[quote=Skinnyman]Greetings from the Surface!
The lack of deck refresh is a burden for some, but in the end those are called opportunity cards.
With data gathered about 1 year ago, on average, an EF (10 cards) checking the game almost constantly and with 8 hours of absence for sleep, will draw about 105 cards per day. With this number, any card will standard frequency will pop about 1.35 times per day.
Don’t have enough data, but a slower game pace lowers that number to ~1 so I will go with this number. All the above required will enable a player draw the Noman card 5 times per day.
For The Sense of an Ending option, the card must be drew at least 41 times which is about 8-9 days. Not impossible specially if you grab the Noman ASAP which will give you 14-21 days; the average is almost double the required days.
Because there are no more deck refreshes, all the extra AP can be easily invested in the increase of the quirks that give 3 Noman Knows.
So yes, getting that option is still doable, but it must be done in time and can’t be rushed like it used to. Please remember that that option was made available when there were no deck refreshing! :)[/quote]
I agree with your math; I also came to the same approximate theoretical numbers. Nevertheless, over the last two weeks (I was able to generate the Noman on 7th or 8th January on both my accounts), I don’t think I’ve drawn the Noman card 5-times on one day more than maybe 2-6 times, out of ~28 days of drawing (14 per account).
Of course, that’s hardly a sufficient number of repetitions to reasonably claim that the card’s frequency is in reality lower than it says; this sort of bad luck does, however, create disappointment when it happens on two separate accounts. Particularly when I went into the grind with a reasonable assumption that 14 days should be more than enough.
In many cases, there is some sort of a compensatory mechanism which allows you to invest more resources or reliably grind to prevent total loss (such as the newly added options to repeatably though inefficiently grind all the faction favours); or else the relevant cards become pinned at the end of the event so you can scrounge out at least a partial success. In the case of trying to achieve Noman’s End, there is nothing like that in place, although it presumably is meant to be much easier to accomplish than the Noman tattoo (and for that reason, I don’t count investing a large amount of Lacre into keeping the Noman alive for three TtH hits, which would far exceed the value of the Elemental Secret you’re grinding for).
TL: DR - I don’t believe the reset removal is such a big deal, actually; I’d just like to see more "safety nets" for players being hated by RNG, especially in cases like this where you invest a lot of time and resources and risk falling short by 1 card draw out of 20.
I guess I’m just averse to chance-dependent gambits, and always pining for ways to counteract these and stick to controllable ones…
edited by Sir Reginald Monteroy on 1/21/2021