Getting frustrated at the super low payouts of decent cards in Fatasica? Lets take a closer look at the numbers.
It's worth noting that Fantasica has been evolving and will continue to change over time, so these numbers will change with time and reflect only the current state of the game at the time of this writing.
I'll be using the term 'total chance' to describe the generic overall cumulative odds for the card drawings, but lets all avoid having a Gambler's Fallacy here and remember that odds are independent of one another and don't really increase with repeated drawings (i.e. you will win at any game of chance eventually, but there is never a guarantee that it will be on the next attempt).
As with any CCG, Fantasica players need to get the rarest and most powerful cards to be successful. These cards range from 1 to 7 stars. In the current game, 5-star cards are too weak for most events and weaker cards are virtually worthless.
The freemium currency used in Fantasica is called fanta and players get roughly 100 fanta per US $1 spent.
We'll start with the normal card packs that are always available.
Brave Packs are the only free card pack available. As expected the payout for these packs is rather dismal. The Fatasica Wiki estimates the odds per card to be approximately 5:6 for a 1-star, 1:6 for a 2-star, 1:333 for a 3-star, and extremely low for a 4-star (I drew two 4-star cards in the last year). These cards are useless aside from leveling up your better cards.
Premium Packs come in a few different sizes ranging from one card (300 fanta) to fourteen cards (3000 fanta). According to info posted on the Japanese Wiki (if someone has the link send it to me please -- to the post not the wiki ~_^) the cards drawn are 58% 3-stars, 40% 4-stars, 1.3% 5-stars, and 0.2% 6-stars. And, as many have complained, that last 0.5% are 2-stars. This means a player spending 3000 fanta ($30) will get fourteen cards and still only have a 'total chance' of 20% for a 5-star and 2.8% for a 6-star!
Events give players the chance to grind for rewards and purchase special event packs. While the top players take home 6-star and 7-star cards the rewards most players can reasonably earn are limited to 4-star and occasionally 5-star cards.
Event Premium Packs are much more expensive than regular Premium Packs (3000 fanta for seven cards) and offer the same payout rates, but limit the cards received to only event cards.
Step Up Packs consist of a special chain of card draws where the payout increases each time the player buys another pack. The price of the packs and the number of cards received increase with each step. Players plateau at Step 7 and are then allowed to repeatedly draw from Step 6 or Step 7 without limit.
| This Step | Total | ||||
| Step | Cards | 6-Star Odds | Fanta | 6-Star Odds | Fanta Spent |
| 1 | 1 | 0.20% | 100 | 0.20% | 100 |
| 2 | 2 | 0.40% | 300 | 1.00% | 400 |
| 3 | 3 | 0.62% | 500 | 2.86% | 900 |
| 4 | 4 | 0.88% | 1,000 | 6.38% | 1,900 |
| 5 | 5 | 1.26% | 2,000 | 12.68% | 3,900 |
| 6 | 7 | 1.66% | 3,000 | 24.30% | 6,900 |
| 7 | 12 | 2.00% | 5,000 | 48.30% | 11,900 |
Purchasing steps 1 through 7 would cost a player 11,900 fanta ($119) and have a total chance of ~48% for getting a single 6-star along the way. In my experience (echoed by others in the forums) it took repeated draws at Step 7 to receive even a single 6-star card.
Dream Chests are a diabolical beast where players are given a pool of approximately 1200 4-stars, 200 5-stars, 10 6-stars, and a single 7-star card to draw from. Some special events modify the amounts of cards, such as the Season 2 Dream Packs that contained three 7-star cards, however the overall odds stay roughly the same. Players draw cards from this pool at 300 fanta ($3) per card which removes the drawn card from the pool thereby increasing their odds of hitting the jackpot, or at least that is the claim...
Many players (myself included) have reported getting strings of hundreds of 4-stars, so lets take a detailed look at the odds:
| Cards in Pool | 6-Star Odds | 7-Star Odds | Cards Drawn | Fanta Spent | $ Spent |
| 1411 | 0.71% | 0.07% | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1211 | 0.83% | 0.08% | 200 | 60,000 | $600 |
| 911 | 1.10% | 0.11% | 500 | 150,000 | $1500 |
| 411 | 2.43% | 0.24% | 1,000 | 300,000 | $3,000 |
| 77 | 12.99% | 1.30% | 1334 | 400,200 | $4,002 |
| 0 | n/a | n/a | 1411 | 423,300 | $4,233 |
Even after spending thousands of dollars the odds are still rather terrible. The only reliable means of getting the 6-star and 7-star cards from a Dream Chest are to empty it completely with an estimated retail value of over four thousand dollars! @_@
At the end of the day the purpose of every freemium app and CCG is to make money and by that metric Fantasica (and many others) are very successful. However, the use of hidden odds and requiring players to spend hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars to participate strikes a nerve with many people.
Odds information collected from the Fantasica Wiki, Japanese Wiki, personal experience, and the unofficial forums.
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment