Summoning animations. WHAT HAS CHANGED EXACTLY?
There has been a lot of discourse about the summoning animations ever since yesterday's update. Since Kuzan dropped today and way more people began summoning, I think majority of you have noticed something. A lot more pulls now tend to have the no crewmates, no chests, black flag, groove 14, white text combination.
All throughout the day I have talked with people that summoned, I watched videos to collect a relatively decent sample size and then discussed the change with other veterans in the community.
I am sure some of you will be *surprised Pikachu face* but NOTHING has changed in terms of rates. They aren't rigged, they aren't broken, there is no conspiracy theory here, the rates are the same as they have always been for EX banners.
What has changed however is the amount of animations that occur which gives you the impression that your pulls are worse now.
Previously we had a point system established by the community based on every single animation to predict what we might get and as such making us more hopeful when watching the animations play out. That however didn't always translate to a 4*, let alone the new 4* if you knew how to tally the points. For example, you could get gold chests which makes you think that you are gonna get something and then the next animation plays out, close-up on the flag, it's a red and then the next animations play out and everything else is basic (groove is 14, "Pull" text is white, you had no crew mates pop up at the beginning) and in the end, you didn't get a single 4*.
In case you do not know about the point system, please watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZCPbVok2fI&t=61s
From a total of 162 possible animation combinations, a large amount of those would result in duds.
In essence, they have reduced the amount of possible combinations. Now when you get Drums of Liberation G5 it pretty much signals that you are getting Kuzan. No other possible combination does.
The reason it is so hard to accept that we are getting shafted is because we are so used to the previous formula. It felt more magical to watch the animations play out because there were more combinations that would let you know in advance if you got something.
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TL;DR: Only the guaranteed animation gets you the new unit while no other animation does while before (some of) the non-guaranteed animations could still get you the new unit.
Amount of animation combinations has been reduced.
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Shoutout to u/Mruberman who made the video I linked above and who is always a reliable source regarding anything OPBR related.