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There's been shuffler truthers since the early days of MTGO - it always says more about human nature and psychology than any shuffler. It's like with the thoughtseize "bug" - you don't remember most of the times when you cast it but you do when you discard a card and they topdeck another copy of it and play it straight away so it feels like it happens more often than statistically likely, even if it doesn't actually.
Iirc, some of the DotP games actually did have a difficulty setting when playing against the computer where it would actually rig the AI deck against them, putting the stronger cards on the bottom of their library on low difficulties.
MTGO had a great community for a while. And I mean a good long while too. The game felt great at the time and the staff all seemed like friends. The community feeling was very tight but it was inclusive and not elitist in any way. Lots of comradery even among the spikiest spikes and angriest teens. There were so many bugs on MTGO that it was often a running joke and it seemed like Leagues was just never coming back, ever. But the overall feeling of the game on MTGO was that it was convenient, social and full of great times.
Now it is a deserted island and MTGA is where all the cool kids hang but it isn't what MTGO was and probably never will be sadly. Interesting factoid: A certain % of players who were extremely aggressive and vocal about it were convinced MTGO was rigged as well. Thousand page long threads dominated the tops of the forums wizards finally took down in 2015 or so. They consisted back n forth (the same exact as here) script of:
"Player1: This game is rigged, the shuffler hates me! etc"
"Player2: Proof?"
"Player1: Ur a <insert pejoritive here>! Of course you shill for WOTC, etc, etc (never once answering the question)."
Interrupted by sometimes lengthy arguments between more earnest posters that talked about the incredibly tedious specifics of the science and mathematics behind statistical analysis and random number generation algorithms and how this and that was very important etc. Overall lending pages of breaks between the above. For some it was popcorn worthy entertainment.
Sadly that history is behind us, as WOTC no longer really hosts a community forum of any significance.
Paper magic used to be very local unless you were willing to drive to PTQs and do long road trips to PTs (the days when they were open to the public ended in the early 00s but while they lasted there were some great events happening. Got to meet lots of artists and higher ups at the company.
I Earned a T-shirt (and free admission) for standing guard at the doors of PTNY 2000 because they forgot to hire some one for that ahead of time. Yeah it was cheap labor but I got to chat with the people coming in and plenty of time to do the other things I came there for (reporting on the PT for neutralgrounddotcom) and interviewing many of the top contenders beforehand.
Paper definitely had its moments. Haven't really done a paper tournament in a few decades, not counting occasional prereleases.
Other MTG clients I have enjoyed:
Free ones: Apprentice 32 was such an essential part of the irc mtg community that without it I doubt many of us would have hung out for so long. E-league being a major contributor to that with their tournaments and online judge certifications.
MTGForge: it started out very small in the alpha and beta stages with slow increments over time that went from tiny upgrades to huge leaps in what you could do with it. Forge sort of emulated a few different ways to play the game, including a text version of shandalar. Which was kind of cool and the one I liked most which was a leagues style limited play.
Never did try cockatrice or encyclopedia.
pay to play:
Duels was medium in its Steam variants. I would not say it was bad. It introduced Planechase and that was pretty good if clunky but the AI was so bad that the only way to make it challenging was to give the player commons/uncommons vs mythic/rare rich decks. Also the gold rewards system was super buggy and often did not work at all.
Shandalar from Microprose was probably my favorite PvE version of the game. Even with its fairly easy to solve RPG elements. It had a nice sort of Sid Meier's charm to it. Even when its bugs ate your game/deck/cards, etc, it was still highly playable even into the late 2010s. Unfortunately technology (intentionally) obsoleted it and other similarly built games.
There's been shuffler truthers since the early days of MTGO - it always says more about human nature and psychology than any shuffler. It's like with the thoughtseize "bug" - you don't remember most of the times when you cast it but you do when you discard a card and they topdeck another copy of it and play it straight away so it feels like it happens more often than statistically likely, even if it doesn't actually.
Iirc, some of the DotP games actually did have a difficulty setting when playing against the computer where it would actually rig the AI deck against them, putting the stronger cards on the bottom of their library on low difficulties. [/quote]
I wonder if WOTC uses some sort of thing like that with the shuffler, or it's just moreso you just didn't get the heart of the cards. Not every game is bound to be good! But there are times where I feel like they aren't wrong. You get a round of good games, and then this one bad game where you just get all lands, or all creatures.
(I realize it merged both comment responses...)
"We also found in testing that certain cards really frustrated players when the AI hit them with them. In particular, Elspeth's habit of playing Pacifism and Holy Day really wound them up, as did armies of fliers that they couldn't protect themselves from. So we implemented a system whereby certain cards are flagged such that some or all of them are removed (well, actually they're shuffled to the bottom of the AI's deck) when a novice plays the game. The difficulty level then ramps up as the player gets more experienced, and these cards start to get introduced. The player can also bias this difficulty in the Options menu, so that either the game remains on easy (with many of these cards tucked away), or starts on hard."
Not rigging your deck, only the computers and just tucking away the salt-inducing cards for new players if you set the difficulty to novice. It was all precons so it was very much a curated experience.
Oof why you guys derail thread like instantly. Go make your own discussion posts
The common factor is generally a complete lack of factual evidence. Notable exceptions being a few early poker sites that were actually rigging the game, and MTG: Arena when it was in beta - there definitely was a problem with the shuffler. This was proven by an enterprising player who collected data from over a million hands and presented it. WotC confirmed and fixed the issue. This is what happens when empirical evidence for an issue is presented.
The rest of it is just a combination of tin foiled hattery, pattern recognition and confirmation bias. You will get the same posters popping in every few days to claim "I went second 8 times in a row today, shuffler is broken". Of course on the other days they don't post, they probably went first 8 times in a row, or 4-4 - but hey, can't whine about that.
These people clearly do not understand probability and the concept of variance. Any poker player will tell you they have long stretches of bad luck, when they can't get a break (can last for weeks). It happens, you just have to learn to live with it and wait for the streak to break.
Is MTGA rigged? Yes, it is most definitely rigged in a completely open and well documented way. WotC have never denied the existence of separate MMRs for ranked and play queues, deck weight match making in play, and the BO1 hand smoothing algorithm. Was explicitly detailed during the beta of the game. Use these things to your advantage when choosing decks.
I never got into collecting how ever, I just messed around with this started set which either had one deck for each color or enough for you to make a deck out of two, they've been on a shelf the past two years and I haven't messed with them in a while.
When I think about it now, I'm surprised I never got into actual collecting though, I did with Pokemon and Yugioh (I was part of a targeted ad campaign and was sent a VHS of Yugioh the anime in the mail before English cards were being printed in the US)
Mostly I stuck to video games wit Magic and ultimate that's what happened with Yugioh as well. I have pre mades for Yugioh and Magic but thats about it at this point.