Why we are disappointed in Ixalan's cards

FindingHeart8

Stormcrow said:

Oh there was an obnoxious bug for a little while in the early days (I wanna say around when Oath of the Gatewatch dropped?) where we were all (or a lot of us, I don't remember exactly) totally locked out of Story Mode for like a week. That was an odd one. Pretty sure there have been bugs with purchasing planeswalkers too, though understandably bugs with purchasing anything tend to be fixed very quickly. (Unlike Prickleboar....man I'm still mad about that, that bug totally ruined my first red deck ever...*shakes fist*) Anyways, the specifics aren't really the point: the point is, nothing about the game that we can observe suggests there are bug-free parts of the game we can't observe. It just adds to the extra-ordinariness of your extraordinary claims. And you know what they say about extraordinary claims.

I will add that I think making broken cards harder to draw is a good way to introduce massive bug and lots of player frustration. For one thing, there have been previous issues (and may be again!) with getting the deck's first 40 cards to actually be 4 of each card. For another thing, people who build decks around a single broken card usually aren't silly enough to wait to actually draw it. At least not without enough card-draw in the deck to blow right past any weighting mechanism. I, for one, learned long ago with paper cards that MtG would not be kind to me if I made decks that assumed I wouldn't be unlucky.

Ah I see, that was just before my time (I jumped into the mtg ball pit mid-Oath right before Innistrad).  What was the prickle boar glitch again?  My first real waltz with broken cards was Runaway Carriage...butchered my werewolf deck and I never packed it until they fixed the glitch (just my luck lol).

I get what you're saying with nothing we can observe suggests there are bug-free parts we cant.  That's part of a larger issue that causes a lot of debates in these threads...we just don't have all the information, and there really isn't a way of knowing some of these answers, we're just stuck with competing probabilities lol.

Hmmm, I didn't consider the possibility of it causing a bug.  Some other app games have publicly acknowledged having a weighted card draw (though it was presented as part of the game mechanic so it would be more acceptable in that game than in mtgpq).  If Hibernum had outsourced their coding or purchased a template from another company that allowed that option, it may not be hard to adjust weight values to card draws (presuming all cards are currently equal in likelihood to draw), if not...well yeah then attempting to do that could cause some technical issues.

bk1234

babar3355 said:

FindingHeart8 said:

I agree with what Bil and Barbar said above me.  I'd also like to add another drawback to Starfield...not only is it slow, but in the weighted card draws it's an easy draw, which is bad when you only need one.  I've lost count of the number of times my opening hand has been 3 starfields, which can cost you the game if your opponent is playing a fast deck.

I honestly can't wait to River's Rebuke a Starfield Lock

My Starfield lock got RR-ed yesterday -- I had another one loaded in my hand -- it was nice to see all of my supports come back in the next 4 turns -- including Starfield reinforcing itself. 

Volrak

FindingHeart8 said:

Volrak, you have less than 100 different players who have made posts on your database (69 to be exact as of today), and less than 40% are players posting more than just a couple of inserts.  So, yes, any player who consistently reports inaccurate data to your spreadsheet could significantly alter the results.  I'm sorry, but this database is more a sample population of the mtg community, not its representation.

So, to summarise, there's never been any evidence of tampering, and if there ever was, there are ways we can check for it, only there's a cunning cabal with no known motive who've made it their life's work to corrupt statistical experiments, and whose members include many well-known mtgpq players, such that more than half of the 50,000 cards entered into the database are dodgy, so we can't check for it after all.

Well, it's clearly time that the rest of this community who *aren't* members of the Spreadsheet Bandits to come together and fight bad data with good data!  Their paltry 25k dodgy cards will soon wither before the combined might of our flood of unbiased data, and become an insignificant rounding error in the many fruitful analyses yet to come.  Will you help us out?

(Edit - sorry if this appears snarky, but in all seriousness, there appears to be no other logical interpretation of your concerns as I explained previously, and again in all seriousness, that interpretation, bizarre though it may seem, cannot be irrefutably disproven. Finally, still in seriousness, for all except those who disbelieve the possibility of honesty in scientific endeavour in principle, more data is indeed a remedy should such a scenario eventuate in a realm outside of fantasy.)

ILikePancakes

khurram said:

Starfield is fine as it is. It's been around since the start and people have survived. It can easily be dealt with, but suddenly it needs the new tinykitty self-destruct feature? (which is hugely unpopular btw)
If it self destructs it is not worth the investment of all that Mana you need to cast it and the other supports. It can't be compared to an imaginary version of Whir that doesn't exist, in order to make an argument about nerfing it.

But yeah let's just nerf any card that may give you even a least bit of challenge while facing the AI, and turn this game into candy crush.

I just got my butt kicked by a deck with starfield in it. I don't think the card should be tinkered with, it's fine as is.

I'd really like that card, lol.

babar3355

bken1234 said:

babar3355 said:

FindingHeart8 said:

I agree with what Bil and Barbar said above me.  I'd also like to add another drawback to Starfield...not only is it slow, but in the weighted card draws it's an easy draw, which is bad when you only need one.  I've lost count of the number of times my opening hand has been 3 starfields, which can cost you the game if your opponent is playing a fast deck.

I honestly can't wait to River's Rebuke a Starfield Lock

My Starfield lock got RR-ed yesterday -- I had another one loaded in my hand -- it was nice to see all of my supports come back in the next 4 turns -- including Starfield reinforcing itself. 

Oh nice recovery.  I really think that card is going to be hugely frustrating to play again.  I already run it in every blue deck. 

It would be amazing regardless of the timing and interaction, but it actually puts the supports back in the players hand before the creatures.  So it often destroys the creatures and the AI prioritizes supports anyway, so it forces Greg to spend a few more turns redeploying supports.  

My favorite combo right now is Dubious Challenge into River's Rebuke.  

FindingHeart8

Volrak said:

FindingHeart8 said:

Volrak, you have less than 100 different players who have made posts on your database (69 to be exact as of today), and less than 40% are players posting more than just a couple of inserts.  So, yes, any player who consistently reports inaccurate data to your spreadsheet could significantly alter the results.  I'm sorry, but this database is more a sample population of the mtg community, not its representation.

So, to summarise, there's never been any evidence of tampering, and if there ever was, there are ways we can check for it, only there's a cunning cabal with no known motive who've made it their life's work to corrupt statistical experiments, and whose members include many well-known mtgpq players, such that more than half of the 50,000 cards entered into the database are dodgy, so we can't check for it after all.

Well, it's clearly time that the rest of this community who *aren't* members of the Spreadsheet Bandits to come together and fight bad data with good data!  Their paltry 25k dodgy cards will soon wither before the combined might of our flood of unbiased data, and become an insignificant rounding error in the many fruitful analyses yet to come.  Will you help us out?

(Edit - sorry if this appears snarky, but in all seriousness, there appears to be no other logical interpretation of your concerns as I explained previously, and again in all seriousness, that interpretation, bizarre though it may seem, cannot be irrefutably disproven. Finally, still in seriousness, for all except those who disbelieve the possibility of honesty in scientific endeavour in principle, more data is indeed a remedy should such a scenario eventuate in a realm outside of fantasy.)

With all due respect, it's the minimizing of my arguments to bizarre conspiracy theories or reductio ad absurdum fallacies that I find the most absurd here.

I'm not some vagabond-prophet on the street corner preaching of the "End Days."  I have a Masters Degree, conducted research for successful academic publications, and taken a significant number of statistics courses in multiple fields of discipline.

Your database may consist of a lot of inputs, but not a lot of different users (69 total) who input the information.  One of the users is responsible for over 20% of the information you have.  If you tried to get conclusions based solely off this database published as a representation of the entire community, it would not be deemed credible by most scholarly sources because of the inability to account for accurate inputs beyond being a deviation off and the imbalance on the results favoring multiple inputs of the same user vs. inputs from all users.

I'm not saying there's a secret underground society bent on ruining your database, nor am I saying your database is corrupt, nor am I saying that you should not have made it.  I've always thought this attempt at accurate information was a good thing.  I've just seen too many arguments in this forum turn to "This is the indisputable will of the entire mtgpq community because this database of 70 people," which is what I was arguing against. 

As your database develops further with more users (and I hope it does!), I'll be more reluctant to question it.  But at it's current size of a mere 3.5 coalitions of variety in inputs, it's too early for me to swallow as unquestionable fact.  I would be interested in hearing about the methods you do take to keep the data secure and safe, but, if you feel like sharing that, you can private message me that if you'd prefer.  Since it can be sometimes difficult to detect the emotional context to a message, and that context can play a part in determining motive; this is not meant as a "I'm calling you out," more as a "I'm actually curious."

babar3355

Surely you can understand how publicly calling into question the quality of someone else's research and database will elicit a defensive reaction @FindingHeart8 . Especially, one in which they have spent countless hours managing with little to no personal reward.  We all understand you have concerns.  No one is asking you to rely on the information.

Can we just move on with the conversation about why the community is generally disappointed with the Ixalan set and specifically with the Elite cards.

FindingHeart8

babar3355 said:

Surely you can understand how publicly calling into question the quality of someone else's research and database will elicit a defensive reaction @FindingHeart8 . Especially, one in which they have spent countless hours managing with little to no personal reward.  We all understand you have concerns.  No one is asking you to rely on the information.

Can we just move on with the conversation about why the community is generally disappointed with the Ixalan set and specifically with the Elite cards.

I do understand that @barbar3355, which is why I took the time to repetitively express that I thought this was overall a good idea and that I respect and supported Volrak's commitment to this.  It's less Volrak but moreso other players' additions that I'm referencing, the debate between Volrak and I has been fairly civil.

I am not in opposition to the database, and I have (believe it or not) given its results serious consideration.

However, as with all topics of scientific pursuit, research should be able to withstand questioning.  It would be unfortunate if the conversation around certain topics became dogmatic.

Volrak

FindingHeart8 said:

As your database develops further with more users (and I hope it does!), I'll be more reluctant to question it.  But at it's current size of a mere 3.5 coalitions of variety in inputs, it's too early for me to swallow as unquestionable fact.

Again, while many results are strongly supported, I've never presented them as unquestionable fact.

There might be two things being conflated here.  One is the possibility that the true drop chances aren't the same for different players.  Stats using combined data from all players generally assume they are.  Although basic checks (and Occam's Razor) support that idea, if you were to suggest that that hasn't been proven, you'd be right.  A second thing is the possibility that large-scale contributors are submitting fraudulent data.  Having spoken to most such people and seeing first-hand the care and effort they've taken to get it right, I think it's ridiculous and borderline insulting to the great community we have (there are actually 85 contributors to date).  I hope that explains where I'm coming from.

babar3355 said:

Can we just move on with the conversation about why the community is generally disappointed with the Ixalan set and specifically with the Elite cards.

Apologies to have sustained an off-topic tangent.  I'm always happy to take it to PMs if there's more to be said.

Regarding XLN, I think a further significant factor contributing to disappointment is we naturally compare the power level of the cards we open to the power level of our existing decks.  For many of us, it's rare for any XLN card to come out on top in these comparisons, because:

• XLN deliberately takes a step back on the power curve;
• Some of us have most/all the strongest cards from all the previous sets;
• Most of us have only a small fraction of the XLN cards (and so only a fraction of the XLN power cards); and
• Decks are only ten cards, but there are now over a thousand cards in standard!  Even if there wasn't a power level imbalance *and* a collection size imbalance between XLN and the prior sets, you could only expect on average around 1% of all the XLN cards you open to make it into any given existing deck as an upgrade.

I think events which strongly encourage all-new decks focusing on XLN tribes or mechanics will help, because it'll be a way to have fun with the new set that doesn't depend solely on comparing like-for-like with previous sets.  And possible formats which could be added in the future like drafting would really give us reasons to play with the new cards and see how they work together.

khurram

I think events which strongly encourage all-new decks focusing on XLN tribes or mechanics will help, because it'll be a way to have fun with the new set that doesn't depend solely on comparing like-for-like with previous sets.  And possible formats which could be added in the future like drafting would really give us reasons to play with the new cards and see how they work together

The new big event is out, I am curious to think how many people think it actually encourages new decks focused on XLN tribes. For me it doesn't.

Are people having fun with the new set while playing Race for Orazca?

PS: Perhaps this should be a poll.

Mainloop25

khurram said:

I think events which strongly encourage all-new decks focusing on XLN tribes or mechanics will help, because it'll be a way to have fun with the new set that doesn't depend solely on comparing like-for-like with previous sets.  And possible formats which could be added in the future like drafting would really give us reasons to play with the new cards and see how they work together

The new big event is out, I am curious to think how many people think it actually encourages new decks focused on XLN tribes. For me it doesn't.

Are people having fun with the new set while playing Race for Orazca?

PS: Perhaps this should be a poll.

I'm not, because my old cards help me hit objectives better than my new ones, and I don't get points if I don't hit objectives. 

span_argoman

FindingHeart8 said:

Your database may consist of a lot of inputs, but not a lot of different users (69 total) who input the information.  One of the users is responsible for over 20% of the information you have.  If you tried to get conclusions based solely off this database published as a representation of the entire community, it would not be deemed credible by most scholarly sources because of the inability to account for accurate inputs beyond being a deviation off and the imbalance on the results favoring multiple inputs of the same user vs. inputs from all users.

As the user submitting the ~18% of the data on that spreadsheet that @Volrak and @octal9 have built, I'd just like to say that my methodology for recording card pack data is that I record down all card drops except Free Boosters, Basic Boosters and Elite Packs. I don't see how there can be bias if I'm submitting everything but I'm always up to hear about how to improve the quality of the data collected.

FindingHeart8

span_argoman said:

FindingHeart8 said:

Your database may consist of a lot of inputs, but not a lot of different users (69 total) who input the information.  One of the users is responsible for over 20% of the information you have.  If you tried to get conclusions based solely off this database published as a representation of the entire community, it would not be deemed credible by most scholarly sources because of the inability to account for accurate inputs beyond being a deviation off and the imbalance on the results favoring multiple inputs of the same user vs. inputs from all users.

As the user submitting the ~18% of the data on that spreadsheet that @Volrak and @octal9 have built, I'd just like to say that my methodology for recording card pack data is that I record down all card drops except Free Boosters, Basic Boosters and Elite Packs. I don't see how there can be bias if I'm submitting everything but I'm always up to hear about how to improve the quality of the data collected.

~18%?  Did you only post that to dispute my over 20% claim?  How did you arrive at the conclusion of 18% if only to approximate it?  I went back to Volrak's spreadsheet to double check (because for some odd reason I think research is fun lol).  As of this post you are responsible for at least the 1015 entries that are clumped together on the spreadsheet (I noticed at least 75 more entries spread out through the rest of the database that I'm leaving out because an extra percent or two is not critical to the point I'm trying to make).  Anyways, to keep this simple, we are going to go with just the 1015 entries at the moment:

So at the moment of this comment I am making: 1015 entries out of the 4774 total is 21.26%.  Still over 1/5 of all entries in the database.

At the date of my comment, you were responsible for 23% of all entries in the spreadsheet.  This is not to say your methods of entry were unreliable, nor that your entries were inaccurate, but 1/5 of the entries from a single person does not make a balanced analysis of the entire community.

FindingHeart8

Volrak said:

FindingHeart8 said:

As your database develops further with more users (and I hope it does!), I'll be more reluctant to question it.  But at it's current size of a mere 3.5 coalitions of variety in inputs, it's too early for me to swallow as unquestionable fact.

Again, while many results are strongly supported, I've never presented them as unquestionable fact.

There might be two things being conflated here.  One is the possibility that the true drop chances aren't the same for different players.  Stats using combined data from all players generally assume they are.  Although basic checks (and Occam's Razor) support that idea, if you were to suggest that that hasn't been proven, you'd be right.  A second thing is the possibility that large-scale contributors are submitting fraudulent data.  Having spoken to most such people and seeing first-hand the care and effort they've taken to get it right, I think it's ridiculous and borderline insulting to the great community we have (there are actually 85 contributors to date).  I hope that explains where I'm coming from.

One of my primary issues with the database is not it's existence, but it's presentation as proven indisputable (a word you and I both seem to dislike, justifiably so) evidence.

How did you get 85? Have a lot of new people joined the database since yesterday?  I'm not seeing a lot of new entries from unique people.  When I had Excel crunch the number of unique name entries in your database, it told me 69 exactly.  Now there are a few "?" anonymous entries, those could be from different users or the same user posting anonymously multiple times, that could make the number grow to 85 but I don't know how you would have that exact number given the inability to determine if it's multiple users or not.

During my career, I've had to inform researchers whether their experiments were statistically acceptable from a scholarly level or not, based on primarily whether the data was biased or how much caution was taken to protect the integrity of the data.  Usually when I've done this, if there was a disagreement, it was presented academically.  This is the first time I've ever been accused of conspiracy or data sabotage merely for critiquing material, which is odd, though if this is the first time this data has been critiqued I guess I could see it being an unfortunate possibility.

I do understand where you are coming from.  And I do apologize if my critiques are coming off harsh, it was not my intention, which is why I've repeatedly and repeatedly mentioned that I respect and support the pursuit here. If I hadn't taken your database seriously, I would not have taken the time to analyze it.

Volrak

FindingHeart8 said:

~18%?  Did you only post that to dispute my over 20% claim?

You're confusing rows in a sheet with data points.  Span's entered 9601 out of 53266 cards: 18.02%. 
Span's point was to give you an opportunity to provide a practical suggestion.

How did you get 85?

Card data used for analyses resides on multiple tabs, not just the main "Data" tab.

During my career, I've had to inform researchers whether their experiments were statistically acceptable

In general, critique is very welcome.  I can't speak to your career's work, but I've critiqued your present critique via PM.

FindingHeart8

Volrak said:

FindingHeart8 said:

~18%?  Did you only post that to dispute my over 20% claim?

You're confusing rows in a sheet with data points.  Span's entered 9601 out of 53266 cards: 18.02%. 
Span's point was to give you an opportunity to provide a practical suggestion.

How did you get 85?

Card data used for analyses resides on multiple tabs, not just the main "Data" tab.

During my career, I've had to inform researchers whether their experiments were statistically acceptable

In general, critique is very welcome.  I can't speak to your career's work, but I've critiqued your present critique via PM.

You're confusing rows in a sheet with data points.  Span's entered 9601 out of 53266 cards: 18.02%. Span's point was to give you an opportunity to provide a practical suggestion.

Ah, I see what you mean with the 18% now.  When I skimmed it over, most of his cards packs I saw were 5-packs to premium packs.  Honestly, the difference between 18%-20% is overall minimal to my point (will discuss further via PM).

Card data used for analyses resides on multiple tabs, not just the main "Data" tab.

Yeah I looked over the other data tabs, I assumed that was further details on some entries from the 1st data tab, and that the first data tab was the primary pool.  Generally it's best to keep your related data organized in the same spot.  We can also discuss this further on via PM.