Man spends 6,000$ on microtransactions in a single day

[Zontar]

So a man trying to get an item that has a drop rate of 3% from a micro-transaction purchase ended up spending 6,000$US in over 2200 attempts to get the item he wanted.

Something to note is how stupendously unlucky this man is. With a drop rate of 3%, at 2200 consecutive failed attempts to get the item, his odds of getting that in a row is 7.9e-30 percent, or 0.0000000000000000000000000000079%. That's half way to being a statistically impossibility.

 

[BrawlMan]

He could have done so many other useful things with that money. He better be rich, otherwise it's on him. I would watch the video, but I am not a huge fan on AlphaOmegaSin. Looks like Satan was absolutely right about Freemium games They're not really free.

 

[DoPo]

With a drop rate of 3%, at 2200 consecutive failed attempts to get the item, his odds of getting that in a row is 7.9e-30 percent, or 0.0000000000000000000000000000079%. That's half way to being a statistically impossibility.

Gods...I double checked the maths just to make sure and that is correct. Well, actually, I think the percentage conversion is two orders of magnitude off (one extra zero). Or rather 7.9e-30 is NOT the percentage - it's the actual chance, the percentage is 7.9e-28 which is 0.00000000000000000000000000079%. On the other hand, I don't think it really matters in terms of how awfully low the chance is.

Well, I don't know about you, but I think...or at least I hope, if it was me, I'd sort of get the hint that I may be unlucky after the first, I dunno - 1000 tries.

 

[Pseudonym]

Why? Why would anyone pay that kind of money for microtransactions. Do you not realise by the time that you have spent 100 dollars that you have a problem and that you need to stop playing this specific game and similar games?

With a drop rate of 3%, at 2200 consecutive failed attempts to get the item, his odds of getting that in a row is 7.9e-30 percent, or 0.0000000000000000000000000000079%. That's half way to being a statistically impossibility.

Gods...I double checked the maths just to make sure and that is correct. Well, actually, I think the percentage conversion is two orders of magnitude off (one extra zero). Or rather 7.9e-30 is NOT the percentage - it's the actual chance, the percentage is 7.9e-28 which is 0.00000000000000000000000000079%. On the other hand, I don't think it really matters in terms of how awfully low the chance is.

Well, I don't know about you, but I think...or at least I hope, if it was me, I'd sort of get the hint that I may be unlucky after the first, I dunno - 1000 tries.

That sounds fallacious. Your chances are independent. At any point you have a chance of 3% to get that item on your next attempt. Though he should have certainly stopped.

And having consulted my computer after my calculator told me the guys chances to be this unlucky were 0 (only 10 decimals there), I think you are right about the percentage being off by a factor of 100.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Wait wait wait wait!

Fee to pay games openly lie about your chances for random drops because each failed drop is a profit for them?

Come on! Its not the exact same, but I've played XComm Enemy Unknown, had a dead to rights shot with a Sniper with 100% chance of hitting and still missed. Same in Chaos Gate, Valkyria Chronicles, etc...I've had mans in Civ V with a 100% chance of a sweeping victory get their asses handed to them.
Never take it as read that the in-game GUI percentage is the same as the scripted code percentage, especially when there is real money involved.

 

[DoPo]

That sounds fallacious. Your chances are independent. At any point you have a chance of 3% to get that item on your next attempt. Though he should have certainly stopped.

It may be fallacious but it was also the joke.

Still, assuming I had lost 1000 independent 3% chances, I'd be inclined to to think that the RNG is either broken or deliberately non-uniform.

 

[Pseudonym]

That sounds fallacious. Your chances are independent. At any point you have a chance of 3% to get that item on your next attempt. Though he should have certainly stopped.

It may be fallacious but it was also the joke.

Still, assuming I had lost 1000 independent 3% chances, I'd be inclined to to think that the RNG is either broken or deliberately non-uniform.

Oh, sorry, I didn't get it.

And yeah, I'd probably come to that conclusion as well. I had my computer do some further math. If everyone on earth tried 2200 times to win a 3% chance item the chances are overwelmingly such (around 0.999999999999999999944676) that every single person would win at least one time. So this might have been some kind of computer error. Or maybe RNJesus just didn't like the guy. Things which are very unlikely still happen.

 

[CritialGaming]

What I wanna know is, did he at least get any other really cool or good things for that money? OR was the one item, the ONLY item?

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

This has me wondering if we might see court cases about things like this. If it can be proven what claims to be a 3% chance isnt actually one when there are microtransactions involved, shouldnt that be illegal?


Just a theoretical though because the man could be unlucky.

 

[Silvanus]

I think the man may have had somewhat skewed priorities.

An update: after a backlash, Cygames is apparently going to be instituting a cap [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-09/-6-065-hunt-for-blonde-avatar-exposes-dark-side-of-japan-gaming], so that people cannot have over 300 unsuccessful attempts (about $800).

...Also, according to Bloomberg, this event (the $6000 one) happened during a special event in which the chances are doubled. 3% is the regular, non-event drop-rate, so it should have been 6%. I don't think Cygames have been entirely honest.

 

[Zhukov]

Was the guy financially well off?

I wanna know so I can decide whether to feel jealous of someone who can afford to blow 6K on bloody video game microtransactions or to pity someone who blew their savings on bloody video game microtransactions.

 

[HybridChangeling]

I want to go full Ian Malcolm on this thread with Gamblers Ruin and chaos and uh uh uh uh uh drops of water, but there's another thing to talk about.

The fact that before this incident these games didn't have a cap. That makes them theoretically as bad as gambling in their own right. With little to no regulation, kids and adults have been spending unprecedented amounts of cash in these games. Now that is their freedom, but shame on these corporations for not even warning the player and for not having a cap. If a guy is sitting at the slots for days he will eventually be asked if he wants to stop or something like that, but with this all they care about is the money trickling in. As well as that double percentage still failing, which is just nearly impossible without cheating on the games part. I usually don't use such strong language, but free to play mobile game makers are 90% SCUM.

 

[Lightspeaker]

What I wanna know is, did he at least get any other really cool or good things for that money? OR was the one item, the ONLY item?

I've played several games like this and I'm a little familiar with Granblue Fantasy though I don't play it myself; some people I know do, however. (Incidentally they've also complained about the terribly low rates in this particular game.)

Personally my current poison is Fate/Grand Order.

Anyway...how these games work for acquiring stuff is what is referred to as a 'gacha' system which comes from gachapon. Its a very common part of these kinds of Japanese-originating (as well as many western originating) mobile games. Effectively it works the same as a blind box system; gachapon originally refers to vending machines that drop little capsules with a toy in them, and what you get from them is basically random. The same applies to these systems. You always get SOMETHING dropped, but the percentage chance of good stuff is low.

Frequently there are two gacha systems in most of these games. There'll be a free version which you get some kind of in-game points for (typically tons of these points so you can roll a lot) that'll get you the lowest tier of stuff and have a small chance of getting mid-tier things. And there'll be a 'premium' gacha which is paid for via premium currency or, frequently, tickets that they give out for events in small amounts.

For example: In FGO the two main systems of currency are 'Friend Points' and Quartz. You use FP to roll on one gacha which can give you stuff rated between 1 star and 3 stars and you use Quartz (which you can acquire small amounts of for free as you go along and through events or outright purchase in bulk) or tickets that you can sometimes earn to roll on the premium gacha, which guarantees you at least a 3 star and have a chance of a 4 or 5 star.

I have no idea what specifically the Granblue Fantasy system is but its likely to be something similar. So in short: yes he'd almost certainly have got a ton of other stuff (most likely some really good stuff too with that sheer number of rolls). But a lot was likely to be useless to him due to duplicates or stuff like that.

Further reading:
http://www.serkantoto.com/2012/02/21/gacha-social-games/

 

[PsychicTaco115]

Some people ruin their lives with alcohol, others with drugs

This guy did it trying to get a waifu (essentially)

At least he can still sell his kidney to pay off his debt

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

Well, I don't tell people what to do with their money.

But I'd advise not to play chance based anything if your luck is that horrible.

 

[CritialGaming]

SNIP

Yeah I have played gacha games. MY first one was a game called Brave Frontier, which was fun. Then I got hooked to Dragonball Z Dokkan Battle. I got so hooked that I played both the english game and the Japanese game. I probably drop 150 bucks on the game over six months. And too much I was disgusted that I had paid that much money on a fucking phone game. I stopped buying shit in the game, but I continued to play for months before bored got me.

 

[DoPo]

...Also, according to Bloomberg, this event (the $6000 one) happened during a special event in which the chances are doubled. 3% is the regular, non-event drop-rate, so it should have been 6%.

If we take that number, then here is the actual chance of failing a 6% change 2200 consecutive times (assuming a fair uniform distribution):
7.6081299e-60

This expressed as a percentage is 7.6e-58%. Before I expand it, here is something fun I wanted to throw in as well - the chance of winning the lottery 6/49 is 1 in 13,983,816 which expressed as a percentage is 7.2e-6%, while 6/99 is 1 in 1,120,529,256 or 8.9e-8%. Now, with that in mind, let's just show all of these expanded

0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000076% - chance of failing at 6% 2200 times
0.00000000000000000000000000079% - chance of failing at 3% 2200 times
0.000000089% - chance of winning a 6/99 lottery
0.0000072% - chance of winning a 6/49 lottery

I can't be bothered right now, but it'd be fun to try and find how many lottery tickets do $6000 buy you, find what's the lottery around where the guy was and if it would have been a better bet to just go for the lottery instead. OK, the answer would be "no", but at least looking at the statistics would have been interesting.

 

[Czann]

Some people spent $30,000 in golf or fishing gear. Cars? Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds, of dollars to have a tiny collection.

$6,000 is small stuff.

 

[Fappy]

Tying random drops to microtransactions is one of the greediest things I've ever heard of. Fuck this idiot for supporting such a horrendous business model.