Guest posts by Donot

1

Issue Archive / Re: Vanishing newly dealt card [unconfirmed]

« on: August 04, 2011, 03:06:42 am »

Were furiously clicking on the space in your hand where the voodoo doll should have been added ? or something like that
more info

9.  Rapid Draw problems Symptoms:  Not drawing a card you should have, despite having room for it in hand.  Being forced to discard an invisible 99 cost card. Causes:  If you use card draw abilities like mind gate, electrum hourglass, and precognition, too close together, an error occurs.  If you are looking at extended card art by mousing over a card while a card is drawn, that card will magically disappear.  As the game keeps track of your cards in hand separately, the game will think you have an extra invisible card in hand, and force you to discard it if necessary. 10.  Rapid Click Problems Symptoms:  Playing cards for free, playing an infinite number of cards, discarding more than one card, and various other illegal game moves. Causes:  This is an exploit, and as such, will not be explained in detail.  Please slow down when clicking to avoid problems.  Zanz is currently trying to find the optimal pause between clicks.

  - Confirmed bugs

No furious clicking ... but sometimes the card being drawn will arc past the mouse - causing the extra card art to pop up.  #9 sounds about right. 

2

Issue Archive / Vanishing newly dealt card [confirmed?]

« on: August 02, 2011, 12:57:28 pm »

Very odd behavior - I see the card get dealt, but not added to my hand.
 
I've seen this before, months ago, and again today.  I had played a Voodoo Doll, computer reversed time on it.  Next turn, I see it get dealt to me, but no card is added to my hand.  I had two cards in my hand.  The next turn, a new card is dealt to me - not the Voodoo Doll.  So the doll vanished.
 
 

3

Platinum League Decks / Re: Essence's PlatDeck Compendium

« on: July 14, 2011, 03:37:53 am »

I'm incredibly annoyed at the RNG; I got a whopping 8 plays in 24 hours, and I'm convinced that that's the only reason this deck isn't Top 10 right now.

Tomorrow the HP will be so low that it'll start accruing massive losses, so today's failure to get played is what cost me a chance at stardom.  Oh, well.

Next time!

It seems pretty common for me not to get much games the first day or two as well. I'm over a day and a half in and I've only had 18 games played—all wins

I don't think it's possible to get in t10 without being up at least 4 or 5 days to get enough games in. But that's when the real difficulty comes in keeping up rating, like you said, because of diminishing HP.

Me too.  I've had an air rush deck up for 2 days, it's got 19 wins and 1 loss, ranking it at 100.  Shouldn't winning 95% of your matches count for something?  And shouldn't it get more than 10 plays a day?  These are concerns I voiced while Arena was in beta.  Maybe people aren't playing it now that the novelty has worn off? Or is it true that the higher ranked decks get played more?  I don't know.  But the Ranking algorithm should take age into consideration.  And kicking decks through reduced HP is just silly.  Decks should simply be booted after some threshold (days? number of games? number of losses? some combination?).
 
Oh, and it would be nice to see a leaderboard.  Are the same people putting up the top ranked decks? 

4

Forum Archive / Re: Post Unconfirmed Bugs Here!

« on: July 07, 2011, 10:17:34 am »

Mirror shield seems broken - it says "any damage from spells is reflected" but nightmare (a spell) still inflicts damage. 

5

The Arena / Re: What is rating

« on: July 06, 2011, 12:10:04 pm »

One thing still isn't completely clear to me, the rating only applies to one deck, not to yourself? When you change decks, is it completely reevaluated regarding rank and rating?

And wouldn't that encourage people not to use the oracle cards for new decks if they have a deck that works well?

Is there a time limit that determines how long you can keep one particular deck in the arena?

So many questions...

no time limit, but after 8 days your health is 1, an easy em by any RoL Hope if they go first
2^8=256, obviously, the deck does worse and worse as its health decreases.

yes it discourages people from using oracle cards if they have a good old deck, but the deck has to change eventually, and this system works best.

Yes, that's the idea (as I understand it).  But I still think that having decks forced out via weakening is a bad idea - it undermines the real goal of getting interesting decks of various difficulty.  A deck with 1 hp is not interesting and not difficult.  There ARE better ways to remove stale decks (like simply limiting the number of days or games a deck participates in before getting the boot).  I think Zanz chose the weakening approach because he found it clever that decks would fall out the bottom.  It is clever, but that doesn't mean it's in keeping with the overall idea of the Arena.  I'm all for forcing decks out after awhile, but not through weakening them.

6

The Arena / Re: What is rating

« on: July 06, 2011, 03:10:15 am »

This is starting to become more clear.  Thanks.
 
(How do I view the source code?)

7

Farming Studies and Statistics / Re: List of decks used against Arena with Stats

« on: July 06, 2011, 02:49:33 am »

I've used this deck against Gold with reasonable success.  I ran a set of 20 games, had a 50% win rate (10/10) nine of which were mastery, with a net increase in score of 1494 and gold of 2704.  I won 5 cards, managed at most 3 wins in a row (no rare spins), and it took roughly an hour.  Its biggest weaknesses are bad draws and sanctuary. 
 
"Ultimate Shutdown"

by Donot

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u8 74f 74f 77j 77j 7dm 7dm 7gp 7gq 7gs 7n5 7q4 7q5 7t6 7t6 7t6 7ta 7td 80i 80i 80i 8pj

 
(? = Entropy Mark, not a card)

I didn't write this deck, I found it in the forums a few months ago, made minor (long forgotten) changes to it then, and add it to my library of fun decks.  If you wrote it, let us know and I'll give you proper credit.

8

The Arena / Re: What is rating

« on: July 05, 2011, 10:08:20 pm »

I've been wondering this too.  Does the rank/rating reset every time I post a new arena deck? Does it matter if the new posting is a mod on the same oracle-picked card?
 
I was assuming, with no basis for reliance, that "rank" was my deck was "doing" compared to the other 499 decks in my league.  So my deck's current "rank" of 198 would mean that 197 other decks are "better", based on some unknown formula.  I've asked for that formula before, and got something like "rand(N,X)" which can't be right because random ranking would be silly.  I would hope it's something like ( Seed + Games Won + Number of League Games played since posted) / ( 1 + Games Won + Games Lost + Number of League Games played since posted ) [no, I don't know if that's the right apporach either... I'm just thinking about the important factors]. 
 
As for "Rating", I was hoping it was an overall metric of my decks performance.  That is, some measure of how each deck I've posted has performed, to be used in determining where to put a new deck in the ranks.  So my current "Rating" of 130 would mean that my next deck should be seeded highly.
 
ZANZ!  PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS TO US!  THANK YOU!

9

Patch Notes and Development News / Re: A few details about T500

« on: July 01, 2011, 02:32:35 pm »

Why does the deck hp atrophy?  I mean, I know Zanz coded it that way - but why? If the goal of the arena is to get people to post interesting decks, why penalize the good ones that folks would want to leave up longer?  Why not just put a 7 day expiration on all decks, sort of like how the old T50 reset every weekend.  Do we need to weaken the decks artificially?  Doesn't that just weaken the arena as a whole?  I think if the goal is to get a variety of decks out there - just let them be out there! and then expire them after a couple days (somewhere around 5 to 7 seems good). 
 
Also, the ranking system seems broken.  It should be a function of wins, losses, times played, and age (to reflect opportunities to be played, e.g., total number of plays since posted).  What's the current formula?  Does it do this?

10

Patch Notes and Development News / Re: A few details about T500

« on: June 28, 2011, 02:47:36 am »

ok, to adress your worries:
1) just look at how many people HAVE actually played in the platinum level. ive faced decks that have been faced 60 times (admitedly, it had only 5 losses, but w/e). a lot of people do play them, just not noobs as they shouldnt face them. they should face bronze or silver.
2) go to the oracle to get the random card. it doesnt show up on the oracle's screen, but it will in the arena
3) im sure zanz did this to avoid people exploiting a glitch that he probably caught before releasing the beta. besides, it doesnt permanently change your cards, it only changes them for that deck. after that, its as if those cards never existed in your inventory
4)what penalty? im in the gold league, but i can still face bronze and such. theres nothing bad about having a high score other than having to click a little more when building your decks for the ai to use. and this is the new scoreboard.

1) Current stats only reflect the novelty factor.  My concern is more long term.  Also, the question isn't if people play against platinum, but if they do so on par with the other levels.  I predict they won't.
4) The penalty is that your deck submitted to the arena wins electrum for winning.  But only if people play against it.  See (1).
2) Great.  I'm sure that will become clear as I play, but it isn't clear on the face of the screen.  That was my only point there.  I trust in Zanz and his long term ability to make it great.  I was only pointing out room for improvement.
3) I'm sure it's just a bug.  One that Zanz will probably fix. 
 
I'm not concerned that I won't figure out the nuances through trial and error; I would just prefer not to have to ferret out the nuances.  I've been playing long enough to know that some nuances just have to be figured out the hard way, but that doesn't mean this will always be the case.
 
And yes, platinum decks CAN be beaten (I've beaten a few already).  Just not very often.  The rewards for my wins wern't even close to reasonable compared to the difficulty.  It's like beating an FG, only you get half the coins and you might spin an un-upped oty.  Oooooooo.   Yeah, not worth it.

11

In-game Troubleshooting / Re: What's the matter with t50?

« on: June 28, 2011, 02:22:14 am »

I think it's down for the arena beta.  Might be down perm?

12

Patch Notes and Development News / Re: A few details about T500

« on: June 28, 2011, 02:09:45 am »

Okay, started playing with the t500 beta and I noticed a few things:
1) There's no real incentive to play against the platinum level decks.  Sure you might win a nice chunk of change, but more likely you're just going to lose.  Hard.  These decks are FG buffed, plus they have shards.  The best anti-FG decks can't simultaneously deal with 12 regens + antimatter + denial of any sort.  That also has the unfortnuate side effect that those of us with platinum level scores can't really "earn" anything by making decks.  No one plays against the class, then the decks don't get much play.  D'oh.
 
2) I was confused by the random card choice.  Really, I was confused by the whole layout.  I think I'll figure most of it out soon enough, but maybe some labels/instructions would help.  But most important, I didn't see where to randomly choose my deck card... so I have skeleton.  After playing a bunch of decks, it looks like lots of people got skeleton.  As though it were the default card before you get one at random...  D'oh!
 
3) You can modify your deck after you submit it.  Cool! Except you can't put in a code.  Oh well.  I hit "remove" and then I start putting in cards.  Surprise! The random cards were removed, but each of my first 5 additions were rewritten as the random card (skeleton).  And the selected card was taken from my library.  Start over fixed this, but that seems like a confusing bug too.
 
4) I think this has real promise, but some issues need to be worked out.  Like the unintendend penalty for having a high score.  Oh, and speaking of score... no more score board?