Coinflip, enormous issue in Pro Ladder and possible solution

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Coinflip, enormous issue in Pro Ladder and possible solution

Since this Pro Ladder seasons started I decided to try to get into top 200, because maybe that will get me somewhere, hopefully salt mine :D

Yesterday I had very mean streak of Blue coins which certainly didn't help my fMMR, so I decided to track the coinflip today, I got 16 Blue and 4 Red coins so far.

As I noted wins as well, I noted I have 100% win rate on Red coin with three different decks, while less than 50% with Blue coin. Maybe those numbers as well as overall percentage of Blue/Red coin doesn't hold on the long run, but it is acutely agitating and unnecessary.

As CDPR addressed the coinflip in tournaments, it would go a long way to institute alternating coinflip in Pro Ladder as well. So, when someone gets Blue coin, next game he will get guaranteed Red coin, while be pair exclusively with player who previously got the Red coin, so everyone would get Red coin reliably every other game.

I implore the devs to consider this and make Pro Ladder platform for demonstration of skill, untarnished by Blue streaks that wreck the mood and fMMR.
 
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SrdjanB;n10637331 said:
I implore the devs to consider this and make Pro Ladder platform for demonstration of skill, untarnished by Blue streaks that wreck the mood and fMMR.

Why not just have this for literally every match? Or at least attempt it - I know it would probably see queueing times go up.
 
I'm not necessarily against the idea but that would be a virtual fix of the problem since the player who lose the CF will still be at a disadvantage.
It's better than nothing, that's for sure but I think I prefere a complete fix of the issue.

That being said, it can be a good intermediate option until CDPR show up with an actual mechanic that put both player at equal chances to win the game.
 
Dante2144;n10641271 said:
Why not just flip a coin to determine 50/50 because its either heads or tails. Rest is all luck

Because everyone isn't equal in front of the RNG, some loses it much more than they win it.
 
Update if anyone is interested, overall tally for yesterday was 26 Blue and 9 Red coins (three of the Blue were in other modes, one on each of Arena, Ranked and Friendly)

Today so far I am on 10 Blue and 6 Red in Pro so not much better proportion.

How is that fair and how am I to compete with players who have reverse situation?
 
SrdjanB;n10643271 said:
Update if anyone is interested, overall tally for yesterday was 26 Blue and 9 Red coins (three of the Blue were in other modes, one on each of Arena, Ranked and Friendly)

Today so far I am on 10 Blue and 6 Red in Pro so not much better proportion.

How is that fair and how am I to compete with players who have reverse situation?

Please play at least 1000 games: if the coin flip distribution is not 500+/-25, then you can complain.

I also have some mean blue coin streaks, and that is indeed frustrating, but you need to look at a bigger picture.
 
Esmer;n10643981 said:
Please play at least 1000 games: if the coin flip distribution is not 500+/-25, then you can complain.

I also have some mean blue coin streaks, and that is indeed frustrating, but you need to look at a bigger picture.

I can complain right now just fine, thank you very much.

Main point isn't even how this is frustrating to me, but how unfair it is in competitive conditions, I am not saying I should get 20 Red coins now, but how to make a system better.

Would you really prefer current state to the proposition of alternating coin I suggested, is it that much better and why?

 
The thing is, even with a pretty large sample, some people will necessarily be unlucky. That's just how to bell curve works.
There's a thread by a player who had 56% blue coins over a 1000 games. Someone else will have 56% red coins. That's well within the range that could be expected from a pro ladder competitor. As a semi-competitive player who wants to get a high rank but could not possibly muster the time for the pro ladder, I don't really mind ... But I do see the issue.

I would prefer an algorithm that skews your chances towards whichever coin you haven't been getting lately so people would get their 50% more reliably. (This would also help curb frustration among casual players.)
The reason I prefer this over simply alternating between coins is because than you'd know whether you're gonna go first the next match, and not only mulligan but maybe even switch decks accordingly.
 
NomanPeopled;n10645391 said:
The thing is, even with a pretty large sample, some people will necessarily be unlucky. That's just how to bell curve works.
There's a thread by a player who had 56% blue coins over a 1000 games. Someone else will have 56% red coins. That's well within the range that could be expected from a pro ladder competitor. As a semi-competitive player who wants to get a high rank but could not possibly muster the time for the pro ladder, I don't really mind ... But I do see the issue.

I would prefer an algorithm that skews your chances towards whichever coin you haven't been getting lately so people would get their 50% more reliably. (This would also help curb frustration among casual players.)
The reason I prefer this over simply alternating between coins is because than you'd know whether you're gonna go first the next match, and not only mulligan but maybe even switch decks accordingly.

I'm not saying it's a conspiracy, I am saying it is very flawed and seriously unfair system.

Knowing that you go second and adjusting accordingly is integral part of tournament play now, I don't see how is it out of place on Pro Ladder, besides everyone else has that advantage as well and best players won't be just abusers of Red coin, but players who are better on Blue coin than everyone else.

Besides even the Red abuse decks (which there are two at the moments as I am aware so just the half of overall MMR) are not invincible on Red coin and when everyone has to prepare for that scenario on regular basis they will be even more vulnerable, so not instant win even for the best players.
 
SrdjanB;n10646331 said:
I'm not saying it's a conspiracy, I am saying it is very flawed and seriously unfair system.
Rereading my first paragraph, I'm not sure what it was meant to be a response to. It is not supposed to imply that the system is being rigged though, on the contrary.
My point was that an unbiased series of coinflips will result in quite significant deviations for a significant number of players. It will not average itself out sufficiently in the number of games one can expect during a single pro ladder to be considered fair.
The coinflip is a necessity, not part of the game mechanic. Its effects on the outcome should be kept minimal, particularly if that outcome is to show who the best players are.

Knowing that you go second and adjusting accordingly is integral part of tournament play now, I don't see how is it out of place on Pro Ladder, besides everyone else has that advantage as well and best players won't be just abusers of Red coin, but players who are better on Blue coin than everyone else.
The trouble I see for casual and semi-competitive players would be that players would start switching entire decks between matches.
That's sort of speculative, but consider that the game is not balanced around the possibility of dedicated redcoin and bluecoin decks. Hard to say what would happen if players could predict perfectly and choose their deck accordingly.

That's not a bad thing in and of itself and might actually be very interesting to see. I don't think that the average player would be thrilled about that, though.
Might work in pro ladder where players can be expected to put a lot more effort into it. But I don't see CDPR implementing a coinflip regulation in the pro ladder only. I think there'd be a significant backlash from the community if something were done about the issue in one game mode but not another.
 
NomanPeopled;n10646791 said:
The trouble I see for casual and semi-competitive players would be that players would start switching entire decks between matches.
That's sort of speculative, but consider that the game is not balanced around the possibility of dedicated redcoin and bluecoin decks. Hard to say what would happen if players could predict perfectly and choose their deck accordingly.

That's not a bad thing in and of itself and might actually be very interesting to see. I don't think that the average player would be thrilled about that, though.
Might work in pro ladder where players can be expected to put a lot more effort into it. But I don't see CDPR implementing a coinflip regulation in the pro ladder only. I think there'd be a significant backlash from the community if something were done about the issue in one game mode but not another.

They would get used to it, people got to this game that is pretty different than other CCGs and they got a hold of it, they got a hold of changing metas, very OP decks, constant changes and more, they will quickly get a hold of blue/red coin decks.

It is not that much of a trouble, and upcoming patches will nerf coinflip abuse decks according to the newly found situation.

So all will be back to normal quickly for everyone.
 
SrdjanB;n10646911 said:
So all will be back to normal quickly for everyone.
I'm not so sure. If the game necessitated or even just pushed players towards alternating between two decks, that would put a lot of strain on newcomers as well as players who only want to play their pet deck at any given time. Never mind competitive players who want to do a string of tests with a single deck.

At worst, the entire game would need to be rebalanced as there's no guarantuee that redcoin decks would not have an even larger advantage over bluecoin decks than the red coin already has over the blue coin.
 
SrdjanB;n10644501 said:
I can complain right now just fine, thank you very much.

Main point isn't even how this is frustrating to me, but how unfair it is in competitive conditions, I am not saying I should get 20 Red coins now, but how to make a system better.

Would you really prefer current state to the proposition of alternating coin I suggested, is it that much better and why?

Yes, you can always complain, that's true.

Alternating coin flips is bad because players would be able to mulligan accordingly. This will lead to even more red coin abuse from decks like Barclay -> Cleaver. Moreover, Wardancer will be an even bigger problem: basically, if you know you go second and you have only one Wardancer in hand, you won't mulligan it in R1 to use in round 2.

There could be some other mechanics to distribute red/blue coin flip equally for each player, but I, as I believe many other players, would prefer another solution (there're dozens of suggestions on how to balance a coin flip).
 
Esmer;n10647101 said:
Yes, you can always complain, that's true.

Alternating coin flips is bad because players would be able to mulligan accordingly. This will lead to even more red coin abuse from decks like Barclay -> Cleaver. Moreover, Wardancer will be an even bigger problem: basically, if you know you go second and you have only one Wardancer in hand, you won't mulligan it in R1 to use in round 2.

There could be some other mechanics to distribute red/blue coin flip equally for each player, but I, as I believe many other players, would prefer another solution (there're dozens of suggestions on how to balance a coin flip).

I would prefer addressing the coinflip in-depth with some functional mechanic to alleviate the problems going first create, there is no discussion about it, all players would want that.

I am not suggesting alternating coinflip as ultimate solution, just quick band aid until some new mechanic is developed and implemented.

As for exacerbating abuse, well everyone would have that opportunity equally, so solutions and counter-plays would certainly be developed, also CDPR would be forced to account that when balancing next patch.
 
NomanPeopled;n10646951 said:
I'm not so sure. If the game necessitated or even just pushed players towards alternating between two decks, that would put a lot of strain on newcomers as well as players who only want to play their pet deck at any given time. Never mind competitive players who want to do a string of tests with a single deck.

At worst, the entire game would need to be rebalanced as there's no guarantuee that redcoin decks would not have an even larger advantage over bluecoin decks than the red coin already has over the blue coin.

Well that certainly can be bad, but this is kinda more pressing since this is bad right now.

I get what you are saying, but something has to be done and this would be least technically demanding and in line with already existing tournament practice.
 
SrdjanB;n10647361 said:
As for exacerbating abuse, well everyone would have that opportunity equally, so solutions and counter-plays would certainly be developed, also CDPR would be forced to account that when balancing next patch.

The solution could be simpler. Each game the server compares blue coin rates* of both players. A player who has a bigger blue coin rate goes second.

But what do we know, perhaps there's a similar mechanism in the game already.

*Blue coin rate = (number of matches you went first) / (your total number of matches).
 
Esmer;n10647101 said:
Yes, you can always complain, that's true.

Alternating coin flips is bad because players would be able to mulligan accordingly. This will lead to even more red coin abuse from decks like Barclay -> Cleaver. Moreover, Wardancer will be an even bigger problem: basically, if you know you go second and you have only one Wardancer in hand, you won't mulligan it in R1 to use in round 2.

There could be some other mechanics to distribute red/blue coin flip equally for each player, but I, as I believe many other players, would prefer another solution (there're dozens of suggestions on how to balance a coin flip).

Honestly, I don't think it would be that bad.
Peoples can mulligan/chose their deck accordingly but so do you. I don't really see how it would be an issue.
Also, Red coin abuse are not going to be higher, everyone who's twisted enough to use those kind of tactics already does.
Same thing with Wardancer, who drop her on round 1 anyway...
 
Esmer;n10656061 said:
People at rank 21 so you can't dry pass.

I'm sorry but this is poor tactic.

1/ You can't tell for sure if you're gonna win or lose the CF when you swap her on R1, and she has a lot more value on R2 if you win it.
2/ You can't tell what deck your opponent is bringing that early in the game (the leader isn't a good enough of a clue), meaning you don't even know if your opponent is gonna dry pass in the first place (if he doesn't, you basically sacrifice one of your bigger threat for nothing...doesn't sound all that productive to me).
3/ Some players never dry pass unless they have an unplayable hand, dry passing has never been proven a viable strategy and dry passing doesn't increase your chance to win by a significant amount (it's not like the card advantage, for example...which you can get if you keep WD in your hand).
 
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