Cactus Game Design Message Boards

So I was thinking...  I can definitely see why Rob would want to start guaranteeing 1 UR per box for CoW/RoJ, as opening a box and getting no UR is not fun...  But it sets up the possibility for abuse.

If I'm a seller with many many boxes of CoW or RoJ in stock, and I have some orders to fill that are less than 1 box, I can start sifting my existing stock to guarantee I keep more URs for myself.  Simply start with any unopened box and start opening packs.  As soon as I hit an UR, set aside all remaining packs in that box for resale, since they almost certainly will have no URs.  For each box I do this to, I will get an average of 12 packs that don't have an UR (or the odds of having an UR are astronomically low).  I will also increase my odds of pulling URs, since I will now open an UR once about every 12 packs instead of 24.

I'm not accusing anyone of this, and I don't think anyone would do this, but the "guaranteed 1 UR per box" deal creates the temptation of this.

Getting less-than-ideal results from a random outcome is not fun, but random outcomes prevent situations like this from being possible.

Thoughts? 

I think that have 1 UR per box is a good thing.  I see how it could be abused, but then you should know the person you buy your cards from.  The only places you can really buy this game is from trusted online sources (like cactus or threelions)or from people you know who probably taught you the game.  If you can't trust who you are buying cards from, don't buy them. 

Although it's easiest when the number is 1, this can really be done anytime there's a known "maximum" number of URs per box.

Yeah, and that's the point I was trying to communicate.  If it's truly random, then the maximum number of URs (although with infinitesimally small odds) should be 24 per box. 

If you can't trust who you are buying cards from, don't buy them. 

I definitely agree with this.  However, this could be abused in secondary market trading.  Somebody's looking for packs of CoW/RoJ but doesn't want to buy them (wants to trade).  Anyone can easily buy a few boxes, do the whole "open until I hit an UR" thing, and then keep the extra packs for trading away at full TLG value, when in reality they are less valuable.

Seppjazz, you forgot Your Turn Games as well. Just ask my many returning customers.

The practice that Josh described is, in my opinion, not right or fair to customers. And for the record, I do not practice it in my business. When I want an ultra rare I buy a box or two and hope for the one(s) I need. I open all of the packs and add the cards to my inventory. If a business's focus is just to get the high, in-demand cards then they will do that kind of practice and not care much about the spirit and fun of the game, but for me I truly enjoy knowing that my customers have a chance at pulling a UR. As an example, at a recent tournament I hosted I had two boxes of Cloud for prize packs. Someone had already pulled the one UR out of one box, so when a 12 year old boy won T1 MP, instead of letting him get packs from the remaining packs that we know didn't have a UR, I opened the other box so he had a chance at pulling the UR out of it. Sure enough, out of the three packs he won he pulled The Second Coming. He was ecstatic, to say the least, and we all rejoiced with him. That brought me a lot of pleasure, as well as his father, knowing that he got that card.

As a selling point I tell my customers that the UR hasn't been pulled out of the box yet (and I don't switch packs around from other boxes to make people think it's in there; I leave the packs in the box as is). This gives a customer more incentive to invest in packs with a greater chance of pulling a UR. So it benefits the customer and me. I want them to pull the UR. It's so much more fun for them and me when I get to see the expression on their faces and experience the joy they're experiencing than the disappointment if they open several packs and don't find one. In fact, it's actually counter productive for sales if my customers never pull a UR as they will eventually get discouraged and may even question my business practices. I got into this business for the love and promotion of the game and to make getting cards more easily accessible and cheaper; the business part was secondary, and not with trying to make the most profit either. And trust me when I tell you, there is not a lot of money to be made in retail game sales. Mostly, if not always, I reinvest whatever money I make in buying more product and/or going towards advertising or paying for expenses. It's at a point where my business pays for itself, which is fine by itself for my family and I!

One way to help keep this UR issue from being potentially abused is for Cactus to put an occasional two URs per box instead of the set 1 per box practice. This is a win-win for the customers and retailers in so many ways. But again, it still comes down to how many packs are opened before the UR is found, so there's no sure-fire way of resolving it.

You can't ever truly know what a business is doing behind the scenes, but you most certainly can discern and have a trust developed based upon a pattern of good practices. Like Jesus said, you'll know a tree by its fruit. If that tree is bearing bitter fruit more often than not, then don't eat fruit from that tree anymore...move on to the next one.

The model of 1 UR per box isn't unique to Redemption. Any system has potential for abuse. A dishonest person will find and exploit that if they really want to.

I saw a video of someone opening a box of pokemon packs. the way they are ordered, you can predict which packs have the foils and rares and ultra rares etc. this is a way that some game store owners have used in the past, and the just take the expensive cards and sell the rest as single packs or put a bunch of garbage packs in a box and reseal it.

Sounds to me like those game store owners were POKEing around when they shouldn't have! 

1. Christians cheat like everyone else. We can only pray the Holy Spirit convicts them.
2. Not everyone that plays Redemption is a Christian.
3. Years ago, people on this message board mapped booster boxes, so they could tell exactly what URs were in each pack after opening the first pack.
4. Full Body Art URs in Pokemon are heavier than normal cards, so people can indeed weigh the packs to find these URs.
5. I would not buy loose packs at (or near) retail, even from people on these Message Boards.
6. Only buy from people you trust, or be content with what you get.

I would like to thank jmhartz for bringing this issue to light, since nobody likes to talk about this kind of manipulation in a Christian Forum.