Monday, July 14, 2014

Team Battle Balancing

This is a delicate subject. A lot of players have expressed that there are issues with Team Battle Mode (which I'll just call PvP, player vs. player, for shorthand). We know that the developers tweak the PvP parameters and the computer AI quite often because we see the game download "new resources." Each time they push new team battle files down, it throws us all for a loop because we don't know what they have changed. Teams you used to ride to victory one day may not serve you very well the next. But here is some breaking news from our friends at LINE Rangers 台灣社團 which may help explain what's going on. Their raid team published this just today, and this will change the way you think about your PvP strategy. Keep in mind that this is subject to change, and very likely will given Line Rangers' track record.


Team Battle Attack Power Reduction Ratio

Published and valid as of: July 14, 2014, 6:37pm. The text contained within this box is an English interpretation of the original article
  • Article originates from: LINE Rangers 台灣社團
  • Authors: 黃郁弘, 小為
  • Testing Contributors: 黃郁弘, 陳安安, 小為
  • Editor: 小為
The Line Rangers Raid Team is focusing on attack power specific to Team Battle this time. 

Rangers' attack power = DPS x Attack Speed x Attack Power Treasure modifier 

We discussed the details of this formula for finding actual attack damage in the attack speed post where the Raid Team hashed all that out.

The team experimented with rangers in Friend Battle Mode and discovered that rangers' attack power while in Team Battle Mode is weaker than in Single Player Stage Mode. The amount by which they are weakened is determined by the ranger's classification. 


Quick example:
Level 80 Alice's attack is reduced down to 33813. Level 70 Shu is weakened to 4049: Alice's attack power is approximately equivalent to 8 Shus on single target damage.

Test Method

The test team used Friend Battle Mode to do all their research. They allowed the opponent to attack their tower (since only the home tower has HP values now) in order to exact the damage inflicted by rangers. If you click on the article, you will see the pictures which illustrate Witch Cony inflicting exactly 24808 damage on the home tower, a farcry from the calculated 49616 damage per hit she should be making in single player mode. 
Sampling of rangers of various class types and their modified attack power in PvP Mode. The last column is the rangers' attack reduction modifier rate

Conclusion

The Line Rangers game has adjusted the damage rate practically once per week. Last week, splash rangers were reduced to 0.20, single-target rangers were 0.25. 

The week of July 14, highlights were attack class rangers 0.70, while other single target rangers were 0.50. 

This just continues to prove that Team Battle Mode is not ruled by splash rangers. If you have Dumpy, Prince James or Dancer King Boss, it's time to take them off the bench. You may find them surprisingly effective. 

For players who play with free rangers, Alice and Masked Moon are great choices. 

This week, attack rangers have the highest attack modifier as they're attacking at 70% power. All other single-target rangers are performing at 50% power and splash rangers are doing just 15% of their original power. Yikes.

Surely from the early days of Team Battle Mode, we have felt that something was not quite right. Our rangers do not perform the way we expect them to. Thanks to the team at LINE Rangers 台灣社團 we now know what was happening last week for a few days when it seemed as though our rangers were dying faster. Some modifiers must have been changed which created a difference in the actual damage rangers were inflicting and the way we expected our rangers to be performing. 


Some players may be outraged by this, but this info doesn't shock me, actually. A lot of games that have vs. player and vs. computer modes create a modifier for damage vs. other people because the pure damage in vs. computer environment would spell the end of player controlled units in no time at all. The amount of damage that is increasingly demanded to keep up with the challenge and difficulty of single player would not translate well in a PvP environment. This is an attempt to "balance" the rangers to make the PvP experience smoother and more worthwhile. Everyone will have their own opinions about whether this is helping. 

My biggest problem with Line Rangers with regard to these modifiers is the fact that players have gotten NO NOTICE about their existence nor the changing of these values on a near-weekly basis. This is something I criticized in my survey to the developers. They change stats without telling us. They change stage environment and enemy formation without so much as a warning. And they created and tweak these attack rate modifiers without any indication. We're left to wonder week after week why our fine team last week sucks this week. Or why our good tank yesterday is getting fried today. I understand that Team Battle is new and the game still needs tweaking. But the players should not get penalized for the mistakes and trials of the developer. At least give us the opportunity to properly adjust.

If anyone out there in LINE world is reading, my greatest plea would be to give us notices when significant changes like this are pushed out. Please?

And finally, I want to emphasize that the above stats are a snapshot of the PvP environment as of July 14 afternoon in Taiwan time. These numbers may not apply for tomorrow or the week after. And I wouldn't expect for the authors of the article to continually update the modifier numbers, either. It really changes too often to keep up-to-date 100%. But the point is, we know that our team composition needs to take into account for this kind of a parameter. This week, if you have the super good single target attack rangers on your team, you're probably kicking butt all over the place on the ladder ranking. Next week, it might not feel as great.

By the way, this does not mean that there is no place for splash rangers. You shouldn't just cross splash rangers off your team. Their potential damage is still huge when the enemy stacks up a bunch of rangers together. What this deters is having a whole 5-man team of splash rangers. That comp might not be a very effective team at the moment.

It's also possible that they tweak other stuff, like how much HP rangers have. We don't know if they've ever touched that stat in the past or if they will in the future. Sometimes you just have to go by feel of how your team is performing, and adjust accordingly.

Edit: This is more of an afterthought but... I just realized that I should feel kind of cheated by these modifiers. I spun the Gacha a lot over the last few months for splash rangers like SoCo, KSM and Ola Brown. Especially Ola Brown because he came around right as Team Battle was introduced, I wanted him badly! And I'm sure a lot of you were spinning for a chance at Susu recently. They're all splash rangers and they were promoted as the most powerful rangers in the game. And yet we just found out that splash rangers are performing at a mere 15% of their normal power in PvP. Anyone else feel like they've been played for a fool? HMMM...

Sunday, July 13, 2014

More Experience Wanted - Player Exp

It was established from comments in my earlier post, Experience Wanted, that the amount of experience that your rangers receive from stage clear and the amount your player account receives are different. Just how different? Well, 120 feathers later, here it is. Click to enlarge.


Why does this list appear smaller than the first? I don't know, Blogspot resized it. :(
Is this very important to know? Well, no, not essential, but you should know that the experience you get is different from the amount your rangers get. Double experience day and the exp booster can works for player experience, too. The only thing that's pretty interesting is that the ranger experience and the player experience differ by quite a lot from the very beginning. When you lose a battle, your rangers get a fraction of the experience anyway, but your player account gains nothing for losses.

If you're grinding your way to 99 these days, you're probably already doing 104 or 117 depending on your preference. They're both decent choices. One yields you more straight up experience while the other gives decent experience and a shot at extra 4-5 star rangers to sell for coins. When the new area releases I'll probably have to update this list again and the new stages are likely to be more fruitful for level grinding.

One might argue that 104 is a better grinding area because of the possible uptick in coins from the selling bonus rangers. In fact, gaining levels for your player account doesn't do anything other than increase your tower health incrementally (this increment is separate from the tower health category that you can pay coins to upgrade, a change that was implemented during the patch that introduced Team Battle, etc.). So maybe if you are strapped for cash, 104 is the way to go for you. 117 honestly isn't bad, though, especially on double experience or double coin day. Whichever works for you! During the Shu event on 104, however, 104 was definitely better since it stacked with double coin day.


Thursday, July 10, 2014

New Area: Maze of Illusion Coming July 17

Update: Maze of Illusion is confirmed to be releasing approximately at 8am JST on July 17. Maintenance is happening as usual, then release.

Oopsie Daisies!

Early this morning, Line "accidentally" revealed that the new area called Maze of Illusion is going to be released July 17. The new area will come with new treasure, of course. It will also feature 7 new enemies. The splash screen was released everywhere and then true to "oopsie" Line Rangers fashion, was pulled out minutes later. Probably another accidental push!

Found these pics online

The new enemies look like Alice in Wonderland meets board game bonanza. I'm honestly pretty disappointed it is only one new area and not 2. We have it on good authority that 5 new areas are coming (don't ask me where, I cannot confirm), but maybe they're going to release them one at a time.

July 17 is only a week away! I can't wait. I have been dying to play new stages for a long time.

Line Rangers Survey

By the way, if you have not checked it out, go in-game to "Settings> Notices" for a new notice called Line Rangers Survey. If you do not see the new notice, try to restart the game. I had an issue where it showed up, then disappeared, then reappeared again. 

They want to know what you like about the game, what you like least about the game, what can be improved/fixed and what suggestions you have for them to make the game better. There is no character limit so write as much as you like. I highly recommend that everyone who feels passionately about the game do this so that the game developers get the message directly from their players about what we want. 

Me? I sent them 11 bullet points of top items I wish they'd do. Remember to be respectful and constructive because if you just tell them their game sucks and the Gacha sucks and you don't give them any intelligently formed opinions, it will not be useful. 

Thursday, July 3, 2014

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.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Experience Wanted

If you're like me, you're wondering how on earth some players have already reached level 99. Now I can tell you that these players probably spent loads of time playing when they should have been doing something else or sleeping :)

Once again, our friends at LINE Rangers 台灣社團 did some exhaustive studying into the topic of Player Experience to bring us an illustrative table of info. 


LINE Rangers Player Level 1-99 Experience
  • Article comes from: LINE Rangers 台灣社團
  • Author: 小為
  • Contributing members: .Zzzzz, 小弘, 小爲, 工丂巧, 王文鴻, 李傳崇, 孫質心, 張皓, 淮绅, 翊倢, 許劍星, 陳信憲, 曾君君, 黃國城, 葉乂彰, 樂羽萱, 蔡可亮, 燁, 蕭孟晟, ahmdrifkyr, Arsoitee, b0910439960, Chia Pang Yu, Darren, Dennis Cheng, Duncan Chou, Edward Chang, Egnaro Jiang, Gary Tsai, GGININDER, GGSOFTSOFTDER, JimShieh, Kai Chen, kenny, Lin T-Xun, maplinx, Nancy Chen, Peter Lam, Philip Chen, shooyun, syuan yan, Thomas Lu, thomas1116, Vivi Wang, Wan Lin Tung, Winson Lo, Ying Ling Chen, Yukuo Yu
"Line Rangers' player experience can be viewed if you tap on your avatar on the main screen. In order to determine the experience required to get from level 1 to level 99, dedicated members of LINE Rangers 台灣社團 collected stats over a span of 5 days. From the tables below, you can see that in order to get to level 100, you need to accumulate approximately 43.4 million experience."
The 3rd column of each table shows the increase in experience required for the next level

There is also a graph on the original article that shows that right as you past level 60, the experience required steps up dramatically. The additional amount required to get from 59 to 60 is only 3600, but the additional amount required to get from 60 to 61 is 15900. And then from 80 to 81, the additional step skyrockets again. 


One reader accurately pointed out that the experience that is gained by the player is not the same as the experience gained by the rangers. For instance, the experience gained by the player from clearing stage 117 once is 4560. The experience gained by each ranger is 1550 (which is the number that appears briefly over each ranger's head). Following the math, it will take you 9516 clears of 117 under normal circumstances to get from level 1 to 100 (obviously, this is all theoretical). If you farm 117 repeatedly on double experience day with the 50% experience booster, you'll need to play for 52.87 straight hours, or well over 2 days. That's a lot of play time! There might be some relationship between the experience gained by the player and the rangers, but it'll require more time to look into it.