A few details about T500

[zanzarino]

Ranking has nothing to do with how often a deck is played, the selection is done in .php and it is:
$ran=rand(1, N);
Where N is currently slowly increasing and soon will be set at 500.

Decks that are above N in the ranking are not played at all, that is why if you have a deck low in ranking nobody plays against it: it is not in the -soon to be- top 500.

[ggabriel2]

33% because we have just a few decks, including some "NPCs" and crap decks with skeletons. When its alive and we have a lot of decks submitted every day, weak ones being quickly eliminated, I bet it will be much worse.

Possibly. On the flip side, I suspect some progress will be made in construction counters. The nature of the platinum arena being one-sided to begin with, though, the trend is probably going to be downwards from here. There's only so much you can do to counter an opponent who gets such substantial advantages.

Personally, my main qualm with the arena is not the difficulty itself, just the lack of variety. Right now you almost get more variety grinding against FGs than in plat arena (and probably better rewards), which seems kind of backwards. The oracle card does not really do much itself to foster deck variety.

[LongDono]

Ranking has nothing to do with how often a deck is played, the selection is done in .php and it is:
$ran=rand(1, N);
Where N is currently slowly increasing and soon will be set at 500.

Decks that are above N in the ranking are not played at all, that is why if you have a deck low in ranking nobody plays against it: it is not in the -soon to be- top 500.

Ah thank you, I wanted to know that as well.

[Falcon4415]

Is the whole "withdrawing after seeing next player's oracle card, mark and level without breaking win streak or counting as a win for the arena deck" thing fixed? It just feels wrong that my deck, after 2 days, has only been played 18 times, while others have been played much, much more.

On another note, I feel disappointed that, after the effort put into grinding score (of course, this had no previous motivation, although it did require effort and time), platinum players are penalized with being played fewer times than their lower-ranked gold colleagues (or at least that is the impression I have from the evolution of reward price). I think increasing the reward for playing in platinum, or increasing the reward per arena (AI controlled) deck victory could balance this. The first one would be the best, as it would benefit both Platinum players and Platinum T500ers.

Apart from that, the Arena is awesome.

EDIT: I am a Platinum leaguer myself, even if only level 61.

[kirchj33]

The current win ratio for platinum is very close to 33%
Sounds like a perfect number to me, again, the fact that if feels frustrating to the most does not mean that it needs to be removed from the game because it is too challenging, it is the equivalent of the "level7" that a few players have been asking for.

Rewards will be adjusted accordingly when the arena will go live.

This number may be inflated by skeleton decks, as mentioned.  Poor deck construction should remain constant.  In order for platinum to be worthwhile to play, opportunities to win ups after each game need to be available, otherwise playing false gods will remain much more profitable.  In this case, a 3.6% chance of spinning for an upped rare is not worth it.

[Hodari]

33% because we have just a few decks, including some "NPCs" and crap decks with skeletons. When its alive and we have a lot of decks submitted every day, weak ones being quickly eliminated, I bet it will be much worse.

Every one knows PC is the worst part of FGs. FGs with no or little FGs are much more beatable. And of course a lot of players know this, and will pack decks with 12 Explosions and / or Steals. Because of this, I still think the main thing would be ban Shards and QT. Wants heavy PC? At least you cant do it in a rainbow, with a lot of creatures, hourglasses, etc.

Another good option: adding some more PA like cards.

Exactly...the arena system overall is good, just needs a few minor adjustments to certain things.

33% seems fine for a win rate and even could go somewhat lower than that and still be reasonable if we consider platinum to be the "ultimate challenge" level.

The rewards seem pretty good to me so far but many want higher...this is definitely something that has to be evaluated after it goes live and the difficulty and number of games being played can be more accurately measured.

Preventing them from being chained several times in a row fixed most of the problem cards but I still think the permanent control is an issue and not one that can be fixed in this way.  Poison might be as well.  In both cases, this could easily be fixed by adding a few new cards or making the existing ones more widely available OR by limiting the maximum number the AI decks can use to something like 6 instead of 12.  There's probably other solutions as well and it doesn't need to be anything too extreme but something needs to be done there imho.

[Hodari]

Is the whole "withdrawing after seeing next player's oracle card, mark and level without breaking win streak or counting as a win for the arena deck" thing fixed?

I just tested this and it does indeed break the win streak now, so looks like that was fixed.

[Essence]

Ranking has nothing to do with how often a deck is played, the selection is done in .php and it is:
$ran=rand(1, N);
Where N is currently slowly increasing and soon will be set at 500.

Decks that are above N in the ranking are not played at all, that is why if you have a deck low in ranking nobody plays against it: it is not in the -soon to be- top 500.

So the fact that we have low-ranking decks (by which I mean currently in the upper 40s) getting ~~1 play/hour and high-ranking decks (currently in the top 10) getting ~~15 plays/hour is just a coincidence?

I'll believe it if you say it, it just seems like an odd stroke of luck on the high-ranking decks' part.

[ggabriel2]

This number may be inflated by skeleton decks, as mentioned.  Poor deck construction should remain constant.  In order for platinum to be worthwhile to play, opportunities to win ups after each game need to be available, otherwise playing false gods will remain much more profitable.  In this case, a 3.6% chance of spinning for an upped rare is not worth it.

Bear in mind that the substantially higher base income from playing platinum league games does mean your score goes up a lot faster than against FGs even if you're losing twice as often. That's going to entice some people to play even if the overall gold reward is lower. Right now, I suspect the sheer disparity in earnings would still keep most grinders away once the novelty wears off, but zanz already said the rewards will get tweaked as things go live.

[The_Mormegil]

Ranking has nothing to do with how often a deck is played, the selection is done in .php and it is:
$ran=rand(1, N);
Where N is currently slowly increasing and soon will be set at 500.

Decks that are above N in the ranking are not played at all, that is why if you have a deck low in ranking nobody plays against it: it is not in the -soon to be- top 500.

So the fact that we have low-ranking decks (by which I mean currently in the upper 40s) getting ~~1 play/hour and high-ranking decks (currently in the top 10) getting ~~15 plays/hour is just a coincidence?

I'll believe it if you say it, it just seems like an odd stroke of luck on the high-ranking decks' part.

15 plays/hour? Madness. I got about 90 games in 60 hours, and I'm top 10 in Platinum... well, almost: I'm 11th now, got down a bit.

[Essence]

I'm merely reporting what was told to me earlier in this very thread.

[The_Mormegil]

I'm merely reporting what was told to me earlier in this very thread.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to insult you. It was a more general "madness", as in "this is madness I want moar matches too", not in "you're mad".