Great Vault: Gambler’s Fallacy, “Gacha” Game, and the Illusion of Choice

Community General Discussion
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Today, many of us opened our Great Vaults for the second time, and watched a cast bar fill up as the game randomly generated 1 to 9 items based on the eligible activities that we did last week.

Just think, though, how much more satisfied would you feel if you could keep all 1 to 9 of those items, and they had been awarded to you the moment you completed the said eligible activities last week?

Before Shadowlands, you could have easily obtained several more pieces of competitive loot from fully clearing a raid or doing rated PvP throughout the week (yes, rating-appropriate loot dropped randomly from rated PvP wins), and you could have looted at least several more items (than you did in fact loot last week) from doing ten keys.

In other words, it is no coincidence that the number of options generated in the Great Vault closely resembles the number of actual drops that the current looting system has intentionally taken away from us. So instead of looting at least several items per week for each eligible activity we now do, and choosing whether to equip each piece compared to what else we have for that slot, we are only allowed to choose one piece weekly for all activities that we do, not knowing what other gear will drop for us in the future or what the Great Vault will generate next week. (Given how scarce loot is, it can be frustrating how the Great Vault choice that you make may be replaced by a lucky drop, etc. elsewhere or in the future, or the the options presented may compete with the legendary that you have already crafted.)

Game developers and fans of the new system have said that the Great Vault will help us gear up over time by allowing us to choose meaningful upgrades. You may feel this way for the first few weeks, when the Great Vault is likely to generate multiple options that are all upgrades for the difficulty of content you are doing, but over time the Great Vault is more likely than it is unlikely to generate mainly options for slots that you have already upgraded. (Beware the Gambler’s Fallacy.)

Let’s say that you are lucky after doing one activity (raiding, for example) for many months and only need one last slot to be upgraded to a power level appropriate to what you are doing. The Great Vault would only have an 18% chance of generating an appropriate item for that activity in its 3 options. (Let’s hope that slot isn’t your weapon slot or you might need two patch cycles to get your weapon!)

Or you may assume that it will all work out in the end if you simply push yourself to do all 3 eligible activities and generate more choices to help beat the RNG, but even if you earn all 9 options, there is only a 6% chance that the Great Vault will generate options for 9 different slots (assuming that the Great Vault generates all slots at an equal probability). Furthermore, regardless of which slot an item is generated for and whether it is an upgrade from the perspective of item level, the Great Vault will not be a reliable means of aiming for specific best-in-slot or secondary stat-appropriate items as we cannot be sure that it will not generate the same items that it already generated last week, or that it will generate next week.

So what we have is the illusion of choice and control (when we had multiple times more choices before, therefore more control), and some players will fall victim to the fallacy that the Great Vault will surely after many weeks continue to provide upgrades and eventually allow us to meet our gearing goals if we keep doing content every week and filling up our options.

The game developers hope that we will continue to take our chances at the Great Vault every week in a “gacha”-style game spread out over the course of many months, with the cost of each attempt being our weekly efforts, and the goal (which we are statistically unlikely to reach) being a complete gear set. But the real “gacha” here is going to be when the developers think “Gotcha!” for having brainwashed so many players into thinking that the Great Vault is a great improvement, and for having kept them subbed and raiding for the entirety of a given patch cycle.

16 Likes
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Sure, I would rather go back to having more loot drops + 2 weekly chests than our current low droprate + 1 weekly chest, or even a Justice/Valor vendor system could be implemented that would be better than the vault. But I am pretty sure that the vault is loved by many and here to stay, and may have been specifically requested by YouTubers and streamers.

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because opening my weekly chest to get a piece i literally had no use for is much better than planning out my vault to maximize the potential for an upgrade
/S

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I do so love it when people recognize actual logic / math and call it out. I applaud you!

/bow

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First people complained because of the drought. Next, people complained because there wasnt enough loot. Then they complained about too much useless loot and how everything could titan/warforge and nothing was rewarding. And on and on and on and on…

Seriously. If youre not happy. Go take a break for an expansion. It wont kill you. Promise.

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6

I’ll take less loot over too much loot. Too much loot you hit your ceiling sooner and leave.

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I miss bfa its sad. I unsubbed im not feeling rewarded enough for the time i spent in game.

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That’d be pretty cool until I was fully geared up by the end of January and done with dungeons until the next tier, as tended to happen in BFA.

Pacing matters.

Don’t feel like reading the rest of your apparent dissertation on the subject.

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I don’t really need to read the whole post you made…cause honestly gearing just feels bleh. I’m cool with slowing loot progression down, but we still have so much RNG when it comes to PvE loot. PvP gearing was improved massively and the upgrade system available there is amazing using honor to upgrade gear as you gain ranks. It’s such a novel idea having your gear grow in power alongside the player. Maybe they shouldn’t do it for every piece of gear, or maybe they could put caps on the ilvl you can upgrade each piece but some kind of system where you “forge” your gear would be great, not one based on RNG, but one based on a currency reward used to upgrade gear you get for just completing PvE encounters in dungeons and raids.

Like imagine you could upgrade any piece of gear two or three tiers up from which it was obtained. Like with M+ right now sure you get less loot, but you might actually not mind grinding them if you could get a 213 piece that could be upgraded to 226 after a few weeks of grinding (as long as you’ve already obtained a piece of 226 gear from M+ or raids already). All they would have to do is add the currency as a reward to all raid, dungeon bosses scaled based on difficulty, with a weekly cap that increases throughout the season.

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To be honest I would like to see some kind of token come back for rolls . Right now one guild is full on raiders and another is in limbo so right now I am kind of stuck doing lfr until I can get geared up enough for a pug group to take me .

With some kind of currency we could rerun things like lfr if we didn’t get something the first time. Yes I know going back through and using a bonus roll doesn’t guarantee something will drop bit it would increase the odds.

I don’t want loot dropping at BfA levels but I don’t want loot to drop so little that it makes it not fun to do things. There needs to be a happy middle .

1 Like
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People who would have been willing to play or grind for more chances of gear before are no longer interested in doing that. Several of my friends take on a bearish attitude towards arena as soon as they get to the rank they want their vault rewards to be at.

As a result, less games, less practice, less time playing together. The great vault sucks.

2 Likes
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Then everyone would be top ilevel and no one would care to play anymore. Why would any subscription game want to do this?

Oh, definitely not. It’s still just another box o’ sad. lol

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You just sound greedy.

And no, that’s not gacha. We’re not being encouraged to pay real world money for the chance of getting a piece of loot.

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Yes. Let us get 9 out of the 18 pieces we require each week so that it only takes 2 weeks to fully gear.

This sounds like a great idea.

*no it doesn’t

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15

Yes.

The Great Vault and the looting system we have now simply sucks.

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The problem is due to skill disparity between players means that gear brackets dont really exist as something some players cant clear in 226 gear others will clear in 200 gear.

Which means to create a decent length loot treadmill they needed to do one of two things.

  1. RNG options to get the best available gear (titan forge, corruption, warforge, making gear have options for multiple sockets but rare and impossible to grind)
  2. Soft capping gear aquisition

Option 1 was tried in bfa and was poorly recieved so they have opted for Option 2 for shadowlands to encourage players to gear up and interact with the game till 9.1 where the gear reset hits and we start again.

The problem is the average gamer is much older now than we were in 2004 so spending large amounts of time on a loot treadmill is less exciting than it was 16 years ago.

Personally it does not bother me I am happy with my gearing rate and progression at the moment. If I stopped enjoying the game I would just change to something else and come back later.

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Still much better odds than the old weekly chest or a single dungeon. 6% for the old chest, and 1% chance from dungeon runs.

I thought we were just looking to get a single item to fill that missing slot. In which case the probability that slot will show is, 56%. Ultimately your math is correct, there is a 6% chance that the great vault will have 9 unique items, the thing to consider though, is you only need one so the other 8 are irrelevant.

Personally I feel it would be more authentic to frame the odds in my first sentence of the last paragraph. The odds a single slot will show within the great vault. Which is 56%. Pretty good odds no?

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18

I would almost be concerned if your post wasn’t full of garbage.

Mythic+ - The great vault has only increased the possibilities. The 1st option is the exact same as Legion/BFA, based on your highest key, with options 2-3 purely in addition. The great vault (or old weekly cache) gives higher item level gear than available through end of dungeon gear (which is what got its items reduced by 1). The great vault change has VASTLY increased your chances of getting mythic level gear from mythic+.

Raiding - First, the chest didn’t even exist. In its place you got 2 additional items per 20 people (5 for 20 instead of 3 for 20). So on a 10 boss clear you would get 20 additional item drops rather than having a chance to get items in your weekly chest, including end 2 boss loot that goes to 233. If you’re clearing he raid its extra chances at key trinkets and other raid specific gear.

PvP - rating requirements for everything cut, making it way easier to get good gear. Also this coincides with the PvP vendor so you can purchase items you aren’t getting in your weekly chest. PvP is the most reliable method now to 226 gear since both the weekly chest item and the vendor can be purchased first and upgraded rather than having to re-obtain the item at a higher item level once the rank is achieved. In BFA the end of match loot capped lower, like end of dungeon loot, and wasn’t upgradable like it is now.

In the end, the Great Vault (along with the PvP vendor) has drastically increased your chances of getting BiS. Especially for anyone gearing solely from mythic+ since you were always hard stuck at 1 single high item per week and now at least you get 3 options instead of 1 if you do a lot of keys.

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19

Why does this look like a rant meant for the Genshin Impact community and not the World of Warcraft community lol. Plus it cannot be Gatcha because we are not spending real money on rolls to get loot. Like we arent paying for the loot. If you want to pay for a chance to get loot that you want, then I would recommend playing Genshin Impact lol.

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Write a book about it why dontcha. Honestly it’s a huge improvement over BFAs loot chest. I went months getting bracers and boots that I just vendor’d. Having the extra options allows it so that you have a much better chance for an upgrade and not limited to mythic plus.