Luck is more important than skill.

[chiikawaRabbit]

I don't believe this game is random. Whenever I play splendor and get a certain score of elo, the system will also give me unfavorable cards, making it difficult for me to win against my opponent. (I have replayed the game many times and found using computer calculations that the probability of me winning is very low).

And the added irony is that even if the game ends in a draw, I lose a lot of points because my opponent has a lower elo than me. I don't think this kind of setting is fair. On the contrary, it is very stupid and frustrating, and does not encourage people to play.

I have been playing this game for almost a year, and I will cancel playing splendor on this website.

[Cile]

I don't understand, how does the system give you unfavourable cards? As I understand it Splendor is a public display and you choose which cards to acquire?

Are you suggesting that the game code has access to your ELO, and instead of just randomizing a deck of cards (fairly common code, especially on this site, that can be easily taken from elsewhere and implemented with minimal adjustments) the programmer went through the time and effort to program it to:
1) Check each players ELO before revealing a new card
2) If that ELO is above a given threshold, choose a card that is less useful to them
3) In order to choose a less useful card the game is also programmed to know what a less useful card is (which is completely unnecessary for the game to know except for this specific purpose)
4) Hide this very large amount of unnecessary code so that other people looking at it don't know a) That it's doing this and b) That this code looks out of place.

And you think all of this is more likely than:
1) Sometimes you get lucky and your ELO increases as a result.
2) after a lucky a streak you eventually get unlucky.

I would expect someone capable of doing the "computer calculations" of how likely they are to win a game to better understand how programming and randomness works. (You need buy premium at the "bonus good luck" level.)

[Ceaseless]

I don't believe this game is random. Whenever I play splendor and get a certain score of elo, the system will also give me unfavorable cards, making it difficult for me to win against my opponent. (I have replayed the game many times and found using computer calculations that the probability of me winning is very low).

And the added irony is that even if the game ends in a draw, I lose a lot of points because my opponent has a lower elo than me. I don't think this kind of setting is fair. On the contrary, it is very stupid and frustrating, and does not encourage people to play.

I have been playing this game for almost a year, and I will cancel playing splendor on this website.

What I find strange is your play record. You may only be a 500s player, but your opponents are somehow all below 300 from what I could see. I might understand this if there were few 300+ players to be found, but I can personally attest there are plenty, you can easily maintain rated play on nothing lower than 300 and get plenty of games. Your drawing complaint makes no sense, if players are rated so far below you then just beat them, Splendor is not so luck-based that this is an issue.

If you don't like getting such lopsided rating gains vs losses then stop playing such lopsided games in your favor. Play a fair game vs players closer to your level. That will prevent you from losing much rating at all from a draw, in fact you might even gain rating depending on the pairing. Rating exchanges are determined by the ratings of the players involved, if you do nothing but face low rated players you'll get next to nothing for beating them, because you were already expected to win in the first place.

Not to mention that for some reason over 800 of 1500+ games are somehow against the same 200 player, whose games are near exclusively against you. Were they all ranked games too? I'm not even going to get into whatever strangeness you decided to throw in with these "computer calculations".

[h_illes]

People have been quick to see patterns into randomness, and in the short term, it might look like there is some pattern to it (either lucky and unlucky streaks for example), but in the long run, it's still just random.

Now you reached 500+ rating in Splendor which suggests that you are good at it. Instead of complaining about luck, try to figure out how to improve further.

[JohnnyCyclops]

How does your friend birdyfree feel about Splendor? Since joining BGA seven months ago it’s the only game they play - 809 games in total of which 801 are against you. They’ve lost 4 out of 5 games to you. I believe BGA puts a dampener on ELO changes for people/friends who regularly play against each other.