Many people complain how hard it is to get a Locutus. Still I am confronted with pure Locutus walls incredibly often. How likely is that if the opponent choice is completely random or follows a defined pattern like in my example above?
My impression is, that opponents are selected randomly within a certain range around your own position. If you're in 40th place, your opponents will be selected from places 20 to 60 (or something along those lines). It would stand to reason that, the longer a Gauntlet progresses, the more the "religious" players float to the top. The more you play the Gauntlet, the higher you will eventually place. This might be a function of a) being more likely to receive Gauntlet exclusives, b) enjoying playing the Gauntlet and/or c) gearing your crew towards proficiency-high cards. As a result, people near the top of most Gauntlets are more likely to have cards like Locutus, and thus, no matter who the game selects for you, you will be much more likely to face a wall of them. If you are near the top as well, that is. I am rarely in the bottom half on day two, but anecdotically, you face significantly fewer walls down there.
I agree, however, that there is a substantial lack of transparency in Gauntlet. I would love to know, for instance, how on earth the point value for opponents is calculated. They seem to be higher the more down the ranking you are, for a useful rubber-band effect. But why do you sometimes face a 10-pointer as the leftmost choice when somewhere in the top 10, but other times a 100+-pointer when you're at the very top? Why do you seem to be offered fewer points directly after you lose a battle, but more points if you refresh once after a win (completely anecdotal)?
- where possible always go with the mathematically "impossible to lose" ones
- be the pessimist and take into consideration more so on the starting rolls rather than the top end rolls.
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Overall gauntlet does not appear to be fair even if the statistics tell otherwise. I think it is due to the intransparancy on opponent choice and crit outcome. I often lose with more than one crit while the opponent has less but much better crits; often my crits do not look much better than normal results.
I believe that statistics work fine in Gauntlet but due to the subjective perception of outcomes it fosters suspicion. The implementation is just frustrating per design which is poor for a game. It should be fun instead.
The reward structure and time zoning does the rest to totally frustrate players. It is a wonder that still so many people even care to take part without it being relevant for the daily goals. I am one of them but I increasingly dislike it.
You're talking abut a couple of separate things there.
Obviously.
Why would there be a need to intentionally stack opponent choice against you to drive more dil spent, when the sheer volume of gauntlet rounds played will inevitably mean that you've got poor matchups regularly via RNG? It's extra effort programming in some conspiratorial small potential revenue gain, which is in my opinion irrationally unnecessary.
This arguement makes no sense to me. Of course it would make sense to trap people into spending dil by giving them opponents they could beat with dil-refreshed crew but not with what they currently have. But I did not even say that it is that way. I just said that the choice of opponents is intransparent. Or did you find a pattern so far? Like "1st is 20 ranks higher, 2nd is 10 ranks higher, 3rd is 1 rank higher, 4th is 10 ranks lower and the last is 20 ranks lower" (given that you are somewhere in the middle and not in the top or bottom 20? You could not even if you tried as you only can see one or two small parts of the ranking at a time.
Many people complain how hard it is to get a Locutus. Still I am confronted with pure Locutus walls incredibly often. How likely is that if the opponent choice is completely random or follows a defined pattern like in my example above?
Your other comment about crits being sometimes lower values than opponent crits, you can see that in your character stats. There is a RANGE of stats which is used as your "roll of the dice". Let's say it's 100-200. A crit from a 100 roll is significantly different outcome from a 200 roll crit, and the ranges are typically much larger than that from minimum to maximum. There are 2 layers of RNG here, for the initial dice roll then the RNG giving you a crit chance. If your crew has a larger skill roll range (I think phlox is an example of someone with a large range), you are more susceptible to RNG than someone with a smaller range of possible rolls for the same skill.
I know. But my biased (!) impression is that the opponents more rarely have such annoying bottom range crits but rather extraordinary one. Of course this is easiest to observe with identical crew and stats as no calculations are required.
I'm glad this game is made up of Star Trek fans. Can you imagine how much complaining about math would happen from fans of a drama show? I'm surprised at the volume of complaining about math happens on this forum for fans of a science fiction show, whom I'd anticipate being a more analytical audience than average.
This is a bias too.
I am merely complaining about the design and reward structure of the Gauntlet and not the math. It is just not enjoyable and frustrating. You only need to look at the result animation which most of the time shows the end result on the halfway to understand how uninspired they were when they implemented Gauntlet. And I am not convinced that it is designed and programmed in a way that fulfills the criteria of randomness I would expect from a proper implementation. (Of course, I worked in the Casino gaming industry and my expectations on randomness are accordingly high.) At some points they probably had several options how to proceed without having to give any explanation to the community (e.g. opponent choice) and perhaps chose the one that promises the most profit? Like hard-but-with-dil-possible-to-come-by opponents?
Frankly I'm glad there is no rigid pattern to have one crew 20 above me, another 10 above me, another within 5, etc. This would make it far more likely to get the same opponent again when I do a merit refresh. I far prefer what seems to be currently RNG in a range above and below me, which I can refresh inexpensively with merits.
You did mention timezones, and that's an unfortunate reality of a game like this with fixed start and end times for events/functions. I sympathize with that problem, though am fortunate that they are not TOO bad for me except for starting and ending events in the middle of workdays.
As another person already posted, as you climb the ranks and later in the gauntlet you'll see more religious/long term gauntlet players who are more likely to have locutus, armus, caretaker. If you keep playing you'll get one eventually like the rest of us did.
Since you mentioned identical crew, those are VERY risky of course being typically around 50% win chance, or worse if your starbase/collection bonuses are not as good. Just as with a coin toss, 50% odds can very easily lead to streaks of losses but are sometimes unavoidable to chase more points towards the end of a gauntlet to rank.
FYI, coincidentally this gauntlet I happen to be on one of my longest ever win streaks. I spent a fair bit of merits to find fights that were very clearly in my favor, but I'm now up to a 43 streak. No crew yet, but I've been using this approach since they improved the gauntlet crew drop odds (chasing long streaks then only chasing rank in the last 2-3 runs of the gauntlet) and I've got a pretty highly fused group. I recommend not being afraid to spend merits generously in gauntlet instead of merit pulls, because merit pulls can give you terrible/unneeded legends while for me all but Armus are now desirable in gauntlet.
- where possible always go with the mathematically "impossible to lose" ones
- be the pessimist and take into consideration more so on the starting rolls rather than the top end rolls.
And remember, the only truly impossible to lose matchup is when your minimum roll is more than twice your opponents maximum roll. Everything else you may be likely to win, but there is still a chance you could lose.
Mhh I have Locutus, Armus and Caretaker already. So I often have the chance to see them lose against their equal or weaker twins. Our starbase is complete, so my bonuses are quite fine.
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Mhh I have Locutus, Armus and Caretaker already. So I often have the chance to see them lose against their equal or weaker twins. Our starbase is complete, so my bonuses are quite fine.
If your strategy is to go up against mirror matches IMO you're doing gauntlet wrong if you hope to win. At best you're at about 54% odds to win.
Mhh I have Locutus, Armus and Caretaker already. So I often have the chance to see them lose against their equal or weaker twins. Our starbase is complete, so my bonuses are quite fine.
If your strategy is to go up against mirror matches IMO you're doing gauntlet wrong if you hope to win. At best you're at about 54% odds to win.
I do not spend merits on Gauntlet out of principal as this used to lead to even more anger and frustration for me personally. So very often there is no other choice with a wall ahaid. I would not call it a strategy.
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Mhh I have Locutus, Armus and Caretaker already. So I often have the chance to see them lose against their equal or weaker twins. Our starbase is complete, so my bonuses are quite fine.
If your strategy is to go up against mirror matches IMO you're doing gauntlet wrong if you hope to win. At best you're at about 54% odds to win.
It depends what your goal is. Do you want to maximize chance at Legendary crew, do you want to go for long streaks, do you want to go for winning gauntlet overall, do you want to merit farm?
Those are all valid strategies. In some of them going up against a mirror crew is absolutely the right option. In fact, going up against a mirror crew with slightly better bonuses can even be the right option depending on the strategy and where in the gauntlet you are.
Data science, statistics, probabilities, blah, blah, blah. All I know is that Surak has a hidden X% crit bonus, where x=whatever it would take to beat Travis.
TLDR: it may well be that many people don't understand probabilities. What is likely more factual, instead of anecdotal, is that many more people don't understand data science. If you're reading this, there is a high probability you don't understand data science. Heck, there's a high probability I don't understand data science and yet I get paid to do it for a living.
We have "all this data" and yet not a single one of these data collection efforts ever led to detection of the frozen gauntleteer bug. Theoretically this bug has existed since the origins of gauntlet. Nobody but DB will ever know the truth, because this data is inaccessible.
Moral of the story: if you don't know the conditions you're testing for, an aggregate is virtually meaningless.
IAmPicard meanwhile presents an interesting intersection of statistics and sociology. Namely, what happens when a portion of the player population readily has access to more and better information than the rest of the population? It couldn't possibly influence outcomes could it!? Anyone have a peer reviewed study to drop on us common folk???
Coverage bias is pretty basic, and yet there have been zero attempts to address it.
(Let's not forget the whole cheating scandal. Surely we can trust IAmPicard derived data points, because "a lot" of it was collected. The rehabilitation of IAmPicard begins here. )
Regarding non-IAmPicard data sets... manual collection of large data sets doesn't sound the least bit problematic, does it?
I work with people for whom "attention to detail" is one of the top three professional responsibilities (arguably the top responsibility) and I was horrified to learn how rare attention to detail actually is. It's probably out there past shark attack odds. I could provide numbers, but this is proprietary information.
At best, the data made available to forum-goers points to the possibility that match outcomes basically align to expected results in situational-agnostic conditions across what amounts to around a year of a passionate gauntlet player's matches. Cool beans. But that's not the game 99.9% of us are playing and that's not what the OP is discussing.
(Shout out to all the confirmation bias in the house. Put your hands in the air now! 🙋)
Let's not forget the third rail of gauntlet stats debate: match selection data, or more accurately, the glaring lack of it. If you don't implicitly understand how this information is likely key to deciphering situational match outcome stats, I don't think there's much I can do for you.
This is one case where I wish IAmPicard would have used their developer powers for good rather than evil. But they didn't. We might as well call this data inaccessible since it's not only about the matches you see, but the larger pool of potential matches out there.
So when even the top tier data collection effort ever presented here has less than half of the necessary data needed to determine conditions, suffice to say, I ain't boarding anything going to space on data like that. I'd be dubious about using a scooter built on data that trustworthy.
Sure, observational bias is a thing. And yet, shock of all shocks, people successfully diagnosed problems before we had robust modern data science. 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
(They were undoubtedly witches and should be tarred and feathered as such in public spaces.)
Now then, please continue with the size comparison of your data sets. I find it fascinating.
Match selection may be important in the overall gauntlet, but that's not what people complain about. The complaints are basically, "I lose too many matches I think I'm supposed to win". The data collected so far says the individual matches are fair.
Yes I wish the data was better, yes I wish there was more we could look at. But to look at what was collected, change the question being asked, claim there is no data for that question, therefore you support the original conspiracy theory? That's not exactly data science either.
I have to say after reading @AviTrek , it comes to the point that large data gauntlet matches should use a RNG to determine which opponent is selected. And it at least is a better method than us or Iampicard picking the opponent when trying determine if there is bias. Again, he is right 5he dat gathering is flawed and it will most likely always be.
I have noticed the OP's comment about underdog. But it rarely ever changes the result of battle. If I am the underdog, even if every roll is max and crit I will lose. If the defender is underdog, it really takes a lot of bad luck for them win.
I consider underdog being less than 5% chance to win. But, the results that I noticed it, is even lower chance to win maybe 1%. This could still just be perception, but I will not forget Nod demonstrating gauntlet at the beginning, choosing a certain win for the 3rd battle and the opponent, with 5% chance crit, crit 5 or more (cannot remember if they were all crits) he won but he was shocked and I think for a moment he thought he lost.
I've had a theory for quite a while that the defender tends to have better rolls overall than the attacker, i.e. a higher % of maximum. In my casual observation, it seems like the defender's crits lean more toward the maximum whereas mine seem to come in more often on the lower end of the range. It's only a theory, but I'm putting it out there in case someone wants to put it to the test.
TLDR: it may well be that many people don't understand probabilities. What is likely more factual, instead of anecdotal, is that many more people don't understand data science. If you're reading this, there is a high probability you don't understand data science. Heck, there's a high probability I don't understand data science and yet I get paid to do it for a living.
We have "all this data" and yet not a single one of these data collection efforts ever led to detection of the frozen gauntleteer bug. Theoretically this bug has existed since the origins of gauntlet. Nobody but DB will ever know the truth, because this data is inaccessible.
Moral of the story: if you don't know the conditions you're testing for, an aggregate is virtually meaningless.
IAmPicard meanwhile presents an interesting intersection of statistics and sociology. Namely, what happens when a portion of the player population readily has access to more and better information than the rest of the population? It couldn't possibly influence outcomes could it!? Anyone have a peer reviewed study to drop on us common folk???
Coverage bias is pretty basic, and yet there have been zero attempts to address it.
(Let's not forget the whole cheating scandal. Surely we can trust IAmPicard derived data points, because "a lot" of it was collected. The rehabilitation of IAmPicard begins here. )
Regarding non-IAmPicard data sets... manual collection of large data sets doesn't sound the least bit problematic, does it?
I work with people for whom "attention to detail" is one of the top three professional responsibilities (arguably the top responsibility) and I was horrified to learn how rare attention to detail actually is. It's probably out there past shark attack odds. I could provide numbers, but this is proprietary information.
At best, the data made available to forum-goers points to the possibility that match outcomes basically align to expected results in situational-agnostic conditions across what amounts to around a year of a passionate gauntlet player's matches. Cool beans. But that's not the game 99.9% of us are playing and that's not what the OP is discussing.
(Shout out to all the confirmation bias in the house. Put your hands in the air now! 🙋)
Let's not forget the third rail of gauntlet stats debate: match selection data, or more accurately, the glaring lack of it. If you don't implicitly understand how this information is likely key to deciphering situational match outcome stats, I don't think there's much I can do for you.
This is one case where I wish IAmPicard would have used their developer powers for good rather than evil. But they didn't. We might as well call this data inaccessible since it's not only about the matches you see, but the larger pool of potential matches out there.
So when even the top tier data collection effort ever presented here has less than half of the necessary data needed to determine conditions, suffice to say, I ain't boarding anything going to space on data like that. I'd be dubious about using a scooter built on data that trustworthy.
Sure, observational bias is a thing. And yet, shock of all shocks, people successfully diagnosed problems before we had robust modern data science. 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
(They were undoubtedly witches and should be tarred and feathered as such in public spaces.)
Now then, please continue with the size comparison of your data sets. I find it fascinating.
Match selection may be important in the overall gauntlet, but that's not what people complain about. The complaints are basically, "I lose too many matches I think I'm supposed to win". The data collected so far says the individual matches are fair.
Yes I wish the data was better, yes I wish there was more we could look at. But to look at what was collected, change the question being asked, claim there is no data for that question, therefore you support the original conspiracy theory? That's not exactly data science either.
The quote of yours bolded is what you and everyone in the "pro-data crowd" here is missing. The data says nothing of the sort.
What the data collected could imply is a possibility that over thousands of matches the percentages even out to reflect something approaching the data supplied by DB. To interpret this macro possibility for micro specificity is what's terminally incorrect.
I expressed no support for any match outcome scenario, but I leave open the door that some people in some conditions can detect patterns better than non-contextual, poorly collected data can. This is a fact.
An important facet of data science is recognizing the limitations of what data can do. In this case, because of how DB has designed the feature, data science can do very little. To wield this bad data as you and others do is little more than statistical chicanery.
I realized a long time ago that getting pissed over the Gauntlet is wasted energy. Oscar Wilde said it best, “It is not enough that you succeed, others must fail.” Failure is a part of the Gauntlet....and a lot of it. Fair or not, I just try to have fun anymore. Sometimes I am lucky, other times Fate beats me like I owe her money on collection day. It just is... Although, I do have a sneaking suspicion that my luck is being stolen, possibly by Travis and his “juiced” X variable... but that could just be the paranoia talking. lol
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Many people complain how hard it is to get a Locutus. Still I am confronted with pure Locutus walls incredibly often. How likely is that if the opponent choice is completely random or follows a defined pattern like in my example above?
My impression is, that opponents are selected randomly within a certain range around your own position. If you're in 40th place, your opponents will be selected from places 20 to 60 (or something along those lines). It would stand to reason that, the longer a Gauntlet progresses, the more the "religious" players float to the top.
This is absolutely not the case.
A few days ago I was in rank 12 against a Locutus wall. All opponents were around 50 ranks around me but the last which was in rank 153! But incidentially he had a Locutus too. I really doubt randomness here.
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Many people complain how hard it is to get a Locutus. Still I am confronted with pure Locutus walls incredibly often. How likely is that if the opponent choice is completely random or follows a defined pattern like in my example above?
My impression is, that opponents are selected randomly within a certain range around your own position. If you're in 40th place, your opponents will be selected from places 20 to 60 (or something along those lines). It would stand to reason that, the longer a Gauntlet progresses, the more the "religious" players float to the top.
This is absolutely not the case.
A few days ago I was in rank 12 against a Locutus wall. All opponents were around 50 ranks around me but the last which was in rank 153! But incidentially he had a Locutus too. I really doubt randomness here.
That is a matter of taste I would say. I did it like 5 times overall and each time I exchanged one wall against another. And that made me so upset that I decided to not do it any more at all.
Maybe it was bad luck but I do not play a game to make me angry, so if I can I avoid situations where this might happen I do.
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Many people complain how hard it is to get a Locutus. Still I am confronted with pure Locutus walls incredibly often. How likely is that if the opponent choice is completely random or follows a defined pattern like in my example above?
My impression is, that opponents are selected randomly within a certain range around your own position. If you're in 40th place, your opponents will be selected from places 20 to 60 (or something along those lines). It would stand to reason that, the longer a Gauntlet progresses, the more the "religious" players float to the top.
This is absolutely not the case.
A few days ago I was in rank 12 against a Locutus wall. All opponents were around 50 ranks around me but the last which was in rank 153! But incidentially he had a Locutus too. I really doubt randomness here.
First of all, the range I indicated earlier was by no means meant to be accurate. I just believe there is a range. In my current round, I am in position 78, with opponents ranging from 67 to 92. This is what I would usually observe. I certainly never see Top10 opponents, when I barely have any time the first 1.5 days and need to catch up starting somewhere in the 150s or even lower.
Incidentally, I'm in a MED Gauntlet and am only seeing one (underdeveloped) Guinan in her prize combination "down there" in the ranks. Even the top players over to the left sport a Mirror Troi and a Minuet. The walls are really just fences the more you go down in the rankings. With some exceptions: In your screenshot, your rightmost opponent hovers around position 70. Were you in my Gauntlet, you would face me in that area as well (on day 1). And I would not only bring a Guinan or a Locutus to the table, but a lot of other heavy hitters.
And even if there is no selection range, running into a wall completely by chance is also not negligible. Yes, the Gauntlet exclusives have a very low probability of dropping. But given how long the Gauntlet has been running, and how many rounds many players have completed, it is safe to assume that a lot of players have these cards now. Even if only 40/200 in each Gauntlet have won at least one exclusive (very conservative estimate in my opinion), chances are that at least 10 of these have a Locutus, which could already present you with 252 completely unique walls (if my math does not fail me here).
Many people complain how hard it is to get a Locutus. Still I am confronted with pure Locutus walls incredibly often. How likely is that if the opponent choice is completely random or follows a defined pattern like in my example above?
My impression is, that opponents are selected randomly within a certain range around your own position. If you're in 40th place, your opponents will be selected from places 20 to 60 (or something along those lines). It would stand to reason that, the longer a Gauntlet progresses, the more the "religious" players float to the top.
This is absolutely not the case.
A few days ago I was in rank 12 against a Locutus wall. All opponents were around 50 ranks around me but the last which was in rank 153! But incidentially he had a Locutus too. I really doubt randomness here.
First of all, the range I indicated earlier was by no means meant to be accurate. I just believe there is a range. In my current round, I am in position 78, with opponents ranging from 67 to 92. This is what I would usually observe. I certainly never see Top10 opponents, when I barely have any time the first 1.5 days and need to catch up starting somewhere in the 150s or even lower.
Incidentally, I'm in a MED Gauntlet and am only seeing one (underdeveloped) Guinan in her prize combination "down there" in the ranks. Even the top players over to the left sport a Mirror Troi and a Minuet. The walls are really just fences the more you go down in the rankings. With some exceptions: In your screenshot, your rightmost opponent hovers around position 70. Were you in my Gauntlet, you would face me in that area as well (on day 1). And I would not only bring a Guinan or a Locutus to the table, but a lot of other heavy hitters.
And even if there is no selection range, running into a wall completely by chance is also not negligible. Yes, the Gauntlet exclusives have a very low probability of dropping. But given how long the Gauntlet has been running, and how many rounds many players have completed, it is safe to assume that a lot of players have these cards now. Even if only 40/200 in each Gauntlet have won at least one exclusive (very conservative estimate in my opinion), chances are that at least 10 of these have a Locutus, which could already present you with 252 completely unique walls (if my math does not fail me here).
I would not call it unique if it was a selection of 6 out of 10 but ok. (It is 10!/6!/4! = 210 btw but 252 is close enough.)
Let us assume that I am in rank 1 and the range is 60 like you suggest (given full randomness ranking lower further decreases the chance of a wall as there were up to 120 people involved). Also let us assume that all the 10 Locutus in the whole Gauntlet you suggest are present in these top 60 ranks and I do not have one of them so they are among the other 59 slots. If math does not fail me, this means a chance of (10/59)*(9/58)*(8/57)*(7/56)*(6/55)*(5/54) = 4.66*10^-6 to see a Locutus wall with random selection among those 59. Wow!
For a more realistic calculation let us rather assume that 30 out of 59 opponents have and use one. The chances to see a wall would still only be 1.1 % if the opponents were chosen randomly. I feel like we see more than that, don't we?
Oh btw... I do not have a Guinan myself. I rarely use to see a Guinan wall even if it is her top pair and she has bonuses. Is she so rare? Or is she so bad that people do not use her even if she has one or more bonuses? Or is it just the algorithm seeing no sense in trying to trap me into refreshment when I have no competitive crew anyway and mixes in different crew instead to make it appear more random? I very often see walls of Locutus, Caretaker and Armus on the other hand, not exclusively but preferrably if mine is exhausted.^^ And yes, of course only in the higher ranks as there indeed seems to be some sort of range, I agree, but the algorithm sometimes breaks the rule downwards for unknown/suspicious reasons (see my example with rank 153 above when I was in rank 12). I did not take a screenshot then but I will next time when it happens if I do not forget about it.
I am aware that this all sounds paranoid but intransparency fosters doubt. DB could also just tell how opponents are selected to ease our minds. But as they did not so far they will probably not in the future.
PS: I calculated with 59 instead of 60 and now I am too lazy to do it again but I think the point is made.
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I would not call it unique if it was a selection of 6 out of 10 but ok. (It is 10!/6!/4! = 210 btw but 252 is close enough.)
Unique meaning no repetitions, different combinations of all the people owning a Locutus. For some reason I remembered we are offered 5 opponents, when there are naturally 6, so 210 checks out.
For a more realistic calculation let us rather assume that 30 out of 59 opponents have and use one. The chances to see a wall would still only be 1.1 % if the opponents were chosen randomly. I feel like we see more than that, don't we?
This calculation I cannot retrace (which is not to say that it is not correct). Does this account for the fact that 1) skill combinations should not be weighed equally and 2) that the Gauntlet picks not a random, but always the best card in defense? Logically, Locutus will show up for any DIP/SCI, DIP/SEC and many SEC/SCI combinations, since he is simply (one of) the top crew. But he will also show up for DIP/ENG a lot, since the other choices are far more elusive or more useless overall. For that combination, you are also more likely to face a wall of Locutus than the Caretaker for DIP/ENG, since the game values the former more highly in defense. And even for DIP/MED he is not so far outside of the top15, with many in front of him being super-rares and/or two skillers.
I am aware that this all sounds paranoid but intransparency fosters doubt. DB could also just tell how opponents are selected to ease our minds. But as they did not so far they will probably not in the future.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean they aren't actually out to get you I try to internalize to never assume malice in situations that can be perfectly adequately explained by incompetence.
Many people complain how hard it is to get a Locutus. Still I am confronted with pure Locutus walls incredibly often. How likely is that if the opponent choice is completely random or follows a defined pattern like in my example above?
My impression is, that opponents are selected randomly within a certain range around your own position. If you're in 40th place, your opponents will be selected from places 20 to 60 (or something along those lines). It would stand to reason that, the longer a Gauntlet progresses, the more the "religious" players float to the top.
This is absolutely not the case.
A few days ago I was in rank 12 against a Locutus wall. All opponents were around 50 ranks around me but the last which was in rank 153! But incidentially he had a Locutus too. I really doubt randomness here.
First of all, the range I indicated earlier was by no means meant to be accurate. I just believe there is a range. In my current round, I am in position 78, with opponents ranging from 67 to 92. This is what I would usually observe. I certainly never see Top10 opponents, when I barely have any time the first 1.5 days and need to catch up starting somewhere in the 150s or even lower.
Incidentally, I'm in a MED Gauntlet and am only seeing one (underdeveloped) Guinan in her prize combination "down there" in the ranks. Even the top players over to the left sport a Mirror Troi and a Minuet. The walls are really just fences the more you go down in the rankings. With some exceptions: In your screenshot, your rightmost opponent hovers around position 70. Were you in my Gauntlet, you would face me in that area as well (on day 1). And I would not only bring a Guinan or a Locutus to the table, but a lot of other heavy hitters.
And even if there is no selection range, running into a wall completely by chance is also not negligible. Yes, the Gauntlet exclusives have a very low probability of dropping. But given how long the Gauntlet has been running, and how many rounds many players have completed, it is safe to assume that a lot of players have these cards now. Even if only 40/200 in each Gauntlet have won at least one exclusive (very conservative estimate in my opinion), chances are that at least 10 of these have a Locutus, which could already present you with 252 completely unique walls (if my math does not fail me here).
I would not call it unique if it was a selection of 6 out of 10 but ok. (It is 10!/6!/4! = 210 btw but 252 is close enough.)
Let us assume that I am in rank 1 and the range is 60 like you suggest (given full randomness ranking lower further decreases the chance of a wall as there were up to 120 people involved). Also let us assume that all the 10 Locutus in the whole Gauntlet you suggest are present in these top 60 ranks and I do not have one of them so they are among the other 59 slots. If math does not fail me, this means a chance of (10/59)*(9/58)*(8/57)*(7/56)*(6/55)*(5/54) = 4.66*10^-6 to see a Locutus wall with random selection among those 59. Wow!
For a more realistic calculation let us rather assume that 30 out of 59 opponents have and use one. The chances to see a wall would still only be 1.1 % if the opponents were chosen randomly. I feel like we see more than that, don't we?
Oh btw... I do not have a Guinan myself. I rarely use to see a Guinan wall even if it is her top pair and she has bonuses. Is she so rare? Or is she so bad that people do not use her even if she has one or more bonuses? Or is it just the algorithm seeing no sense in trying to trap me into refreshment when I have no competitive crew anyway and mixes in different crew instead to make it appear more random? I very often see walls of Locutus, Caretaker and Armus on the other hand, not exclusively but preferrably if mine is exhausted.^^ And yes, of course only in the higher ranks as there indeed seems to be some sort of range, I agree, but the algorithm sometimes breaks the rule downwards for unknown/suspicious reasons (see my example with rank 153 above when I was in rank 12). I did not take a screenshot then but I will next time when it happens if I do not forget about it.
I am aware that this all sounds paranoid but intransparency fosters doubt. DB could also just tell how opponents are selected to ease our minds. But as they did not so far they will probably not in the future.
PS: I calculated with 59 instead of 60 and now I am too lazy to do it again but I think the point is made.
I can contribute an anecdote here: Guinan is actually somewhat rare for me in the gauntlet. There are of course the occasional times when she gets a 65% crit and you’d be a fool to not trot her out there or you won’t even have a 50% chance against the inevitable walls of Guinan. Other than those, however, she rarely has a 45% crit, almost as rarely has a 25% (this is the case for B schedule today), is demonstrably weaker than Locutus for DIP, and has somewhat of a weak tertiary skill. There are other great diplomats, there are better doctors, and other crew tend to match traits better than she can.
For a more realistic calculation let us rather assume that 30 out of 59 opponents have and use one. The chances to see a wall would still only be 1.1 % if the opponents were chosen randomly. I feel like we see more than that, don't we?
This calculation I cannot retrace (which is not to say that it is not correct). Does this account for the fact that 1) skill combinations should not be weighed equally and 2) that the Gauntlet picks not a random, but always the best card in defense? Logically, Locutus will show up for any DIP/SCI, DIP/SEC and many SEC/SCI combinations, since he is simply (one of) the top crew. But he will also show up for DIP/ENG a lot, since the other choices are far more elusive or more useless overall. For that combination, you are also more likely to face a wall of Locutus than the Caretaker for DIP/ENG, since the game values the former more highly in defense. And even for DIP/MED he is not so far outside of the top15, with many in front of him being super-rares and/or two skillers.
It was the same way to calculate it as before:
(30/59)*(29/58)*(28/57)*(27/56)*(26/55)*(25/54) = 1,3% !!
Obviously I mistyped somewhere when I did it the first time, sorry.
So it calculates the probability for a Locutus wall when he is the best option for the current pair and 30 out of the 59 people behind you in rank 1 have him in their setup, given randomness.
I would conclude that (a) much more than 50% of the people possess and use most of the Gauntlet only crew (apart from Guinan which is perhaps used less even if possessed) or (b) the opponent selection is not fully random.
Wir, die Mirror Tribbles [MiT] haben freie Plätze zu vergeben. Kein Zwang und kein Stress, dafür aber Spaß, Discord und eine nette, hilfsbereite Gemeinschaft, incl. voll ausgebauter Starbase und täglich 700 ISM.
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My impression is, that opponents are selected randomly within a certain range around your own position. If you're in 40th place, your opponents will be selected from places 20 to 60 (or something along those lines). It would stand to reason that, the longer a Gauntlet progresses, the more the "religious" players float to the top. The more you play the Gauntlet, the higher you will eventually place. This might be a function of a) being more likely to receive Gauntlet exclusives, b) enjoying playing the Gauntlet and/or c) gearing your crew towards proficiency-high cards. As a result, people near the top of most Gauntlets are more likely to have cards like Locutus, and thus, no matter who the game selects for you, you will be much more likely to face a wall of them. If you are near the top as well, that is. I am rarely in the bottom half on day two, but anecdotically, you face significantly fewer walls down there.
I agree, however, that there is a substantial lack of transparency in Gauntlet. I would love to know, for instance, how on earth the point value for opponents is calculated. They seem to be higher the more down the ranking you are, for a useful rubber-band effect. But why do you sometimes face a 10-pointer as the leftmost choice when somewhere in the top 10, but other times a 100+-pointer when you're at the very top? Why do you seem to be offered fewer points directly after you lose a battle, but more points if you refresh once after a win (completely anecdotal)?
- where possible always go with the mathematically "impossible to lose" ones
- be the pessimist and take into consideration more so on the starting rolls rather than the top end rolls.
Frankly I'm glad there is no rigid pattern to have one crew 20 above me, another 10 above me, another within 5, etc. This would make it far more likely to get the same opponent again when I do a merit refresh. I far prefer what seems to be currently RNG in a range above and below me, which I can refresh inexpensively with merits.
You did mention timezones, and that's an unfortunate reality of a game like this with fixed start and end times for events/functions. I sympathize with that problem, though am fortunate that they are not TOO bad for me except for starting and ending events in the middle of workdays.
As another person already posted, as you climb the ranks and later in the gauntlet you'll see more religious/long term gauntlet players who are more likely to have locutus, armus, caretaker. If you keep playing you'll get one eventually like the rest of us did.
Since you mentioned identical crew, those are VERY risky of course being typically around 50% win chance, or worse if your starbase/collection bonuses are not as good. Just as with a coin toss, 50% odds can very easily lead to streaks of losses but are sometimes unavoidable to chase more points towards the end of a gauntlet to rank.
FYI, coincidentally this gauntlet I happen to be on one of my longest ever win streaks. I spent a fair bit of merits to find fights that were very clearly in my favor, but I'm now up to a 43 streak. No crew yet, but I've been using this approach since they improved the gauntlet crew drop odds (chasing long streaks then only chasing rank in the last 2-3 runs of the gauntlet) and I've got a pretty highly fused group. I recommend not being afraid to spend merits generously in gauntlet instead of merit pulls, because merit pulls can give you terrible/unneeded legends while for me all but Armus are now desirable in gauntlet.
And remember, the only truly impossible to lose matchup is when your minimum roll is more than twice your opponents maximum roll. Everything else you may be likely to win, but there is still a chance you could lose.
If your strategy is to go up against mirror matches IMO you're doing gauntlet wrong if you hope to win. At best you're at about 54% odds to win.
I do not spend merits on Gauntlet out of principal as this used to lead to even more anger and frustration for me personally. So very often there is no other choice with a wall ahaid. I would not call it a strategy.
It depends what your goal is. Do you want to maximize chance at Legendary crew, do you want to go for long streaks, do you want to go for winning gauntlet overall, do you want to merit farm?
Those are all valid strategies. In some of them going up against a mirror crew is absolutely the right option. In fact, going up against a mirror crew with slightly better bonuses can even be the right option depending on the strategy and where in the gauntlet you are.
😂😂👍😉😎Good one👍
I have to say after reading @AviTrek , it comes to the point that large data gauntlet matches should use a RNG to determine which opponent is selected. And it at least is a better method than us or Iampicard picking the opponent when trying determine if there is bias. Again, he is right 5he dat gathering is flawed and it will most likely always be.
I have noticed the OP's comment about underdog. But it rarely ever changes the result of battle. If I am the underdog, even if every roll is max and crit I will lose. If the defender is underdog, it really takes a lot of bad luck for them win.
I consider underdog being less than 5% chance to win. But, the results that I noticed it, is even lower chance to win maybe 1%. This could still just be perception, but I will not forget Nod demonstrating gauntlet at the beginning, choosing a certain win for the 3rd battle and the opponent, with 5% chance crit, crit 5 or more (cannot remember if they were all crits) he won but he was shocked and I think for a moment he thought he lost.
The quote of yours bolded is what you and everyone in the "pro-data crowd" here is missing. The data says nothing of the sort.
What the data collected could imply is a possibility that over thousands of matches the percentages even out to reflect something approaching the data supplied by DB. To interpret this macro possibility for micro specificity is what's terminally incorrect.
I expressed no support for any match outcome scenario, but I leave open the door that some people in some conditions can detect patterns better than non-contextual, poorly collected data can. This is a fact.
An important facet of data science is recognizing the limitations of what data can do. In this case, because of how DB has designed the feature, data science can do very little. To wield this bad data as you and others do is little more than statistical chicanery.
A few days ago I was in rank 12 against a Locutus wall. All opponents were around 50 ranks around me but the last which was in rank 153! But incidentially he had a Locutus too. I really doubt randomness here.
sooo... use merits to refresh.
That is a matter of taste I would say. I did it like 5 times overall and each time I exchanged one wall against another. And that made me so upset that I decided to not do it any more at all.
Maybe it was bad luck but I do not play a game to make me angry, so if I can I avoid situations where this might happen I do.
First of all, the range I indicated earlier was by no means meant to be accurate. I just believe there is a range. In my current round, I am in position 78, with opponents ranging from 67 to 92. This is what I would usually observe. I certainly never see Top10 opponents, when I barely have any time the first 1.5 days and need to catch up starting somewhere in the 150s or even lower.
Incidentally, I'm in a MED Gauntlet and am only seeing one (underdeveloped) Guinan in her prize combination "down there" in the ranks. Even the top players over to the left sport a Mirror Troi and a Minuet. The walls are really just fences the more you go down in the rankings. With some exceptions: In your screenshot, your rightmost opponent hovers around position 70. Were you in my Gauntlet, you would face me in that area as well (on day 1). And I would not only bring a Guinan or a Locutus to the table, but a lot of other heavy hitters.
And even if there is no selection range, running into a wall completely by chance is also not negligible. Yes, the Gauntlet exclusives have a very low probability of dropping. But given how long the Gauntlet has been running, and how many rounds many players have completed, it is safe to assume that a lot of players have these cards now. Even if only 40/200 in each Gauntlet have won at least one exclusive (very conservative estimate in my opinion), chances are that at least 10 of these have a Locutus, which could already present you with 252 completely unique walls (if my math does not fail me here).
I would not call it unique if it was a selection of 6 out of 10 but ok. (It is 10!/6!/4! = 210 btw but 252 is close enough.)
Let us assume that I am in rank 1 and the range is 60 like you suggest (given full randomness ranking lower further decreases the chance of a wall as there were up to 120 people involved). Also let us assume that all the 10 Locutus in the whole Gauntlet you suggest are present in these top 60 ranks and I do not have one of them so they are among the other 59 slots. If math does not fail me, this means a chance of (10/59)*(9/58)*(8/57)*(7/56)*(6/55)*(5/54) = 4.66*10^-6 to see a Locutus wall with random selection among those 59. Wow!
For a more realistic calculation let us rather assume that 30 out of 59 opponents have and use one. The chances to see a wall would still only be 1.1 % if the opponents were chosen randomly. I feel like we see more than that, don't we?
Oh btw... I do not have a Guinan myself. I rarely use to see a Guinan wall even if it is her top pair and she has bonuses. Is she so rare? Or is she so bad that people do not use her even if she has one or more bonuses? Or is it just the algorithm seeing no sense in trying to trap me into refreshment when I have no competitive crew anyway and mixes in different crew instead to make it appear more random? I very often see walls of Locutus, Caretaker and Armus on the other hand, not exclusively but preferrably if mine is exhausted.^^ And yes, of course only in the higher ranks as there indeed seems to be some sort of range, I agree, but the algorithm sometimes breaks the rule downwards for unknown/suspicious reasons (see my example with rank 153 above when I was in rank 12). I did not take a screenshot then but I will next time when it happens if I do not forget about it.
I am aware that this all sounds paranoid but intransparency fosters doubt. DB could also just tell how opponents are selected to ease our minds. But as they did not so far they will probably not in the future.
PS: I calculated with 59 instead of 60 and now I am too lazy to do it again but I think the point is made.
Unique meaning no repetitions, different combinations of all the people owning a Locutus. For some reason I remembered we are offered 5 opponents, when there are naturally 6, so 210 checks out.
This calculation I cannot retrace (which is not to say that it is not correct). Does this account for the fact that 1) skill combinations should not be weighed equally and 2) that the Gauntlet picks not a random, but always the best card in defense? Logically, Locutus will show up for any DIP/SCI, DIP/SEC and many SEC/SCI combinations, since he is simply (one of) the top crew. But he will also show up for DIP/ENG a lot, since the other choices are far more elusive or more useless overall. For that combination, you are also more likely to face a wall of Locutus than the Caretaker for DIP/ENG, since the game values the former more highly in defense. And even for DIP/MED he is not so far outside of the top15, with many in front of him being super-rares and/or two skillers.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean they aren't actually out to get you
I can contribute an anecdote here: Guinan is actually somewhat rare for me in the gauntlet. There are of course the occasional times when she gets a 65% crit and you’d be a fool to not trot her out there or you won’t even have a 50% chance against the inevitable walls of Guinan. Other than those, however, she rarely has a 45% crit, almost as rarely has a 25% (this is the case for B schedule today), is demonstrably weaker than Locutus for DIP, and has somewhat of a weak tertiary skill. There are other great diplomats, there are better doctors, and other crew tend to match traits better than she can.
It was the same way to calculate it as before:
(30/59)*(29/58)*(28/57)*(27/56)*(26/55)*(25/54) = 1,3% !!
Obviously I mistyped somewhere when I did it the first time, sorry.
So it calculates the probability for a Locutus wall when he is the best option for the current pair and 30 out of the 59 people behind you in rank 1 have him in their setup, given randomness.
I would conclude that (a) much more than 50% of the people possess and use most of the Gauntlet only crew (apart from Guinan which is perhaps used less even if possessed) or (b) the opponent selection is not fully random.