SoE - Robbing Bastards (LoN)

[Flight]

Originally Posted by Braen

It says in the EULA that you have to be in the US to participate.

We could argue over the fact that you can go to the Sony Store, buy a fortune worth of cards and not have to see or acknowledge the EULA. We could also discuss the fact that part of the EULA wasn't always there.


More sensible to suggest mentioning it in passing in the EULA, without any other reference to it on all their promotional, sales and sony store blurb, is not nearly enough. Sure they are covered legally, but as is often the case, ethically they are screwing people over. The number of people who buy cards then realise they can't enter tournies is large. The official forums are full of people who have spent a fortune on cards, then after this policy is quietly introduced, realised they have wasted a lot of money.

[Sneaky]

Originally Posted by Kodylan

It has nothing to do with being a "2nd rate customer," and everything to do with the fact that there are gambling rules that disallow participation if you live in certain territories.

I live in a territory where people are allowed to play Online Poker and other "gambling" games. Why am I not allowed to take part in some Card-Game Tournament when there are Magic - TG tournaments all over the place with prices and what not?
I took part in Red Orchestra Tournaments, Starcraft tournaments, Chess Tournaments (I sucked), some Browser-Games offer prices fo the winners. What's the difference here other than Sony being dicks to EU customers?

Additionally to not being upfront about it, but hiding the fact deep in some EULA shit that hardly anyone manages to read withotu falling asleep anyway.

[The Hiram Key]

Originally Posted by Flight

Awesome sauce.

Forget subscribing to your newsletter, you and I should co-author our own. Thank you for standing up and helping to shed light on this multi-layered scam that Smed and his pals are running over there.

Love EQ2, LOVE IT. This whole LoN business stinks to high heaven however.

[Hachima]

Is it really that hard to just type in fake location info?

[Sneaky]

Irrelevant

[TwiNCannoN]

I can't imagine paying for virtual cards. Trust me, I'm a CCG geek, M:TG was the only thing in the past decade that has managed to take me away from the internet for more than a week, but it's all about the social/physical interaction imo.

I could see paying a subscription fee to play an online card game. But not paying for the cards.

[Schatze]

The laws do vary from country to country, from state to state, to province to province. That's why you'll see almost every single contest run by a North American company will exclude Quebec and Manitoba, due to their laws on contests. In many other contests, you'll see that you have to answer a "skill testing question" in order to claim a prize for the contest to be legal as it's therefore not "gambling" but a game of skill.

And these are in places where you can go to the local casino or play poker online all day and not have to pay taxes on any of it.

Just creating contests applicable to Canada and the US are a nightmare, when you start adding in the fact that you're now talking multiple countries with multiple provinces/states each with its own laws, it makes sense to restrict it to the US.

P.S. Your understanding of probability is really crap. In any statistical distribution, a number of people will get the short end of the stick. That's normal. Random is streaky, random is independent of previous trials, etc. You just don't understand probability, which isn't an insult as most people absolutely SUCK at understanding probability unless they've actually taken a course on stats or what have you. Do a randomized statistical test or you really won't be able to determine whether you and the people you talk to are just on the "unlucky" end of the curve, or if there is a true flaw in the probability statements.

[Teljair]

Ive killed thousands and thousands of mobs in EQ2, I have seen 1 starter deck drop.

[Kodylan]

Originally Posted by Teljair

Ive killed thousands and thousands of mobs in EQ2, I have seen 1 starter deck drop.

I killed about 50 mobs in the tutorial in EQ and saw 2 starter decks drop.

[Penalty]

Originally Posted by Kodylan

I killed about 50 mobs in the tutorial in EQ and saw 2 starter decks drop.

the conspiracies imo

[Flight]

Originally Posted by Schatze

P.S. Your understanding of probability is really crap. In any statistical distribution, a number of people will get the short end of the stick. That's normal. Random is streaky, random is independent of previous trials, etc. You just don't understand probability, which isn't an insult as most people absolutely SUCK at understanding probability unless they've actually taken a course on stats or what have you. Do a randomized statistical test or you really won't be able to determine whether you and the people you talk to are just on the "unlucky" end of the curve, or if there is a true flaw in the probability statements.

Thats a good point; to be fair, something most of us are aware of.

1. Drop rate of loot cards are stated as being one in eight boosters. THK got one in 150. Statistically of course its possible (someone care to work out the maths on that ?) but at the very least its a really crap, cheap ass method SoE are using to distribute them, when you can get shafted that bad. More likely, something was broken, because, going on to point 2....


2. SoE have admitted on multiple occasions that the drop rate has been broken. This has only when there has been mass cross server action. Of course, there were people each time saying - the drop rate is fine, I got some boosters....


Again, people understand the laws behind gambling. The issue is that SoE hides it in some minutae of the EULA, refusing to acknowledge it, discuss it or expand on it outside of that. That includes their advertising, their sales site and the official forums.

When this surfaced, the forum was full of pissed off people who had spent a lot of money, some thousands of dollars, selling off their collections of thousands of cards for next to nothin because they were useless to them.

[Luthair]

Originally Posted by Hachima

Is it really that hard to just type in fake location info?

Only if you don't have a credit card to go along with it.

I've seen 0 drops in EQ1 outside of promo weekends, and thats a shit ton of mobs over 4 months. EQ1 prices have been 100kish for boosters

[Onte]

Leveling a new char from 1-30: No cards
Leveling a new char from 1-20: No cards
Leveling a char from 65-68: No cards

My experience with my L60+ isn't the greatest example but I think getting a combined 50 levels on another 2 chars and not seeing a single drop is pretty underwhelming.

[Horse]

Originally Posted by Flight

There you go.

Lots of folks are saying that, but Sony never have. Various players have put this theory forward and its now propagated as fact. You won't even find Sony discussing the issue, nevermind making it clear to people buying the game and the cards.

Sony doesn't have to tell you what the law is.

[Horse]

And random is just random. Trying to describe how random works is fruitless because there is no such thing as random... there is always a set of rules that will determine a random outcome. Other than that, there is probability and it will not necessarily pan out because you simply can't come up with an unbiased "random generator." There is a "random enough that unless you have way too much time on your hands you'll never know the difference" and I'm confident that's what we're accustomed to.


Until I see data from "everyone's" drop rates I'll have to say that the RNGs that we've all questioned are random enough.

I'm extremely lucky in WoW JC when it comes to getting an uneven distribution of the expensive versus the cheap gems from prospecting. That doesn't mean that my luck will change over my next 10,000 prospects. Shrug.


Online TCGs are great but my issue is when the shit folds your cards fold with it, not so with printed paper.