Superb read about pack odds

Hey guys,

We're recovering this post from last year since many of you haven't seen it. It's always good to remember this write up when you're tempted about opening FIFA packs, so you can make an informed decision about whether if it's worth opening packs or not.

A Reddit user u/TapeTen, did the math about buying FIFA packs, by doing a research on this subject and opened a mind-numbing 651 packs from a whopping 453650 FIFA Points,worth over €3800 when purchased in bundles of 12000 (which have the best money-to-points value).

WHAT HE GOT FROM THE PACKS

In total, he pulled 9961 items, of which 6992 were player cards, and 4483 were rare gold cards.

Out of his 6992 player cards, a mere 70 special cards were packed. Special cards include (Hero, OTW, TOTW,TOTS).

If you think this is bad,it gets worse.A grand total of ‘0’ Icon Cards were pulled. It just goes to show the absurd drop rates these special cards have. Granted, you’d think that only special cards must have horrible drop rates, but that does not seem to be the case…

All of the Top 10 cards in FIFA by rating were packed for a combined total of - ‘0’ times.Yes, you read that right, not even 1 of the Top 10 cards was packed out of 6992 player cards.

His findings indicate that when a pack is opened, a card isn’t randomly drawn from the category of ‘rare gold cards’ but rather it is skewed towards those with lesser value.

This is clearly evident once we have a look into the underlying numbers.
About 10% of rare gold cards in FUT are rated 85-89, and about 1% of rare gold cards are rated 90 or more.

So if all the cards were equally likely to be pulled we should have expected a similar return in our packs.This isn’t the case check out the results he had for these brackets:

85-89: 1.6%
90+: 0,02%

He makes a curious example by comparing 3 pairs of brothers all who have rare gold cards namely-Romelu/Jordan Lukaku, Paul/Florentin Pogba and Eden/Thorgan Hazard.Each pair had one high rated brother-Paul ,Romelu and Eden and one relatively low rated brother-Florentine,Jordan,Thorgan.

In 651 packs, the higher rated brothers were pulled only once-that too,the lowest rated amongst them-Romelu Lukaku. Whereas,the lower rated brothers were pulled 14 times in total-Jordan Lukaku was pulled 3 times, Florentin Pogba was pulled 6 times & Thorgan Hazard was pulled 5 times.

This was his entire distribution of cards he got from the experience:

- Players rated from between 75 to 79 were packed a total of 2634 times (58.76%)
- Players rated from between 80 to 84 were packed a total of 1776 times
(39.62%)
- Players rated from between 85 to 89 were packed a total of 72 times
(1.61%)
- Players rated from between 90 to 94 were packed a total of 1 time.
(0.02%).

This is already really bad, but if you then consider that a cheap 80-84 players is much more likely to be packed than an expensive 80-84 player, then you get a full picture of how much a waste of money opening packs is.


CALCULATING THE AVERAGE AND MEDIAN RETURN OF EVERY PACK

He also calculated the "return to player" (RTP) from the packs, as a measure of what was typically returned per spent fifa coin. He did this by totalling the value, according to Futbin.com, of every card in a pack, and he then divided this value by EA’s asking price for the pack.

So, for example - a pack that contains cards worth 50,000 coins, and with a cost of 100,000 coins, has a RTP of .50 (or 50%), whereas a pack with that has cards worth 200,000 , and with a cost of 100,000, has a RTP of 2.0 (or 200%).

Across the 651 opened packs, the average RTP was .58, or 58%. However,he says that this average is slightly skewed by a couple of rare instances where the packs contained something very valuable. A better indication of what could typically be expected from packs is probably the median (or middle) RTP, which was 38.9% (that is 38900 from a pack sold for 100000).You can see his entire spreadsheet which he made public.

So being very positive and generous about this numbers, every time you open a pack you are roughly losing half your coins.


HOW MUCH TOTAL COINS HE GOT FOR THE $3800 HE SPENT

It is pretty obvious that you should not be opening packs at all,regardless of whether you obtain them by spending FIFA coins or by spending your hard earned money on FIFA Points.

With total of $3800 US dollars spent , according to FUTBIN.com he got back 13.8 Million coins.