Pet Catcher Q & A

[PhleBuster]

Howdies,

Since there were a couple of active threads on the topic and my replies likely got lost in them without most people seeing them, I figured I'd make a new thread to quickly address some main points brought up regarding the new Pet Catcher mechanics.

On a principal level I appreciate a lot of even the most negative comments I've seen, since it's good to see a healthy dislike of paid lootboxes/gacha, which I'm strongly against myself, and I feel the overall mentality toward them is a sign of good things to come. Just feels it can be a bit misguided/overly generalized, so I'll try to clarify things here a bit.

I'll try to keep it short and simple. If other good questions come up, I'll update the post.

Q: Is this paid lootboxes? Will it be?

A: No. You earn arcade tokens by playing the game, and they cannot be bought now or in the future.

Q: Is Fruitbat Factory getting rich off the pets?

A: Well I can't say for sure before we see the next royalty report, but the publisher only gets a 7% cut of transactions, and they're no different from Steam trading card sales, which we do have a long experience with. Based on that... I expect they won't make any noticeable difference for us. There's a degree of difference to if we were selling the items ourselves, never mind selling endless arcade tokens to prey on the vulnerable (I've been known to be quite vocal about my dislike of paid lootboxes/gacha, so we've made sure there's no gambling element to our implementation), and keeping all of the sales except for Steam's fees.

Q: What are the limits on earning arcade tokens?

A: You can earn 18 tokens (6 rolls) every 3 days by playing up to 6 games. You also get 6 additional tokens (2 rolls) every week just for logging in.

Q: I'm only getting common drops, this system sucks!

A: While there's a 20% chance to get a pet drop, statistically some players will also be unlucky and go the first 3-day period or even longer without any pet drops. That does suck. We ran against a deadline in the implementation, but we'll be adding a "pity reward" system themed after the real-world UFO catchers in Japan to the game sometime soon. If you feel the RNG isn't with you, you can hold onto your arcade tokens until it's implemented (though I can't give any ETA for when it'll happen).

Q: I hate the fireworks!

A: We'll be looking at ways to make them more interesting, and will also be adding other kinds of consumable items with cool effects further down the line. But we also made them tradable now, so you can just gift them to your friend for a firework party if you don't like them.

I can never get all the items now! RIP my collection!

Our goal's never been for the status quo of the game to be one where players have everything there is in the game, but rather we've aimed to make sure nothing is permanently missable, and there's always something cool to work toward. We've played with the rates a fair bit so I'll have to double check the final figures, but by my latest count you should be on average able to get all the currently added pets and their variants (by getting all different pets directly or trading them 1:1 with others of same rarity) in less than a year - which is less than the completion rate for the challenge crates when we added them. From our perspective, it takes several months to add this amount of content to the game, so it's not a very long time frame for completion. Of course, you can expect us to add even more pets to the game, I'm just pointing out that the launch situation isn't particularly unusual.

Q: No one asked for this, so why did you add it!

A: Well, no one asks for most of the features we add to the game. We like to surprise people like that... although, in this case it shouldn't exactly have been surprise since we pretty clearly explained the inventory plans earlier. The pets themselves were a cool new idea and we spent a long time working on the most interesting implementation for them. One pet grievance we always had with adding new content is that it's not exactly secure - while VAC keeps most cheaters at bay, there will always be some who cheat endless currencies to just unlock all the content, which doesn't feel very fair to everyone else who's playing seriously. When we keep both the currency and rewards in the Steam inventory, it's a closed system and basically as secure as it can get.

Steam economy is also something Valve has recommended to us to draw in more players, since apparently games with economy support automatically become a lot more interesting to players[citation needed]. And personally I find it hard to disagree with that, when I have a $12 valued DOTA2 inventory without having paid a dime for that game. It's not like I've sold any of the items... but I could! Every time we release a new DLC, there are concerns that people will find it too much. On the other hand, we do need to make money from something, and the cheap DLC have been a pretty good method so far, in my opinion. Going forward with the Steam economy system, players could have the possibility to make enough money selling their free bonus items to cover future DLC costs and play for free forever! Well, I guess that's in a perfect world, and we can't know if the pets will even have any value or sales down the line for that to happen. If not, that's cool too.

Half of those weren't actually questions... oh well.

Updates here:

Q: How does the game determine "every 3 days"?
I'm concerned that some possibilities (such as a simple 72-hour countdown) would mean that you can't actually get tokens every 3 days but every 3-days-plus-when-you-can-next-play, slowing things down.

A: Turns out that it's a global timer, so you can get new tokens at fixed intervals (3 days for more exchange tokens and 7 days for the bonus arcade tokens). You can log in whenever during this period to claim your rewards.

Q: Does the "every 3 days" token allowance accumulate?

A:We're still working on the item stacking etc details, but the intent when everything's done is that the exchange tokens don't accumulate but will be capped at 6. They aren't really meant to be an item in the first place, it's just a physical manifestation of the 3-day period during which you can earn arcade tokens 6 times, necessitated by the Steam implementation.

Q: Why 3 tokens per spin, 3 per game and 6 per weekly login, and not simply 1 token per pull and 1 earned per game?

A: 3 tokens gives us more leeway for both granting varying amounts of tokens in the future, where the minimum grant isn't exactly 1 pull and anything more than that 2 pulls or more.

[Keegster23]

So, I used the pet exchanger to exchange my two Searchlight pets, which are both blue. The color I got in exchange happens to be the exact same color. Is this intentional, or are you not supposed to have a chance of basically losing one of the two pets?

[megametalgreymon]

Is there a limit to how many of each colored fireworks a player can have in their inventory at one time? As I don't use the fireworks, they are going to build up in my inventory over time.

[Miraglyth]

Originally posted by Keegster23:

The color I got in exchange happens to be the exact same color.

It should have an extended name, like "(Variant 2)". If that's the same colour as the original one (you can't get variants from the arcade, I believe?) then the issue would be that a certain pet has a variant color the same as the original.

If the new pet doesn't have an extended name, then you did get the same pet back as the two you exchanged. Which I think they said in one of the complaint topics shouldn't be possible.

Originally posted by megametalgreymon:

Is there a limit to how many of each colored fireworks a player can have in their inventory at one time?

I suspect not, otherwise it would be a great idea to stockpile them and prevent getting more of them, allowing every pull to be a pet.

----

Edit: We've passed another cutover to get new exchange tokens in the last few hours.

[PhleBuster]

Updated with new info:

Q: How does the game determine "every 3 days"?
I'm concerned that some possibilities (such as a simple 72-hour countdown) would mean that you can't actually get tokens every 3 days but every 3-days-plus-when-you-can-next-play, slowing things down.

A: Turns out that it's a global timer, so you can get new tokens at fixed intervals (3 days for more exchange tokens and 7 days for the bonus arcade tokens). You can log in whenever during this period to claim your rewards.

[Bluflare1]

Originally posted by PhleBusterFruitbat Factory:

Updated with new info:

Q: How does the game determine "every 3 days"?
I'm concerned that some possibilities (such as a simple 72-hour countdown) would mean that you can't actually get tokens every 3 days but every 3-days-plus-when-you-can-next-play, slowing things down.

A: Turns out that it's a global timer, so you can get new tokens at fixed intervals (3 days for more exchange tokens and 7 days for the bonus arcade tokens). You can log in whenever during this period to claim your rewards.

I wish there was a timer, or something when we know the tokens will vanish.

[Miraglyth]

Originally posted by trecotrick:

I wish there was a timer, or something when we know the tokens will vanish.

They've just changed over. If I had to guess it was either 20 minutes ago or 1 hour and 20 minutes ago. Logging in again will provide 6 more exchange tokens.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Just two quick questions:

1. Do the pets in a given rarity tier have the same probability of being generated by the pet catcher? (e.g. are Robo Balls and Chickens and Seagulls equally probable?)

2. Do the pet color variants have the same probability of being generated? (e.g. does combining two Chickens have the same chance of resulting in a red or green chicken?)

[mds2005]

So I just got a second "SB Bomb (Variant 4)". As in, I have two of them now.
Is it intentional that I can't combine those two Variant 4's to get a different SB Bomb variant?

[winter wave]

please make these paid lootboxes

[PKblaze]

Can't be mad. Had 4 Super Rares already and I think I've taken like 8 attempts

[tricosahedron]

Originally posted by mds2005:

So I just got a second "SB Bomb (Variant 4)". As in, I have two of them now.
Is it intentional that I can't combine those two Variant 4's to get a different SB Bomb variant?

This raises an interesting question: Can we get rid of alternative color uncommon pets, once our inventories and the market are flooded with them, and they lose nearly any value? I mean, except for dumping them on a Steam account that is willing to accept them all.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Suggestion: Theme the receipts thing differently.

It's supposed to be a counter toward a pity reward, which resets whenever one actually gets a pet. But right now it looks like something that one can collect indefinitely, because a physical receipt wouldn't disappear when someone does pull something in a claw game.

Instead, I suggest theming it in some way like (for example) a counter on an Poppo statue or something, which "mysteriously changes" depending on result of your last draw.

[winter wave]

make them lone zone tokens

[a vicious gacha Poppo appears.]

looks like i'm done with 100%oj, oj and fbf.
the fact that you can't seen the problems with this system baffles me.

and no gambling element? what?
gachas are gambling. it's just that instead of selling the gambling tokens you skim off the top of whatever comes out making you look a lot cleaner than you really are.

[Juno Brier]

Originally posted by a vicious gacha Poppo appears.:

looks like i'm done with 100%oj, oj and fbf.
the fact that you can't seen the problems with this system baffles me.

and no gambling element? what?
gachas are gambling. it's just that instead of selling the gambling tokens you skim off the top of whatever comes out making you look a lot cleaner than you really are.

It's not like you're spending any money on it. Unless you take the phrase "time is money" too literally.