, approaching 100 immortals
All you need to know about Disruptor Beam
DB - Bug
Apple - Thanatos
Who do YOU see winning this fight?
DB will be forced to toe the line, or they will be done in the Apple store. And shortly thereafter in the Google Play store, and Zuckerfacebook will follow along, just to avoid any potential backlash.
So either DB will follow the rules, or we are about to see the end of STT (and DB)