Is there a "Black List" of players

jaigrim · December 20

Im beginning to think that a list exist of players (like me) that can only win about 20% of games played.
I lose regulary against opponents that play exactly the same tactics especially with Crows and Red Eagle in play, this can happen several games in a row.

But Hey must be coincidence.

It seems that human players are too few so it throws an AI bot at you to play, its destroying the game enjoyment.

I see from other threads that some of the same things happen to other players.

Please ESO can you just let us play each other, enjoy the great game that it should be and explain how the hell scoring works!!

Calastir · December 20

There MUST be. I've been losing my way up the ranks to 'Veteran' this past month playing for hours every day and it's been the most frustrating ordeal of my life. The rng is ALWAYS stacked against me no matter what my opponent does. They're always handed first choice of all the best cards and the rng guarantees them the best hand each round leaving me with no options but to watch my opponents win time after time and driving me up the wall because it's got nothing to do with skill.

The only times I win are against NPC's because they make the worst choices, but even then the rng is always stacked against me.

Altera0x · December 21

jaigrim wrote: »

It seems that human players are too few so it throws an AI bot at you to play, its destroying the game enjoyment.

Have you seen Tribute NPCs? They play laughably bad, it took ZOS many months to fix the issue when they were burning their own high-value cards, for example (and I'm not sure if they really fixed it in the end). If you think that ZOS somehow has some super AI that can keep a decent player at 20% winrate, but instead of proudly presenting that achievement with an Oracle NPC they hide it in PvP queues just to worsen your mood — that's the definition of a conspiracy theory.

You're right that the pool of players is too small. My record queue time was 12+ minutes. This means that even if ZOS wanted to, they can't put a real matchmaking system into ToT, since they won't be able to fill different skill groups if they have problems with a single pile. What you're observing is poor matchmaking, not necessarily malicious one. For example, in Ranked mode before LB due to how generous win streak bonuses are you can have about 30% winrate and stay at the same place, so if you're playing at that point it will indeed be a miserable experience (you win 3 games in a row, then lose 6 games in a row, and you progress is still +30 points after that). Casual mode is even worse, because LB ranking de-incentivize actually playing there, so a lot top players spend most of their time noob-stomping outside of Ranked mode.

TL;DR: the system is bad, because its design is bad, trading the real enjoyment of winning for cheap “number goes up, be glad!” tricks, along with other problems.

jaigrim · December 22

I see your point about matching skill groups but i have just played 3 ranked games lost them all, but was not due to the skill of the other player, but opponent got favourable deals on each and every hand.

The patterns i see daily are literally unbelivable.

A 12 min wait time is due like you say to matching skill levels, but do you really want to play poeple of the same level, your own game may not really improve.
In that case you should have different leagues so to speak to get on the leaderboard and have some "success".
I have had the odd days when i couldn't lose 5 or 6 games in a row as well (sometimes only gained 15 points for my effort) but skill didn't come into it i can honestly say that, but sometimes there is the odd game where RNG has been random and played some really close enjoyable games and my opponent has recognised it as well.

I concurr that the game is flawed and design of the ranking system is bad but it has huge potentail as a great side game.
Personally I think the ranking thing should be scrapped and played as an open type game and fixed points for a win 0 for a defeat, and the 80 top limit removed

Calastir · December 23

Game should be reduced to flipping a coin.

It's quicker and just as fair.

Necrotech_Master · December 23

from my experience, the games against the NPCs are laughably easy, even with them semi fixing the NPCs from destroying their entire decks (which was absolutely hilarious when they got themselves down to a 0 card deck lol)

i dont usually do much tribute pvp, as i dont really find that as enjoyable

Calastir · December 24

RNG always favors my opponents. Always.

So unless I'm specifically targeted, my case should be studied by scientists for breaking all laws of probability.

Calastir · December 24

The lengths the game will go to make sure I lose are becoming ridiculous.

Just now two winning Hermaeus Mora cards I'd bought disappeared from my deck.

They were 'Apocryphal Pact' and 'Unsettling Aura', both action cards which should've gone into my cooldown pile, yet nowhere to be seen for several rounds.

The other three patrons were Saint Pelin, Duke of Crows and Psijic Loremaster Celarus.
Almalexia was not in play so they could not have been confined by the other player, yet they only returned to my draw pile after the other player had already won.

SilverBride · December 24

I'm pretty sure I'm on that black list. I'm having similar experiences to others in this thread.

jaigrim · December 24

Unreal, can belive it, have just been smashed 71-7 in abiut 6 hands by opponent getting rather a lot of Duke of Crows and a cpuple of Psijics cards