Record your games

[Z0mbie]

Seriously. I leave for 2 weeks due to algorithm throwing games. No problem, I’ll take a break. But I’m recording games now and things are looking suspect.

I come back and I’m getting a good balance of draws. Sometimes great, sometimes trash, but it’s consistently random. Exactly what you’d expect. In the end, clearly my deck has been “shuffled.” Woohoo! In very short time, I hit level 8 again.

Ope! There’s that wall. Here comes the 7 rounds in and I’ve successfully pulled 1 fighter and the rest are counters/orders. Cool! Completely useless while the enemy pulls tank after tank but alright, guess I’m back in the stacked deck algorithm. Game after game after game it’s the same carefully crafted, badly stacked deck. Weird!

I guess as soon as I see the algorithm kick in and do it’s usual thing, I’ll just laugh about it, surrender and give out some free, easy wins and farm the few points until things change. If you’ve got a little boost from me, you’re welcome things weren’t like this years ago, but we might as well mix up the pool, right?

[sushi_komplett]

A question: Is the deck that you play a copy (from the Kards website decklist, a tournament list or a similar source) or is it self-designed?

[puschit]

Sigh.
There is an algorithm in play, yes, and that's the ladder ... you get paired against players of your same level and there are different decks and metas in different levels. FM is a threshold for many players they can barely take and some just can't. And at the end of a month you'll get thrown back to rank 6, so you'll have to fight against all the sharks again until they become FM again, which may throw you back to rank 7 or 8 temporarily.
And THAT means, these are the ranks where serious play begins! Everything below that is the wooden league. Decks are vastly different.

Additionally, everybody, whether he admits it or not and whether he likes it or not, DOES have a skill cap. A ladder system will sooner or later have moved you to the rank/place that roughly matches your skill - which is the sole purpose of a ladder!
But way too many players think of the ladder as something that they can and should constantly climb until they are number 1. Which just doesn't work in a game where for every winner there will always be a loser. Also, even more players think they are better than average - which, again, is impossible. Both of these false expectations are challeneged when that player hits his skill cap rank ... and then he is looking for explanations. Which usually means blaming non-existant malicious algorithms that are designed to specificially screw them (and nobody else).
That's the sad story if every single competitive online game out there. Design your own game, implement the simplest ladder system and let true randomness decide - I guarantee you that there will be countless players writing complaints like the OP just did.

This is reference post. I'll just link to it from now on.

[Z0mbie]

Originally posted by sushi_komplett:

A question: Is the deck that you play a copy (from the Kards website decklist, a tournament list or a similar source) or is it self-designed?

Self designed. I really, really hate playing meta, copy/paste decks. It takes the fun out of it for me and it makes things entirely predictable for the person I’m playing against.

Unfortunately, there’s so many well known meta decks that have been in circulation for so long without any fixing, you almost have to build your customize your custom deck to counter those popular meta decks specifically. But I can deal with Japandicap all day. Those are a dime a dozen and easy to counter, most of the time.

My issue is the matter of the very specifically oddly stacked decks that I draw from. I’ll play 8 games and on the 9th game, I’ll draw a card that I completely forgot that I even had in the deck, and it just happens to be one that’s pretty damn good. And it’s not a matter of playing/losing 4 round games (they happen a lot now and days). I rarely surrender and most of my games last 12+ rounds so it’s not a matter of “I’m never seeing the cards I need in the first 3 draws.” It’s more like “Huh. I haven’t seen X card after drawing half the deck, going on 8 games now.”

Having 2 copies of a card in a deck of 40 means I have 38 chances to draw anything but those cards. Not seeing them for the first 20 draws, for 8 games in a row? Either that’s an algorithm stacking decks to fail or that’s some insanely bad luck lol.

Which honestly, I’d believe both.

[Z0mbie]

Originally posted by puschit:

Sigh.
There is an algorithm in play, yes, and that's the ladder ... you get paired against players of your same level and there are different decks and metas in different levels. FM is a threshold for many players they can barely take and some just can't. And at the end of a month you'll get thrown back to rank 6, so you'll have to fight against all the sharks again until they become FM again, which may throw you back to rank 7 or 8 temporarily.
And THAT means, these are the ranks where serious play begins! Everything below that is the wooden league. Decks are vastly different.

Additionally, everybody, whether he admits it or not and whether he likes it or not, DOES have a skill cap. A ladder system will sooner or later have moved you to the rank/place that roughly matches your skill - which is the sole purpose of a ladder!
But way too many players think of the ladder as something that they can and should constantly climb until they are number 1. Which just doesn't work in a game where for every winner there will always be a loser. Also, even more players think they are better than average - which, again, is impossible. Both of these false expectations are challeneged when that player hits his skill cap rank ... and then he is looking for explanations. Which usually means blaming non-existant malicious algorithms that are designed to specificially screw them (and nobody else).
That's the sad story if every single competitive online game out there. Design your own game, implement the simplest ladder system and let true randomness decide - I guarantee you that there will be countless players writing complaints like the OP just did.

This is reference post. I'll just link to it from now on.

It’s not the skill or the ladder that I’m talking about though. I’m for sure not the best player, obviously lol. I’ll still do something and immediately realize I should have done something better. It’s the consistently bad draws. My current deck I’m running right now is 22 units, 15 orders and 2 counters. It’s not 50/50, but units should have higher odds to draw. But a lot of games have the orders stacked together in the deck, consistently. Like it’s organized by type.

I’m collecting data and figuring it all out though.

[puschit]

Do that, but keep in mind that you need rather big sample sizes. True randomness does NOT mean roughly equal distribution, it'll be all over the place. You need to record hundreds of games to get reliable averages and the conditions must be all the same. But I applaud that you are trying to collect actual data ! :)

[sushi_komplett]

Originally posted by Z0mbie:

Originally posted by sushi_komplett:

A question: Is the deck that you play a copy (from the Kards website decklist, a tournament list or a similar source) or is it self-designed?

Self designed. I really, really hate playing meta, copy/paste decks. It takes the fun out of it for me and it makes things entirely predictable for the person I’m playing against.

Unfortunately, there’s so many well known meta decks that have been in circulation for so long without any fixing, you almost have to build your customize your custom deck to counter those popular meta decks specifically. But I can deal with Japandicap all day. Those are a dime a dozen and easy to counter, most of the time.

My issue is the matter of the very specifically oddly stacked decks that I draw from. I’ll play 8 games and on the 9th game, I’ll draw a card that I completely forgot that I even had in the deck, and it just happens to be one that’s pretty damn good. And it’s not a matter of playing/losing 4 round games (they happen a lot now and days). I rarely surrender and most of my games last 12+ rounds so it’s not a matter of “I’m never seeing the cards I need in the first 3 draws.” It’s more like “Huh. I haven’t seen X card after drawing half the deck, going on 8 games now.”

Having 2 copies of a card in a deck of 40 means I have 38 chances to draw anything but those cards. Not seeing them for the first 20 draws, for 8 games in a row? Either that’s an algorithm stacking decks to fail or that’s some insanely bad luck lol.

Which honestly, I’d believe both.

I understand what you mean. The question which remains about the algorithm ist the Why.

Why should your deck be shuffled in a disruptive manner? What would be the gain of that? How would that alogrithm know which cards you need at a given time? Why does it not affect other players, or does it?
On the other hand, it is statistically possible that you play 8 games and not once draw the card you wait for. It's unlikely, yes. But so is throwing 20 dice and not rolling a single six. It just happens.

Here is a different perspective on that “Wall” you mention:
I play the game for about two years now. I like to play self-constructed decks on ladder. And at some rank - also depending on the current meta - many of these decks stop to work. A deck would bring me, for example, to rank 5 and from there on I would not make any further progress. The win/lose rate of the deck would drop to a point where using it would become tedious and frustrating. I’m sure though that this is not due to an algorithm. Instead I would encounter too many other decks which had also made it to that given rank and which were simply better than my own deck. Even though my deck could potentially win, it was not consistent or flexible or strong enough to deal with the opposition in a reliable manner.
You say that your draws are sometimes great sometimes trash but consistently random. That might simply not be good enough for a ladder deck meant to go beyond a certain rank.

Many people build their deck with this thought in mind (I definitely did and sometimes still do):
“If I draw this card and then this card and then play them in the right order, I win.”

But a better way to think is this:
“This card and this card are very good, but I might never draw them at all, so I still need enough other cards that make me win.”

I guess what I want to say with this is: Perhaps there are ways for you to make your deck more flexible and yourself more independent from specific draws. :)

[flobayern87]

Originally posted by Z0mbie:

Originally posted by puschit:

Sigh.
There is an algorithm in play, yes, and that's the ladder ... you get paired against players of your same level and there are different decks and metas in different levels. FM is a threshold for many players they can barely take and some just can't. And at the end of a month you'll get thrown back to rank 6, so you'll have to fight against all the sharks again until they become FM again, which may throw you back to rank 7 or 8 temporarily.
And THAT means, these are the ranks where serious play begins! Everything below that is the wooden league. Decks are vastly different.

Additionally, everybody, whether he admits it or not and whether he likes it or not, DOES have a skill cap. A ladder system will sooner or later have moved you to the rank/place that roughly matches your skill - which is the sole purpose of a ladder!
But way too many players think of the ladder as something that they can and should constantly climb until they are number 1. Which just doesn't work in a game where for every winner there will always be a loser. Also, even more players think they are better than average - which, again, is impossible. Both of these false expectations are challeneged when that player hits his skill cap rank ... and then he is looking for explanations. Which usually means blaming non-existant malicious algorithms that are designed to specificially screw them (and nobody else).
That's the sad story if every single competitive online game out there. Design your own game, implement the simplest ladder system and let true randomness decide - I guarantee you that there will be countless players writing complaints like the OP just did.

This is reference post. I'll just link to it from now on.

It’s not the skill or the ladder that I’m talking about though. I’m for sure not the best player, obviously lol. I’ll still do something and immediately realize I should have done something better. It’s the consistently bad draws. My current deck I’m running right now is 22 units, 15 orders and 2 counters. It’s not 50/50, but units should have higher odds to draw. But a lot of games have the orders stacked together in the deck, consistently. Like it’s organized by type.

I’m collecting data and figuring it all out though.

Try going with only 10 to 12 orders and few less counters, and replace with units. Do a run of 20 games and see what your W/L rate is.