Slot wheel mysteries revealed (finally!)

[Cisco]

Not sure if it was 50% or simply changed so pillars always get a shot. Zans posted it somewhere in that huge thread.

[Cisco]

remember that post. The post must be somewhere  in the middle. kudos for finding it.

[Evil Hamster]

remember that post. The post must be somewhere  in the middle. kudos for finding it.

Took some hunting

Eh, maybe I'm really, really unlucky, but... I've won emerald and wind pillars off AI3, which has enough deck variety in every deck that the odds of not finding 5 non-pillar cards in 50 attempts is incredibly low. Maybe there's a bug no one knows about yet.

I vaguely recall if the deck was over 50% pillars the 50 attempts is ignored and it just fills the spinners randomly to reduce the efficiency of "rare farms". People were putting up decks of 6 Owl eyes and 24 pillars. But I'm not about to go looking through all those posts at the moment!

[Evil Hamster]

Can you post the link to the original post?

mysterious secrets of the magical slot machine (http://board.flashkit.com/board/showpost.php?p=4178125&postcount=321)

You beat me to it!

[Evil Hamster]

After MUCH digging around on the flashkit forum, I have found the mysterious secrets of the magical slot machine (http://board.flashkit.com/board/showpost.php?p=4178125&postcount=321) 

Well I will reveal the mystery about the spinning wheel:

The program takes the opponent deck and randomly finds 5 non pillar cards, the 5 non pillars cards are used for the spinning, so the possible combinations are

5^3=125

the winning combinations are

5

If all the 5 cards are different, the chance to win with a single spin is:

5/125 = 4%
(that's why I said 5%, it is actually 4, but there is a small chances that 2 or more of the same card will be used)

However, if a deck is specialized, the chances to have more cards of the same kind in the cards pool are higher, if 2 of the five cards are the same the chance to win is:

((2^3)+2) / 125 = 11/125 = 8.8%

etc... so, putting it in a table:

5 different cards = 4% winning chance
4 different cards = 8.8% winning chance
3 different cards = 23.2% winning chance
2 different cards = 52% winning chance
all cards are the same = 100%

That means that from a deck with only one kind of non-pillar card you'll win for sure, BUT....

In the new version I added something else: the program has only 50 chances to find all the 5 non-pillar cards, if it is not successfull at doing that it will start drawing pillars as well. This way, playing against a pillar only deck will give you 3 pillars. Statistic for almost all pillar decks gets quite complicated.

Actual step by step walkthrough:

1. Pick a random card in your opponent's deck
2. If it's a pillar, go back to 1
3. Security mechanism (for builds that are composed of pillars only) : if, after 10 random picks, you still get a pillar then keep it
4. Store card in variable card1.
5. Repeat steps 1 to 4, until you have filled 4 variables
6. Now the spinning starts for 3 rounds but you only pick cards in [card1, card2, card3, card4]. This ways, the chances to pick 3 times the same one are much higher.

EDITED by Mr. Jellyfish:

I wish I had seen this before... I wouldn't have explained everything again here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,712.msg7409#msg7409).

A few comments though:

* The first part of the algorithm creates what I call a "shortlist" of 5 cards, but only the first 4 are actually used afterwards (and that's what really counts). So the chances to get something are higher than what Zanzarino says. I don't know if it's bug or not, but that's how it works.

* The mechanism to prevent infinite loops described at the end of the post, doesn't stop searching for non-pillar cards after 50 failed attempts but after 10. That makes the risks to get a pillar from the spinning wheel much higher for builds that have about 50% pillars (or more). Also, only elemental pillars, elemental towers and quantum pillars are excluded. For some reasons, quantum towers are considered valid.

* There are also 2 undescribed mechanisms:
- one that converts every card into its non-upgraded version if you're not fighting against a fake god. This mechanism takes place after the exclusion of pillars, so quantum towers might be chosen in first place and then converted into quantum pillars (that's common in PvP)
- and another that has a 10% chance to replace the first card of the shortlist by a shard, if you're fighting against a fake god. The shard inserted here is always the one that upgrades into Shard of Divinity.

[joob]

Awesomesauce. Now we can all stop guessing. Thanks to both Zanz and EvilHamster.

[joob]

Can you post the link to the original post?

mysterious secrets of the magical slot machine (http://board.flashkit.com/board/showpost.php?p=4178125&postcount=321)

You beat me to it!

xD
You were too sneaky.

[joob]

Can you post the link to the original post?

mysterious secrets of the magical slot machine (http://board.flashkit.com/board/showpost.php?p=4178125&postcount=321)

[RoKetha]

Eh, maybe I'm really, really unlucky, but... I've won emerald and wind pillars off AI3, which has enough deck variety in every deck that the odds of not finding 5 non-pillar cards in 50 attempts is incredibly low. Maybe there's a bug no one knows about yet.

[vice123]

Can you post the link to the original post?

[Daxx]

Given that method for the spins, and the fact that we now know the composition of the T3 decks, this presumably means we can calculate the odds of winning various cards (read: rares) from those decks.

EDIT: This should also help us optimise rare farms, too, if someone so inclined wants to run through the maths.

[EmilyMoby]

I see pillars appear in slots all the time when playing T50. It happens often enough that it makes me agree with the above poster who suspected there might be a bug.