There have been a lot of claims made here, particularly in the salt thread, that random odds are being manipulated by the Devs in an effort to maintain balance and a 50% winrate.
Is there any actual proof that this is true? Or has anyone done any proper statistical analysis that suggests it may be true?
It’s an absolute conspiracy and is born of bitterness. Sure, there would technically not be a 100% way to know without being the developer themselves, but it’s a ludicrous claim.
Its possible since arena uses buckets to control power card levels. Therefore a player could access to a more powerful bucket of random cards?
All arena bucket system did was matching cards with the same power level at every pick in drafting phase, so you got 3 good, 3 normal or 3 bad cards at once, not 1 good, 1 normal, 1 bad or 1 good, 2 bad. It didn't decrease odds to get 30 bad picks or 30 good picks. Also arena don't have a bucket system anymore. There are "micro" adjustments for the offering odds, but once again, this helps to achieve class balance, not 50% winrate for every player.
What really made winrates in constructed closer to 50% is the new ranked system, so players are matched together not by rank, but by MMR. It's absolutely not about a random odds.
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English is not my native language, so, with a high probability, mistakes were made.
However, there's so much RNG now in the game, and of a bad kind (generated by generated by generated by...), that it negates skill to a certain amount, and I can see that driving down the winrates closer to 50%.
Theoretically you could minimize the effect of intentional manipulation by reducing the RNG in your deck and leaning on aggro to reduce the played RNG events of your opponent.
they can easily control rng in the game it is possible and they already prove that enough with some tavern brawl mechanics and card mechanics also they can create high roll brackets to favor one player on another they are not really hard to code but it is too risky to rig it for monetary purposes but more likely to sustain balance in the game.
remember pirate warrior meta that deck had minimal amount of rng ever seen in the game only thing that could go wrong was the drawing patches pirate and it dominated the meta single handedly. such meta is undesirable we say meta is bad but back in than it was worst right now meta is much more diverse than before.
So the question made is far to general. Do they manipulate randomness? Yes, they have already admitted to doing so with cards like Dr. Boom, Mad Genius. They will add weights to certain card "types" the same as they said they changed certain probabilities for getting certain Arena cards.
As far as artificially trying to maintain balance between classes on ladder. No. Easy answer. Otherwise there would never be a need for a card nerf.
I am not sure. To continue playing devil's advocate, there would be only so much manipulation they could do to RNG outcomes without being detectable statistically. Additionally there would be matches with few RNG events that would not be correctable. Therefore card nerfing would still be required for significant corrections.
Additionally there would be matches with few RNG events that would not be correctable.
Drawing cards from your deck is an RNG event and it happens in every game. It is one of the most impactful RNG events in the game. It could easily be manipulated, but most likely it is not occurring.
So the question made is far to general. Do they manipulate randomness? Yes, they have already admitted to doing so with cards like Dr. Boom, Mad Genius. They will add weights to certain card "types" the same as they said they changed certain probabilities for getting certain Arena cards.
In what way was Boom manipulated? I haven't heard of this before.
People claim they do because they can do it. And it's true it is possible for the devs to do so. And in some ways the do manipulate RNG. The new ladder system is a manipulation that gives you an opponent with roughly the same winrates as you, as an example. But there are no proofs they manipulate card draw or discover in games.
They have most likely given certain "random" effects tweaks to make some outcomes more likely than others, but to think they actively manipulate your games if you win too much is just absurd.
So the question made is far to general. Do they manipulate randomness? Yes, they have already admitted to doing so with cards like Dr. Boom, Mad Genius. They will add weights to certain card "types" the same as they said they changed certain probabilities for getting certain Arena cards.
In what way was Boom manipulated? I haven't heard of this before.
They had different weights for generating class Mechs vs. non-class Mechs. They openly stated that after they changed the weights to equal out the chance of getting class Mechs. They also lowered probabilities of getting certain OP cards in Arena.
Edit: these were the Delivery Drone hero power discovers.
Edit #2: This is taken from an article on HearthstoneTopDecks. I'm not sure why it was SOOOOO hard to find this information and that so many people were unaware of this change. Here is the gist of the article.
"Let’s talk quickly about what exactly changes. Before this patch, each Discover card that could give you cards from pool of both Neutral and Class cards (so a bunch of them) gave you the latter more commonly. To be precise, each Class card had a 400% chance to appear compared to a Neutral card. After the patch, this bonus will no longer be present. It means that every single card has exactly the same chance of being Discovered.
It doesn’t means that Class cards will have exactly 4x lower chance to appear right now than they did in the past. Depending on the exact card pool etc. they will now, on average, appear ~2.5 times less often. Which is still a lot.
But why does it matter, exactly? Why is it a nerf? That’s because, on average, class cards are more powerful than neutral cards. There are less “filler” class cards than neutrals. There are also much more specific, high priority picks among class cards. Getting them way less consistently will be a huge downside. The cards that could previously give you either a class or neutral card will now offer neutral cards more often. Which, most of the time, is bad. But we’ve also got two examples of cards that will become stronger after the changes!"
I'd be surprised if their was actual manipulation in a match in terms of which cards you draw or how the RNG goes in a game as if that was ever proven the game would be ruined, but fairly sure the match-making algorithm tries to give you either a favourable or unfavourable match-up depending on your current win loss streak in order to maintain an average 50ish% win/loss across the board for all players. The reality is good players will still win bad match-ups by outplaying their opponent and I've gone many times from the old rank 5 to rank 1-2 without losing a game but how many times have you switched deck because you only seem to get a certain bad match-up to then see the exact counter match to the new deck you switched too even though you might not have seen that deck or class in 20 or 30 games. It just happens too many times to be a coincidence. Once you hit high legend though it seems to change as your range of possible opponents is so much smaller.
As a poker player I understand perception bias. I also have a basic understanding of statistics.
Knowing that they can, I have a hard time trusting that they never influence RNG without full disclosure to us. This bothers me a great deal. If I am to engage in a game and build decks, I expect all odds to be clear to me. When I play poker I make money because I understand the probabilities as well as one can and plan around them. If there were someone behind the scenes inside the deck manipulating outcomes so that they were invisibly different from what one could determine... I simply would not play.
I would appreciate a clear statement from the Devs as to any case of manipulated RNG from cards or a statement that it never occurs.
The amount of times I face guys with the perfect mulligan I'm starting to believe it lol... Also, the amount of times I randomly play some meme deck and the first person I queue against is a guy playing basically the same deck happens all too often...
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There have been a lot of claims made here, particularly in the salt thread, that random odds are being manipulated by the Devs in an effort to maintain balance and a 50% winrate.
Is there any actual proof that this is true? Or has anyone done any proper statistical analysis that suggests it may be true?
It’s an absolute conspiracy and is born of bitterness. Sure, there would technically not be a 100% way to know without being the developer themselves, but it’s a ludicrous claim.
No there is not. How else can a lot of people constantly maintain winrates over 60 or even 70%?
Always expect the unexpectable!
it's not possible to have a 70% win-rate. on 50 games maybe yeah. but overall no
It is on even more games. I even have old record with 70% winrate over more than 70 games. Depends on the deck and how much you played it.
Always expect the unexpectable!
Its possible since arena uses buckets to control power card levels. Therefore a player could access to a more powerful bucket of random cards?
All arena bucket system did was matching cards with the same power level at every pick in drafting phase, so you got 3 good, 3 normal or 3 bad cards at once, not 1 good, 1 normal, 1 bad or 1 good, 2 bad. It didn't decrease odds to get 30 bad picks or 30 good picks. Also arena don't have a bucket system anymore. There are "micro" adjustments for the offering odds, but once again, this helps to achieve class balance, not 50% winrate for every player.
What really made winrates in constructed closer to 50% is the new ranked system, so players are matched together not by rank, but by MMR. It's absolutely not about a random odds.
English is not my native language, so, with a high probability, mistakes were made.
RNG isn't being manipulated per se imho
However, there's so much RNG now in the game, and of a bad kind (generated by generated by generated by...), that it negates skill to a certain amount, and I can see that driving down the winrates closer to 50%.
Theoretically you could minimize the effect of intentional manipulation by reducing the RNG in your deck and leaning on aggro to reduce the played RNG events of your opponent.
they can easily control rng in the game it is possible and they already prove that enough with some tavern brawl mechanics and card mechanics also they can create high roll brackets to favor one player on another they are not really hard to code but it is too risky to rig it for monetary purposes but more likely to sustain balance in the game.
remember pirate warrior meta that deck had minimal amount of rng ever seen in the game only thing that could go wrong was the drawing patches pirate and it dominated the meta single handedly. such meta is undesirable we say meta is bad but back in than it was worst right now meta is much more diverse than before.
So the question made is far to general. Do they manipulate randomness? Yes, they have already admitted to doing so with cards like Dr. Boom, Mad Genius. They will add weights to certain card "types" the same as they said they changed certain probabilities for getting certain Arena cards.
As far as artificially trying to maintain balance between classes on ladder. No. Easy answer. Otherwise there would never be a need for a card nerf.
I am not sure. To continue playing devil's advocate, there would be only so much manipulation they could do to RNG outcomes without being detectable statistically. Additionally there would be matches with few RNG events that would not be correctable. Therefore card nerfing would still be required for significant corrections.
Drawing cards from your deck is an RNG event and it happens in every game. It is one of the most impactful RNG events in the game. It could easily be manipulated, but most likely it is not occurring.
In what way was Boom manipulated? I haven't heard of this before.
People claim they do because they can do it. And it's true it is possible for the devs to do so. And in some ways the do manipulate RNG. The new ladder system is a manipulation that gives you an opponent with roughly the same winrates as you, as an example. But there are no proofs they manipulate card draw or discover in games.
They have most likely given certain "random" effects tweaks to make some outcomes more likely than others, but to think they actively manipulate your games if you win too much is just absurd.
Silver Hand Recruit
They had different weights for generating class Mechs vs. non-class Mechs. They openly stated that after they changed the weights to equal out the chance of getting class Mechs. They also lowered probabilities of getting certain OP cards in Arena.
Edit: these were the Delivery Drone hero power discovers.
Edit #2: This is taken from an article on HearthstoneTopDecks. I'm not sure why it was SOOOOO hard to find this information and that so many people were unaware of this change. Here is the gist of the article.
"Let’s talk quickly about what exactly changes. Before this patch, each Discover card that could give you cards from pool of both Neutral and Class cards (so a bunch of them) gave you the latter more commonly. To be precise, each Class card had a 400% chance to appear compared to a Neutral card. After the patch, this bonus will no longer be present. It means that every single card has exactly the same chance of being Discovered.
It doesn’t means that Class cards will have exactly 4x lower chance to appear right now than they did in the past. Depending on the exact card pool etc. they will now, on average, appear ~2.5 times less often. Which is still a lot.
But why does it matter, exactly? Why is it a nerf? That’s because, on average, class cards are more powerful than neutral cards. There are less “filler” class cards than neutrals. There are also much more specific, high priority picks among class cards. Getting them way less consistently will be a huge downside. The cards that could previously give you either a class or neutral card will now offer neutral cards more often. Which, most of the time, is bad. But we’ve also got two examples of cards that will become stronger after the changes!"
RNG is manipulated in all aspects, see this thread for the last long discussion of this issue.
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/241952-does-zephrys-the-great-prove-rigged-card-draw
I'd be surprised if their was actual manipulation in a match in terms of which cards you draw or how the RNG goes in a game as if that was ever proven the game would be ruined, but fairly sure the match-making algorithm tries to give you either a favourable or unfavourable match-up depending on your current win loss streak in order to maintain an average 50ish% win/loss across the board for all players. The reality is good players will still win bad match-ups by outplaying their opponent and I've gone many times from the old rank 5 to rank 1-2 without losing a game but how many times have you switched deck because you only seem to get a certain bad match-up to then see the exact counter match to the new deck you switched too even though you might not have seen that deck or class in 20 or 30 games. It just happens too many times to be a coincidence. Once you hit high legend though it seems to change as your range of possible opponents is so much smaller.
As a poker player I understand perception bias. I also have a basic understanding of statistics.
Knowing that they can, I have a hard time trusting that they never influence RNG without full disclosure to us. This bothers me a great deal. If I am to engage in a game and build decks, I expect all odds to be clear to me. When I play poker I make money because I understand the probabilities as well as one can and plan around them. If there were someone behind the scenes inside the deck manipulating outcomes so that they were invisibly different from what one could determine... I simply would not play.
I would appreciate a clear statement from the Devs as to any case of manipulated RNG from cards or a statement that it never occurs.
The amount of times I face guys with the perfect mulligan I'm starting to believe it lol... Also, the amount of times I randomly play some meme deck and the first person I queue against is a guy playing basically the same deck happens all too often...