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Anybody else just absolutely HATE gauntlet?
The stats make no sense and it’s frustrating to get beat by someone whose top number is lower than your bottom number. 😡
Anybody else just absolutely HATE gauntlet? 116 votes
YES
60%
![[KM]Videm](https://us.v-cdn.net/6030345/uploads/userpics/696/n393JWWYQ896H.jpeg)
70 votes
NO
39%
![[QH] Oxmyx](https://us.v-cdn.net/6030345/uploads/userpics/547/n2W6EFWXI2VWP.JPG)
46 votes
0
Comments
I can see how the small sample size per round coupled with the large numbers of rounds played can throw people off on this. But the numbers do make sense.
Personally, when Gauntlet debuted, I thought it was pathetically shallow and a dismal addition to the game. It took me months to realize that there were decent tactics that could be applied that genuinely make it a gameplay challenge. In fact, I now consider it the strongest "gameplay" currently in STT - although a lot of it is more "game theory".
But as with most of STT, newer players don't stand much of a chance, and I can't think of a straightforward fix for that apart from the obvious: introduce reasonably strong Gauntlet crew (somewhere between Humbled Archer and Twilight T'Pol) once or twice every month. That way the Gauntlet has a wider range of opponents and possibilities, and newer players can develop a reasonable Gauntlet roster in a matter of months rather than multiple years.
I'm trying to remember who we got in 2020 who works well in Gauntlet, but I think it's just Twilight T'Pol and Red Angel...? I can't understand why proficiencies are so readily overlooked in the 50+ new legendary crew we've had this year.
Also, while the Gauntlet numbers are correct, I'm not sure it's enough for a game to be fair. Shouldn't it also be important that it feels fair?
I think the Gauntlet mechanics (and Voyages) could make for an interest new event type.
Starport
I agree with you, it is very frustrating. 5% vs 25% or 45% or 65%.
25% has a 5 times chance of getting a crit than a 5% ;
45% has a 9 times chance of getting a crit than a 5% ;
65% has a 13 times chance of getting a crit than a 5%
But it does not work that way. The percentages are completely wrong because they add in RNG for the final result.
So if you play knowing it is fixed, then it becomes more acceptable.
I get very few rewards of value, but I get a fair increase in merits and chronitons. And once in a long while, I get a gold crew. I don't understand those who boast of multiple crew drops monthly, but they still come, if slowly.
It's not rigged.
The two main issues you aren't factoring are the small sample size of each round (6-12 results) and the large number of rounds we play (6-12 results, say 10 rounds per refresh, 4-5 times a day, gives 240-600 results every day). Also bear in mind the emotional factor of an unlucky loss, compared with your own unlikely crits generally having no effect on the outcome of the match you chose (because you chose one you expected to win, of course!).
Statistics is not intuitive. It's certainly an interesting subject, though!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salience_(neuroscience)#Salience_bias
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-our-brains-do-not-intuitively-grasp-probabilities/
I have kept the actual number and done the work of crunching them. While there is a random factor. Hundreds of rounds have proved the gauntlet is rigged. Please stop using the same lazy excuse of bias. Below 50% you get easier wins. Every third box generates a wall intended to break your streak or make you spend merits. I'm not complaining, I'm not saying it's wrong. But the numbers don't lie. Real numbers, not "emotional factors." Once you know how it's rigged you can take advantage of it.
If you want to build a streak keep a skill hole or have a weak member or two so you can be knocked down faster, and don't go for big points. Taking the bait for big points rushes you back up to harder matches. Spend time at the bottom to build bank for a run at ranking every once in a while.
If I'm too close to the top on a third box the game consistently forces a loss. Not some times, almost every time, unless you spend enough merits to make a loss impossible. I've put a 65% against 5% and every time the game simply rolls within 20 of the min proficiency. Real stats over months.
While I find the gauntlet frustrating, what I discovered in the stats, tracking beholds and voyages, is the bias in the algorithm that preferences immortalized and unheld cards. A fewmonths ago I started getting double frozen/immortal beholds. I had less than 100 SR crew and have that many now. The last 4 beholds have been entirely immoral/frozen crew. At less than a third of the total SR crew this is statistically ridiculous. I looked at my voyages and discovered the same bias. Voyages have been roughly 3 times more likely to drop immortalized crew and almost as likely to drop unheld crew compared to unfused crew held in crew slots. I welcome anyone who can empirically disprove this bias. Stress empirically. I took the time, at least collect the numbers for a month.
Again, I know this is a game. I know it is designed to entice paying and make play challenging. I'm not denouncing based on these biases. I'm recognizing they exist and trying to work with them. Just as voyaging past 8 hours statistically returns less on chrons and honour. This is a Casino. It doesn't make sense for the game to not be rigged.
Agreed. That's why I shared 4000 rounds of data that show it's not rigged.
Oddly, your numbers don't seem to be forthcoming..?
My last set was the perfect example of why, given nearly every round featured four Guinans as my opponents, with 65% crit chance.
The time difference makes it hard too; it ends in the morning for me, so unless I get up absurdly early, I lose a lot of ground.
Simply: YES!
Anyone can fill a spreadsheet with whatever they want.
Agreed 100%. It’s a little sad that players have to understand statistics and have experience with collecting and analyzing Big Data to not feel cheated by a game function, to the extent that certain players feel empowered to put more trust in their misguided feelings than in the data.
It’s also sad that Twilight T’Pol was such a welcome surprise. She is the only truly good gauntleteer we’ve gotten from events in 2020, and aside from her and the Red Angel the only other new gauntlet crew that comes to mind is Tuesday pack-only Admiral Kirsten “S.F. Hubris” Clancy. The dilution of the portal pool is bad enough in general, but is pointedly bad for proficiency-heavy crew because so few have been introduced to keep up with the pace of overall crew releases.
it truly needs a fine tuning on the assignment of opponents.
So what "empirical" evidence would you accept? And, as delightful as it is to have encountered someone unfamiliar with Russell's teapot, why do you present none yourself?
Sorry... sidetracked the point of this thread.
Back to gauntlet RNG - yep, very frustrating, but as I’ve written before, I’m convinced the problem lies in our expectations associated with the crit percentages. Ex: we expect a 45% card to crit 2-3 times in a six-roll battle. When it doesn’t, we feel cheated (and of course we usually lose the battle since we were counting on the crits). We expect 5% opponents to never crit, yet when they do so 4 times, we scream “rigged!”. Except neither of these things is unreasonable, just low probability.
And the biggest. We never challenge an opponent when we expect to lose, so we never see when RNG rolls in our favor for an upset. We only challenge opponents when we expect to win(or maybe a tie), so either we see the outcome we expected(win) or we see an upset loss. We never experience the underdog win, so the gauntlet feels biased against players.
So true. I’ve noticed plenty of battles where I go to redshirt someone, don’t pay attention to the result, and then go “wait, they actually won that battle?” when I see them ready to go for another round. This won’t happen as much if you avoid all seemingly-guaranteed losses by reviving, refreshing the opponent list, or just giving up.
The gauntlet that ended yesterday was a perfect example - my once-fatigued Admiral Nechayev at 5% crit beat a rested 25% crit Kahless in a COM/DIP tilt, and I didn’t even realize it until three battles later when COM/DIP came up again and Nechayev wasn’t down for the count.
It's so quaint to find a some one falling back on accusations of ignorance. As I said, anyone can contaminate their data. Did your personal outlook lead you to believe others exclude themselves from "anyone" when recognizing the inherent ability to present false or partial data? Peer review of my or your data is irrelevant. There's no teapot, I don't trust other people to not lie to prove their point. I have absolutely no reservation with others having the same lack of trust of my data and analysis, I expect it. The only evidence I would accept as irrefutable would be the algorithm that generates opponents and handles the combat. As neither of us is ever going to have that luxury there really isn't much point. As far as I'm concerned it's a debate with no real resolution.
Do you isolate combat results? Combining all results from all ranks nullifies the premise of the hypothesis, which is that the game bends success toward the player at lower ranks and away from the player at higher ranks. In mismatched and balanced combats. I have not encountered a single guide to the gauntlet that insists the odds are even accross the ranking. The observation I've made is consistent with every guide I took the time to gather my own numbers to question. Everyone else collecting numbers seems to agree the game biases results based on rank. If you want to call that confirmation bias, feel free. I don't really care.
There are a few subtle things that happen during gauntlet rounds that clearly demonstrate that the content is geared toward making players spend merits and dilithium. While i definitely wish this was not the case, it really isnt any different from any other part of the game.
Some examples:
Ever notice how once you have a crew member fatigued you are way more likely to see matchups that Align with your fatigued crew members stats? This even happens if the skills are not one of the “higher likelihood” skills.
In fact, i see the above example pretty frequently. Say we have a security favored gauntlet, if my caretaker is fatigued, i can promise that i am more likely to see some variation of eng/sci/med in the matchups until the streak is broken. This is even more likely if i am at a point on a streak that is about to reward a chest/crate on the next win.
And there in is one of the most frequently observed issues, and that is with the odds being tilted toward the opponents favor in those chest/crate reward deciding battles.
Certainly, there have been times that i am surprised, and some folks on here are likely to point at “confirmation bias” or some other statistical anomaly, but the reality is that a lot of people “feel” like its rigged. That should definitely indicate a larger issue. In my experience, more often than not, the opponent is more likely to win those streak reward battles. And the content is more likely to give you poor matches on those streak reward battles, requiring you to spend merits to re-roll opponents in hopes of a better match up.
That being said, once you accept that the above issues are part of gauntlet, and that they are not “issues” but they are in fact there by design, you can develop strategies on how to cope with them and even exploit them. Some strategies have been alluded to in this thread.
If someone was interested in testing these hypotheses, it could definitely be done but will require a lot of data recording by interested individuals. At the end of the day, is it worth it? Maybe its frustrating, maybe its rigged, maybe its completely fair. Who cares? Play it if you like, leave it alone if you dont like it.
As a final note, i am a big fan of gauntlet and i do play it quite a lot.
doesn t mean it crits everytime and 5% means it still can crit.
And as a player that has played like 60k+ gauntlet rounds, i can tell for sure that bad beats and luck outs, even out over the course of time. It‘s just human that you remember the bad beats better. 😉
It‘s a great ressource for free stuff, but if u have anger issues with losing from time to time or rng at all, don t play. 🤗
While I don't think it's rigged, and I understand all the math and what not involved, it's still a frustrating and joyless part of the game. There's little to no strategy involved to win. Also, it's a great example of haves vs have-nots, as several of the strongest cards for this part of the game are only available in it (and these cards drop randomly and rarely). The rewards, at least for advanced players like myself, are completely worthless; in fact, the rewards have rarely ever been useful. And, from my own experience, paying into it with dilithium doesn't sound like a sound strategy, as so much of the rewards are handed out by just random chance. And what I really want to say about the 20K achievement would get me booted off this forum. As I said, frustrating and joyless.
Why would you do that?
Oh my goodness. You haven't even clicked through the link.
The data I linked to actually does address your claim of every third round producing results biased against the player, albeit indirectly. I don't think it could be easily understood by someone who thinks that Poisson distribution is how fish restaurants manage their orders, but why don't you take a look anyway? When you figure out how your misconception would hypothetically be covered by the data (assuming that the linked results were genuine, for the purposes of the exercise!
I should probably mention at this point that I used to think Gauntlet was rigged. A couple of months back, someone said on the forums something like "25% IS FIVE TIMES MORE LIKELY THAN 5%!!!" and it made me laugh because I'd shouted exactly that at my phone a few years ago - probably more than once!
I did vote "No". I've had more than my fair share of crap rolls but I can still regularly do well when I try to do well.
However getting good gauntlet crew is still a pain. I've been playing since the beginning and my best SEC gauntlet crew are still Locutus and Kahless. The best Gauntlet 4* is still Mirror Phlox. There's still no ENG competition for Caretaker. It can be frustrating on occasion.
I think they should add an associated 4* gauntlet crew for each new 5* crew. This crew should be decent and even competitive with the right traits.
maybe frustrating but definitely not joyless. I find great satisfaction in beating on people who've accused the innocent of cheating, those who have stolen fleets out from others, poachers or people who just can't treat people with decency. we all have our motivations
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If you don't want or need any of the featured crew at least you can ignore the gauntlet completely, but if you do and you're not lucky with it, it quickly becomes very annoying.
Every other crew in the game, is either obtainable:
1) for sure, by investing in-game resources and/or time (that would be events, achievements, honor hall crew or Collection rewards)
or
2) potentially, by quickly investing a bunch of in-game resources and/or money (that would be Tuesday packs, LTOs and capaigns)
And even Tuesday packs crew gets added to the portal and potentially becomes available in campaigns or LTOs, so there are other possible or certain ways to obtain them, eventually.
The only crew that is merely obtainable through gambling and, which makes it worse, a form of gambling that requires you to invest actual time and thought in it (or, well, just time, once you get annoyed enough) is the gauntlet crew.
Also, the universal ending time, even if you ignore the fact that rank has some impact on rewards, doesn't even allow you the pointless satisfaction of seeing yourself win a gauntlet, when you don't live in the right timezone.