I wasn’t able to find a recent answer to this, so here goes: if you are pursuing multiple card based story threads, does this effect the frequency of other cards? For example, if I’m printing newspapers, am I less likely to encounter dream cards?
edited by friendshipranger on 1/22/2013
Yes, that’s just how probability works. All your possible opportunities add up to 100%, because that’s basically what probability means: The chance that a given thing will happen.
The chances of all possible options will naturally add up to 100% because of the nature of the question: If those are indeed all the options, then it cannot add up to less than 100% (One of those options WILL happen), nor can it add up to more than 100% because only ONE of those options will happen.
When you add a new possibility, the total of all the possibilities STILL needs to add up to 100%. This basically means that the other options are indeed less probable.
Now, that said, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s most effective to pursue only one card-based story at a time. By adding more cards that you want to draw to your list of possible options (Say, for your example, you’re interested in both the newspaper AND dreams qualities), you’re increasing your chances of drawing a card you like, while decreasing the chances of drawing a card you don’t like.
Cool. Thanks for the help. For some reason I thought that there would be some kind of independent variable for card frequency divorced from the card pool. But your explanation makes more sense. What’s killing me is I’m just seven more papers from “The Only Source of Truth” and I’m practically mad. Honey sipping mad!
edited by friendshipranger on 1/22/2013
Actually it all depends on how it is implented. It’s true that adding a new card would inevitably increase the probability of drawing other cards. But there is no reason, that this decrease should be equally applied to all cards.
For example the cards could be divided into several pools. Story, Connection, Dreams, Misc1, Misc2 e.t.c. And Story cards could have a set probability of 5 percent. In this case adding new story cards to existing ones would not decrease the proability of getting cards from the other pools. Only probability of getting the other story cards.
But yeah, I am not sure anybody besides the developers knows, how it works for sure. I have the same worry about the Dream cards (I would like more of them, or at least not less). I think the consesus was, that a newly created character with less cards in his pool got Dreams more often. But starting a new story? No idea if that will affect any card in particular.
edited by Fhoenix on 1/22/2013
I’m not sure there’d be any way to test for this - it’s a system vastly larger and more complex than those that there have been extensive scientific efforts to measure.
[quote=Fhoenix]
For example the cards could be divided into several pools. Story, Connection, Dreams, Misc1, Misc2 e.t.c. And Story cards could have a set probability of 5 percent. In this case adding new story cards to existing ones would not decrease the proability of getting cards from the other pools. Only probability of getting the other story cards.
edited by Fhoenix on 1/22/2013[/quote]
This did actually occur to me, but I wanted to keep my description of probability as simple as I could, and I doubted they actually went with such a system. It would be adding extra complexity for a system for not much gain, especially when you consider the difficulty of determining where cards should go. Is restoring souls for the CVR in the same category as the cards you need earlier just to progress the story? Same thing for newspaper cards, do they go in the same batch as story progress? Invitation cards like the secrets on dusty stones? Or a separate category all their own? Do dreams need their own category? And so on and so forth. Far simpler, and as far as most players would be aware of, quite the same result, if they just make each card have certain rarities. In this case, it is not that there is a dream category that has a low chance of being drawn, but more that the cards that raise dream qualities tend to have rather low chances individually.
I think of it like this: If I make myself disqualify for a bad card, the chance of other cards appearing instead is 100%
There are so many different cards that I don’t think it affects it that much for a few cards, though.
edited by Aximillio on 1/22/2013
I disagree about the complexity. It’s not harder to implement, then the simple Common, Uncommon and Rare system. As for sorting, well yeah, you have to think for a moment. But it adds clarity and saves you a lot of pain later. It’s metadata.
The end result would be different. Yeah, any one player could still get any combination of cards at random. But it would ensure, that the player base as a whole progressed through stories with a set speed, or, you know, had Dreams at a steady pace. You could get the same effect by tweaking individual rarities of course, but it’s just easier to do, if the cards have some tags.
Grindable CVR is a connection card, obviously. I don’t think there would be a need for a special pool of invitation cards. Invitation is just a side option, that is not used often. The card itself just gives you some items, so it would go into the generic group. The Paper could be in the same group as the Singular Plant/Dreams, since those traits are similar in function (mostly decoration, increase very slowly, used once in a blue moon).
[quote=Aximillio]I think of it like this: If I make myself disqualify for a bad card, the chance of other cards appearing instead is 100%
There are so many different cards that I don’t think it affects it that much for a few cards, though.
edited by Aximillio on 1/22/2013[/quote]
That’s a fascinating idea. So if I sell all my pets…
[quote=friendshipranger][quote=Aximillio]I think of it like this: If I make myself disqualify for a bad card, the chance of other cards appearing instead is 100%
There are so many different cards that I don’t think it affects it that much for a few cards, though.
edited by Aximillio on 1/22/2013[/quote]
That’s a fascinating idea. So if I sell all my pets…[/quote]
Don’t forget that some pet cards are actually good =)
The overgoat one is quite profitable. And you kinda get the card even without one >.>
Also, you’ll always want some bats for exchanging research.
I like the pet cards! It’s the new cards featuring the people who backed the kickstarter that I find a little too frequent - the rewards aren’t really good enough, imo.
Oh, so that’s what they were. I was wondering their purpose, since the rewards are so meh, and they don’t open any new stories. Definitely would like their frequency decreased by a lot.
Also, wasn’t the Kickstarte cancelled? Have people still gotten their rewards?
Silver Tree Kickstarter, not the Below Kickstarter.
I feel like I should defend those cards, because I am one of them… that said, I would have agreed with you, until this very moment, when I got what looks to be a rare success with the Reclusive Turophile that gave five bloody Blackmail Materials! I’ve never seen that before - is it new?
Oh, that’s interesting! I mean, I liked the cards when they were new, but once you’ve played them a few times then you know the text and the rewards are poor. So if rare successes have been added then they’re worth playing again! (Though if the rare successes have always been around… then that makes them pretty rare. Hm.)
That could actually make them rather nice… Time to spend actions on them as well…
I just drew that same card and got the reward again. Either I am one lucky son of a horse, or the rewards have been upped considerably!
I also got it. A similar card got me nothing but 3 appalling secrets, however. Perhaps they’re slowly improving them all?