Machinations

Simple player behavior

Add basic crafting preferences to a card-pack model so player decisions affect collection progress. In the last section, we encountered an issue.

In the last section, we encountered an issue:

Warning

Almost only Common cards are being crafted. This is because our modeled player is preferenceless: thus, they craft whatever is most consistently affordable.

Because of this, our player never accumulates enough Arcane Dust to spend on any other rarity. This is not an accurate representation of real players.

We would expect real players to craft higher-rarity cards much more often: why craft a Common card when it’s quite likely to show up in a future card pack anyway?

The whole crafting model after a Play of 45 days: Card Packs feed Pick Rarity and four Storage pools, each Disenchanter turns duplicates into Arcane Dust in the Dust Vault, and the Forges craft 20 Common cards, 1 Rare and no Epic or LegendaryThe whole crafting model after a Play of 45 days: Card Packs feed Pick Rarity and four Storage pools, each Disenchanter turns duplicates into Arcane Dust in the Dust Vault, and the Forges craft 20 Common cards, 1 Rare and no Epic or Legendary

To address this, we need to introduce some dynamic player behavior into the model. But this raises a vital question: how do players decide what to spend their Dust on? Do they focus on crafting Epics first, then move to Legendaries? Or do they behave more unpredictably?

Note

In order to model player decisions, we need to make an educated guess of how players behave, and implement a solution based on that assumption.

There are two main approaches we can take:

Option A: The player randomly picks a rarity to craft

A Craft Choice gate sits between the Arcane Dust pool and the four Forges: the gate, not each Forge, decides which rarity is craftedA Craft Choice gate sits between the Arcane Dust pool and the four Forges: the gate, not each Forge, decides which rarity is crafted

In this approach, we use a Trigger Gate to model the decision-making process.

Instead of making each Craft Converter Auto, we instead make the decision-making Gate Auto: the Gate is now the controlling agent in the diagram.

The Craft Choice gate takes Arcane Dust and sends it to one of four Forges by chance: 5% to the Common Forge, 10% to the Rare Forge, 35% to the Epic Forge and 50% to the Legendary Forge, each Forge feeding its own Collection poolThe Craft Choice gate takes Arcane Dust and sends it to one of four Forges by chance: 5% to the Common Forge, 10% to the Rare Forge, 35% to the Epic Forge and 50% to the Legendary Forge, each Forge feeding its own Collection pool

We can then set the relative chances of a player choosing to craft each rarity, based on our best guess. This means, for instance, that a player has a 50% chance to choose to craft a Legendary.

Option B: The player has savings buckets for each rarity

Option B: Earn Arcane Dust splits each unit at random between four savings pools, Common, Rare, Epic and Legendary Savings, 25% eachOption B: Earn Arcane Dust splits each unit at random between four savings pools, Common, Rare, Epic and Legendary Savings, 25% each

In this approach, when the player earns Arcane Dust, it is split randomly between four different Pools. Each Pool represents the Dust the player has allocated for spending on that particular rarity of cards. Think of this approach like budgeting for food, entertainment, rent, etc. in real life.

A fifth element, Total Dust, reads the four savings pools and shows how much Arcane Dust the player has in totalA fifth element, Total Dust, reads the four savings pools and shows how much Arcane Dust the player has in total

We also have a fifth Pool that counts the values of all four Pools, so that we always know how much Dust the player has in total.

Note

This approach is a little more abstract, and probably doesn’t reflect how players actually make decisions. However, it is often accurate enough to model this way.

We will use Option A going forward.

The Craft Choice gate with weights instead of percentages: Common 1, Rare 10, Epic 100 and Legend 400The Craft Choice gate with weights instead of percentages: Common 1, Rare 10, Epic 100 and Legend 400

We have replaced the percentages on the Gate with normal numbers (i.e. ratios, or weights). This makes it easier to tweak the values later, as we don’t need to make sure everything still adds up to 100.

Note

When using Gates, weights/ratios are easier to work with when the odds of each outcome are subject to change.

Percentages are best used when the odds are always fixed (like the drop rates of each card rarity), or if there are only two outcomes (like whether a card is a Duplicate or New).

Since we expect Commons to be the least preferable thing to craft, their weight is set to 1. As the weight for Rares is 10, this means that the player is ten times more likely to choose to craft a Rare rather than a Common.

Warning

Our modeled player still behaves somewhat irrationally. For instance, there is nothing stopping them from crafting a Rare even if they’ve already collected all the Rares.

We will address this in the next section.