Split Rate Compensation Analysis

Second Dinner has announced compensation for the period of reduced split rates that negatively affected ink, gold, and Krackle. Let’s dig into it! I’ll briefly cover the whole story (in case you’ve somehow missed it so far), then analyze and evaluate the compensation.

Infinity Split Rate Compensation

The Timeline

On Saturday, October 5th, I shared my discovery of a hidden nerf in the August 20th patch. The rates of the rarest (and generally considered most desirable) split effects had dropped from roughly 1-in-4.25 to 1-in-6. That may not sound like a huge hit, but it adds up over time. It also compounds for the combination of ink/gold with Krackle, which took a bigger hit: from 1-in-9 to 1-in-18.

Second Dinner responded quickly. They verified on October 8th that “a change was errantly released to Infinity Split rate odds.” They also announced that one way they would address this is by temporarily boosting the drop rates to 35% each (or 1-in-2.86).

For the record, I believe them. I think it was probably an honest mistake. The timing was a mistake, anyway. They’ve told us directly that split rates will be changing when Character Mastery debuts (whenever that is).

I believe it was an accident, but it still tickles me that the “Caught Red-Handed” bundle debuted just a couple days after my Twitter post. One of those great cosmic coincidences.

Moving on! Boosted split rates went live almost a week later, on October 14th. I have taken to affectionately calling this time “Splitsmas” — a coinage of my podcast cohost, Rie. I unaffectionately call the period of lower rates the “Dark Times”. Anyway, Splitsmas is expected to last until mid-December, so the increased rates will last about as long as the decreased rates did. I suspect that means the old rates will resume alongside either the patch on December 10th or the OTA on December 12th.

The next day, every player received the additional compensation of 1 Cosmic Rainbow Border and an X-Men ‘97 Variant for Magneto.

Players weren’t satisfied, though, and they made it known through the official Discord and other social media. Some players withheld their spending (I personally did not spend any money besides the Season Pass during this time). The devs were quiet for a while, except a message or two from Griffin Bennett, Senior Community Manager, saying that discussions were ongoing.

Here, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge all the players who kept up consistent, constructive, and respectful feedback. It’s important for us to let the devs know how we feel, and what changes we’d like to see for this game we love.

I believe one reason this new round of compensation took so long is because it’s compensation on a massive scale. Any player who did a split at #4+ for a character between August 20th and October 14th was affected. That’s likely hundreds of thousands of players. In other words, we’re talking tens or even hundreds of millions of Credits in total. Adding that many resources to the economy surely took a long time to get approved. Our feedback provided fuel for any team member who was arguing to deliver another round of compensation.

That brings us to yesterday, November 15th. Second Dinner announced another round of compensation. This time, offering seven tiers of compensation instead of a one-size-fits-all solution. A promising start towards fair compensation!

The New Compensation

Let’s go through what the new compensation is. I’m glad to be writing this a day later. I’ve had time to see the praise, criticism, and confusion from my fellow players on social media.

I’d like to establish my own feelings up front. I think Second Dinner is doing the right thing to deliver more compensation, and I’m thrilled to see it. I’m grateful to Griffin and any other team members who pushed for it. Spoilers: it’s quite good. It’s well beyond “better than nothing”. It’s not immune from criticism, but I’ve developed a much more favorable view of it over the course of putting this article together.

The Existing Compensation

While we feel that the rate boost, Variant, and Border are fair to the average SNAP player, we recognize that the one-size-fits-all plan wasn’t meeting expectations for equitable compensation.

I don’t have the stats to know who the average Snap player is, but I’ll tell you who the existing compensation was sufficient for:

• Free-to-play players (except those who entered the Dark Times with a large hoard of Credits, and then spent them during the Dark Times)
• Any player with a low number of affected splits (#4+ for the same character)
• Any player who’ll spend roughly the same amount (or more) during Splitsmas that they spent during the Dark Times

I’d bet the average Snap player is in there somewhere.

The rate boost was an extremely clever solution (props to whichever Second Diner came up with that). As long as Splitsmas lasts as long as the Dark Times did, they pretty much balance each other out, and without affecting Collection Level. It’s elegant!

The following rates are approximate, based on the analysis of the collections of 36 players. That’s plenty large for a sample size, especially considering that group includes several whales. The average indicates the average of the Dark Times and Splitsmas. See how the average beats the old rate?

Type	Dark Times Rate	Splitsmas Rate	Average Rate	Old Rate
Ink	16.67%	35.00%	25.83%	23.50%
Gold	16.67%	35.00%	25.83%	23.50%
Krackle	16.67%	35.00%	25.83%	23.50%
Combo	5.56%	24.50%	15.03%	11.05%

Where It Evens Out

Anybody doing the same number of splits in the Dark Times and Splitsmastime should actually come out a little ahead, regardless of which type of “premium split” they were pursuing. I’d argue it’d be easy for most players to do that since there’s an information advantage during Splitsmas. For most of the Dark Times, we had no idea split rates were low. We’ve known rates were boosted for the entirety of Splitsmas (sorry-not-sorry if these names are getting too cute for your taste; I find them efficient).

Any Credits spent on split #4+ during Splitsmas makes up for such Credits spent during the Dark Times. Free Credits balance out Free Credits. Paid Credits balance out Paid Credits.

In that sense, the boosted rates alone are good compensation for spenders, too, as long as they spend consistently. While I imagine most spenders are fairly consistent, it’s wrong to expect players to spend even more to get themselves proper compensation. This is where the existing compensation was insufficient; for players who spent more during the Dark Times than they would want to (or be able to) during Splitsmas.

The one thing players are left missing is all the Boosters they spent. I spent all my Professor X Boosters during the Dark Times. Enough for 10 splits. Now the rates are boosted and I’m left without a quick way to split Professor X anymore. It would take forever for me to earn hundreds more Boosters for him. Fortunately, I have my game set up to control what shows up in the Bonus Boosters section of my shop, but not every player will be in that position.

Challenges and Considerations

That leads us to the first of the challenges and considerations presented in the latest compensation announcement.

Exact Boosters

Delivering the exact Boosters used by each player for each split conducted during this period is not feasible

This was really disappointing, but I’m taking it on face value as reality. I don’t know why SD would lie about this — if they could realistically refund the specific Boosters we spent, they would. Note the use of “feasible” — it’s technically possible, but impractical.

My assumption is that this is a problem on the side of distribution. They have the data to see which splits we did during the Dark Times, but it would be impractical to give custom-tailored compensation to every affected player. As I previously mentioned, that could be hundreds of thousands of players.

Affected Splits

The affected Infinity Splits are on the 4th Character Split and higher, which means this bug affected higher Collection Level players, on average, more than others.

Seems fair. Compensating based only on splits #4+ makes sense considering those are the only ones that were affected by the bug.

Players who ONLY did split #3 or less never encountered the bug affecting split rates. It didn’t affect them negatively at all, so there’s nothing to compensate.

Separating Purchases

Identifying the usage of purchased Credits and Boosters versus “earned” currencies (like Missions, Login Rewards, etc.) is also not feasible.

I’m a little surprised they don’t have more granular data on how we’re spending our resources, but I think this problem could be worked around. You can calculate how many splits could have been done for free by an active player during the affected time period. That would hurt an inactive player who paid for splits, but you could smooth that out with an extra week or two of boosted split rates.

Anyway, it’s definitely a challenge if they can’t distinguish between free and paid Credits. I can’t imagine it was many players, but players who spent hoarded Credits during the Dark Times lost value on those Credits (assuming they were pursuing ink, gold foil, or Krackle splits). Notably, that affects even free-to-play players, who could have had up to 10,000 free Credits saved up from before the Dark Times.

CL Entanglement

Splits during the errant Split rate timeframe still earned Collection Level progress and the rewards along its track.

Yeah, this is a tricky one. Splits are innately tied to CL progress. Which also means they’re innately tied to card acquisition, which is central to the game’s economy.

I think it is something that’s important to consider when calculating compensation, but it shouldn’t be held against players that there’s no way to separate splits from CL. That’s not our fault, and it’s not in our control.

It’s impossible to separate players by why they were splitting. Was it mostly about CL, or mostly to chase a certain split?

Boosted Rates!

The (currently active) boosted Split Rates mean that any compensation using Credits and Boosters has a higher current value.

This is an excellent point. In consideration of this point, it’s ideal for them to deliver compensation during Splitsmas. It means they can compensate more desirable splits without compensating as much free CL.

For perspective, the average cost of a combo split (ink or gold foil with Krackle)  is usually 13,801 Credits. During Splitsmas, that average cost is down to 10,146 Credits.

The Plan Proper

We’ve finally made it to the actual plan for the latest compensation for split rates.

It will use the number of affected splits (#4+ for a character) a player did during the Dark Times to sort them into a compensation tier. Players will then be compensated as if they had the same number of affected splits as the median player in their tier.

The compensation will be worth 10% of the cost of the median number of splits (in the form of Boosters and Credits). Every group of 155 Boosters will be for a random character (as previously mentioned, distributing Boosters for specific characters isn’t feasible).

It’s worth noting that the thresholds qualifying players for each tier are missing. I suspect this is for two reasons. One: to obscure any information that might be used to reverse engineer player counts. Two: because the thresholds are close to the medians.

The median represents the literal middle player in each tier. This means tiers may skew low, with the minimum number of splits being close to the median. 

For example of what a low skew may look like, 5 is the median of this arbitrary list of numbers: 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 9, 100.

Based on SD’s table, we don’t know what tier you qualify for if you fall between the medians of two tiers.

So, Is It Any Good?

I mean, yeah. It’s great, generally speaking. There will probably be a few players slightly short-changed, but it’s extremely generous as a whole.

I have two main concerns about it: Boosters, and the distribution among players.

Boosters

I already touched on this. It stinks that character-specific Boosters won’t be refunded, but I understand that it isn’t feasible to do so.

They could have given Gold out instead (you can spend Gold to fill in missing Boosters). That would be a massive influx of Gold into the economy, though, and I doubt that much of that Gold would end up being spent on splits.

I saw people floating the idea of “Split Tickets” — an item that would let you split a card without gaining any Collection Level. I think these are a great idea. They would have made compensation for this issue easy, and they could be used as an awesome prize for things like Leagues, the Conquest Medal Shop, and Weekly Log-In Rewards.

However, any solution that requires the development of a new feature is unrealistic. I’m always careful about “why don’t they just” solutions surrounding dev work. Every now and then, there’s something that would truly be easy to implement, but usually new features are much more complicated than they appear.

In lieu of specific Boosters or Split Tickets, random Boosters are the best they could do. They’re an alright solution. Let’s call them balanced out by the new compensation giving most players extra Credits beyond what would be fair.

That leads me to…

Compensation Distribution

I have to admit I find the distribution of generosity weird — many players were already compensated fairly. They’re covered by Magneto ‘97, the Rainbow Cosmic Border, and most importantly, Splitsmas!

The players with the largest need for compensation are those who spent more during the Dark Times than during Splitsmas. This round of compensation serves them the least.

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t typically take the attitude of taking from the poor to give to the rich. But this is about compensation, not freebies. It’s about righting wrongs. The reality is that spending more meant the split bug affected you more.

Let’s look at a few examples to understand how effective the compensation has been.

Example 1: The Consistent Spender (F2P)

Let’s look at an active free-to-play player who didn’t go into the Dark Times with a large hoard of Credits.

They would have earned roughly 49,120 Credits while rates were lowered (August 20th–October 14th). That’s worth 32 Splits with 320 Credits left over. Those 32 Splits refund another 8,870 Credits from the CL track — worth an extra 6 Splits. Those, in turn, refund enough for 1 more split (see how complicated this gets with splits being entangled with CL?).

Anyway, we’re looking at 39 Splits total.

Let’s say this player was chasing ink or combo (ink/gold + Krackle) splits, and every one of those 39 was split #6+ for the same character.

With normal split rates, we’d expect 39 splits to yield 9.17 inks / 4.31 combos.

During the Dark Times, we’d expect 39 splits to yield 6.50 inks / 2.17 combos: missing 2.67 inks / 2.14 combos.

During Splitsmas, we’d expect 39 splits to yield 13.65 inks / 9.55 combos: an extra 4.48 inks / 5.24 combos.

See how the Splitsmas extras more than make up for the Dark Time losses?

This example applies to any consistent spender. Bigger spenders would have bigger numbers, but would still have Splitsmas numbers that make up for Dark Times numbers. Bigger spenders will also receive bigger compensation from this latest round.

This player will also enjoy the next round of compensation. Even a free-to-play player who didn’t hoard might have as many as 39 qualifying splits. We’re not sure which tier that would qualify for, but they’ll be compensated enough Credits to cover an extra 1 or 6 splits (tier 5 becomes worth 6 splits after you get CL track rewards from the first 5 splits).

I would guess most players fit this tier. Which is where I weigh in at the compensation being very generous. I think it more than makes up for the specific Boosters these players won’t get refunded.

Example 2: The Inconsistent Spender (Small)

Next, we’ll look at a small spender who spent during the Dark Times but not during Splitsmas. I’m going to use myself as an example. During the Dark Times, I bought one bundle specifically to chase better splits for Gamora (I got really lucky and landed a killer combo on split #9 — see her in the second image of this article).

I bought this $20 Ghost-Spider bundle.

Let’s call that 3,500 Credits I spent in the Dark Times that I will not be spending extra during Splitsmas to compensate. That boils down to 2.80 extra splits on top of the 39 for free (from our last example).

I’m also a Season Pass buyer, so we’ll add 600 Credits to each time period to represent 2 Season Passes. Worth an extra 0.47 splits.

So, for the Dark Times we’re looking at 42.27 Splits, and 39.47 for a matching length of Splitsmas. Again, let’s say I’m chasing either ink or combo, and that I poured all my splits into #6+ for the same character.

With normal split rates, we’d expect 42.27 splits to yield 9.93 inks / 4.67 combos.

During the Dark Times, we’d expect 42.27 splits to yield 7.04 inks / 2.35 combos: missing 2.89 inks / 2.32 combos.

With normal split rates, we’d expect 39.47 splits to yield 9.28 inks / 4.36 combos.

During Splitsmas, we’d expect 39.47 splits to yield 13.81 inks / 9.67 combos: an extra 4.53 inks / 5.31 combos.

Even with a $20 spending discrepancy in favor of the Dark Times, Splitsmas still comes out ahead.

And on top of that, this player will receive either tier 4 or tier 5 compensation for an extra 1 or 6 splits.

Example 3: The Inconsistent Spender (Big)

We need a more extreme example to stress-test the compensation — is it even possible for the compensation to be insufficient? Here will be the portion of players most deserving of compensation, but least favored by it.

Let’s take a hypothetical player who definitely qualifies for Tier 7 in the latest round of compensation. They did 200 splits during the Dark Times (39 of which were free), then they only did their free 39 during Splitsmas. Once again, with all splits being #6+ for the same character.

With normal split rates, we’d expect 200 splits to yield 47.00 inks / 22.10 combos. During the Dark Times, we’d expect 200 splits to yield 33.33 inks / 11.12 combos: missing 13.67 inks / 10.98 combos.

With normal split rates, we’d expect 39 splits to yield 9.17 inks / 4.31 combos. During Splitsmas, we’d expect 39 splits to yield 13.65 inks / 9.55 combos: an extra 4.48 inks / 5.24 combos.

See, this is the type of player who needed more compensation. Splitsmas alone doesn’t do nearly enough to help this player catch up to the splits they missed out on. And I assume any player doing 200 splits in 2 months has the primary goal of chasing certain split types.

Oh, but here comes the latest compensation. Tier 7 will cover 24 additional splits for our player (including 4 extra from CL rewards earned for the first 20). During Splitsmas, we’d expect an extra 8.40 inks / 5.88 combos.

This player would have a net balance of missing 0.79 inks and having an extra 0.14 combos. To be thorough, they’d also be missing 0.79 golds and 0.79 Krackles. That still seems very reasonable.

Not so bad for a player who paid for 161 splits during the Dark Times! Remember, this is an extreme example. A player who spent a lot during the Dark Times, and nothing during Splitsmas. Out of 239 total splits, they’re only 2.23 behind on premium splits — less than 1% of all the splits they did.

An inconsistent spender with a less extreme gap than 161 splits between the Dark Times and Splitsmas might also end up behind on splits, but by even less than 0.79 inks/golds/Krackles.

Conclusion

This upcoming final round of compensation seems beyond sufficient for the splits issue. I had to use an extreme example to find a hypothetical player who would still be behind, and even then they were just barely behind.

I think the distribution is kinda weird. They could have made it more fair by giving a bit more to bigger spenders and much less overall — but instead, it’s more compensation for everybody who was possibly affected by the split bug, even those who didn’t need more. It almost makes me think of this more as goodwill than restitution. Or else apology Credits for your missing Boosters. At this point, damn near every player is coming out ahead in this situation — and I hope the player base will remember it that way.

Any of you who read my previous compensation analysis (a month ago, on Twitter) may wonder about this apparent about-face. I’ll own it — there were some key pieces I missed. These include card acquisition being entangled with splits, the increased value of compensation if it happens while split rates are boosted, and that CL progress helps you buy even more splits. I admit I came into this article kinda down on this latest round of compensation, but I convinced myself otherwise in the process of writing it.

It’s a bummer it took so long to be resolved, but credit where it’s due: I believe this is the biggest compensation they’ve ever done. I, uh, don’t know how to praise SD without sounding like a shill. They did a good job with this one. I feel good about spending on stuff besides the Season Pass again — my little personal boycott is done, anyway. I’m a small-time spender even when I’m not boycotting, but I’m really glad to see the bigger spenders compensated. They’re a critical part of what keeps this game alive. I want to see them taken care of.