It doesn't really matter how good your deck is

Omega Red

If the AI simply refuses to give you the cards you need, you're gonna lose. It's that simple.

Case in point, a match I just lost to Avacyn's final node. The AI gets a cascade and casts an early wolf of devils. Ok, no problem I have unholy hunger, ruinous path and behold the beyond so no problem right? I got to cast behold not once, but twice. That alone makes twelve card draws plus I don't know how many more from the rest of the game. NOT A SINGLE **** CREATURE REMOVAL. Meanwhile my shrine of forsaken has been reinforced for over ten matches. Thank you very much that was very useful! (Not)

It's already bad enough that we have to play against these OP decks with huge HP and cheesy match bonuses. This kind of thing happens in all events but it's more evident here where matches are longer and you get more draws. You're effectively playing with a deck of seven or eight cards because you never see the light of the rest. It's infuriating.

Also, I notice that this tends to happen in streaks during a single playing session. Like, I lose two or three straight games because of bad draws or awful boards that always give mana to the AI and never to me. After a second or third loss I restart the app and suddenly I'm winning again. Hard to establish a corelation but the conspirationist in me believes that each playing session comes with its own luck factor determined by the evil RNGesus!

Conspirations aside, this only highlights an inherent problem with this game. Hands are too small and creature in battlefield limit is too restrictive. These things favour luck too much in a game where luck already plays a pivotal role due to the way mana is obtained.

Steeme

I think the issue is that the AI is able to consistently outpace the player. That means the player needs to make up for it by making better decisions about which cards to play in which sequence and at what time (ie. hold off for a few turns).

Now, given that the player needs to beat the AI with better decisions, this all gets thrown out the window if you don't have a proper hand selection or draw. There's only so much you can do at the deck design level to improve your chances.

Example:
You have 5 creatures in your deck.
You also have Devil's Playground and From Under the Floorboards.
Despite this, you keep drawing Shrine of the Foresaken god and Haunted Cloak (repeatedly).
You get overrun and swipe the application of the screen in frustration.

Normally, this isn't much of an issue (eg. Quick Battle), but when you're playing an event and facing Avacyn, she is clearly designed to have a gimongous advantage over the player. This is a good thing, since it is more of a challenge, but honestly I'm in agreement with you that it becomes more based on luck.

For the record, I was able to beat Avacyn once. I used a lvl 59 Nahiri. I held off on dropping Olivia and other troops until I had enough loyalty to spam the first ability for several rounds since the AI was going to do the same. It was an incredibly frustrating experience, and I pretty much didn't have a chance since the AI was able to miraculously trigger the Angel of Deliverance's delirium condition repeatedly and board wipe me consistently (strangely enough, when I've played the same card in other decks, I don't even recall if I have ever triggered that delirium condition a single time). I did squeak out a victory, only because at the clutch moment I triggered a glorious cascade and was able to drop another Olivia and get my health back up. Without that "lucky drop", I was done for.

Rogan_Josh

yes, we shouldn't have to bow low to the RNG overlords.

In fact we shouldn't have to play the game at all. Instead we select which cards are played in which order and have the game auto-resolve so we always win.

Rootbreaker

If you need to win 100% of your games, yes, you're gonna be disappointed. That shouldn't be your goal when playing though. Your goal is to win as many games as you can.

And for that goal, it definitely does matter how good your deck is.

Omega Red

Rootbreaker wrote:

If you need to win 100% of your games, yes, you're gonna be disappointed. That shouldn't be your goal when playing though. Your goal is to win as many games as you can.

And for that goal, it definitely does matter how good your deck is.

I think you're missing the point of my OP entirely. This is not about how many games should I be able to win with this or that deck.

The core of this game is deck building. We spend time analyzing, tweaking, adjusting, compromising, chasing the cards that will help make it better. All this to select ten and only ten cards. Each one of them is vital and has a reason to be there.

Now, you go to a 400+ battle where you'll need each and every card in your deck. What's the point in doing all this deck building when the game simply refuses to draw you the cards and you end up effectively crippled with a seven, eight card deck randomly picked by the AI?

This also highlights the poor balance of the game. Card draws wouldn't be an issue if the game wasn't so fast-paced to make the starting hand and first couple of draws so decisive for the outcome of a quick battle, or first half-dozen draws in boss nodes.

Rootbreaker

Omega Red wrote:

Rootbreaker wrote:

If you need to win 100% of your games, yes, you're gonna be disappointed. That shouldn't be your goal when playing though. Your goal is to win as many games as you can.

And for that goal, it definitely does matter how good your deck is.

I think you're missing the point of my OP entirely. This is not about how many games should I be able to win with this or that deck.

The core of this game is deck building. We spend time analyzing, tweaking, adjusting, compromising, chasing the cards that will help make it better. All this to select ten and only ten cards. Each one of them is vital and has a reason to be there.

Now, you go to a 400+ battle where you'll need each and every card in your deck. What's the point in doing all this deck building when the game simply refuses to draw you the cards and you end up effectively crippled with a seven, eight card deck randomly picked by the AI?

Given that you're facing a 400 health opponent, your strategy should change for deckbuilding. Make sure you can maintain control of the board and that you don't get chiseled away by small chips like the planeswalker power that shoots you and your creatures for 3. I've lost more to freezes than I have to the AI killing me legitimately.

Your claim seems to boil down to the argument that variance is this game is too high, but that seems very far from the truth to me. Platinum events almost always have the players at the top of the standings for NoP ending with a perfect record, sometimes enough that someone with a perfect record doesn't even make top 5.

Sure, sometimes the AI will get crazy cascades and that will line up to your poor draw, but that doesn't happen very often. Programming the game so that cascades from offscreen were artificially limited would be weird. They could make your deck 2 copies of each card instead of four, so that draw variance would be lower, but I think it's low enough as is.

This also highlights the poor balance of the game. Card draws wouldn't be an issue if the game wasn't so fast-paced to make the starting hand and first couple of draws so decisive for the outcome of a quick battle, or first half-dozen draws in boss nodes.

I don't find this to be true at all. I win over 90% of my quick battles, and my goal there is to win as quickly as possible, rather than maximizing win%. The most dangerous boss fight I've found is the Heroic Nissa that starts with Gaea's Revenge and Evolutionary Leap. Nothing in the Avacyn event approaches that level of difficulty.

Omega Red

Rootbreaker wrote:

Omega Red wrote:

Rootbreaker wrote:

If you need to win 100% of your games, yes, you're gonna be disappointed. That shouldn't be your goal when playing though. Your goal is to win as many games as you can.

And for that goal, it definitely does matter how good your deck is.

I think you're missing the point of my OP entirely. This is not about how many games should I be able to win with this or that deck.

The core of this game is deck building. We spend time analyzing, tweaking, adjusting, compromising, chasing the cards that will help make it better. All this to select ten and only ten cards. Each one of them is vital and has a reason to be there.

Now, you go to a 400+ battle where you'll need each and every card in your deck. What's the point in doing all this deck building when the game simply refuses to draw you the cards and you end up effectively crippled with a seven, eight card deck randomly picked by the AI?

Given that you're facing a 400 health opponent, your strategy should change for deckbuilding. Make sure you can maintain control of the board and that you don't get chiseled away by small chips like the planeswalker power that shoots you and your creatures for 3. I've lost more to freezes than I have to the AI killing me legitimately.

Your claim seems to boil down to the argument that variance is this game is too high, but that seems very far from the truth to me. Platinum events almost always have the players at the top of the standings for NoP ending with a perfect record, sometimes enough that someone with a perfect record doesn't even make top 5.

Sure, sometimes the AI will get crazy cascades and that will line up to your poor draw, but that doesn't happen very often. Programming the game so that cascades from offscreen were artificially limited would be weird. They could make your deck 2 copies of each card instead of four, so that draw variance would be lower, but I think it's low enough as is.

This also highlights the poor balance of the game. Card draws wouldn't be an issue if the game wasn't so fast-paced to make the starting hand and first couple of draws so decisive for the outcome of a quick battle, or first half-dozen draws in boss nodes.

I don't find this to be true at all. I win over 90% of my quick battles, and my goal there is to win as quickly as possible, rather than maximizing win%. The most dangerous boss fight I've found is the Heroic Nissa that starts with Gaea's Revenge and Evolutionary Leap. Nothing in the Avacyn event approaches that level of difficulty.

Platinum decks end up perfect in NOP because they're at the top of the meta and only face similar decks or worse, not some overbuffed 400+ boss, they're the boss! They have no handicap to overcome, the AI will never overrun them unless they have even worse draw rates than what I had in my OP. Variance for them is much less of a problem because the raw power of their cards compensates. Let's take a look at the top of bronze tier and see if they're perfect as well. I seriously doubt it. Variance affects lower tier decks a lot more because they contain less powerful cards. Anyway, you can't compare Avacyn with NOP, they're different animals.

huntly

Just half a thought but wouldn't this be solved with a deck size of 30 or even 20

MaxMagic420

I think one glaring issue with the deck design is the ten card format meant to replicate a paper magic deck of 60 cards. Four copies max of any given card, and most competitive players in paper magic (back in the day, rules might have changed, been a while since I've played competitively) use the regulation minimum 60 card deck to maximize draw probability. Okay. So ten cards, four copies each, plus 20 lands, forty cards. Makes sense unless you recognize the fact that most paper magic players use only one or two copies of certain cards because they simply only need it once. A top tier Type I paper magic player has a deck that looks like this:
14 basic land
2-4 dual/specialty land
5 moxes (speed and mana advantage)
1 Black lotus
A few control spells (bounce, direct damage, etc.)
A few always include ( time walk, whatnot. In this game cards like mirrorpool or exert influence)
1 or 2 key combo cards
1 kill spell
0 creatures

The reason for this is because every draw has to count. The cards you draw, no matter what they are, have to be either immediately useful or absolutely critical. No matter when you draw a mox or black lotus, it is going to help you, 99% of the time.
In this game, the fact that there are essentially four copies of each card is what cripples the deck design format. Once you're competing at a high enough level, every card you draw could be the difference between winning or losing.
Simply put, I only need helm of the gods once. I only need alhammaretts archive once. If it was a paper deck, I might go two archives, two or three helms. This maximizes my chances of drawing a card I really need rather than a third helm I can't cast because I only have two (in this game) supports.
And even worse is the fact that the RNG is so incredibly bad that at times, you'll actually draw five copies of a card over the course of a long game. And like OP said, some cards in the deck you might not see for several matches in a row. And in a lot of cases, it does come down to raw single card value. If your deck is loaded with powerful mythics, you're in much better shape when you draw three in a row. Three Ulvenwald Hydra? Probably a win. Three weirding wood? Not likely.
This game is an excellent adaptation of the paper game, but we need to have the same deck building system. 40 cards, minimum 10 cards four copies. Essentially have 40 slots to fill however we choose, as long as there are still 4 copies max of any given card. That would allow us to build decks to beat our opponents instead of building decks to beat the RNG. Wouldn't that be nice?

wink

MaxMagic420 wrote:

And even worse is the fact that the RNG is so incredibly bad that at times, you'll actually draw five copies of a card over the course of a long game. And like OP said, some cards in the deck you might not see for several matches in a row.

It's my understanding that the library is 40 cards--4 each of the 10 cards in your deck. I haven't been rigorous about measuring it, but it sure seems like some games I draw a given card 5 times before seeing all of the other cards 4 times. How is that happening?

Rootbreaker

Are you playing day's undoing? That one resets libraries.

shteev

It does a bit.

I refute it thus!

Ow. My foot.

MaxMagic420

Ha....shteev.
Nope. Just a long, long game. I cast uncaged fury four times on my Tyrant, when I won I had another one charged in my hand. At least that card I can usually make use of if I get multiples. But still, just highlights the fact that deck design needs some work.

Buret0

MaxMagic420 wrote:

Ha....shteev.
Nope. Just a long, long game. I cast uncaged fury four times on my Tyrant, when I won I had another one charged in my hand. At least that card I can usually make use of if I get multiples. But still, just highlights the fact that deck design needs some work.

...unless you never draw a creature. I've had runs where I drew eight or nine mana supports, spells to return a dead creature to life, and whatnot in a row in a deck where 40 to 50% of the cards are creatures. Sometimes that's just the RNG. I still think there are issues where you change your deck around and suddenly the card in slot 3 goes seven matches without ever being drawn.

Of course deck design matters, but even in paper magic you used to get a run of bad cards. Of course, I played paper magic in the mid 90s, long before the days of the -1 card mulligan rule. Maybe it is better now.

keeshond

I've been playing for nearly a decade, and honestly, this is pretty close to an actual tourney, and yes, it really does matter how good your deck is built. As for the AI mucking up draws, think about it, you play the paper form, and draw six different opening hands. Frequently you end up mulliganing your hand and settling for one less card.

I think the main thing I'd change at this point is the amount of cards you draw during an opening hand. And that's the only thing that hold back a good deck from being awesome.

Ok, and a second thing I'd probably do, give us, the vet players, some of the cards we used ten years ago in digital form. Cause that would add more variance in the overall game.

Steeme

I agree that allowing a mulligan for both the player and the opponent on the starting hand would be an excellent addition to this game.

shteev

I think if the AI had a mulligan and more cards in it's start hand, it'd just be more likely to always start off playing the same card.

Pestilence

Tis the stochastic nature of the RNGesus.
RNGesus giveth and taketh away.

Omega Red

I'm all for Mulligan and a feature to determine how many copies of each card we want. Anything that reduces randomness and increases control and strategy is good for the game.

Rootbreaker

Omega Red wrote:

Anything that reduces randomness and increases control and strategy is good for the game.

Perhaps you'd like to play chess then.

Randomness keeps games from all feeling the same. It is not some evil to be exorcised.

Increased randomness doesn't mean reduced strategy. They are not opposite ends of a scale. Increased randomness means you encounter more situations, so you have to think about how to solve them, whether that's during the game, or before it, during deckbuilding.

Omega Red

Rootbreaker wrote:

Omega Red wrote:

Anything that reduces randomness and increases control and strategy is good for the game.

Perhaps you'd like to play chess then.

Randomness keeps games from all feeling the same. It is not some evil to be exorcised.

Increased randomness doesn't mean reduced strategy. They are not opposite ends of a scale. Increased randomness means you encounter more situations, so you have to think about how to solve them, whether that's during the game, or before it, during deckbuilding.

But we neither are playing casino dice here. This game is a combination of randomness and strategy. And the game its based on certainly favours the later. If you ask me, the match-3, cascade aspect of the game already gives a lot of weight to luck and randomness.