MTG Duel of the Planeswalkers 2013

[Pinky]

Yeah, your follow up was even more retarded than the sentence I quoted. So, your "solution" to an imbalanced game is to play it more. I'm sure you think that's brilliant or insightful or whatever.

Where have I accused you of anything?

I've been talking about why I like luck being in the game and why I think it's healthy for the game overall. This entire time I've been defending that I like luck. How is that irrational or inconsistent with the stance that I think it would be boring without it?



What I was saying is that everyone is playing with an element of chance, which is 100% true. Even the most finely tuned decks in the world get mana screwed sometimes.

That first part of my last (and this) post was at meer's delusional nonsense that was above my post. I don't want to bother quoting him if I can avoid it, easier for me that way. Sorry for the confusion.

And yeah, just about every nonathletic game outside of chess (and its spin offs) have some luck. But most have ways to reduce it to nil, especially games with a serious tournament community. As you said earlier, this set of MTG favors Jace. We both know that's because his cards (and blue in general) have the best control mechanics: from your graveyard to the opponent's library.

But I can't think of another competative game whose core rules are so influenced by luck as MTG. Really, the other day I had five consecutive games where 12-15 cards of the first 20 were lands, and I kept several in my hand just to pretend that I had something to play. It's good that I only spent $10 on this or I would be pissed.

[Jonathan Meer]

Yeah, your follow up was even more retarded than the sentence I quoted. So, your "solution" to an imbalanced game is to play it more. I'm sure you think that's brilliant or insightful or whatever.

If a game involves a mixture of skill and luck, then playing more games and determining the victor by virtue of whoever wins more games of a set is a prime means of lessening luck and emphasizing skill. Hence, most modern playoff systems (excepting American football).

Neither brilliant nor insightful, but an obvious solution well-implemented in most other competitive games.

[Pinky]

Comparing atheltic sports to card games shows just how clueless you are. Luck is a catch all used in sports to define a terrible mistake or series of mistakes on the part of the loser; there is no mystical element that causes a player to fumble the ball, it's just excuses for poor performance. Also, the more games that teams play the more money is made for franchise and stadium owners, and there's not enough teams in any sport to avoid identical match ups in a single season and still satisfy the income demands of multimillion dollar investors.

MTG involves real luck to an absurd degree. I'll repeat myself for the umpteenth time, hopefully for the last time: there is a reason that the best decks control the game's bad mechanics.

[Jonathan Meer]

If the set of all game-relevant factors (ranging from the mental acuity of the players to the humidity of the field, or temperature of the room) can be represented as R, and the set of all game-relevant factors directly attributable to skill can be represented as S, then S would be a subset of R, and what is left would be what is usually meant when one refers to 'luck'. That is, 'luck' (as defined both generally in terms of competitive sports, and within this conversation itself) is a negative definition rather than a positive definition (that is, the set of all game-relevant factors that are not directly attributable to skill).

A mistake in terms of competitive sports carries the connotation of blame, with the implication that the player who makes a mistake (or, say, in the case of baseball, an error) should not have made that mistake, but did so due to some lack of skill. Though there is some fudgery here (even the best make the occasional blunder), mistakes are what would typically be referred to as directly attributable to skill in some form, not in the sense that those players with great skill will never make mistakes, but that those players with great skill are less likely to make mistakes, or that their mistakes may be less costly in some way.

There are, however, game-relevant factors that are indeed ascribable to simple chance. If, for example, you take a risk in American football and commit to an aggressive blitz when the opposing team's outer WR is running a short outer-slant, the blitz will likely fail. This isn't due to any mistake on the defensive side, or any skill on the offensive side, but rather a coincidence that will probably lead to the advantage of the offensive side. Statistics being what they are (and American football being what it is), one game is not sufficient to even out these coincidences to determine who is really the 'better skilled'. Thus, the 'upset'. The idea of the upset does not necessarily imply that the losing team (though favored) played poorly, or that the winning team played well (though this is often the perception).

The third sentence in your first paragraph is irrelevant.

MTG doesn't involve an absurd amount of luck. It does, however, involve some. The proper way to mitigate that element and determine who of two players is the most skilled is not to bastardize the game mechanics into some boring-ass, sterilized shell, but rather to play a series of games (say, best of seven) with a robust side-deck mechanic.

Oh, and tit for tat, your father sucks dickaroni

[Pinky]

If you're forced by the rules to roll dice as a method of choosing your play, then it's luck. If you're making a strategically bad decision, it's your own damn fault. Penn State didn't look the other way for years while Sandusky was fucking little boys because he was lucky, it was because he was a really good coach.

Oh, wait, suddenly your play-lots-of-crappy-games clusterfuck has finally broken through to me. See, the other day I was overdrawing a metric ton of land cards. But tonight, I was drawing 2-3 lands in the first 20 cards. (for fucking real) But see, between the games where I drew too many and the new games where I drew too few, the average comes out to about 7-8 lands in the first 20 cards, which is perfectly normal. What an ideal system this is, all of my criticisms are now moot. Thanks for teaching me the joys of averages, meer.

Now stop.

Seriously.

In not-stupid news, I was about to stop playing altogether but I ran into some guys online that were using cards you can't unlock just by winning matches. After a minimal amount of browsing I found a list of ten leaked promotal codes that each unlock one card in all ten decks. They unlocked a lot of 4th cards of an identical set, or cards that are stronger than what you normally have, and many of them are holofoil. The codes are universal so it doesn't matter what platform you bought the game on.

http://www.toptiertactics.com/14452/even...d-unlocks/

[Jonathan Meer]

Oh, wait, suddenly your play-lots-of-crappy-games clusterfuck has finally broken through to me. See, the other day I was overdrawing a metric ton of land cards. But tonight, I was drawing 2-3 lands in the first 20 cards. (for fucking real) But see, between the games where I drew too many and the new games where I drew too few, the average comes out to about 7-8 lands in the first 20 cards, which is perfectly normal. What an ideal system this is, all of my criticisms are now moot. Thanks for teaching me the joys of averages, meer.

http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/hy...etric.aspx

Assuming a 60 card deck, where 20 cards are land (low-balling it), only 3% of games will have you drawing 3 lands or fewer in the first 20 cards.

Assuming the same 60 card deck, where 20 cards are again land, only 1.3% of games will have you drawing 11 lands or more in the first 20 cards.

Following up, the chance of these occurring twice in a row is the probability-factor 4.3% (0.043) squared, or 0.18% (0.0018).

Really, this whole argument is about you bitching about losing to the CPU on an unlucky draw. When you run the statistics, your concerns are easily mitigated by playing 5+ games as a set.

[Pinky]

When five in five games are ruined by bad draws, then under your view the best solution is to play more rather than want to fix the stupid rules.

"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." - Lawrence Peter Berra

[Jonathan Meer]

Under the statistics I listed above, the chances of five in five games being ruined by bad draws (where bad draws are defined as fewer than four lands in the first 20 cards, or greater than 10 lands in the first 20 cards) is roughly 0.0000147%. Reciprocated, 1 in 6802721.

"Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses." - Wikipedia

EDIT: Fun fact, assuming a typical Magic game takes 15 minutes, you would have to play non-stop for about 195 years to get five straight games of draws that poor.

[Vad]

Lol you're assuming that your deck is perfect. Assemble a shitty deck and your likelihood of drawing bad cards 5 times in a row is way higher than that.

[Jonathan Meer]

I'm not assuming the deck is perfect. I'm assuming the deck is built common-sensically.

inb4 lolol common sense is anything but

[Vad]

I'm not assuming the deck is perfect. I'm assuming the deck is built common-sensically.

inb4 lolol common sense is anything but

I'm not the person to be explaining this. All I know is that decks can consist of multiple colors and or a single color. Even if you use common sense you may get fucked.

Like playing a goblin red/fire deck that relies on shit tons of small creatures only to have a white deck play Wrath of God (I think? The card that kills all creatures on the table). There's shit you just can't predict.

[Super Buu]

... It's over? Aww. Well, that was epic.

I've been playing the demo for this today; turns out MtG is really fun once I get it. So I'll probably buy this at the end of the summer if it doesn't go on sale. But I had my ass kicked by the first 'boss' (the Earth guy) like five times so I think I may be the Worst MtG Player, or just ludicrously unlucky. Every time, he'd bring out that fucking Terra thing with 8/8 and I'd have nothing. NOTHING.

[Maruset]

Yeah, if he gets that out early it's kinda rough with the decks you get in the demo

[Pinky]

25 cards are land in Magic 2013. In a sixty card deck that is awfully close to half. You obviously don't know what you're talking about, meer. If you were really smart this alone would be enough to shut you up, but according to your average performance in the last few pages this is going to keep going on for a few more pages of inane posturing on your part.

[Jonathan Meer]

75% of that post is ad hominem, and the other 25% makes your '2-3 lands only bro srslyyyy' claim even more laughably unlikely, making my already absurd quoted statistics generous.

I repeat. 195 years of straight magic-playing. Go home.

[Maruset]

This kind of reminds me of the people complaining about the 4% crit mastery in LoL with Gangplank. Sometimes, however rarely, luck would just hand him a tremendous early advantage by way of crits and completely crush his lane. Super rare, but super frustrating at the same time because it had nothing to do with skill on anyone's part.

[Vad]

Having only 2 -3 lands in your deck is suicide...

[Pinky]

75% of that post is ad hominem, and the other 25% makes your '2-3 lands only bro srslyyyy' claim even more laughably unlikely, making my already absurd quoted statistics generous.

I repeat. 195 years of straight magic-playing. Go home.

Your numbers are blatantly wrong, and you're still trying to use them to "disprove" what actually happened. Meer, you are a parody of the pseudointellectual. Part of me wants to believe you are trolling, but another part says you are being completely serious. Can you crunch the numbers on which possibility is most likely to be true?

[Jonathan Meer]

Not sure if you've ever participated in a proper, intelligent discussion, but you don't just get to say 'You're wrong' and walk off. Care to break down my math and show the mistake?

[Super Buu]

Did they just put the price down? I could have sworn it was like £12.99 before, now it's £6.99, but there's no 50% off or anything. Was it always that cheap, and I'm just high and have been imagining it was more expensive than it is? The 2012 version is £15.