Plat Arena behaving oddly

[moehrpi]

I don't see the need for me to try and phrase those reasons.

This sounds pretty condescending.

There are enough players out there posting new decks. Just find yours and get on or don't and get on. Bitching about it, coming up with what seems like a poor excuse and being part of it at the same time is hypocritical. Shaming others for choosing a strategy that is perfectly within the borders of rules also doesn't sit straight with me.

Uh, where to start. This explanation pretty much shows what's wrong with the world. Not now, but anytime in history and in any communities.
There is something which is clearly broken and instead of changing people adapt to the broken situation. You may say that my complaints
possibly won't change anything - my view is like this: if I shut my mouth nothing will change if I speak my mind there is a slight chance
that something might happen. Too bad people always fear getting rebuked with the usual policeman attitude "nothing here to see, move along".

Other thing is what I call "western attitude". Or let's call it gamesmanship. "It doesn't matter if it isn't fair or exploits some totally broken element,
if it works it already confirms its usage." Sort of a Petitio principii, but who cares?

If players are "fine" (at least telling themselves) fighting for the 50th place, ok, they should have "fun", at the same time I think abusing
a certain strategy AND the broken scoring of the arena to be the Numero Uno forever is crappy. And that's the reason I don't make a new deck.
For me it isn't funny to vie for #50. In the past I always made new decks and hoped that people will stop this nonsense, and frankly, I got bored
being the guy doing something for a change just to be ridiculed by those fellow players like saying "haha, you thought we will follow you? well no,
have fun fighting for #50". And no I don't need game theory explanation why ppl doing this. Just because you have the opportunity to steal smth
without getting caught doesn't equal to you have to steal it.

It probably is condescending but it is not for me to go and speculate about all the reasons people might or might not have to keep on doing what they are doing.


As far as I am concerned I don't see complaining in the forums as a way to fix this. You can blame the world or attack people for their actions but you'll never get to decide why they do something. This I find condescending. Competing for the highest rank is not the only valuable reasons. Gatekeeping is not the answer. Neither for those that provide fresh input nor for those that seem to sit complacently on their 'better ranks'.

What confirms its usage is that its usage is allowed.

What bugs me is you talking on you high horse about compromising for the greater good and implicating everyone who does not follow suit has a flawed character.

I also don't understand why there needs to be a discussion about it. People submit new decks. Of course they have reasons?!

[worldwideweb3]

how exactly does light decks/sodiv destroy arena? its not hard to beat them lol

[serprex]

Wyand,

I'll try skip going into the game theory of how the people who call for not exploiting systems effectively help setup those very systems by tricking people into thinking nobody will exploit them, as you've stated you aren't interested in game theory (presumably because we agree by that this discussion is too easy to refute unless we mute an entire branch of mathematics)

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/the-arena/banning-supernova-quantum-tower-and-sog-from-arena-(yet-another-new-poll)/msg1289319/#msg1289319

A year ago you covered this ground & realized basically nobody is going to sympathize with you. So when you start posting about sod decks I assume you just want to argue with someone

"There is a small chance something changes" nope. This might surprise you, but most players (even now) don't check out the forums. They might step into chat as a guest who's played for a few years & show us their deck that's totally jank because they play a few games every couple years or something & they really don't care about tuning their deck. Arena is broken so that for all we know some of those sod deck builders got hit by a bus as karma for posting sod decks & still they'd stay where they are. The only person who can fix arena is Zanz

You're complaining both that nobody posts decks, & that people are posting decks that stick around

Back in the old days people complained about people ignoring their oracle card & posting monoaether with dead cards. This isn't some ethical debate. People post decks, this isn't cheating, hate the game not the player, any ranking system will select the subset that optimize for it, so trying to generalize these decks as "everybody does this" isn't even accurate

Complaining that you can't achieve rank 1 because someone else posted a deck that can achieve rank 1.. If you disagree with how arena effectively ranks, why do you care about rank 1?

Honestly arena is boring because it's full of NaN & 1hp. If you want something fun play AI4. These sod decks perhaps reflect more on the arena playerbase only exploiting the 1hp decks than anything else. Because arena is rewarding players for farming 1hp decks rather than going after that 10x reward for beating rank 1

This is like someone walking into a lounge & complaining about how much of a dive the place is. If you don't like it, don't be a patron. My parents have a cat who'd sit & hiss at a guest living in their basement for a couple months rather than give him the space. & basically comparing that to this, the cat had a more reasonable reason to make a fuss

As an aside, there happens to be a healthy arena meta in openEtG (that is, until antiaverage broke the https cert yesterday..). Of course people still complain that the AI having RNG precognition makes pandemonium 3.0 decks broken & so you have Chapuz posting random pande3.0 decks no matter his oracle card, & indeed these decks are difficult to counter, but if you're going to play arena, the pve content where players are encouraged to try make the game impossible, then you're opting into that. Either you take the couple of pande3.0 decks on the chin or if half the arena is pande3.0 you start coming up with whatever has the best chance to counter it. & I know you don't think oetg achieves the spirit of etg or whatever, but here's a case where you're complaining about etg, & now I'm adding an example where you'll complain about oetg, so really it's to show we can't help you

Please avoid attacking others as capitalists. You do this pretty often, & it's antagonistic. You're not going to have a quality discussion when you start framing the conversation as "me vs you" & pushing towards validating Godwin's Law. My guess is what you want & what moe wants aren't all that opposed

Arena isn't a deckbuilding dog show. You could create a thread where people post their arena decks & then we have a monthly poll as to who's deck was best. Does that suit your values more? I don't know

[Wyand]

You are right about one thing. I shouldn't have complained about it AGAIN publicly. About half year passed, and it is still
the same, and it makes me always angry when I look at the arenas.

www, it isn't SoD decks alone. They are just a mean to abuse the ranking system in arena. The problems are:

- only minus 40 score for a loss;
- number of wins matter more than win/loss ratio;
- as you get a higher position/score you get more points for a win;
- unneeded thumbs up system (why including sympathy into a system which should value good decks?);
- arena generally played by newcomers and they will get often beaten by those SoD decks.

All these together will mean that you can have tons of losses (see Sapart at #3 - he was around #200 for years,
but the sudden change in economics propelled him to the top), while scraping in a few random wins with T1 SoD.
The only change happened in SoD decks that they became a bit more aggro, having Light Nymphs or Dragons, too.
Someone even used Hope, while toros applying his usual vader sadering. Add the stupid filler accounts which
effectively killed bronze arena (new decks quickly getting NEGATIVE scores and disappearing from the top500
forever).

What confirms its usage is that its usage is allowed.

Because of this quarantine situation there were a lot of archived materials in the television from earlier Olympics.
It was fun to relive those moments. Ofc there were bitter memories as well, but there was something that outright
shocked me. 2004 Olympics France vs Hungary women handball. We had quite a good lead for most of the match,
but eventually lost mostly because the French side started playing more aggressively. After the match there were
short interviews. The French team had a Hungary-born player, so they asked her as well about their victory.
She said (not word by word): we saw that the referees today allow the more aggressive play, so we played by
that and eventually won.

So, yes. The usage is allowed. That is what disgusts me. The referee is complacent and allows brutal play?
OK, let's do that and win! By this reasoning the banking system is totally cool, everybody should do the same.

What bugs me is you talking on you high horse about compromising for the greater good and implicating everyone who does not follow suit has a flawed character.

Nobody is perfect. In my view they are imperfect because cheesefest winning is more important them
than playing fairly. It is very common that people who play together something (be it a board game or sports)
agree about not cheesing.



It pains me how you don't understand me. Online games show the flaws of human behaviour they reflect societies perfectly.
It isn't the first time for me to experience this. For example I played Diablo II for years. That sort of elitism, where the
level 95+ players thought they are some sort of deities who has the rights to maintain the resources of the game. They figured
out unwritten rules just to maintain their status quo. Won't tell you examples, because dunno how much you know about the actual game.

And if you understand me (but react like this) that's even worse.

Spoiler for Hidden:

moe don't take my words personally, please. You started defending the exploiters, which obviously pissed me.
I have no problems with you, playing against you is always a good experience, you are a fair player.

[Darigaaz]

debated whether or not post since apparently I am evil for trying to rank high.

First, seems like it would be easy to change the rankings to factor in winning percentage, but the dev decided not to do that.

What I don't understand is if someone cares about their ranking, why wouldn't they make a deck that they believe will place high?

[Wyand]

debated whether or not post since apparently I am evil for trying to rank high.

First, seems like it would be easy to change the rankings to factor in winning percentage, but the dev decided not to do that.

What I don't understand is if someone cares about their ranking, why wouldn't they make a deck that they believe will place high?

Hey, I remember your name, I meet your deck frequently when playing plat!

Don't want to reiterate my whole post, just pointing out some stuff again. I have such a plat deck, it is at rank #4.
Due to the buggy state of the arena someone who makes a new deck has about 0 chance to break top10. Look at
the top10. There are only 2 decks which are younger than 100 days. Which sorta means that you have to wait around
3 months to get into the top10, and after that you won't really advance because the arena is totally bugged.
Read the list of problems again in my previous post. Since all of the top decks has the same method (sod cheesing)
it is impossible to advance. Or you just can trust rng that your deck will see more play and/or get more T1 SoDs than other
decks with the same strategy. I wouldn't call this skillful.

Achieving better ranks isn't a crime. Cheesing and ruining the balance of the arenas is - in my eyes. The dev isn't around
since ~2013, doubt he had a chance to make any changes. Such things never occured in arena, it seemed there is
nothing to fix.

(And there is something else which really bugs me about the arenas, but I don't have enough data to post about that.
It is a suspicion, which is hard to prove, but a strong suspicion.)

[Darigaaz]

Arena is broken so that for all we know some of those sod deck builders got hit by a bus as karma for posting sod decks & still they'd stay where they are. The only person who can fix arena is Zanz

Seems like if I don't log into the game for a week or so due to vacation or other reason that it disappears from the Arena. Is this not other people's experience? Maybe it doesn't disappear until I log back in?

[serprex]

Arena is broken so that for all we know some of those sod deck builders got hit by a bus as karma for posting sod decks & still they'd stay where they are. The only person who can fix arena is Zanz

Seems like if I don't log into the game for a week or so due to vacation or other reason that it disappears from the Arena. Is this not other people's experience? Maybe it doesn't disappear until I log back in?

Yeah I had that happen to me too, which is the real reason I stopped making decks. Don't know details

[Wyand]

I don't recall correctly but 1 or 2 weeks is the threshold. If you have that amount of time between your two logins
your deck gets deleted. So, if you don't login for an extended period of time your deck stays and it gets only deleted
when you login again... Can't understand the logic behind that, normally it would be logical to do it the other way.

[MasterWalks]

This explanation pretty much shows what's wrong with the world.

You said this to me. Youve said this to many other people im sure. If you need to keep telling other people this, maybe its not them but you.

[Wyand]

This explanation pretty much shows what's wrong with the world.

You said this to me. Youve said this to many other people im sure. If you need to keep telling other people this, maybe its not them but you.

Exactly. I'm the one who wants clear rules, positive moral and such idealist things. People who don't want this like the world as it is.
They don't mind if the greater powers are abusing others or even them. They agree with these morally grey doings. Why? Because it
allows them to do same in a smaller scale. This is what elevated us, human beings to such high ranks in evolution and this same
thing will tear us down someday.

And no point in kicking me around publicly. If you want to share your insights with me you can do that privately. I do not wish to follow
this off-topic part, however I wished to defend my point.

[Darigaaz]

Just lost to a decent mono Air deck that was 1 and 15 after 1 day. Took a look at the leaderboard, and sure enough, everyone has a losing record. Looks like the person hacking the loss column is back