User blog:Linathan/Misunderstandings about Summon Rates in Brave Frontier

Hi all. Long time no blog! This time, we are going to be talking about the summon rates in Brave Frontier and how there are quite a lot of misunderstandings with it. I've seen this around Discord servers, Reddit, and the Wiki, but people are complaining about how gumi is nerfing the summon rates of obtaining a featured unit.

Why did gumi start revealing summon rates?
Recently, Apple made changes to their Terms of Service which stated that games that sell lootboxes must reveal rates for gacha gates. In which case, these "lootboxes" are the bundles that appear in the game's Shop feature. As such, every announcement starting from the summon gate featuring the return of Rahotep and Neferet onward listed the summon rates of getting a certain kind of unit.

Is gumi nerfing summon rates by any means?
No. Just because Zegstia and Wintia had a 15% chance of obtaining a featured unit while Yan & Yuan had a 5% chance of summoning, this does not mean that their rates were nerfed by any means. Understandably, Blaze had a 4% rate of summoning, so I can definitely see the argument there; though, this starting rate was there to begin with considering it was a Resummon Gate that did not include any additional rate-up for every summon you did.

Your math is wrong. Clearly 15% is higher than 5%!
Yes and no. Upon the release of Zegstia and Wintia, Ordine was also in the featured units pool (for some odd reason that I can't even explain), making the pool three units total. You had a 15% chance of obtaining a Featured Unit, which also meant you obtained a random unit within the Featured Units pool. Even with a 15% chance of obtaining a featured unit, you are still at the mercy of RNG in terms of getting a unit you wanted, just like any other unit that is in the summon gate. Yes, this meant that you had a 5% chance of obtaining Zegstia, a 5% chance of obtaining Wintia, and a 5% chance of obtaining Ordine. Looking at the Yan & Yuan summon gate, you had a 5% chance of obtaining Yan & Yuan too. Both gates are nothing different in terms of obtaining featured units.

Let's also not forget other factors that may come in, such as "What if I don't want Ordine?" and "What if I'm only going for Wintia?" This further supports the main point in question as you still had a 5% chance of obtaining Wintia much like you having a 5% chance of obtaining Yan & Yuan. Rates start out the same from the 8th summon onward so it is already unlikely that you are going to get the unit you want within the first seven summons.

But let's say you wanted to get both Wintia and Zegstia. Both units each have a 5% chance of summoning, but you would have a higher chance of summoning both of them in their featured banner as opposed to obtaining them as noise pulls in other summon gates.

5% rate still sucks! It needs to be higher!
I'm going to be the guy who plays Devil's Advocate and say not really. 5% chance is still a very generous rate. Let's take Yan & Yuan's summon rates as demonstration. Factoring an average 2.5% rate from the first seven summons and the 5% rate that is consistent for the 8th summon onward, the average amount of summons it takes to summon Yan & Yuan is roughly 26 summons. Buying the 2nd and 3rd bundles in their batch, which is normally 8 and 18 Summon Tickets respectively (more if it's during a special event), that brings roughly an average cost of $51.98 USD without tax. While you are not guaranteed the unit you're going for, 26 summons is more reasonable compared to the 50+ summons that we've been seeing in the past (Yes, I'm looking at you Chloe and Natsu). Of course, an F2P or a slight P2P player might not buy every bundle there is, but 5% is still higher than a great chunk of gacha games out there.

I'm still not convinced. 5% rate is still too low!
This goes on to another segment where I compare summon rates in Brave Frontier to other mobile games.

First up is Fire Emblem Heroes, the game that won the People's Choice award for 2017's Mobile Game of the Year. Newly released units would be featured in a new banner that have a 3% chance of summoning a 5★ Focus unit. The neat thing about the gacha rates in this game is that the 5★ Focus and 5★ pools both increase by 0.25% for every 5 summons you do. Pretty generous, right? Let's do some math here.

You are given five summoning circles which each have a random color (red, blue, green, and colorless). Let's say New Year Azura is the featured unit you want out of that banner, which includes her, New Year Takumi (Colorless), and New Year Camilla (Red). She is a green unit, so we'll focus on summoning only green summoning circles. With five circles that become completely randomized and using binomial cumulative density, we have at least a 76.27% chance of at least one green summon circle appearing out of the five summoning circles we can summon from. Upon summoning a green circle, we have a 3% chance of obtaining Azura. Combining the probabilities together, that's a 2.289% chance of obtaining Azura within the first five summons. Rates do increase for every five summons you perform, but to be fair, if we are looking to compare to Brave Frontier's 5% rate of obtaining a specific featured unit, you would have to reach a 4% rate of obtaining a 5★ Focus hero, which is a total of 20 summons that you're spending to reach there, and that would indeed suck if you manage to reach that rate. It's also not to mention that the 5★ Focus rate resets back to 3% if you summon a 5★ hero within the banner, which doesn't help our case in trying to obtain New Year Azura in an easier fashion.

Another simple comparison is Fate/Grand Order. The chance of obtaining a 5★ servant is 1%. That's atrocious. That's a fifth of the chances that you'd summon Yan & Yuan. If we're using our average 26 summons it'd take to summon one Yan & Yuan, multiply that number by 5 and you get 130 summons. One 10x summon costs 30 Quartz, so in total, we're spending 390 Quartz to summon just one 5★ hero. Assuming you want the most amount of quartz for your buck, so you would have to buy three 140 Quartz packs which cost $239.97 USD total without tax. Comparing that to Brave Frontier, that's pretty disgusting.

But Brave Frontier Japan has Confirmed Summon, so why don't I just get whatever I want for just 30 Gems?
There are a lot of wrong things in that statement that just does not apply to the Global version whatsoever. It's safe to say that the Global version will not be getting Confirmed Summon. Ever. Is it to only spend $34.99 USD or ¥3000 for 50 Gems to use for summoning a 7★ unit of your choice? It sure as hell is. Do units like Blaze, Dranoel, Yan & Yuan, Kawab, Rahotep, and all of those recent Global Exclusive units appear in the Japan version? No. You likely will not ever see them in the Japan version due to a stop to their content, and the fact that Confirmed Summon will never come to Global already makes this argument useless.

This point isn't meant to depict server elitism in any fashion. Both servers have their differences, but complaining about versions having advantages over others simply gets us nowhere.

Conclusion
This blog post isn't meant to convince players to go summon for Yan & Yuan nor is it meant to advertise Yan & Yuan's summon gate at all. The main premise is that 5% is very high for a gacha game such as Brave Frontier and that players should not only appreciate that units are being summoned at that rate, but also appreciate gumi for actually revealing the summon rates that players have been asking for so long. In the past, we've seen 10x rates on units, but we never got to know what number is being multiplied by that 10x. I understand people had misunderstandings of these summon rates, and considering there are people who have spent tons on this game and still being overwhelmed by a 5% rate, it's not as low as it may seem.

At the end of the day, RNGesus is still the ultimate obstacle we still have to pray to in order for players to get what they want. You could have gotten Yan & Yuan on the first summon or be that guy in a Pokémon battle missing 70% accurate Focus Blasts and Thunders every single turn until your Pokémon faints.

If you stuck until the end, thank you! This was quite a fun post to write up and I hope this convinces people enough that 5% isn't as low of a rate as it may seem and no matter what the rates are for any gacha banner in any gacha game, you are still at the mercy of RNG. I wish you luck in what you summon in Brave Frontier, in what OHKO moves you land in Pokémon games, in what dices you roll in your spare time, or maybe that lottery you're gambling over at your local 7 Eleven. If you have any thoughts, I definitely would like to read them in the comment section.