EO blue node - Why we split eights in blackjack

Astralwind

buscemi wrote:

@Irgy @Astralwind

I think you guys are very much overestimating the difference in skill levels between two players in the same tier. There are no beginners in Platinum Tier.

There probably ARE some very advanced players in Bronze Tier, but I think it's safe to say that those players aren't going to be dealing 400 damage to their opponents in 4 turns any time soon, so I don't think that's really the tier we're considering in this thread.

You may be right. In platinum tier, most players have learnt the game well. However, platinum tier is not that difficult to reach. So there's still going to be a skill difference gap between players. Players in platinum tier are not beginners but most of them reach this tier with a sizable amount of strong cards. It would start becoming obvious if we were to match players together - who are the ones with skill and who are the ones who were relying on mythics and rares to top the other bottom tiers.

Perhaps the pie chart would look more appropriate if we think of deckbuilding as a skill, which I think it is. Then the pie chart would look just about right. It takes skill and luck to win a game. You can be skilful, but if luck is against you and you draw really bad starting hands and really bad gem boards, there's no way you can win if the bad luck lasts long enough. Ratio of luck and skill? I don't know. I feel that deckbuilding and some card play decision skills can help to compensate for some bad luck RNG. It's really hard to explain this.

Let me try illustrate a little.
To offset bad mana RNG (due to opponent's good cascade RNG), we consider mana cost of the cards we use. I don't think anyone would have average cost of 20 for their deck. It's not going to be smooth.
To offset bad hand RNG, we would not rely on one method to finish off the opponent, or rely on rigid synergies.
For example, if I want to center my deck around marionette master, I would need cards that can fabricate servors and also cards that can destroy them easily. I would also need to look into ways to buff up marionette to increase her damage potency. However, if I were to only rely on marionette to do the damage and I only buff her up using servor supports, I can be easily locked down by a suppresion bond, deadlock trap, or any other disable opponent's first creature ability card. I can also be easily countered by creature removal spells. I can also be screwed by cards such as exert influence. So if my deck only has a primary way of winning, then it's going to be easily subjected to bad hand RNG too. What if I just can't draw marionette after 10 rounds?

And even if you have the right deck built, sometimes, you need to decide a few things in gameplay to deal with RNG.
Back to my gem match skill, some gem match can reduce the chance of cascades for opponent. Especially if you can read the board and you know the AI next move. Sometimes we just can see it coming.
Ever familiar with this kind of thought? "The AI is definitely going to make that move. So it will remove this, this and this gem. That, that and that gem is going to drop and cause a cascade. But if I were to do this, the AI is going to do this and very likely, it won't cascade unless this color gem drops. Even so, it's only going to be a small one, giving the AI this amount of mana etc."
Another thing is card playing skill. Opponent has casted a creature. I have 1 creature removal spell in my hand. Should I use it or wait it? Can I afford to eat that damage?

These skills are going to make a difference even in platinum tier and can help to reduce bad luck RNG moments if you do it right.

wereotter

Astralwind wrote:

buscemi wrote:

@Irgy @Astralwind

I think you guys are very much overestimating the difference in skill levels between two players in the same tier. There are no beginners in Platinum Tier.

There probably ARE some very advanced players in Bronze Tier, but I think it's safe to say that those players aren't going to be dealing 400 damage to their opponents in 4 turns any time soon, so I don't think that's really the tier we're considering in this thread.

You may be right. In platinum tier, most players have learnt the game well. However, platinum tier is not that difficult to reach. So there's still going to be a skill difference gap between players. Players in platinum tier are not beginners but most of them reach this tier with a sizable amount of strong cards. It would start becoming obvious if we were to match players together - who are the ones with skill and who are the ones who were relying on mythics and rares to top the other bottom tiers.

This is not entirely true depending on when you started the game. Mastery was already a thing when I joined the game, so I VERY quickly ranked up from bronze to silver to gold just through the process of learning the game and replacing starting cards with progressively better cards. Before I even knew it I was in platinum in some colors as I got new rares to play with. Even now I have powerful cards, but still lack a large number of what I would consider platinum staples, think Olivia, Turn to Frog, To the Slaughter, Oath of Liliana, Deploy the Gatewatch, Crush of Tentacles, Tyrant of Valakut... I could go on, but I own none of these. And these lackings have contributed to my inability to place high enough on recent events to stay competitive with cards like Dynavolt Tower.

So there is definitely a difference in player skill and access to cards within Platinum which will likely continue as new players join the game and continue ranking up as they think that's what they're supposed to do, only to end up stuck in the maximum rank unprepared for what they will face.

andrewvanmarle

Ohboy wrote:

andrewvanmarle wrote:

Oh Boy,

this randomiser type of creating tiebreakers is in my opinion a lazy solution. This game is primarily skill based, not luck based.
So I don't'agree with you that this is a step in the right direction, it's'just a way for the devs not to give out more than they want regarding to prizes.

You may have glossed over the part where I explained how games of chance require skill as well to excel.

You tacitly acknowledge this concept by playing mtgpq in the first place and talking about skill despite the numerous random factors in each single game we start.

This is a randomiser the same way your starting hand is a randomiser. But we don't go around accusing Mtg pro tour players of coasting on luck. Luck only carries you so far if you're not prepared to take advantage of it. And those who have the skill to take advantage of it will eventually rise to the top anyway.

There is a difference between the luck of the draw and making the most of your cards, including building your deck in a certain way to maximie your chances.
I haven't'glossed over the fact that there is an amount of chance involved in the game.

What I object to is the lazy choice of using an effective randomiser to determine the tiebreaker. a bad hand can be dealt with in game, but to win the objectives you need an exceptional hand...everytime. That is just a lottery.

Ohboy

andrewvanmarle wrote:

Ohboy wrote:

andrewvanmarle wrote:

Oh Boy,

this randomiser type of creating tiebreakers is in my opinion a lazy solution. This game is primarily skill based, not luck based.
So I don't'agree with you that this is a step in the right direction, it's'just a way for the devs not to give out more than they want regarding to prizes.

You may have glossed over the part where I explained how games of chance require skill as well to excel.

You tacitly acknowledge this concept by playing mtgpq in the first place and talking about skill despite the numerous random factors in each single game we start.

This is a randomiser the same way your starting hand is a randomiser. But we don't go around accusing Mtg pro tour players of coasting on luck. Luck only carries you so far if you're not prepared to take advantage of it. And those who have the skill to take advantage of it will eventually rise to the top anyway.

There is a difference between the luck of the draw and making the most of your cards, including building your deck in a certain way to maximie your chances.
I haven't'glossed over the fact that there is an amount of chance involved in the game.

What I object to is the lazy choice of using an effective randomiser to determine the tiebreaker. a bad hand can be dealt with in game, but to win the objectives you need an exceptional hand...everytime. That is just a lottery.

So does everyone else. Subtle differences in skill and decks will give some people the advantage. That's the whole point.

andrewvanmarle

There is no subtle difference in skill when you need to draw a specific hand to win in 4 turns, its just luck, not skill

Ohboy

andrewvanmarle wrote:

There is no subtle difference in skill when you need to draw a specific hand to win in 4 turns, its just luck, not skill

It's 5 turns, and if your deck needs to draw a specific hand to win in 4 turns, you've answered your own question. Mine has more than one way to win, so I will win more often. Even in deploy decks, there are numerous ways it can unfold to win in 5 turns.

madwren

sageofhalo451 wrote:

Please let me clarify. In my wall of text and being distracted with a baby monitor I didn't state what I wanted to say clearly. The challenge of an event should be such that unless you have the collection, the skill, and yes that bit of luck you should not on average get full points for the event. It should be possible but the amount of luck necessary is higher. The part I didn't add was the on average over multiple iterations of the event part. My apologies.

Thank you for clarifying. That does indeed make more sense when you explain it this way. I appreciate it.

madwren

Ohboy wrote:

andrewvanmarle wrote:

There is no subtle difference in skill when you need to draw a specific hand to win in 4 turns, its just luck, not skill

It's 5 turns, and if your deck needs to draw a specific hand to win in 4 turns, you've answered your own question. Mine has more than one way to win, so I will win more often. Even in deploy decks, there are numerous ways it can unfold to win in 5 turns.

They've been talking about Revolt 3.1 (Exquisite Archangel), which is 4 turns, 392 hp.

Also, "I can do it so everyone else should be able to" isn't really an effective defense of the objective. I have an infinite turn deck that might be able to pull it off--just got a Gonti's Heart--but that doesn't make it a fair objective for everyone else.

andrewvanmarle

Thank you.

Oh boy, i dont mind hard objectives. I mind objectives that are designed to be barely attainable just serve as tiebreaker. It's lousy and lazy and honestly a little stingy. By that i mean that the devs should just reward tied players equally.

span_argoman

WALL OF TEXT WARNING

andrewvanmarle wrote:

Thank you.

Oh boy, i dont mind hard objectives. I mind objectives that are designed to be barely attainable just serve as tiebreaker. It's lousy and lazy and honestly a little stingy. By that i mean that the devs should just reward tied players equally.

I don't get one bit. When did this mindset set in that everyone deserves a perfect score in events *and* deserves top reward for it? Ranking rewards are by their nature meant for the stated percentile of players who perform better then the rest.

So to on one hand complain that really difficult objectives prevent everyone from getting a perfect score, and then on the the hand argue that people who get perfect scores should be given the guaranteed mythic (that's the one that people really want I'm sure) when the game is being prevented from being challenging enough to separate the top players? It kind of sounds like we want the game to be easy and to be rewarded for completing something easy.

I get that it's also about the objectives differentiating the top players not by skill but by luck. But I think Ohboy brings up a very good point that if you're well-prepared you can mitigate the impact of the luck factor over time. And mitigating luck with the existing resources at your disposal is also a skill. Yes, the variance may have increased such that you can no longer fully control it over the (short) length of a single event, but you should be able to see the effects of your decisions over a longer period of time like what Ohboy is saying.

Will a top player be able to get a guaranteed mythic every event? Very unlikely. But neither will that player with a perfect score now unless their deck is consistently fast while meeting the objectives (or if he's a [redacted]). And how different is building your deck to be fast while meeting the objectives versus building your deck to meet the objectives a greater proportion of the time in the context of ranking high enough to get a guaranteed mythic?

I don't see that big a difference. Build your deck well and be prepared for what we already know is coming. And the benefit is that you don't have to worry about having to wake up at 4am or whatever time the final node recharge is in your time zone to break event ties. You do it when convenient because the tiebreaking factor is points and not time of completion. That sounds better to me. But maybe it's a bitter pill to swallow for those who have come to expect mythics from every event they participate in.

For those who feel like they are being **** in events where they get a perfect score but not get the top reward, maybe in the short term we can request for a progression reward that requires a perfect score which (hopefully) gives some crystals or a Fat Pack? It'll be a holdover until the developers figure out good ways to differentiate top player performance in events.

And I know there's also the complaint that if you match up with murderous decks or troll decks, you're kind of struck off from the top ranks compared to players who get lucky matching up against softer decks or troll decks tailored to troll another node. Is there a clear solution to this problem? If everyone plays against the same deck, that's the space that PvE events fill in this game.

Everyone only matches against event decks? Yes that will help reduce the frequency of meeting murder decks, but not troll decks. The idea of locking in the decks used to clear the nodes sounds good though the issue is the first round of nodes to be cleared. Maybe the first charge of each event can follow the current matchmaking rules with subsequent charges restricted to event decks used to clear the nodes.

Like Shteev said, some of it comes down to existing card collection, some of it comes down to skill (whether it's deckbuilding, piloting or reading the meta), and some of it comes down to luck. Luck which can be managed by proper preparation over the long term and also pure dumb luck you have no control over. Yes you need to be lucky in events but you also have to be prepared or else you wouldn't be able to capitalise on your luck.

Do I agree with Shteev's breakdown of the various factors determining a top 5 finish? Partially. I agree that card collection is the most important factor and definitely makes up over 50%. I would combine deck building and skill because as others have pointed out, it is also a skill and it does not seem meaningful to split deckbuilding skill from the other skills required. I would lump game crashes in with luck, cause it's under stuff that you can't control. Card collection is separate cause it's an aspect of luck that can be (partially) overcome by spending money, which we have to remember (whether or not you do it) is what enables the developers to keep working on this game.

A big contention is whether the game is getting more luck-based as a result of these changes. Is luck mattering more with these new objectives? On face value yes, we know that certain objectives require a really good card collection to overcome the other variables as well as a good starting hand and maybe even a soft opponent on top of that. A combination which cannot be gotten without some degree of luck.

But an argument could also be made that this affects all the top players, bringing down the event scores of players in general and hence making a freak loss to a 'lucky' opponent less significant a factor for top 5 placement. If the spread for top 5 is 0, the freak loss ends your hopes of top 5. If the spread is 10 points, you've got some wiggle room even with a freak loss. Which one will be a bigger factor? I don't know and I don't think we can tell at this point.

People are unhappy over the change but maybe it might not be that bad. Take Fate is Rarely Fair which has received a ton of brickbats for its objectives coupled with Enrage. So many people posted that they were giving up on the objectives cause they couldn't see a way to do it consistently. I was facing a fair number of murder decks which made the event tougher (perhaps as a result of players' decisions not to pursue the objectives) but even with a loss and I think one or two more points leaked, I still made top 25. In previous events a loss in Platinum knocks you out of the top 50 or even top 100.

I admit I was flummoxed initially but it helped me understand that with the harder objectives, you don't have to perform as well in terms of absolute score as before to attain the same rank. So really the change might not be all that bad.

It also annoys players when they feel like they aren't meant to get the top rewards due to them not possessing some requisite card to obtain the objectives. We want our efforts put into this game to count for something. We don't want that we have no chance at top placement just because we didn't buy an exclusive mythic or didn't open enough packs to get the requisite mythic.

But if I may make a plea, let's not say that this is a matter of the objectives being too difficult. This is a matter of the objectives being too narrow in the cards it requires for achieving it, whether directly or indirectly. Let us make this distinction in our feedback so that we can find a way to have more challenging events without having the chance to place well taken away from us. I saw Shteev make this distinction in the "What Objectives Do We Want?" thread. Hopefully we can all be aware of it too.

What I don't get really is what I perceive to be a sense of entitlement over event rewards. My perception may be off so I'm hoping someone can explain this to me. This isn't directed at you andrewvanmarle, but you brought up the point about rewarding tied players equally and the developers being 'stingy' in this thread which I think is suitable for discussing this issue. At the end of the day we may just have to agree to disagree on how we see things or on what we want for the game, but I'm reaching out to people to explain this to me if they would be so kind to.

Irgy

buscemi wrote:

@Irgy @Astralwind

I think you guys are very much overestimating the difference in skill levels between two players in the same tier. There are no beginners in Platinum Tier.

Quite the opposite actually. I wasn't ever talking about players just in platinum. Instead I was arguing that comparing player skill between players in platinum is a silly baseline for evaluating the importance of skill in the first place. You pick a bunch of people with similar skill and skill isn't a big factor, that doesn't mean skill is irrelevant or missing from the game, it just means you've set up your baseline to exclude it.

buscemi

Irgy wrote:

buscemi wrote:

@Irgy @Astralwind

I think you guys are very much overestimating the difference in skill levels between two players in the same tier. There are no beginners in Platinum Tier.

Quite the opposite actually. I wasn't ever talking about players just in platinum. Instead I was arguing that comparing player skill between players in platinum is a silly baseline for evaluating the importance of skill in the first place. You pick a bunch of people with similar skill and skill isn't a big factor, that doesn't mean skill is irrelevant or missing from the game, it just means you've set up your baseline to exclude it.

I never said that skill was irrelevant or missing from the game; but what we're talking about in this thread is individual placement on a leaderboard, which is always, only, against players at the same tier as you are. Hence the baseline.

P.S. Skill can be quite irrelevant in this game sometimes. OP cards see to that.

andrewvanmarle

span_argoman wrote:

WALL OF TEXT WARNING
I don't get one bit. When did this mindset set in that everyone deserves a perfect score in events *and* deserves top reward for it? Ranking rewards are by their nature meant for the stated percentile of players who perform better then the rest.

So to on one hand complain that really difficult objectives prevent everyone from getting a perfect score, and then on the the hand argue that people who get perfect scores should be given the guaranteed mythic (that's the one that people really want I'm sure) when the game is being prevented from being challenging enough to separate the top players? It kind of sounds like we want the game to be easy and to be rewarded for completing something easy.

I get that it's also about the objectives differentiating the top players not by skill but by luck. But I think Ohboy brings up a very good point that if you're well-prepared you can mitigate the impact of the luck factor over time. And mitigating luck with the existing resources at your disposal is also a skill. Yes, the variance may have increased such that you can no longer fully control it over the (short) length of a single event, but you should be able to see the effects of your decisions over a longer period of time like what Ohboy is saying.

Will a top player be able to get a guaranteed mythic every event? Very unlikely. But neither will that player with a perfect score now unless their deck is consistently fast while meeting the objectives (or if he's a [redacted]). And how different is building your deck to be fast while meeting the objectives versus building your deck to meet the objectives a greater proportion of the time in the context of ranking high enough to get a guaranteed mythic?

What I don't get really is what I perceive to be a sense of entitlement over event rewards. My perception may be off so I'm hoping someone can explain this to me. This isn't directed at you andrewvanmarle, but you brought up the point about rewarding tied players equally and the developers being 'stingy' in this thread which I think is suitable for discussing this issue. At the end of the day we may just have to agree to disagree on how we see things or on what we want for the game, but I'm reaching out to people to explain this to me if they would be so kind to.

I cut a part out of your reply to break the wall of text *grin* i hope you dont mind, i just wanted the part in there I felt relevant to my response.

About the luck portion of the tie breaker. The way it is now feels to me akin to having a wheel of fortune at the end of each match to see if we get the objective or not. I don't like that, it's that simple, a preference. To me this game is about deckbuilding, playing skill and last, and most certainly least, about luck.
That's why i don't like a luck based tie breaker. Someone in another thread (sorry forgot who) posted the option of a sliding scales when it comes to ribbons: x turns less than 10 is x ribbons etc. That way you are more in control as player.

I don't'think one should have a guaranteed mythic every event no doubt about that. But I do think that any kind of randomiser to break ties feels cheap and i'd'rather have players who played equally good share in the spoils. in other words i'd'rather reward skill than luck.

buscemi

Is it me, or are the rewards in the current Inventor's Fair on a flatter curve than usual?



The difference between 1st place and 6th place is only 25 crystals. Has it always been like this? Or has it been changed recently, perhaps to mitigate the effect that luck has on prizes?

span_argoman

andrewvanmarle wrote:

I cut a part out of your reply to break the wall of text *grin* i hope you dont mind, i just wanted the part in there I felt relevant to my response.

About the luck portion of the tie breaker. The way it is now feels to me akin to having a wheel of fortune at the end of each match to see if we get the objective or not. I don't like that, it's that simple, a preference. To me this game is about deckbuilding, playing skill and last, and most certainly least, about luck.
That's why i don't like a luck based tie breaker. Someone in another thread (sorry forgot who) posted the option of a sliding scales when it comes to ribbons: x turns less than 10 is x ribbons etc. That way you are more in control as player.

I don't'think one should have a guaranteed mythic every event no doubt about that. But I do think that any kind of randomiser to break ties feels cheap and i'd'rather have players who played equally good share in the spoils. in other words i'd'rather reward skill than luck.

Hahaha yeah of course. I agree that it feels like luck at the individual match level. But the sliding scale objective is equally prone to luck too. With a Nahiri Zoo deck, one could possibly luck into a 3 round (or even 2 rounds, egads) win depending on how your card draw and the cascades favour you. If players are already trying to win in as few rounds as possible, with the cut-off being 5 rounds, then using the same objective but with a sliding scale I would say just magnifies the luck effect further. Right now the differential is 1 point per match in the node for this objective. If you use a sliding scale, wouldn't the possible differential from this particular objective just be even more?

I think that it's perhaps that I feel that the way of structuring the objectives while making each particular match more random in its outcome, actually makes the overall result less random due to what Ohboy explained about how we can mitigate randomness. And also the point that if the objectives reduce the overall score more, it mitigates the luck factor of matching up and losing to some insane deck. Everyone scoring perfect scores is a bad thing for differentiating players.

And yeah while I agree that I would rather the game reward skill over luck, but the design direction of the game has led to cards which mean that skill doesn't matter all that much any more. Firstly the top cards are becoming too strong for the AI to react properly to. Secondly, more of them are being introduced with each new set and some with deadly synergies with older cards. At some point you're just at the mercy of some unstoppable combo. With every new OP card, the game speeds up a little leaving you less able to react to new stuff on the board since more happens in-between your turns. But that's how MtGPQ is now.

buscemi wrote:

Is it me, or are the rewards in the current Inventor's Fair on a flatter curve than usual?



The difference between 1st place and 6th place is only 25 crystals. Has it always been like this? Or has it been changed recently, perhaps to mitigate the effect that luck has on prizes?

I think that's how it is for events with exclusive mythics but I didn't really pay attention to the past two Inventor's Fair reward tables. Saheeli's Challenge was 200/125/75 crystals for top 5/10/25 but that was a long time ago.

buscemi

Here's a thought.

There are unquestionably a lot of elements which prevent you from getting a 4 or 5 turn kill which are not under your control. The state of the start board and the cascades you get; your start hand and the cards you draw; the planeswalkers, and especially the cards that you own. And building for extreme speed requires you to minimize the amount of interactive cards you put in your deck.

Is it fair, then, to have to play against a randomly selected opponent? You might have to play against Madeupicide's creatureless Ob, packed with removal spells which interfere with your 5 turn kill; whereas I might get MadeupDJer, whose first play is a Crackdown Construct. I get the points and the prizes.. you don't.

If we're building for speed, and if, as it seems, the dev team have absolutely no desire to include code which picks opponents for players suitable to their level of play, perhaps such objectives should be played against no opponent at all?

Volrak

buscemi wrote:

Is it fair, then, to have to play against a randomly selected opponent? You might have to play against Madeupicide's creatureless Ob, packed with removal spells which interfere with your 5 turn kill; whereas I might get MadeupDJer, whose first play is a Crackdown Construct. I get the points and the prizes.. you don't.

A point that's already been made is it's fair in the long run, since even if Madeupicide regularly denies you objectives whenever he appears, if you have an edge that means you beat him with full points 20% more often than player B, then in the long run, all else being equal, you'll end up in the top reward groups more often than player B. Of course, there's no fairness here on the timescale of an individual event.

buscemi wrote:

If we're building for speed, [...] perhaps such objectives should be played against no opponent at all?

This is a really interesting idea which would remove a big element of short-term unfairness.

Ohboy

Volrak wrote:

buscemi wrote:

Is it fair, then, to have to play against a randomly selected opponent? You might have to play against Madeupicide's creatureless Ob, packed with removal spells which interfere with your 5 turn kill; whereas I might get MadeupDJer, whose first play is a Crackdown Construct. I get the points and the prizes.. you don't.

A point that's already been made is it's fair in the long run, since even if Madeupicide regularly denies you objectives whenever he appears, if you have an edge that means you beat him with full points 20% more often than player B, then in the long run, all else being equal, you'll end up in the top reward groups more often than player B. Of course, there's no fairness here on the timescale of an individual event.

buscemi wrote:

If we're building for speed, [...] perhaps such objectives should be played against no opponent at all?

This is a really interesting idea which would remove a big element of short-term unfairness.

There's no such thing as long term fairness and short term unfairness.

It's just Variance. To give an example, this would mean that flipping a perfect coin for a 50/50 result is unfair. That's just not true.

Volrak

Ohboy wrote:

There's no such thing as long term fairness and short term unfairness.

It's just Variance. To give an example, this would mean that flipping a perfect coin for a 50/50 result is unfair. That's just not true.

A decision by coin flip may well be perceived as unfair. The fact that statistical models can fully explain statistical outcomes does not remove or nullify the human perception of fairness or unfairness over the same set of outcomes.

Ohboy

Volrak wrote:

Ohboy wrote:

There's no such thing as long term fairness and short term unfairness.

It's just Variance. To give an example, this would mean that flipping a perfect coin for a 50/50 result is unfair. That's just not true.

A decision by coin flip may well be perceived as unfair. The fact that statistical models can fully explain statistical outcomes does not remove or nullify the human perception of fairness or unfairness over the same set of outcomes.

Isn't the whole point that human perception is flawed? That's why we have to rely on statistics to make unbiased judgements.

Like how some people think drop rates get worse with every set, but collected stats show that it's impossible for most people to tell the difference.

It's also why making up charts based on made up statistics is absolutely abhorrent. It serves no purpose other than to spread misinformation.