The RNG Seeding Issue is Grotesque, Grotesque, Seeding, Issue, Issue, Seeding, Issue

El_Borracho

Sepultura_13 wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

Its getting to the point where ToT is just not fun to play. Games that stood out from last night, in that they were beyond the typical "3 of a kind" in the tavern sillines:

Game 1: NPC got 3 Forest Wraiths in a row. Zero Black Sacrament or Ambush cards in the entire game

Game 2: NPC played his SINGLE Conquest card 3 hands in a row, despite not eliminating any cards from his 12 card hand, without Celarus or any other way to reshuffle his SINGLE Conquest card back to the top. Every single time it was accompanied by Way of the Sword

Game 3: My personal favorite from yesterday. NPC, going second, got his base Hlaalu card plus 4 coins, and started the game by getting Kwama Egg Mine followed THREE Ebony Mines which were followed by TWO Currency Exchanges, an Unfathomable Secrets, and Rajhin agent spam, of course. All in one turn. To start the game.

I'm glad that I'm not the only one noticing this stuff recently. The RNG in ToT against NPCs has been insane. There's also been some strange bugginess with some of the cards:

1. Bewilderment cards ALWAY get laid down first, but lately, the NPC has been able to select when it is played.
2. One of the Mora cards is glitching - the one where the player has to destroy 2 cards and the opponent gets 1 power. I haven't seen it play correctly since before Gold Road launched.

And don't forget the "bad luck" where your agent you picked up is at the bottom of your pile while the NPC's agent is right there on top.

Sepultura_13

El_Borracho wrote: »

Sepultura_13 wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

Its getting to the point where ToT is just not fun to play. Games that stood out from last night, in that they were beyond the typical "3 of a kind" in the tavern sillines:

Game 1: NPC got 3 Forest Wraiths in a row. Zero Black Sacrament or Ambush cards in the entire game

Game 2: NPC played his SINGLE Conquest card 3 hands in a row, despite not eliminating any cards from his 12 card hand, without Celarus or any other way to reshuffle his SINGLE Conquest card back to the top. Every single time it was accompanied by Way of the Sword

Game 3: My personal favorite from yesterday. NPC, going second, got his base Hlaalu card plus 4 coins, and started the game by getting Kwama Egg Mine followed THREE Ebony Mines which were followed by TWO Currency Exchanges, an Unfathomable Secrets, and Rajhin agent spam, of course. All in one turn. To start the game.

I'm glad that I'm not the only one noticing this stuff recently. The RNG in ToT against NPCs has been insane. There's also been some strange bugginess with some of the cards:

1. Bewilderment cards ALWAY get laid down first, but lately, the NPC has been able to select when it is played.
2. One of the Mora cards is glitching - the one where the player has to destroy 2 cards and the opponent gets 1 power. I haven't seen it play correctly since before Gold Road launched.

And don't forget the "bad luck" where your agent you picked up is at the bottom of your pile while the NPC's agent is right there on top.

Oh, indeed...I sometimes feel like grabbing "good" cards is almost futile, because every single one of them stacks at the bottom of the deck, while every high-dollar/agent/knockout card the NPC has goes right to the top. In one game, the NPC only had 5 Crow cards, but every deal, they were always. Right. On. Top. And that's without any reshuffling, because Celarus and Hunding weren't any of the chosen patrons.

Definitely makes one want to rage-quit, which I do if I've lost 8 games in a row and it's past my bedtime, LOL - I hate conceding a match, but sometimes...nothing else to do, especially when they have 10 agents up and they're spamming Crow and Druid King nonstop.

Personofsecrets

I had a game where the opponent's only Almalexia cards where Lessons and the starter card.

You can tell when someone plays a card that they just drew based on where that card in the hand comes from.

I watched them play that Lessons, do the Donate 1, and the card that they drew with it was the starter card over and over and over and over and over..... Of course, each time, that entitled them to drawing another card via combo 2, so they never actually got punished for picking up Lessons with no synergy.

Sepultura_13

Personofsecrets wrote: »

I had a game where the opponent's only Almalexia cards where Lessons and the starter card.

You can tell when someone plays a card that they just drew based on where that card in the hand comes from.

I watched them play that Lessons, do the Donate 1, and the card that they drew with it was the starter card over and over and over and over and over..... Of course, each time, that entitled them to drawing another card via combo 2, so they never actually got punished for picking up Lessons with no synergy.

Seeing that happen drives me nuts. Or, when they use the Crow cards over and over and over and over...they end up drawing up to 20 cards in the same round. Insane.

Personofsecrets

Laugh or cry folks?

Cuwen

So it's not just me!! I was just talking about this with my husband yesterday. It has felt like for the past few months, the RNG has been insane, and a lot of the games I play are decided within the first 2 rounds. I have no problems losing to good players. I learn awesome strategies with them and have made good friends from this as well. But the key thing is: skill. Not RNG. It's not fun for me, either, when I get really good cards at the beginning and my opponent gets crap. That's not skill when you win. It feels like an empty victory. I'd end the game, but then you've got that stupid deserter penalty. If there's a card that gets rid of the OP cards in the beginning, I do that rather than take it so that the game is more interesting.

Sepultura_13

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Laugh or cry folks?

Oh, wow...I think that I would laugh until I cry! That's not right...

Seraphayel

Can someone please explain this bs for me?

kmfdm

I usually hesitate to take a firm stance in these kind of situations because human perception of randomness is inherently biased. We tend to over- or under-represent certain sequences as we are naturally inclined to look for patterns. However, in compiling comprehensive statistics of all my ToT games, I've some very strange - almost mystical - observations:

Out of my 1,927 games, I was the first player 46.53% of the time and the second player 53.47% of the time. Out of context, my win rate as the first player is 83.4%, and as the second player, it's 70.8%, indicating a significant first-player advantage. Anyway, this distribution of first vs second player is statistically anomalous; the probability of being the first player only 46.53% of the time (or less) out of nearly two thousand games is approximately 0.003%. This is certainly an anomaly.

Additionally, while the sequence of the starting seed appears random, the longest streak of either going first or second was seven games (a 1 in 128 chance), and it happened only once out of those 1,927 games, which seems acceptable. However, I've noticed something extremely odd: whenever I face the same opponent consecutively, the starting seed remains the same. This is not just an observation or some kind of a general feeling. My data shows that. Same opponents in a row are almost always giving the same starting seed. This pattern persists up to four times -- I've never had a five-game streak against the same opponent. Anyway, the sequence can be broken by logging in with a different character. This is genuinely strange, as I can't fathom why this would be the case, suggesting that the seeding might not be entirely random.

Even more perplexing is how the rating is calculated and how the seeding works concerning the rating difference. For example, two days ago, after joining a queue, I was matched with an opponent instantly. I started first, won, and received 6 points. After the game, my rating was 1,625, and my opponent's rating was 520. Then I joined the queue again and was instantly matched with the same opponent (and, unsurprisingly, I was the first player again). I won and received 3 points. In the next game, I was within seconds matched with the same opponent (again as first player), and won receiving 4 points. Besides the fact that it is weird that I got paired instantly with an opponent of such a low rating compared to mine, it is also baffling how I could earn more points with my third win than with my second, given the rating difference was even larger during the third game, and logically, the rating gain should be lower (maybe it was just a rounding issue, but it still seems extremely weird). This seeding, however, is fairly consistent. If you, and your opponent keep playing, the chances are pretty high you are gonna get matched against each other with the same starting seed (up to 4 times in a row).

Personofsecrets

kmfdm wrote: »

I usually hesitate to take a firm stance in these kind of situations because human perception of randomness is inherently biased. We tend to over- or under-represent certain sequences as we are naturally inclined to look for patterns. However, in compiling comprehensive statistics of all my ToT games, I've some very strange - almost mystical - observations:

Out of my 1,927 games, I was the first player 46.53% of the time and the second player 53.47% of the time. Out of context, my win rate as the first player is 83.4%, and as the second player, it's 70.8%, indicating a significant first-player advantage. Anyway, this distribution of first vs second player is statistically anomalous; the probability of being the first player only 46.53% of the time (or less) out of nearly two thousand games is approximately 0.003%. This is certainly an anomaly.

Additionally, while the sequence of the starting seed appears random, the longest streak of either going first or second was seven games (a 1 in 128 chance), and it happened only once out of those 1,927 games, which seems acceptable. However, I've noticed something extremely odd: whenever I face the same opponent consecutively, the starting seed remains the same. This is not just an observation or some kind of a general feeling. My data shows that. Same opponents in a row are almost always giving the same starting seed. This pattern persists up to four times -- I've never had a five-game streak against the same opponent. Anyway, the sequence can be broken by logging in with a different character. This is genuinely strange, as I can't fathom why this would be the case, suggesting that the seeding might not be entirely random.

Even more perplexing is how the rating is calculated and how the seeding works concerning the rating difference. For example, two days ago, after joining a queue, I was matched with an opponent instantly. I started first, won, and received 6 points. After the game, my rating was 1,625, and my opponent's rating was 520. Then I joined the queue again and was instantly matched with the same opponent (and, unsurprisingly, I was the first player again). I won and received 3 points. In the next game, I was within seconds matched with the same opponent (again as first player), and won receiving 4 points. Besides the fact that it is weird that I got paired instantly with an opponent of such a low rating compared to mine, it is also baffling how I could earn more points with my third win than with my second, given the rating difference was even larger during the third game, and logically, the rating gain should be lower (maybe it was just a rounding issue, but it still seems extremely weird). This seeding, however, is fairly consistent. If you, and your opponent keep playing, the chances are pretty high you are gonna get matched against each other with the same starting seed (up to 4 times in a row).

Thank you for writing. Also, thank you for supplying some statistics. I wish that an add-on could keep track of these types of things in greater details since it is sort of tedious to make notes of every game.

I wrote some findings from the June ranked season at the below link.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8141543/#Comment_8141543

Firstly, yes, there does seem to be imbalance with the go first or second aspect of the game. There was one EU player who stated that they didn't believe this to really be the case, but it could be that they are, for some reason, an exception. Most players seem to find that they lose more when going second.

The go first or second RNG does seem to have been very improved compared to, I don't know, the first year and a half of the game? This issue interested me a while ago because I noticed that I was going first quite often. @sayswhoto calculated that my small data set showed an abnormality with 94% certainty. Not too long after that posting, I did notice that I started going second a large amount of the time. More recently, in June, it seemed like the chances of going first or second became more normal.

I'd be interested in knowing what your data says about going first or second for each month of play. It would be interesting to see if the odds changed during some months (or even weeks).

There has been a NA ranked player that I suspected does well precisely because they went first all of the time. Against me, I calculated around a 70% chance of them going first. Another player reported that they go first 80% of the time. That said, a third player stated that they are likely going first only half the time against them.

So it seemed to be the case that your observation is the same as what other people have. Some specific players tend to go first or second against other specific players.

My observation in June is that this myself and this opponent had much more normal go first / go second chances. This was only over the course of 5 games though...

So I'm left wondering if all of this is in my head. Maybe the design team is working on the odds. Maybe the RNG seed is just getting changed, in the background, sometimes.

Anyhow, thanks again for writing and I look forward to any further elaborations that you can make about the game.

Largomets

So a long time ago I heard that RNG had a seeding component based on character and instance. The theory explains why sometimes one person goes a very long time without getting a rare item (years ago when this concept was introduced to me, it was the polymorph from vAS+2) while other people have seemingly "too good to be true" luck. What we'd find is that if a player got a polymorph in a run, one would think the odds of the same player getting another poly anytime soon was extremely low. After all, the drop rate is extremely low, and even if it DOES drop, there's 12 people it should go to and one would think that even IF a poly dropped again in a night, it should almost certainly go to one of the other 11 players instead. And yet, any raider will tell you a story of someone who got 2, or even 3 polymorph drops in back-to-back runs, seemingly defying odds that must be 1 in several millions if truly random.

This thread and my observations in ToT make me think there is truth to that in ESO. I'm also starting to suspect that it works on a character and instance level too. Playing matches against roughly equally skilled players, one would assume I would win roughly half the time, +/- a bit in either direction (like 60/40). And yet, I regularly find myself going on either win streaks or lose streaks, as many other players are also complaining about.

Similarly, one would assume the split of going first/second would follow a similar pattern, yet again, I find myself going first 10+ games in a row then going second 10+ games in a row with alarming frequency.

Now, I win way more than I lose because I play this game a lot. However, I can't help but notice that if I lose because my opponent picked an RNG deck and then won largely on luck, I can safely log out for the day because today is a "bad RNG" day for me. That might sound crazy and like it's the gamblers fallacy, but I've been keeping track. If my opponent is getting "way too good RNG to be true" and I am getting the worst possible RNG I could have, that WILL repeat game over game for as long as I stay logged into that character.

Some examples include, my opponent picks crow and gets a crow card hand one. I immediately hit them with bewilderment. I have now drastically reduced the chance their two crow cards will proc, because there should already be a low chance they get the combo, and I've added a statistically-significant chance they won't get the combo. And yet, they do. So I hi bewilderment again. And yet, they continue to combo every time. And within that same game, my cards NEVER combo. So they are getting better draw RNG hand over hand, and I am getting the worst possible draw RNG hand over hand. When this type of RNG is happening to me, I can assume it is a seeding RNG, and that the game is intentionally blocking my combos because I am in a lower RNG modifier for my character. There are even extreme examples where my hand is FAR superior to my opponents, and I have extremely strong tavern and deck control, and they have a much weaker deck and yet they have exactly the cards they need in their hand when they need them, despite it being astronomically improbable from a true RNG standpoint.

And of course, the same goes the other way. Sometimes if I'm in a good RNG seed, I'll test my luck more aggressively. Let's say red eagle is in play and I have a 1/10 chance of getting the card I need. If I've identified I'm in a strong RNG instance, I will turn the dial and a surprising amount of the time get the card I needed, even though it was a 10% chance.

Obviously there's no way to prove it, but given the amount of "the odds are way too improbably and yet it's happening anyhow" things that happen in ESO with enough frequency that confirmation/recency bias can start to be eliminated, the most logical explanation is that the game has seeds it uses rather than true RNG, and if you're in a "good" seed you feel like you have "good luck," and a bad seed means "bad luck," when it reality, the only luck involved is if you're in a good or bad seed instance...

Seraphayel

Largomets wrote: »

So they are getting better draw RNG hand over hand, and I am getting the worst possible draw RNG hand over hand. When this type of RNG is happening to me, I can assume it is a seeding RNG, and that the game is intentionally blocking my combos because I am in a lower RNG modifier for my character. There are even extreme examples where my hand is FAR superior to my opponents, and I have extremely strong tavern and deck control, and they have a much weaker deck and yet they have exactly the cards they need in their hand when they need them, despite it being astronomically improbable from a true RNG standpoint.

This. And it's happening not rarely which is the real problem here. When you have an ongoing feeling the game is actively playing against you, you know there's something wrong. And this happens too often to be a pure coincidence.

Personofsecrets

I love how Philanthropy works. It doesn't always show up in games of TOT, but when it does, it makes a double or tripple appearance in the first 12 cards.

Personofsecrets

The last three games I've had...

Game one, the opponent get's multiple 2 Customs Seizures, 2 Hostile Takeover, and an Ebony/Kwama Mine combo within the first 10 cards.

Game two, the opponent get's the Ebony/Kwama combo on their 3rd turn.

Game three, the opponent get's 3 luxury exports by their second turn. No Ebony/Kwama mind combo at least this time!

I'm not even going to bother and post the screen shots. Should I even bother to complain?

sayswhoto

I'm wondering if they also change some RNG weighting factors or algorithm from time to time. Otherwise, people would just build probability calculators. The game wouldn't be solved, but it would be significantly reduced to just pick the highest chance to win given what a calculator is showing.

Personofsecrets

sayswhoto wrote: »

I'm wondering if they also change some RNG weighting factors or algorithm from time to time. Otherwise, people would just build probability calculators. The game wouldn't be solved, but it would be significantly reduced to just pick the highest chance to win given what a calculator is showing.

It's possible that even something like the weekly update or major patches change the seed.

sayswhoto

It must be Hlaalu week/month right now because I'm running into double Kwama/Ebony mine to the point I don't think I can use this patron as a pick for the moment.

Personofsecrets

sayswhoto wrote: »

It must be Hlaalu week/month right now because I'm running into double Kwama/Ebony mine to the point I don't think I can use this patron as a pick for the moment.

I just got done playing a game with my Hierling, Oathman, and 3 Philanthropy against the opponents 2 Hostile Takeover and 2 Currency Exchange.

GuuMoonRyoung

I am glad to see that I am not imagining things, this is real! Holy *** some of these situations are extreme!

Personofsecrets

GuuMoonRyoung wrote: »

I am glad to see that I am not imagining things, this is real! Holy *** some of these situations are extreme!

I have a ton of these screenshots since this type of thing seems to happen in almost every game. I decided to stop posting them.

GuuMoonRyoung

Personofsecrets wrote: »

GuuMoonRyoung wrote: »

I am glad to see that I am not imagining things, this is real! Holy *** some of these situations are extreme!

I have a ton of these screenshots since this type of thing seems to happen in almost every game. I decided to stop posting them.

Played some yesterday after I posted. No matter which card I pick, it opens up an even better card for my opponent. And not only that, after the 4th round shuffle, they got two 2G tavern card and one 2G psijic card, total 8G and bought out two Midnight Raid that came out on the same spot one after the other! The game was over then, but I still suffered through it as the more I purchased, the better card they got.

Lost queued again, same guy and same situation, lost, queue again, same dude, same situation. I closed client, did not log back in for a few hours. When I returned, queued again, and somehow I started getting the good cards, my opponent purchased something that left a better card for my turn, I bought it on my turn and somehow another good one popped out and I bought that too. Won!

Queued again, and the same person who lost to me popped again and same thing started happening, this time, opponent quit. So I queued again and the hat trick winner from last time popped up! And I already knew what would happen, so I played very very cautiously but oh boy, when they finally decided to start purchasing, cards just kept falling for them, I still persisted but to no avail, they scored 35+ power in one round, just one *** round!

This situation is messed up man.

Sepultura_13

Seraphayel wrote: »

Largomets wrote: »

So they are getting better draw RNG hand over hand, and I am getting the worst possible draw RNG hand over hand. When this type of RNG is happening to me, I can assume it is a seeding RNG, and that the game is intentionally blocking my combos because I am in a lower RNG modifier for my character. There are even extreme examples where my hand is FAR superior to my opponents, and I have extremely strong tavern and deck control, and they have a much weaker deck and yet they have exactly the cards they need in their hand when they need them, despite it being astronomically improbable from a true RNG standpoint.

This. And it's happening not rarely which is the real problem here. When you have an ongoing feeling the game is actively playing against you, you know there's something wrong. And this happens too often to be a pure coincidence.

Exactly. I'm glad that others notice it, too.

kmfdm

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Firstly, yes, there does seem to be imbalance with the go first or second aspect of the game. There was one EU player who stated that they didn't believe this to really be the case, but it could be that they are, for some reason, an exception. Most players seem to find that they lose more when going second.

Yes, that was me. I used to have more positive statistics when starting second, which changed dramatically over the last year.

Personofsecrets wrote: »

The go first or second RNG does seem to have been very improved compared to, I don't know, the first year and a half of the game? This issue interested me a while ago because I noticed that I was going first quite often. @sayswhoto calculated that my small data set showed an abnormality with 94% certainty. Not too long after that posting, I did notice that I started going second a large amount of the time. More recently, in June, it seemed like the chances of going first or second became more normal. I'd be interested in knowing what your data says about going first or second for each month of play. It would be interesting to see if the odds changed during some months (or even weeks).

You are right, I checked the statistics from June and July, and these are my results:
In June out of 316 games, I went first 45.2% times.
In July out of 379 games, I went first 49.1% times.
In August (so far) out of 55 games, I went first 68.5% times.

Not sure, what is going on there.

Additionally, I checked the starting seed against the same opponent in consecutive games:
In July, when I was paired with an opponent 2 times in a row or more (47 cases), for the first two games:
6 of them was either 1-2 or 2-1
41 was 1-1 or 2-2
**This seems completely out of place**

When I was paired with an opponent 3 times in a row or more (total 27 cases), for the first three games:
3 of them the seeding was 1-2-X or 2-1-X
15 was either 1-1-2 or 2-2-1
9 of them was 1-1-1 or 2-2-2
**Still highly anomalous**

When I was paired with an opponent 4 times in a row (total 9 cases):
1 was 1-1-2-1
3 was 1-1-2-2
3 was 1-1-1-2 (or 2-2-2-1)
2 was 2-2-2-2
(none was 1-2-X-X)
**Small sample size**

I never had the same opponent 5 times in row in July (and I don't remember any such case even before).

This does indicate some improvement; however, I didn't thoroughly analyze my previous data, it's just my subjective feeling, but I am almost 100% sure that the starting seed anomaly was even greater in previous months/year.

GuuMoonRyoung

All these talk about RNG reminded me about an old friend, she was a software engineer in a now defunct game company that used to publish a lot of korean and taiwanese mmos. She explained to me how ideal RNG worked and how RNG worked in online games. Basically, when a player logs in, they are given an RNG modifier, a number ranged 0-9, but nobody would ever get 0 or 9 as that would mean they either get everything or nothing. Ideally, this modifier would be recalculated every time there is an RNG roll but to lower the amount of calculation the server would have to do, this modifier would be given at login instead and it would stick for a set amount of time, at the very least 24 hours.

Also, the system would also automatically give lower modifier to players if it deems it has given out too many 5+ modifier to players. This complicates a lot of things, especially when it comes to loot, some people keeps getting better and better loots while others get none.

So let's say ESO does the same, and I have been assigned a modifier value of 4 and my opponent in ToT is at 5, final RNG calculation for both of us would be very close and the match would be close and each player would have to work hard to win. But if the difference of modifier is 2 or more, that changes drastically, it would mess up the tavern card roll for the lower modifier player. In this case, buying up a card and leaving an extremely beneficial card for the opponent or opponent getting two midnight raid in the same spot or getting two very good combo card in a row.

I feel like ESO does apply this system for RNG. If it does, they need to disregard modifiers for ToT.

Personofsecrets

kmfdm wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Firstly, yes, there does seem to be imbalance with the go first or second aspect of the game. There was one EU player who stated that they didn't believe this to really be the case, but it could be that they are, for some reason, an exception. Most players seem to find that they lose more when going second.

Yes, that was me. I used to have more positive statistics when starting second, which changed dramatically over the last year.

Personofsecrets wrote: »

The go first or second RNG does seem to have been very improved compared to, I don't know, the first year and a half of the game? This issue interested me a while ago because I noticed that I was going first quite often. @sayswhoto calculated that my small data set showed an abnormality with 94% certainty. Not too long after that posting, I did notice that I started going second a large amount of the time. More recently, in June, it seemed like the chances of going first or second became more normal. I'd be interested in knowing what your data says about going first or second for each month of play. It would be interesting to see if the odds changed during some months (or even weeks).

You are right, I checked the statistics from June and July, and these are my results:
In June out of 316 games, I went first 45.2% times.
In July out of 379 games, I went first 49.1% times.
In August (so far) out of 55 games, I went first 68.5% times.

Not sure, what is going on there.

Additionally, I checked the starting seed against the same opponent in consecutive games:
In July, when I was paired with an opponent 2 times in a row or more (47 cases), for the first two games:
6 of them was either 1-2 or 2-1
41 was 1-1 or 2-2
**This seems completely out of place**

When I was paired with an opponent 3 times in a row or more (total 27 cases), for the first three games:
3 of them the seeding was 1-2-X or 2-1-X
15 was either 1-1-2 or 2-2-1
9 of them was 1-1-1 or 2-2-2
**Still highly anomalous**

When I was paired with an opponent 4 times in a row (total 9 cases):
1 was 1-1-2-1
3 was 1-1-2-2
3 was 1-1-1-2 (or 2-2-2-1)
2 was 2-2-2-2
(none was 1-2-X-X)
**Small sample size**

I never had the same opponent 5 times in row in July (and I don't remember any such case even before).

This does indicate some improvement; however, I didn't thoroughly analyze my previous data, it's just my subjective feeling, but I am almost 100% sure that the starting seed anomaly was even greater in previous months/year.

Thank you for writing back with your observations.

Do you think that either of the next mentioned ideas are impacting your win rate when going second? Changes like Festival/Bardic costing 3 instead of 4, the improved Psijic/Cephora's Insight giving 2 gold, Customs Seizure buying 6 cost cards, the unpredictability of Mora games, or the arising tendency of players to start picking power focused Patrons?

Your consecutive game data is really something. I guess that it's just showing what we all already know and experience. There are a number of changes where I've been told that maybe the designers have game data so the changes made to the game really do make sense. So it's funny what becomes apparent when players have game data.

Anyhow, I could offer incentives to someone how may come up with an add-on to track data. It always interested me too how some digital games such as Hearthstone have custom software for things like deck tracking and wins/losses. That said, I don't know if 3rd part tracking software would be allowed for ESO, so an add-on is likely the way to go.

spartaxoxo

I think power decks are more likely to result in a second player lose scenario than non-power decks, but IDK.

Highwayman

What everyone here is describing could be modulo bias in a fisher-yates shuffle. Assuming the array was filled in order the suits were picked, you would expect to see more combos from the first one or two suits chosen. Even assuming a prng with a good uniform distribution, any random byte (0-255) mod 100 would tend towards the lower half. This would be more pronounced early game and should get better and then worse again as you go depending where you are in the deck (mod 99, mod 98 etc...)

I feel I have experienced the same thing. I have to say though that perception of randomness is a funny thing. Regardless, it would be interesting to note the first suit chosen each game and see how often these runs of cards happen to be in that suit.

kmfdm

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Do you think that either of the next mentioned ideas are impacting your win rate when going second? Changes like Festival/Bardic costing 3 instead of 4, the improved Psijic/Cephora's Insight giving 2 gold, Customs Seizure buying 6 cost cards, the unpredictability of Mora games, or the arising tendency of players to start picking power focused Patrons?

It might have just been due to a shift in my playstyle; it’s hard to say. I don’t believe these two changes had a significant impact. While Customs Seizure is likely the strongest card that you can get on turn 1 in the game as of now, it alone wouldn’t make that much of a difference.

I think the primary issue with the first-player advantage is the obvious one: the first player simply gets an additional turn in many games. This extra turn can be crucial for winning through Patrons, reaching 80 prestige in close matches, or responding to an opponent who hits 40 prestige. Additionally, the first player benefits from the faster first deck reshuffle on turn 3, and has a higher chance to use non-starting cards before the opponent. This advantage consequently accumulates throughout the match. In theory, unless the second player receives non-starting cards after the first reshuffle sooner than the first player, the first player should always win. This is similar to chess, where the first player advantage is also quite apparent.

In contrast, another tabletop deckbuilder, Hero Realms/Star Realms (which are almost identical to ToT but without Patron powers and with card gold/power ratios skewed slightly more towards higher power and lower gold), uses a system where the first player starts with only 3 cards, which is almost like a half-turn instead of a full turn with regard to other mechanics, i.e., in HR/SR, the first player does not fully reshuffle their deck on turn 3; they still draw 2 starting cards plus 3 after the reshuffle, which isn’t as significant as 5 cards in ToT, and the chance they can use their first non-starting cards is lower and somehows evens out.

GuuMoonRyoung

kmfdm wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Do you think that either of the next mentioned ideas are impacting your win rate when going second? Changes like Festival/Bardic costing 3 instead of 4, the improved Psijic/Cephora's Insight giving 2 gold, Customs Seizure buying 6 cost cards, the unpredictability of Mora games, or the arising tendency of players to start picking power focused Patrons?

It might have just been due to a shift in my playstyle; it’s hard to say. I don’t believe these two changes had a significant impact. While Customs Seizure is likely the strongest card that you can get on turn 1 in the game as of now, it alone wouldn’t make that much of a difference.

I think the primary issue with the first-player advantage is the obvious one: the first player simply gets an additional turn in many games. This extra turn can be crucial for winning through Patrons, reaching 80 prestige in close matches, or responding to an opponent who hits 40 prestige. Additionally, the first player benefits from the faster first deck reshuffle on turn 3, and has a higher chance to use non-starting cards before the opponent. This advantage consequently accumulates throughout the match. In theory, unless the second player receives non-starting cards after the first reshuffle sooner than the first player, the first player should always win. This is similar to chess, where the first player advantage is also quite apparent.

In contrast, another tabletop deckbuilder, Hero Realms/Star Realms (which are almost identical to ToT but without Patron powers and with card gold/power ratios skewed slightly more towards higher power and lower gold), uses a system where the first player starts with only 3 cards, which is almost like a half-turn instead of a full turn with regard to other mechanics, i.e., in HR/SR, the first player does not fully reshuffle their deck on turn 3; they still draw 2 starting cards plus 3 after the reshuffle, which isn’t as significant as 5 cards in ToT, and the chance they can use their first non-starting cards is lower and somehows evens out.

The only time I get to play first are the games where there are 2 or more power deck starter. And then my first hands are full off 1P cards and I have no choice but to use tavern patron. But the opponent gets full 6G in the first round and things just keep going downhill for me then on.

Seraphayel

Just stop playing (ranked) ToT, it will make your days way better, trust me. Haven’t played for three weeks now and my mood drastically increased compared to the times I’ve played multiple matches a day. It‘s just not worth it especially with this broken RNG.