My major beef with the Vault right now is that the progression in both invisible, and so slow as to be imperceptible in its effect, so that right now it feels as though it doesn't even exist. So it's not serving its psychological purpose of offsetting the frustration of opening duplicates at all. Even if all we could see is some tiny little icon that tells us that the duplicates are doing *something*, that would be better than the current system.
^ This. This is the issue. I would really like to actually have the information available. I think that someone somewhere stated they have hidden the progress so that it's not frustrating to watch it not move, but I think a better solution to that would be a faster pace of vault progress, not hiding the information from the users.
My personal hope is that they produce a proper shuffling algorithm. I mean, I have just finished a 1-3 quick draft, in which I managed to draw at least ten lands in every game (not exaggerating here, I literally saw at least twice as much lands as nonlands every game) in a monoR deck with 16 lands. When I splash a color and put three basics in the deck, I somehow manage to draw at least two of them (often more than the basics of color/s I play as main) 95% of the games. When I play a standard deck with twenty lands, I almost never fail to draw at least five. It's incredibly frustrating, especially since I still play paper at least once per week and similar situations simply don't happen irl. I don't know how their deck randomizing engine works, I am just certain it doesn't work as it should.
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standard: BUG The Baron (it doesn't work, but I try anyway)
Your theory operates under the assumption that you will open 50 unique rares/mythics. That is simply not true. Also, of those 50 rares, maybe only half are playable and then at that, maybe only 8 are specifically valuable to the decks you are trying to assemble. I feel like that is the flaw in your reasoning. A wildcard will always be more valuable than just arbitrary rare "x." Which is why generating them even slightly faster, is more beneficial to you. So now it seems we are back to, if both of our methods generate rares at the same rate, but mine also generates wildcards faster... lol. If you are looking to assemble a specific deck, the fastest way possible, you are doing it via opening duplicates. This also just isnt something I have come up with. Ill happily link multiple podcasts discussing this.
Well that's just not true at all. The assumption is that out of 50 packs I won't open a significant amount of 5th copies of uncommons or rares. As for the playability of those rares... I don't really know what to tell you when you're advocating for an alternative in which your packs are literally empty and therefore unplayable. You are literally arguing that 50 packs are of less value than 1 Mythic Wildcard, 2 Rare Wildcards and 3 Uncommon Wildcards. I will take the 50 packs. But you do you, man.
I guess I am getting different dailys than you are, because I sort of fail to see how "play 40 lands" is an indication of "only incentivizing winning." Im also not sure how "Play 20 blue or red spells" is is an exemplification of just play your best deck, because you need to win in order to satisfy your daily quests. In fact, both of those examples seem to be in stark contrast to what you are saying.
Except I was paraphrasing an early post of my own in which I noted that the single daily quest involving game actions was the sole exception:
First, something needs to be done about the daily rewards. They way they are currently set up -- so that with the exception of the single "play X amount of these colored spells" quest everything requires winning to unlock -- incentivizes some pretty unfun play patterns. Right now, I have no reason to play anything except the one deck I actually put all my wildcards into because that is simply my best deck and therefore has the best chance of earning rewards. The problem is that playing the same deck day in and day out is extremely boring. Unfortunately, it is actively bad for me to try to play anything else because I will literally just be wasting my time. And even if, by some chance, I do feel like playing a pile of jank for fun, nobody else will be because they've all come to the same conclusion I just did, so they're all playing their best deck to finish their quests as quickly as possible, meaning I'll just get stomped anyway. WotC needs to spread out the rewards to include things other than just winning. More quests for doing game actions, or even just for playing some games, win or lose. I've played paper Magic basically every week for almost a decade straight, but in barely a month of Arena they've managed to turn the game into a chore instead of something I look forward to. This is a massive problem and it should be worrying the hell out of the devs right now.
They should restructure the daily prizes so that A) the full compliment of rewards can be achieved in a reasonable amount of time, and B) most quests don't require winning to fulfill. Something like front-loading the gold across multiple daily 250-500 gold reward quests that are all active at the same time instead of this drip-drip-drip style they have going now. Currently, getting 15(!) wins a day will yield a total of 750 Gold as well as 6 ICR. You can also earn 500 or 750 Gold from the daily quest that involves performing game actions like playing certain colored spells or playing lands, etc. That's a total possible 1500 Gold and 6 ICRs in one day.
Instead, they could have 4 different game action quests worth 250 all active at the same time so you can potentially work towards multiple at once, as well as a big 500 gold "First Win of the Day" bonus. The ICRs can stay behind a 5-win questline with each win revealing 1 ICR, but the last one should have a higher than normal chance of being upgraded to a rare. There. Same total rewards per day (with the exception of potentially more rares being given out as ICR but I doubt that will affect the economy significantly) except if you log on for an hour, play 5 games but only win 1 you'll still have been able to complete a large portion of your rewards. And best of all, you'll actually be able to experiment with new deck ideas because you are no longer required to win to do the quests.
The more I play, and as I got closer to a 'real' deck the flaws in the economy/match making really started to show up. Theres no way I would dump money into the game to the point of 'finishing' a top end deck, and the pace of reward's to build one through drafting is just terrible.
I'm sure people have heard by now, but it was announced earlier this week that Direct Chellenge (Which I can't think of any other thing it means outside of P2P matchmaking) is going to be implemented on the 15th.
While it's 6 weeks overdue for most of us, we do have to consider that the game is still in Beta and these features are being worked on. It's still a great positive sign IMO.
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I'm sure people have heard by now, but it was announced earlier this week that Direct Chellenge (Which I can't think of any other thing it means outside of P2P matchmaking) is going to be implemented on the 15th.
While it's 6 weeks overdue for most of us, we do have to consider that the game is still in Beta and these features are being worked on. It's still a great positive sign IMO.
It's still in a pretty appalling state. There's still no actual friends list. Instead you have to manually enter the name and that ridiculous identifier number at the end of your name to challenge someone. I find it hard to believe they are still unable to get a bare bones friends list up and running.
WotC can call this a Beta all they want, but the fact of the matter is they are taking customers money for what is a fairly substandard product. A working friends list, a way to play against specific people, a client that doesn't leak memory like a colander... these are things that should have been implemented before opening it up to the public.
I haven't bothered getting into it because I don't feel like dealing with the hand and match making manipulation. It feels like a lot of this was done to prevent a badly designed set from bombing the game, but it's mostly causing people to play the same matches over and over. Not to mention the free play mode hand draw throws off the land count one needs to run the deck in tournaments.
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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!
I haven't bothered getting into it because I don't feel like dealing with the hand and match making manipulation. It feels like a lot of this was done to prevent a badly designed set from bombing the game, but it's mostly causing people to play the same matches over and over. Not to mention the free play mode hand draw throws off the land count one needs to run the deck in tournaments.
For a brand new game, in beta, in a hugely competitive market, the developers really seem to have just dropped the ball and are dooming it to failure already. The lack of fixes and updates and improvements and just the general lack of even communication is a pretty big turn off. The official message boards are flooded with post after post about the matchmaking and the shuffling and the missing wildcard issue and have been for months. What does Wizards do in the latest update which was like 3 months in the making? Give a way to challenge someone else (not a friends list though) and add advertisements. These are the critical months for this game if it wants a future and no one in charge seems to care.
I haven't bothered getting into it because I don't feel like dealing with the hand and match making manipulation. It feels like a lot of this was done to prevent a badly designed set from bombing the game, but it's mostly causing people to play the same matches over and over. Not to mention the free play mode hand draw throws off the land count one needs to run the deck in tournaments.
For a brand new game, in beta, in a hugely competitive market, the developers really seem to have just dropped the ball and are dooming it to failure already. The lack of fixes and updates and improvements and just the general lack of even communication is a pretty big turn off. The official message boards are flooded with post after post about the matchmaking and the shuffling and the missing wildcard issue and have been for months. What does Wizards do in the latest update which was like 3 months in the making? Give a way to challenge someone else (not a friends list though) and add advertisements. These are the critical months for this game if it wants a future and no one in charge seems to care.
The game has been in open beta for 2 months now (It launched September 24) and while there are definitely some sticking points I'm genuinely curious what you expected from them.
Matchmaking: In the free play ladder the general idea is understood, Arena appears to measure deck strength in terms of Rares/Mythics/Wildcards Used to create pairings. As it so happens, most decks are pretty set in their Mythic/Rare/Uncommon/Common requirements, and in general wildcard use is generally being spent on lands, DOM and IXN cards that are uncommon to come by without whaling. So it really stands to reason that if you're going to play a specific deck that you're often going to be in the mirror or against one other deck very frequently - they're the ones with the deck closest to yours. The easiest way to avoid this is avoid the ladder queues unless you just want cheap and dirty pickup games to get the last few spells for a quest or something.
Shuffling: Absolutely there are annoying runouts and mana floods. But honestly what do you want, a guarantee that the game will further rig draws so you won't see 4 or 5 lands in a row? As we saw from Luis Scott Vargas at the Pro Tour, mana flood can happen in paper as easily as it can happen in Arena. And with tens of thousands of games being played every day, the probability of any remote event is going to approach certainty over that many trials. (Law of Large Numbers)
Math says you're going to see this stuff happen. It's not Arena deliberately rigging it.
Friend List: I'm still not entirely sure why people want this or what it would accomplish. It's not like there's some kind of chat function in Arena, and I find it unlikely that people would want to do Direct Challenges with people they don't already have some means of coordination with. The dual connection system is easiest effective way of making sure both players are free to play and willing to play - imagine how flooded with requests streamers would be if that wasn't the case! Could they add a dropdown menu of recent challenges for easy rematches? Sure, but that should hardly be a dealbreaker.
Advertisements: It's easy to forget that a large majority of the target market is nowhere near as enfranchised with the game as someone like me who's been playing for 11 years. Poaching players from Hearthstone and Eternal and Shadowverse is nice and all (judging by previous posts of yours I assume you're coming from HS) but in order to keep those players, Wizards need to show them that there's so much more to magic than just this one program. Advertising is the most cost-effective way to do that, and it's not even that obnoxious for a player who isn't interested.
So yeah. I'm curious what you expect from them with these complaints. Sure there's a few bugs. Sure there's kinks to be worked out. That's why it's called Open Beta, they're using all of this to see what needs to be changed - and even if they've recognized these problems you argue about, it's not like there's a button they can press to fix all of it overnight. Code, especially GOOD code, takes a lot of time and testing. With the spaghetti that MTGO runs on, I can appreciate Arena taking its time to get things right - Better IMO to wait 6 weeks for Direct Challenge and have it work right, than to get it 2 weeks into OB and have it be completely unusable.
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I haven't bothered getting into it because I don't feel like dealing with the hand and match making manipulation. It feels like a lot of this was done to prevent a badly designed set from bombing the game, but it's mostly causing people to play the same matches over and over. Not to mention the free play mode hand draw throws off the land count one needs to run the deck in tournaments.
For a brand new game, in beta, in a hugely competitive market, the developers really seem to have just dropped the ball and are dooming it to failure already. The lack of fixes and updates and improvements and just the general lack of even communication is a pretty big turn off. The official message boards are flooded with post after post about the matchmaking and the shuffling and the missing wildcard issue and have been for months. What does Wizards do in the latest update which was like 3 months in the making? Give a way to challenge someone else (not a friends list though) and add advertisements. These are the critical months for this game if it wants a future and no one in charge seems to care.
The game has been in open beta for 2 months now (It launched September 24) and while there are definitely some sticking points I'm genuinely curious what you expected from them.
Matchmaking: In the free play ladder the general idea is understood, Arena appears to measure deck strength in terms of Rares/Mythics/Wildcards Used to create pairings. As it so happens, most decks are pretty set in their Mythic/Rare/Uncommon/Common requirements, and in general wildcard use is generally being spent on lands, DOM and IXN cards that are uncommon to come by without whaling. So it really stands to reason that if you're going to play a specific deck that you're often going to be in the mirror or against one other deck very frequently - they're the ones with the deck closest to yours. The easiest way to avoid this is avoid the ladder queues unless you just want cheap and dirty pickup games to get the last few spells for a quest or something.
Shuffling: Absolutely there are annoying runouts and mana floods. But honestly what do you want, a guarantee that the game will further rig draws so you won't see 4 or 5 lands in a row? As we saw from Luis Scott Vargas at the Pro Tour, mana flood can happen in paper as easily as it can happen in Arena. And with tens of thousands of games being played every day, the probability of any remote event is going to approach certainty over that many trials. (Law of Large Numbers)
Math says you're going to see this stuff happen. It's not Arena deliberately rigging it.
Friend List: I'm still not entirely sure why people want this or what it would accomplish. It's not like there's some kind of chat function in Arena, and I find it unlikely that people would want to do Direct Challenges with people they don't already have some means of coordination with. The dual connection system is easiest effective way of making sure both players are free to play and willing to play - imagine how flooded with requests streamers would be if that wasn't the case! Could they add a dropdown menu of recent challenges for easy rematches? Sure, but that should hardly be a dealbreaker.
Advertisements: It's easy to forget that a large majority of the target market is nowhere near as enfranchised with the game as someone like me who's been playing for 11 years. Poaching players from Hearthstone and Eternal and Shadowverse is nice and all (judging by previous posts of yours I assume you're coming from HS) but in order to keep those players, Wizards need to show them that there's so much more to magic than just this one program. Advertising is the most cost-effective way to do that, and it's not even that obnoxious for a player who isn't interested.
So yeah. I'm curious what you expect from them with these complaints. Sure there's a few bugs. Sure there's kinks to be worked out. That's why it's called Open Beta, they're using all of this to see what needs to be changed - and even if they've recognized these problems you argue about, it's not like there's a button they can press to fix all of it overnight. Code, especially GOOD code, takes a lot of time and testing. With the spaghetti that MTGO runs on, I can appreciate Arena taking its time to get things right - Better IMO to wait 6 weeks for Direct Challenge and have it work right, than to get it 2 weeks into OB and have it be completely unusable.
And it's been in closed beta for months and months before open beta.
Also saying if you dont like rigged matchmaking avoid the ladder and only play the pay to play modes is moronic. How about just dont rig the matchmaking and find matches based on rank. Wow! I solved it. Just match on rank like literally every other game of this genre does. Holy cow mind blowing.
As for the rest of your post, not really interested in reading it. It looks like the same crap the Wizards fan boys post on the official fourms. If you honestly think Arena is in a great place right now I dont know what to say, you either have low expectations or some bizarre love affair with Wizards that means you cant view them critically.
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Friend List: I'm still not entirely sure why people want this or what it would accomplish. It's not like there's some kind of chat function in Arena, and I find it unlikely that people would want to do Direct Challenges with people they don't already have some means of coordination with. The dual connection system is easiest effective way of making sure both players are free to play and willing to play - imagine how flooded with requests streamers would be if that wasn't the case! Could they add a dropdown menu of recent challenges for easy rematches? Sure, but that should hardly be a dealbreaker.
Mainly because it's kind of ridiculous that they don't have it by this point. It's not like making a functional friends list is difficult. I want to be able to "friend" opponents that I had fun games against for future challenges. I want to be able to challenge my actual friends without having to enter their name every time. I want a chat function in the client between friends. These aren't exactly monumental tasks here. These are things I fully expect any online game to support these days.
And it's been in closed beta for months and months before open beta.
Also saying if you dont like rigged matchmaking avoid the ladder and only play the pay to play modes is moronic. How about just dont rig the matchmaking and find matches based on rank. Wow! I solved it. Just match on rank like literally every other game of this genre does. Holy cow mind blowing.
Except ladder rank has zero impact on deck quality, you can have a fully powered tier 1 deck and still be a low rank if you don't play that tier 1 deck that often. Wizards appears to have made the conscious decision to base matchmaking on something other than ladder rank. Should it be more transparent as to how it works? I think so, but I also understand that if the formula is known, there will be people who will exploit it to get "easy" pairings which ruins the concept.
As for the rest of your post, not really interested in reading it. It looks like the same crap the Wizards fan boys post on the official fourms. If you honestly think Arena is in a great place right now I dont know what to say, you either have low expectations or some bizarre love affair with Wizards that means you cant view them critically.
Emphasis mine, now this bothers me. You refuse to read an argument because you have a preconceived notion of what I think and just passing the whole thing off as another shill. So let me make it easy for you since you don't like reading hunks of text:
The point of beta testing is to find problems and address them. Arena is not perfect but it is doing this. Bring problems to their attention and if they're actually problems they will be fixed.
What you have to realize is there's a world of difference between "this is a problem" and "this is something you don't like". Arena can't and won't cater to your every whim, and if you expect a game to do that...well, good luck.
]Mainly because it's kind of ridiculous that they don't have it by this point. It's not like making a functional friends list is difficult. I want to be able to "friend" opponents that I had fun games against for future challenges. I want to be able to challenge my actual friends without having to enter their name every time. I want a chat function in the client between friends. These aren't exactly monumental tasks here. These are things I fully expect any online game to support these days.
A chat function opens up such a massive legal liability for wizards that I'm sure they (Or more likely Hasbro) would just rather not deal with it. Attempting to "friend" random opponents doesn't open up any way to coordinate future games, making the whole thing largely pointless. The typing in of friend codes I agree with, but again - that's ultimately a really minor thing. I'm unsure why you "expect" these from a game when they add no value to the game, and would like to understand a bit more.
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A chat function opens up such a massive legal liability for wizards that I'm sure they (Or more likely Hasbro) would just rather not deal with it. Attempting to "friend" random opponents doesn't open up any way to coordinate future games, making the whole thing largely pointless. The typing in of friend codes I agree with, but again - that's ultimately a really minor thing. I'm unsure why you "expect" these from a game when they add no value to the game, and would like to understand a bit more.
I expect them because I've played a PC game in the past decade. It's like asking why I expect my car to have a sound system. As for 'legal liability' I find that extremely hard to believe seeing as how there are literally thousands of games with a chat function.
Again, WotC can call it a "beta" all they want, but the fact is they are taking money in exchange for a service and right now that service is quite lacking.
Personally, I don't miss a friends list that much, but it's one of the the most basic features in a game like this. Sure, the current implementation of direct challenge is better than nothing, but it's still a temporary band-aid solution.
Matchmaking absolutely needs to be improved. I get them wanting to prevent the most janky homebrews getting ripped apart by tier 1 decks, but limiting the matchups you get with a specific deck to the point were you play one of 3 possible games each time is just dumb.
Besides diversity, mixing up rank and deck strength makes the whole ladder system quite pointless. I think they should just add a 'free play' mode that matches by deck strength only while going by rank for the ladder mode.
I'd also welcome a history/log. Mostly interactions are clear enough from the stack, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to retrace what exactly happened while you had no possible response without going into full control. This is more of a quality of life thing, not highest priority.
Another personal preference would be more accessible Bo3 draft. It's my favorite way to play in arena, but 1,5k gems is a lot and you can go 1-2 very easily even with a decent deck. I went 2-0, 1-2, 1-2 with two very close third games on my last attempt. Was fine with the result, but I'll have to save up quite a bit before I can start again.
So I hope for a lower entry, lower turnout version that maybe doesn't let you keep what you draftet (would also incentivize drafting for the best posible deck over raredrafting).
I think some kind of game mode that's standard best of three (matches) should be available at all times. It's very annoying when their flagship format in its truest form is replaced with some experimental format like GRN constructed or limited with some older set. One game standard doesn't cut it either, since I need to practice sideboarding and playing postboard games. If there's one thing that could make me stop playing Arena, this would be the most likely one.
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When I hit my 3000 post mark, I'm gone for good.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
I've finally been getting annoyed enough to seek out the forums and see what other people are experiencing. My biggest problem is the number of lands in hand issue mentioned in recent posts. Second biggest is the "multiple copies of cards showing up at once problem." As explained in the video it is obvious that there is a flaw with the randomness of how often multiple copies of a card will show up. Basically, if you have a card in your opening hand, or draw into a copy, you are much more likely to see a 2nd 3rd or 4th copy based on already having one as the game progresses. For example, I have 3 Ravenous Chupacabras in my deck. My opening hand contain 2 of them (3.25% chance of that happening) then I somehow manage to draw my 3rd an final copy within a 3 draws (only .35% chance of that happening!!!) Of course this is a single instance can be explained away by stastics. However, these scenarios play out so often that it truly defies actual probability. If I have only 2 copies of a card, I magically often see both copies within a single game, or none at all. I'll draw 2 of the same card in a row (.34% chance of that happening with 4 copies in a deck.)
This problem is so bad it has started to affect how I even build the decks in the first place. I play G/B Midrange and feel forced to play numerous explore creatures, Adventurous Impulse and recently I'm trying out the Discovery//Dispersal card to mitigate this lack of randomness. After putting in 2 copies of Discovery, I drew both of them in my hand on my 2 game with them in the deck. Chances of drawing both copies out of 2 in your hand is 1.1%
This lack of randomness is really hurting how my deck functions. It is really making me want to play more 1 ofs for my higher cost spells, as I don't want to increase the risk of me drawing all high cmc spells in the begining of the game due to a lack of variance. It is forcing me to play more and more cards that can bust through pockets of dual copies, or as you all have experienced the EXTREMELY unlikely land pockets.
I like that the video goes into why Wizards is doing this, which makes a kind of sense from Wizards perspective. He thinks that this lack or randomness is designed to keep people from accruing too many gold/wins in a day, and to keep lesser players from accruing too many losses.
Anyway, all of this is bullcrap. We can make excuses about "Oh it's just the Beta version" but that is bullcrap when it comes to spitting in the face of probability. The best skill (arugably) a player can have in this game is to be able to understand and predict probablity. It doesn't matter if this is the Beta version or the finished product when it comes to having a correct algorithm to have probability in regards to drawing cards.
Two options here: Either the developers don't understand probability, or they are purposefully manipulating it in order to achive some end. Either one of these is a TERRIBLE sign. They are trying to get too fancy with this. Just make everything random as it should be. Fix the economy in other ways, not by making their own rules to change how statistics works.
I have not seen the video you've linked, so I can't comment on that in particular, but I would advice you to take anything DesolatorMagic with a grain of salt. And by grain I actually mean a truck load. Like, Lantern Control opponent levels of salt. The guy is way out there, and he tends to view everything in the most negative and malicious way to drive views.
This, of course, is my personal perspective, which you can feel free to ignore or disagree with. I'm just throwing it out there.
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When I hit my 3000 post mark, I'm gone for good.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
I've seen a lot of complaints about the shuffler 'not feeling truly random' - most of it seems to boil down to the fact that truly random usually doesn't feel random to us. Always Nicely distributed feels random to us, but is pretty much the opposite. Also a lot of the 'this happens in arena FAR more often than in paper' is most likely due to insufficient shuffling in paper rather than issues with arena's randomization
I have not seen the video you've linked, so I can't comment on that in particular, but I would advice you to take anything DesolatorMagic with a grain of salt. And by grain I actually mean a truck load. Like, Lantern Control opponent levels of salt. The guy is way out there, and he tends to view everything in the most negative and malicious way to drive views.
This, of course, is my personal perspective, which you can feel free to ignore or disagree with. I'm just throwing it out there.
I can totally understand the skepticism when it comes to evaluating probability and also DesolatorMagic's claims. Probability is nearly impossible for a human to perceive from merely gathering results from your own gaming time. Here's where I'll tell you I've taken many university classes on understanding statistics and analyzing data. I understand we have certain inherit psychological functions in our brain that predispose us to biases when it comes to understanding data.
DesolaterMagic is totally arrogant, and does have splashy headline type of information/sometimes wrong info. provided in his videos. However, I believe that he does understand mathematics (I know enough to understand that he's explaining these types of segments pcorrectly) and perhaps programming (that's just a hunch.) Yes, he's rude, overly dramatic and/or straight up wrong about some things, but not his explanation of mathematics.
I've been playing 60 card paper Magic for quite a few years now. I'm telling you something doesn't add up with Arena's randomization system. Yes, improper shuffling can be a thing as mentioned right above this post. I've watched multiple videos on different shuffling techniques and how to reliably check to see if they are random before. I know how to shuffle. In fact the way I group cards prior to shuffling (each copy of every card lined up next to it in converted cmc in order) in paper Magic would guarantee that more copies of the same card are EVEN MORE LIKELY to put those cards together compared to a truly mathematical randomization.
FYI I am entering actual gameplay data into a hypogeometric calculator to provide you with % data points.
I noticed that something was obviously wrong with MTG arena's shuffling/randomization pattern well before watching the video (I'm not taking about the best of 2 hands for lands in ladder games part which is actually explained in the tips.) You don't even need to watch the video to gain an understanding. Just start using a hypogeometric calculator with gameplay results and you'll see...
PLEASE! By all means be skeptical! Once you have heard about this dual copies of cards showing up, it can't be unseen. (I know that's a normal psychological trap, this extends beyond that.) Take mental notes, if not actual notes by using statistical methods. I'd be at the point of taking actual data points down if I had more time. Telling you, multiple copies of the same card show up way too often. I believe this applies to even non-basic land cards too. Sure, it's easy to misunderstand statistics. When nearly all of your games have instances of 1% or much less chance of cards occurring, it's time to sit up and take notice.
Anyway, hope to keep seeing reports for or against this!
^ This. This is the issue. I would really like to actually have the information available. I think that someone somewhere stated they have hidden the progress so that it's not frustrating to watch it not move, but I think a better solution to that would be a faster pace of vault progress, not hiding the information from the users.
My personal hope is that they produce a proper shuffling algorithm. I mean, I have just finished a 1-3 quick draft, in which I managed to draw at least ten lands in every game (not exaggerating here, I literally saw at least twice as much lands as nonlands every game) in a monoR deck with 16 lands. When I splash a color and put three basics in the deck, I somehow manage to draw at least two of them (often more than the basics of color/s I play as main) 95% of the games. When I play a standard deck with twenty lands, I almost never fail to draw at least five. It's incredibly frustrating, especially since I still play paper at least once per week and similar situations simply don't happen irl. I don't know how their deck randomizing engine works, I am just certain it doesn't work as it should.
BUG The Baron (it doesn't work, but I try anyway)
modern:
RGShaman Aggro
legacy:
UHigh Tide
German highlander:
BUG aggro control
EDH:
a positively unhealthy amount of decks
Except I was paraphrasing an early post of my own in which I noted that the single daily quest involving game actions was the sole exception: They should restructure the daily prizes so that A) the full compliment of rewards can be achieved in a reasonable amount of time, and B) most quests don't require winning to fulfill. Something like front-loading the gold across multiple daily 250-500 gold reward quests that are all active at the same time instead of this drip-drip-drip style they have going now. Currently, getting 15(!) wins a day will yield a total of 750 Gold as well as 6 ICR. You can also earn 500 or 750 Gold from the daily quest that involves performing game actions like playing certain colored spells or playing lands, etc. That's a total possible 1500 Gold and 6 ICRs in one day.
Instead, they could have 4 different game action quests worth 250 all active at the same time so you can potentially work towards multiple at once, as well as a big 500 gold "First Win of the Day" bonus. The ICRs can stay behind a 5-win questline with each win revealing 1 ICR, but the last one should have a higher than normal chance of being upgraded to a rare. There. Same total rewards per day (with the exception of potentially more rares being given out as ICR but I doubt that will affect the economy significantly) except if you log on for an hour, play 5 games but only win 1 you'll still have been able to complete a large portion of your rewards. And best of all, you'll actually be able to experiment with new deck ideas because you are no longer required to win to do the quests.
Spirits
While it's 6 weeks overdue for most of us, we do have to consider that the game is still in Beta and these features are being worked on. It's still a great positive sign IMO.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
Spirits
WotC can call this a Beta all they want, but the fact of the matter is they are taking customers money for what is a fairly substandard product. A working friends list, a way to play against specific people, a client that doesn't leak memory like a colander... these are things that should have been implemented before opening it up to the public.
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!
For a brand new game, in beta, in a hugely competitive market, the developers really seem to have just dropped the ball and are dooming it to failure already. The lack of fixes and updates and improvements and just the general lack of even communication is a pretty big turn off. The official message boards are flooded with post after post about the matchmaking and the shuffling and the missing wildcard issue and have been for months. What does Wizards do in the latest update which was like 3 months in the making? Give a way to challenge someone else (not a friends list though) and add advertisements. These are the critical months for this game if it wants a future and no one in charge seems to care.
The game has been in open beta for 2 months now (It launched September 24) and while there are definitely some sticking points I'm genuinely curious what you expected from them.
Matchmaking: In the free play ladder the general idea is understood, Arena appears to measure deck strength in terms of Rares/Mythics/Wildcards Used to create pairings. As it so happens, most decks are pretty set in their Mythic/Rare/Uncommon/Common requirements, and in general wildcard use is generally being spent on lands, DOM and IXN cards that are uncommon to come by without whaling. So it really stands to reason that if you're going to play a specific deck that you're often going to be in the mirror or against one other deck very frequently - they're the ones with the deck closest to yours. The easiest way to avoid this is avoid the ladder queues unless you just want cheap and dirty pickup games to get the last few spells for a quest or something.
Shuffling: Absolutely there are annoying runouts and mana floods. But honestly what do you want, a guarantee that the game will further rig draws so you won't see 4 or 5 lands in a row? As we saw from Luis Scott Vargas at the Pro Tour, mana flood can happen in paper as easily as it can happen in Arena. And with tens of thousands of games being played every day, the probability of any remote event is going to approach certainty over that many trials. (Law of Large Numbers)
Math says you're going to see this stuff happen. It's not Arena deliberately rigging it.
Friend List: I'm still not entirely sure why people want this or what it would accomplish. It's not like there's some kind of chat function in Arena, and I find it unlikely that people would want to do Direct Challenges with people they don't already have some means of coordination with. The dual connection system is easiest effective way of making sure both players are free to play and willing to play - imagine how flooded with requests streamers would be if that wasn't the case! Could they add a dropdown menu of recent challenges for easy rematches? Sure, but that should hardly be a dealbreaker.
Advertisements: It's easy to forget that a large majority of the target market is nowhere near as enfranchised with the game as someone like me who's been playing for 11 years. Poaching players from Hearthstone and Eternal and Shadowverse is nice and all (judging by previous posts of yours I assume you're coming from HS) but in order to keep those players, Wizards need to show them that there's so much more to magic than just this one program. Advertising is the most cost-effective way to do that, and it's not even that obnoxious for a player who isn't interested.
So yeah. I'm curious what you expect from them with these complaints. Sure there's a few bugs. Sure there's kinks to be worked out. That's why it's called Open Beta, they're using all of this to see what needs to be changed - and even if they've recognized these problems you argue about, it's not like there's a button they can press to fix all of it overnight. Code, especially GOOD code, takes a lot of time and testing. With the spaghetti that MTGO runs on, I can appreciate Arena taking its time to get things right - Better IMO to wait 6 weeks for Direct Challenge and have it work right, than to get it 2 weeks into OB and have it be completely unusable.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
And it's been in closed beta for months and months before open beta.
Also saying if you dont like rigged matchmaking avoid the ladder and only play the pay to play modes is moronic. How about just dont rig the matchmaking and find matches based on rank. Wow! I solved it. Just match on rank like literally every other game of this genre does. Holy cow mind blowing.
As for the rest of your post, not really interested in reading it. It looks like the same crap the Wizards fan boys post on the official fourms. If you honestly think Arena is in a great place right now I dont know what to say, you either have low expectations or some bizarre love affair with Wizards that means you cant view them critically.
Except ladder rank has zero impact on deck quality, you can have a fully powered tier 1 deck and still be a low rank if you don't play that tier 1 deck that often. Wizards appears to have made the conscious decision to base matchmaking on something other than ladder rank. Should it be more transparent as to how it works? I think so, but I also understand that if the formula is known, there will be people who will exploit it to get "easy" pairings which ruins the concept.
Emphasis mine, now this bothers me. You refuse to read an argument because you have a preconceived notion of what I think and just passing the whole thing off as another shill. So let me make it easy for you since you don't like reading hunks of text:
The point of beta testing is to find problems and address them. Arena is not perfect but it is doing this. Bring problems to their attention and if they're actually problems they will be fixed.
What you have to realize is there's a world of difference between "this is a problem" and "this is something you don't like". Arena can't and won't cater to your every whim, and if you expect a game to do that...well, good luck.
A chat function opens up such a massive legal liability for wizards that I'm sure they (Or more likely Hasbro) would just rather not deal with it. Attempting to "friend" random opponents doesn't open up any way to coordinate future games, making the whole thing largely pointless. The typing in of friend codes I agree with, but again - that's ultimately a really minor thing. I'm unsure why you "expect" these from a game when they add no value to the game, and would like to understand a bit more.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
Again, WotC can call it a "beta" all they want, but the fact is they are taking money in exchange for a service and right now that service is quite lacking.
Matchmaking absolutely needs to be improved. I get them wanting to prevent the most janky homebrews getting ripped apart by tier 1 decks, but limiting the matchups you get with a specific deck to the point were you play one of 3 possible games each time is just dumb.
Besides diversity, mixing up rank and deck strength makes the whole ladder system quite pointless. I think they should just add a 'free play' mode that matches by deck strength only while going by rank for the ladder mode.
I'd also welcome a history/log. Mostly interactions are clear enough from the stack, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to retrace what exactly happened while you had no possible response without going into full control. This is more of a quality of life thing, not highest priority.
Another personal preference would be more accessible Bo3 draft. It's my favorite way to play in arena, but 1,5k gems is a lot and you can go 1-2 very easily even with a decent deck. I went 2-0, 1-2, 1-2 with two very close third games on my last attempt. Was fine with the result, but I'll have to save up quite a bit before I can start again.
So I hope for a lower entry, lower turnout version that maybe doesn't let you keep what you draftet (would also incentivize drafting for the best posible deck over raredrafting).
W(W/U)U Ephara - Flash & Taxes W(W/U)U || B(B/G)G Meren - Circle of Life B(B/G)G
RGW Marath - Ever shifting Wilds RGW || (U/R)C(W/B) Breya - Artificial Dominion (U/R)C(W/B)
UBR Becket Brass - take what you can, give nothing back UBR
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdJv2CY6H7Y
I've finally been getting annoyed enough to seek out the forums and see what other people are experiencing. My biggest problem is the number of lands in hand issue mentioned in recent posts. Second biggest is the "multiple copies of cards showing up at once problem." As explained in the video it is obvious that there is a flaw with the randomness of how often multiple copies of a card will show up. Basically, if you have a card in your opening hand, or draw into a copy, you are much more likely to see a 2nd 3rd or 4th copy based on already having one as the game progresses. For example, I have 3 Ravenous Chupacabras in my deck. My opening hand contain 2 of them (3.25% chance of that happening) then I somehow manage to draw my 3rd an final copy within a 3 draws (only .35% chance of that happening!!!) Of course this is a single instance can be explained away by stastics. However, these scenarios play out so often that it truly defies actual probability. If I have only 2 copies of a card, I magically often see both copies within a single game, or none at all. I'll draw 2 of the same card in a row (.34% chance of that happening with 4 copies in a deck.)
This problem is so bad it has started to affect how I even build the decks in the first place. I play G/B Midrange and feel forced to play numerous explore creatures, Adventurous Impulse and recently I'm trying out the Discovery//Dispersal card to mitigate this lack of randomness. After putting in 2 copies of Discovery, I drew both of them in my hand on my 2 game with them in the deck. Chances of drawing both copies out of 2 in your hand is 1.1%
This lack of randomness is really hurting how my deck functions. It is really making me want to play more 1 ofs for my higher cost spells, as I don't want to increase the risk of me drawing all high cmc spells in the begining of the game due to a lack of variance. It is forcing me to play more and more cards that can bust through pockets of dual copies, or as you all have experienced the EXTREMELY unlikely land pockets.
I like that the video goes into why Wizards is doing this, which makes a kind of sense from Wizards perspective. He thinks that this lack or randomness is designed to keep people from accruing too many gold/wins in a day, and to keep lesser players from accruing too many losses.
Anyway, all of this is bullcrap. We can make excuses about "Oh it's just the Beta version" but that is bullcrap when it comes to spitting in the face of probability. The best skill (arugably) a player can have in this game is to be able to understand and predict probablity. It doesn't matter if this is the Beta version or the finished product when it comes to having a correct algorithm to have probability in regards to drawing cards.
Two options here: Either the developers don't understand probability, or they are purposefully manipulating it in order to achive some end. Either one of these is a TERRIBLE sign. They are trying to get too fancy with this. Just make everything random as it should be. Fix the economy in other ways, not by making their own rules to change how statistics works.
This, of course, is my personal perspective, which you can feel free to ignore or disagree with. I'm just throwing it out there.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
W(W/U)U Ephara - Flash & Taxes W(W/U)U || B(B/G)G Meren - Circle of Life B(B/G)G
RGW Marath - Ever shifting Wilds RGW || (U/R)C(W/B) Breya - Artificial Dominion (U/R)C(W/B)
UBR Becket Brass - take what you can, give nothing back UBR
I can totally understand the skepticism when it comes to evaluating probability and also DesolatorMagic's claims. Probability is nearly impossible for a human to perceive from merely gathering results from your own gaming time. Here's where I'll tell you I've taken many university classes on understanding statistics and analyzing data. I understand we have certain inherit psychological functions in our brain that predispose us to biases when it comes to understanding data.
DesolaterMagic is totally arrogant, and does have splashy headline type of information/sometimes wrong info. provided in his videos. However, I believe that he does understand mathematics (I know enough to understand that he's explaining these types of segments pcorrectly) and perhaps programming (that's just a hunch.) Yes, he's rude, overly dramatic and/or straight up wrong about some things, but not his explanation of mathematics.
I've been playing 60 card paper Magic for quite a few years now. I'm telling you something doesn't add up with Arena's randomization system. Yes, improper shuffling can be a thing as mentioned right above this post. I've watched multiple videos on different shuffling techniques and how to reliably check to see if they are random before. I know how to shuffle. In fact the way I group cards prior to shuffling (each copy of every card lined up next to it in converted cmc in order) in paper Magic would guarantee that more copies of the same card are EVEN MORE LIKELY to put those cards together compared to a truly mathematical randomization.
FYI I am entering actual gameplay data into a hypogeometric calculator to provide you with % data points.
I noticed that something was obviously wrong with MTG arena's shuffling/randomization pattern well before watching the video (I'm not taking about the best of 2 hands for lands in ladder games part which is actually explained in the tips.) You don't even need to watch the video to gain an understanding. Just start using a hypogeometric calculator with gameplay results and you'll see...
PLEASE! By all means be skeptical! Once you have heard about this dual copies of cards showing up, it can't be unseen. (I know that's a normal psychological trap, this extends beyond that.) Take mental notes, if not actual notes by using statistical methods. I'd be at the point of taking actual data points down if I had more time. Telling you, multiple copies of the same card show up way too often. I believe this applies to even non-basic land cards too. Sure, it's easy to misunderstand statistics. When nearly all of your games have instances of 1% or much less chance of cards occurring, it's time to sit up and take notice.
Anyway, hope to keep seeing reports for or against this!