Quantius said: The forums always make me feel like I've got a special case of bad luck. Like I'm the only person who casts Hour of Promise and doesn't get a single match and then watches the AI eat the board.This last weekend with the great tournament I lost 4 matches due to Greg just going nuts with cascades turn after turn, with a number of other matches being very close.I end up like Mburn where I'm barely scraping by on off-color matches while Greg drops 2-3 cards per turn and I'm hoping to get lucky or drop a bomb like Killer Instinct or Urza, but taking 5 turns to cast it hurts.
Quantius said: I think it has more to do with the fact that Greg is generally an idiot and the only way the AI wins against people who have been playing for a while is via nutty cascades. So the only losses come from game freezes and bad beats due to cascades, so every loss feels bad and never truly "earned".It's why my vote will always be for nerfing Greg's ability to cascade and instead make him smart. I'd rather lose a close match due to my mistakes or because the AI pulled off some good moves than just sitting there watching the AI annihilate me.
Stormcrow said: You're right about the confirmation bias, EvilDead, but I think it doesn't help that cascades in the player's benefit don't usually change the outcome of the game, whereas crazy cascades in the AI's favor are probably the #1 thing that suddenly turns the outcome of a game to the AI's favor. Like if I get 50 mana in one turn...I probably just win like a turn or two faster than I would have won otherwise. I don't remember it later because it didn't have a memorable impact on the course of the game. But if the AI gets 50 mana and drops two copies of Razia in one turn (not that JUST happened to me or anything...now I have to wait 8 more hours to unlock the last Ardenvale node, argh) suddenly I go from confident victory to brutal defeat before I can do anything about it. The actual mana gains may be the same for both sides, but the cascade makes a much bigger difference to the outcome when it happens in the AI's favor, so the "bad" cascades have a much bigger emotional impact.
EvilDead said:Lastly, who really wants to basically win every game? I mean it's not the point of this thread but it seems like many want to win all the time.
madwren said: I posit that it's more noticeable these days because we lack effective gem conversion spells, which makes it harder for us to rally from behind when an imbalancing cascade occurs and Greg dumps his hand onto the board and you're like "welp, guess I could cast a land."
EvilDead said: The thing is, I win and many of my coalition members win in excess of 90% of the matches played. This is in Standard Events just as much as Legacy. So while I can appreciate all the consternation, I just don't think the situation is as tilted in the AI's favor as many would describe.
CheeksMagunda said: EvilDead said:Lastly, who really wants to basically win every game? I mean it's not the point of this thread but it seems like many want to win all the time. Everyone does want to win all the time. You don't play wanting to lose. The question I think you meant to ask is, who EXPECTS to win every time? That isn't realistic.I freely admit that my own personal frustration stems from being a relatively new player who really just began the uphill slog against much bigger collections. Manipulating the board for an entire game only to lose when Greg finally dumps out his entire hand including Omni and BSZ is the literal worst. As mentioned above, it's really only glaring when it causes you to lose, but do me a favor - in the next event, count the number of 3+ cascades you get, against the number Greg does. I've adopted a new approach to almost every match, and that's "What can I do to limit the shenanigans the AI will inevitably pull off on his next turn?"The entire point here has also been mentioned already, too: I wouldn't mind losing to a smart Greg. What pisses me off is losing to a digital mouthbreather simply because he has the ability to blow up the board on a whim. And if you're afraid of a smart Greg (which would be impossible to effectively code in the first place), you shouldn't be playing anything related to M:tG in the first place.