Recycle rates - an understanding

[fargone]

There is a lot of focus on recycle rates in threads concerning cpc lately. This was originally a reply in another thread, but I felt it really needs it own.

Recycle rates are the biggest red herring this game has in regards to CPC, so why are you so focused on it? Actually getting what you want for your money without the need to recycle, that is CPC.

Recycling to get back gran to buy more recycling has nothing to do with CPC, and is the method Alteil uses to **** (erotically caress) your wallet into thinking it's having a good time - in much the same way a poker machine does. It is a "perceived" refund of cost that is not actually a refund at all. It is a win so small, that you will ultimately reinvest it into the machine for a zero outcome.

It is pissing in your pocket and calling it rain.


Recycle in Alteil can be defined by this short story:

A man pays for 20 cars. They are worth $100 each. He has bought $2000 worth of cars.
The man learns only 10 cars are roadworthy, and he may as well scrap the others.
The scarp yard (owned by the car dealer) offers $50 per car to be scrapped, but offers this as store credit, not cash.

The man now has 10 cars, and has lost $500 dollars in value in this transaction. Given the record of the dealer, that $500 is not even likely to be worth $300.

The dealer has sold 10 cars for the price of 15 (after paying for the scrap). He actually charged for 20 (the dealer has kept $500 for nothing). Plus he has a few more guaranteed sales to the same person, and they are likely to be more scrap. Would you do business with this dealer?

Now let us view this another way:

The dealer just sold a guy 10 cars that had no value, and worse, he bought them back at half price and for store credit, meaning he didn't really buy the cars back, he just offered less of his own merchandise as a consolation for bad luck in buying his merchandise in the first place.

This equates to you taking a faulty item back to the store, and they give you only half of your money back and you can only spend that money in store. Would this not make you a little mad? Would you not want your money back (all of it)?


Please understand the way in which recycling functions. This is the crux of the problem for the Altiel cpc issues, and one that I think most people fail to understand.

Boasting a high recycle rate in a pack is not CPC, it is the potential to give you nothing in return for your purchase. It is a red herring.

[Quigleaf]

Indulging in misplaced critics is not going to enhance anyone's experience, Fargone. Paradigm shifts do not happen instantly, and even while we've been waiting for that these years, it's bound to happen only when the Developers decide to. Prolonged criticism at this point is inane.

My new posture is to change what I can, hoping others catch up eventually. If you believe otherwise, let me remind you we have gone down that road before. And here we are, arguing over realities that ultimately should not be.

[fargone]

Indulging in misplaced critics is not going to enhance anyone's experience, Fargone. Paradigm shifts do not happen instantly, and even while we've been waiting for that these years, it's bound to happen only when the Developers decide to. Prolonged criticism at this point is inane.

My new posture is to change what I can, hoping others catch up eventually. If you believe otherwise, let me remind you we have gone down that road before. And here we are, arguing over realities that ultimately should not be.

This is not a criticism. This is education for those people in the forums comparing CPC and using recycle rates do so. The only criticism I see in this thread is yours.

Your posture (and mine) are totally irrelevant here. Please realise quiggy, that as a player, you have absolutely zero power to enact change. Please also understand that I am not making an argument over any reality, I am simply more clearly defining the role that "recycle" plays here in Alteil.

If you have issues with the information I have presented then please feel free to address it. To address me as the messenger is to miss the point entirely.

[Quigleaf]

If you have issues with the information I have presented then please feel free to address it. To address me as the messenger is to miss the point entirely.

You're the one missing the point, and I'd further elaborate but could take a while. My apologies.

[fargone]

Take your time. In the meantime, realise this is not in safiria's and I am not making any suggestions for change.

[angelspawns]

It's more a slots machine that continious to refund less and less money, while you try and hit the jackpot.
You can still not win anything, but you do get to try abit more often with the coins it kept spitting out.

After auctionhouse this whole thing will be over. What comes rolling out of the slots machine may become of higher value to some1 else, then just a diminishing reroll to you on the machine.

[Logress]

I have also spent a lot of time analyzing recycling, as you can imagine -- and I also kind of would like to rework the financial system so it doesn't have to exist for purely mathematical reasons. From your argument, it does seem like, since at best a high recycle rate can get close to the original value you spent, and since your are approaching a value you started with, it seems like a net gain of zero (at best!). But that assumes the the goal of recycling is to gain value (or maintain value), which it's not. What recycling IS about -- is targeting cards.

So, if you spend $10 and that gives you a chance of getting the card you want, but on average recycling everything from that purchase gets you a 50% return, effectively it lets you pull 50% more times and thus increase your chances of pulling what you want by 50% --- actually way more, because if at any time you don't get what you want, you recycle again and get 50% of that in additional pulls -- and the cycle repeats. If you DO get what you want, then it's moot, you've gotten the value that matters to you.

Different shop items have different ratios -- obviously, the best is the lotto, since 10 gran... well, even if it was a always a 1-star it would still be 50%... I think the real number is 70-75. When rates get boosted, I analyze the results over the course of the sale. As you can imagine, a 100% average recycle rate means anyone with patience can any card for 10 gran. During the last few rarity ups I watched several free players with a modest amount of gran saved up recycle their way to a meta deck in a few hours.

So, while making everything cheaper and killing off recycling would help getting more cards for your money, (if that is the content you are looking for in CPC) but would make it harder to target cards (if that is the content you're looking for).

As for the question of fixed card sales, the Marketplace/Auctionhouse and what the real CONTENT is in CPC and ways to fix it, I've already made a lot of posts about that...

[Callonia]

I have no arguments with fargone.

After all, recycling cards didn't get me my playset of sun god and playset of new 4* zagar pfft.

[ForgotPassNotWorking]

Indulging in misplaced critics is not going to enhance anyone's experience, Fargone. Paradigm shifts do not happen instantly, and even while we've been waiting for that these years, it's bound to happen only when the Developers decide to. Prolonged criticism at this point is inane.

My new posture is to change what I can, hoping others catch up eventually. If you believe otherwise, let me remind you we have gone down that road before. And here we are, arguing over realities that ultimately should not be.

Well if you need few more years to figure things out you're free to do so.

As for the rest they are free to say what they must say. You have no right to tell them what to do. You didn't pay for their costs.

[Shirozaki]

This thread and Sherry's response to a different topic bring up one question though: How high is the PROMISED change on the priority list? I know a lot of people, including Logress, had a few ideas on how to tackle this, but there has never been a mention of it in quite a while.

If you have issues with the information I have presented then please feel free to address it. To address me as the messenger is to miss the point entirely.

You're the one missing the point, and I'd further elaborate but could take a while. My apologies.

Surprised you didn't trip over your feet as you did the french maneuver.