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I've played my fair deal of Owl Warlock (I know, I know...), and a lot of people run Mutanus in their deck for such specific reason.
However, I've had it happened at least 5-6 times now, that when I have 3-5 minions on hand (Tamsin, Owl, Moarg, you name it), it always targets the owl. Is there any mechanic behind it or am I simply unlucky? I know it must feel so good for the opponent, so I'll let 'em have it :)
It's almost certainly RNG, I'd say; certainly within reasonable rates for RNG. I've been Mutanussed and ratted enough, both with and without whiffs - though recently it's been reliably hitting Bolnar, that's the nature of such relatively high rates (yes, 25% or even anything over 10% is going to be relatively high for this discussion) - very streaky. Not helped by biases in memory either - longer term you forget [and don't grumble about] when it whiffed and didn't decide the match, and an opp often can't tell when it doesn't decide the match, for example.
Also, 6 attempts is nowhere near a large enough number, unfortunately, for the law of large numbers to apply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect
Monkey sees an expected action: neuron activated
Haha touché <3
I would love it if Mutanous preferred to chow down on owl, but alas I fear you are just unlucky (or are suffering from subconcious bias and only noticing and remembering the times when Mutanus eats an owl).
just run second one
Yes it all luck . But your opponent must seeing u conceed right after that.
I'm actually in agreement here. Things have been buggy before in strange ways. My Mutanus seems to have been going in my favor quite often, and I also seem to draw Mrg Mrgrgle in the early game more reliably than any other card in my deck (playing Reno Pally in wild)
Obviously everyone is going to say it's RNG but I also trust my intuition. What I want to know is: is a bug like this even possible? or can cards secretly have values that make them more commonly eaten or drawn? is it even possible to mistakenly put that in the game? I Know nothing about coding/game programming
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StaffBasic common sense says that minions, especially ones in the opponent's hand, are unlikely to be programmed to be eaten. If there were a bug, it would have to be in Mutanus.
So is Mutanus bugged? considering that he was a part of the mini set of Forged in the Barrens, logic would dictate that his programming would be limited to things up to and including that mini set. Because cards with abilities that need to be updated, like Zephrys, need specific testing and coding to be able to adjust to new cards being added, we saw that when the Core set was introduced; For many months after that we saw mentions of Zephrys being adjusted inthe Patch notes and bug fix notes. So it;s unlikely that Mutanus was made up to date with current minions unless someone not only made a deliberate attempt to rig him when he was created, but then also kept his rigging up to date by revisiting him.
That all makes it that it's both very questionable that the problem is in something other than Mutanus and very unlikely that Mutanus would have been rigged for anything other than the sets up to and including the set he was in. And since we also determine that anecdotal evidence says he is now focused on Owls and Bolner, that should tell us that he's not limited or targeting old minions exclusively.
The only conclusion that is then left, is that common sense wins and says that Mutanus is probably in fact not rigged at all, and people just see a result they are biased for and that confirms their bias.
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Card Design ChampionI'd honestly love Mutanus to always eat the highest-Cost minion. We need more consistent disruption.
Then he shouldnt get the stats, cuz the value of guranteed picks would be massive in many matchups
Trusting your intuition is a bad thing when it comes to RNG and probabilities due to biases and us human not dealing well with statistics.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here, though always ask yourself: Why would Blizzard do this? What is their goal and how does this achieve it, without being picked up by the data collection sites? The usual answers like Patent! Zephrys! Money! still don't answer how this rigging would translate to more sales.
Anyway:
Yes, things could be programmed that way. Give each card a weight that modifies a certain interaction with another card. When you have 20 "normal" cards left, drawing a card is 1/20 - but give Mutanus a weight of 3 and suddenly you are looking at a higher chance to draw it.
In the same way they could add a weight for cards to be eaten. But again: why would they?
Could these things be added secretly or by mistake? Secretly, yes - their code isn't open source so we can't check it (which leads to the "you can't prove it isn't rigged!" claim).
Everything by mistake, no. They would need to implement drawing in this way (purposefully giving each card a weight when it's not necessary), then manually enter the weights (they aren't needed in the first place and why manually, if they are supposed to be all the same) and then fat-finger the values specifically for certain cards (how would this happen for Murgur and Mutanus and not be detected internally) and then not pop up on data collection sites afterwards.
While Mutanus and Owl are from different sets, their dev cycle is probably still a year or longer. So an interaction could have been coded into them. Why specifically Owl though and not some other card?
The most likely answer is that eating a random other card is just not memorable enough as you go on and win the game. Having your single combo piece removed means instantly losing, so that creates a lasting impression.
Lucky streaks are of course possible too, or like you said, other factors manipulating my perceptions.
The only reason I could see Blizz doing this is to internally balance something that is overpowered while staying precious with the design of certain cards and not wanting to nerf/buff them in normal ways. In this scenario it wouldn't make them more money but could prevent the game from being unfun and losing players, and thus losing money. I doubt this is happening but that is the only thing I could think of.
Great explanation though. Thanks!
I’m on the other end of the spectrum, my mutanus almost never eats the combo pieces. I like to run redundancies when there is a combo heavy meta just because of this. If mutanus doesn’t eat the owl, one of my parrots will.
I think that if there is some kinda "hidden" programmed behavior for Mutanus, it would be to have increased chance to eat highest cost minion. That makes sense because that's usually what player hopes to happen when he plays it. I've also run Mutanus in my control warlock deck couple expansions ago and I've won quite a few games with it eating important big minions like Rattlegore, Y'Shaarj, Carnival Clown, Lady Liadrin and so on.
In death, I exact my revenge!
There's three options - highest cost, highest stats, or some hidden value. Latter of which is a LOT of work, particularly across expansions. Former two would be noticable in a big dataset, though it's worth noting that success rate with mutanus varies with skill based on hand readings. Less so with quests and similar, though.
Of course, the simplest explanation is a small dataset and no observable bias in a large dataset :P
They should buff Mutanus to always target the highest cost minion
I wouldnt question it being spaghetti coding with how Discover cards favor the newest set and Mutanus chance having higher odds of eating the newest expansion stuff.
But most likely you've just been unlucky.