Disparity of outcomes?

[Toge111]

Arena is not about decks being better than others (equal AI), but about arena decks vs. deck and the player. It's many times easier to play a well-balanced grinding deck against arena, than it is to design a deck around random cards the oracle gives you. At least this is my experience. I don't have upgraded cards outside farming deck or other decks with clear idea how to play them. This means that the arena deck is going to be unupped. Of course the player serious about farming arena is going to have upgraded cards on his deck.

In the other thread zanzarino shared with us the rating changes for arena decks:

The numbers you are looking for are constantly changing (dynamic). Currently:

Bronze win: +6
Bronze loss: -10

Silver win: +9
Silver loss: -20

Gold win: +6
Gold loss: -30

Platinum win: +15
Platinum loss: -40

As a gold league player I'd have to design a deck that beats opposition over 5 times more than it loses in order to have above average rating. Someone complained that there are too many rainbows in league. Isn't this quite understandable? Rainbow deck is what most players have upped and supernovas and quantum towers can handle random critters and spells that the oracle gives without sacrificing too much.

[Artea]

It sounds like you're worried about your lack of upped cards significantly affecting your ranking in gold. It's really not that big of an issue if you spend some time thinking about your deck. Some cards have huge gaps between upped and unupped forms, and some have very little. Being in gold league also means you can afford both 200hp and double draw, which greatly overwhelms not having upped cards if you build it right.

You did say you have little experience playing a lot of cards, which is probably the biggest reason you're finding it hard to build a successful deck. The best arena decks see oracle cards as an integral part of their win condition, not random cards that you shuffle in and hope they don't get in the way. Some cards are definitely sub-par to others (my oracle today was protect artifact...I'm sticking with my dragons kthx), but a good deck can remain effective for at least 5 days with full hp boost, giving you some time to wait for another good oracle card.

If you're lacking experience with cards, maybe start by reading up on your oracle card of the day? There are also lots of archived decks in this forum that lay out their win condition and explain their strategies nicely. Get familiar with the classic strategies, and soon enough you'll be able to come up with your own.

My current deck in gold is a duo with 10 upped cards, and it's 9-1 and rank 110 at 1 day old. I've built 4 decks for gold league so far, including 1 for a friend, and I've never found it hard to stay in the top half of the rankings. I think most people are still slowly getting the hang of AI stupidity and trying to do too many things at once/making decks that are simply too slow. It will get harder to stay in the rankings as time passes, but atm high ranking in gold isn't as hard as you make it out to sound with a proper deck, upped or not.

[Essence]

^^ Top-tier first post, Artea.  +Rep.  Keep it up.

Also, agreed.

[Toge111]

That was a great post Artea.

However, I'm concerned that in most cases the player has distinct advantage. Some card like Protect Artifact can be devastating when used correctly, but the AI will likely use it on random pillar when it comes up in its deck. Planning ahead and baiting strategies work for the player.

To express this mathematically:
- You have 80% win rate
- You play the gold league 100 times

---> aggregate gain for decks in gold league is 5 * 20 = 100 rating and aggregate losses is -15 * 80 = -1200 for the total change of 100 - 1200 = -1100

Decks will lose and drop out fast, so the only hope is that players will keep making more decks every day. Can this work in the long run?

[Artea]

Thanks, I've been lurking for a while here, just never felt the urge to post until now

Yes, the player will always be smarter, which is why arena decks are allowed the FG-like advantages as a handicap, and which is why you'll have to build your decks for the AI. Generally, don't expect the AI to hold any cards for combos, and knowing their targeting priorities is always good. Throw your deck in the trainer and play against it. Does the AI do what you expect it to do? I've had a deck idea tank because of that; the AI prioritized fractalling arctic octupi before pufferfish, screwing up my intended win condition

Your deck will only lose lots and drop out IF you let people beat you. Gold league still has some very meh decks along with the mean decks. The whole point of the ranking system is to weed out the weak and keep the strong. Decks dropping in rank has to do with a combination of people submitting new decks, and the deck itself losing too much compared to the average. When decks are tied with the same rating, they are arranged by age. Older decks will be ranked higher than younger decks with the same rating. If you want to keep your deck in the top 500, the answer is to build a strong enough deck that defeats most of its challengers. Because of the way ratings work, the more new decks submitted each day, the higher your W-L ratio needs to be to stay above the inrush of newcomers. Also, the only way to get into the top ranks of a league is to not submit a new deck each day, as no matter how good a deck's W-L ratio is, it'll never build up enough rating in one day to reach the top.

Test play a few popular decks against your deck, use the trainer if you have to (I know the level 6 AI is stronger than gold league, and it auto-ups your cards for you, but usually it's close enough to find out if the AI behaves well or not. You can tweak the quanta balance and such afterward). If your deck consistently gets beaten, then find out why and fix it. Remember, you don't have to account for all counter decks, if your deck can rip through the majority of deck styles you throw at it (rush, control, stall, hope, creatureless, etc.), then it should be robust enough to survive in gold until people come up with new farm decks. That's the fun of arena though, think of it as an arms race between the farmers and the deck builders

[Terrilocks]

I'm feeling your pain, but personally am enjoying the challenge. I'm sure I could throw any old rainbow together if I really wanted, but it's much more fun to find new synergies. Quite often I bemoan my lack up upgraded pillars in more than half the elements, however it's always fun to see how something new performs.

My first deck was a mono-entropy that actually reached rank 34 in Gold.

Since then, I've been trying out some duos and even trios to see how well they perform. In fact, don't tell anyone () but the oracle gave me a Nymph Queen yesterday so I've been trying to work out soemthing around that. What I've got is a (hopefully) complete shutdown as nymph queen summons legions of gravity nymphs to suck you dry before you have a chance. As that takes a while to get going though, there are of course normal blackhole spell cards to slow you down. As for permanent control, a few immolations lend themselves nicely to explosions as well as a few other 1 quanta cost creature control cards, then the remaining fire quanta can summon a few lava destroyers.

This ended up a trio largely because of AI limitations. There's no way to guarantee it'll make a gravity nymph first which is the whole point of the shutdown, and then I had to add some random photons as I doubt it'll use immolation on one of the many unnecessary nymphs it eventually creates. Also if I used other gravity creatures, the AI would much rather play those over black holes which can often be fatal.

A previous version used time towers for rewinds and precogs; time nymphs also have good attack, however I was slightly underwhelmed by the complete lack of permanent control.

Currently 8:2 so after a few changes so something must be going right!

*Oh, and the deck is only half upgraded; no towers or immolations upgraded at all 

[gourgou]

I am using a FULLY unupped deck and it is at 11th place in gold league atm and its a monotime,so yes you can do it whithout rainbows too...

[ggabriel2]

Decks will lose and drop out fast, so the only hope is that players will keep making more decks every day. Can this work in the long run?

Yes. Decks drop out fast because players keep submitting many decks per day. There are only 500 slots for active decks--and remember that the bottom 250 largely consists of decks that are on their way out, because room has be continuously made to accommodate new decks being submitted. Only the best 200~250 decks really get to stay in since the rest of the T500 is given over to those new untested decks and mostly consists of failing decks that are on their way out. The ratings algorithm automatically adjusts itself to keep rankings consistent: when Gold was at +6/-30 and you needed an 83% winrate just to stay in place, that was because the competition for those 200 or so "safe" slots was so fierce that there was no room for a deck with a mere 80-82% winrate. Right now things seem to have cooled off a bit, because Gold is giving out +8/-30 rating.