LogFAQs > #975087834

Tyranthraxus posted...

It's a win of 40%

Winnings probabilities for most games at casinos hover around winning about 49% of your bet across all games.

For example, I bet 100 roulette black, lose, I bet about 100 on black, I win 200. Total: I've won nothing I'm just back to square 1, this is a 50% winrate, however the exists of 2 numbers that are neither red nor black means neither of those bets actually have a 50% chance of winning. Over 1000s of games, the lost 1% adds up for the house, aka, house always wins.

Nobody would play a slot machine where you lost all your money every time you play. They're too smart for that, so they make you win a lot of times, you just win slightly less than your bet. They also do tricks like drop 5, win 6, drop 5 again, win 3. Overall you're down 1 from when you started but you'll remember that time you won 6 and keep playing.

Gambling is a dirty game of math and psychological tricks designed not to make you lose all your money at once but to make you play for so long that you eventually lose it all over the course of several days.

Slot machines in the US have to payback 80 cents for every dollar that goes into the machine. It can be paid out any way they want, fast or slow, but they have to eventually pay that out on average. But I would imagine frequent payouts would be the best to maximize player retention.

Opening CS lootboxes is the worse of both worlds. Not only are you usually going to only get about $100 on average for every $1,000 put in, but it is highly back loaded. Every skin you draw is virtually worthless, mere pennies, until you draw a knife or gloves, which tend to be around $500 on average. It is like a lottery more than a slot machine.

I am flabbergasted that the community allows it. Even something like trading cards you will have close to a whole set by opening a booster box (yeah, you will be missing quite a few mythics, but you will have a bunch of rares, uncommons & commons). Valve skins are like you spend a $100 and get 40 of the same exact 5 cent skins. It is the most inefficient way to get skins if that were the primary purpose.

Plus Valve knows what they are doing. They could set the odds to get the better stuff higher, but they keep it artifically low to create scarcity and therefore drive up the market. Yeah, they can say the community sets the prices, but they are responsible for creating the odds & therefore partially responsible for the price.