I run an lgs and we have been getting paper standard firing again. It’s great! Haven’t really had a standard event since covid. Format is really solid right now
As someone who has worked in video games development for 22 years, I would be very impressed if Wizards actually managed to figure out how to do many of these things.
As someone who is only lightly familiar with programming and has been gaming for 30 years, the conspiracies around video game programming in general is wild. Yes, the developers are monitoring your pulls and screwing you over intentionally. Yes you are being forced into garbage match ups. Yes every single game is predetermined and skill has no factor. How does the programming work? Uhhhhhh.... Don't look behind the curtain okay?
For what its worth, I think the last one would actually be much easier in Arena than paper. Rather than "good" cards, it would just be based on craft rate. They could fairly easily have a standard pull rate for each card in each rarity and an individual modifier that is applied as cards are crafted over the course of time if they really did want to limit how many of the most played cards are pulled from packs. I'm not saying its definitely true or anything, but if I were going to make this one happen then this is how I would do it at least. Especially because outside of specific regions there is no need to disclose pull rates for anything out of a pack.
oh no crim is wrong the hand smoother is in arena in every bo1, including events and draft ( which means you can run 1 less land in bo1 draft then in bo3 draft) the rules goes following by wizards themself "The system draws an opening hand from each of two separately randomized copies of the decks, and leans towards giving the player the hand with the mix of spells and lands (without regard for color) closest to average for that deck." wizards confirmed it for be in every bo1 format, you draw two hand and gets the better one, meaning you still can hit 0 or 7 lands but its MUCH rarer. as example in bo1 i had in the last year zero times 0 or 7 lands, while in bo3 it happened sometimes
I don’t think ‘closer to the average’ means better? If you run less lands it will give you the hand closer to the average which would have less lands right? Unless there’s a one land break point that doesn’t change it by a whole card in the averages
@@counterpoint1494generally you want to have lands in your opening hand and after that not as much. So lower amount of lands gives you more spells, you run more lands so it is easier to get lands in the early game so you can play the game at all
@@counterpoint1494 A more appropriate way to look at it is by judging how likely a good starting hand is, in terms of land to nonland ratios. Generally, 3:4 is perfect, no matter what your deck does. Lets compare a normal draft deck's odds of each possible ratio with and without the hand smoother: 40 cards, 17 land. Opening hands without the smoother, we have a 1.3% chance for 0 lands, 9.2% for 1, 24.5% for 2, 32.3% for 3, 22.6% for 4, 8.4% for 5, 1.5% for 6, and 0.1% for 7. The smoother looks at two random hands and chooses the one that had a higher probability of occurring, so the math gets very very complicated here, but it's still relatively easy to do the math for the most and least common possibilities. The chance of getting 3 lands goes up to a whopping 54.2%, and the chance of that 7 land hand goes down to 0.0001%. Effectively, what the smoother does increase the gap in probability between "bad" land:nonland ratios and "good" land:nonland ratios. Roughly 80% of all hands without the smoother should have 2, 3, or 4 lands. With the smoother, that should go up to 96%. To fully understand the math here, we need to know the break point at which 2 becomes more common than 3, as that's actually when the issue you're talking about comes up. Well, skipping the complicated process to get there, I can tell you that dropping the land count down to 15 still has 3 being more common than 2, while 14 finally crosses that line. Effectively, in a 40 card deck, the hand smoother allows you to cut 2 lands from your deck without it negatively impacting the consistency of your opening hand.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 ah. Thank you for doing the work on that. I figured that there would be a break point where you could cut a land or two without negatively reducing the average hand in a measurable way otherwise OP point wouldn’t make sense
Wotc has already been caught and admitted to some forms of altering draws/hands/pairings. It’s not wild to think a billion dollar company (hasbro) would have the means to alter/program other things. Seth you answered your own question as to why they would do these things. To make more money . If it takes you longer to reach mythic . Your are playing the game more . Arena is only making money if the app is open….
I think main reason for all those theories is the amount of games we play.. when we used to go for FNM once a week and play few random games during week it did not sting so much, but when people clock 10+ games every day all these bad shuffles, muligans etc. pile up
I pay lots of money to Arena and somehow get stuck in platinum 4 limited every time! So yeah that conspiracy isn’t real, but hand smoother and hidden rank messing with matchups is VERY MUCH real.
I mean you made a lot of fun of the conspiracy where if you spend money then your matchups will be easier. But Activision demonstrably _is already doing that_, even patenting the technique. And yes, the headlines weren't pretty. Did it matter though? Not really, money keeps racking in so..
not what the patent says. "The microtransaction engine may match a more expert/marquee player with a junior player to encourage the junior player to make game-related purchases of items possessed/used by the marquee player" this means they will put you against players with good decks so that.
@@swiftdragonriderUnfortunately it also says "For example, if the player purchased a particular weapon, the microtransaction engine may match the player in a gameplay session in which the particular weapon is highly effective, giving the player an impression that the particular weapon was a good purchase"
@@TheAlmightyGoiter When you say 200+ card jankpile, is it actually just a pile of jank? Or are you trying to assert that because it's a large deck it necessarily must be jank?
@@dontmisunderstand6041I mean, since battle of wits isn't on the client, it will be. Even if it has some good cards, with decks of that size, they don't have enough good cards to maintain the quality not to mention the lack of synergy. I've seen it a decent amount in unranked and the lower levels of ranked play.
As an MTGA player I would love to give paper a try, but $200+ average per deck is just silly and prohibitive. I think the paper community would explode if it wasn't so ridiculous.
yep. I have 1 paper deck im making and its going to be proxies because its be around $700 otherwise. but if a full deck was $60 I'd build like 10 without proxies limited and packs are the problem, wizards doesn't make more money off selling a sheoldred or selling draft chaff in those packs. they just need chase cards to exist because they can't or won't sell print to order cards
Given the existance of the hand smoothing algorithm, it wouldn’t surprise me that they could alter the frequency of drawn cards. As to the why, the answer is obvious: Wizards is doing everything possible to make Magic players miserable, while taking all the money to themselves
Regarding the last point, note that with play boosters there are more uncommons, therefore it is harder to get some (even with the chance to open more uncommons in pack). I opened 3 boxes and for some of the uncommons there were only two. In previous sers 3 boxes usually gave me a playset of almost all the uncommons.
Stopping people from ranking up easily (and getting the rewards) encourages people to play more, and to spend more/play more. They want the game to be fun enough that you play, and tough enough that you want to throw money at them. That's the potential motivation to make bubble games specifically hard.
I’m not so much in for the conspiracy theories but I have an untappedgg backed up 83% on the draw rate this season. I am a control player for the most part, but if I switch to mono red I instantly get to go first. There is definitely something built in to give aggro decks a higher on the play percentage. This is not a one season thing, I have been watching this since the launch of M21 and I have never had an on the play percentage of over 40% in any season.
The idea behind Wizards giving you worse matchups to keep your rank down is to keep you playing longer and enganged longer in the hopes to spend more money in their gacha system. This is tech that is known and utilized in other games. Other games with PvP matchmaking will match you based on your performance with lower performing individuals hoping that it'll somehow balance out on the other side rather than just true cross-rankings. Hell, Ive been in SIlver after a break on MTGA and have ended up playing people ranked in Platinum while using old set decks. Plus, per Wizards themselves, they literally do cater hands in Bo1 matchups based on curve to give a faster playing experience.
Hey Seth, talking about the Laelia deck and also Tibalt's Trickery made me remember a match I had one time. I played against a deck that was The First Sliver, Tibalt's Trickery, Cultivator Colossus, and all lands, including the whole Gate package. If you cast the First Sliver, you cascade into Tibalt's, spin into Cultivator, and win with Maze's End next turn.
Not saying that it's true but a reason that wizards could be inclined to push you into "bad draws" for winning to much would be in any non-free game mode. Doing so would actually just directly put more money into their pockets by limiting the amount you win. Not all game modes are F2P. I also have screenshots of drafting and getting qued against a numbered mythic person while I was in gold, cant imagine that had anything to do with elo. MAYBE it had something to do with the time of day/month and there being NOONE else in the que.
The counter to that is, for premium game modes they want players to feel like they got their money's worth from the transaction, so making their paying players lose would lose them money.
The answer to most of the Qs regarding what does WotC have to gain from land flooding you or matching you with an opponent who can counter you just before you rank us is easy. WotC has a bad habit of self sabotaging themselves and that's how they roll! But realistically, my guess is to force player to stay in the grind as much as possible hence why you're "forced" to lose after a small win streak. Also the HAnd smoother is a real thing that WotC confirmed themselves for Bo1
I've said it before in other "conspiracy" videos. It's all about game retention and play time. You're one win from Mythic, here's 7 lands in a row. You lost. Now you HAVE to keep playing to get that rank you were sooooo close to getting. Now their numbers are padded. Players are playing X more time now on our game.
@@bigpablo673 They don't need it to be everyone. They just need a larger total additional amount of time spent than time lost from players who do simply log off when they get bad luck once. Naturally, there will be the people who do spend more time because of it, and naturally there will also be the people who spend less time because of it, however there's also the group whose time spent won't change regardless of this decision. It's a numbers game. Not that I buy into this conspiracy theory at all. My own personal experiences do enough to discredit it, I'd need some convincing evidence to overcome that.
Modern is in an odd place. If enough people like the same deck as you it's gonna start getting banned. People confusing how much a deck is played vrs how much it actually wins is not gonna go well for long, I think.
My Arena conspiracy theory is that the reason you can’t trade cards, or redeem digital cards for paper cards, is because Wizards makes more money this way. 😅
Regarding the new deck wins theory, I think this one IS real, but not for any conspiracy reason. Arena does actually have some kind of deck strength rating. It's why when you play unranked with a new player or jank deck you fight against other new player and jank decks, but bring a Tier 1 deck and you'll play against other Tier 1 decks. Your new deck is unsorted. Arena doesn't know how to qualify your deck. So it starts by matching you against low-tier decks and sees how you do. As you win it starts putting you in higher and higher deck power brackets until you reach parity
Just to mention that the scenario where you brew somethig weird and get easier oppoenents isn't a concpiracy. WoTC already admitted to this; variables for matchup are ELO and deck power. And as far as I recall, that was not limited to casual play (though happy to stand corrected). So, if your deck is wonky you are more likely to get faced against wonky decks. One could argue that is already pernicious.
I would like to point out how you guys claim it would be very hard for arena to do some of these things then say that it is able to somehow quantify jank in a deck and match it against other jank decks is somewhat contradictory.
Regarding the 'Mythic uncommon' theory - I've opened a Throne of Eldrane booster box and got 0 Mystical Disputes and 1 Drown in the Loch. I've also opened more than 10 M20 boosters and gotten 0 Veils of Summer etc. I'm not sure if I believe in the theory though, but I do know I'm super unlucky with uncommons in particular for some reason.
I've also be very unlucky with Streets of New Capenna, I've opened around 20-25 boosters, got 0 An Offer You Can't Refuse and 5 Wingshield Agent, both blue uncommons
I'm not sure how true the assessment is that LCI has had more impact on MtG compared to Karlov Manor. What do we really have out of LCI - Tidebinder? A few standard related creatures? Cavern of Souls is a reprint, so I think looking back we will not be considering it to be LCI impact. Karlov Manor's lands on their own probably outweigh LCI as a set tbh longterm, they're going to be played in most formats for the next 10 years at least and in EDH, they will be present forever. Then you have the surprise success story with Vein Ripper and Vampires, you have Leyline that has found success in way more powerful format, you have EDH cards that we will see 20 years from now (Crime Novelist, Archdruids Charm). You have Mana Leak 2024 which is massive (No More Lies), Slime Against Humanity might be one of the more iconic cards to be printed at Common in the last couple of years, Insidious roots might start its own archetype in Golgari... IDK, it's not like a GOAT set or anything like that, but I think it is actually already being more impactful than LCI which is only remembered because of one powerful reprint and a Tidebinder
The hand smoother/shuffler isn’t rigged, but it is poorly designed. As mentioned in several comments, it draws two hands and basically gives you the one it deems “more playable” after considering your deck based on preprogrammed metrics (curve, land to spell ratio etc.)The problem is it doesn’t actually know what a playable hand is for specific decks, so if you deck doesn’t have a traditional curve or mana requirements, it’ll prioritize much stranger, less functional hands. This issue is exacerbated when it picks “correctly” for an opponent, often leading to very mismatched experiences, and thus the feeling that it is rigged. When it correctly “smooths” an opponent’s draw, but fails for yours, it’s definitely a feel bad. Ideally they’d get rid of the smoother and let people experience real variance in best of one. Best of three matches feel much less lopsided.
The "one win away loss" one is even more simple than how memory works. On average you are going to be matched against someone else who is "one win away" or so when you are in that position. Since one of you has to lose, that will result in one of you getting the "one win away loss," more often. Then it's just a matter of humans overestimating how often it happens, only remembering the more significant/bad things, etc. But statistically its just the normal way it goes based on a competitive game.
Why would you assume that to be true? When grinding for ranks, it's extremely uncommon to come across an opponent in the same TIER of the rank as you, let alone matching your progress. For diamond and platinum, there are 24 different values your opponents' progress could have. Coming across someone with an equal measure to yours should be extremely unlikely.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 so, the matchmaker specifically will attempt to match you this way. If you have found it unlikely to happen then you are probably playing at a time or for a format that isn't very populated, or playing limited which has a different matchmaking weight which does make this unlikely to happen. Or alternatively, you are playing at a time of the month where your rank is less populated (ie lower ranks later in the month). This is not an assumption, btw, this is literally a known weight of the matchmaking system. All other things equal, it will attempt to match you with someone at the exact same rank if possible.
@@tahlialysse Known in what way? Known as in a bunch of paranoid schizophrenics on the internet "know" the world is out to get them, or known as in the people who make the game literally described how it works? I ask because one of those is how most Arena conspiracy theories go, and the other is the shuffler.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 literally how the people who make the game tell us. This isn't hard info to find. There are parts of matchmaking they aren't explicit about, but this is the one thing that is explicitly stated. It will try to match people of the same rank who are queued at the same time if it can, barring the undisclosed other elements stopping it. We theoreize there is some weight given to not queuing into someone you just faced (obviously still possible to do, hence the assuming some weight is given), and we also know there is an undisplayed MMR for players that can also factor in, but have no details about how that is calculated or what weight is given to it. So back to my initial point, pairing against someone else who is "one win away" is not unlikely to happen. Will it happen every time? Ofc not, but mathematically it is selected for within matchmaking to some degree, which will cause it to happen some amount more often than expected average. What I also know from talking with arena devs is that the goals of the matchmaker are twofold: they want to have reasonably quick queue times and also want to match people who are ranked similarly. So these are the two things which can pull in opposite directions (they aren't allowed to talk more specifics than the general ethos behind decisions). So that's the stated goal of the matchmaker to balance those two qualities, even if it may not balance them perfectly.
A question I've had since you guys started doing it is. Now that your doing paper magic for Commander clash how are you doing viewer decks? Are you getting them in the mail and sending them back after? Building with your personal collection/what you can easily acquire for the episode?
Likely building with their personal collection, based on the last episode. There's going to be a lot of card buying and we know they've sent cards to each other too of course.
Thanks for the great cast! Ive heard of most of these. The one that I identify with is playing a new deck, you'll win 10 in a row as Seth would say "Maybe this deck is the truth, taking down the best deck in standard". And then lose 20 in a row. I don't think the meta is learning so fast, because this will happen in the matter of a day or so. I think peoeple's trust of Arena is like a digital casino, how much can you trust playing the house. On the flip side, with the amount of money that Hasbro produces, it wouldn't be impossible to create win bands based on account status. This is programmable. whether they do it or not is a different story, but it is possible
As someone who has been trying to regrow the local std scene at my store, it’s nice to hear others say they are enjoying the format! I feel less alone in my joy of the game😁
Veteran amulet titan player here. One of our worst possible matchups is mill. There are so many one-offs that need to be in the deck to be able to combo kill, where if they get milled, you just can't win
They should make a Thoughtseize variant that also looks at the top card of your opponent's library and gives you the option to mill it if you don't like that haha
That would actually be really sick on a 6 mana Dimir planeswalker. "+1 Target player reveals their hand. You choose a nonland card from it. That player discards that card. Surveil the top of target player's library. You lose 2 life." -X all creatures get -X/-X until end of turn -8 exile all graveyards, you may cast spells from among the exiled cards this turn without paying their mana cost.
So on the "Wizards reduces the availability of cards they think will be good" this is probably the closest a conspiracy will come to being true because it was true in other cards. It's a practice known as short printing, and usually the stated reason is due to as Crim said the way sheets are printed and cut. This was a thing in Yugioh for a very, very long time (and it might still be a thing for side products? unsure), but it's not really confirmable at the box level. You generally need to be opening cases and cases of product to get a good feeling on short prints, and that usually only happens with big stores. Yugioh has some really infamous short printing stories: Nekroz of Brionac and Nekroz of Valkyrus in Secret Forces, Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring in Maximum Crisis, and Eldlich the Golden Lord + Adamancipator Researcher in Secret Slayers. So yeah, that could just flatly be true. Figured you might find that interesting.
Haven't even listed to the Arena theories but drawing the card you put on the bottom is real. I've legit tested it with singleton decks in 60 card formats
Really quick historical lesson. TCGs have a very long history of "short printing" cards they expect to have an impact. Yugioh is notorious for this, and I believe MTG, at least, used to do this as well. I can easily see it being a thing digitally, as well as in paper
As for "hacking" the client ... everything your game client knows about the game state is stored in memory. If the opponents hand is in the local game state then you could write very simple software to expose that. Other than that everything that is controlled on the server is infinitely less likely to be exploitable and would require real access to secured systems.
The surgical extraction/extripate build is extra fun when you add "the end" and "test of talents" Rip your opponents deck apart (The new deadly cover up looks good too, especially because it can hit basic lands)
Unless you are trying to make top mythic for free tournament entries, the rewards for anything over plat at the end of the month are so meagre I can't see why people get frustrated thinking wotc is cheating them out of 3k gold and a pack or two.
One conspiracy theory is that Wotc R&D is developing recent sets based around BO1 more than BO3. The more fast-paced a limited format is, the more games you end up playing, and therefore spending more gems/gold/money on Arena
I love Standard at the moment too. I don't love that certain cards are still around and will be around longer, but there are so many viable options that I see each particular one less often; as more sets are released it kind of solves itself. MKM is a weird set where the 'good' cards don't line up well with it's flavor, so it feels off, but it has so many enablers of various archetypes, and some really entertaining combos and value engines that lead to a broader range of decks and more interesting games.
With regards to the hand smoother, it's important to note that people do not like truly random outcomes. There are a multitude of examples of this, and a simple one is that the shuffler function on most audio players are not truly random, because people hate when the same song is played twice in a row and think THAT is proof that it isn't random.
If they do have a shuffling thing to screw you outta games, it would only be on the drafts cause thats something that you spend currency for. I don't believe they do, but if they did, that'd be it. Mana flooding you or screwing you at 3 or 4 wins so you don't have enough to draft again.
People who create the tools are not the people who use the tools. In regards to the hacker discussion. This is a fairly known thing that happens across online gaming, people make and sell tools to cheat at games. Pretty much any game you can think of. Even games that aren't particularly popular, and especially games that are incredibly popular. I don't particularly buy into specific variations of the "my opponent hacked the game" argument. Like, very obviously nobody's going to waste the time hacking to see their opponents' hands when they can literally just prevent the opponent from playing cards instead just as easily.
On the topic of easier matches after building a new deck, I wanted to try Invasion of Tarkir in Explorer. The card seemed pretty powerful, and there are tons of good dragons to play alongside it. So, I build the deck and hop onto the ladder. My very first match is against Green Devotion. The deck that plays a 4/5 reach and a 5/6 reach. I hadn't played against devotion for almost 3 weeks at that point, and the first game with 4/4 flyers the deck is a complete counter...
For hand info (or info in private zones), it would only be possible if that info was actually sent to the other persons computer. Usually that is never done unless it is specifically needed, so any peeking into other zones is likely impossible due to the persons game client not physically having that info. An example of this was LoL, where enemies positions were sent to the client even if they were not in sight range, so hacks could pull this info and display it, but the code was changes so this was not possible (or as easy).
The reasoning behind conspiracy about the winstreak decks would not be as Seth suggested trying to sell newest set but instead trying to convince ppl to craft bad rares and mythics for these jank decks. That being said i could believe any deck can get to 7 wins in a row, even the all lands deck (like due to opponent crashing). Having a lucky win streak does not represent the winrate of a deck, you could have 7 wins in a row while having 9-60 win/lose ratio. With enough jank decks being played some of them will get lucky win streaks. For example in a lot of random decks i run Test Of Talents which is often auto-win vs sorcery based decks. Some jank decks have surprising win rate vs specific meta decks and in that case you don't have to get that lucky to get paired vs them 7 times in a row.
not saying they do, but since you asked how it would be possible, this is the kinda easy way i thought of to make your matches easier for a new deck: if arena had deck specific hidden MMR. Your rank might be diamond/1500, but if your hidden MMR is set to 1000 with a heavy multiplier for the first few wins you get with the deck (to get you back to your appropriate rank) that would make your matches easier/pair you against other players with new decks. decks you play alot would have a very similar mmr to your actual visible rank. similarly, if you spent money in the store, they could bump all your decks' hidden MMR down a bit to make your next matches easier. Heavy play would obviously dilute this effect and would make sense as to why crim and seth don't really see its effect but someone who only spends money rarely notice more. otherwise, giving you a few games of the Bo1 hand smoother in Bo3 would be another invisible, subtle, and easy way to give you a boost for spending money. Not that I want these conspiracy theories to continue or anything, but "how would you do that" is just not a very good argument imo.
Track printing, it's a thing. There were websites dedicated to tracking how the packs were loaded. Certain cards are printed more, and one rare is printed even more than that. Green Myojin from Neon Dynasty was the rare from that set ... Pulled like 5 of them myself, from 7 packs. Everything else was diverse enough, but I just kept getting foil and non foil of green Myojin. They know the good cards, especially reprints and pushed cards. Sure, there are curve balls, but they know the knobs of power to turn, and when they've created a monster. I've opened dozens of boxes to receive multiple copies of garbage rares while chase cards are either never pulled or lucky to get 1. It's easy as pie to rig drop percentage on Arena.
The "new decks win more" theory, could be a hidden MMR thing. Meaning, if you play the same deck over and over, your MMR fluctuates depending on W/L, picking a different deck, might either reset the MMR or at least change it favorably, towards you, so a new player can actually learn the game. While I still doubt it being the case, there is a possibility for this to be a thing. And I am pretty sure short printing is a thing. We know this is true for example YGO. And WotC doesn't need to predict it, they just need to assume, if a card will be impactful. Why? Because a bad card that is short printed is something no one will notice.
Felidar Guardian does combo with itself.... I dont know what kind of deck plays this as I never played during this meta. However playing #2 of Felidar, you can flicker them endlessly. Everyone reading this card should see this coming.
Exclusivity is the primary valuation for high ranks, so yes, there is active monetary incentive to keep the upper ranks thinner so it's more desirable, and those in the lower ranks spend their money on new decks or cards in order to reach them. You don't have to monitor that. Just build it into the matchmaking that already exists.
You are supposed to have a 50% win rate so you get worse matchups when on a winning streak. They could easily change the drop rates on rares and mythics after seeing what's being sought after. I'm also positive decks over 100 cards are more likely to draw more action
Someone was in CalebD's chat a few months ago wanting to know how to learn Magic, and I told them Arena, and the said "No, I don't want to play against hackers." First of all, if you're a new player, you probably aren't playing against Mythic rank hackers. Secondly, I haven't seen any evidence of hacking. Even if there were, surely Wizards fixes it.
My conspiracy theory is that arena matches your brawl opponents based on your commanders colors. I only seem to play red white when I play red white, or abzan / abzan, or golos vs mono black
For the last one I feel like I personally haven’t experienced that especially on arena - I really haven’t opened that many packs on arena for mkm and I pulled 3 of the Dimir surveil land which I would expect they value as higher
I've played so many card games/digital card games. A lot Arena players are just kind of dumb tbh no other game I have ever played had so many people who don't understand variance or think that there's some conspiracy keeping them out of silver two
My conspiracy is having rigged matchups sometimes. Like i have fun and then for example i started running into a lot of Goblin Charbelcher decks so i've made deck aimed at completely destroying them and then i never see Goblin Charbelcher so i swap back to the other one and i start seeing Goblin Charbelcher decks again. Obviously when sth like that happens and we know Brawl matches ppl up by what Arena considers same tiers, my mind is thinking that ladder also uses some hidden tiered matchmaking and that's the reason i never am against a deck i built against. Ofc the logical answer is my luck is just garbage.
I've thought about the conspiracy where WOTC makes some cards harder to pull than others on arena. I understand Seth's argument that you can't predict what will be good most of the time, however, they can very easily predict at least two different patterns that they could employ to end up making more money in the end. I open between 50 and 100 packs every set, usually 90ish. I open them all at once, so it's not especially hard to see patterns if you're looking. 1. In my experience it is significantly more difficult to pull rare lands than it should be. With around 60 rares per set, and a land cycle consisting of typically 5 different variants you should average about 1 in 12 packs. I understand there is variance to this, but I'm not sure if I've EVER opened that many or more while ripping packs digitally. It should be pulling roughly 6-7 out of 100 and it seems to be about half that usually. I've opened as few as 1 out of 90 packs. WOTC knows you need the rare lands, so its a pretty easy call to make them more rare (and make more money!) 2. It's pretty easy for wizards to predict which rares are going to be MEME/BULK typically. And they might miss on this once in awhile but if they intentionally pick some of those and make them MORE common they are doing the same as making good rares less common. Every set I open playsets of garbage rares that I will never play. If you watch for it you will see it. I am convinced this is more than just conspiracy. More garbage rares=less good rares=more wildcards needed or more packs purchased. And yes, there could be confirmation bias/negativity bias going on but being aware of those two possibilities should reduce them by a substantial amount.
The Thoughtseize bug can't be real because right before you play it, their deck will have a fixed ordering and there's no way the game can know what you'll choose before you see their cards so in the absence of a shuffle effect being used before they draw for turn, they're going to draw the same card that was on top of their deck before you played Thoughtseize. The only scenario where such a bug could exist would be if you Thoughtseize and choose, then they search their deck somehow and shuffle before their turn and a bug causes the Thoughtseized card to land on top in the shuffle but it's so unlikely since the effect which shuffled the deck would be completely separate from the use of Thoughtseize. This would be a more believable theory if Thoughtseize had another effect as well which caused the deck to shuffle.
Re: short-printing certain cards. The same rules regarding bias work here. Let's assume that, based on the printing process, some uncommons are more rare than others. If those rare uncommons happen to be cards that nobody cares about, then nobody notices. If, on the other hands, those rare uncommons happen to be cards that are in high demand, then *everyone* notices. Conversely, if there were to be an uncommon that was especially 'un-rare' (i.e., common), then nobody notices and/or everyone is happy.
Hearthstone had a long time conspiracy about buying packs meant increasing the packs odds as opposed to the “free” packs. Even though the odds should be the same.
Seeing seth shit on mkm and then immediately get shut down by crim was awesome. I feel like I've heard a lot of weird mkm hate when the set was *amazing* for standard and made some p sweet impact in every format. Novice inspector did a bunch for glitters affinity in pauper, vein ripper for vampires, domain aggro is tier one now bc of leyline of the guildpact, and cryptic coat is seeing play even up to legacy... like how much more impact do you want a set to have before it isn't weak anymore lol. That's not even mentioning archdruids charm or codebreaker or any of that. I also play both domain aggro and dimir crime, so maybe I'm biased, but man this set just slaps so hard. My favorite since I've started playing.
About the see-opponent's-hand conspiracy, I will speak as a video game developer, with 99.99% certainty that your game does not locally have the information of cards you are not supposed to know. That is, no amount of hacking will get Arena to show you your opponent's hand.
1:00:11 rigging pulls on arena would the easiest thing to rig out of all these things though. If a card gets better than they can decrease pull rates 🤷♀️
I own about 12,000 MTG cards in paper... every single one is in a penny sleeve... virtually all from booster packs... I've learned my collection is also virtually worthless. I can probably sell my $1000 commander deck for more than 10,000 cards...
Didn't some game company conduct a study that showed that people are more likely to play more if they occasionally loose? I wouldn't put is past any game company to put an algorithm into their game that makes your more likely to loose.
23:31 acruallg titan is one if the best matchups for mill. If you randomly mill some of their titan targets like the singilsr sunhome and then you just win.
You missed the one about Shadows over Innistrad Remastered bonus Shadows of the Past cards dropping and a lower rate then Wizards says. Players on Reddit used a streamers unlocked account to open thousands of SoI:Remastered packs and their bonus card drop rates were way lower then they should have been.
Mtga ftp account player-(all instances are in best of 1 draft) I have experienced several recurring trends. 1) very good first match hands, no mulligan necessary mix of spells and land a curve 2) mid match 4-5 land clumps while opponent draws gas (no lands) 3)an outlier... 9swamp/8plains orzhov deck with no plains in the top 21 cards of my limited deck...? Reasons? Its not a conspiracy persay, Mtga just needs ftp players to not win. I've played limited for 20 years and not experienced randomness like this.
I dont know when this started but there was a time when you had an equal chance of pulling a given rare for a set. (if there were 60 rares in the set, each rare was 1/60 weighted when opening boosters.) Now we have different rarities for sought after cards. This isnt very healthy if you have to play Sheoldred and you need to afford 120usd to 240usd for only 4 pieces of paper. This why we are seeing with the rising costs of Standard (busted cards that have a lower supply and an inflated demand)(also other four drops don’t really compare if its not one of the few). Maybe someone can comment how Sheoldred isn’t an auto include for meta black decks but what is your deck doing if you are not playing Sheoldred and running black. (Show some tournament data if you are going to really comment).
not sure its a "conspiracy" but I don't trust the "Did you have fun" button. They're obviously using that screen to collect data, but to what end? We know the hand smoother exists. Could it be to seed opening hands or draw patterns (e.g. players have more fun when they draw a Planeswalker, players who don't draw a land in the first three turns and then lose don't have fun)?
The firts theory, the one of if you win too much you get hit with bad hands probably comes from FIFA players. EA has a patent of "dynamic difficulties" where if a player is winning too much, they make their soccer players miss even on sure fire shots to make sure the other player doesnt gets defeated like 0-7. This is something that they really do, to the point that I heard someone say "a 2-0 in the first half is a 2-2 in the second half". The idea of this is to keep someone in a loosing streak from getting away from the game as the dynamic difficulty WILL make them win a couple of games, keeping them hooked into the micro transactions. Since both games are zero sum games, I think the theory comes from not screwing someone who is winning a lot per se, but to give someone who is loosing a lot in the same event/rank a free win so they wont close the game in frustation. This is something that has been VASTLY criticized from FIFA games and EA official statement was something along the lines of "Yes we have the patent, but we promise we dont use it, wink wink". Of course for me in magic it doesnt happens, and the "conspiracy" can be easily explained with "variance + winning a lot puts you against more skilled opponents".
I'll be honest, I agree that WotC would literally need a psychic on par with the most powerful in Magic's lore to predict every card that was going to take over the world. However... they gotta know some of them, and at least can tell when a card is going to be a big hit or a staple. I think it's smart to assume that there are less of the powerhouse cards out there, even as just a reminder that you; a) don't need every single staple to play the game, and b) that chasing a mythic through a bunch of booster boxes is insane... That being said though, never put it past a company, who's convinced a large portion of their consumers the company is the greediest it's ever been, to take the chance on printing less of a card to keep the chase going... They literally did it publicly already, and the One of One Ring did it's job perfectly. I will say though, if they WERE doing this, why bother upshifting rarity of sought after cards and upsetting the player base when you could have just printed the cards at mythic quantity without changing a thing on it..?
that brewing a deck, it crushing it, then days later, it loses every game conspiracy.. yeah, that happens all the time to me. Not saying it's true, but it is a weird one.
I've got it on the 1 win away conspiracy theory. They do this to make you play more to try and achieve it. Then it becomes an addictive behavior that might get you to spend money upgrading your collection to hit that goal. (I say this jokingly.)
No crim hand smoother is in ALL best of one. What you forget is MOST players play Bo1 on Arena. Bo1 does some rather 'interesting' matchmaking and hand smoothing which throws players off.
All the conspiracies about keeping people stuck at a certain rank make sense in that they encourage you to keep players more games to hit the next rank. Typically the more someone plays the more likely they are to spend more money so WOTC is incentivised to design the game to keep people playing
The scry/thougthseize bug i can attest to cause i was playing a combo deck where one of the pieces was in my had and i scryed the 2nd one away and i still drew it despite seeing both copies of a 2 of.
I don't believe in any one Arena conspiracy but I DO believe if there was a surreptitious and convenient way for WOTC to make more money on Arena, they absolutely would do it.
SBMM is a thing in the video game industry. Why does it exist? Supposedly by making games feel fair. But how does it actually work? By stacking higher stat players against you the more you win. That is the ability to steer a players win/loss ratio, which ideally to them should be 50/50. They have crunched the numbers and that is the sweet spot to get people to buy into the game more. It is ABSOLUTLEY plausible that WotC is fixing matches by flipping mana ratio draw or literally putting you against people you have no chance with.
I run an lgs and we have been getting paper standard firing again. It’s great! Haven’t really had a standard event since covid. Format is really solid right now
Hanlon's razor, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" is also official WotC tagline.
However, never discount the existence of the stupidly malicious.
Hanlon's razor can be self-defeating. We just assume the guy who said it is a moron instead of actively trying to get people to make poor decisions.
LOLOLOLOL
As someone who has worked in video games development for 22 years, I would be very impressed if Wizards actually managed to figure out how to do many of these things.
They can't even get multiplayer and a spectator system to work no way they could
As someone who is only lightly familiar with programming and has been gaming for 30 years, the conspiracies around video game programming in general is wild. Yes, the developers are monitoring your pulls and screwing you over intentionally. Yes you are being forced into garbage match ups. Yes every single game is predetermined and skill has no factor. How does the programming work? Uhhhhhh.... Don't look behind the curtain okay?
@@nvvv_ Technology beyond the comprehension of the observer is magic
Be impressed, they've done some of these and more. Emotional highs and lows drive engagement.
@@projectedenable any proof at all?
For what its worth, I think the last one would actually be much easier in Arena than paper. Rather than "good" cards, it would just be based on craft rate. They could fairly easily have a standard pull rate for each card in each rarity and an individual modifier that is applied as cards are crafted over the course of time if they really did want to limit how many of the most played cards are pulled from packs.
I'm not saying its definitely true or anything, but if I were going to make this one happen then this is how I would do it at least. Especially because outside of specific regions there is no need to disclose pull rates for anything out of a pack.
oh no crim is wrong
the hand smoother is in arena in every bo1, including events and draft ( which means you can run 1 less land in bo1 draft then in bo3 draft)
the rules goes following by wizards themself
"The system draws an opening hand from each of two separately randomized copies of the decks, and leans towards giving the player the hand with the mix of spells and lands (without regard for color) closest to average for that deck."
wizards confirmed it for be in every bo1 format, you draw two hand and gets the better one, meaning you still can hit 0 or 7 lands but its MUCH rarer.
as example in bo1 i had in the last year zero times 0 or 7 lands, while in bo3 it happened sometimes
I don’t think ‘closer to the average’ means better? If you run less lands it will give you the hand closer to the average which would have less lands right? Unless there’s a one land break point that doesn’t change it by a whole card in the averages
Yes, it is designed as bad luck protection since its bo1 (bo3 is instead bad luck protected by playing several games per match)@@counterpoint1494
@@counterpoint1494generally you want to have lands in your opening hand and after that not as much. So lower amount of lands gives you more spells, you run more lands so it is easier to get lands in the early game so you can play the game at all
@@counterpoint1494 A more appropriate way to look at it is by judging how likely a good starting hand is, in terms of land to nonland ratios. Generally, 3:4 is perfect, no matter what your deck does. Lets compare a normal draft deck's odds of each possible ratio with and without the hand smoother:
40 cards, 17 land. Opening hands without the smoother, we have a 1.3% chance for 0 lands, 9.2% for 1, 24.5% for 2, 32.3% for 3, 22.6% for 4, 8.4% for 5, 1.5% for 6, and 0.1% for 7.
The smoother looks at two random hands and chooses the one that had a higher probability of occurring, so the math gets very very complicated here, but it's still relatively easy to do the math for the most and least common possibilities. The chance of getting 3 lands goes up to a whopping 54.2%, and the chance of that 7 land hand goes down to 0.0001%. Effectively, what the smoother does increase the gap in probability between "bad" land:nonland ratios and "good" land:nonland ratios. Roughly 80% of all hands without the smoother should have 2, 3, or 4 lands. With the smoother, that should go up to 96%.
To fully understand the math here, we need to know the break point at which 2 becomes more common than 3, as that's actually when the issue you're talking about comes up. Well, skipping the complicated process to get there, I can tell you that dropping the land count down to 15 still has 3 being more common than 2, while 14 finally crosses that line. Effectively, in a 40 card deck, the hand smoother allows you to cut 2 lands from your deck without it negatively impacting the consistency of your opening hand.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 ah. Thank you for doing the work on that. I figured that there would be a break point where you could cut a land or two without negatively reducing the average hand in a measurable way otherwise OP point wouldn’t make sense
My arena conspiracy is that WotC hires someone to watch Crim's stream to make sure he always queues into the worst possible match ups for his decks. 😂
Crim just always makes bad decks, lol.
@@andrewbrock3675 Also BO1 is just rly weird way to play mtg
Wotc has already been caught and admitted to some forms of altering draws/hands/pairings. It’s not wild to think a billion dollar company (hasbro) would have the means to alter/program other things. Seth you answered your own question as to why they would do these things. To make more money . If it takes you longer to reach mythic . Your are playing the game more . Arena is only making money if the app is open….
I think main reason for all those theories is the amount of games we play.. when we used to go for FNM once a week and play few random games during week it did not sting so much, but when people clock 10+ games every day all these bad shuffles, muligans etc. pile up
Also 3rd part trackers have tracked a million games and proved the forced win/lose rate.
I pay lots of money to Arena and somehow get stuck in platinum 4 limited every time! So yeah that conspiracy isn’t real, but hand smoother and hidden rank messing with matchups is VERY MUCH real.
I mean you made a lot of fun of the conspiracy where if you spend money then your matchups will be easier. But Activision demonstrably _is already doing that_, even patenting the technique. And yes, the headlines weren't pretty. Did it matter though? Not really, money keeps racking in so..
Wouldn't be surprised if wotc used this. Every time I make a new deck, one of my first opponents is on 200+ card jankpile. Really weird trend...
not what the patent says. "The microtransaction engine may match a more expert/marquee player with a junior player to encourage the junior player to make game-related purchases of items possessed/used by the marquee player" this means they will put you against players with good decks so that.
@@swiftdragonriderUnfortunately it also says
"For example, if the player purchased a particular weapon, the microtransaction engine may match the player in a gameplay session in which the particular weapon is highly effective, giving the player an impression that the particular weapon was a good purchase"
@@TheAlmightyGoiter When you say 200+ card jankpile, is it actually just a pile of jank? Or are you trying to assert that because it's a large deck it necessarily must be jank?
@@dontmisunderstand6041I mean, since battle of wits isn't on the client, it will be. Even if it has some good cards, with decks of that size, they don't have enough good cards to maintain the quality not to mention the lack of synergy. I've seen it a decent amount in unranked and the lower levels of ranked play.
I bought a Throat Wolf for my Vintage Cube. Thanks Seth.
Ha, nice!
Love this idea, might do it myself :)
As an MTGA player I would love to give paper a try, but $200+ average per deck is just silly and prohibitive. I think the paper community would explode if it wasn't so ridiculous.
yep. I have 1 paper deck im making and its going to be proxies because its be around $700 otherwise.
but if a full deck was $60 I'd build like 10 without proxies
limited and packs are the problem, wizards doesn't make more money off selling a sheoldred or selling draft chaff in those packs. they just need chase cards to exist because they can't or won't sell print to order cards
Given the existance of the hand smoothing algorithm, it wouldn’t surprise me that they could alter the frequency of drawn cards.
As to the why, the answer is obvious: Wizards is doing everything possible to make Magic players miserable, while taking all the money to themselves
Regarding the last point, note that with play boosters there are more uncommons, therefore it is harder to get some (even with the chance to open more uncommons in pack). I opened 3 boxes and for some of the uncommons there were only two. In previous sers 3 boxes usually gave me a playset of almost all the uncommons.
Stopping people from ranking up easily (and getting the rewards) encourages people to play more, and to spend more/play more. They want the game to be fun enough that you play, and tough enough that you want to throw money at them. That's the potential motivation to make bubble games specifically hard.
After the MapleStory lawsuit, I don't trust any free-to-play game's "randomness." I would be more surprised if there wasn't something weird going on.
I played against mono red 6 or 7 times in a row. Built a deck specifically to beat mono red afterward, then never saw a mountain again.
Same, but if I play green I end up playing red all the time
so rng?
@@swiftdragonrider It's not RNG if it's consistent.
That's not a conspiracy, Wizards said it is intentional
@@itze_ Do you think conspiracies aren't intentional?
Call it a conspiracy, but I do think Arena has some mechanism(s) to trying a keep your win rate at around 50% beyond just ranking you up.
I’m not so much in for the conspiracy theories but I have an untappedgg backed up 83% on the draw rate this season. I am a control player for the most part, but if I switch to mono red I instantly get to go first. There is definitely something built in to give aggro decks a higher on the play percentage. This is not a one season thing, I have been watching this since the launch of M21 and I have never had an on the play percentage of over 40% in any season.
The idea behind Wizards giving you worse matchups to keep your rank down is to keep you playing longer and enganged longer in the hopes to spend more money in their gacha system. This is tech that is known and utilized in other games. Other games with PvP matchmaking will match you based on your performance with lower performing individuals hoping that it'll somehow balance out on the other side rather than just true cross-rankings.
Hell, Ive been in SIlver after a break on MTGA and have ended up playing people ranked in Platinum while using old set decks.
Plus, per Wizards themselves, they literally do cater hands in Bo1 matchups based on curve to give a faster playing experience.
Hey Seth, talking about the Laelia deck and also Tibalt's Trickery made me remember a match I had one time. I played against a deck that was The First Sliver, Tibalt's Trickery, Cultivator Colossus, and all lands, including the whole Gate package. If you cast the First Sliver, you cascade into Tibalt's, spin into Cultivator, and win with Maze's End next turn.
Not saying that it's true but a reason that wizards could be inclined to push you into "bad draws" for winning to much would be in any non-free game mode. Doing so would actually just directly put more money into their pockets by limiting the amount you win. Not all game modes are F2P. I also have screenshots of drafting and getting qued against a numbered mythic person while I was in gold, cant imagine that had anything to do with elo. MAYBE it had something to do with the time of day/month and there being NOONE else in the que.
The counter to that is, for premium game modes they want players to feel like they got their money's worth from the transaction, so making their paying players lose would lose them money.
The answer to most of the Qs regarding what does WotC have to gain from land flooding you or matching you with an opponent who can counter you just before you rank us is easy. WotC has a bad habit of self sabotaging themselves and that's how they roll!
But realistically, my guess is to force player to stay in the grind as much as possible hence why you're "forced" to lose after a small win streak. Also the HAnd smoother is a real thing that WotC confirmed themselves for Bo1
I've said it before in other "conspiracy" videos. It's all about game retention and play time. You're one win from Mythic, here's 7 lands in a row. You lost. Now you HAVE to keep playing to get that rank you were sooooo close to getting. Now their numbers are padded. Players are playing X more time now on our game.
You're assuming that everyone thinks that specific way instead of anybody thinking "I just got flooded time to get off" lol
@@bigpablo673 They don't need it to be everyone. They just need a larger total additional amount of time spent than time lost from players who do simply log off when they get bad luck once. Naturally, there will be the people who do spend more time because of it, and naturally there will also be the people who spend less time because of it, however there's also the group whose time spent won't change regardless of this decision.
It's a numbers game. Not that I buy into this conspiracy theory at all. My own personal experiences do enough to discredit it, I'd need some convincing evidence to overcome that.
Modern is in an odd place. If enough people like the same deck as you it's gonna start getting banned. People confusing how much a deck is played vrs how much it actually wins is not gonna go well for long, I think.
My Arena conspiracy theory is that the reason you can’t trade cards, or redeem digital cards for paper cards, is because Wizards makes more money this way. 😅
Regarding the new deck wins theory, I think this one IS real, but not for any conspiracy reason.
Arena does actually have some kind of deck strength rating. It's why when you play unranked with a new player or jank deck you fight against other new player and jank decks, but bring a Tier 1 deck and you'll play against other Tier 1 decks.
Your new deck is unsorted. Arena doesn't know how to qualify your deck. So it starts by matching you against low-tier decks and sees how you do. As you win it starts putting you in higher and higher deck power brackets until you reach parity
Just to mention that the scenario where you brew somethig weird and get easier oppoenents isn't a concpiracy. WoTC already admitted to this; variables for matchup are ELO and deck power. And as far as I recall, that was not limited to casual play (though happy to stand corrected). So, if your deck is wonky you are more likely to get faced against wonky decks. One could argue that is already pernicious.
I would like to point out how you guys claim it would be very hard for arena to do some of these things then say that it is able to somehow quantify jank in a deck and match it against other jank decks is somewhat contradictory.
Regarding the 'Mythic uncommon' theory - I've opened a Throne of Eldrane booster box and got 0 Mystical Disputes and 1 Drown in the Loch. I've also opened more than 10 M20 boosters and gotten 0 Veils of Summer etc.
I'm not sure if I believe in the theory though, but I do know I'm super unlucky with uncommons in particular for some reason.
I've also be very unlucky with Streets of New Capenna, I've opened around 20-25 boosters, got 0 An Offer You Can't Refuse and 5 Wingshield Agent, both blue uncommons
I'm not sure how true the assessment is that LCI has had more impact on MtG compared to Karlov Manor. What do we really have out of LCI - Tidebinder? A few standard related creatures? Cavern of Souls is a reprint, so I think looking back we will not be considering it to be LCI impact.
Karlov Manor's lands on their own probably outweigh LCI as a set tbh longterm, they're going to be played in most formats for the next 10 years at least and in EDH, they will be present forever.
Then you have the surprise success story with Vein Ripper and Vampires, you have Leyline that has found success in way more powerful format, you have EDH cards that we will see 20 years from now (Crime Novelist, Archdruids Charm).
You have Mana Leak 2024 which is massive (No More Lies), Slime Against Humanity might be one of the more iconic cards to be printed at Common in the last couple of years, Insidious roots might start its own archetype in Golgari...
IDK, it's not like a GOAT set or anything like that, but I think it is actually already being more impactful than LCI which is only remembered because of one powerful reprint and a Tidebinder
I think the switch to play boosters (and associated price increase) soured people's perception of MKM even though it was an ok set
I mean lci made dino a viable deck again
@@bigpablo673 basically doesn’t exist even at tier 2 right now
The hand smoother/shuffler isn’t rigged, but it is poorly designed. As mentioned in several comments, it draws two hands and basically gives you the one it deems “more playable” after considering your deck based on preprogrammed metrics (curve, land to spell ratio etc.)The problem is it doesn’t actually know what a playable hand is for specific decks, so if you deck doesn’t have a traditional curve or mana requirements, it’ll prioritize much stranger, less functional hands. This issue is exacerbated when it picks “correctly” for an opponent, often leading to very mismatched experiences, and thus the feeling that it is rigged. When it correctly “smooths” an opponent’s draw, but fails for yours, it’s definitely a feel bad. Ideally they’d get rid of the smoother and let people experience real variance in best of one. Best of three matches feel much less lopsided.
The "one win away loss" one is even more simple than how memory works. On average you are going to be matched against someone else who is "one win away" or so when you are in that position. Since one of you has to lose, that will result in one of you getting the "one win away loss," more often. Then it's just a matter of humans overestimating how often it happens, only remembering the more significant/bad things, etc. But statistically its just the normal way it goes based on a competitive game.
Why would you assume that to be true? When grinding for ranks, it's extremely uncommon to come across an opponent in the same TIER of the rank as you, let alone matching your progress. For diamond and platinum, there are 24 different values your opponents' progress could have. Coming across someone with an equal measure to yours should be extremely unlikely.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 so, the matchmaker specifically will attempt to match you this way. If you have found it unlikely to happen then you are probably playing at a time or for a format that isn't very populated, or playing limited which has a different matchmaking weight which does make this unlikely to happen. Or alternatively, you are playing at a time of the month where your rank is less populated (ie lower ranks later in the month).
This is not an assumption, btw, this is literally a known weight of the matchmaking system. All other things equal, it will attempt to match you with someone at the exact same rank if possible.
@@tahlialysse Known in what way? Known as in a bunch of paranoid schizophrenics on the internet "know" the world is out to get them, or known as in the people who make the game literally described how it works?
I ask because one of those is how most Arena conspiracy theories go, and the other is the shuffler.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 literally how the people who make the game tell us. This isn't hard info to find. There are parts of matchmaking they aren't explicit about, but this is the one thing that is explicitly stated. It will try to match people of the same rank who are queued at the same time if it can, barring the undisclosed other elements stopping it. We theoreize there is some weight given to not queuing into someone you just faced (obviously still possible to do, hence the assuming some weight is given), and we also know there is an undisplayed MMR for players that can also factor in, but have no details about how that is calculated or what weight is given to it.
So back to my initial point, pairing against someone else who is "one win away" is not unlikely to happen. Will it happen every time? Ofc not, but mathematically it is selected for within matchmaking to some degree, which will cause it to happen some amount more often than expected average.
What I also know from talking with arena devs is that the goals of the matchmaker are twofold: they want to have reasonably quick queue times and also want to match people who are ranked similarly. So these are the two things which can pull in opposite directions (they aren't allowed to talk more specifics than the general ethos behind decisions). So that's the stated goal of the matchmaker to balance those two qualities, even if it may not balance them perfectly.
A question I've had since you guys started doing it is. Now that your doing paper magic for Commander clash how are you doing viewer decks? Are you getting them in the mail and sending them back after? Building with your personal collection/what you can easily acquire for the episode?
Likely building with their personal collection, based on the last episode. There's going to be a lot of card buying and we know they've sent cards to each other too of course.
Thanks for the great cast! Ive heard of most of these. The one that I identify with is playing a new deck, you'll win 10 in a row as Seth would say "Maybe this deck is the truth, taking down the best deck in standard". And then lose 20 in a row. I don't think the meta is learning so fast, because this will happen in the matter of a day or so.
I think peoeple's trust of Arena is like a digital casino, how much can you trust playing the house.
On the flip side, with the amount of money that Hasbro produces, it wouldn't be impossible to create win bands based on account status. This is programmable. whether they do it or not is a different story, but it is possible
As someone who has been trying to regrow the local std scene at my store, it’s nice to hear others say they are enjoying the format! I feel less alone in my joy of the game😁
😨
“local std scene” 😂😂
I think that's illegal man
Veteran amulet titan player here. One of our worst possible matchups is mill. There are so many one-offs that need to be in the deck to be able to combo kill, where if they get milled, you just can't win
They should make a Thoughtseize variant that also looks at the top card of your opponent's library and gives you the option to mill it if you don't like that haha
and then copy #3 is right under that
That would actually be really sick on a 6 mana Dimir planeswalker.
"+1 Target player reveals their hand. You choose a nonland card from it. That player discards that card. Surveil the top of target player's library. You lose 2 life."
-X all creatures get -X/-X until end of turn
-8 exile all graveyards, you may cast spells from among the exiled cards this turn without paying their mana cost.
@@brainpower45 That -x is way too strong.
@dontmisunderstand6041 I forgot to mention this, but starting loyalty 4, the expected case would be -3: -3/-3, sort of like Chandra Awakened Inferno.
@@brainpower45 For comparison, The Eternal Wanderer's board wipe is a -4, though it starts at 5 loyalty and doesn't get an ult.
So on the "Wizards reduces the availability of cards they think will be good" this is probably the closest a conspiracy will come to being true because it was true in other cards. It's a practice known as short printing, and usually the stated reason is due to as Crim said the way sheets are printed and cut. This was a thing in Yugioh for a very, very long time (and it might still be a thing for side products? unsure), but it's not really confirmable at the box level. You generally need to be opening cases and cases of product to get a good feeling on short prints, and that usually only happens with big stores.
Yugioh has some really infamous short printing stories: Nekroz of Brionac and Nekroz of Valkyrus in Secret Forces, Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring in Maximum Crisis, and Eldlich the Golden Lord + Adamancipator Researcher in Secret Slayers.
So yeah, that could just flatly be true. Figured you might find that interesting.
Haven't even listed to the Arena theories but drawing the card you put on the bottom is real. I've legit tested it with singleton decks in 60 card formats
So you put a singleton copy to the bottom of the deck and still drew it?
why not post the video of this?
Really quick historical lesson. TCGs have a very long history of "short printing" cards they expect to have an impact. Yugioh is notorious for this, and I believe MTG, at least, used to do this as well. I can easily see it being a thing digitally, as well as in paper
As for "hacking" the client ... everything your game client knows about the game state is stored in memory. If the opponents hand is in the local game state then you could write very simple software to expose that. Other than that everything that is controlled on the server is infinitely less likely to be exploitable and would require real access to secured systems.
The surgical extraction/extripate build is extra fun when you add "the end" and "test of talents"
Rip your opponents deck apart
(The new deadly cover up looks good too, especially because it can hit basic lands)
Unless you are trying to make top mythic for free tournament entries, the rewards for anything over plat at the end of the month are so meagre I can't see why people get frustrated thinking wotc is cheating them out of 3k gold and a pack or two.
How does one get a goldfish plush?
One conspiracy theory is that Wotc R&D is developing recent sets based around BO1 more than BO3. The more fast-paced a limited format is, the more games you end up playing, and therefore spending more gems/gold/money on Arena
the conspiracy theories people have about arena are so exhausting and are all obviously designed to protect arena players' egos
Magic players being bad at Magic and blaming anything but themselves?! Unthinkable!
It's actually insane because you'd think people who play one of the oldest tcg's would understand variance a little bit
When several people are reporting the same thing, it's a conspiracy theory to call them all incorrect.
@@Cybertech134 they only thing they are all reporting is that they are sore losers.
@@Cybertech134 there's more people reporting a normal experience but everyone ignores that 🤷
I love Standard at the moment too. I don't love that certain cards are still around and will be around longer, but there are so many viable options that I see each particular one less often; as more sets are released it kind of solves itself.
MKM is a weird set where the 'good' cards don't line up well with it's flavor, so it feels off, but it has so many enablers of various archetypes, and some really entertaining combos and value engines that lead to a broader range of decks and more interesting games.
With regards to the hand smoother, it's important to note that people do not like truly random outcomes.
There are a multitude of examples of this, and a simple one is that the shuffler function on most audio players are not truly random, because people hate when the same song is played twice in a row and think THAT is proof that it isn't random.
If they do have a shuffling thing to screw you outta games, it would only be on the drafts cause thats something that you spend currency for. I don't believe they do, but if they did, that'd be it. Mana flooding you or screwing you at 3 or 4 wins so you don't have enough to draft again.
People who create the tools are not the people who use the tools. In regards to the hacker discussion. This is a fairly known thing that happens across online gaming, people make and sell tools to cheat at games. Pretty much any game you can think of. Even games that aren't particularly popular, and especially games that are incredibly popular.
I don't particularly buy into specific variations of the "my opponent hacked the game" argument. Like, very obviously nobody's going to waste the time hacking to see their opponents' hands when they can literally just prevent the opponent from playing cards instead just as easily.
On the topic of easier matches after building a new deck, I wanted to try Invasion of Tarkir in Explorer. The card seemed pretty powerful, and there are tons of good dragons to play alongside it.
So, I build the deck and hop onto the ladder. My very first match is against Green Devotion. The deck that plays a 4/5 reach and a 5/6 reach. I hadn't played against devotion for almost 3 weeks at that point, and the first game with 4/4 flyers the deck is a complete counter...
For hand info (or info in private zones), it would only be possible if that info was actually sent to the other persons computer. Usually that is never done unless it is specifically needed, so any peeking into other zones is likely impossible due to the persons game client not physically having that info.
An example of this was LoL, where enemies positions were sent to the client even if they were not in sight range, so hacks could pull this info and display it, but the code was changes so this was not possible (or as easy).
The reasoning behind conspiracy about the winstreak decks would not be as Seth suggested trying to sell newest set but instead trying to convince ppl to craft bad rares and mythics for these jank decks.
That being said i could believe any deck can get to 7 wins in a row, even the all lands deck (like due to opponent crashing). Having a lucky win streak does not represent the winrate of a deck, you could have 7 wins in a row while having 9-60 win/lose ratio. With enough jank decks being played some of them will get lucky win streaks. For example in a lot of random decks i run Test Of Talents which is often auto-win vs sorcery based decks. Some jank decks have surprising win rate vs specific meta decks and in that case you don't have to get that lucky to get paired vs them 7 times in a row.
not saying they do, but since you asked how it would be possible, this is the kinda easy way i thought of to make your matches easier for a new deck: if arena had deck specific hidden MMR. Your rank might be diamond/1500, but if your hidden MMR is set to 1000 with a heavy multiplier for the first few wins you get with the deck (to get you back to your appropriate rank) that would make your matches easier/pair you against other players with new decks. decks you play alot would have a very similar mmr to your actual visible rank.
similarly, if you spent money in the store, they could bump all your decks' hidden MMR down a bit to make your next matches easier. Heavy play would obviously dilute this effect and would make sense as to why crim and seth don't really see its effect but someone who only spends money rarely notice more. otherwise, giving you a few games of the Bo1 hand smoother in Bo3 would be another invisible, subtle, and easy way to give you a boost for spending money.
Not that I want these conspiracy theories to continue or anything, but "how would you do that" is just not a very good argument imo.
Prefect timing. Just opened TH-cam and this was posted 2 seconds ago
Track printing, it's a thing.
There were websites dedicated to tracking how the packs were loaded.
Certain cards are printed more, and one rare is printed even more than that.
Green Myojin from Neon Dynasty was the rare from that set ... Pulled like 5 of them myself, from 7 packs. Everything else was diverse enough, but I just kept getting foil and non foil of green Myojin.
They know the good cards, especially reprints and pushed cards. Sure, there are curve balls, but they know the knobs of power to turn, and when they've created a monster.
I've opened dozens of boxes to receive multiple copies of garbage rares while chase cards are either never pulled or lucky to get 1.
It's easy as pie to rig drop percentage on Arena.
The "new decks win more" theory, could be a hidden MMR thing. Meaning, if you play the same deck over and over, your MMR fluctuates depending on W/L, picking a different deck, might either reset the MMR or at least change it favorably, towards you, so a new player can actually learn the game.
While I still doubt it being the case, there is a possibility for this to be a thing.
And I am pretty sure short printing is a thing. We know this is true for example YGO. And WotC doesn't need to predict it, they just need to assume, if a card will be impactful. Why? Because a bad card that is short printed is something no one will notice.
Felidar Guardian does combo with itself.... I dont know what kind of deck plays this as I never played during this meta. However playing #2 of Felidar, you can flicker them endlessly. Everyone reading this card should see this coming.
Exclusivity is the primary valuation for high ranks, so yes, there is active monetary incentive to keep the upper ranks thinner so it's more desirable, and those in the lower ranks spend their money on new decks or cards in order to reach them. You don't have to monitor that. Just build it into the matchmaking that already exists.
You are supposed to have a 50% win rate so you get worse matchups when on a winning streak.
They could easily change the drop rates on rares and mythics after seeing what's being sought after.
I'm also positive decks over 100 cards are more likely to draw more action
I opened a TON of murders and didn't pull a single crime novelist. Had to buy them as singles.
Someone was in CalebD's chat a few months ago wanting to know how to learn Magic, and I told them Arena, and the said "No, I don't want to play against hackers." First of all, if you're a new player, you probably aren't playing against Mythic rank hackers. Secondly, I haven't seen any evidence of hacking. Even if there were, surely Wizards fixes it.
My conspiracy theory is that arena matches your brawl opponents based on your commanders colors. I only seem to play red white when I play red white, or abzan / abzan, or golos vs mono black
I just find it weird no one plays 1v1 commander. Its soo much more fun than regular commander and gives you the vibe of a constructed match
For the last one I feel like I personally haven’t experienced that especially on arena - I really haven’t opened that many packs on arena for mkm and I pulled 3 of the Dimir surveil land which I would expect they value as higher
I've played so many card games/digital card games. A lot Arena players are just kind of dumb tbh no other game I have ever played had so many people who don't understand variance or think that there's some conspiracy keeping them out of silver two
Man, this is why we need perpetual spoiler season, or Serh and Crim will spend half the pod talking about conspiracies
My conspiracy is having rigged matchups sometimes. Like i have fun and then for example i started running into a lot of Goblin Charbelcher decks so i've made deck aimed at completely destroying them and then i never see Goblin Charbelcher so i swap back to the other one and i start seeing Goblin Charbelcher decks again. Obviously when sth like that happens and we know Brawl matches ppl up by what Arena considers same tiers, my mind is thinking that ladder also uses some hidden tiered matchmaking and that's the reason i never am against a deck i built against.
Ofc the logical answer is my luck is just garbage.
Try playing Blood Moon in timeless. You will never see more monocolor decks.
@@just_anoncap bloodmoon is the only reason I win in timeless
I've thought about the conspiracy where WOTC makes some cards harder to pull than others on arena. I understand Seth's argument that you can't predict what will be good most of the time, however, they can very easily predict at least two different patterns that they could employ to end up making more money in the end. I open between 50 and 100 packs every set, usually 90ish. I open them all at once, so it's not especially hard to see patterns if you're looking.
1. In my experience it is significantly more difficult to pull rare lands than it should be. With around 60 rares per set, and a land cycle consisting of typically 5 different variants you should average about 1 in 12 packs. I understand there is variance to this, but I'm not sure if I've EVER opened that many or more while ripping packs digitally. It should be pulling roughly 6-7 out of 100 and it seems to be about half that usually. I've opened as few as 1 out of 90 packs. WOTC knows you need the rare lands, so its a pretty easy call to make them more rare (and make more money!)
2. It's pretty easy for wizards to predict which rares are going to be MEME/BULK typically. And they might miss on this once in awhile but if they intentionally pick some of those and make them MORE common they are doing the same as making good rares less common. Every set I open playsets of garbage rares that I will never play. If you watch for it you will see it. I am convinced this is more than just conspiracy. More garbage rares=less good rares=more wildcards needed or more packs purchased.
And yes, there could be confirmation bias/negativity bias going on but being aware of those two possibilities should reduce them by a substantial amount.
The Thoughtseize bug can't be real because right before you play it, their deck will have a fixed ordering and there's no way the game can know what you'll choose before you see their cards so in the absence of a shuffle effect being used before they draw for turn, they're going to draw the same card that was on top of their deck before you played Thoughtseize.
The only scenario where such a bug could exist would be if you Thoughtseize and choose, then they search their deck somehow and shuffle before their turn and a bug causes the Thoughtseized card to land on top in the shuffle but it's so unlikely since the effect which shuffled the deck would be completely separate from the use of Thoughtseize. This would be a more believable theory if Thoughtseize had another effect as well which caused the deck to shuffle.
Re: short-printing certain cards.
The same rules regarding bias work here.
Let's assume that, based on the printing process, some uncommons are more rare than others.
If those rare uncommons happen to be cards that nobody cares about, then nobody notices.
If, on the other hands, those rare uncommons happen to be cards that are in high demand, then *everyone* notices.
Conversely, if there were to be an uncommon that was especially 'un-rare' (i.e., common), then nobody notices and/or everyone is happy.
Hearthstone had a long time conspiracy about buying packs meant increasing the packs odds as opposed to the “free” packs. Even though the odds should be the same.
The last time I played in a standard FNM, I had Oko, Thief of Crowns in my deck
Seeing seth shit on mkm and then immediately get shut down by crim was awesome. I feel like I've heard a lot of weird mkm hate when the set was *amazing* for standard and made some p sweet impact in every format. Novice inspector did a bunch for glitters affinity in pauper, vein ripper for vampires, domain aggro is tier one now bc of leyline of the guildpact, and cryptic coat is seeing play even up to legacy... like how much more impact do you want a set to have before it isn't weak anymore lol. That's not even mentioning archdruids charm or codebreaker or any of that. I also play both domain aggro and dimir crime, so maybe I'm biased, but man this set just slaps so hard. My favorite since I've started playing.
About the see-opponent's-hand conspiracy, I will speak as a video game developer, with 99.99% certainty that your game does not locally have the information of cards you are not supposed to know. That is, no amount of hacking will get Arena to show you your opponent's hand.
1:00:11 rigging pulls on arena would the easiest thing to rig out of all these things though. If a card gets better than they can decrease pull rates 🤷♀️
3:56 The ultimate strategy, you don't need to bring removal your opponent will cover that for you
WotC is not able to do that. And now let's discuss hand smoother.
I own about 12,000 MTG cards in paper... every single one is in a penny sleeve... virtually all from booster packs... I've learned my collection is also virtually worthless.
I can probably sell my $1000 commander deck for more than 10,000 cards...
59:31 there’s no way that some cards aren’t more rare than their counterparts of the same rarity
Didn't some game company conduct a study that showed that people are more likely to play more if they occasionally loose?
I wouldn't put is past any game company to put an algorithm into their game that makes your more likely to loose.
23:31 acruallg titan is one if the best matchups for mill. If you randomly mill some of their titan targets like the singilsr sunhome and then you just win.
You missed the one about Shadows over Innistrad Remastered bonus Shadows of the Past cards dropping and a lower rate then Wizards says. Players on Reddit used a streamers unlocked account to open thousands of SoI:Remastered packs and their bonus card drop rates were way lower then they should have been.
Paying streamers do not see the conspiracy because you are a part of it. i rarely draw 7 lands in a row in paper magic, not occasionaly like in arena.
Mtga ftp account player-(all instances are in best of 1 draft) I have experienced several recurring trends. 1) very good first match hands, no mulligan necessary mix of spells and land a curve 2) mid match 4-5 land clumps while opponent draws gas (no lands) 3)an outlier... 9swamp/8plains orzhov deck with no plains in the top 21 cards of my limited deck...? Reasons? Its not a conspiracy persay, Mtga just needs ftp players to not win. I've played limited for 20 years and not experienced randomness like this.
Amulet Titan is a great match up for mill. Tasha's Hideous Laughter is insane against it and a single Surgical is basically curtains.
I dont know when this started but there was a time when you had an equal chance of pulling a given rare for a set. (if there were 60 rares in the set, each rare was 1/60 weighted when opening boosters.) Now we have different rarities for sought after cards.
This isnt very healthy if you have to play Sheoldred and you need to afford 120usd to 240usd for only 4 pieces of paper. This why we are seeing with the rising costs of Standard (busted cards that have a lower supply and an inflated demand)(also other four drops don’t really compare if its not one of the few).
Maybe someone can comment how Sheoldred isn’t an auto include for meta black decks but what is your deck doing if you are not playing Sheoldred and running black. (Show some tournament data if you are going to really comment).
not sure its a "conspiracy" but I don't trust the "Did you have fun" button. They're obviously using that screen to collect data, but to what end? We know the hand smoother exists. Could it be to seed opening hands or draw patterns (e.g. players have more fun when they draw a Planeswalker, players who don't draw a land in the first three turns and then lose don't have fun)?
The firts theory, the one of if you win too much you get hit with bad hands probably comes from FIFA players. EA has a patent of "dynamic difficulties" where if a player is winning too much, they make their soccer players miss even on sure fire shots to make sure the other player doesnt gets defeated like 0-7.
This is something that they really do, to the point that I heard someone say "a 2-0 in the first half is a 2-2 in the second half". The idea of this is to keep someone in a loosing streak from getting away from the game as the dynamic difficulty WILL make them win a couple of games, keeping them hooked into the micro transactions.
Since both games are zero sum games, I think the theory comes from not screwing someone who is winning a lot per se, but to give someone who is loosing a lot in the same event/rank a free win so they wont close the game in frustation. This is something that has been VASTLY criticized from FIFA games and EA official statement was something along the lines of "Yes we have the patent, but we promise we dont use it, wink wink". Of course for me in magic it doesnt happens, and the "conspiracy" can be easily explained with "variance + winning a lot puts you against more skilled opponents".
I'll be honest, I agree that WotC would literally need a psychic on par with the most powerful in Magic's lore to predict every card that was going to take over the world. However... they gotta know some of them, and at least can tell when a card is going to be a big hit or a staple. I think it's smart to assume that there are less of the powerhouse cards out there, even as just a reminder that you; a) don't need every single staple to play the game, and b) that chasing a mythic through a bunch of booster boxes is insane... That being said though, never put it past a company, who's convinced a large portion of their consumers the company is the greediest it's ever been, to take the chance on printing less of a card to keep the chase going... They literally did it publicly already, and the One of One Ring did it's job perfectly.
I will say though, if they WERE doing this, why bother upshifting rarity of sought after cards and upsetting the player base when you could have just printed the cards at mythic quantity without changing a thing on it..?
that brewing a deck, it crushing it, then days later, it loses every game conspiracy.. yeah, that happens all the time to me. Not saying it's true, but it is a weird one.
I've got it on the 1 win away conspiracy theory. They do this to make you play more to try and achieve it. Then it becomes an addictive behavior that might get you to spend money upgrading your collection to hit that goal. (I say this jokingly.)
No crim hand smoother is in ALL best of one. What you forget is MOST players play Bo1 on Arena. Bo1 does some rather 'interesting' matchmaking and hand smoothing which throws players off.
All the conspiracies about keeping people stuck at a certain rank make sense in that they encourage you to keep players more games to hit the next rank. Typically the more someone plays the more likely they are to spend more money so WOTC is incentivised to design the game to keep people playing
The scry/thougthseize bug i can attest to cause i was playing a combo deck where one of the pieces was in my had and i scryed the 2nd one away and i still drew it despite seeing both copies of a 2 of.
Random odds can be random
I don't believe in any one Arena conspiracy but I DO believe if there was a surreptitious and convenient way for WOTC to make more money on Arena, they absolutely would do it.
SBMM is a thing in the video game industry. Why does it exist? Supposedly by making games feel fair. But how does it actually work? By stacking higher stat players against you the more you win. That is the ability to steer a players win/loss ratio, which ideally to them should be 50/50. They have crunched the numbers and that is the sweet spot to get people to buy into the game more. It is ABSOLUTLEY plausible that WotC is fixing matches by flipping mana ratio draw or literally putting you against people you have no chance with.
9:04 I'm glad me and Crim said "nice" at the exact same time on reflex.
Crim do you have a list for esper control?👉👈