What Dessy's data set is showing (and 500 is probably a large enough number of trials to make a reasonable judgment) is that there is an aberration. It's notable, but it's also useless unless you can identify WHY there's an aberration and HOW that aberration is affecting the play/draw options. Again, hypothesis testing.
One point of data cannot indicate an aberration according to statistics courses and books I've taken / used. His additional games are "duplicates" in statistics, rather than replicates (I believe) and that is part of the issue. To say this is an aberration we need data from lots of other Arena players.
His case is one point on the distribution curve, of which we do not know the standard deviation, variance or anything. We know that DesolatorMagic's data point is not 50/50, not anything else about the population so saying it is an aberration is premature.
EDIT!!!! Wait a second now!!! The deck builder automatically sorts everything right back into the usual order as soon as you click done, then reopen the list. That means it's IMPOSSIBLE to try and see if the order of the deck in the deck builder's list has an influence on the randomization factor of the shuffler.
It may sort things back into order in the deck building interface, but if you export the decklist to a text file it will be in "cards added" order.
RedditOP did not say he knew what methods WotC used but made some educated guesses because they are apparently near industry standard.
Regarding Dessy, the "who gets to play/draw first" thing is interesting but means nothing unless we have an explanation for why it's uneven, and can test that explanation.
Similarly, what RedditOP has discovered a very probable explanation for the phenomenon, but there's a fair degree of HARKing (Hypothesizing After Results are Known) which means his conclusion is circumstantial. Granted, it's enough circumstantial evidence for me to believe it as fact, but to statistically and scientifically PROVE it as fact requires hypothesis testing that as of yet hasn't been done. (Though I expect once it is done it will confirm the data we've discussed.)
As for the Pay to Play allegations, that's probably another argument entirely, though I'm going to lean on Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. (The first time)"
I'm not saying that I'm sure that Wizards has malicious intent. I just had to provide a counter-argument that non-randomization COULD be used to make Wizards more $.
I like that quote. I counter with "Shake with your right hand, but hold a rock in your left." Same basically same idea. Here's the thing, this study came out of the anecdotal evidence of people saying "something is off." They refused to back down, even after the first, inadequate study said everything was fine. Wizards said everything is fine. Yet, experienced players kept saying, "No, something seems off."
While we can't outright assume malicious intent, I'm much MORE open to the idea now. If the going first coinflip is off too, that's a really bad sign. Innocent until proven guilty, but Wizards needs to go on trial now.
What Dessy's data set is showing (and 500 is probably a large enough number of trials to make a reasonable judgment) is that there is an aberration. It's notable, but it's also useless unless you can identify WHY there's an aberration and HOW that aberration is affecting the play/draw options. Again, hypothesis testing.
One point of data cannot indicate an aberration according to statistics courses and books I've taken / used. His additional games are "duplicates" in statistics, rather than replicates (I believe) and that is part of the issue. To say this is an aberration we need data from lots of other Arena players.
His case is one point on the distribution curve, of which we do not know the standard deviation, variance or anything. We know that DesolatorMagic's data point is not 50/50, not anything else about the population so saying it is an aberration is premature.
Edited for spelling and fat fingers.
I believe you are thinking of it wrong. I'm not certain, but here's why:
If everyone uses the same exact algorithm to determine whether or not they go first, even one individual given enough games can demonstrate something is off.
If one person played 1 million games, and they went second every time, it is incontrovertible proof (basically) that the algorithm is off. Does that makes sense? You calculate the confidence interval (or something like that, I'm very rusty) to determine how likely it is.
The bottom line is, even if everyone else on Arena gets normally statistical results, but even one person gets VERY unlikely statistical results, then something is wrong. Something is not truly random.
You just scale this down, to size, find the "confidence interval" of say, someone playing 500 games and them getting a 75% rate of going second. Your not AS confident in the 0 in 1 million games, but your confidence does go up that something is off.
I believe you are thinking of it wrong. I'm not certain, but here's why:
If everyone uses the same exact algorithm to determine whether or not they go first, even one individual given enough games can demonstrate something is off.
If one person played 1 million games, and they went second every time, it is incontrovertible proof (basically) that the algorithm is off. Does that makes sense? You calculate the confidence interval (or something like that, I'm very rusty) to determine how likely it is.
The bottom line is, even if everyone else on Arena gets normally statistical results, but even one person gets VERY unlikely statistical results, then something is wrong. Something is not truly random.
You just scale this down, to size, find the "confidence interval" of say, someone playing 500 games and them getting a 75% rate of going second. Your not AS confident in the 0 in 1 million games, but your confidence does go up that something is off.
Your line of thinking and explanation is correct, and your explanation is how I think of it (not the incorrect way you're presuming I think of it).
Based on the confidence interval, we can have a guess if something is more likely to be "off" than representative of the true mean. That's just it though, it doesn't tell you definitively (per your claim he could prove it was OBVIOUSLY not 50/50). It merely says that it is more likely to be representative of a different mean.
Just as important, the confidence interval you speak of for hypothesis testing is directly affected by the population statistics (which I keep stating we do not have). We don't know anything about the population distribution. We know DesolatorMagic's value, and therefore cannot test the null hypothesis. This individual being at 60% going second cannot tell us this. We need population statistics for his data to be evaluated in a meaningful manner. "That seems odd" doesn't hold up well in the world where it's possible, even if improbable to achieve that result.
In addition, DesolatorMagic's games are kinda problematic in that they are non-sequential. Basically he's sampling a coin flip at random intervals, which while it should trend towards 50/50, it may have pronounced clustering of outcomes, especially since we know that no RNG is truly random. There are ways to control for these things. I would like to see his analysis. I am merely warning that we should definitely avoid making conclusions at this time.
I really would like the whole logic behind shuffling and starting hand selection killed.
If the deck works in paper it should work in Arena and vice versa. It is honestly kind of disheartening that these weird 13 mana red rush decks work this consistently.
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I agree. I mean, it was a nice try to get rid of those "bad games" for bo1 where someone just mulligans themselves out of the game basically. However, all the problems that have come along with it are not worth it. I don't want to spend my time using probability math to "beat the evil shuffler." I'd rather just say "Well, screw it. Sometimes people will mulligan themselves down to 5, immediately concede, then we're off to the next game."
Unfortunately, because Arena and bo1 is aimed at bringing new players into the game, and it sucks that games can just be boring sometimes, they will probably not get rid of the function. They will be too scared of getting rid of potentially new players who are like "But I can't even play this hand! This is stupid. I'm not going to play this anymore."
EDIT!!!! Wait a second now!!! The deck builder automatically sorts everything right back into the usual order as soon as you click done, then reopen the list. That means it's IMPOSSIBLE to try and see if the order of the deck in the deck builder's list has an influence on the randomization factor of the shuffler.
It may sort things back into order in the deck building interface, but if you export the decklist to a text file it will be in "cards added" order.
Okay, I would love to "randomize" my deck order before it goes into play to see if that affects what the shuffler brings up. What I did was Export my current decklist, opened notepad, mixed up the lands and the cmc a bit, then imported my newly made "Random" list on Arena. All the cards were in the exact same order as they usually are. It seems impossible to make the deck builder deviate from the usual list of lowest cmc to highest cmc. Sure, you can save a list that's "Random" by clicking done, but it just puts them back in order when you do so.
Can you clarify how to arrange your own decklist order the way you want it? I would love to do so if possible. I anecdotally noticed that not only do certain cards "clump together" they also seem to be slightly organized by cmc as well. Like "Oh here's the 2 cmc section with a bit of 3s. Here's the 3 cmc section with a bit of 4s, Here the 4 cmc section with even more land.
I would love to be able to mix up my cmc and lands before it goes into the evil shuffler! Please explain to me how it's done. I'm sure other people here are curious as well.
EDIT!!!! Wait a second now!!! The deck builder automatically sorts everything right back into the usual order as soon as you click done, then reopen the list. That means it's IMPOSSIBLE to try and see if the order of the deck in the deck builder's list has an influence on the randomization factor of the shuffler.
It may sort things back into order in the deck building interface, but if you export the decklist to a text file it will be in "cards added" order.
Okay, I would love to "randomize" my deck order before it goes into play to see if that affects what the shuffler brings up. What I did was Export my current decklist, opened notepad, mixed up the lands and the cmc a bit, then imported my newly made "Random" list on Arena. All the cards were in the exact same order as they usually are. It seems impossible to make the deck builder deviate from the usual list of lowest cmc to highest cmc. Sure, you can save a list that's "Random" by clicking done, but it just puts them back in order when you do so.
Can you clarify how to arrange your own decklist order the way you want it? I would love to do so if possible. I anecdotally noticed that not only do certain cards "clump together" they also seem to be slightly organized by cmc as well. Like "Oh here's the 2 cmc section with a bit of 3s. Here's the 3 cmc section with a bit of 4s, Here the 4 cmc section with even more land.
I would love to be able to mix up my cmc and lands before it goes into the evil shuffler! Please explain to me how it's done. I'm sure other people here are curious as well.
I do not think the display will ever not sort them no matter what you do with that list. If you want to see if Arena preserves the list, then export the list for the deck you imported. If the card order is preserved then... well... we know that it's preserved. Unfortunately, if the re-exported list is sorted, it doesn't actually prove anything conclusive.
EDIT!!!! Wait a second now!!! The deck builder automatically sorts everything right back into the usual order as soon as you click done, then reopen the list. That means it's IMPOSSIBLE to try and see if the order of the deck in the deck builder's list has an influence on the randomization factor of the shuffler.
It may sort things back into order in the deck building interface, but if you export the decklist to a text file it will be in "cards added" order.
Okay, I would love to "randomize" my deck order before it goes into play to see if that affects what the shuffler brings up. What I did was Export my current decklist, opened notepad, mixed up the lands and the cmc a bit, then imported my newly made "Random" list on Arena. All the cards were in the exact same order as they usually are. It seems impossible to make the deck builder deviate from the usual list of lowest cmc to highest cmc. Sure, you can save a list that's "Random" by clicking done, but it just puts them back in order when you do so.
Can you clarify how to arrange your own decklist order the way you want it? I would love to do so if possible. I anecdotally noticed that not only do certain cards "clump together" they also seem to be slightly organized by cmc as well. Like "Oh here's the 2 cmc section with a bit of 3s. Here's the 3 cmc section with a bit of 4s, Here the 4 cmc section with even more land.
I would love to be able to mix up my cmc and lands before it goes into the evil shuffler! Please explain to me how it's done. I'm sure other people here are curious as well.
I do not think the display will ever not sort them no matter what you do with that list. If you want to see if Arena preserves the list, then export the list for the deck you imported. If the card order is preserved then... well... we know that it's preserved. Unfortunately, if the re-exported list is sorted, it doesn't actually prove anything conclusive.
Okay, so I exported the "Random" list to notepad and they WERE still in the "Random" order. That does improve my confidence. You're saying, Arena will take the list order found under "Export" and not the usual display order under the deck builder feature? Do you know that conclusively? Or just guessing from a programming standpoint? Did Wizards explicitly state it?
EDIT!!!! Wait a second now!!! The deck builder automatically sorts everything right back into the usual order as soon as you click done, then reopen the list. That means it's IMPOSSIBLE to try and see if the order of the deck in the deck builder's list has an influence on the randomization factor of the shuffler.
It may sort things back into order in the deck building interface, but if you export the decklist to a text file it will be in "cards added" order.
Okay, I would love to "randomize" my deck order before it goes into play to see if that affects what the shuffler brings up. What I did was Export my current decklist, opened notepad, mixed up the lands and the cmc a bit, then imported my newly made "Random" list on Arena. All the cards were in the exact same order as they usually are. It seems impossible to make the deck builder deviate from the usual list of lowest cmc to highest cmc. Sure, you can save a list that's "Random" by clicking done, but it just puts them back in order when you do so.
Can you clarify how to arrange your own decklist order the way you want it? I would love to do so if possible. I anecdotally noticed that not only do certain cards "clump together" they also seem to be slightly organized by cmc as well. Like "Oh here's the 2 cmc section with a bit of 3s. Here's the 3 cmc section with a bit of 4s, Here the 4 cmc section with even more land.
I would love to be able to mix up my cmc and lands before it goes into the evil shuffler! Please explain to me how it's done. I'm sure other people here are curious as well.
I do not think the display will ever not sort them no matter what you do with that list. If you want to see if Arena preserves the list, then export the list for the deck you imported. If the card order is preserved then... well... we know that it's preserved. Unfortunately, if the re-exported list is sorted, it doesn't actually prove anything conclusive.
Okay, so I exported the "Random" list to notepad and they WERE still in the "Random" order. That does improve my confidence. You're saying, Arena will take the list order found under "Export" and not the usual display order under the deck builder feature? Do you know that conclusively? Or just guessing from a programming standpoint? Did Wizards explicitly state it?
Thanks for the tip!
I don't know this conclusively, but under my assumption of the source of the error it makes sense that the game reads your decklist in the same order it's shown in the export.
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Okay y'all. "Randomizing" your deck in a text list, then importing it TOTALLY FIXES THE LAND/DUPLICATE PROBLEM! I know, I know, only one man, too small a sample size et.
I dare you to try it out for yourself. Instead of making it random, I actually put my list in a "semi-optimized order." As in, putting the cards in a list as I would hope to draw them.
This is all for bo1 ranked as my testing mode:
Well, I have been keeping tack of my win%, and also my land% drawn per game prior to this. My win ratio was at 50% and my % land drawn out of cards seen was at 50% or more, nearly every game, despite having only 23 lands in the 60 card deck. This is prior to the change.
I'm now 6 games in. My win:loss is 5:1 compared to 50%, and my land percentage drawn per game is an expected 30-40% of cards seen. (I know, too small a sample. Try it for yourself and see what you think.)
EDIT!!!! Wait a second now!!! The deck builder automatically sorts everything right back into the usual order as soon as you click done, then reopen the list. That means it's IMPOSSIBLE to try and see if the order of the deck in the deck builder's list has an influence on the randomization factor of the shuffler.
It may sort things back into order in the deck building interface, but if you export the decklist to a text file it will be in "cards added" order.
Okay, I would love to "randomize" my deck order before it goes into play to see if that affects what the shuffler brings up. What I did was Export my current decklist, opened notepad, mixed up the lands and the cmc a bit, then imported my newly made "Random" list on Arena. All the cards were in the exact same order as they usually are. It seems impossible to make the deck builder deviate from the usual list of lowest cmc to highest cmc. Sure, you can save a list that's "Random" by clicking done, but it just puts them back in order when you do so.
Can you clarify how to arrange your own decklist order the way you want it? I would love to do so if possible. I anecdotally noticed that not only do certain cards "clump together" they also seem to be slightly organized by cmc as well. Like "Oh here's the 2 cmc section with a bit of 3s. Here's the 3 cmc section with a bit of 4s, Here the 4 cmc section with even more land.
I would love to be able to mix up my cmc and lands before it goes into the evil shuffler! Please explain to me how it's done. I'm sure other people here are curious as well.
I do not think the display will ever not sort them no matter what you do with that list. If you want to see if Arena preserves the list, then export the list for the deck you imported. If the card order is preserved then... well... we know that it's preserved. Unfortunately, if the re-exported list is sorted, it doesn't actually prove anything conclusive.
Okay, so I exported the "Random" list to notepad and they WERE still in the "Random" order. That does improve my confidence. You're saying, Arena will take the list order found under "Export" and not the usual display order under the deck builder feature? Do you know that conclusively? Or just guessing from a programming standpoint? Did Wizards explicitly state it?
Thanks for the tip!
Just guessing from a programming standpoint. Since decks can, and do, change, it doesn't really make sense to sort the list internally when storing it since the only time you're going to want it sorted is during deck building. It's all just a bunch of pointers (references) anyways. It's probably not even a array proper but probably some indexed collection. They might even go so far as a full fledged database back end but that might be a bit much for the client. Whether they choose an array, collection, or a database, it wouldn't really be worthwhile to bother sorting it before storing it. You're going to do all sorts of sorting and shuffling anyways.
Come to think of it, I'm not actually sure if Unity Engine really has a proper array or just masks the collection to make it look like an array.
For those that don't know.
An array is a literal list. Each card has a reference on this list. So if you want to find any particular card, you have to run through the list from top to bottom until you check them all. If you could somehow look directly at RAM, you can easily go from element to element.
A collection behaves more like a bucket or buckets (not exactly but let's keep it simple eh?). The software can just reach in and arbiltrarilly grab X number of references, or sort them any way it wants, of whatever. Notably, many languages can treat collections as arrays but the reverse is usually not true without a lot of extra code. In addition, the element position in RAM isn't always relevant or even matters.
A database is Voodoo Magic, chicken blood and goat sacrifices. It used to involve virgin sacrifices at a volcano but labor laws prevent that now. But I guess for the sake of berevity, we can treat it as a bucket with a special query language that let's us do all sorts of cool things with the data. Some combinations of query engine and storage are better than others.
Makes sense that there is something weird about the lands. My 26 land deck gets way more 1 lander (mull) 1 lander openings than chance should dictate
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Okay y'all. "Randomizing" your deck in a text list, then importing it TOTALLY FIXES THE LAND/DUPLICATE PROBLEM! I know, I know, only one man, too small a sample size et.
I dare you to try it out for yourself. Instead of making it random, I actually put my list in a "semi-optimized order." As in, putting the cards in a list as I would hope to draw them.
This is all for bo1 ranked as my testing mode:
Well, I have been keeping tack of my win%, and also my land% drawn per game prior to this. My win ratio was at 50% and my % land drawn out of cards seen was at 50% or more, nearly every game, despite having only 23 lands in the 60 card deck. This is prior to the change.
I'm now 6 games in. My win:loss is 5:1 compared to 50%, and my land percentage drawn per game is an expected 30-40% of cards seen. (I know, too small a sample. Try it for yourself and see what you think.)
I'm not doubting you, I just want some more information, can you post the deck list (as exported) or explain where you've put the land to seemingly solve the problem? I'd like to do a bit of model testing myself, and knowing how you did things will give me some ideas on how I can test it further.
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What I did was put all the land in "Order" Mountain, Forest, Stomping Ground, Mountain, Forest, Rootbound Crag et. Then I would take my spells, basically "randomly" and stick one in between each land. Then went back with the extra's and stuck them in between again. The order is not exact anymore, I didn't want it to be TOO perfect, lest I run back into the same "Remainder problem" if that's what it is.
If you REALLY wanted to test it out, I would make an all-land deck with equal numbers of basic lands. Though of course you'd end up losing rather quickly, you'd stay alive long enough to see the difference. Just make one deck where every land is clumped together, then another where they are exactly spaced out and in order. You will quickly see it then.
I am now at 11:6 win:loss ratio for my "new" list, as compared to the past 51:50 games of basically the same list. It is SO obvious if you have been keeping track of your mana/spell ratio during your games for a while. I just keep hitting my normal amount of lands. I occasionally see duplicates of cards, but usually only once a game. This is what I was used to when playing paper Magic for 6+ years.
Thanks to everyone putting in their feedback and suggestions to make this solution happen. I was literally switching over to bo3 so at least the hand fixer wasn't messing with stuff. Now I'm back to bo1 and doing great.
**EDIT*** I have been noticing that this new list will freeze Arena sometimes when trying to open it, or join a game. It is happening way more often than I'm used to.
What I did was put all the land in "Order" Mountain, Forest, Stomping Ground, Mountain, Forest, Rootbound Crag et. Then I would take my spells, basically "randomly" and stick one in between each land. Then went back with the extra's and stuck them in between again. The order is not exact anymore, I didn't want it to be TOO perfect, lest I run back into the same "Remainder problem" if that's what it is.
If you REALLY wanted to test it out, I would make an all-land deck with equal numbers of basic lands. Though of course you'd end up losing rather quickly, you'd stay alive long enough to see the difference. Just make one deck where every land is clumped together, then another where they are exactly spaced out and in order. You will quickly see it then.
I am now at 11:6 win:loss ratio for my "new" list, as compared to the past 51:50 games of basically the same list. It is SO obvious if you have been keeping track of your mana/spell ratio during your games for a while. I just keep hitting my normal amount of lands. I occasionally see duplicates of cards, but usually only once a game. This is what I was used to when playing paper Magic for 6+ years.
Thanks to everyone putting in their feedback and suggestions to make this solution happen. I was literally switching over to bo3 so at least the hand fixer wasn't messing with stuff. Now I'm back to bo1 and doing great.
I tried this but I must be messing something up. When I import my list, it causes the red exclamation to appear. Selecting the deck to edit causes Arena to hang. I have to force close.
It might be cause I initially exported it into a spreadsheet to help speed up the splitting and sorting and something was modified in the translation. I'll try again today after work using just Notepad or SciTE and do the arranging by hand.
If this pans out, it's completely mind blowing as this effectively amounts to weaving the deck. I have to wonder if this is already a well known secret with some players? Especially those opponents that have the unnatural capacity to always hit their curve dead on. If not, it's well known now.
Wait a minute. Did you say that when you export this modified list that the order you imported them is preserved?! It's not merging the duplicate entries??
Now that I think about it, I can see how it makes sense if they're tracking cards in a collection and simply increment the card count rather than adding a new entry. When you break apart those entries line by line, you're probably creating new elements in the array or collection rather than incrementing that specific element count.
Good grief... I can see many places where the problems can come in.
What I did was put all the land in "Order" Mountain, Forest, Stomping Ground, Mountain, Forest, Rootbound Crag et. Then I would take my spells, basically "randomly" and stick one in between each land. Then went back with the extra's and stuck them in between again. The order is not exact anymore, I didn't want it to be TOO perfect, lest I run back into the same "Remainder problem" if that's what it is.
If you REALLY wanted to test it out, I would make an all-land deck with equal numbers of basic lands. Though of course you'd end up losing rather quickly, you'd stay alive long enough to see the difference. Just make one deck where every land is clumped together, then another where they are exactly spaced out and in order. You will quickly see it then.
I am now at 11:6 win:loss ratio for my "new" list, as compared to the past 51:50 games of basically the same list. It is SO obvious if you have been keeping track of your mana/spell ratio during your games for a while. I just keep hitting my normal amount of lands. I occasionally see duplicates of cards, but usually only once a game. This is what I was used to when playing paper Magic for 6+ years.
Thanks to everyone putting in their feedback and suggestions to make this solution happen. I was literally switching over to bo3 so at least the hand fixer wasn't messing with stuff. Now I'm back to bo1 and doing great.
I tried this but I must be messing something up. When I import my list, it causes the red exclamation to appear. Selecting the deck to edit causes Arena to hang. I have to force close.
It might be cause I initially exported it into a spreadsheet to help speed up the splitting and sorting and something was modified in the translation. I'll try again today after work using just Notepad or SciTE and do the arranging by hand.
If this pans out, it's completely mind blowing as this effectively amounts to weaving the deck. I have to wonder if this is already a well known secret with some players? Especially those opponents that have the unnatural capacity to always hit their curve dead on. If not, it's well known now.
**EDIT** Yes, I can click "Export" on my randomized list and it will stay in the same order. Even after playing games, even after closing the program.
Perhaps you added in a 5th copy of a card on accident? Or cut a letter or number off a card name. Mine imported after being made on notepad with no problem. However, I have been unable to edit the deck list with the "randomization" in it as well. I have to force quite also. I can play with it though.
I'm sure at least some people have figured this out. There are plenty of programmers out there who play Magic who would futz around with this stuff. They probably kept it to themselves so they can keep the advantage. I had to share my findings with y'all since y'all were who gave me the idea to begin with. Why hasn't Wizard's developers figured this out though? Why did they keep denying there was any problem when so many players said there was a problem?
In fact, I think everyone should check their work using another card building site. I just noticed I'm at 61 cards recently, one more land than I wanted. I put my list into tappedout.net since I couldn't edit it on Arena. That's how I caught my mix-up. It can be pretty easy to mess something up on accident, then not be able to notice it in your actual list.
That means I've been doing this much better, even with an extra land in there.
Also, I have been noticing opponents time out on me sometimes. This guy I'm in a game in right now hasn't played a land, he discarded a land on his turn 2. It doesn't make any sense. I've had someone else time out against me today as well. He just lost after doing nothing.
One point of data cannot indicate an aberration according to statistics courses and books I've taken / used. His additional games are "duplicates" in statistics, rather than replicates (I believe) and that is part of the issue. To say this is an aberration we need data from lots of other Arena players.
His case is one point on the distribution curve, of which we do not know the standard deviation, variance or anything. We know that DesolatorMagic's data point is not 50/50, not anything else about the population so saying it is an aberration is premature.
Edited for spelling and fat fingers.
I'm not saying that I'm sure that Wizards has malicious intent. I just had to provide a counter-argument that non-randomization COULD be used to make Wizards more $.
I like that quote. I counter with "Shake with your right hand, but hold a rock in your left." Same basically same idea. Here's the thing, this study came out of the anecdotal evidence of people saying "something is off." They refused to back down, even after the first, inadequate study said everything was fine. Wizards said everything is fine. Yet, experienced players kept saying, "No, something seems off."
While we can't outright assume malicious intent, I'm much MORE open to the idea now. If the going first coinflip is off too, that's a really bad sign. Innocent until proven guilty, but Wizards needs to go on trial now.
I believe you are thinking of it wrong. I'm not certain, but here's why:
If everyone uses the same exact algorithm to determine whether or not they go first, even one individual given enough games can demonstrate something is off.
If one person played 1 million games, and they went second every time, it is incontrovertible proof (basically) that the algorithm is off. Does that makes sense? You calculate the confidence interval (or something like that, I'm very rusty) to determine how likely it is.
The bottom line is, even if everyone else on Arena gets normally statistical results, but even one person gets VERY unlikely statistical results, then something is wrong. Something is not truly random.
You just scale this down, to size, find the "confidence interval" of say, someone playing 500 games and them getting a 75% rate of going second. Your not AS confident in the 0 in 1 million games, but your confidence does go up that something is off.
Your line of thinking and explanation is correct, and your explanation is how I think of it (not the incorrect way you're presuming I think of it).
Based on the confidence interval, we can have a guess if something is more likely to be "off" than representative of the true mean. That's just it though, it doesn't tell you definitively (per your claim he could prove it was OBVIOUSLY not 50/50). It merely says that it is more likely to be representative of a different mean.
Just as important, the confidence interval you speak of for hypothesis testing is directly affected by the population statistics (which I keep stating we do not have). We don't know anything about the population distribution. We know DesolatorMagic's value, and therefore cannot test the null hypothesis. This individual being at 60% going second cannot tell us this. We need population statistics for his data to be evaluated in a meaningful manner. "That seems odd" doesn't hold up well in the world where it's possible, even if improbable to achieve that result.
In addition, DesolatorMagic's games are kinda problematic in that they are non-sequential. Basically he's sampling a coin flip at random intervals, which while it should trend towards 50/50, it may have pronounced clustering of outcomes, especially since we know that no RNG is truly random. There are ways to control for these things. I would like to see his analysis. I am merely warning that we should definitely avoid making conclusions at this time.
If the deck works in paper it should work in Arena and vice versa. It is honestly kind of disheartening that these weird 13 mana red rush decks work this consistently.
Hands to the sky
Give a round of applause
For the great Miss Y!
Unfortunately, because Arena and bo1 is aimed at bringing new players into the game, and it sucks that games can just be boring sometimes, they will probably not get rid of the function. They will be too scared of getting rid of potentially new players who are like "But I can't even play this hand! This is stupid. I'm not going to play this anymore."
I hope to be wrong, but...
Okay, I would love to "randomize" my deck order before it goes into play to see if that affects what the shuffler brings up. What I did was Export my current decklist, opened notepad, mixed up the lands and the cmc a bit, then imported my newly made "Random" list on Arena. All the cards were in the exact same order as they usually are. It seems impossible to make the deck builder deviate from the usual list of lowest cmc to highest cmc. Sure, you can save a list that's "Random" by clicking done, but it just puts them back in order when you do so.
Can you clarify how to arrange your own decklist order the way you want it? I would love to do so if possible. I anecdotally noticed that not only do certain cards "clump together" they also seem to be slightly organized by cmc as well. Like "Oh here's the 2 cmc section with a bit of 3s. Here's the 3 cmc section with a bit of 4s, Here the 4 cmc section with even more land.
I would love to be able to mix up my cmc and lands before it goes into the evil shuffler! Please explain to me how it's done. I'm sure other people here are curious as well.
I do not think the display will ever not sort them no matter what you do with that list. If you want to see if Arena preserves the list, then export the list for the deck you imported. If the card order is preserved then... well... we know that it's preserved. Unfortunately, if the re-exported list is sorted, it doesn't actually prove anything conclusive.
Thanks for the tip!
I don't know this conclusively, but under my assumption of the source of the error it makes sense that the game reads your decklist in the same order it's shown in the export.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
I dare you to try it out for yourself. Instead of making it random, I actually put my list in a "semi-optimized order." As in, putting the cards in a list as I would hope to draw them.
This is all for bo1 ranked as my testing mode:
Well, I have been keeping tack of my win%, and also my land% drawn per game prior to this. My win ratio was at 50% and my % land drawn out of cards seen was at 50% or more, nearly every game, despite having only 23 lands in the 60 card deck. This is prior to the change.
I'm now 6 games in. My win:loss is 5:1 compared to 50%, and my land percentage drawn per game is an expected 30-40% of cards seen. (I know, too small a sample. Try it for yourself and see what you think.)
Just guessing from a programming standpoint. Since decks can, and do, change, it doesn't really make sense to sort the list internally when storing it since the only time you're going to want it sorted is during deck building. It's all just a bunch of pointers (references) anyways. It's probably not even a array proper but probably some indexed collection. They might even go so far as a full fledged database back end but that might be a bit much for the client. Whether they choose an array, collection, or a database, it wouldn't really be worthwhile to bother sorting it before storing it. You're going to do all sorts of sorting and shuffling anyways.
Come to think of it, I'm not actually sure if Unity Engine really has a proper array or just masks the collection to make it look like an array.
For those that don't know.
An array is a literal list. Each card has a reference on this list. So if you want to find any particular card, you have to run through the list from top to bottom until you check them all. If you could somehow look directly at RAM, you can easily go from element to element.
A collection behaves more like a bucket or buckets (not exactly but let's keep it simple eh?). The software can just reach in and arbiltrarilly grab X number of references, or sort them any way it wants, of whatever. Notably, many languages can treat collections as arrays but the reverse is usually not true without a lot of extra code. In addition, the element position in RAM isn't always relevant or even matters.
A database is Voodoo Magic, chicken blood and goat sacrifices. It used to involve virgin sacrifices at a volcano but labor laws prevent that now. But I guess for the sake of berevity, we can treat it as a bucket with a special query language that let's us do all sorts of cool things with the data. Some combinations of query engine and storage are better than others.
RRGrenzo plays your deck, GGYeva's mono green control, WW9-tails trys desperately for monowhite not to suck
RWBUTymna and Kraum's saboteur tribal, UWG Kestia's Enchantress Aggro, RUB Jeleva casts big dumb spells, RGB Vaevictis' big critters can kill your critters hard
Arena Standard
UUUU Tempo, since before it was cool
Various Wx decks running Fountain of Renewal and Day of Glory
Anything I can cram Chaos Wand in to
I'm not doubting you, I just want some more information, can you post the deck list (as exported) or explain where you've put the land to seemingly solve the problem? I'd like to do a bit of model testing myself, and knowing how you did things will give me some ideas on how I can test it further.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
1 Stomping Ground (RNA) 259
1 Gruul Spellbreaker (RNA) 179
1 Growth-Chamber Guardian (RNA) 128
1 Mountain (RIX) 195
1 Merfolk Branchwalker (XLN) 197
1 Shock (M19) 156
1 Forest (RIX) 196
1 Growth-Chamber Guardian (RNA) 128
1 Stomping Ground (RNA) 259
1 Lightning Strike (XLN) 149
1 Thorn Lieutenant (M19) 203
1 Mountain (RIX) 195
1 Rekindling Phoenix (RIX) 111
1 Forest (RIX) 196
1 Jadelight Ranger (RIX) 136
1 Rootbound Crag (XLN) 256
1 Lava Coil (GRN) 108
1 Nullhide Ferox (GRN) 138
1 Mountain (RIX) 195
1 Shock (M19) 156
1 Thrashing Brontodon (RIX) 148
1 Mountain (RIX) 195
1 Nullhide Ferox (GRN) 138
1 Lava Coil (GRN) 108
1 Gruul Spellbreaker (RNA) 179
1 Forest (RIX) 196
1 Thorn Lieutenant (M19) 203
1 Rootbound Crag (XLN) 256
1 Gruul Spellbreaker (RNA) 179
1 Mountain (RIX) 195
1 Rekindling Phoenix (RIX) 111
1 Forest (RIX) 196
1 Growth-Chamber Guardian (RNA) 128
1 Stomping Ground (RNA) 259
1 Merfolk Branchwalker (XLN) 197
1 Mountain (RIX) 195
1 Lightning Strike (M19) 152
1 Forest (RIX) 196
1 Gruul Spellbreaker (RNA) 179
1 Thrashing Brontodon (RIX) 148
1 Stomping Ground (RNA) 259
1 Lightning Strike (XLN) 149
1 Mountain (RIX) 195
1 Thorn Lieutenant (M19) 203
1 Thrashing Brontodon (RIX) 148
1 Kraul Harpooner (GRN) 136
1 Forest (RIX) 196
1 Light Up the Stage (RNA) 107
1 Rootbound Crag (XLN) 256
1 Rekindling Phoenix (RIX) 111
1 Mountain (RIX) 195
1 Growth-Chamber Guardian (RNA) 128
1 Forest (RIX) 196
1 Jadelight Ranger (RIX) 136
1 Lava Coil (GRN) 108
1 Forest (RIX) 196
1 Kraul Harpooner (GRN) 136
1 Rootbound Crag (XLN) 256
1 Jadelight Ranger (RIX) 136
1 Lava Coil (GRN) 108
1 Rekindling Phoenix (RIX) 111
What I did was put all the land in "Order" Mountain, Forest, Stomping Ground, Mountain, Forest, Rootbound Crag et. Then I would take my spells, basically "randomly" and stick one in between each land. Then went back with the extra's and stuck them in between again. The order is not exact anymore, I didn't want it to be TOO perfect, lest I run back into the same "Remainder problem" if that's what it is.
If you REALLY wanted to test it out, I would make an all-land deck with equal numbers of basic lands. Though of course you'd end up losing rather quickly, you'd stay alive long enough to see the difference. Just make one deck where every land is clumped together, then another where they are exactly spaced out and in order. You will quickly see it then.
I am now at 11:6 win:loss ratio for my "new" list, as compared to the past 51:50 games of basically the same list. It is SO obvious if you have been keeping track of your mana/spell ratio during your games for a while. I just keep hitting my normal amount of lands. I occasionally see duplicates of cards, but usually only once a game. This is what I was used to when playing paper Magic for 6+ years.
Thanks to everyone putting in their feedback and suggestions to make this solution happen. I was literally switching over to bo3 so at least the hand fixer wasn't messing with stuff. Now I'm back to bo1 and doing great.
**EDIT*** I have been noticing that this new list will freeze Arena sometimes when trying to open it, or join a game. It is happening way more often than I'm used to.
I tried this but I must be messing something up. When I import my list, it causes the red exclamation to appear. Selecting the deck to edit causes Arena to hang. I have to force close.
It might be cause I initially exported it into a spreadsheet to help speed up the splitting and sorting and something was modified in the translation. I'll try again today after work using just Notepad or SciTE and do the arranging by hand.
If this pans out, it's completely mind blowing as this effectively amounts to weaving the deck. I have to wonder if this is already a well known secret with some players? Especially those opponents that have the unnatural capacity to always hit their curve dead on. If not, it's well known now.
Wait a minute. Did you say that when you export this modified list that the order you imported them is preserved?! It's not merging the duplicate entries??
Now that I think about it, I can see how it makes sense if they're tracking cards in a collection and simply increment the card count rather than adding a new entry. When you break apart those entries line by line, you're probably creating new elements in the array or collection rather than incrementing that specific element count.
Good grief... I can see many places where the problems can come in.
Perhaps you added in a 5th copy of a card on accident? Or cut a letter or number off a card name. Mine imported after being made on notepad with no problem. However, I have been unable to edit the deck list with the "randomization" in it as well. I have to force quite also. I can play with it though.
I'm sure at least some people have figured this out. There are plenty of programmers out there who play Magic who would futz around with this stuff. They probably kept it to themselves so they can keep the advantage. I had to share my findings with y'all since y'all were who gave me the idea to begin with. Why hasn't Wizard's developers figured this out though? Why did they keep denying there was any problem when so many players said there was a problem?
That means I've been doing this much better, even with an extra land in there.
Also, I have been noticing opponents time out on me sometimes. This guy I'm in a game in right now hasn't played a land, he discarded a land on his turn 2. It doesn't make any sense. I've had someone else time out against me today as well. He just lost after doing nothing.