The short list's impact on a whale's purchasing

[Helstrem]

WG, 

Here is a breakdown of this particular whale's problem with the short list.  In the table below I lay out the ships available, those available that I don't have, those that I want and the ships that are, as I understand it, on the short list of one crate level or another.  If there were no short list I would have, from appearances, a decent shot at a ship I actively want, and there are ships I wouldn't mind that are also on the list of ships I don't have.  However, I am faced, if I were to purchase any Santa crates, that I would need to first get the ships on the short list (I know that you can jump past it by rolling one you have, but I have to make worst case assumptions here) before I even have a shot at the ships, save Viribus Uniitis, a basic Santa crate shortlist ship, I actually want, and none of the shortlist ships, other than the mentioned one, do I want at all.  This basically makes the meaningful number of crates I'd have to buy too high to justify only about a one if four shot of getting one I want.

*Yes, I know I forgot to mark Lazo as one I have.

[missile742]

How much u willing to spend?  Recommend u go full whale and start with 20 Mega gifts and see how many short list ships u kill off.  Then go 20 Big and get some SCs.  YMMV but i got 6 ships from my 20 Mega and 4 from the Big.  That included Orkan and Makarov but no Yudachi. Already had the rest of the short list

[SeaKing_CityDel]

and after you do get the short list ships you will start from the lowest tiers  from the want list .  But a true whale wouldn't care .

[MeglaGnome]

I count 69 long list ship you don't have.
Most of the ones you want are in the rare / T9 category. We know the long list drop % are heavily skewed to the bottom of the list, even when you get past the short list.

I estimate you'll need to buy about 350 big santa crates to have a respectable chance of dropping one or two of the T9 / rares.

You can read my full analysis here:

There are some assumptions and guesstimates, but so far it seems to be about right.

Gamble at your own risk, but better to not gamble at all.

[Estimated_Prophet]

May pick up another pack tonight, just to see what drops.

Have the seven list ships, and a lot of other low tier premiums besides. Might be amusing to see what drops, if anything.

[ol_Cajun]

I don't think this short list thing will have any negative affect on boxes, most players never come to the forum, or like me don't come often.

[Herr_Reitz]

40 minutes ago, ol_Cajun said:

I don't think this short list thing will have any negative affect on boxes, most players never come to the forum, or like me don't come often.

Sorry... but that's not a clear explanation. Or did you miss the whole "on the short list" actually having a negative impact on boxes thing? 

You suggesting it won't effect sales of those boxes? I think you might be wrong if that's the thought. 

But stay-tuned... come Monday they've promised devs will explain it all. 

[Helstrem]

2 hours ago, missile742 said:

How much u willing to spend?  Recommend u go full whale and start with 20 Mega gifts and see how many short list ships u kill off.  Then go 20 Big and get some SCs.  YMMV but i got 6 ships from my 20 Mega and 4 from the Big.  That included Orkan and Makarov but no Yudachi. Already had the rest of the short list

Last year I bought, IIRC, 20 of the Big Gifts.  I am not really willing to blow much more than that on loot boxes.  If I expect a ship for every ~15 loot boxes I would need to buy about 45 Big Gift boxes before I saw the first ship not on the short list.

 

1 hour ago, SeaKing_CityDel said:

and after you do get the short list ships you will start from the lowest tiers  from the want list .  But a true whale wouldn't care .

This is not true.  The lower tier ships probably have a higher chance to drop, but you don't need to have them to get the higher tier ships.

[ol_Cajun]

46 minutes ago, Herr_Reitz said:

Sorry... but that's not a clear explanation. Or did you miss the whole "on the short list" actually having a negative impact on boxes thing? 

You suggesting it won't effect sales of those boxes? I think you might be wrong if that's the thought. 

But stay-tuned... come Monday they've promised devs will explain it all. 

What I meant was that a bunch of folks will buy the boxes never knowing there is a short list, like they do every Christmas, and they won't come here and tell us what they received. They will just hit battle, and carry on. I will admit that the short list has stopped me from my usual Christmas binge.

[armakel]

Yes Helstrem that's what I'm thinking as well.

The idea that I would have to get some ships out of the way first(and those I have no interest in) before a meaningful chance of others dropping has made me decide to just not buy at all.

I also don't want to clutter my port with additional ships that I have no desire of playing.

[SteelRain_Rifleman]

If you bought crates like I did the last two times then the short list was already eliminated.

Of the new short list this year none of those ships I want. And that would be just the one. After going past that, of the ships in the big list, again, none I want.

This is actually one year I can pass this one up.

The vast majority of the whales probably got all the short list ships anyway. So they will just mega one time a huge lot and probably get that one premium they didn't really want to buy outright.

For me last year, had that happen. I got 2 ships I didn't buy the whole year. 

It's a good idea to never sell them. They are placeholders.

Because next year may be a different presentation based on how this one goes.

 

Good luck to anyone trying just the same. Just remember, it also drops signals, FXP, coal, and other stuff listed in the news tab.

Read carefully before you buy.

Have fun out there.

[Jitta77]

4 hours ago, missile742 said:

How much u willing to spend?  Recommend u go full whale and start with 20 Mega gifts and see how many short list ships u kill off.  Then go 20 Big and get some SCs.  YMMV but i got 6 ships from my 20 Mega and 4 from the Big.  That included Orkan and Makarov but no Yudachi. Already had the rest of the short list

From a whale perspective, it might be cheaper to buy a few with dubs to get them off the list so you can win ships worth twice as many dubs.  It all depends on your goals.

I have just about every ship and then some.  There were only 2 ships on the list I didn't have (Flint and Nue) so 20 mega crates got me both with 10 pt captains along with flags, camos, dubs, and coal.  Not a bad deal for $75 when the 2 ships would have cost me 450K coal.

 

For "new" whales coming into santa time with 30-40 ships missing from the list; yeah that is probably going to run you $600 or so.

[0ldRichard]

12 hours ago, Helstrem said:

WG, 

Here is a breakdown of this particular whale's problem with the short list.  In the table below I lay out the ships available, those available that I don't have, those that I want and the ships that are, as I understand it, on the short list of one crate level or another.  If there were no short list I would have, from appearances, a decent shot at a ship I actively want, and there are ships I wouldn't mind that are also on the list of ships I don't have.  However, I am faced, if I were to purchase any Santa crates, that I would need to first get the ships on the short list (I know that you can jump past it by rolling one you have, but I have to make worst case assumptions here) before I even have a shot at the ships, save Viribus Uniitis, a basic Santa crate shortlist ship, I actually want, and none of the shortlist ships, other than the mentioned one, do I want at all.  This basically makes the meaningful number of crates I'd have to buy too high to justify only about a one if four shot of getting one I want.

*Yes, I know I forgot to mark Lazo as one I have.

You have yet to achieve Peak Whale. To become a True Blue Whale you must keep buying crates till you you have every available ship regardless of if you want them, because you can.

[Righteous_Noob]

You get better ships with more containers purchased obviously, I'm up to 4 mega x20 containers so that's just under $300usd.  My last container gave me a  Alabama and mutsu.  When you factor in everything given...flags/coal/doubloons/ camo  it's actually a decent deal.  4 mega containers =  mutsu, yudachi,  monghan, alabama, mikoyan, murmansk, okt revolution, ochakov, vanguard, genova, duca d'aosta, perth all with 10 point captains. Yeah it's stupid to spend that kind of money on a game, but here I am....

[armakel]

Sorry but out of that list of dropped ships, there's only 3(alabama, mutsu and perth) which I would actually want and would play.

If I spent 300 bucks and had the same drops as you did, I would be quite disappointed. I wouldn't add undesired ships that I don't play to the final value of what I get.

[Righteous_Noob]

When I'm through purchasing crates, I'm selling the ones I won't be using.......more credits. The ships are secondary to all the camo / coal / premium time/ doubloons / signals, I made out quite nicely. Money well spent for me.

[Roadrider7021]

   I had all the "short list" ships plus most of the others. I wanted Siliwangi, Neustrashimy and Benham so I bought 20 Mega gifts. Got all three for $75 plus 4,000 dubs, and lots of coal, signals and camo. I figured it made sense to do and am super happy I did. I think  i bought like $40 worth of crates one other time during the Pan Asian event, I don't really believe in it except where all of this excellent forum info allowed me to target what I wanted. Thanks guys!

[0ldRichard]

I was once a whale, but I beached in Puerto Rico and stunk up the whole place.

No worries, I reincarnated as a bottom-feeding free-to-play Ohio River channel catfish.

[GandalfTehGray]

4 hours ago, Righteous_Noob said:

When I'm through purchasing crates, I'm selling the ones I won't be using.......more credits. The ships are secondary to all the camo / coal / premium time/ doubloons / signals, I made out quite nicely. Money well spent for me.

That's a really poor choice. Because if you buy crates again this year or next year you could end up with the same ship. Use those signals, camo and premium time to make silver instead. 

[Volron]

If I were to purchase crates, then it would be almost entirely for flags, as the only ship in their list I do not have is Neustrashimy.  While I like to have more special flags, overall it is just not worth it for me.

 

4 hours ago, Righteous_Noob said:

When I'm through purchasing crates, I'm selling the ones I won't be using.......more credits. The ships are secondary to all the camo / coal / premium time/ doubloons / signals, I made out quite nicely. Money well spent for me.

Well then, you better hope a ship you really want never shows up in the list.  Cause shooting yourself in the foot (selling premiums) makes it that much more difficult down the line.

[Njanear]

1 hour ago, Volron said:

If I were to purchase crates, then it would be almost entirely for flags, as the only ship in their list I do not have is Neustrashimy.  While I like to have more special flags, overall it is just not worth it for me.

 

Well then, you better hope a ship you really want never shows up in the list.  Cause shooting yourself in the foot (selling premiums) makes it that much more difficult down the line.

Well, I was lacking 9 ships off of the list as of Friday.  I picked up 3 since then (California from a Free crate, Indomitable from a Big and... Neustrashimy from a Mega).

I got those so my collection is still lacking an Ochakov (on the mega list, so the process jumped me past that one and gave me Neustrashimy), Agir, Siliwangi, Champagne, Cheshire and Z-35.  Of those, I am not too keen on Ochakov and Cheshire - but won't turn them away.

[missile742]

11 hours ago, Jitta77 said:

From a whale perspective, it might be cheaper to buy a few with dubs to get them off the list so you can win ships worth twice as many dubs.  It all depends on your goals.

I have just about every ship and then some.  There were only 2 ships on the list I didn't have (Flint and Nue) so 20 mega crates got me both with 10 pt captains along with flags, camos, dubs, and coal.  Not a bad deal for $75 when the 2 ships would have cost me 450K coal.

 

For "new" whales coming into santa time with 30-40 ships missing from the list; yeah that is probably going to run you $600 or so.

I started with all but 11 off of the list and after 20 mega and 20 big received 10 (Cheshire, Indomitable, Z-35, Erich Loewenhardt, Flint and Makarov from Mega, Neutrashimi, Siliwangi, Champagne, Orkan from Big).  Only missing Yudachi.

In my experience buying these since 2016 the Mega provide much more bang for the buck.  I opened all at once so not sure how they dropped, but assuming I got Makarov first from Mega and Orkan from Big, followed by SCs.

[Willy55_1955]

16 hours ago, Herr_Reitz said:

Sorry... but that's not a clear explanation. Or did you miss the whole "on the short list" actually having a negative impact on boxes thing? 

You suggesting it won't effect sales of those boxes? I think you might be wrong if that's the thought. 

But stay-tuned... come Monday they've promised devs will explain it all. 

I got refunded for my 60 Bigs and 20 Megas to wait and see what WG response is.

[Herr_Reitz]

2 hours ago, Willy55_1955 said:

I got refunded for my 60 Bigs and 20 Megas to wait and see what WG response is.

Excellent! 

[Frigate007]

I rarely buy containers, never get much from the ones I earn so seems like a poor investment to me. Plus I don't have the premiums on the short list and don't want them. Would rather save up XP or coal and get what I want. Only a few premiums I would be interested in, and the chances of getting them from Xmas containers is zero unless I spent a small fortune. This short list debacle is just one more nail in the WG coffin....