While many of us are struggling to resist dropping $20 on a full five-character pull in Fire Emblem Heroes, Redditor Kooko22 dropped a cool grand on Nintendo’s latest mobile game, expanding their team size to 500 and filling it completely — yet they still don’t have Hector.
According to the AMA posted alongside a gallery of the expansive crew, Kooko22 is a chemical analysis software developer with no kids, so it makes sense they might have a spare $US1000 ($1310) laying about to put Fire Emblem Heroes‘ random character pulls to the test. “Fun, curiosity, and data” are given as the reasons for the large investment.
The purchased orbs that didn’t go to increasing their team size from the default 200 to the 500 member max were spent equally between the two types of Summoning Focus currently available in the game.
Before we get into those numbers, look at all of these gold stars.
Image via Kooko22 on imgur.
Wait for it…
Image via Kooko22 on imgur.
That’s seven rows of five star characters plus the four-character team, or 39 total. Of the 35, 24 are red. Six are blue, six are colourless and a measly three are green. Basically the same percentages I’ve seen, but I’ve only spent $40 or so.
Along with the 35 five stars, Kooko22’s army also contains 168 four stars, 279 three stars, nine two stars and only five single star characters. You can see the entire roster at their imgur gallery.
Aside from rendering my writing a story about spending $40 on the game and only getting two five star characters, one of which either wants to have sex with me or be my sister (possibly both), obsolete, Kooko22’s monetary sacrifice should net a ton of useful information about summoning percentages, as well as base and levelled character stats. They already have a spreadsheet going.
You know what this game really needs? A player marketplace, where poor Kooko22 can trade for that elusive Hector. They deserve him.
Comments
21 responses to “Player Spends $1000 In Fire Emblem Heroes, Still Doesn’t Have Hector”
I’m just using my stock characters….
I know someone who dropped 10k on that kate upton war game. His wife was not impressed as that’s not money they could really spare.
All the developers of these games just need ONE sucker.
Several but yeah, complete and absolute suckers.
Are they still together? Can you elaborate? It sounds like this guy needs to do an AMA
Yeah, but things are a bit rocky apparently. He doesn’t know I know so no AMA coming.
That sucks. Hard. I hope things get better.
From what I understand his wife has put some things in place to stop it happening again. And they have gotten better.
That’s like some gambling addiction level of mental issues there…
Though, perhaps not even mental issues. I’ve always felt that most of these F2P games prey on the same basic task/reward mechanics as many gambling games, particularly with the RNG thrown in too there’s not too much of a separation.
I’ve spent a little on eggs in Pokemon Go and there is certainly that little rush when it starts to hatch….what will it be?
I’m always rather interested in people’s mentality when dropping money into apps.
like for me it’s mostly about time spent using the app. I bought tripview when I was in uni, almost a decade ago, and it’s probably the best 2 dollars I’ve spent.
I recently dropped money into Crazy Kings (played it for over a year now). dropping 1K into a game that just came out? yea I personally can’t justify it regardless of whether i can afford it
I’ve spent a bit on Pokemon Go but have spent many evenings trawling around with a group of friends tracking pokemon, capturing gyms etc. Many more hours than I spend on some full price games so I have no issue with that.
yea that seems logical to me
at the end of the day I’m okay with supporting developers for games I’ve spent considerable time playing.
it’s just hard for me to wrap my head around that somebody will download a free to play game and immediately dump 100 dollars into it
I find it funny how people will pay $100 for a brand new console game and play it for 10 hours, but refuse to spend a single cent on a mobile game that they spend 100 hours playing.
Spent about $240 on Mechwarrior over 3 years. Don’t regret it at all, though I stopped playing when Overwatch came out
I always hated games that have no cap on how much you can spend.
If your “game” isn’t worth 1.99 on the app store it sure as hell isn’t worth over 1k in microtransactions.
I don’t see this as being any different to gambling, the same methods are used to lure people into spending so much with little to no chance of receiving any benefit, depending on how you value virtual goods.
It’s a pretty good legitimate scam until it’s eventually reeled in by the relevant authorities, who are struggling to keep up with a global market.
Unusually, China is well ahead of the rest of the world in seeing random drop boxes as exactly what they are – gambling. Which is why they are going to be forcing companies to reveal actual drop rates so players at least know how much of a sucker they need to be in order to get that elusive animated gold whatever skin. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-12-09-china-forces-devs-to-reveal-loot-box-drop-rates-in-game
A large part of the gambling box scam, like at any other casino, involves the house creating the impression that drop rates are higher than they actually are, encouraging people to spend one more dollar, then another, then another. (Obviously, since otherwise they’d just allow you to buy the damn skin you want directly so you know what cash you’re going to be up for and just get on with your life).
The whole casino effect is constantly reinforced by a wide range of manipulative psychological tricks to create the impression that gold ultra rare whatevers are as common as flies on shit, such as sending out global announcements whenever anyone actually pulls one of these illusive, miraculous beasts. As well as to obscure the fact that you are spending real money, such as by forcing you to buy in game currency with real cash, and it’s the in game currency that’s then used to buy the boxes or keys giving you a psychological step or two of removal from the spending.
IMHO, if in-game gambling boxes were banned entirely tomorrow it still wouldn’t be soon enough.
Not to mention that unlike casinos they’re selling chips/coins/gold/etc rather than converting it. They can put up deals that pressure the customer into buying the ‘best value’ currency bundle, or at least the next size up from what they wanted to spend.
As long as he made that money from his sweat and blood who am I to judge. We all do crazy things at times. Admittedly i put about 200 bucks in overwatch loot crates, not all at once, but you get what happens. A few dollars here, a few dollars there… eventually… you see your bank statement and go… ohhh. This guy is much braver (or… ahem stupider or… ITS FOR THE LOVE OF SCIENCE I TELL YOU!), anyhow his game, he can do whatever he wants with it.
Why do you have to pay for these