This game is rigged as hell

Multiplayer Discussion
227

While SparkyElf is mostly just Gish gallop incarnate, I feel this one point has a shred of merit.

The peer review process is not immune to corruption, and I think it’s fair to say that this process has reached unprecedented levels of corruption in recent years. Some years ago (but not too long ago) a small group of right-wing provocateurs successful wrote fake papers and had them pass peer review to be published in feminist, etc academic journals. Regardless of how you feel about the ethics of this prank, the fact that they were able to sneak completely fabricated research past peer review shows that the process is not perfect.

That said, there is a difference between constructive criticism and revolutionary disdain for process. Regardless of whether or not peer review is currently working or not, Izizero is correct: the point of peer-reviewing is to test again and see if it works. It’s meant to be an academic audit system. It’s completely fair to point out that it doesn’t always work, it’s even fair to mock it for its failures, but if not peer review, then what? What alternative system, if any, should come in and replace it?

This line of questioning is why you come off as anti-intellectual, Elf. It doesn’t seem that your aim is to mock academia into fixing itself, into sweeping away the “scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” corruption and going back to a peer review process that worked. It feels a lot more to me like you just want to watch the universities burn.

But I’ll admit that this perception is based mostly on your tone — which is cringe, by the way. It’s one of those things that you should probably anticipate and explicitly clear up.

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This game is obviously rigged. Matchmaking, mulligan, card draw, discovery are all manipulated by the algorithm. Randomness is a pure illusion.

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What’s the point, people like you will never believe it.

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Never believe it’s rigged?

I honestly hope it is rigged so I can personally sue them for fraud, but until someone, anyone, has some sort of solid proof I must believe it’s fair.

There’s what you know and what you can prove, and asserting things you know but can’t prove can get you into trouble in many different ways. If Blizzard was as evil as you think they are, they could sue each person who accuses them of rigging the game of slander and libel, and they would win.

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game is rigged i have date to show

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Yeah, we remember that one.

PS Here’s the actual reference:

https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/

That’s quite a reading and even rather fun, in case someone missed it. (End PS)

By the way, that such journals about ‘feminism’ and so on are considered ‘academic’ is alone a big sign screaming that the ‘progress’ has gone backwards many hundreds of years, beyond the ‘darkest’ (whatever that is supposed to mean) of ages, surpassing auguries as a scholarly discipline. Man, even these forums are much more of a scientific journal :rofl:, and very peer-reviewed at that.

Anyway, I wasn’t even referring to that one there — it was about real science (yes, just like that), very experimental and so on, mind you. If you want examples of notoriety, look for the case of Haruko Obokata, for instance — although I assure you it’s just happened to be a more resonant one.

It’s more or less like discussing the ethics of that fairytale boy who pointed out that the king has no clothes.

Yeah, go on, invite me when you do it — I’ll join you.

Oh, quite solid suggestions, based on years of professional experience, have been made, I read them at some point. Do you really wish to got into that on this forum? I thought it as efficient as trying to explain quantum mechanics to some bumpkins, but if someone’s really interested…

It’s not going to just ‘fix itself’ as it is, with those academic helminths, just sitting there in the nourishing stream and absorbing it, comprising the overwhelming majority, apparently, thus the status quo satifsying them completely (and the one or two percent who are genuinely interested in what’s the purpose of academic institutions in the first place tend to be outcasts at best, as said — provided they survive to the point of some academic autonomy… many do not due to how the system works). Although self-governing is crucial to a functional academia, some systematic changes must be made.

You cannot go back to a rudiment of an old system, which has since evolved for objective reasons (or devolved — depending on the viewpoint… to the ‘publish or perish’ atrocity at the very least, although I should also save the ‘Why Witten is the new Aristotle’ dissertation for another day, perhaps… :grinning: I think the subject might have actually been mentioned at some point… but it’s a digression). I’d say the best shot for that purpose would probably be for the review system evolve as well — starting with anonymity: it used to be something meant to protect academic people from psychos, including violent ones, sending them their perpetuum mobile ideas and such, but seems to have turned out differently nowadays, as discussed above — in case someone’s interested why. In fact, with modern technology, internet in particular, nothing prevents us from doing a portal where anyone in the field can post an open review of an article, with the process being transparent — for starters, that’d be an infinite impovement in this regard.

And why should I show any more regard for your feelings than you do to anyone else’s on this forum? :grinning:

This phrase doesn’t even make any sense. :grinning: It’s like, ‘You potato a swim’ or ‘Jenny tomorrow red’ — am I supposed to take this as a suggestion? :grinning:

Should I? :grinning: As for expectations… Well, they say if you show a monkey its reflection in a mirror, it’s gonna grimace at that ugly ape in front of it and show signs of aggression — I’d expect this, too. What’s this got do to with this forum? Well, apparently, such behavoiur patterns are not unlike what I’d expect here, either. Does this mean I should try to please everyone?

Unlike some, I prefer to harbour no delusions of grandeur about ‘MUH OPINION!!!111’, and thus perceive the forum accordingly: for instance, if someone doesn’t like my posts, which I mostly do for my own fun, or my tone, they can just pass or whatever — that’s it, nobody owes anyone anything here, essentially. I generally try to reply to reasonable points in a substantial manner, by the way.

(Updated and edited a bit)

233

How come nobody notices when we have cards like the old Tracking, and all the Dredge stuff and the new Finley are in the game?

You can actually rigg your card draw. We have Polkelt and Order in the Court.

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Not if those cards to ‘rigg’ the draw are themselves rigged to be at the bottom or other inaccessible part of the deck. Duh! :grinning:

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So it’s like a 4th level partial differential equation?

They hired a team of math PhDs to do this?

You realize how expensive that would be?

You also understand that the rigging at that level takes more computing than the actual Hearthstone?

I think you are a lot cheaper to hire as an anti shill conspiracy theorist to spread the theories in here so people spend extra money on non existing rigging.

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Nah. Hes employed by a competitor, to sew discord on these forums.

I have just as much evidence of this as he does of the game being rigged!

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One insight I’ve had recently is that people who fall for psychological operations (psyops) don’t notice the psyop when it’s effecting them, but they notice the absence which they then think is the psyop.

Hearthstone is full of psyops to make you think you’re a much better player than you actually are. Matchmaking is designed to prevent you from facing an opponent considerably more skilled than you are — and now, if you’re in queue long enough that the acceptable rank/MMR band would grow too large, you’re matched against a free-win BlizzBot instead of a player significantly stronger than you. New players start in ranks where the existence of a winstreak bonus means that you climb with a winrate of 45.34% or better. The voice acting is full of over-the-top encouragement (especially in Battlegrounds, where it’s laid on so thick it threatens to become a parody of itself). Animations and sound effects are engineered to be positive reinforcement, a la slot machine. It’s all so affirming. You’re doing such a great job.

These psyops work on rigging believers, and as such they believe that they’re much better than they actually are. To a certain extent that’s not their fault; the game is deliberately designed to instill this belief. But when that overconfidence crashes against reality, the sudden absence of that confidence is essentially the frustration that rigging believers believe sells packs. They’re wrong, of course — what sells packs is the delusion that your homebrew will take the meta by storm and that you’ll be able to prove it if only you could complete the list. But in a strange way I am actually now of the belief that they’re kinda pointing in the right direction. It’s just that they don’t understand what it is that they’re pointing at, because it’s an effective illusion.

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I don’t agree.

It’s that if those people were making Hearthstone, they would do rigged matchmaking.

So they project what they think they would do unto others.

How many arguments do I get with them where they’re defending the legality and morality of the matchmaking rigging?

I get into weird discussions with religious people, where it’s the same thing. These psychopaths need to believe there’s an all knowing eye :eye: or they would become Hannibal Lecters.

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I think I’ve shared in a previous thread recently that I really don’t like the person that I used to be. I don’t believe I was technically speaking a psychopath, because that would mean an inability to empathize with others. But let’s just say I had a profound unwillingness to do so that was, for practical purposes, virtually indistinguishable from an inability. Psychopath by choice, if you will.

The only thing that really stopped me from going down that road further was essentially the non-supernatural version of your “all seeing eye.” When it comes to the life of crime, there are people who are “in the game” and there are people who aren’t, and I’d been sitting on that fence a little too long, so all my acquaintances eventually made my choice for me: I wasn’t. I woke up one day and they were gone and ALL my stuff was gone. I couldn’t report it stolen because all of it was acquired nefariously. In the weeks that followed that event, I began to realize a few things, like that I knew some of them were violent enough that I was lucky to not be in the hospital, if not in the morgue, but more importantly that I hadn’t gotten away with anything. All the things were gone; all the friends were gone. And it’s when I fully embraced that I couldn’t get away with it, that I live in a world where social interactions are complex and nuanced enough that I don’t have the power to just ignore incentives, that I surrendered to something like fair trade. Not because it’s “good;” because it’s better.

And I’ll be straight up with you, if I genuinely believed that sociopathic behavior was the better long term strategy for achieving self-interest, I’d advocate sociopathic behavior. (Online, at least; in person who knows what lies I’d spin.) The reason I don’t is because I know it’s a losing strategy.

I know this hasn’t been a concise explanation but my point is that believing in the supernatural eye isn’t all bad. Yeah maybe without it a few of those jerks start going down the road of Hannibal Lecter — or perhaps more accurately, Hank Hill from Goodfellas — until they wreck themselves or, if they have some sense, they piece together the existence of the real Eye and experience The Fear. Religious people call it the Fear of God, or a Come To Jesus moment; I’m not superstitious enough to like those names, but do I ever know the feeling. It’s the kind of thing that’s best NOT to know empirically. Best kept to a story where someone tells you it exists and, in your wisdom, you believe them rather than go verifying it for yourself.

For my son’s birthday I got him a book that I felt covered a lot of the themes I struggled with in my own youth, and I wrote on the title page:
“It’s good to learn from your failures, but I prefer to learn from the failures of others.”
— some Magic: the Gathering flavor text writer

(He plays MtG.) I think that the major religions actually succeed to some extent at doing this. Because if a failure is experienced by you, it’s not really someone else’s. It’s a type of learning that can’t happen unless you can trust a story.

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Oh! Thanks for this object of a good laugh. :rofl: It’s one of those moments when you try to sound very smart, but fail miserably, not knowing the subject. :rofl: There are no ‘levels’ in PDEs… Orders or degrees, perhaps, but you’ve apparently got no notion. :grinning:

By the way, these are useful things, but not for this problem.

Actually, that’d be quite cheap. :grinning:

Oh, I’d like to see the estimate of computational complexity, but I don’t think I would. :grinning:

By the way, I’ve even written a brief draft of a possible rigging algorithm elsewhere. :grinning: If they have already implemented Zephrys, for instance, this’d be a piece of cake.

Go on, make my day and impress me with your offer. :smirk:

Actually, competitors should hope that the game in its current state keeps going, it being an ‘anti-advertisement’ itself. :grinning:

I still am a Mercenaries fan (less so of the ‘Mythic Boss Rush’ thing, though), but if you look at the technical state in which it has been, especially since the last major update — it’s a shame of an epic, no, legendary scale. Oh, and, apart from Classic, this is more or less the best this game has to offer, if you ask me. :rofl:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Yep, encouragement to ‘Put this apple on your head.’ :rofl:

Ugh, these get irritating after a while, by the way.

I think the present tense would still be fitting for this passage, from my perspective. :rofl:

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You’re very predictable.

Perhaps I should have added that it prevents you from facing an opponent considerably less skilled as well.

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Perhaps, but I’d find the notion equally laughable — predictably enough. :grinning:

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Wow that is really an intense read.

I changed my mind about wanting to meet you IRL.

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That makes me sad and a bit confused. I’d like to think overcoming my issues would be inspirational, not horrifying.

In this case, not so much. I mean, I get that you believe quite fiercely in your own exceptionalism, but surely you’ve got some kind of theory in your head about how the plebs queue against each other, right? Or are you actually that myopically self-absorbed?

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I am not sure if issues like that CAN be overcome or they simply become repressed.

Based on your writings here, and I get it that you don’t see it but based on your writings here, I cannot help but think that explains a lot.

I am a raging alcoholic. Simply put. I am a functional one though thank God and my issue can never be resolved. It can be repressed and that is it.

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If you’re done with that ridiculous :grinning: (hey, where’s my pay-per-click, by the way? :rofl:) bit of ranting, how about this little question: since when has that famous matchmaking prevented players of considerable skill from meeting dumb bots regularly enough? Not Blizzard’s bots — just those run-of-the-mill bots… beep, bop… and rather crude ones, at that? Or, if you’d really like, you could do the enormous effort of flipping the question: since when has it prevented those ‘players’ (beep, bop) from meeting opponents of considerably higher skill?

A small reminder for the plebs those who didn’t get the memo: even one counterexample disproves a general statement, logically speaking.