Gacha Probabilities - June 30 - July 3

The results are in from the June 30 - July 3 Double 5-star Chance Gacha Event! If you participated, thank you for contributing to the survey (created by 小為) to provide the Line Rangers player community with helpful information.

The Results

Our friends at LINE Rangers 台灣社團 have concluded their survey once the event finished and they were able to collect 329 sets of data from participants, a total of 3449 results (raw data is here) from Gacha. Results were:

• 3★%: 1008 (29.23%)
• 4★%: 1001 (29.02%)
• 5★%: 1440 (41.75%)

This 5 star result is very similar to what the previous results were from their mid-June study which were:

• 3★%: 30.56%
• 4★%: 21.55%
• 5★%: 47.89%

The Analysis

Authors 小為 and 楊濟安 of LINE Rangers 台灣社團 posted this new article about their findings with some more information and analysis on the numbers. Contained within this box is their article interpreted in English. 

The results being 3★ 29%, 4★ 29% and 5★ 42%, by lumping the 3★ and 4★ odds together (an average together of 58% of the samples), we can say that the Gacha is only slightly biased towards 3 and 4★.

Now let's move on to some more in-depth useful information. 

1. How many times do you need to play to receive one super ranger? 

  - The authors defined super ranger as one of the ten 5★ rangers that everyone typically wants to get: KSM, Susu, Cherina, Luis, Hitman, Prince James, Dwight, Dumpy, Dancer King Boss (DKB), Hip Hop Brown. There are a total of 24 5★ rangers on the roster now (Ola is no longer obtainable). Let us assume that the odds of each ranger are the same within their star grade. The chance of you receiving one of these shiny 10 rangers is 10/24 * 41.75% = 17.40% during the event. You'll need 100/17.40=5.75 spins of the Gacha on average before you can expect to receive one of the 10 super desirable rangers. 

2. How much do I need to spend on average to get a level 80 Susu?

  - For this question, we're going to have to assume again that the chances to receive each of the 5-star rangers are equal.

   Susu is 1 out of 24 of the available 5★ rangers. Multiply 1/24 by our 41.75% to obtain 5★ and you'll get a 1.74% to receive Susu, which will take approximately 57.5 Gacha spins for 1 Susu. You need 5 Susus to max out so that means you actually need about 287.5 spins.

    Well, 287.5 spins means you have to play the 5+1 48 times (4800 rubies). I don't know how much they charge all the other regions in the world but in US Dollars on the Android Google Play market during the Ruby Event we can get 494 rubies for roughly $49. In order to get 4800 rubies, we'd have to buy almost 10 packs, which costs $491 USD! It's possible that you get unlucky and have to spend more, but there are those who scored Susu on their first few spins. The average is simply for illustrative purposes.

    That said, I sincerely hope that if you were aiming to get Susu, that you did all your Gachas during this past event because if you don't do it during the double chance event, chances are you'll end up spending a great deal more money. But then again, these are averages based on some reality, some assumption, so take it all with a grain of salt.

3. Should I spin with 20 rubies or 100 rubies? 

   - This is a popular question and to answer it, we won't talk about the part that luck plays, we will only discuss probabilities. 
    This question involves the concept of independent events. If we assume that the 6 results from playing 100 rubies are each independent events, this means that one spin of the Gacha has no bearing on the result of the next spin of the Gacha. The authors believe that the 6 results from 100 rubies Gacha are independent events because a lot of people reported getting four 4-stars and one 5-star, or three 5-stars and three 4-stars. This kind of result would not be possible if the game developer had set the 100 rubies Gacha to be dependent events. For instance, if we believe the Gacha is set up to predetermined dependent results, then we should often get results of three 3-stars, two 4-stars and one 5-star, with some variability but not to the extreme of some people getting four or five 4-star rangers in one shot of 100 rubies. So if we assume that both the 100 rubies and the 20 rubies Gacha are independent events then we can use the July results of 41.75% to do some calculations.

For this example, we'll just assume that the chance of you receiving the ranger you want is 1 out of 100 for sake of illustration. 

    - If you used 20 rubies x5, the chance of you getting the ranger is 5%. 

    - If you used 100 rubies, the chance of  you getting the ranger is 6%. 

Based on 41.75% chance to get a 5-star ranger, we have a 17.54% of getting one of the desirable super rangers. 

    - If you use 20 rubies five times to spin 5 times you will average only 0.877 desirable rangers (which is to say playing 5 times can possibly yield you zero desirable rangers). 

    - If you use 100 rubies once to spin 6 times, you will average 1.05 desirable rangers (which is to say you'll get at least 1 desirable ranger on average in the bundle of 6).

    The difference is slight, but it lies in the fact that 100 rubies gives you that one extra spin. Remember the answer we got to question 1 above: you need to spin 5.75 times on average before you can expect to get a desirable ranger. Playing 100 rubies puts you inside the chance to get one since you are spinning 6 times. In this light, playing the 100 rubies game is relatively better. This was deduced based on the information that was collected from the data set. Of course, your personal experience may deviate from this because this is the "average."

4. Should I spin while there is no double chance event?

The short answer is no, of course not. Here's why:

   - Since we have a 41.75% to get a 5★ ranger during the double chance event, then it goes to reason that without the event, our chances are roughly 20.88%. 

Our chances to get a desirable super ranger: 

   - With double chance event is 17.4%, averaging 5.75 spins to get 1 ranger

   - Without double chance event is 8.7%, averaging 11.5 spins to get 1 ranger

This makes it pretty obvious that during the double chance event your odds of getting something good are much higher. The authors recommend, as I also do, please resist the urge to scratch the itch while there is no double chance event going on! For if you do, you're very likely going to spend some time with this guy.

Go away, Pew. We still do not love you.

Concluding Thoughts

I've stated this before and I think it is important to repeat this: The 41.75% number was an average from a vast pool of results. It is possible that you played and rolled on some very different results than the average. And surely you have seen on the internet instances where people have rolled insanely good results. But this is why this is the average. 

The other consideration that often makes players sad after playing Gacha is the fact that your personal set of "desirable" rangers may be a lot smaller than than 17.4%. Maybe all you want are Susu, Hitman and Cherina. In that case, you're rolling on much smaller chance and the chances of you getting something you don't want are much, much higher. 

Astute players will notice that supposing 5 star chance remains the same in the future, as long as LINE continues to release more new rangers, the chances of us getting each ranger will be lessened each time. This is made especially clear when you compare the difference in the odds of Susu (1.74%) and last month's Ola Brown (2.39%) which translated to an average difference of $148. This really does put players who have been playing for a long time in a worsening situation. For instance, myself, I have almost all of the rangers on the roster (not all are masters) and the ones I still need are just a tiny percentage. The chances of me getting what I want keeps diminishing. It's a tough situation, but I can understand that as a game maker, they need to keep pushing out newer, better, shinier products for people to want to buy. For me, the breaking point is near, but for many others, there's still plenty of incentive to buy in. 

Last but not least, a special thanks to 小為 for pooling all this information for us to share.

Gacha Probabilities - June 2014

The results are in from the June 19 - June 21 Double 5-star Chance Gacha Event! If you participated, thank you for contributing to the survey (created by 小為) to provide the Line Rangers player community with helpful information.

The Results

Our friends at LINE Rangers 台灣社團 have concluded their survey once the event finished and they were able to collect 349 sets of data from participants, a total of 5782 results (raw data is here) from Gacha. Results were:

• 3★%: 30.56%
• 4★%: 21.55%
• 5★%: 47.89%

This 5 star result is over twice what the previous results were from their May study which were:

• 3★%: 49.22%
• 4★%: 30.17%
• 5★%: 20.60%

The Analysis

Authors 小為 and 楊濟安 of LINE Rangers 台灣社團 posted this new article about their findings with some more information and analysis on the numbers. Contained within this box is their article interpreted in English. Note: The numbers on the article were as of late hours of June 19 when the data up to that point was reflecting an average of 43.85%.

If you played the 5+1 Gacha with 47.89% odds of receiving a 5-star ranger, this translated to about 2.88 5★ rangers out of 6 balls for every 100 rubies played. They went on to answer some really good questions based on the 43.85% result that they got at the time of the writing of their post. Wherever possible I'll use their math and adapt it with the end-result number of 47.89%.

1. How many times do you need to play to receive one super ranger? 

  - They defined super ranger as one of the eight 5-star rangers that everyone typically wants to get: KSM, Dancer King Boss (DKB), Sorcerer Cony (SoCo), Bernard, Hip Hop Brown, Dumpy, Dwight, Ola Brown. There are a total of 20 5-star rangers on the roster so the chances of you receiving one of these shiny 8 rangers is actually 19.16% during the event. 100/19.16=5.22 spins of the Gacha on average before you can expect to receive one of the 8 super desirable rangers. 

2. How much do I need to spend on average to get a level 80 Ola Brown?

  - For this question, we're going to have to assume that the chances to receive each of the 5-star rangers are equal (side note from Panic: we know this to be untrue because Line Game Support has directly told me that the odds for each of the rangers is preset, and they have said that "rarer" rangers have a lesser chance. I understood this means in reality some rangers are really preset to be less likely to pop out). 

   So, anyway, Ola Brown is 1 out of 20 of the available 5★ rangers. Multiply this by our 47.89% and you'll get a 2.39% to receive Ola Brown, which will take approximately 42 Gacha spins for 1 Ola Brown. You need 5 Ola Browns to max out so that means you actually need about 210 spins.

    Well, 210 spins means you have to play the 5+1 35 times (3500 rubies). I don't know how much they charge all the other regions in the world but in US Dollars on the Android Google Play market during the Ruby Event we can get 494 rubies for roughly $49. In order to get 3500 rubies, we'd have to buy just over 7 packs, which costs $343 USD! Unfortunately, it sounds about right... And if you happen to be unlucky, you'll spend more. 

    That said, I sincerely hope that if you were aiming to get Ola Brown that you did all your Gachas during this past event because if you don't do it during the double chance event, chances are you'll end up spending a great deal more money. But then again, these are averages based on some reality, some assumption, so take it all with a grain of salt.

3. Should I spin with 20 rubies or 100 rubies? 

   - This question involves a concept that we've touched on before when I shared the May event's results on this blog, which is whether or not the 6 results you get from spending 100 rubies are independent events. This means that one spin of the Gacha has no bearing on the result of the next spin of the Gacha. The authors believe that the 6 results from 100 rubies Gacha are independent events because a lot of people reported getting four 4-stars and one 5-star, or three 5-stars and three 4-stars. This kind of result would not be possible if the game developer had set the 100 rubies Gacha to be dependent events. For instance, if we believe the Gacha is set up to predetermined dependent results, then we should often get results of three 3-stars, two 4-stars and one 5-star, with some variability but not to the extreme of some people getting four or five 4-star rangers in one shot of 100 rubies. So we assume they are independent events and we can use the June results of 47.89% to do some calculations.

For this example we'll just assume that the chance of you receiving the ranger you want is 1 out of 100 for sake of illustration. 

    - If you used 20 rubies x5, the chance of you getting the ranger is 5%. 

    - If you used 100 rubies, the chance of  you getting the ranger is 6%. 

Based on 47.89% chance to get a 5-star ranger, we have a 19.16% of getting one of the desirable super rangers. 

    - If you use 20 rubies five times to spin 5 times you will average only 0.958 desirable rangers (which is to say playing 5 times can possibly yield you zero desirable rangers). 

    - If you use 100 rubies once to spin 6 times, you will average 1.14 desirable rangers (which is to say you'll get at least 1 desirable ranger on average in the bundle of 6).

    The difference is slight, but it lies in the fact that 100 rubies gives you that one extra spin. Remember the answer we got to question 1 above: you need to spin 5.22 times on average before you can expect to get a desirable super ranger. Playing 100 rubies puts you inside the chance to get one since you are spinning 6 times. In this light, playing the 100 rubies game is relatively better. This was deduced based on the information that was collected from the data set.Of course, your personal experience may deviate from this because this is the "average."

4. Should I spin while there is no double chance event?

The short answer is no, of course not. Here's why:

   - Since we have a 47.89% to get a 5★ ranger during the double chance event, then it goes to reason that without the event, our chances are roughly 23.95%. 

Our chances to get a desirable super ranger: 

   - With double chance event is 19.16%, averaging 5.22 spins to get 1 ranger

   - Without double chance event is 9.58%, averaging 10.44 spins to get 1 ranger

This makes it pretty obvious that during the double chance event your odds of getting something good are much higher. The authors recommend, as I also do, please resist the urge to scratch the itch while there is no double chance event going on! For if you do, you're very likely going to spend some time with this guy.

Go away, Pew. We do not love you.

Concluding Thoughts

I've stated this before and I think it is important to repeat this: The 47.89% number was an average from a vast pool of results. It is possible that you played and rolled on some very different results than the average. And surely you have seen on the internet instances where people have rolled insanely good results. But this is why this is the average. 

The other consideration that often makes players sad after playing Gacha is the fact that your personal set of "desirable" rangers may be a lot smaller than than 19.16%. Maybe all you want are Ola Brown, KSM and Dwight. In that case, you're rolling on much smaller chance and the chances of you getting something you don't want are much, much higher. 

Now, the last thing that is bothering me is the fact that this event's results differed greatly from last month's. June's double chance event was seriously more than twice more lucrative (and from my personal experience, I tend to agree with the results). Such a large difference cannot be a mistake on the survey because they had over 5700 samples. May's results were done with over 2000 samples, which should still be quite accurate. So I don't think the numbers are wrong. I think this was a deliberate change in the presets by the game developers. With the release of Team Battle Mode and Endless Mode, I believe they really want people to participate and they want people to feel competitive. Nobody likes losing over and over and that can make a PvP battle fizzle out very quickly. I'm guessing that's why they've more than doubled the odds to get 5 star rangers, so people will be more likely to jump into the new modes.

So in the end, I do apologize that I did not get this post out sooner because perhaps it would have swayed some players to take more advantage of the event while it was still possible to get the best odds at Ola Brown. However, now that the "new" non-event probability for 5-star rangers is roughly 23.95%, I wonder if it will stay that way until some other significant event happens (like new area release or new ranger release). Did they increase the non-event chance from 10% to 23.95% when the "major update" came out on June 19? Nobody knows for sure when the change in the odds was made. LINE has no obligation to tell us. We can only try to figure it out with our collective effort. Hopefully this provided some deeper understanding of the gamble that is Gacha. Special thanks to 小為 for pooling all this information for us to share.

Upcoming Major Update 1

As predicted, Line Rangers really will be getting a major overhaul by way of additional game modes. These updates will be live on June 19.

In the splash screen it seems to be saying that the team battle mode is the player vs. player mode that was mentioned, but in the notice, it treats Team Battle and Friend Battle differently. Perhaps we will get to pick random people as well as battle our friends (in case some of us out there don't have any friends to play Rangers with!) So I think there is probably a random vs. random and a friend vs. friend mode.

Endless mode is pretty straight forward and I think it will add to giving people something to do while there are no new zones out. I think it'll be something like 1-3 stages for each zone where you battle with that area's set of enemies in a preconfigured formation. It should be interesting and challenging in its own way. What I think will be a nice twist is that Endless Mode will likely diminish the importance of splash rangers. Endless mode by definition does not have an end point, therefore splashing down a tower is a utility that we will not need. And when dealing with a continuous stream of enemies sometimes it is better to focus down on one enemy and get rid of it with a single target nuking ranger (such as Alice, Dumpy, Dwight, etc.) Splash rangers will still be very useful, of course, but maybe just less so.

And finally, items are changing! Following in suit of many other of Line Games, Rangers will soon get the option of an experience booster item. I really hope that it can be bought with a lot of coins and not a lot of rubies because I fail to see why anyone would sacrifice rubies for more experience. It will give the coin currency (especially those out there with millions sitting idle) some more purpose.

The tower repair item will be changed from a healing + temporary invincibility item to just a temporary invincibility item. I guess we better alter our strategies if our tower remains at the health that it was prior to item usage. This brings to light something important though: now you should probably start upgrading that tower health category that we've all been ignoring. Previously, tower repair really did make having loads of tower health unnecessary. You could practically get twice the tower health with this item. After the update, your tower is as healthy as it ever will be and you will just have to protect it fervently the first time.
[Edit: Although now that I think of it, what good will temporary invincibility do if the enemy is already at your front door? As soon as invincibility ends, they are still there killing the 1-2 rangers you can deploy at a time. You would pretty much have to pair invincibility with tornado to give yourself any hope of continuing combat, right? Unless it is invincibility for your rangers...? The verbiage of the notice leaves much to be desired.]

I don't know what "Friend's Home" feature is but if I had to guess, it might be something that gives us a peek into which rangers our Friends have left for us to use when we summon them. Right now it's a crap shoot whether we get 3 good rangers or 3 lowbies. Maybe this feature will tell us things like ranger name, ranger level, friend's playing progress, etc. That would be so helpful, so we can receive the most applicable set of rangers for the stage we are facing!

Anyway, that's all I have for now. This is all the information that was hinted for us. Will update more when I know more.

In the meantime, to prepare for the new modes, maybe we should all brush up on our strategies and plan our defenses for the new game modes! Maybe the new attack speed post will be useful because in PVP, speed does matter! There's plenty to read and learn on this blog. Please use the search bar at the upper left corner or the right sidebar if you're having trouble finding topics. You can also click on the labels at the bottom of each post to find all the posts that relate to that label name.

New Rangers Released: Game Field to Farm Field

The new rangers are here! This is the 3rd month in a row that new rangers have hit the game in the early days of the month, so it seems like we are following a steady release cycle. On to the new stuff!

Ola Brown and Dumpy range comparison with Thunder Brown (front line), KSM and Songster Cony

Ola Brown - 5 star long-ranged Splash Ranger. Limited time only! Get him while you can because Ola Brown will only be available June 1 through June 30 GMT +9. This is the first non-melee Brown unit we have seen and he is so cute with his creepy football/soccer ball. He is currently the longest range splash ranger which works out in his favor since Ola's health is relatively low. His health is comparable to Cony, so he's quite weak. Ola will not live in the presence of Richard (green dino mini boss in Skyscraper zone) but he will serve you well from behind the fray in most other instances. His attack is nothing to write home about, but it's certainly better than the 4-star splash rangers. Ola is also cheaper to deploy than other 5-star splash units, only 350 minerals at max. In certain situations due to his superior cooldown, cost and speed, spamming a lot of Ola Brown may be more effective than deploying Sorcerer Cony, Sol, or KSM. At level 80, he has 48,898 ATK (also known as DPS)/104,781 HP. 

Dumpy -  5 star Attack Ranger. Mid-range. Absolutely insanely high attack. Makes Dancer King Boss' max attack seem like child's play, but Dumpy has a much shorter range to hit. His range is the same as Dwight and Sol. Even at level 1, he does 45K DPS, making him immediately viable to use. He's on relatively short cooldown and he costs 380 minerals to deploy at max which is really cheap! The problem with Dumpy is his health is pretty low unless you are lucky enough to get 5 Dumpies to combine. His level 80 stats are 476,905 DPS/319,334 HP. More attack than health? That's a first for rangers! 

Abdula, Dwight and Lightning Jessica range comparison with Witch Cony & Warrior Jessica

Dwight -  5 star Balance Ranger. Melee range, sort of. Insanely high attack, high health. Pretty costly to deploy but makes up for it in battle. As far as range goes, Dwight doesn't stand up where health rangers are. He's a little bit further back, which is ideal for a ranger of his strengths because he will allow the health rangers to take the direct damage while having enough health to stand in the heat of incoming splash damage and hold the line a bit if the health rangers die. His range is the same as Sol. His level 80 stats are 245,279 DPS/2,678,054 HP. Yes, you read correctly -- That's 2.6 million HP. He's pretty much a Bernard with actual damage capabilities. Dwight will be a very valuable team member despite not being a splash ranger. 

Abdula -  4-star mid-range Splash Ranger. Medium splash damage, high health, but costs a great deal of minerals to deploy. He stands the same distance from the enemy as Clara. Abdula trumps all the other 4-star splash rangers in damage. At first I was skeptical about him because he does cost quite a bit more than other 4-star splash rangers (760 at max) and it didn't feel like he did that much more damage. However, after doing some math, I have found that with the cost of his damage, he does in fact come out ahead of all four of the other 4-star splash units. So he is actually a good choice to use if you can afford him. But what's important is he has the most hilarious attack animation. Maybe Abdula is the pet chicken's name, who knows? :) At level 70, Abdula sports 69,668 DPS/381,790 HP.

Lightning Jessica -  4 Star Speed Ranger. Only way to describe her is a mini Hip-Hop Brown. High speed, spammable, cheap. Doesn't quite have the attack or health for tanking the way Hip Hop does, so my initial thought is if you have a maxed Hip Hop Brown, you probably don't need to bother with Lightning Jessica. Another thing that's somewhat off about her is unlike her melee splash lookalikes, Lightning Jessica does not stand in actual tanking range (see picture above). Her distance is the same as Sol, Dwight and Dumpy. So if you're looking to use her as a tanking alternative, I'd be a little wary. She leaves a lot of room between her hit range and the enemy's hit range, which may result in allowable enemy forward marching space. Lightning Jessica's stats at level 70 is 21,975 DPS/305,089 HP.

Position comparison between new rangers and Sol. Dumpy, Dwight and Lightning Jessica stand at the same range as Sol

All 5 new rangers tearing up the place in 117

All in all, the new rangers are pretty impressive, with maybe the exception of Lightning Jessica. The game makers have really tried to give us a wide array of ranger attributes to choose from. I can definitely foresee situations where you cannot use some of our new overpowered friends, but many situations where they will excel and give you a huge advantage.

Does this mean that we don't need or want KSM, DKB, SongCo, Hip-Hop and Bernard? Absolutely not. They each have their own strengths and will fill different needs depending on the stage and the rangers you have available. Now, if you have Dwight and Bernard, you probably won't put both on your team, but certainly if have just Dumpy and Bernard, it's not a bad combo at all. Hip-Hop as a tanking hybrid will still be better than Lightning Jessica and hold speed advantage over Dwight. Dancer King is still the king of range though he does not have the DPS of Dumpy. But sometimes safety in far-range is more important than 500-600K hits. So, it all depends!

Good luck, everyone! If you are curious about GACHA probability, check out this post.