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- rezombied
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Member for 12 years, 1 month, and 18 days
Last active Sun, Aug, 7 2022 22:04:10
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Apr 1, 20141
Truesight posted a message on Location keeps disappearingBam! Who the man? You the man.Posted in: Forum Software Feedback and Bug Reports -
Feb 14, 20143
Colonel Cutz posted a message on What are some of the pros/cons for the newly revised Curse MTGSalvation site?pros:Posted in: Community Discussion
the mods can finally get paid( as noted here: http://diestoremoval.com/viewtopic.php?f=124&t=2404&view=unread#p189431 )
that mods can ban those they dont like and and blame the 'higher ups'
cons:
the DiesToRemoval.com community never getting their dumps despite being promised by galspanic.
It kinda smells weird
This post getting deleted because of the truth being posted. -
Jul 24, 20134
Drifting Skies posted a message on Is Price More of a Metagame-Determining Factor Than We Think?As it turns out, this was the topic of my undergraduate thesis.Posted in: Market Street Café
In short, the answer is: It's a big factor in small tournaments, and its relevance decreases as the stakes increase.
For those who do not have a working grasp of game theory, the rest of what I'm going to say may come off as more than a little dense.
The longer answer requires the concept of Nash Equilibrium. I'll start with a simple, but illustrative example.
There are three different decks you can play in a format. There's an aggro deck, a combo deck, and a control deck. For simplicity's sake, we'll assume that the aggro deck always beats the control deck, the control deck beats the combo deck, and the combo deck beats the aggro deck.
In a Nash equilibrium, no player can unilaterally improve his position by changing his strategy. This means, in practice, each deck archetype must be represented in such a proportion(*) such that on the margin, I do just as well with strategy A as with any other strategy.
We'll assume, again, for simplicity's sake, that a win counts as +1, and a loss as -1. A draw counts as 0 [no mirror breaking allowed in this simple example, so this is equivalent to winning half the time - we are assuming that payoffs are von-Neumann Morgenstern utilities (**)]
So, calling the metagame proportion of aggro x, combo y, and control (1 - x - y) (***)
Then, by choosing aggro, my payoff is:
0*x + (1-x-y) - y = 1 - x - 2y
Combo gets:
x - (1-x-y) = 2x + y - 1
Control gets:
y - x.
These expressions have to equal each other. The solution is x = y = 1/3
In this simplified metagame, control, aggro, and combo are all represented in equal proportions.
Now, we extend this model by incorporating a price component. Control, since it requires all those expensive Jaces and Sphinx's Revelations, costs more money to play. We will penalize the players of Control by penalizing them by 0.1 ex ante.
Now, aggro still gets:
1 - x - 2y
Combo still gets:
2x + y - 1
But control now gets:
y - x - 0.1
And when we equilibriate, we find that
x = 0.3
y = 0.367
(1 - x - y) = 0.333
This results in combo being played more and aggro being played less, while control, despite being more expensive, still gets played exactly the same amount as before. However, because the metagame has shifted to accommodate this, it's a metagame that is in fact more favorable to the control player. The end result is that control will win more (since it faces more favorable combo matchups and fewer unfavorable control ones) than it used to.
In bigger tournaments, the stakes are higher, so the relative penalty (that 0.1 figure I used) will be a lot smaller [relative to the utility derived from winning], and you'll be a lot closer to the original figure where control, combo, and aggro decks all win with equal percentages. At FNM, that penalty might be larger, such as 0.3 or 0.4, and the more expensive decks win a lot more.
The question that this economic argument can't answer is: Do the better decks become more expensive because people want to play with them because they win more, or do decks win more because they become more expensive and therefore carve out a better metagame position. That I do not have an answer for.
----
Footnotes (for added explanation)
* - Technically, it would involve each player mixing his strategies in certain proportions [where my opponent randomizes to make me indifferent, and I do the same to him], but there's no difference between the mixing being done on the spot before each match and each deck being represented in certain proportions in a metagame with random assignment of matches.
** - A von-Neumann Morgenstern utility function is used for making modeling uncertainties more tractable. There are specific axioms on them, but the key takeaway is that I am completely indifferent between a 100% chance of getting x and a y% chance of getting 100*x/y, for any values of x and y.
*** - We could call it z, but we'd have the boundary condition that x+y+z = 1, and it's simpler to just incorporate it as such. -
Jul 19, 2013
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Valarin posted a message on Detroit files for bankruptcy - largest municipal bankruptcy in US historyPosted in: Talk and EntertainmentSo its just the states and cities fiscal irresponsibility that is the culprit here? It has no correlation to our financial system being debt based?
Maybe there is more to it...
Not really. If someone eats poison, it doesn't mean food is a bad idea.
You need to be very careful when talking about specific financial situation, finances are almost always incredibly unique to the situation, and it's easy (but often incorrect) to extrapolate broad conclusions from single data points.
Stuff like
- it's not the only city that is in financial hell.
- Plenty of other US cities and even whole states are teetering on the brink of insolvency
- Detroit may just be the tip of the iceberg
- the general problem with most modern cities is that the rich have left the city
Are just alarmist chicken little slogans. Please provide sources to back up sweeping claims like that.
Since 2010, a total of 8 cities have gone bankrupt, Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/18/detroit-isnt-alone-the-u-s-cities-that-have-gone-bankrupt-in-one-map/
There are approximately 25,000 cities in the US (depending on how you define "city"). 8 out of 25,000. You can't look at that data and say things like "The country itself is headed for an implosion." or "Every city in the US will eventually file. The economy is completely unsustainable". That's simply disingenuous.
Please do the research and observe the facts and based your information on those, not uninformed opinion or mob financial anger (which 99% of the time is just financial jealously). Banks profits have nothing at all to do with Detroit. Populist rage doesn't solve any problems.
Detroits problems were completely solvable. They simply lacks the leadership to solve it while it got worse and worse. This is a failure of the political system, not the financial one. -
Jul 6, 20131
Juju posted a message on Anyone commision Full Art Foils?Posted in: ArtworkQuote from ohnnoHey guys,
Just wondering if you guys know anyone that commission something like these?
http://youtu.be/DnoKzHaeLqQ
http://youtu.be/jP1q4GGKJXw
Thanks in advance for any help!
I think that these sorts of things are often fairly grey, ethically. The reasons being that many of the people who make these (even the ones who sell them) use copyrighted art material without permission for their foil alters.
I won't go into the process of making those kinds of alters/proxies on this board, as it isn't allowed, but suffice to say, it would be better to do it yourself for your own personal use, rather than support people who make money off using copyrighted art without permission in their products. -
Jun 30, 20131
euknemarchon posted a message on Accusations without proofjeffbcrandall, what is evidence? You say the poster had no evidence. But the poster claimed that SCG had responsibility for Chord of Calling because he saw SCG sell out and raise the price. If he's wrong, the proper response would be for someone to explain why his evidence or reasoning was incorrect. If being wrong gets you infracted, though, there's a big chunk of users who need suspensions right now.Posted in: Community Discussion
"This card got sold out at SCG, then they raised the list price above everybody else and their buy list price up close to the old market price. Prices went up. I believe this is their market manipulation strategy, and I think it's bad the store can do it."
That's the essence of what got said here. I have not seen anything in this thread that persuades me that such a post would be flaming or trolling.
Typically when there's a questionable move that generates a CI thread, Galspanic or one of the other admins or veteran mods will make a statement giving at least a reasonable gloss on what happened. We have not received such a reasonable gloss here. The official word is that accusations of market manipulation are generally frivolous and bad. And calling somebody a market manipulator can surely be frivolous enough to justify an infraction:
"OmGzorZ Trooll and Toade be manipulatinZ!! I ehat them."
That did not happen here. The poster provided evidence that, while questionable, clearly shows his intent to state a reasonable opinion about SCG practices. Further, the post did not take place in SCG's dedicated thread where frivolous accusations would be considered most suspect. Instead, it occurred in a thread set aside for the very topic. If this is an infraction, everything is an infraction.
Further, the mod early on tried to characterize this thread as an impermissible third-party appeal. That is frankly bogus. If something was not an issue of general concern, there would not be an explosive CI thread on the topic.
Look guys, you keep the forums clear of the worst kinds of speech, and that facilitates the point of the forum: the free exchange of ideas. And that's why infractions like this one blow up: when it looks like somebody with a reasonable idea worth inserting into the free exchange gets infracted, we want a good reason or we want it taken back. -
Jun 30, 20131
Dracilic posted a message on Accusations without proofPosted in: Community Discussion
I see plenty of trolling/flamiking of political groups, politicians, religious groups etc etc that go without infractions. -
Jun 30, 20132
kpaca posted a message on Accusations without proofPosted in: Community DiscussionQuote from rezombiedIt means you can be suspended for using accurate terms that mods have deemed unsavory that accurately desribe what businesses are doing.
Imagine;
Someone: nike uses sweatshop labor.
Gets infracted.
Mod: "we think sweatshop labor is a negative term against nike."
Nike: we do use sweatshop labor.
Someone else: hey, nothing someone said is against the rules. Why you infract?
Mod: we interpret the rules how we want.
That's pretty accurate. -
Jun 4, 20131
Uldan posted a message on Modern Masters BoxesPosted in: Market Street CaféQuote from ValarinI'm getting 5 boxes at an average price of $149 (2 @ $150, 1 @ $168, and 2 @ $140)
I'm not 100% but I'm probably going to draft them with friends and charge $25 a head. I recoup all my money, put $125 in my pocket, and I get to draft MM for free 5 times.
So you are getting them for less than MSRP then charging "friends" more than MSRP.
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Curse reps have spoken out with support for users using ad blocking software on this site.
The 'Candy Crush' problem is well known and has been documented as far back as March of last year (just weeks after the Curse acquisition of MTGS was announced and migration to their servers took place, coincidence?), this appears to be the exact same thing with a different redirect.
Poppelseed suggested a bunch of fixes that didn't work and then abandoned thread back before the move. It's obvious that nothing was done, and the only answers to come from staff for the last year have been: 'I'll forward it to the techs', 'please provide a screenshot', 'It's not our ads, it's you', and 'use adblock'(which is the only real answer).
It costs them less money for one person to install and run adblock when they finally get fed up with the nonsense ads they are serving up, than it does for them to be proactive and prevent these kinds of malicious ads from being served.
What's funny about this post is that it's totally
wronga lie and users encountering the same problem have reported the link that was posted as ineffective.p.s. I'm glad the admin's get away with having names like 'mol
ester'. Because, y'know, community and all that.p.p.s "maleware"
Poppelseed convened with curse overlords the night of December the tenth, anno domini twenty-thirteen (75 days ago). He was later heard from requesting screenshots and details.
How can you honestly say that this is a glitch when this issue has been going on UNCHECKED AND UNDEALT WITH, BARELY EVEN RECOGNIZED BY STAFF FOR ALMOST A YEAR
Oh, but I'm sure you'll pass it along to Curse, just like pops did.
I find it ridiculous that the best advice given on this issue so far has been "Install adblock" and the person to suggest it was feyd.
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This is completely untrue and is blatant baiting. Infraction issued for troll/flame baiting-Xen
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How is that a solution?
It would be like; one day, a bar I like to visit is infested with bees. Instead of getting rid of the bees, management has issued a statement that anyone that doesn't like it can wear a beekeeper suit. I can't wear the bee suit all the time, because almost every other business I frequent requires you to not be dressed like an idiot. So whenever I want to go to this bar I have to either deal with potentially getting stung, or take the time to put on a bee suit. Even if I want to run in real quick and say hi, I run the risk of being stung.
Isn't the solution to get rid of the bees, even if your exciting bee circus webcam generates $0.0003 per visitor?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_Comics
I know it's implied in the show, but I can't recall it ever being explicitly stated.
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Go to join a custom match, i just search for '5' and then sort by people in lobby, when you enter the lobby, the pick mode should say: **PracticeGame_GAMEMODE.... If it says blind pick or draft then it won't work. Then once you're in, select your champ but don't lock it, if anyone locks the game will crash and if someone dodges in the champ select lobby, just find a new game, the lobby has to be remade.
Best of luck, they fill up fast.
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