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Wishful thinking but once I've finished my midweek magic phantom drafts I'll be drafting as much as I can and passing up the rares all the time, just in case Devs decide to use this data to train the bots for the regular Bot Draft.
Wishful thinking but once I've finished my midweek magic phantom drafts I'll be drafting as much as I can and passing up the rares all the time, just in case Devs decide to use this data to train the bots for the regular Bot Draft.
We are well aware that players treat rares differently in normal Quick Drafts, compared to a phantom draft or Premier Draft. We account for that difference in the bot behaviors and do not blindly copy the behaviors from other modes.
Basically, Quick Draft bots are set up to treat rares the same way that Quick Draft players do, on average. Don't burn too much energy trying to manipulate the system. :)
So your bots just rare draft cards that aren't in their colors? Nice way to squeeze us...
Only to about the same degree as the players do. Why should they act differently? We are trying to provide an experience that resembles (to the best degree that our system allows) drafting with the other players in the event, so the behavior of other players in this event seems like the most reasonable thing to base it off of, no?
We are trying to provide an experience that resembles (to the best degree that our system allows) drafting with the other players in the event
Then you should have your bots act like players in Premiere draft. There's less rare drafting there and that would more closely resemble drafting with other players.
I don't see any benefit for the players to have your bots be rare drafting. It makes it harder to read signals and harder to acquire rares for our collection (though I'm thinking that's probably the point.)
But player behavior is different in Premier and Quick drafts, in part because of the price difference. If the bots allowed players in Quick Draft to end up with all of the rares, and every deck you play against contains six or seven rare cards, that wouldn't resemble drafting with other players either.
The benefit is that it results in your draft opponents having realistic draft decks. When players change their behavior, whether by favoring certain colors or drafting rares at a drastically different rate, we try to adjust to keep things in line.
No, I think the most reasonable thing would be to base it off of what creates the best gameplay. In bot draft, I think people are looking for the same gameplay experience as they are in people drafts so they should be calibrated the same.
What changes some player behavior in the bot drafts is the MTGA economy. Since it's half the price of premiere drafts, people who want to go gain a more full collection use it to rare draft. Naturally, this would lead to rares being picked earlier on average. To me it doesn't seem fair for the bots to be calibrated for sub-optimal player enjoyment for a non-gameplay factor.
We do try to keep the gameplay experience the same. If we have done our job well, the players you play against in Quick Draft will have decks pretty similar to what you'd see in any other draft event, and the gameplay will feel broadly the same. That requires that the bots enforce scarcity during the draft at the same rate as the players.
But player behavior is different in Premier and Quick drafts, in part because of the price difference.
Exactly. Players are more likely to rare draft in Quick draft to build up a collection, while in Premier draft they're more likely to optimize their decks for winrate.
If the bots allowed players in Quick Draft to end up with all of the rares, and every deck you play against contains six or seven rare cards, that wouldn't resemble drafting with other players either.
If they're bad/mediocre rares, sure it would. Obviously, it makes sense to have the bots draft bombs highly. It doesn't make much sense to have them be first picking Pithing Needle or something unless the goal is to pinch us on rares.
The bots still distinguish between good and bad rares. Bad rares get passed often - although still not as often as they do in Premier Draft, because Quick Draft players still place at least some premium on them for collection purposes.
Thanks for all of your replied my dude.
I hadn't clocked that quick being used for collection and premium being used for "skill" had such an impact on the rares floating around.
As an example, I'm drafting 12+ rares in double feature at the moment with a positive win rate and loving it! But I must ask: why does the quick draft require 6 wins to break even while the Premier only requires 5?
Thanks
Sorry for the minor digression, but I always have to shake my head that players describe these points as "break even"... when you get your currency back, but you've also earned a bunch of cards, that's a lot of gain! The real break-even point is when the cards you gain are worth the same to you as the currency you spent, and that happens way earlier.
But to your actual question, Quick Draft has a flatter prize structure - it's generally less risky, and when you take less risk, it takes longer to earn a bigger reward.
While I appreciate your interaction, that minor digression is absolutely stunning.
Does this reply represent fairly the assumptions at Arena/WotC generally? The assumption of value in access to the cards is...considerably inflated. I place zero value on having "earned a bunch of cards" that are digital and cannot be actually owned, cashed in, traded, or turned into something else. It's not even valuable if I choose to value my TIME in such a way that I would rather trade money for access to cards/currency/whatever. There is zero value in the (access to the) cards themselves.
That is just a terrible assumption, and I cannot disagree more vigorously.
Yes, it is my position that the content of our game is worth something. That's why we make it. If your position is that the content of the game has no value, then we will indeed disagree. For instance, you will feel that the "break even" point of events is different than we do, and you will make your gameplay choices accordingly, which is absolutely your right.
The real break-even point is when the cards you gain are worth the same to you as the currency you spent, and that happens way earlier.
That depends on the value you place on those cards.
I'm sure you are already aware from internal data, but there are a lot of players who love limited but do not have much interest in constructed formats.
In paper, this is not an issue, you can just sell your cards to someone who does play constructed and play more limited, but with Arena rares have no real value to people who just want to keep drafting.
You shouldn't really be surprised when the prize payouts on your limited events are judged on the value they provide to limited focused players.
The player I responded to seemed to value the cards - they specifically cited the rares as a positive aspect of their Double Feature experience.
Of course, players who prefer strictly limited game modes should absolutely set their own value for what they get out of a draft experience and make their choices as appropriate.
In Quick draft, will the bot always make the same choice given the same variables or are the percentage chances of them choosing a card over another. Say if they come upon 2 cards that the system values nearly equally, will there be a 50% chance of taking one or the other, or will the bot always pick the card that the system values more highly?
There is some baked-in variance, so when cards are close, then it might go either way. If the gap is significant, you'd probably see the same behavior every time. (There's also context beyond purely the pack contents, like the bot's deck color, but I'm assuming that's all the same for your question.)
Sorry, I had to bite on this one. Your point makes a lot of sense on first glace but I think you're really making a false equivalency here.
You're basically saying that: because players in Quick Draft (aggressively raredraft) then bots must also (aggressively raredraft) otherwise (bad play pattern) people will be facing off with bizarro world 6-8 rare decks.
But actually- there's nothing to stop players from doing this in Premiere Draft either. There are still only 8 rares opened at the table- it's not as if they're magically all on-color bombs. If you rare-draft every pack, what you're getting is a pile of off-color Rares, duds and Constructed cards. All this does is make your deck bad. You'll get cleaned up by players that actually know how to Draft, just like you would in any other draft.
The only reason players would want to take these off-color, 'bad' rares, is to game the fifth-copy-protection in packs as a strategy toward set collection. I know you guys know that, and it's honestly surprising to see you half-acknowledging it here. You basically said it yourself- the bot programming is literally just mitigating the efficiency of a game-economy strategy players are attempting.
Nothing about any of this is the way Limited is supposed to work! Or Magic The Gathering is supposed to work. #LimitedResourcesDidn'tDieForThis
One or even two drafters at a Premier Draft table might get a lot of rares and then make for an unusual match, but a player will (on average) only face that once in a while as they play out their course. The rest of the time, they play against normal decks with normal distributions of rarities. In a world of Quick Draft rare-bonanza, a player might face that every game, because the drafters who weren't getting all those rares don't actually show up to even out the queue, because they're bots.
As to how Limited is "supposed" to work, I don't entirely disagree. However, it's how players are using the mode, and that affects the play experience, just like how players' choice of commanders affects the play experience of the Brawl queue. (BTW, that's another mode where we put controls in place to keep the gameplay from degenerating.) I don't think players would stop doing this unless we significantly raised the price of Quick Draft or made it phantom. (Yes, I know there's plenty of players who would love it to be phantom, but there's also plenty of players who value the fact that they can build their collection this way. Lots of different preferences, and we can only offer so many game modes.)
When someone rare drafts, and gets a ton of off color rares, they don’t end up in the final deck. Games won’t be crammed full of rares. Nobody’s going 5 color good stuff in draft.
What would instead happen is rare drafters would have weaker decks (on average), and then lose to players who drafted “better” (on average). Which is exactly what happens in premiere draft.
It happens in Quick Draft, too. Some players focus on rares, some players focus on their decks. We try to calibrate the bots so that (in theory) these types of players end up with similar drafting results in similar proportions as the players in Premier Draft.
Our goal is not to deny drafters as many rares as possible. It's for drafters to average about as many rares (and as many powerful commons, and as many signpost uncommons, etc etc etc) as they would get if they were drafting with each other.