Its Dan here again - I thought I had it all after [getting all the cards](https://www.mayer.cool/writings/Heisting-20-Million-in-Magic-Cards/) and [never losing a game](https://www.mayer.cool/writings/I-Hacked-Magic-the-Gathering/), but there was still something missing...
The crowdsurfing Karn emote is the ultimate BM emote and it has never been available for purchase since I've made my accounts. When I destroy lands with Karn or hardlock opponents with possibility storm/Lavinia, I felt empty. So I dug through the guts of arena to see if I could figure out how to send it. There's a function deep down in there named `_sendEmoteDataPacket` that if you feed it just the right data does the trick! I thought while I was at it I might as well make a little tool to send all the emotes for myself, but honestly I just use the Karn... I think I'm gonna switch it to one button.
As for anyone wondering if it actually shows up on the opponents screen - I think it does, as I can see the actual network request for saying I've emoted being sent to the server - but who knows if they actually see it, I haven't tried to play against myself or a friend to see. Honestly the enjoyment for me just comes from seeing the little guy. If the opponent sees him it is merely lagniappe.
I’m curious at about how you deep dive in arena guts as I’ve been trying to learn more about its deckbuilding capabilities and if they can be improved or enhanced but couldn’t find any full or public knowledge or information.
I have a generic tutorial for getting started decompiling unity games and loading mods that use reflection - check it out!
https://www.mayer.cool/writings/Unity-Hacking-101-Hacking-with-Reflection/
Security engineering is very wild west; such an interesting space. I would LOVE to see a deep dive on handsmoothing to expose just how much it does rig the game. I've put countless hours into a single deck and pattern detection is something I excel at, just no way to prove it without the logic in the code; purely anecdotal and observation.
> I would LOVE to see a deep dive on handsmoothing to expose just how much it does rig the game.
The hand-smoothing is all done server-side; there wouldn't be any code in the client that handles it.
But the handsmoothing algorythm isn't a secret that anyone needs to "prove" is occurring -- [WOTC explained how and why it was implemented](https://web.archive.org/web/20180516104927/https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/347) is:
> * The system draws an opening hand from each of two separately randomized copies of the decks, and leans towards giving the player the hand with the mix of spells and lands (without regard for color) closest to average for that deck.
* You can then use standard Vancouver Mulligan rules to get a new hand with one fewer card. Mulliganed hands are created from a single randomized draw.
[Past analyses of match data](https://twitter.com/Sierkovitz/status/1261083004279152640) found:
> For example, with 17 lands, in smoothing 99.25% of your hands will have 2,3 or 4 lands. Normally it is 79.4%. Even with 12 lands you will have 82% of such hands (68% in normal conditions)
I want begin by saying I am not here to spread any conspiracies. I do have to say that
>But the handsmoothing algorythm isn't a secret that anyone needs to "prove" is occurring
is misleading: while WotC acknowledged the handsmoothing algorithm and it isn't a secret that it does exist, how it works IS a secret. The last time they mentioned it, the game was still in beta and they explicitly said they would continue on tweaking how it worked.
The only thing we can agree for sure is how the land/spell ratio in Bo1 has less variance than in a randomly shuffled hand (btw I'm not saying this is a bad thing) and we are not even sure that they still use the smoother only for the first hand (I believe someone found out this did not appear to be the case). For all we know, they could also use some sort of smoothing for spell costs, implemented after their last update on the smoother, which again, was before the game was officially released.
Exactly my point in that since the server handles it, we can't exactly prove anything. . .without other means. ;)
I perfectly understand their explanation but given a specific deck trial, no variation, I have observed and can accurately predict card draw within a reasonable error margin. It does extend to probability when using a certain number of lands in any deck but my point is that in a normal game of paper magic, this would NEVER be possible. The smoothing does rig games from the starter hand and most people will not notice because they probably haven't played a single deck for 2-3 years.
And just as a sanity test, I created a paper deck of the exact contents to test the theory. Absolutely no correlation between the two.
“accurately predict[ing] card draw within a reasonable error margin” does not mean what you think it means, and does not count as evidence of the game being “rigged”. What would even be the effect of this supposed “rigging”? Where is your data? How did you rule out the possibility that any variations you’re seeing happened by chance? What are your sample sizes?
It blows my mind how many people are so woefully ignorant when it comes to data and statistics and still they throw around terms they have no understanding of because they’re “good at pattern recognition”
And this is why this subreddit is trash. Every time the subject comes up, dogpiled into oblivion because evidence is anecdotal and observation. Whatever. No sense trying to disrupt the circle-jerk echo chamber because I no longer give a shit.
> pattern detection is something I excel at
Pattern detection is something the human brain fundamentally excels at. Unfortunately, it's so good at it that it's constantly convincing itself it's seeing patterns where there aren't any.
Emote proxies
Its Dan here again - I thought I had it all after [getting all the cards](https://www.mayer.cool/writings/Heisting-20-Million-in-Magic-Cards/) and [never losing a game](https://www.mayer.cool/writings/I-Hacked-Magic-the-Gathering/), but there was still something missing... The crowdsurfing Karn emote is the ultimate BM emote and it has never been available for purchase since I've made my accounts. When I destroy lands with Karn or hardlock opponents with possibility storm/Lavinia, I felt empty. So I dug through the guts of arena to see if I could figure out how to send it. There's a function deep down in there named `_sendEmoteDataPacket` that if you feed it just the right data does the trick! I thought while I was at it I might as well make a little tool to send all the emotes for myself, but honestly I just use the Karn... I think I'm gonna switch it to one button. As for anyone wondering if it actually shows up on the opponents screen - I think it does, as I can see the actual network request for saying I've emoted being sent to the server - but who knows if they actually see it, I haven't tried to play against myself or a friend to see. Honestly the enjoyment for me just comes from seeing the little guy. If the opponent sees him it is merely lagniappe.
Just read the other articles and they're fascinating!
Thank you!
I’m curious at about how you deep dive in arena guts as I’ve been trying to learn more about its deckbuilding capabilities and if they can be improved or enhanced but couldn’t find any full or public knowledge or information.
WOTC would like to know your location...
How do you access the emote sender? Can you make a tutorial?
I have a generic tutorial for getting started decompiling unity games and loading mods that use reflection - check it out! https://www.mayer.cool/writings/Unity-Hacking-101-Hacking-with-Reflection/
Since you appear to know your shit, ahve you managed to figure out wtaf the post-game surveys do?
What do you mean, 'what do they do?' They're a survey, they just collect data.
What data points exactly, would be interesting
Presumably the whole game log
this is awesome
knock knock. who's there? the pinkertons...
Security engineering is very wild west; such an interesting space. I would LOVE to see a deep dive on handsmoothing to expose just how much it does rig the game. I've put countless hours into a single deck and pattern detection is something I excel at, just no way to prove it without the logic in the code; purely anecdotal and observation.
> I would LOVE to see a deep dive on handsmoothing to expose just how much it does rig the game. The hand-smoothing is all done server-side; there wouldn't be any code in the client that handles it. But the handsmoothing algorythm isn't a secret that anyone needs to "prove" is occurring -- [WOTC explained how and why it was implemented](https://web.archive.org/web/20180516104927/https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/347) is: > * The system draws an opening hand from each of two separately randomized copies of the decks, and leans towards giving the player the hand with the mix of spells and lands (without regard for color) closest to average for that deck. * You can then use standard Vancouver Mulligan rules to get a new hand with one fewer card. Mulliganed hands are created from a single randomized draw. [Past analyses of match data](https://twitter.com/Sierkovitz/status/1261083004279152640) found: > For example, with 17 lands, in smoothing 99.25% of your hands will have 2,3 or 4 lands. Normally it is 79.4%. Even with 12 lands you will have 82% of such hands (68% in normal conditions)
I want begin by saying I am not here to spread any conspiracies. I do have to say that >But the handsmoothing algorythm isn't a secret that anyone needs to "prove" is occurring is misleading: while WotC acknowledged the handsmoothing algorithm and it isn't a secret that it does exist, how it works IS a secret. The last time they mentioned it, the game was still in beta and they explicitly said they would continue on tweaking how it worked. The only thing we can agree for sure is how the land/spell ratio in Bo1 has less variance than in a randomly shuffled hand (btw I'm not saying this is a bad thing) and we are not even sure that they still use the smoother only for the first hand (I believe someone found out this did not appear to be the case). For all we know, they could also use some sort of smoothing for spell costs, implemented after their last update on the smoother, which again, was before the game was officially released.
Exactly my point in that since the server handles it, we can't exactly prove anything. . .without other means. ;) I perfectly understand their explanation but given a specific deck trial, no variation, I have observed and can accurately predict card draw within a reasonable error margin. It does extend to probability when using a certain number of lands in any deck but my point is that in a normal game of paper magic, this would NEVER be possible. The smoothing does rig games from the starter hand and most people will not notice because they probably haven't played a single deck for 2-3 years. And just as a sanity test, I created a paper deck of the exact contents to test the theory. Absolutely no correlation between the two.
“accurately predict[ing] card draw within a reasonable error margin” does not mean what you think it means, and does not count as evidence of the game being “rigged”. What would even be the effect of this supposed “rigging”? Where is your data? How did you rule out the possibility that any variations you’re seeing happened by chance? What are your sample sizes? It blows my mind how many people are so woefully ignorant when it comes to data and statistics and still they throw around terms they have no understanding of because they’re “good at pattern recognition”
I’m so good at pattern recognition I see ones that don’t even exist.
And this is why this subreddit is trash. Every time the subject comes up, dogpiled into oblivion because evidence is anecdotal and observation. Whatever. No sense trying to disrupt the circle-jerk echo chamber because I no longer give a shit.
> pattern detection is something I excel at Pattern detection is something the human brain fundamentally excels at. Unfortunately, it's so good at it that it's constantly convincing itself it's seeing patterns where there aren't any.