Yeah, the shuffler is definitely fixed.

[erutan2099]

I rebuilt the starter decks the game gives you and have been playing them in game as well as in real life.

Something I have noticed? The in game versions ALWAYS try to match the number of lands each player has to within a certain amount.
You opponent has 5 mana? you have 4-6. You have 3 mana? Your opponent almost always seems to have 2-5.

In real life, the match up of mana is NEVER that clean. When is the last time someone was mana dry in the virtual game? Mana swamped, sure all the time, because the game is trying to make sure each player has about the same amount of lands. Mana dry? I haven't seen it in the virtual game for ages.

When is the last time you DIDN'T draw at least two mana on the first draw? This is so clearly fixed and so obvious I am giving serious thought as to whether I should keep playing it.

Can I get the feedback of the community? What do you people think about this?

[Kurt Angle's Neck]

You are talking about hand smoothing. It's not some secret conspiracy, WotC has openly stated that there is hand smoothing applied to unranked best-of-1 matches. Tons of people complain that it's a thing, and tons of people would complain if it wasn't... can't please everyone.

[erutan2099]

Originally posted by Kurt Angle's Neck:

You are talking about hand smoothing. It's not some secret conspiracy, WotC has openly stated that there is hand smoothing applied to unranked best-of-1 matches. Tons of people complain that it's a thing, and tons of people would complain if it wasn't... can't please everyone.

Is there an option to turn this smoothing off?

[Kurt Angle's Neck]

Originally posted by erutan2099:

Originally posted by Kurt Angle's Neck:

You are talking about hand smoothing. It's not some secret conspiracy, WotC has openly stated that there is hand smoothing applied to unranked best-of-1 matches. Tons of people complain that it's a thing, and tons of people would complain if it wasn't... can't please everyone.

Is there an option to turn this smoothing off?

No, but it only applies to unranked best-of-1 matches, so you can play ranked or best-of-3. Also I forgot to mention that it only applies to the opening draw, so if you mulligan you will get a "truly" random draw (nothing is truly random).

[erutan2099]

Originally posted by Kurt Angle's Neck:

Originally posted by erutan2099:

Is there an option to turn this smoothing off?

[...](nothing is truly random).

*Hand waves the truly random thing. Yeah, yeah, I have some background in programming. It might not be truly random, but you can get close enough. (See Zeno's paradox and random.org for more info on that).

What was irritating was the blatant smoothing, it was enough to catch the attention that *something* was off, even if I didn't know exactly _what_. Looks like I am going to get more comfortable with doing a mulligan every game.

[Hides in Bushes]

I've always felt something was off about how the game shuffles. Ive kept my mouth shut for a while as I constantly read people complaining about it.

Well, im 100% convinced now after the series of games I just had.

I find it statistically impossible for a deck that is more than half mana to actually get worse over time because I cant find mana?

My deck has been untouched for a few years. I get up to plat in historic in a few days and work for diamond if I didnt get bored by then.

my deck hasnt been touched.
my deck is rampy - 32 mana
six 2 mana creatures that can tap for mana
every creature in the deck costs 1-3 mana except two a 5 and a 7
and a couple of pw and some spells

When I first made the deck it was great. it was a good pace and did what it was supposed to do, now I constantly see 1-2 mana hands with the most expensive cards always in my opening hand and then struggle to draw mana for the next 10 turns.
Like more than half my deck is mana? how is this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ possible this frequently?

Like, I just came back since last ranked seasons. played 6 games in silver and lost every single one to bad generic decks because I cant find my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mana!

whatever they are doing, they need to tone it down because this is not fun

[Dewguru]

Playing Standard Ranked.

In my first 5 matches this morning, in two of them I ended up without more than 2 lands - even after 4-5 turns, while my opponent wasn't mana shorted like I was.

Another one of those 5 matches, I was awash in mana. So much so that I had 11 lands between what was on the board and in the graveyard, to 4 non-land spell cards.

Feast or famine in 3 of my first 5 games. I'm used that being more like 1 in 3, but 60%. Oof. Not a fun start of the day.

[Brujah]

It's not fixed, I just flooded with mana

[Thicc John]

the game is rigged no doubt

[Lyrdian]

Game is def rigged. 138 card deck, 62 mana. so a 2:1 ratio abouts. Drew 12 mana cards in a row. Had to throw out Wrenn and Realmbreaker just to survive by throwing my lands in front of the enemy repeatedly.

[mwesthoff]

tldr did they fix the rigged shuffler?

[GarbageCollector]

Originally posted by Lyrdian:

Game is def rigged. 138 card deck, 62 mana. so a 2:1 ratio abouts. Drew 12 mana cards in a row. Had to throw out Wrenn and Realmbreaker just to survive by throwing my lands in front of the enemy repeatedly.

The shuffler is not rigged. That's also not 2:1 if you're considering nonland:land. That's 45% lands which is pretty close to 1:1 and also a tiny bit higher than rule of thumb. 2:1 would be 46 lands (or 92 if you meant the other way around) which would be rather dubious in a deck of 138 cards.

A deck of 138 cards is also dubious in its own right... if you don't want to just call it a bad idea.

A pointlessly ginormous deck like this will be substantially more susceptible to getting too many lands or too many nonlands.

Let's look at an example. Suppose you keep a 4-lander 7 card opening hand and you get to turn 5 drawing a land each time. 12 total cards drawn. 9 of them were lands (4 in opening hand, 5 total from each turn). Let's keep your 45% ratio and do the math:

Your odds of another land on the next draw:
60 card deck with 27 lands - 37.5%
138 card deck with 62 lands - 42%

Why does this happen? The number of lands in your deck goes down every time you remove a land from it (by drawing) making it less likely you'll draw another. But this fraction depends on the total number of cards in it. Make it more extreme and it might become more clear. Deck of two different cards. You draw one, next time you'll get the other guaranteed. Deck of 1,000,000 cards with half of it copies of one card and the other half copies of a different card. Draw one, you still have a 50% of drawing a copy of the same card again next time... and the next time and the next time. It will take a very long time before these odds appreciably change. Small decks are somewhat self-rectifying.




tl;dr Stop running bloated decks with hundreds of cards. There are few good reasons to ever do this and your deck probably doesn't qualify. If you're going to do it anyway, accept that you're going to get screwed by the draw more.

[Badgriuel]

Originally posted by GarbageCollector:

Originally posted by Lyrdian:

Game is def rigged. 138 card deck, 62 mana. so a 2:1 ratio abouts. Drew 12 mana cards in a row. Had to throw out Wrenn and Realmbreaker just to survive by throwing my lands in front of the enemy repeatedly.

The shuffler is not rigged. That's also not 2:1 if you're considering nonland:land. That's 45% lands which is pretty close to 1:1 and also a tiny bit higher than rule of thumb. 2:1 would be 46 lands (or 92 if you meant the other way around) which would be rather dubious in a deck of 138 cards.

A deck of 138 cards is also dubious in its own right... if you don't want to just call it a bad idea.

A pointlessly ginormous deck like this will be substantially more susceptible to getting too many lands or too many nonlands.

Let's look at an example. Suppose you keep a 4-lander 7 card opening hand and you get to turn 5 drawing a land each time. 12 total cards drawn. 9 of them were lands (4 in opening hand, 5 total from each turn). Let's keep your 45% ratio and do the math:

Your odds of another land on the next draw:
60 card deck with 27 lands - 37.5%
138 card deck with 62 lands - 42%

Why does this happen? The number of lands in your deck goes down every time you remove a land from it (by drawing) making it less likely you'll draw another. But this fraction depends on the total number of cards in it. Make it more extreme and it might become more clear. Deck of two different cards. You draw one, next time you'll get the other guaranteed. Deck of 1,000,000 cards with half of it copies of one card and the other half copies of a different card. Draw one, you still have a 50% of drawing a copy of the same card again next time... and the next time and the next time. It will take a very long time before these odds appreciably change. Small decks are somewhat self-rectifying.




tl;dr Stop running bloated decks with hundreds of cards. There are few good reasons to ever do this and your deck probably doesn't qualify. If you're going to do it anyway, accept that you're going to get screwed by the draw more.

Doesn't explain when it happens with decks that run sometimes anywhere from 16-20 mana as well without even being a 60 card deck.

The game sucks, its bork, its rigged and the shills just gonna shill.

WoTC should just stick to the tabletop version or at least you know let an actual game developer make the game without crap stuff in it. A bit like how Games Workshop does with their Warhammer IP.

[GarbageCollector]

Originally posted by Badgriuel:

Doesn't explain when it happens with decks that run sometimes anywhere from 16-20 mana as well without even being a 60 card deck.

When what happens? Drawing 5 lands in a row after keeping a 4-lander? If you're talking about a draft deck made with 40 cards and 20 are lands (which is high btw), sure it does.

Odds of that same scenario happening if you have 20 lands in 40 cards, keep a 4-lander and draw 5 in a row, is ~1.8% or once in 54 games. That's really not that low. This will happen to you if you play this game long enough. And it's going to really suck so you're likely to remember it a lot more than the other ~50 normal games in that batch.

But, just like the previous discussion, odds are actually lower of this happening in draft, because your deck is smaller. Same math again with a 60 card deck with 30 lands? ~2.3% or once in 43 games. Again, not really that rare when you think about how many matches the average player will end up playing.

Keep in mind this is after already starting with a fairly generous opening hand. In that 60 card deck with 30 lands you're not going to get a balanced spread of 4 in your first 7 cards most of the time.

Random chance can be punishing. The sensible and thought-provoking objection to the game is whether WotC messed up all those years ago by designing the game around the resource generators being cards that are shuffled into the same pile as all the rest of your cards that need those resources. Plenty of other games made since have grappled with this and tried to come up with other systems that involve less randomness or at least less punishment and that might be an interesting discussion to debate the merits of both but you guys are busy punching at ghosts so...

Edit: Come to think of it, WotC themselves have tried to come up with other systems that are less punishing. When I first started playing the mulligan rule was toss your 7 cards back in, and draw 6 next time. Then 5. Every time you had less and less chance of getting a good hand because you drew less cards to see, and if you mulled down to 4 you were almost certainly dead right out of the gate. It was horrible. Back in ~2015 or somewhere around there they added a bonus scry that you got after deciding you would keep a new hand. (I think it was called the Columbus Mulligan but I don't remember.) So for example you toss 7, draw 6, and decide to keep it so you can scry 1. Now it's even better, you just always draw 7 and put the excess back. So all those games you're just hosed before it even starts and there was nothing you really did wrong? It used to be even worse.

[Winter Wolf]

Before Paris, Mulliganing involved having to draw all lands or no lands and then you get one free redraw to 7. That's it.

[Berserkr]

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

Before Paris, Mulliganing involved having to draw all lands or no lands and then you get one free redraw to 7. That's it.

Dark days