[2019] EA Patent - have we been deceived all along?

I’ve never seen that patent before so I can’t speak to it, but let me clarify - we do no difficulty tuning or targeted offers at all. All drops are a fixed rate.

We have talked about a Monte Carlo system which actually increases your odds if you don’t get a drop after a few rolls. But that isn’t in the game because we don’t have the tech.

The only targeting we do is that we have some “lifecycle packs” that get offered to people as they’re leveling up, but they can only be bought once and they get offered to all players.

The fact that I gave myself the out should be proof positive that I’m telling the truth. If I were lying why bother with the caveat? I gave myself that out because I have a lot of bosses and this is something we have been asked for regularly. Many F2P mobile games do it (I can’t speak to which ones, it’s just considered industry standard); and the team does not want to do it.

And as I said in other posts, because we’ve talked about changing drop rates in the player’s favor (Monte Carlo system), that would be a dynamic pricing change. So there are always chance we will use it in a positive way.

If we ever make this change we will announce it in advance so people know.

I agree. Mostly so I can stop talking about probability and randomness with people. :) Randomness isn’t a perfect spread across variables. It’s random. And it isn’t “fair”. I’d like to nudge towards fairness if we can.

I know nothing about patents. The CONCEPT is very common in video games. I’ve been asked if we would offer dynamic purchases, etc., and we said no and that’s the end of it. But I left the door open that there are many people more powerful than me so I can’t say “never ever” (I made this mistake once talking about Real ID to Eurogamer and had to write profuse apologies to the BioWare doctors, so I’d like to avoid if possible).

If we do it, we will communicate it.