Ability drops in packs

I got all the plant alternates pretty quickly, have had them for ages.  I finished getting all the legendary characters a month or two ago.  Yet I am still short about a half dozen of the zombie alternate abilities.

When I'm not saving for something, all I buy is amazing brainz packs, yet last night was the first time in months that I've gotten an ability from one, the wooden dummy shield.  I don't know what's up with the drop rate for these, but it's been driving me bananas.

Unfortunately the random system which they use to determine what is in any particular Sticker Pack which you open is truly completely random; it does not appear to take into consideration what you did or did not receive in previous Sticker Packs and clearly is not programmed to offer anything in particular on any sort of "schedule".

Because of the completely random nature of the system it is possible to have "Lucky Streaks" where you receive the desirable stuff very rapidly or regularly and it is also possible to have "Unlucky Streaks" where you get stuff that you have no interest in over and over again.

You'll find plenty of stories from Players spending tens of millions of coins trying to get one particular Sticker and you'll also find stories from Players like myself where the system seemed to not be able to give desirable items to fast enough.

It's so determinedly random that nobody can reliably say how many Sticker packs you'll personally have to open before you receive all of the alternate abilities which can be obtained through the purchase of Packs.

Thanks for the explanation.  I'm wondering if it's not as random as we might all think. I've noticed some nights while playing garden ops I would get an enchanted garden several times in a row. It seemed like once you got into this scenario you'd get enchanted gardens as long as you kept playing. The same went for sticker packs. If I opened the 35k packs and received a character piece. In the next several packs sometimes I received the same pieces to complete the character. It didn't seem random at all. It seems like it's more about timing and situation that gets you certain things. You just have to figure out the proper situation. I might be totally wrong about this. It just seems like what I've experienced so far. 

I've invested about a thousand hours in the game and have spent tens of millions on various Sticker Packs and there has been no pattern to any of randomly determined sequences, although it is certainly human nature to try to assign a pattern to what is actually a random sequence of events

Most likely what you are observing is just a random sequence which seems to form a pattern; such as when you toss a coin and receive "Heads" multiple times in a row.

There's a mindset which can creep in here which is called the "Gambler's Fallacy", in which the observer assumes that because a random event keeps repeating future behavior must act to "balance" out the results; there is also the "Inverse Gambler's Fallacy" in which the observer assumes that because a random event keeps repeating it will somehow continue to repeat because some higher power has decided to favor it.

The Gamblers Fallacy is also called the "Monte Carlo Fallacy" after a notorious event which occurred in a Monte Carlo casino in the early 1900's where a roulette wheel stopped on black more than two dozen times in a row through simple random chance leading to gamblers losing record amounts of money by repeatedly betting on red believing that the the more black outcomes happened the more a red outcome was "due".

Thank you for that info it's interesting. I do think there is some bug where you do get consistently enchanted gardens in a row. It did seem like the character pieces went in succession to complete certain characters. You're right it could have just been perceived that way. I have no proof and I'm damn well not going to start all over again to try to prove it. 

I found this kind of funny. I bought 6 35k packs with some coins I had and then randomly bought a 15k pack. I received an ability from the 15k pack. 

I've been thinking about going to the 15K for a while, guess I'll try it.

I am at 3500+ level now and spent millions on 15K, 35K and infinity packs with not much luck. So far I have got only 1 full and 1 piece of legendary characters from packs. No extra abilities other than those imported from GW1.

My strategy now is to save up the coins and buy stuff from Rex, the black market dude in the sewers.

Seems like I'm getting the abilities the same way I unlocked the characters. In the beginning I unlocked a lot of cactus, all-stars, scientists and engineers. The abilities are falling along the same pattern. I'm getting abilities from the 35k packs and they have fallen in a pattern of all-star, cactus, scientist and soldier. I haven't gotten an ability for any other character yet. If it follows the pattern of the characters I'll get one for the engineer next.  It seems like for every 5-7 packs you open whether they are 35k or 15k you get one ability with a higher rate of getting an ability opening the 35k packs.