1.08, 1.09, 1.10 Premium / Arsenal / Reserves Pack research

From my experience, Premium packs were balanced based on the number of UR weapons and characters at launch. It means they tend to drop more UR weapons than characters, in order to keep them roughly at the same level (i.e. you had a chance around 6/19 of getting a UR character in a Premium pack vs 13/19 of a weapon). I don't know if Bioware changed that percentage lately, but I'd say most likely not.

crashsuit if you can post a summary like "I opened 500 Premiums and got 125 URs of which 75 were characters and 50 were weapons" I am just going to take your word for it. I am too busy / lazy to view videos for all but the most extreme claims. (Like if we get another yo-yo claiming to debunk the pity RNG, I'd view video of that.)

I went back through the first few hundred packs from this recorded run, and with the 57 UR cards it took to max my characters, I got about 30 UR gun cards, so UR characters dropped almost twice as often as UR guns for me. Also per jadedragonmtr the UR kits will probably tend to max faster than any UR guns because there's so many fewer of them compared to guns. I kind of want to go back through my previously posted videos to see what the kit/gun weighting is for other rarities but right now I'm sick of opening/recording/counting packs.

Seems like pretty simple math to me, assuming individual cards have the same weight, drop rate for any C would be C/(C+W) and drop rate for any W would be W/(C+W). Considering how many more UR gun cards there are than UR kit cards, though, and that I got more UR kits than UR guns, that says to me that UR kits are heavily weighted over UR guns, at least in Premium packs.  Videos for first 1000 recorded Premium packs are uploading now by the way, gonna take a while but I should have links to post before I leave work today.

It's anecdotal, admittedly, but I've not seen much particular weighting towards kits vs weapons in reserves packs, for gold cards. I've been buying reserves exclusively for some time, as IMO maxed chars > extra ranks of guns, esp. given the lootsplosion. But I've been getting lots of weapons, regardless, ie probably as many as kit cards.

I'd love it if reserve/arsenal packs exclusively dropped their respective expected card types if you still have gold cards to get, because I'm actually fed up of getting weapons instead of kit cards all the time. At least a heavier weighting would be lovely.

You need screen or vid to make sure of accuracy? I wrote down my last 60 premium pack openings but I didn't record vids or screens. I'm certain of the data.

Starting point: (these are only URs, didn't record lower tiered stuff in the packs)
Characters cards needed to unlock: 30 basic levels + 60 additional levels
Weapon card needed to unlock: 105 basic levels + 480 variants

Total premium packs bought: 60
The rundown of packs contained URs:
#8
#10
#15
#20
#25
#27*2
#29
#34
#48

Of the UR cards, 4 were characters and 6 weapons. During this period, I got 2 more character cards outside the premium packs, one I bought with my MFs and one came in apex elite pack. So now they're even.

First 1000 Premium pack videos up. Let me know if there are any issues with any of them.

Disclaimer: A couple times I lost connection during runs of 100, and I think I lined the runs back up correctly, but the broken runs may be off in count by a pack.

Hypothesis: buying the "item" packs biases future pack drops towards that item.

(Sadly, I did not keep careful track, but this seems to have been the case for me.)

Equally anecdotal, I got mostly characters, as I desired. I have all 80 new Rare character cards and 40 Rare Variant weapon cards from just Reserve packs since 1.09 dropped. I've also purchased probably 8 or so Reserve packs since I maxed out my Rare characters, in which I now receive weapons instead of characters, which further skews the numbers above in favor of characters. I did have all non-variant, rare weapons and characters before 1.09, so I didn't have a fair chunk of the Rare weapons in my loot pool remaining.

That's why you should open them just a few at a time occasionally instead of hoarding them for months. 

I honestly admire your ability of finding the perfect animgif for the occasion.