War #9 - Suggestions and Feedback

[xn0ize]

There's a little more to this EC than darkness's vault being cut in half and the "Air, how many decks can you make with 72 cards?" "5"

Even in the 5v5, darkness held a big advantage, more information, the ability to prepare for our 5 decks much better than we can, since we don't know what they'll bring because of their bigger vault, if an explanation is needed, They can prepare 5 decks that are strong vs our 5 decks.
We won a match thanks to RNG even though we weren't favored, and we predicted them too.
Bad luck, yes, does that mean the EC completely destroyed darkness or something like that? no.
Does it mean that our chances of winning became 50% or something close to that? no.


Not saying the EC doesn't favor us, but you are all exaggerating and should have a better look.
Just because we've put them in a risky spot  doesn't mean we won.

[majofa]

One of the biggest problems is darkness has to 'lock in' 5 decks, which means they can't be adaptive after seeing Air's decks. So if Air plays a deck that darkness can't counter with their 5, they lose. Even if they had 100 cards in their vault to counter that deck.

[JonathanCrazyJ]

Sorry n0izey, I really disagree.

a) Say air win this 5-4.
Darkness's vault would still be bigger than Air's was at the START of this round. About ~8, unbeaten decks, sitting in the loser's vault, while the winners would be left with 1 deck.

b) If this had progressed to a normal round, Air would have been out if they had lost 2 matches. In this EC, they can afford to lose 4.
If darkness had lost 5 games in a row, they still would have had a bigger vault than air.

c) Imagine a 4 foot man and a 7 foot man, about to take a basketball shot. Now, arbitrarily, the 7 foot man must stand 3 feet below ground level. Sure, his arms are still longer than the shorter man, but why is he having to stand so far down?

[Vangelios]

Is because is wierd, imagine one football team with 9 points of advantage (ie 3 wins of advantage) in points system, sudenly the FIFA says, now will be one game the winner is the champion. is more or less this thing...

[Aves]

You guys put in hard work, Air. There's no denying that, and nobody questions your drive. We're not saying "EC made Air win their matches this round." That would be absurd and demeaning. We're saying "EC negates 15 rounds' worth of slow lead/vault accumulation for Darkness, and eliminates nothing for Air." You guys are still the same determined, motivated team that's been our most-respected and successful adversaries this war. Regardless of the final outcome, you will have nothing to be ashamed of, and everything to be proud of.

The ire is solely directed at the EC and how it has essentially ignored 15 rounds of effort. Kudos to you guys for doing your best. That's all we can ask, and it's not our intention to go against you (outside of matches ).

However, you cannot deny that the EC favors Air, significantly. You say that we had an advantage in prepping-- and to a degree, that is true. We knew around 50/74 of your vault, and I imagine that proportion is far smaller in the converse. However, that advantage is very small; there are only so many deck concepts, and we have already displayed the vast majority or all of them at least twice over the course of war. Kakerstats calls these 'long-term lives.' By merely looking at the decks we have fielded within the past couple of rounds that have not lost, you are able to extrapolate, if not our vault, which decks we are likely to field. Hence your ability to predict some of these matchups. The absolute numerical advantage was far more significant than any sort of 'vault analysis' at this point of the event, and it was essentially eliminated.

[RootRanger]

I think this Sirlin article would be relevant here.

Organizing War is a very tricky balance between making sure that the winning team is neither unfairly disadvantaged, nor unfairly advantaged. With a lack of event cards at all, the latter may actually the case, at least when there is a small number of remaining teams. Personally I think the event card goes a little too far, but finding the right balance is no easy task.

[Lastmerlin]

I have not participated but watched the event with great pleasure (silently so far). I consider myself neutral, but I really appreciate if everybody gets some fair and deserved result at the end. In this light, this ending is really disappointing and frustrating even to watch.

I have made 5 minutes of calculation to show how massively this EC shifts the winning odds (I like math and use it justify my intuitiv displeasure). Base model is:  All factors like hard work, good predictions, RNG etc boil down to a certain winning rate, that is achieved if both sides give their best. Especially in this phase, where there are no hard counters anymore, it seems acceptable to assume as simplification, that the game results are independent. Sometimes one side predicts right, sometime the other, sometime RNG likes and sometimes hates you. Based on the smaller vault of AIR and previous results I would guess a win chance of 40% (which is rather optimistic for Air).

If this *sudden death* mode was played with the original rules, that are: every loss costs 15 cards, whoever drops below 50 is out, then Air is out after 2 losses, Darkness after 11. Binomial distribution gives an overall win chance for Air of
P_air_wins(normal rules) = 0.00032 = 0.032%
In other words: With normal rules Darkness had victory 99.9% assured. I am quite sure no changes to model an parameters would really change that. And its astonishing to see, how essentially decided this should have been. This result already demonstrates what is really taken from Darkness by the EC: The variance reduction. With normal rules, they could survive getting predicted a few times or some bad RNG streak, but not now.

With the new rules its Best of 9 where both are out after the 5th loss. Now we get
P_air_wins(EC) = 0.2665 = 26.65%
If you adjust the probability of Win for Air to 30% (because they have to spead their remaining cards), then you get 9.8%. The exact number is irrelevant, but I believe something around 20% is a good estimate given that even Air team member admit *that they had luck that would not happen again*. The message is the same: This is small, but not completely unrealistic. Apparently, this EC multiplies the chance of victory of Air by more than a Factor of 300. This means the other way round, that any final Win of Air, should it occur, is 99% to be attributed to this EC.

This does not neglect the fact, that hard work is the basis for the (hypothetical) success, because dedication is the basis for the 40% I assumed before. Without the preparation and dedication, win chance for each game is less than 40%, down to 0%. The correct line how a win for Air could emerge is:

• Without EC win chance is 0% - 0.032%, depending on preparation and dedication
• With EC win chance is 0%-20%, depending on preparation and dedication
• Optimal preparation and dedication pins win chance at 20%
• Good luck fills the remaining 80% for the win

Its up to you which of these steps you emphasize. Of course, those who did the work will see the transition from 2 to 3, where they did a lot of work to achieve the 20% that is possible. I cant help to notice that the transition 1->2 comes with a gross multiplication of win chance and finally that its still 80% luck to get from 3 to 4.

[Vangelios]

 Sorry Root, The right balance and is very easy, because was second in war 6 and 7, second last war and the added of shards it makes these elements still very more strong, see now... the EC It was not to balance, was to try end this war more early, however destroying CLEARLY the advantage of darkness making it completely unfair, and is pretty easy to do it (neutralizing the advantage of a team) It is not a hard task.
 The only balance task that I can see here was to reduce the darkness advantage and give better chanches to air...

[Newbiecake]

Stuff.

You are correct to some extent. However, we would not be out after the 2 losses as you said, as they would not have happened at all if it weren't for this EC, I can guarantee you that. Why that is will be made clear when we reveal the decks. I can say though, we still have some strong decks Darkness have not been able to beat in the previous rounds, and used again in this BO9. If that is the case, we can virtually go 3-0 in the future rounds (as the victories started happening after we brought out such decks), easily dragging this out to round 20+. All 3 of our victories were literally attributed to a surprise factor and one of our trump card. Although, if we were to lose a game or two, factoring discards, we're still unlikely to make such a comeback. That we can give you credit for. Would that have happened if the EC had no existed? Not likely. Would it be impossible as your 99% suggests? Hell no; our chances are might higher than that as this BO9 proved thus far.

All in all, this EC is still unfair to Darkness, but to say Air's chances of making such a comeback if the EC had not existed is astronomical, is not close to true.

[Aves]

Eh. I think you're misinterpreting what he's saying, newbiecakes.

If I had to take a gander, your trump cards (I'm assuming you mean stuff like your dark duo, SoP Squids, nymphbow, etc) are really close to even with ours (drainbolt, pandestall, etc) in terms of matchups. If we call it even, .5, then there is a .5 chance of any particular match going one way or the other. In a simplified model with no salvage, darkness needs to lose 11 times. Air needs to lose 2 times. The probability for at least 2 air losses to occur out of 11 games with a 50% chance for either side to win is 99.4%.

Alright. Now let's say darkness only has a 30% chance to win any particular matchup, because Air's decks are super-awesome. Then in 11 games, the binomial distribution says that the probability of air losing at least two of the games is is 88.7%.

But darkness doesn't have 11 good decks against air! Alright, let's go with, say, 6. There's a lot left in our vault, you know. We've used PUGons, ghostmare, SoP Squids, pandestall, siphonary, drainbolt, devtal, monos, dbh, grabbows, dollbows etc over the course of war. We have the vast majority of those left. Surely at least a few of those are decent to put up a fight, so let's say 6 to put it conservatively.

Then in a total of 6 trials, the probability of air losing at least 2 matches is 89% if the decks are even. 57.98% if air has a 70-30 advantage. (assumes the other 5 decks we field are 0% win)

Feel free to go pick up a binomial distribution calculator yourself and mess with the numbers. The point isn't that air's winning games because of EC. Again, that would be a disservice to your work over the course of this war. The point is exactly how much the EC has shifted things, assuming both teams are playing optimally. This is a very simplified model of how things would work, but I hope you get where the numbers are coming from.

[Newbiecake]

Eh. I think you're misinterpreting what he's saying, newbiecakes.

If I had to take a gander, your trump cards (I'm assuming you mean stuff like your dark duo, SoP Squids, nymphbow, etc) are really close to even with ours (drainbolt, pandestall, etc) in terms of matchups. If we call it even, .5, then there is a .5 chance of any particular match going one way or the other. In a simplified model with no salvage, darkness needs to lose 11 times. Air needs to lose 2 times. The probability for at least 2 air losses to occur out of 11 games with a 50% chance for either side to win is 99.4%.

Alright. Now let's say darkness only has a 30% chance to win any particular matchup, because Air's decks are super-awesome. Then in 11 games, the binomial distribution says that the probability of air losing at least two of the games is is 88.7%.

But darkness doesn't have 11 good decks against air! Alright, let's go with, say, 6. There's a lot left in our vault, you know. We've used PUGons, ghostmare, SoP Squids, pandestall, siphonary, drainbolt, devtal, monos, dbh, grabbows, dollbows etc over the course of war. We have the vast majority of those left. Surely at least a few of those are decent to put up a fight, so let's say 6 to put it conservatively.

Then in a total of 6 trials, the probability of air losing at least 2 matches is 89% if the decks are even. 57.98% if air has a 70-30 advantage.

Feel free to go pick up a binomial distribution calculator yourself and mess with the numbers. The point isn't that air's winning games because of EC. Again, that would be a disservice to your work over the course of this war. The point is exactly how much the EC has shifted things, assuming both teams are playing optimally. This is a very simplified model of how things would work, but I hope you get where the numbers are coming from.

Ahh, it looks like I have. Thanks for the clarification. Was only trying to defend that 99% part a little bit.

[Lastmerlin]

You realize, that Aves assumptions intentionally grossly overestimate any advantage Air could potentially have? The point is to prove, that even with completely unrealistic assumptions the underlying message stays. Assuming constant 70% winrate (which I would call well countered in this state) should be called a joke. Even 50-50 is really optimistic. Current record of previous rounds is 5-10 against you. Current state of the round is 3-2 for air, but with very good luck and succesful predictions as you stated youself . And 50-50 yields 99.4%. Moreover: A more realistic model would incorporate that one unlucky loss for air (of two) would shift balance much more than few losses for darkness.

Edit: Edited win record.