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

[CritialGaming]

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.

The difference there, is that those things are tangible physical items. This is bits of code. He paid 6000 bucks for literally nothing. When that game shuts down, he will have nothing to show for it.

Now you could argue that he paid for fun, for the experience. Like someone would for a nice vacation. Again though, with paying for an experience or vacation, he could get EXACTLY what he wanted.

Here he paid in the hopes that he got what he want, and he got nothing. Basically this is gambling. And the house beat him. HARD. The only real comparison is gambling in this situation.

 

[Denamic]

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.

Dunno about the other games, but xcom has a semi-random chance manipulation kind of system. For example, if you hit a lot of shots, future shots have a slightly lower chance to hit. And if you miss a lot, you have a greater chance to hit. Also, Valkyria Chronicles doesn't use a percentage based system.

 

[DoPo]

what was the worth of the drop he was aiming for.

I'll assume the answer is "nowhere near $6000" but I don't know this for a fact.

 

[K12]

Very unlikely things do happen but with those kinds of odds I'm willing to bet that his chances were actually 0 in the specific way he was approaching the problem (like reloading a failed shot in Xcom:Enemy Unknown doesn't actually give you an extra chance to hit it just replays your miss), or there was some kind of bug.

The developers really should just give him the character anyway but if it turns out there was a bug involved they should give him the character AND refund his money.

Ignoring the money for a second, can you imagine the psychology of someone just sitting there for hours on end constantly buying the same loot crate (or whatever) over and over again and constantly failing? I've grinded for rare items in games before (costly only my time btw) but I wouldn't make several thousand attempts in a single night!

I'd be interested to see if this guy has a general gambling problem or impulse-control disorder of whether this is the only area in which he acts like this.

 

[Czann]

Now you could argue that he paid for fun, for the experience. Like someone would for a nice vacation. Again though, with paying for an experience or vacation, he could get EXACTLY what he wanted.

Here he paid in the hopes that he got what he want, and he got nothing. Basically this is gambling. And the house beat him. HARD. The only real comparison is gambling in this situation.

I can't disagree with this. The house may even be (and probably are) cheating. But still, as long as it is not addiction, gambling can be hobby as any other too.

 

[CaitSeith]

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.

Bad comparison. Those are direct purchases examples, and this is more like gambling to get a figurine prize (and I'm not sure if he even got it after unanticipatedly spending the $6,000).

 

[DoPo]

I'm willing to bet that his chances were actually 0 in the specific way he was approaching the problem (like reloading a failed shot in Xcom:Enemy Unknown doesn't actually give you an extra chance to hit it just replays your miss)

How would you know what's "the better way" of approaching winning a random[footnote]as far as you were told[/footnote] reward? Isn't it just clicking or tapping on something on the screen and you either get the reward or not? In XCOM the reload doesn't give you an extra roll, sure, but you still have control over the RNG result and you can still achieve a better outcome through saving and reloading. How would you do something similar with opening rewards? You have no control and no means of knowing what influences the RNG, either.

 

[K12]

I'm willing to bet that his chances were actually 0 in the specific way he was approaching the problem (like reloading a failed shot in Xcom:Enemy Unknown doesn't actually give you an extra chance to hit it just replays your miss)

How would you know what's "the better way" of approaching winning a random[footnote]as far as you were told[/footnote] reward? Isn't it just clicking or tapping on something on the screen and you either get the reward or not? In XCOM the reload doesn't give you an extra roll, sure, but you still have control over the RNG result and you can still achieve a better outcome through saving and reloading. How would you do something similar with opening rewards? You have no control and no means of knowing what influences the RNG, either.

I don't know enough about the game to be confident about any of my random guesses but there are lots of different ways to randomise something so that he wouldn't have gotten a fresh 6% chance each time he made a new purchase, like resetting the number when entering a new area or by leaving a reentering an NPC vendor dialogue and so on. Those would all be really shit design decisions and the poor guy couldn't possibly have known what he was doing wrong. Or there was a bug which would be ever worse. Or maybe he was the wrong level or class or something, I have no idea.

I think when we're talking about odds of more than an octillion to one, it's far more likely that someone has fucked up somewhere, either the player, or the coder or the designer.

 

[Captain Marvelous_v1legacy]

That. Is. Impressive. The most I've ever spent on in game purchases is $30 in Blacklight Retribution. What item was he trying to get that's worth $6,000?

 

[Scarim Coral]

Source- http://www.destructoid.com/japanese-man-spends-6-065-on-mobile-game-in-one-night-347853.phtml

I guess this is a fine example on the whole when "freemiun" or "microtraction" goes too far!

 

[Elfgore]

It's times like these that I recall that episode of South Park involving free-to-play games. A majority of people don't spend a cent or at the most like ten bucks. Then a minority spends a couple grand on it.

Plus that whole bonus where the character jumped up three percent is pretty intoxicating.

Edit: Just want to add, I just watched a Youtuber spend about four to five hundred pounds in about five minutes. Let that sink in for ya.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

...well that's one way to double down. Normally when I don't get an RNG drop I just quit trying after the 5th attempt.

Unless it's like a 90% drop chance. Then I continue out of spite, because like hell RNGesus is going to fuck me that way.

 

[Elijin]

ITT: Gambling remains gambling. But this time its different and special because its a mobile game and microtransactions? Except not really, because gambling remains gambling.

 

[Elijin]

And CoC update confirmation results in double posts!

 

[veloper]

The company should have made the drop rate a flat 0% (without telling anyone of course). Then they could have made more than $6000 of this fool. The sky is the limit.

 

[LordLundar]

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.

And you would be wrong because of the gambler's fallacy. In this case it's a confusion between the percent chance and the "a in b" odds, in this case 3 in 100. With the latter example it's a guarantee that within the selected number of draws you will get the result you're after, so a failed result only increases your chance of a subsequent successful one. The percent chance however is not affected by the previous draws so whether it's the first or one hundredth draw you still have the same percent chance.

There is also the issue that the percent chance listed is an overall average of results, not a guarantee. While this guy did 2200 draws to get what he wanted, this is only a part of the hundred of thousands of draws per day by thousands of other players. So while his results were much lower than the average, other people were far more fortunate and got it first time, maintaining the average.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Will he get his mother to call the people and tell them it was a mistake, and the he stole her details?

 

[DoPo]

And you would be wrong because of the gambler's fallacy. In this case it's a confusion between the percent chance and the "a in b" odds, in this case 3 in 100. With the latter example it's a guarantee that within the selected number of draws you will get the result you're after, so a failed result only increases your chance of a subsequent successful one. The percent chance however is not affected by the previous draws so whether it's the first or one hundredth draw you still have the same percent chance.

Yes, I know that, however, if 1000 3% tries do not even yield a single success[footnote]let alone the 30 there should have been on average[footnote]Or even the 60 that there should have actually been, as it was a 6% chance[/footnote][/footnote] then it doesn't seem like the chance really was 3% or the RNG could be really bad. If you're hitting such a long "dry" stretch, it's a good indication that the RNG be broken.

This isn't actually the case - there are certain properties that pRNGs need to conform to and we can know if they are wrong or not. It's hard, true, as they might malfunction on, like, the 10th million iteration of spewing random numbers but we can still observe and determine that.

There is also the issue that the percent chance listed is an overall average of results, not a guarantee.

No, that is incorrect. Unless you have a different source of information, the chance listed was at 3% and for that day it was, in fact, doubled. This is the guarantee. Or at least what you're promised - whether or not the actual chances were 3% (or 6%) is not easy to know - it is entirely possible that the chances were 2% and were unchanged by the promotion.

So while his results were much lower than the average

Much, much, much, much, much lower than average, yes. One could say, almost unrealistically so. Yes, it is possible for that to happen, however, the odds are so extremely low that it warrants suspicion. Especially in this context - the company explicitly profits from players losing on the 3% (or 6%) chance. If the chances were fudged in some way, then that's sort of criminal in some places in the world.

other people were far more fortunate and got it first time, maintaining the average.

Prove it, then.

 

[Nazulu]

That's a whale if I ever saw one! Well, heard of one.

I don't believe I've spent that much on games in my entire life!