Opinions on win/loss streaks

Azwrix

I've only been playing a lot of tribute for the last three months. However, this month, made it up to 9th on the leaderboard, about 850 score. Was super proud. I then lost twelve matches in a row, where I swear I played the with the same effort/skill as usual. This happens quite often to me, though not to this extreme. Statistically speaking, losing such a high number in a row is crazy unlikely. Do huge win/loss streaks happen to you? What do you think causes this?

NoSoup

I wouldn't get too upset, a lot of competitive players don't really start ramping up their efforts until the last few days of the month. 850 score won't even get you in the top 100 come end of month. I finished on 902 last month and it wasn't enough to make the cut.

Ranking system. The better you do/play the more likely it becomes that you are matched more with equally higher ranked players and matched less with people that are consistently at the bottom of the table. Now, if you really wanted to avoid getting match with players at the top of the table frequently, you could manipulate this by conceding a ton of games when you're on or near zero as you don't go into negative scores - but many people would argue this is against the spirit of the game.

Faulgor

Yes, it happens.

I've started recording my games recently to analyze them afterwards, and 70-80% of the time I lose to RNG, i.e. a bad tavern. The rest I made a mistake or simply a miscalculation that could have gone either way.

DragonRacer

Yes, I'll go on big win streaks and even bigger losing streaks. Often times it almost feels like the Tavern decides early on who it wants to win, such as seeing your opponent get favorable card after favorable card and you get garbage.

Seraphayel

Yesterday my win:lose ratio was 70:30. I lost about 90% of my 20 matches today. My win:lose ratio right now is 50:50. I was #6 at the leaderboard yesterday, now I’m #142. I’m not saying I lost all my battles due to RNG, I’m sure I lost several because I played dumb.

But losing most of my battles today can’t be solely attributed to my skill, not when it‘s like this and I easily make it to the top 10/20 regularly. It just shows that this game is more about luck than anything else. I just went five times in a row against the same opponent as second player. I lost all of them. My bad? Not sure about that.

Seraphayel

I have no idea, some days it feels like the RNG is totally working against you, on other days it‘s working for you. I know, that’s the meaning of random, but it‘s just so ridiculous sometimes. After dropping to #142 as I said above, I made it to #9 again yesterday.

Today I lost 95% of my battles and my win:lose ratio now is 40:60. I lost ten battles in a row, then I did win two and lost another 8 in a row. This just feels so fabricated. It‘s so weird to have days like where you lose almost every match, either if you starting first or second. I dropped from #9 to #187, just that you know how absurd this is.

I really have no way to properly explain this, but it’s so funny when you just set up two tanks, the enemy has barely any power cards and yet in the tavern the new card that pops up is the kill two agents for 3 Coin. Or that the opponent could solely win with a turning all patrons and then they get two Tithe cards in the tavern one after another. Like…?

Yes, again, this is what random means, but this feels like the computer sabotaging a clear win. These scenarios happened like three times to me alone today and every time I‘m just left with my mouth open because it‘s just so unreal and ridiculous. I‘m sure all of you know these situations where you have the feeling that you have two opponents and not just one.

DragonRacer wrote: »

Yes, I'll go on big win streaks and even bigger losing streaks. Often times it almost feels like the Tavern decides early on who it wants to win, such as seeing your opponent get favorable card after favorable card and you get garbage.

This is exactly what I mean. I had like two or three matches today alone where I could not buy any tavern card because I had never enough coin whereas the opponent somehow always managed to get the favorable draw and stack up on tavern cards. It often really feels like that the winner based on tavern luck is decided early on and then you either play along and lose or you concede because there‘s no way you could win.

And when I see players that always pick Crow and then waste 20 coins to buy crap cards instead of turning the Crow patron for an easy win it’s so obvious that they are not winning because they know how to play the game, they’re winning because they are lucky. I know this might sound salty, but these are clearly the differences between a player that knows how to play the game and a player that does not.

sayswhoto

This has been the frustrations for many players including myself. It's a common post on these forums. I'm still trying to figure out what causes the trend, but my current suspicion is there could be a MMR/bracket system similar to Battlegrounds.

To illustrate: this was my personal experience in climbing the ToT ladder:

• Played AI for a while and then started ranked play. Was able to achieve a high win rate until consistently losing to players on the leaderboard (placed me about rank 70 first time out of Voidsteel for some reason). My losses were probably because I encountered a higher "MMR" level of players (people in the top 100 vs. Voidsteel and below).
• I did some searching online and found out what cards were good and which were not. Was then able to reverse the loss streaks until again facing another round of loss streaks. By then I had placed top 10% for two seasons, so I think it may have moved me up another "bracket" in terms of what players I would likely face.
• Through forum searching, learned about what are good first turn vs. second turn patrons. After that, I was able to climb the ladder with a consistent win rate before facing another series of losses. And again, I believe I'm playing a successively higher level of players from some matchmaking system.
• Now I reversed my loss streak once again and got higher on the ladder than ever before. After studying matches and searching forum posts from 2022, I've learned about meta patron combo's like Crow+Reachmen, Pelin+Orgnum, and Druid+Almlaexia (still practicing those).

To summarize, I've had to learn more about ToT each time I suspect the system moves me into a higher "MMR/bracket" of players. The problem is the ToT community is relatively small with little visibility to how the top ranking players play or what the meta is. Without this information, it's easy to encounter loss streaks.