Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 549 - 532 Precision Fishing

Chapter 549: Chapter 532 Precision Fishing

The official stance on minimum probability requirements is clear, Nitiandang couldn’t possibly disregard corresponding laws and regulations to create a completely barren gacha system.

However, the order of "Conservation of Luck" adjustments can cause significant changes in player psychology.

This is the difference between "Morning Three and Evening Four" and "Four in the morning and three in the evening."

For monkeys, they can accept four fruits in the morning and three in the evening, but they cannot accept three in the morning and four in the evening.

For players of pay-to-win games, it’s quite the opposite, most can accept moving from non-EU to EU, but not from EU to non-EU.

Starting off with rapid deliveries, the players may be happy, but not excessively so.

But later when the deliveries stop, thinking back to the good luck they had before, many players’ negative emotions will double.

On the contrary, starting off with no deliveries can depress players, but subsequent rapid deliveries leave them with nothing but happy feelings.

Gu Fan’s method aimed to exploit this psychology, creating an illusion at the beginning to inflate their expectations.

Once the players start to feel good about themselves, eager to smash their pots and sell their iron to dive into the 648 pool with great enthusiasm, reality would ruthlessly shatter their expectations.

The more they pull, the worse their luck gets, the worse their luck gets.

At this point, the negative emotions generated would naturally soar.

In Lilith’s view, from the standpoint of negative emotion generation, there’s nothing wrong with this approach; it indeed could harvest more negative emotion value from players than conventional gacha mechanics.

"But even so, won’t the players eventually find out?" Lilith raised another question.

It wouldn’t be hard to deceive players in the early stages with this system.

But eventually, players would start to sense something was amiss. They might not be able to directly check the backend code, as this is an online game and the gacha data are all on the server, but it’s possible that some rich man might do experiments.

Through analyzing the statistical changes in thousands of gacha pulls, sooner or later players would become aware of this mechanism.

Gu Fan spread his arms and said, "Of course players will find out, but what of it?

"At least in the initial few months, players won’t find out, and even if they suspect something, they will hardly have sufficient resources to verify and come up with solid proof.

"During this time, the negative emotions generated by the players are real.

"As long as we have significant initial influence and a large number of incoming players, then the negative emotions harvested will be quite substantial.

"A few months later, even if the players do find out, so what?

"They will crunch the numbers and at most come up with two conclusions: Conclusion 1, our game consistently lowers the odds with every 1000 pulls cycle, reducing probability as one pulls further; Conclusion 2, our gacha mechanism has an overall lower draw rate than other games on the market.

"Generally, the combined draw rate for other games is between 1.6% and 3%, whereas ours is only 1.5%, with a base draw rate of only 0.5%, which is barely the minimum required by the officials.

"President Li, do you think players will have any positive emotions when they arrive at these two conclusions?

"If players don’t feel any positivity, then what does it matter if it’s exposed? We’ve already made a killing by then."

Lilith pondered seriously and then slowly nodded, "Hmm, you’re right! Even if the true probabilities are discovered, it wouldn’t spell disaster, but could instead make players even more infuriated.

"After all, our game’s combined draw rate is verifiably low.

"Alright, let’s tentatively finalize the gacha system, I’ve noted it down.

"What else?"

Gu Fan hurriedly said, "Please wait, President Li, I’m not finished yet.

"To better complement this gacha system, we must consider another issue carefully – that is the output of the in-game currency.

"It’s about how many gacha pulls a player can save up in a month without spending any real money.

"This figure will also affect how the gacha system makes players feel.

"Let me give you a simple example.

"According to our preliminary data, the combined deliverability rate for 1000 pulls is 1.5%, meaning 1000 pulls yield 15 golden items, assuming a 40% rate for normal residents, that is, 1000 pulls yield 9 characters from the current UP pool.

"Given that the probability decreases, the distribution would likely be:

"The first 300 pulls yield 5 UP characters, the next 300 pulls yield 3, and the last 400 pulls only yield 1 UP character.

"Since it’s a pay-to-win game, there should be a concept of ’star upgrades,’ when players repeatedly draw the same character, they can ’upgrade’ their original character to increase its power.

"Current games have systems with a limit of four full stars or six full stars.

"President Li, with your brilliant insight, you must realize how the specifics of the full star value, as well as how much in-game currency players can obtain through regular mechanisms and exchange for pulls per month, will likely influence the actual experience of gacha for the players.

"To give an extreme example, if it’s four full stars and players can securely obtain 300 pulls every month through the game, it means they can get a full star UP pool character completely free monthly, then they’d have practically no reason to spend money, and this character would be essentially free, rendering our set probabilities meaningless.

"Can something given for free cause any negative emotions?"

Lilith had a realization, "Hmm, right! It seems we must also consider the full star numeric issue.

"Forget it, I won’t ponder over this, just tell me the solution, and I’ll decide if there’s any rationale to it."

Clearly, at the moment, Lilith’s brain was somewhat overloaded, struggling to put more thought into this.

Gu Fan continued, "The answer is simple.

"Every month, we give players a fixed chance of about 100 gacha pulls in the game."

"At the same time, we set the full stars for all characters to ’Five-star full stars,’ meaning players need to draw six identical characters to reach ’full stars’ status."

"Based on a 1.5% comprehensive rate and a 60% correct rate, players would need approximately 666 pulls to draw six characters."

"But it’s important to note that the earlier rates are higher, so with the 100 free pulls we give players, there’s a high probability they’ll draw two characters, reaching a ’one-star’ status."

"Our star level arrangement becomes very clear:

"One-star, we give a rather basic value increase.

"Two-star, we provide a substantial value increase.

"Three-star, we introduce a special mechanic change, which could significantly optimize the character’s handling or comfort, or unlock more team-up options."

"Four Stars, we give another basic value increase.

"Five-star full stars, we add yet another special mechanic change."

Lilith’s eyes lit up, "Eh? This arrangement is brilliant! It’s like a carrot on a stick!"

This sort of star level setup is clearly fishing for players.

In the ideal scenario, a player enters a new card pool starting from zero with the 100 free pulls from the game.

After pulling, the rate is high, averaging 50 pulls or even less to snag an UP pool character, not to mention the skewed regular Five-stars.

At this point, he looks at the freely given one-star character, then at the star level enhancements:

One-star is just a trifling mosquito leg boost.

But two-star offers a massive increase, and three-star brings a significant mechanic change.

While still basking in the feeling of good luck, he’s very likely to make this decision:

At least get the three-star, right?

Just two more to go!

And based on past experience, 100 pulls could net two, which translates to roughly two bundles of 648 for 100 pulls.

Many a rich man would be tempted then.

So they recharge and pull, one silent pull at a time.

When rich men have actually recharged three or even four bundles of 648 and only then reached three stars, some of the more rational ones stop.

But there are others who, looking at the massive upgrade to five-star, fall into contemplation again.

The 200 pulls previously spent on the game seem unlucky. But luck couldn’t be bad forever, right?

I must say, the allure of the five-star upgrade is too tempting, and the gap from three-star to five-star is only two characters.

Maybe recharge a bit more?

What if the Conservation of Luck kicks in, and my luck improves?

Then a small portion of the rich men start to get carried away, fiercely recharging bundles of 648, only to be met with silent pulls again.

This time, it’d probably take five, six, or even more bundles of 648 to net the last two.

Looking back after it’s all over, the rich man might be on the verge of spitting blood.

Isn’t that where the negative emotions start piling up?

In fact, considering the normal gacha mechanics, experiencing regret after getting carried away isn’t uncommon.

But the system proposed by Gu Fan clearly magnifies this sort of regret.

It’s a scam! A blatant scam!

Of course, there are also less than ideal scenarios, such as when a player has already made 200 or 300 pulls before entering the card pool.

Then regardless of whether he recharges or not, his luck will noticeably worsen.

Even with the free 100 pulls, players enter the card pool expecting to draw two UP characters.

In the end, they might get only one, or even none at all.

That’s infuriating too!

If they get upset and recharge, it only adds to the frustration.

But just then, President Li posed a new question.

"Hmm? Wait a minute.

"What if players simply turn into TunTunShu?

"Based on current expectations, roughly 666 pulls could get a full stars character. What if a player waits half a year before pulling?

"Isn’t that also a common occurrence in pay-to-win gacha games?"