Wizards has said that they use an algorithm to pair people based on "deck strength" though that term has never been defined and likely never will. It's generally assumed that it's based on how many rares/mythics you have in your deck, so the F2P players with lesser put together decks should get paired with other F2P players with less put together decks - generally it'll keep your deck on par with your opponent's, though plenty of exceptions exist (The mono blue curious obsession deck comes to mind)
If the amount of variation bugs you, then playing in the constructed events (as opposed to ladder) should smooth it out.
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Top 16 - 2012 Indiana State Championships Currently Playing: GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Wizards has said that they use an algorithm to pair people based on "deck strength" though that term has never been defined and likely never will. It's generally assumed that it's based on how many rares/mythics you have in your deck, so the F2P players with lesser put together decks should get paired with other F2P players with less put together decks - generally it'll keep your deck on par with your opponent's, though plenty of exceptions exist (The mono blue curious obsession deck comes to mind)
If the amount of variation bugs you, then playing in the constructed events (as opposed to ladder) should smooth it out.
Was there an attempt to analyze this like players did with the land ratio vs draw algorithm?
Was there an attempt to analyze this like players did with the land ratio vs draw algorithm?
I don't believe so. The land ratio algorithm is very explicitly stated to the player, it can be worked out with not a ton of math, and it's dependent solely on what you put into your deck. To get an analysis of the deck power ratio you'd need to be able to see your opponent's entire deck over multiple matchmaking sessions to even figure out an equation. And then once you have that, you'd need to do that many more trials to see if you can adjust your deck in a way that influences the decks you face to a meaningful degree. I don't think it'd be feasible without automation or a crowdsourcing it via a LOT of people playing Unmoored Ego.
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While this doesn't factor into drawing lands past the first hand, I'm pretty sure that the game draws two hypothetical hands and gives the better of the two (usually). A lot of the game is built to try and make it difficult for a player to run away with the game and go on a massive win streak too consistently, so they developed different ways to prevent it. It sucks for people who genuinely hate having their skill get nullified in some cases, but I can understand why they would do these things: If some player came into the game and just got curb stomped into the earth by established players, he is likely not going to keep playing the game.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The opening hand manipulation is called out specifically, the match making manipulation...I get, but I'm not a fan of in the ladder.
Well, as an update it appears that something the Devs did was add some kind of handicap system to freeplay. Basically, in free play there are two hands that are drawn and the system picks the better of the two, but in legitimate tournaments this doesn't happen. I didn't actually know about this until today after a video popped up on youtube talking about it. I had to go confirm it was true as well...
I agree with other posters that having hand manipulation at all is bad for the game as it lets people get away with jank mana bases that are not properly measured out. If I get to draw two hypothetical hands, that severely drops the required land count on my part to make my deck work. Take the same deck to a tournament and now I'm getting mana screwed or flooded all the time.
Also, Arena does do something with certain deck win ratios. I'm not sure what it is, but it does have something to do with why people keep running into specific decks more often than not.
You know, there is a saying called Keep it simple stupid. If people want an online system where they can play magic the gathering strait up, it just needs to fulfill basic requirements. There was never a requirement for hand manipulation,weird algorithmic match making that are supposed to "improve" the new player experience, etc. The developers might have been able to get away with it in other genres, but Magic the Gathering has a dozen different dedicated online match makers already that are 100% fair as well as MTGO: People can easily spot these kinds of parlor tricks.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Wizards has said that they use an algorithm to pair people based on "deck strength" though that term has never been defined and likely never will. It's generally assumed that it's based on how many rares/mythics you have in your deck, so the F2P players with lesser put together decks should get paired with other F2P players with less put together decks - generally it'll keep your deck on par with your opponent's, though plenty of exceptions exist (The mono blue curious obsession deck comes to mind)
If the amount of variation bugs you, then playing in the constructed events (as opposed to ladder) should smooth it out.
My experience -
Play Grixis midrange - face endless burn decks
Play merfok - face endless Lifegain decks
Play Jeskai control - face endless mirror matches
All three of these are interspersed with random Dimir decks, the absolute worst scum deck of the new standard.
I mean, there's no manipulation in shuffler or mulligans or matchmaking...
(I couldnt get it in this shot, but this guy had one of those 75+ card decks... yet he got all four seal away in the first four turns. Not so great with math, what are the odds of that?
I mean, there's no manipulation in shuffler or mulligans or matchmaking...
(I couldnt get it in this shot, but this guy had one of those 75+ card decks... yet he got all four seal away in the first four turns. Not so great with math, what are the odds of that?
Thankfully we have Hypergeometric Distrobution to solve this, though we do have to make some assumptions:
-We don't know how many cards are in their deck, you claim it's 75, let's assume it's right.
-We don't know how many cards he's seen. We can get a good idea though, since he's sealed away a Hired Poisoner, a Lazav, the Multifarious, and two Thief of Sanity, and you're untapped after having played a disinformation campaign and a thoughtbound phantasm. That means it's at least been 6 of your turns when you took this, he's taken at least 5 draws and seen 12 cards, conveniently we can see all 12 cards (3 in hand, 3 lands, 4 seal away, the artifact, and the pledge he discarded to your disinformation campaign)
Based on that, we get this:
So this is exceedingly rare, one that should happen 4 in 10000 (or 1 in 2500) times. It is a quirk, and a very rare one. Is it salt-inducing? Absolutely. Does that prove that there's fixing in the shuffler? Not even remotely.
The human mind SUCKS at understanding probabilities and odds. We're conditioned to only remember the 1 time the seal away playset drops, and not the 2499 times where it doesn't. Now if you can show that it happens repetitively and consistently, THEN you can say there's a problem. But until then, congratulations on finding a statistical anomaly. They show up. Not much you can do except accept it.
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Top 16 - 2012 Indiana State Championships Currently Playing: GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Haha, thanks for doing the math actually. Pretty interesting. I bring it up because it seems way more common than 4 in 10000. How many times do you get or see two or three lightening bolts or two or three murders in early game? It happens enough that I wouldn't be surprised if there was a 'weighted' card draw algorithm in place. We know the first draw before mulligan is manipulated. Why should we think others aren't being?
Edit: I literally JUST finished another game against ANOTHER white deck that was running around 68 cards (why are all these people playing with such huge decks?) that cast three seal away in early game (say turn 7). Couldnt get a screenshot in time because I hate the snipping tool, but theres, match making manipulation (I only face these white lifegain decks in such large numbers when I play a dimir surveil deck), mulligan manipulation (as confirmed and intended by development) and it feels like card draw manipulation (early game cards draw early).
Haha, thanks for doing the math actually. Pretty interesting. I bring it up because it seems way more common than 4 in 10000. How many times do you get or see two or three lightening bolts or two or three murders in early game? It happens enough that I wouldn't be surprised if there was a 'weighted' card draw algorithm in place. We know the first draw before mulligan is manipulated. Why should we think others aren't being?
Edit: I literally JUST finished another game against ANOTHER white deck that was running around 68 cards (why are all these people playing with such huge decks?) that cast three seal away in early game (say turn 7). Couldnt get a screenshot in time because I hate the snipping tool, but theres, match making manipulation (I only face these white lifegain decks in such large numbers when I play a dimir surveil deck), mulligan manipulation (as confirmed and intended by development) and it feels like card draw manipulation (early game cards draw early).
This event is actually far more likely than the previous event with odds of 0.024136004%. A smaller sample size(68 vs 75), more cards seen(turn 7 so 14+ vs 12). Only partially related buy I don't think anyone would call turn 7 early game, early game is turn 5 at the latest, usually ends at turn 3. 1-4 early, 5-9 mid, 10+ late. As turn go later players see more cards and it becomes more common to see multiples, so when talking about how many of a card is seen in the early game people will assume you mean the first 3 or 4 turns where they have probably seen no more than 10 cards or a sixth of their deck. Which is radically different if they've seen 14+ cards.
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Is that intentional?
Spirits
If the amount of variation bugs you, then playing in the constructed events (as opposed to ladder) should smooth it out.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
Was there an attempt to analyze this like players did with the land ratio vs draw algorithm?
EDIT: Ran through a constructed just to see, and the balance seems fine there.
Spirits
I don't believe so. The land ratio algorithm is very explicitly stated to the player, it can be worked out with not a ton of math, and it's dependent solely on what you put into your deck. To get an analysis of the deck power ratio you'd need to be able to see your opponent's entire deck over multiple matchmaking sessions to even figure out an equation. And then once you have that, you'd need to do that many more trials to see if you can adjust your deck in a way that influences the decks you face to a meaningful degree. I don't think it'd be feasible without automation or a crowdsourcing it via a LOT of people playing Unmoored Ego.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Spirits
Well, as an update it appears that something the Devs did was add some kind of handicap system to freeplay. Basically, in free play there are two hands that are drawn and the system picks the better of the two, but in legitimate tournaments this doesn't happen. I didn't actually know about this until today after a video popped up on youtube talking about it. I had to go confirm it was true as well...
https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/88cik2/starting_hand_algorithm/
I agree with other posters that having hand manipulation at all is bad for the game as it lets people get away with jank mana bases that are not properly measured out. If I get to draw two hypothetical hands, that severely drops the required land count on my part to make my deck work. Take the same deck to a tournament and now I'm getting mana screwed or flooded all the time.
Also, Arena does do something with certain deck win ratios. I'm not sure what it is, but it does have something to do with why people keep running into specific decks more often than not.
You know, there is a saying called Keep it simple stupid. If people want an online system where they can play magic the gathering strait up, it just needs to fulfill basic requirements. There was never a requirement for hand manipulation,weird algorithmic match making that are supposed to "improve" the new player experience, etc. The developers might have been able to get away with it in other genres, but Magic the Gathering has a dozen different dedicated online match makers already that are 100% fair as well as MTGO: People can easily spot these kinds of parlor tricks.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
My experience -
Play Grixis midrange - face endless burn decks
Play merfok - face endless Lifegain decks
Play Jeskai control - face endless mirror matches
All three of these are interspersed with random Dimir decks, the absolute worst scum deck of the new standard.
I mean, there's no manipulation in shuffler or mulligans or matchmaking...
(I couldnt get it in this shot, but this guy had one of those 75+ card decks... yet he got all four seal away in the first four turns. Not so great with math, what are the odds of that?
Thankfully we have Hypergeometric Distrobution to solve this, though we do have to make some assumptions:
-We don't know how many cards are in their deck, you claim it's 75, let's assume it's right.
-We don't know how many cards he's seen. We can get a good idea though, since he's sealed away a Hired Poisoner, a Lazav, the Multifarious, and two Thief of Sanity, and you're untapped after having played a disinformation campaign and a thoughtbound phantasm. That means it's at least been 6 of your turns when you took this, he's taken at least 5 draws and seen 12 cards, conveniently we can see all 12 cards (3 in hand, 3 lands, 4 seal away, the artifact, and the pledge he discarded to your disinformation campaign)
Based on that, we get this:
So this is exceedingly rare, one that should happen 4 in 10000 (or 1 in 2500) times. It is a quirk, and a very rare one. Is it salt-inducing? Absolutely. Does that prove that there's fixing in the shuffler? Not even remotely.
The human mind SUCKS at understanding probabilities and odds. We're conditioned to only remember the 1 time the seal away playset drops, and not the 2499 times where it doesn't. Now if you can show that it happens repetitively and consistently, THEN you can say there's a problem. But until then, congratulations on finding a statistical anomaly. They show up. Not much you can do except accept it.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
Edit: I literally JUST finished another game against ANOTHER white deck that was running around 68 cards (why are all these people playing with such huge decks?) that cast three seal away in early game (say turn 7). Couldnt get a screenshot in time because I hate the snipping tool, but theres, match making manipulation (I only face these white lifegain decks in such large numbers when I play a dimir surveil deck), mulligan manipulation (as confirmed and intended by development) and it feels like card draw manipulation (early game cards draw early).