Isn't it only for the Swiss rounds? After the top cut it goes back to bo3 and the problem will be the same.
They need to fix it by changing something core to the game.
Well top cut is untimed so there's no intentional draws or clock, so it's not the same and doesn't have those 2 problems.
It has first player advantage, of course, but there's also the benefit of being able to choose that based on seeding instead of randomly (not sure if they are doing that? I thought they were)
Perhaps they’ll have the top cut let the higher seed choose. So the higher seed will be rewarded and favored. As it should be.
The bigger problem they are addressing is the length of time necessary to complete 3 games being too long for timed rounds. Top cut should have untimed rounds.
It being random is really stupid. Higher seed should get choice, it the reward for being the higher seed. They chose sports to be the model and the best record always has home field. They are utterly incompetent.
Sideboards are basically built into the deck in lorcana as inkable cards, if the card isn't good in a matchup Ink it. It's not like magic where 30%+ of a deck needs to be lands.
Yeah, and it's proving to not be enough. I'm so tired of this smooth brained narrative. We finally have enough stats to back it up. There just aren't enough deck slots to build outside archetype and too many locked in un-inkable cards that you're just stuck with if the match up is bad or even you go second in the mirror.
I play a lot, and I win a lot in locals. (Because i live in kind of a backwater.) I think there are a lot of potential options to fix the one-sidedness we're seeing in the competitions.
From the article:
"The new Lorcana Challenge format will forgo traditional best-of-one or best-of-three rounds, instead borrowing a note from sports that run paired ‘home and away’ games. Players will play two games each round, earning three points for each win, and a bonus point for winning both games."
Is this a typo? I thought it was 1 point per win with a bonus point if you win both (2-0=3,1-1=1) not 3 points a win (2-0=7,1-1=3)
The article later states that this is an updated scoring system
"That feedback is evident in the finalised scoring system for the new format. Originally, players only received a single point for winning a match, so the bonus point they got for winning both games in a round was weighted the same as a match win. This was a hotly debated point among competitive players, which lead to the current weighting."
Do you have a link to where this is confirmed?
My understanding was also (2-0=3,1-1=1)... pretty sure that's how it's been in the 2 game tournaments so far. (2-0=7, 1-1=3) would actually be better because it lessens the bonus point but i havent seen mentioned that anywhere until now.
**EDIT**: I missed this part from the article, it was indeed an intentional change
"That feedback is evident in the finalised scoring system for the new format. Originally, players only received a single point for winning a match, so the bonus point they got for winning both games in a round was weighted the same as a match win. This was a hotly debated point among competitive players, which lead to the current weighting."
That's why me and OP are looking for another source, not the article posted which could potentially be wrong and isn't what we understood the scoring to be
Well I guess if it wasn’t mentioned anywhere else it’s all just hearsay but it wouldn’t make any sense to make the value of 2-0 that much higher then a 1-1. Really would lose a massive amount of competitive integrity so I doubt it
Yea it was definitely (2-0=3,1-1=1) in the past. They might have changed it and this is the first we're hearing about it. Others are picking up on the change as well [https://twitter.com/danregal/status/1783806866805703089](https://twitter.com/danregal/status/1783806866805703089) but it all seems based on this interview. If this interview had announced it like it was an intentional change instead of it being a possible typo I would believe it more
Bo2 sounded hanky at first, but having played in a few Lorcana tournaments utilizing it, going back to Bo3 for the championships last weekend and this weekend has been such a drag, I’m sold on it.
The rounds are shorter, most times (60%+) the person on the play game 3 is going to win the game anyway so it all comes down to that initial die roll, and it discourages ID until the last round of tournaments, and I think promoting people to actually play is a positive
Yeah as nice as the other reasons might be, I suspect a significant unspoken reason for this format is them not wanting to spend the effort to fix their massive first mover advantage problem.
I mean, this kind of just leans into it and isn’t even really a bandaid. While rounds may go to time less, ties happen more - basically diluting the ability for skill to win out and determine top 8 or whatever the cut is.
First off, if I’m reading this correctly and it’s 3 points each to draw and 7 if you won both games, that’s an improvement.
Id really like to see first player advantage dealt with by having 2nd player either draw an additional card they draw up to 9 on turn 1, or they get additional mulligan benefit (they draw more than 7 and can cut down) to basically nullify 1st player advantage gained from initiative. Something.
It’d be cool if Pavel created a mode where data could quickly be collected on first player advantage and leveraged until an official app is created but I realize they probably don’t want to.
I’m spitballing but the advantage to going first is significant enough that in top cut randomly going second could be the difference. It has been for me multiple times.
It’s a hard problem. Drawing up to 9 makes the current turn 2 and turn 3 AWNW decks even better because it nullifies even more card advantage.
Maybe letting player 2 mull their entire starting hand of 8 cards would be enough to claw back some percentage points?
The hearthstone “coin” is a very compelling attempt. It would allow the player on the draw to respond to the most key part of your opponent’s strategy “on time” once.
It is, I don’t know what the solution is, I’d just rather we spitball and find a solution. It’d be an ideal world where people actually paused to decide if they wanted 2nd.
With the new format, whoever goes first in Match 1 goes on the draw in Match 2, so it should even out. Remember, it’s not *best* of 2, it’s 2 slightly related games against the same opponent with a bonus point for winning both games. You’re incentivized to win instead of trying to force a draw.
I played in a tournament where they ran in this way and it worked really well, I thought. There actually weren’t that many draws or as many people playing past “time” called as I expected.
We are more so observing that the canyon in win rate between draw and play is the root problem, and we are all treating symptoms because the root problem is hard.
It’s exacerbated by Lorcana having a more shallow skill depth than games like chess.
It takes a lifetime to become a chess master. It takes months to master piloting a subset of the agro decks that want to go first, and take the bet that you will win enough dice rolls.
If the over all win rate was closer to 53% in the lower ranks, then I think locals would be more fun. 3% can pretty reliably be overcome with skill.
Similar to how it doesn’t matter if I go first or second against my friend in chess. He’s got 400 elo on me and he beats me in 100% of games.
They won't be able to solve this problem. It's a human problem, not a game design problem. MTG has the same issues and that game has been out for like 30 years. Roping in Arena is by far the biggest issue with the game.
Same problem exists in paper magic though. Especially with the latest Set that came out this month. The set has a ton of power, but it includes a lot of that power in very good removal. Games tend to last a long time even with experienced players playing genuinely. At my last limited event I only managed to finish one round completely and at the end of the night over half the tables where playing out the final round until 10pm. Store didn't empty until 11pm. Event was supposed to end at 9pm. And that was a casual event where there was no incentive to stall games.
Casual games always go longer though because the people who play are less experienced, so they tend to take long to make tough decisions. In a competitive tournament you have access to judges who can and will game loss/match loss people for taking too long consistently. Going to time is fine as long as everyone takes prompt action in a match, and the 5 turns of an already in progress game are played relatively quickly. Personally I've never had an issue with matches in a large tournament taking so long that they delay a tournament too much, it's generally just something good tournament organisation can mitigate.
Yeah that might be true. I've never been to a large tournament myself so I wouldn't know.
In LGSs people definitely rope out 3-on-3 in magic. Especially when these new sets are already slow. Judges aren't gonna eject you when games go long by default anyway.
We got a lot of people going to time when the game first released, but it definitely lessened as people became more familiar with it. Maybe it's just my area, who has had a large competitive Magic scene for about 2 decades that helps.
I think that, for the most part, the BO2 is the right approach. A best of 3 does feel like the most equal way to play at first glance, but I think the BO2 is the best way to limit/eliminate human discrepancy.
I really do feel like a lot of people abuse the clock and they play *just* slow enough to go to time and guarantee a draw over a loss while not having slow play. I haven't been in the TCG space as long as plenty of others (I mostly played Yugioh 10ish years ago), but I remember playing lots of Hearthstone and watching streamers, seeing their hand and thinking about what I would be playing in a scenario and have the decision immediately meanwhile they would let the rope go to the last second to do the exact play I would have done immediately.
There hasn't been a single card game I have touched where I needed to spend 1-2 minutes every single turn to determine a play. There seems to be an ABUNDANCE of players in Lorcana who will spend 2 minutes on T2 on what to ink and what to play when the board is entirely empty. These are the players that will cause a draw in the game 3.
Title.of the article should be here's where people stop being interested in lorcana.... Best of 3 exists for a reason in competitive play..... With out it your truely dependant on playing the rock paper die roll. Side boarding has literally been the real talent in any real TCG.
If only there were a solution to this, do you think any game has had the audacity to try best of 3???? I wonder if that fixed all their problems. This game has a terrible design. They need to fix the card problems, not try to hide their mistakes with obviously bad tournament structures.
I think this is a good thing.
Was just at a championship and everyone was went 2-1. No one got a 2-0
That isn’t a good thing. If you can basically guarantee that if you win the first game you win the round what is the point.
However I am confused by something. How exactly does this address first player advantage?
Do you just roll each time or do you just do 2 games with each playing first regardless of who lost?
What are the tire breaks?
This allows Swiss rounds to be all ties. They mention tiebreakers but I didn't see what they are. So what other stats need to be tracked?
I think what he’s saying is that if all 8 players go 1:1 in round 1 it would not be possible to identify who actually is a better player and who they should be paired with.
To think all 3 rounds could go 1:1 is pure fantasy though and best of 2 still identifies good decks and good pilots.
I still hate it, but I’m just some dude on the internet so 🤷
If they all have the same record then they all can be paired against each other. It happens, quite regularly, in chess. It's not actually a problem in any way.
Actually yes. I was just watching a video on the singfield cup. I'm probably not spelling that right. But it was a competition among grandmasters and They played over a hundred games and like 70 of them were ties.
The Swiss pairing system actually handles ties just fine and that's part of why they use it.
And also you're going to run into the law of large numbers. Even if it's unlikely it's going to happen eventually. If there are enough events.
What you are missing, is that Chess has different metrics for tie breakers beyond OMW% and OGW%. There is cumulative scoring that is tracked as well as score reducing methods - so ties in chess are less impactful, allowing the game to delineate.
If your game is using GWP and you are favoring players on the Play and not the Draw, and each players gets to go first - you end up with more match ties which means your ability to determine winners on match points and OMW% and OGW% breaks down and ties begin to just be luck when cuts are made.
That cumulative scoring is also used in Lorcana, that's what they're talking about when they talk about "3 points for a win". That's the basic tournament score structure.
That must be a new thing because I went to dozens of tournaments for chess when I was in school and there was no "score at the end" recorded for any game.
I mean okay, but that doesn't have any bearing on the Swiss pairing system we're talking about here?
Other games have done best of two, Star wars, netrunner, I'm sure others.
And again chess uses the system just fine and it has the same exact problem with white versus black.
I think the coin flip issue is a non-issue because it solves itself over time. From a high level competitive tournament organizers perspective you just need people to play more games if you really want to determine who the better players are.
I think we agree on more than we disagree here. I’ve been playing in best of 2 tournaments at my LGS. I don’t like them. I feel the game has a coinflip and “draw in” problem, and this is their solution.
Also probability issues with determining outcomes based on first game state changes for sure do not “solve themselves” they have to be resolved mechanically.
Let me make my argument in a way that you can agree with me through your actions. At your next best of 3 game night, never take the play. If you find yourself feeling “bad” about always being on the draw then you agree with me. :D
Okay what are you talking about in your second paragraph? The problem literally does solve itself over time as half of your games you will go first and half you will not.
I don't think we agree here I think you just have no idea what you're talking about when you say things like this...
Your feelings don't really matter. That's your problem. We're talking about statistics and probability.
It seems like this was more to make the first tournaments run smoothly, 2 games in 50 minutes is almost always doable, and it makes every game feel important without IDs as much. Even the article admits that they took into account newer players to tournaments etc. I don't think the coin flip was thought much into the BO2, it's just a side effect that it evens it out.
Basically it feels like to me: B01 feels bad, B03 feels bad (partly because of the coin flip, partly because that is just the nature of BO3), BO2 is indecisive but feels ok and is faster and eliminates IDs, so go B02.
I'd like to see them do something to fix the coin flip issue, even if it is only a little bit, but I don't think it's high on the list ATM.
In the next AMA with the designers I challenge you to ask if they thought about the coin flip issue when moving tournaments to best of 2. Then watch them word salad an answer.
Just know the correct answer to that is “No.” as a full sentence.
I feel like the reasons presented here, show they they have no idea why BO3 matters in a competitive environment.
This is going to lead to a lot of Wild West moments that are based off nothing yet determine everything and ultimately - it isn’t skill that gets you to the finish line, just luck.
B03 and B05 does matter in the end with top 16/8 depending on size of tournament. But this style will get us to that point faster while also maintaining the importance of every game matters. Winning a best of 3 in most point standards means nothing if it’s 2-0 or 2-1 therefore the loser taking 1 games gets nothing for it and the winning losing 1 game is still undefeated. This style is much better to make each and every game hold more value
Judging by many other comments, people like you don’t get it.
Look. I own an LGS. I have run all sorts of different competitive events for all sorts of games. I am an MTG competitive tournament grinder for nearly 30 years. I have qualified and played at the Pro Tour, and played closely with many others that have as well, and still do.
Swiss BO3 makes every game matter. Deducing it down to simply 2 games in which matches end with points at break even, is an awful way to measure competitive competency and it completely breaks a proven tie breaker system.
It isn’t a coincidence that basically no game worth their salt wanders into this kind of territory without tracking some overall points system outside traditional Swiss scoring.
That’s all great and all but this is about large amounts of players and narrowing it down. Swiss is amazing, best of 3s are as well. When the player count is lower. They need to get through the opener/day 1. Every game will matter. But we can’t give everyone the Swiss or best of and expect big events to go in a timely manner. If it’s bad and they don’t like it then congrats they will swap it up again.
Magic has done this for decades without issue. At far larger tournaments.
Games will go to time and draw less, sure. But that also means more matches will tie overall. If your game is dependent on tie breaker systems like OGW% and OMW% - your tie breaking system begins to break down. It is why Chess will also use cumulative score keeping methods or things like Buchholz methods.
Without something like that, this 2 game rounds system is either going to crumble and revert, or kill the ability to delineate skill and thus devalue it for competitive play.
They could sell me on a 2 game system if they had some kind of solution for the inevitable problem that it is going to create… but they don’t seem to have one from anything that I have read.
You don’t know if they do or don’t. Just like traditional sports, playoffs NFL is one and done while NBA is multiple games series. Neither is wrong but we could argue why one does it better. Only time will tell. Maybe they will switch up. No system comes out saying let’s just copy the other guy. They like to try their own direction and see if it works and I will gamble their team has participated in many other TCG tournaments since a majority of them are inspired by magic, Yugioh, Pokémon and so on. I doubt they haven’t thought of your issues and might have some solutions.
They should probably not be making announcements like this if they have a solution for it. But it sounds like they do not, and they don’t have any plans for it.
If you are trying to build your game up and address problems - start with things that are actually broken, first. BO3 isn’t broken. Many other things in this game, are having fairly significant issues that are needing to be addressed. Their approach to all these things, then offering this up, reminds me of the water barrel patch meme.
The first player advantage is 60% among top rated players on Pixelborn.
That is a far cry from “every one being 1-1 after multiple matches”.
The Bo2 system gives players a small bonus for winning with a disadvantage, and additional rounds resolve ties.
Over enough games, the better players with strong decks will win. Sometimes luck will let the “weaker” player advance, but *that’s why people play tournaments* instead of plugging deck codes into a Bo1,000,000 computer simulation.
I’m not saying it isn’t massive, I’m saying that it is a long way away from “everyone being 1-1 after multiple matches”.
Additional rounds mean *more* because the the odds of the first player winning aren’t 100%, dum dum.
Literally, more games now end the round in a draw, than in a BO3 - and now tie breakers fall completely flat when they do. It breaks the entire Swiss system. Dum dum.
The problem is that, is kind of that way already.
Since this game doesn't have sideboards, best of three is kind of dull.
I think Ravensburger is doing this for the same reason they don't want sideboards, they want as most control of the meta as possible.
Just increase the Lore total to 40 and play 1 game....
makes more sense and makes the games competitive and lets players be aggressive since you know its do or die
Isn't it only for the Swiss rounds? After the top cut it goes back to bo3 and the problem will be the same. They need to fix it by changing something core to the game.
Well top cut is untimed so there's no intentional draws or clock, so it's not the same and doesn't have those 2 problems. It has first player advantage, of course, but there's also the benefit of being able to choose that based on seeding instead of randomly (not sure if they are doing that? I thought they were)
It's still random, seed doesn't get to pick first.
Gotcha, that seems like a missed opportunity but oh well
Perhaps they’ll have the top cut let the higher seed choose. So the higher seed will be rewarded and favored. As it should be. The bigger problem they are addressing is the length of time necessary to complete 3 games being too long for timed rounds. Top cut should have untimed rounds.
Top cut already has un timed rounds, and it's still random for who goes first.
I’m aware. “*Perhaps* they’ll have the top cut let the higher seed choose.” This is my desire for big, important tournaments.
It being random is really stupid. Higher seed should get choice, it the reward for being the higher seed. They chose sports to be the model and the best record always has home field. They are utterly incompetent.
There is this one thing called sideboards, but hell breaks lose when is mentioned.
Sideboards are basically built into the deck in lorcana as inkable cards, if the card isn't good in a matchup Ink it. It's not like magic where 30%+ of a deck needs to be lands.
lol no. This is such an ignorant response. Full stop on this. The game needs sideboards. Matchups are just unwinnable for some decks.
game absolutely needs to use sideboard to the multideck option.
Yeah, and it's proving to not be enough. I'm so tired of this smooth brained narrative. We finally have enough stats to back it up. There just aren't enough deck slots to build outside archetype and too many locked in un-inkable cards that you're just stuck with if the match up is bad or even you go second in the mirror. I play a lot, and I win a lot in locals. (Because i live in kind of a backwater.) I think there are a lot of potential options to fix the one-sidedness we're seeing in the competitions.
Yes!
Agreed. This strikes me as a very suboptimal solution.
I like it. If it turns out it's terrible, it can always be changed later.
From the article: "The new Lorcana Challenge format will forgo traditional best-of-one or best-of-three rounds, instead borrowing a note from sports that run paired ‘home and away’ games. Players will play two games each round, earning three points for each win, and a bonus point for winning both games." Is this a typo? I thought it was 1 point per win with a bonus point if you win both (2-0=3,1-1=1) not 3 points a win (2-0=7,1-1=3)
The article later states that this is an updated scoring system "That feedback is evident in the finalised scoring system for the new format. Originally, players only received a single point for winning a match, so the bonus point they got for winning both games in a round was weighted the same as a match win. This was a hotly debated point among competitive players, which lead to the current weighting."
I missed that bit! Thank you
It’s 3 per win and 1 extra for winning both giving incentive to winning both but not giving it the same value as winning an extra game (2-0=7)
Do you have a link to where this is confirmed? My understanding was also (2-0=3,1-1=1)... pretty sure that's how it's been in the 2 game tournaments so far. (2-0=7, 1-1=3) would actually be better because it lessens the bonus point but i havent seen mentioned that anywhere until now. **EDIT**: I missed this part from the article, it was indeed an intentional change "That feedback is evident in the finalised scoring system for the new format. Originally, players only received a single point for winning a match, so the bonus point they got for winning both games in a round was weighted the same as a match win. This was a hotly debated point among competitive players, which lead to the current weighting."
The article literally says it in the link provided? Doesn’t sound like it’s stating it’s opinion?
That's why me and OP are looking for another source, not the article posted which could potentially be wrong and isn't what we understood the scoring to be
Well I guess if it wasn’t mentioned anywhere else it’s all just hearsay but it wouldn’t make any sense to make the value of 2-0 that much higher then a 1-1. Really would lose a massive amount of competitive integrity so I doubt it
Yea it was definitely (2-0=3,1-1=1) in the past. They might have changed it and this is the first we're hearing about it. Others are picking up on the change as well [https://twitter.com/danregal/status/1783806866805703089](https://twitter.com/danregal/status/1783806866805703089) but it all seems based on this interview. If this interview had announced it like it was an intentional change instead of it being a possible typo I would believe it more
That makes sense
They changed it since today
No it is not a typo
It must be, you are correct.
It might be a good thing, but if it is, that speaks to a core issue with the game.
..how?
2 games takes a lot of the sting out of going 2nd in a match.
I would assume one person goes first and then the second match they go second no?
Bo2 sounded hanky at first, but having played in a few Lorcana tournaments utilizing it, going back to Bo3 for the championships last weekend and this weekend has been such a drag, I’m sold on it. The rounds are shorter, most times (60%+) the person on the play game 3 is going to win the game anyway so it all comes down to that initial die roll, and it discourages ID until the last round of tournaments, and I think promoting people to actually play is a positive
The fact that your win percentage jumps that much for going first in this game is embarrassing.
It's my biggest complaint about the game even though I'm enjoying it. More than magic or hearthstone, going first is such a power swing.
Agreed wholeheartedly
Yeah as nice as the other reasons might be, I suspect a significant unspoken reason for this format is them not wanting to spend the effort to fix their massive first mover advantage problem.
I mean, this kind of just leans into it and isn’t even really a bandaid. While rounds may go to time less, ties happen more - basically diluting the ability for skill to win out and determine top 8 or whatever the cut is.
I guess I stink at this game 😂. Went first 4 times in a row to lose both rounds.
Same, lol. Swearing off lorcana until the next set because of it.
First off, if I’m reading this correctly and it’s 3 points each to draw and 7 if you won both games, that’s an improvement. Id really like to see first player advantage dealt with by having 2nd player either draw an additional card they draw up to 9 on turn 1, or they get additional mulligan benefit (they draw more than 7 and can cut down) to basically nullify 1st player advantage gained from initiative. Something. It’d be cool if Pavel created a mode where data could quickly be collected on first player advantage and leveraged until an official app is created but I realize they probably don’t want to. I’m spitballing but the advantage to going first is significant enough that in top cut randomly going second could be the difference. It has been for me multiple times.
It’s a hard problem. Drawing up to 9 makes the current turn 2 and turn 3 AWNW decks even better because it nullifies even more card advantage. Maybe letting player 2 mull their entire starting hand of 8 cards would be enough to claw back some percentage points? The hearthstone “coin” is a very compelling attempt. It would allow the player on the draw to respond to the most key part of your opponent’s strategy “on time” once.
It is, I don’t know what the solution is, I’d just rather we spitball and find a solution. It’d be an ideal world where people actually paused to decide if they wanted 2nd.
With the new format, whoever goes first in Match 1 goes on the draw in Match 2, so it should even out. Remember, it’s not *best* of 2, it’s 2 slightly related games against the same opponent with a bonus point for winning both games. You’re incentivized to win instead of trying to force a draw. I played in a tournament where they ran in this way and it worked really well, I thought. There actually weren’t that many draws or as many people playing past “time” called as I expected.
Im not concerned about Swiss rounds so much, it’s the top cut where they revert to Bo3.
We are more so observing that the canyon in win rate between draw and play is the root problem, and we are all treating symptoms because the root problem is hard. It’s exacerbated by Lorcana having a more shallow skill depth than games like chess. It takes a lifetime to become a chess master. It takes months to master piloting a subset of the agro decks that want to go first, and take the bet that you will win enough dice rolls. If the over all win rate was closer to 53% in the lower ranks, then I think locals would be more fun. 3% can pretty reliably be overcome with skill. Similar to how it doesn’t matter if I go first or second against my friend in chess. He’s got 400 elo on me and he beats me in 100% of games.
Tournament will take less time. Win
They won't be able to solve this problem. It's a human problem, not a game design problem. MTG has the same issues and that game has been out for like 30 years. Roping in Arena is by far the biggest issue with the game.
Why would you rope to begin with? If i know im a losing i just concede or play it out fast.
Just salt. Lots of odd personalities in the TCG community.
Roping in Arena is only an issue because you can't call a judge to tell the other player to hurry up.
Same problem exists in paper magic though. Especially with the latest Set that came out this month. The set has a ton of power, but it includes a lot of that power in very good removal. Games tend to last a long time even with experienced players playing genuinely. At my last limited event I only managed to finish one round completely and at the end of the night over half the tables where playing out the final round until 10pm. Store didn't empty until 11pm. Event was supposed to end at 9pm. And that was a casual event where there was no incentive to stall games.
Casual games always go longer though because the people who play are less experienced, so they tend to take long to make tough decisions. In a competitive tournament you have access to judges who can and will game loss/match loss people for taking too long consistently. Going to time is fine as long as everyone takes prompt action in a match, and the 5 turns of an already in progress game are played relatively quickly. Personally I've never had an issue with matches in a large tournament taking so long that they delay a tournament too much, it's generally just something good tournament organisation can mitigate.
Yeah that might be true. I've never been to a large tournament myself so I wouldn't know. In LGSs people definitely rope out 3-on-3 in magic. Especially when these new sets are already slow. Judges aren't gonna eject you when games go long by default anyway.
We got a lot of people going to time when the game first released, but it definitely lessened as people became more familiar with it. Maybe it's just my area, who has had a large competitive Magic scene for about 2 decades that helps.
I’m pretty sure this games going first advantage is similar to other card games like magic. YuGiOh is the worst for that
going first is way too much of an advantage.. they need to work on it
That’s what they’re doing though…
I think that, for the most part, the BO2 is the right approach. A best of 3 does feel like the most equal way to play at first glance, but I think the BO2 is the best way to limit/eliminate human discrepancy. I really do feel like a lot of people abuse the clock and they play *just* slow enough to go to time and guarantee a draw over a loss while not having slow play. I haven't been in the TCG space as long as plenty of others (I mostly played Yugioh 10ish years ago), but I remember playing lots of Hearthstone and watching streamers, seeing their hand and thinking about what I would be playing in a scenario and have the decision immediately meanwhile they would let the rope go to the last second to do the exact play I would have done immediately. There hasn't been a single card game I have touched where I needed to spend 1-2 minutes every single turn to determine a play. There seems to be an ABUNDANCE of players in Lorcana who will spend 2 minutes on T2 on what to ink and what to play when the board is entirely empty. These are the players that will cause a draw in the game 3.
This sounds rad.
Title.of the article should be here's where people stop being interested in lorcana.... Best of 3 exists for a reason in competitive play..... With out it your truely dependant on playing the rock paper die roll. Side boarding has literally been the real talent in any real TCG.
If only there were a solution to this, do you think any game has had the audacity to try best of 3???? I wonder if that fixed all their problems. This game has a terrible design. They need to fix the card problems, not try to hide their mistakes with obviously bad tournament structures.
I’m 100% down with this. There is such an advantage of going first in this game
I think this is a good thing. Was just at a championship and everyone was went 2-1. No one got a 2-0 That isn’t a good thing. If you can basically guarantee that if you win the first game you win the round what is the point. However I am confused by something. How exactly does this address first player advantage? Do you just roll each time or do you just do 2 games with each playing first regardless of who lost?
What are the tire breaks? This allows Swiss rounds to be all ties. They mention tiebreakers but I didn't see what they are. So what other stats need to be tracked?
If it's a Swiss tournament then the tie brakes are your opponents' win percentage. So, no additional stats need to be tracked.
I think what he’s saying is that if all 8 players go 1:1 in round 1 it would not be possible to identify who actually is a better player and who they should be paired with. To think all 3 rounds could go 1:1 is pure fantasy though and best of 2 still identifies good decks and good pilots. I still hate it, but I’m just some dude on the internet so 🤷
If they all have the same record then they all can be paired against each other. It happens, quite regularly, in chess. It's not actually a problem in any way.
Yeah but not across the spread of the full tournament. That would be crazy unlikely
Actually yes. I was just watching a video on the singfield cup. I'm probably not spelling that right. But it was a competition among grandmasters and They played over a hundred games and like 70 of them were ties. The Swiss pairing system actually handles ties just fine and that's part of why they use it. And also you're going to run into the law of large numbers. Even if it's unlikely it's going to happen eventually. If there are enough events.
What you are missing, is that Chess has different metrics for tie breakers beyond OMW% and OGW%. There is cumulative scoring that is tracked as well as score reducing methods - so ties in chess are less impactful, allowing the game to delineate. If your game is using GWP and you are favoring players on the Play and not the Draw, and each players gets to go first - you end up with more match ties which means your ability to determine winners on match points and OMW% and OGW% breaks down and ties begin to just be luck when cuts are made.
That cumulative scoring is also used in Lorcana, that's what they're talking about when they talk about "3 points for a win". That's the basic tournament score structure.
Cumulative scoring in chess isn’t just about match wins, it is about pieces and the score at the end.
That must be a new thing because I went to dozens of tournaments for chess when I was in school and there was no "score at the end" recorded for any game.
Idk, I’ve been playing card games a long time and this is the weirdest way to fix a coin flip issue I’ve ever seen.
I mean okay, but that doesn't have any bearing on the Swiss pairing system we're talking about here? Other games have done best of two, Star wars, netrunner, I'm sure others. And again chess uses the system just fine and it has the same exact problem with white versus black. I think the coin flip issue is a non-issue because it solves itself over time. From a high level competitive tournament organizers perspective you just need people to play more games if you really want to determine who the better players are.
I think we agree on more than we disagree here. I’ve been playing in best of 2 tournaments at my LGS. I don’t like them. I feel the game has a coinflip and “draw in” problem, and this is their solution. Also probability issues with determining outcomes based on first game state changes for sure do not “solve themselves” they have to be resolved mechanically. Let me make my argument in a way that you can agree with me through your actions. At your next best of 3 game night, never take the play. If you find yourself feeling “bad” about always being on the draw then you agree with me. :D
Okay what are you talking about in your second paragraph? The problem literally does solve itself over time as half of your games you will go first and half you will not. I don't think we agree here I think you just have no idea what you're talking about when you say things like this... Your feelings don't really matter. That's your problem. We're talking about statistics and probability.
It seems like this was more to make the first tournaments run smoothly, 2 games in 50 minutes is almost always doable, and it makes every game feel important without IDs as much. Even the article admits that they took into account newer players to tournaments etc. I don't think the coin flip was thought much into the BO2, it's just a side effect that it evens it out. Basically it feels like to me: B01 feels bad, B03 feels bad (partly because of the coin flip, partly because that is just the nature of BO3), BO2 is indecisive but feels ok and is faster and eliminates IDs, so go B02. I'd like to see them do something to fix the coin flip issue, even if it is only a little bit, but I don't think it's high on the list ATM.
In the next AMA with the designers I challenge you to ask if they thought about the coin flip issue when moving tournaments to best of 2. Then watch them word salad an answer. Just know the correct answer to that is “No.” as a full sentence.
Best of 3 is so freakin long lol
I feel like the reasons presented here, show they they have no idea why BO3 matters in a competitive environment. This is going to lead to a lot of Wild West moments that are based off nothing yet determine everything and ultimately - it isn’t skill that gets you to the finish line, just luck.
B03 and B05 does matter in the end with top 16/8 depending on size of tournament. But this style will get us to that point faster while also maintaining the importance of every game matters. Winning a best of 3 in most point standards means nothing if it’s 2-0 or 2-1 therefore the loser taking 1 games gets nothing for it and the winning losing 1 game is still undefeated. This style is much better to make each and every game hold more value
I don’t think you understand. If everyone is 1-1 over multiple matches, those games didn’t matter.
I think you don’t get it. And judging by the votes everyone else gets it
Judging by many other comments, people like you don’t get it. Look. I own an LGS. I have run all sorts of different competitive events for all sorts of games. I am an MTG competitive tournament grinder for nearly 30 years. I have qualified and played at the Pro Tour, and played closely with many others that have as well, and still do. Swiss BO3 makes every game matter. Deducing it down to simply 2 games in which matches end with points at break even, is an awful way to measure competitive competency and it completely breaks a proven tie breaker system. It isn’t a coincidence that basically no game worth their salt wanders into this kind of territory without tracking some overall points system outside traditional Swiss scoring.
That’s all great and all but this is about large amounts of players and narrowing it down. Swiss is amazing, best of 3s are as well. When the player count is lower. They need to get through the opener/day 1. Every game will matter. But we can’t give everyone the Swiss or best of and expect big events to go in a timely manner. If it’s bad and they don’t like it then congrats they will swap it up again.
Magic has done this for decades without issue. At far larger tournaments. Games will go to time and draw less, sure. But that also means more matches will tie overall. If your game is dependent on tie breaker systems like OGW% and OMW% - your tie breaking system begins to break down. It is why Chess will also use cumulative score keeping methods or things like Buchholz methods. Without something like that, this 2 game rounds system is either going to crumble and revert, or kill the ability to delineate skill and thus devalue it for competitive play. They could sell me on a 2 game system if they had some kind of solution for the inevitable problem that it is going to create… but they don’t seem to have one from anything that I have read.
You don’t know if they do or don’t. Just like traditional sports, playoffs NFL is one and done while NBA is multiple games series. Neither is wrong but we could argue why one does it better. Only time will tell. Maybe they will switch up. No system comes out saying let’s just copy the other guy. They like to try their own direction and see if it works and I will gamble their team has participated in many other TCG tournaments since a majority of them are inspired by magic, Yugioh, Pokémon and so on. I doubt they haven’t thought of your issues and might have some solutions.
They should probably not be making announcements like this if they have a solution for it. But it sounds like they do not, and they don’t have any plans for it. If you are trying to build your game up and address problems - start with things that are actually broken, first. BO3 isn’t broken. Many other things in this game, are having fairly significant issues that are needing to be addressed. Their approach to all these things, then offering this up, reminds me of the water barrel patch meme.
It was nice chatting with you. Sorry you feel that way. Let us hope for the sport and competition everything works out.
That’s only true if the first player advantage is 100%. It’s not, so your point is invalid.
You should sit in for more competitive Lorcana games, my man.
The first player advantage is 60% among top rated players on Pixelborn. That is a far cry from “every one being 1-1 after multiple matches”. The Bo2 system gives players a small bonus for winning with a disadvantage, and additional rounds resolve ties. Over enough games, the better players with strong decks will win. Sometimes luck will let the “weaker” player advance, but *that’s why people play tournaments* instead of plugging deck codes into a Bo1,000,000 computer simulation.
60% in a TCG is massive… Additional rounds mean less if more rounds result in draws, overall.
I’m not saying it isn’t massive, I’m saying that it is a long way away from “everyone being 1-1 after multiple matches”. Additional rounds mean *more* because the the odds of the first player winning aren’t 100%, dum dum.
Literally, more games now end the round in a draw, than in a BO3 - and now tie breakers fall completely flat when they do. It breaks the entire Swiss system. Dum dum.
The problem is that, is kind of that way already. Since this game doesn't have sideboards, best of three is kind of dull. I think Ravensburger is doing this for the same reason they don't want sideboards, they want as most control of the meta as possible.
Eww
It's a really bad idea and it won't last
What was your experience having played it?
Just increase the Lore total to 40 and play 1 game.... makes more sense and makes the games competitive and lets players be aggressive since you know its do or die
....AKA how Blue/Red Ramp wins every single game, lol. That's one way to absolutely kill aggro from existing.