Ciri: Nova not working in the Gold Rush mode is a bug

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mdoko

Forum regular
Ciri: Nova not working in the Gold Rush mode is a bug

Description of Ciri: Nova states: "If you have exactly 2 copies of each Bronze card in your starting deck, set base power to 22."

In Gold Rush mode your initial deck has no bronzes at all, meaning that the requirement stated in the card description is satisfied. (This might be confusing at first, so take a look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuous_truth.) However, in the Gold Rush mode Ciri: Nova stays at 1 strength, which is incorrect according to its description.

This is clearly a bug, but it's debatable where the bug exactly is. There are two options:

1. The behavior of Ciri: Nova is as intended. In this case the description is incorrect, and it should be changed to " If you have exactly 2 copies of each Bronze card in your starting deck, set base power to 22 (unless there are no bronze cards in your starting deck)."

2. The description is correct, and the bug is in the implementation. In this case the card implementation needs to be fixed.
 
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"Exactly two" means just that, exactly two. Zero does not equal two; you wouldn't say 0 = 2.
Card works as intended.

Edit: Its description could use a clarification, though. Not the first time it's caused confusion.
 
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mdoko

Forum regular
Muffliato;n10946924 said:
"Exactly two" means just that, exactly two. Zero does not equal two; you wouldn't say 0 = 2.

Have you at least read the article I linked to?

The description says "exactly 2 copies of each Bronze card in your starting deck", which means that for every bronze card you have in your starting deck you have to have exactly two copies. Now, the only way for this condition to bot be satisfied is for there to exist a bronze card in your starting deck of which you do not have exactly two copies. Now, since you have no bronze cards in your deck, there is no bronze card in your starting deck of which you do not have exactly tow copies. In other words: if your starting deck contains only gold cards, you have exactly two copies of each bronze card in your starting deck.


Card works as intended.
As I stated in my initial post, that might indeed be the case. In that case, the description is incorrect and needs to be fixed.
 

rrc

Forum veteran
mdoko;n10946903 said:
Description of Ciri: Nova states: "If you have exactly 2 copies of each Bronze card in your starting deck, set base power to 22."

In Gold Rush mode your initial deck has no bronzes at all, meaning that the requirement stated in the card description is satisfied. (This might be confusing at first, so take a look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuous_truth.) However, in the Gold Rush mode Ciri: Nova stays at 1 strength, which is incorrect according to its description.

If the description said "All bronze cards you have in your starting deck should have exactly 2 copies" then the vacuous truth applies (as the article gives the example: "all cellphones in the room should be ON/OFF"). If you think about the example statement in the wiki, it makes sense to be true if there are no cell phones. Here it says 'if you have exactly 2 copies of each bronze cards' and it doesn't say 'if you have any bronze card, you should have exactly 2 copies".

IMHO, it is intuitive that Ciri:Nova will not work in Gold Rush, may be because I am not a mathematician :)
 

mdoko

Forum regular
rrc;n10946942 said:
If the description said "All bronze cards you have in your starting deck should have exactly 2 copies" then the vacuous truth applies (as the article gives the example: "all cellphones in the room should be ON/OFF"). If you think about the example statement in the wiki, it makes sense to be true if there are no cell phones.

The initial example in the linked article does not say "should", it says "are". Read it carefully again. The first paragraph of the article explains that the following three statements are all true about the room with zero cell phones in it:
1. All cell phones in the room are turned off.
2. All cell phones in the room are turned on.
3. All cell phones in the room are turned on and turned off.

The point is that whenever you make an universal claim over an empty set (such as the set of all cell phones in an empty room, or the set of all bronze cards in a Gold Rush Arena deck), that statement is vacuously true, since the only way for it to be false is if there were an element of the set that would falsify it. However, with the set being empty, there is obviously no element of it that could falsify the claim, so the claim is true.


Here it says 'if you have exactly 2 copies of each bronze cards' and it doesn't say 'if you have any bronze card, you should have exactly 2 copies".
Those are two equivalent statements.

IMHO, it is intuitive that Ciri:Nova will not work in Gold Rush, may be because I am not a mathematician :)
I agree that it's intuitive. I know what the problem is, because I've been having this same discussion every year for several years when teaching formal logic to first year math students. My point is that the card descriptions should be treated as formal contracts between developers and players, and the card should do what it says it does. My guess is that the card works as intended, and the description needs to be fixed in order to describe the card's actual behavior.

 
mdoko;n10946936 said:
Have you at least read the article I linked to?

Yes, and I've now re-read it super closely.

It's certainly one way to look at the description and its indications; however, a way that requires some logical deduction if not actual knowledge of mathematics beyond the basics.
The simpler, less theoretical "zero does not equal two, therefore Nova does not work with zero Bronze cards" thinking seems more likely to occur -- like I demonstrated (and still find it logical).

I suppose extra clarity would be useful in more ways than one; making sure there is one and only one way to interpret the text, even if mathematics is brought into the mix.
I'm now intrigued as to whether there are other similar cases among the cards. Hmm.
 

mdoko

Forum regular
Muffliato;n10946954 said:
It's certainly one way to look at the description and its indications; however, a way that requires some logical deduction if not actual knowledge of mathematics beyond the basics.
The simpler, less theoretical "zero does not equal two, therefore Nova does not work with zero Bronze cards" thinking seems more likely to occur -- like I demonstrated (and still find it logical).
You are confusing what is being stated in the card description. If you read it carefully, the description does not require you to have any bronze cards included in your deck. The only thing the description is talking about is the bronze cards you have included in your deck. Therefore, if you have none, there is no restriction to be satisfied. Do you see what I'm talking about? (I know this is weird, because people rarely use vacuous statements in regular communication. It only happens when you have formal specifications such as card descriptions.)


I suppose extra clarity would be useful in more ways than one; making sure there is one and only one way to interpret the text, even if mathematics is brought into the mix.
This is more than clarity issue. The description is formally incorrect. Not a big deal, since it comes up only in weird corner cases, but still, the fix would be to simply update the description.


I'm now intrigued as to whether there are other similar cases among the cards. Hmm.
I haven't found any. I have formally reported this one as a bug, and I hope they'll fix it. Are there other cards that say something like "for every bronze card in your deck" or something similar?

 
sorry but the "0 != 2" excuse does not hold water, else you'd be required 2 of EVERY bronze in your starting deck which is not the case, which is patently ridiculous.
 
mdoko;n10946951 said:
I agree that it's intuitive. I know what the problem is, because I've been having this same discussion every year for several years when teaching formal logic to first year math students. My point is that the card descriptions should be treated as formal contracts between developers and players, and the card should do what it says it does. My guess is that the card works as intended, and the description needs to be fixed in order to describe the card's actual behavior.

The card works as intended and the description is correct, because every deck is supposed to have bronze cards. That's basically the consequence of the first formal contract between you and the developer (deck building rules).

However, I agree that description should be changed specifically for Gold Rush (and any future modes where you can have zero bronze cards in a deck).
 
Gamer_Matt;n10947173 said:
Ive seen Shupe work in gold rush, so Ciri should too.

Their conditions are rather different, though; Shupe doesn't care about card qualities/colours. And it's not like Nova is at all easy to get to work in normal Arena either.
 
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