Magic The Gathering

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

I have seen more 0,1,6, and 7 land-hands on arena than I can think of playing or goldfishing any paper decks. I've gone on win sprees because people don't read cards (Florian and the Red Phyrexian mana guy both have first strike, evidently no-one knows this or looks at the icon) and generally I find the right mix to beat out the braindead invoke despair decks, and then I'm curiously hit with a 6 land hand into a 0 land hand, over and over again, until I've lost a few games in a row.

Sometimes I do get outplayed or outvalued, and especially if someone's playing something off-meta a deck tuned to deal with the meta has trouble shifting on a dime, but those are usually close games besides. Then it's a case of enjoy invoke despair while you're stuck on 2 lands with 5 3-mana spells in your hand that all cycle or draw. It's hard to take arena seriously when you pay attention to how many games you pretty literally cannot win out of the gate - imagine trying to play a fighting game and you've just got a 10% chance, even outside of character matchup, to immediately lose when the game starts. And it's always several games in a row that this happens - I played exclusively best of 3.

That said, literally anyone could say anything that guy said in the post. It does come off a bit like parody - "It's so good, you literally couldn't prove it was rigged! So trust me!"

 

[SilenceIsViolence]

I’m not an Arena player but would like to hear some opinions on this post.

How specifically MTG Arena is rigged, and why they're able to hide it.

This is a wide open and mostly unmoderated subreddit to talk about Magic: The Gathering. Join our discord here: https://discord.gg/YJE8qDm.

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Seems like bait by a salty player. If this was a real leaker, they wouldn't give the whole "I may or may not have worked for WotC teehee this is satire teehee" and just laid out the facts. It's impossible to prove either way. I've hit Mythic a few times and I'd say, having played a lot of Magic paper and digitial, it's not any worse odds then when I play IRL. Just last week I got flooded or screwed 4 times in a row in paper, and a few weeks ago on cockatrice a buddy shuffled Alabaster Dragon into his deck and then drew it next card, random is random.

Edit: Yeah, 99% sure this guy is full of shit


Nobody who actually codes talks like this - "not hard to do with very basic code" is 'tell me you don't code without telling me you don't code'.


Get's called out for the dumb satire comments, "idc, not a lawyer, also satire teehee"


Their only other post, the dude is barely literate yet he worked on and was privy to information around manipulating the MTGA algorithm? Not buying it.

 

[Retink Retunk]

I’m not an Arena player but would like to hear some opinions on this post.

How specifically MTG Arena is rigged, and why they're able to hide it.

This is a wide open and mostly unmoderated subreddit to talk about Magic: The Gathering. Join our discord here: https://discord.gg/YJE8qDm.

old.reddit.com

We know for a fact rigging occurs, we just don't know to what extent. As the poster mentions, and Wizards has openly stated, they do have code to rig draws in certain modes so that land draws are more consistent, and when you have one instance of that, there's bound to be more that just aren't as obvious. Think about the following as well, these companies want more "diverse" players and if you can't achieve that legitimately, then why not tilt the scales in their favor? Some companies like Blizzard just do an invitational style thing where they'll boot male players for female players (there was a Hearthstone controversy where they removed two players for more "diverse" options), while Wizards probably does it behind the scenes.

I'll also say, I really don't trust their shuffler from personal experience. I've always been a rather good limited player and even on Arena I can usually go infinite from winnings when I try, but I do notice that after a few drafts of 6-7 wins I start to just lose at the 3-4 game mark in the following draft or two, and not because of anything I or my opponent did, but because I'll flood or screw three games in a row with a solid deck. Happened the other day with a U/W soldiers deck in Brother's War quick draft, no issues for the first three games, then the following there were ok opening hands with two games where I flooded ending the game with 12 lands in play and 4-6 spells played, while the last game was a 3 land opener, two 2 drops (one was Disenchant), a 3 drop, and a 4 drop. I proceeded to draw every 4 drop and above in my deck before another land, at which point it was almost impossible to come back.

Sure, that's maybe just bad RNG, but it feels like it happens far too often to the point games feel incredibly one sided far too often.

Edit: I'll also add it's known that many companies like this intentionally mess with win statistics so that players are inspired to buy more packs and loot boxes as the 50-50 win rate is designed to keep them feeling good but also putting them in situations where they feel like if they just had a slightly better deck or whatever they could have beaten the guy who has more rare stuff.

Arena is probably the most predatory of freemium games as well, as the costs to do anything in it are absurd. Again, I hate to use Hearthstone as an example, but in Hearthstone if you want to draft you can get the gold for it in 1-2 days of casual play, in Arena you're looking at 5-10 days. Sure, the Hearthstone drafts are phantom drafts but for 150 gold at the end you're assured a pack and maybe some other reward so you mostly break even as packs are 100 gold. In Arena you get 3 packs for 5-10k gold, and then another pack, so you're down way worse if you don't place highly enough.

The same is true for how they do rare/mythic generation, how they handle pack prices, and I wouldn't be surprised if you needed to invest way more time to grind for the same rewards as in other games. To get a pack a day in Arena you need to do what, finish the daily for 500 gold, then win 3-4 games (250+200-300)? In almost all other games you can get a pack for just doing the daily.

Since it's digital - it's possible. However, keep in mind, that this guy being full of shit and Arena being rigged might be true simultaniously.

I'm going to go with this option, dude is full of shit, but so is Arena.

 

[Polock]

We know for a fact that
1: BO1 has rigged opening hands
2: There is deck based matchmaking

Its basically Pandoras box at that point. I'm willing to believe any crazy conspiracy because of pattern recognition. You can't trust the devs at their word, so I just assume everything is rigged to hell and back.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

The MMR is bugged to the point it might as well be rigged. Basically it's a poor implementation of a normal MMR scheme and for some reason when you win you lose you lose the normal amount of MMR and when you win you win as though you won a mirror match against someone with identical MMR. The take away is that you almost always get more MMR over time then you should and MMR matches you against people who have played similar amounts of matches and not people of similar skill. You can fuck hard with matchmaking by throwing 50 matches at the beginning of the division ( you can not be demoted from platinum to gold for example) and your next 20 matches will be against barely sentient potatoes playing uncommon mono black "I like the card" decks or decks that were terrible 2 standards ago.

 

[Thiletonomics]

So apparently, Magic Arena had country flags as card backs, but some people apparently got butthurt by some of them (probably towards Russian, Chinese, and Qatari ones), that WotC had to make changes to them, and won't make them available for purchase again:



And how did the game industry go from offering country flag items for free (i.e. Battlefield 4 had country flag dogtags that were available to all players), to selling them like this?

 

[SilenceIsViolence]

So apparently, Magic Arena had country flags as card backs, but some people apparently got butthurt by some of them (probably towards Russian, Chinese, and Qatari ones), that WotC had to make changes to them, and won't make them available for purchase again:

View attachment 4009545

And how did the game industry go from offering country flag items for free (i.e. Battlefield 4 had country flag dogtags that were available to all players), to selling them like this?

Tech companies are quickly abandoning having flags in their products and it's embarrassing. Click Cntrl + . (period) on your keyboard if you're on Win10/11 and see the emoji menu pop up - search for any flags, there are none (besides sports flags). Microsoft put it into their policies to remove them and I'm seeing it more and more.

https://twitter.com/TolarianCollege/status/1599855742148022272

Just looking at the professor's thread on this and seeing how many people are happy about this just makes me sad.

 

[Retink Retunk]

Wizards ended up doing an emergency investor call today, and it was pretty bland except the following:

- Wizards does not monitor the secondary market, but knows there are no issues in the secondary market. Those two statements seem contradictory.

- The Warhammer 40k product was a homerun and they want to focus on doing that more, as well as D&D, and other core products totaling 8 brands.

- Wizards doesn't think they are overprinting, and have a lot of competition at the printers. That sounds delusional when their product drops and stays under distributor prices.

- They claimed they scaled back on the 30th Anniversary because of poor reception, however the product was pre-printed before the sale of it started, so that's suspicious.

 

[The Ghost of Kviv]

Wizards ended up doing an emergency investor call today, and it was pretty bland except the following:

- Wizards does not monitor the secondary market, but knows there are no issues in the secondary market. Those two statements seem contradictory.

- The Warhammer 40k product was a homerun and they want to focus on doing that more, as well as D&D, and other core products totaling 8 brands.

- Wizards doesn't think they are overprinting, and have a lot of competition at the printers. That sounds delusional when their product drops and stays under distributor prices.

- They claimed they scaled back on the 30th Anniversary because of poor reception, however the product was pre-printed before the sale of it started, so that's suspicious.

It would be really interesting if the SEC (or another similar 3-letter agency) grows a pair of balls and starts looking to companies like Hasbro.

 

[Haywire]

Wizards ended up doing an emergency investor call today, and it was pretty bland except the following:

- Wizards does not monitor the secondary market, but knows there are no issues in the secondary market. Those two statements seem contradictory.

- The Warhammer 40k product was a homerun and they want to focus on doing that more, as well as D&D, and other core products totaling 8 brands.

- Wizards doesn't think they are overprinting, and have a lot of competition at the printers. That sounds delusional when their product drops and stays under distributor prices.

- They claimed they scaled back on the 30th Anniversary because of poor reception, however the product was pre-printed before the sale of it started, so that's suspicious.

I'm really interested in seeing what ends up with the Hoover estate issue. From my understanding, Quinton Hoover's son has full rights to his father's estate, including art. WotC has tried to purchase the rights to his father's art, then dropped communications and used them without permission on 30th anniversary. If Hoover's son can prove WotC tried to buy the rights, he's got a really strong claim against WotC for breach of contract and the art misuse. WotC may have to prove damages via sales numbers in investigations, and I'm going to follow that case to the bitter end.

Honestly I expected the call to be a waste of time. Ivory tower businessmen have this weird dance when one is falling close to the rabble to shame them and make them say useless words for hours to keep their status. It's all bullshit from leadership.

If the players / dealers / stores can manage to keep up this lashback for longer, then we might see some change. I just don't see that as a likely outcome.

 

[Retink Retunk]

It would be really interesting if the SEC (or another similar 3-letter agency) grows a pair of balls and starts looking to companies like Hasbro.

Letter agencies don't exist to be useful, they just exist to punish the average person and prevent them from accomplishing anything of note.

I'm really interested in seeing what ends up with the Hoover estate issue. From my understanding, Quinton Hoover's son has full rights to his father's estate, including art. WotC has tried to purchase the rights to his father's art, then dropped communications and used them without permission on 30th anniversary. If Hoover's son can prove WotC tried to buy the rights, he's got a really strong claim against WotC for breach of contract and the art misuse. WotC may have to prove damages via sales numbers in investigations, and I'm going to follow that case to the bitter end.

I'm only vaguely aware of that situation, but from what I hear it's why they cropped it so oddly, as that could let them escape some level infringement.



It's also funny how they launched a Frank Frazetta Secret Lair shortly after the new Sorcery TCG did something like 4-5 million dollars on their Kickstarter.

Honestly I expected the call to be a waste of time. Ivory tower businessmen have this weird dance when one is falling close to the rabble to shame them and make them say useless words for hours to keep their status. It's all bullshit from leadership.

If the players / dealers / stores can manage to keep up this lashback for longer, then we might see some change. I just don't see that as a likely outcome.

I think most people expected the call to be a waste of time PR stunt, and it was, but I don't see how the pressure dies down from stores and other merchants as they said they aren't reducing print runs while their core products die on the shelf. It's just impossible to run a business off of every product making a loss constantly.

 

[Tony Martin's Force Ghost]

What a stupid meeting, clearly someone high up got wind that someone was pushing to sell a large group of stocks and/or shares. This was nothing more to prevent that and prevent people from being fired. The cocktail party statement was fucking stupid and made the high-ups look out of touch.

The overprinting statement was REALLY FUCKING RETARDED because bitch you can look at your Q3 and see that you have put $320 000 000 which in $110 individual value translates to 2.9 million booster boxes. This is clearly overprinting as stuff being put in storage basically means unsold to distributors.

Solo investors tend to do their own numbers and can usually tell when shit ain't adding up Honestly they should not have done the call at all because they look worse off.

 

[Haywire]

I'm only vaguely aware of that situation, but from what I hear it's why they cropped it so oddly, as that could let them escape some level infringement.

I'm not sure how well that defense would work for something like what they did for Wrath of God, but it would be interesting to see if they tried that angle.

 

[Thiletonomics]

So Shopee, which sells MTG products in Southeast Asia, is doing gacha tactics with MTG packs:



And it's not even good "rewards" for whaling out during this event either.

 

[Flexo]

Not sure if this should go here or in the community thread.

 

[ZMOT]

We know for a fact rigging occurs, we just don't know to what extent. As the poster mentions, and Wizards has openly stated, they do have code to rig draws in certain modes so that land draws are more consistent, and when you have one instance of that, there's bound to be more that just aren't as obvious. Think about the following as well, these companies want more "diverse" players and if you can't achieve that legitimately, then why not tilt the scales in their favor? Some companies like Blizzard just do an invitational style thing where they'll boot male players for female players (there was a Hearthstone controversy where they removed two players for more "diverse" options), while Wizards probably does it behind the scenes.

it will never stop being hilarious to me that there are people who get immense anal anguish to retarded degrees about gatcha, which is run under gambling laws in their origin countries (and will outright get you vanned or knived in china when you step out of line), while happily taking an ass-reaming from western companies that run without any rules or oversight.

 

[Noebel]

Spoiler: Lol

Spoiler

I've expected something like this, but that's 10 times the normal price. It is surely going to settle at a lower price, but the original card would've been way cheaper if it was reprinted at least once between 2017 and now.

 

[Flexo]

Spoiler: Lol

View attachment 4054584

Spoiler

I've expected something like this, but that's 10 times the normal price. It is surely going to settle at a lower price, but the original card would've been way cheaper if it was reprinted at least once between 2017 and now.

Rudy's most recent video was him joking about this and saying something like, "what do you think WotC is going to do if they figure out they can make money by putting pretty women on cards? We going to get bikini babe secret lair? Young, hot Liliana again?"

 

[Noebel]

Rudy's most recent video was him joking about this and saying something like, "what do you think WotC is going to do if they figure out they can make money by putting pretty women on cards? We going to get bikini babe secret lair? Young, hot Liliana again?"

This might backfire. For all its downsides, MTG managed to not attract much of the regular coomer demographics.

 

[Retink Retunk]

So the other day I found out the 30th Anniversary GP was gayer than I first knew, as not only did they require vaccine papers to get in the door, but they also had retarded shit like:

Oh, and here's everyone's least favorite China Faggot bugging people about masks as if he's the hero, in his own video, which he used Rudy's image on (multiple videos actually) despite Rudy, Open Boosters, and others not wanting anything to do with this sleazy fuck. Not surprising he's acting like the mask hall monitor:

Good on Manaleak for not giving a shit.

Rudy's most recent video was him joking about this and saying something like, "what do you think WotC is going to do if they figure out they can make money by putting pretty women on cards? We going to get bikini babe secret lair? Young, hot Liliana again?"

Would be funny if the current trash fire makes them do a 180 on their depiction of women. I'm not for games being coomer bait, but the occasional Earthbind or whatever isn't the end of the world.