In Defense of the Rare Egg Machines

As long as I’ve been playing Puzzle and Dragons, I’ve noticed time and time again that people enjoy complaining about the rates in the game, or that it’s rigged and the displayed rates are false, ect, ect. Since the beginning, I’ve been happy with the amount of 6 star or higher units (hereby referred to as Specially Super Rares, or SSRs for short). Honestly, when it comes to premium gacha machines, you can’t ever expect to get what you want… no matter how much you put into the game. RNG will always play a role, and you’ll either get it, or you won’t. However in PAD, the game is more than fair; boasting rates for Collab or Limited REM SSRs between 1% to 2%, and that’s per card.

Hell, Kamen Rider came out while I was writing this article and showed me it could be even better!

Would it surprise you if I told you that these rates are higher than average? Lucky for all of us, I’ve played other gacha games, and I’ve experienced the best and the worst of what they have to offer. In the following article, I’ll be focusing on two other gacha games, Fire Emblem Heroes and Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, and discussing how their gacha systems differ from Puzzle and Dragons, and how they’re better or worse than what we have. I’ll also showcase a series of gacha rates from other games not mentioned here (thanks to various PDX Mods~); just to show that we’re lucky with what we have.

Overall Rates

While there are a few reasons as to why the PAD Gacha is superior to other games, the most obvious one would be the overall rates. As mentioned before, PAD SSR rates are between 1-2% for Limited Gachas, while Godfest rates are much less (the lowest I can recall is .3% for a 7 star GFE, that’s not a specific Cotton or Ney Uvo). But those are for Specific cards… it’s nice wanting the newest GFE; however just because you didn’t get that one card, doesn’t nullify the fact that you either…

Barely rolled only a few times
Got a few other SSRs or GFEs
Simply got extremely unlucky

These are the only cases I see when people complain or get upset over their rolls. On average, SSR rates for any given machine can be anywhere from 10 to 15% depending on the number of SSRs available, with the average SSR taking up 1.5% of that. This may seem high or low to some on paper, but let’s look at this a different way…

Rolling a few times and not getting what you wanted

For maths sake, lets look at the recent Dragonbound & Dragon Caller rates where the SSRs are all 2% pulls. Logically, without taking into account RNG (we’ll get back to this, later), it means that 2% of what you roll will be that Ideal you’ve been wanting since last year; which means the other 98% of what you get will not be Ideal. Now instead of percentages, we can look at that through flat “# of pulls”, in this case, 2% of 100%, can be read as 2 out of 100, or 1 out of 50.

This means that, on average, you will need to pull 50 times for Ideal.

This is why it frustrates me when I see people who’ve only rolled five or ten times on a specific machine, then complain that they didn’t get the one card they really wanted. It’s okay to be like “Damn, I didn’t get Suou after rolling five times… guess I have to trade.” and that be the end of it; but to constantly bring it up and announce to everyone that the rates are false only serves to make you look childish.

Reni: “Want: Any diamond, Result: No diamond” I didn’t even realize she didn’t get any diamonds from KR until I asked for pictures from other Blog members .__.;

“But what about those people who pulled more than five or ten times, Ken?”

Well what about them? Let’s say they rolled 20 times, chances are they got a few other cards that are worth their weight in Magic Stones, and made everything worth it. This is honestly more common than people getting upset over not getting what they want in very few rolls; people roll a solid amount of times, and then get many decent cards, but not the one OP card they really, really, wanted. More times than not, these people roll ten or so times, and get some decent to extraordinary pulls, then cry because they didn’t get what they wanted. Well, too bad. You should be happy with what you got, there are people out there who’ve rolled more than you did and actually get nothing but poor pulls.

I kinda really wanted Den-O for 7c memes, but hey 3 6*s is pretty good imo!

On top of this, thanks to the Monster Exchange, I can trade the duplicate GFEs and Collab rares I don’t particularly want or need for cards I find more desirable. Of course it doesn’t always work out for me, but the fact GH added this as an option places it on top in terms of player friendliness.

RNGesus can be a huge dick at times.

Which brings me to my final point; sometimes RNGesus forsakes you. It happens to all of us. I know this for a fact; it’s happened to me, it’s happened to other members of the community, and it’ll happen to you too.

Not Pictured: The hoard of FMA 5*s I sold for MP cause I didn’t need 8 copies of Winry.

RNG is RNG, sometimes people get those SSRs they want from their free or bundle rolls, sometimes they get it after a few pulls, and sometimes they just don’t get it after pulling more than what logic dictates they need to pull to get it. As mentioned before yeah, logically it’ll take 50 pulls to get Ideal from the DBDC machine; however it can take more… much more.

That’s the risk with these games, we rely on pure RNG in order to get what we want.

In the end it’s literally chance… you have a chance to get 10 SSRs out of 100 Rolls, you have a chance to get more, and you have a chance to get less. This is the game we all play; it’s honestly best to either be happy with what you get, or don’t roll at all. Seriously, don’t be that guy who rolls 100 times, then cries that he got below expected rates.

Rates of other Gacha games I play

Fire Emblem Heroes

That said, PAD is one of the few games I’ve played with amazing SSR rates… honestly the only one I’ve played with better, player friendly rates, would be Fire Emblem Heroes.

Here, the chances for getting an SSR may seem lower than PADs average of 10%. Fire Emblem Heroes has something built-in that helps eliminate the factor RNG plays into the Gacha system; Stepping.

Not to be confused with Step Ups (this is discussed further down), Stepping is the process of when SSR rates increase over time after a set number of pulls without obtaining an SSR; sometimes even guaranteeing an SSR after a set number of pulls without any SSRs! That combined with the fact that you can choose what Attribute you want the hero you’re pulling for to be makes Fire Emblem Heroes Rates top-tier among the sea of Gacha games.

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius

On the other side of the spectrum, though, exists my greatest shame; Final Fantasy Brave Exvius…

Looking at the rates for the current banner (which features a single SSR unit), we can gather a few things: Overall SSR Rate is 3%, Featured SSR rate is 1%, and all other SSR rates are 0.025%. Yes, in this case you have a better chance of getting the featured SSR here as opposed to PAD… but like I’ve said before, it’s not all about that one SSR, it’s about getting other SSRs as well; which is more important in Final Fantasy than it is in most other mobile games; mainly because in order to make your SSR’s into the highest rarity, you need to feed one SSR a dupe of itself…

The one blessing FFBE gives us are “Step Up” banners; which are a series of pulls you can take advantage of, with each step having their own perk up until the final step, which is usually either increased SSR Rates, or a guaranteed Featured SSR.

This is the one shining light, assuming you have the premium currency to actually go up the full route all three times to guarantee yourself a 7* of one of those two units. (which in this case is 60000 of FFBE’s premium currency; which would translate to roughly 600 Magic Stones.)

Though, I will say FFBE does give out its premium currency much more than PAD typically does.

Rates of other Gacha games I don’t play

Below is a gallery of images that show the rates of SSRs from other Gacha games…

Bandori rates look really fun!

5% is pretty par for the course it seems

Love Live has 5% for an SSR or better, (I’d say 7* GFEs would count as URs)

Monster Strike seems to be on par with PAD, so not too shabby~

Granblue Fantasy. I originally wanted to get into this game and never did… I made the wise choice.

What PAD does that makes it better than other Gacha games

In order to limit break and unlock the full potential of a card in pad, you just spend easily acquired resources such as Plus Points, Tamadras, and Super Snow Globe Dragons… it’s a serious luxury if you’ve reached upper mid to late game of other Gacha games.

Where FEH can get annoying

In the case of Fire Emblem Heroes, you can feed units to other units in order to pass along passive skills or weapons from the lost unit, into the unit you’re enhancing. This means that any SSR that you have that has a unique, desirable skill that would be amazing on another unit, will have to be sacrificed to that other unit; making you lose it forever. What’s more, is FEH uses an Individual Value (IV) system (similar to Pokémon’s Nature system) where each unit will have one bane, and one boon stat. This means that not only will you face the choice of feeding your SSR to another card to make it stronger or to keep it, you also have to hope that its Internal Value is decent enough to make it not trash in game. I will say though, that these two systems complement each other, since even if you get a good unit with an amazing inheritable skill; if it’s IV’s suck it’ll make it easy to feed it off to another unit.

There’s an actual website to find your unit’s IVs.

Where FFBE can get annoying

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius takes this a few steps further. First of all, in order to create some of the best units in the game, you must get at least two copies of that unit. Then once it’s max level max awoken, you turn the dupe into an Evolution material (like Evo Gems in PAD… except you’re doing it to an REM monster and not some random descended trash.) This will turn your 6 Star unit into a 7 Star. Not terrible… until we get to something called Trust Mastery Rewards.

Units in FFBE can be outfitted with equipment (easy to think of, right?) and materia (not so much; just think of it as Latent Tamadra that you can remove and keep or give to another unit). A large majority of the games best equipment and materia are locked behind Trust Mastery Rewards. A units Trust Mastery starts at 0%, and gradually increases af you use them in the game. It’s not really that bad, considering we have an enhancement material that allows us to boost that value and they give them out often enough that it doesn’t bother me much. The issue here is with two things; SSRs typically have the more desirable Trust Mastery Rewards, and they (at 7 Star) get the ability to unlock Super Trust Mastery Rewards.

My unit’s current Trust Mastery level is on the right (100%), his Super TMR level is on the left (50%)

The first point is easy to comprehend; SSR Trust Masteries are super good, but the rates are so low that you might not ever get them. The second requires a bit more explanation. You see, at 7 Star, the SSR in question can now unlock an amazing piece of equipment or materia called a Super Trust Mastry Reward. However, unlocking this is a bit different from unlocking a standard Trust Mastery; as it requires you feeding two additional dupes into your 7 Star. So you need 4 copies of one SSR in order to acquire its Super Trust Mastery. That combined with 3% SSR rates… if I have to explain it to you then you haven’t been paying attention.

The one thing FFBE does to alleviate this is the 5 Star Select Ticket, where you can choose any SSR in the game that has a 7 Star form; but it requires 10 of the tickets and the game doesn’t give them out often, at most it’s 3 every month.

At least they let us know when they’re coming, right?

The only thing PAD does that can be seen as a hinderance, are Assist Evolutions; but as long as you use your brain that shouldn’t affect you very much.

Closing Thoughts

We’re all here because we enjoy Puzzle and Dragons, and getting the cards we want makes it all the more enjoyable. I get it! It’s nice rolling what you want, and the feeling is euphoric, but it’s important to realize that you don’t need the super overpowered cards to do well in this game; most of it is simply a quality of life enhancement. It sucks not getting Ideal or Valeria, but it’s how you act after getting or not getting it that helps define you; no one likes a show off as much as no one likes a crybaby; we should all be happy that GH is kind with its rates as (seen above) it could be so much worse.

I also know how addicting it can be to want that feeling again. If you feel like you or someone you know has a problem and spends too much on this or any other Gacha game looking for that fix, please do not hesitate reaching out for help; there’s no shame in it and it can only be a real quality of life improvement for not only yourself, but those around who care about you.

USA National Gambling Helpline

Canadian National Gambling Helplines (Sorted by Province)

[speech name=tb_ax]I’ve played FEH since launch, and definitely longer than any reasonably smart person should have right now (it is the only other gacha game I am currently playing). Between unit merges up to +10, praying for good IVs, pitybreakers, and sacrificing highest-rarity units to get new premium skills, FEH’s gacha seems magnitudes more predatory than PAD’s. Combine this with the introduction of not one but numerous PvE/PvP modes, and it’s no wonder a lot of people are dissatisfied with the game right now.

FEH’s premium currency is given out at a much higher rate than PAD’s, but this also leads the weak-willed seeing hardy F2P players save months on end and rolling away their stockpile to fully max out a character, spending the equivalent of hundreds of dollars in handouts. You’ll also often see maxed out units after their release in the PvP modes. These create the illusion that everyone, even F2P players, has a multitude of +10 fully decked out units! It also generates distaste in someone like me, who doesn’t have that huge of an attachment to any character, as a reckless gambit that seldom pays off or simply flamboyant displays of whaling that won’t pay off (from a functional perspective) in the long run.

I regret spending money on FEH, it just feels like a huge money sink if you’re not willing to pull the trigger and blow ludicrous amounts of currency (paid or otherwise) in a sitting. All of the giant spenders in FEH that I had personal contact with have come and gone, leaving this game behind after pumping thousands into it. I feel that small, gradual investments in PAD have a much better return, such as acquiring low-rarity collab rolls with extremely unique niches or waiting for reruns to snag the somewhat desirable stuff you missed and get a shot at brand new OP cards. Or maybe it’s just because I have a more clear-cut definition of what cards I want in PAD instead of blindly following flavor of the month traps.

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[speech name=chu2]My luck in the REM is so-so, but what kept me playing is the high number useful farmable units available, especially in the context of speed farming. Although GH likes to introduce rare niche farming tools as rolling incentive (looking at you Hz8 ), many great farming tools like Whaledor, Tengu & all the full board makers and some nice leads/subs like Rushana, Miru, & Eir are obtained through non-REM means. Max skilling the good farmables takes lots of effort, but at the same time it’s a system that rewards actually playing the game.
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