Is the random generator for sealed weak?

[Aquillion]

I've noticed that -- even once I edit the files to enable every single possible card in sealed, and even once I'm clearly seeing that it's working -- on any given sealed tournament, there will be a few cards that I tend to see a huge amount. It tends to vary by tournament, too, which makes me suspect that the problem is that the random generator used for sealed decks is weak.

Of course, there's several other possibilities -- it could just be a birthday effect (out of over a hundred cards for each of the 5 opponents I see in a given game, plus my own deck, there's bound to be some collisions even with 10,000+ cards, especially when you account for differing rarities. This is compounded by the fact that while I don't know the algorithm the AI uses to build its decks, it presumably favors certain cards, and probably values the same powerful or splashable cards that I do.)

But I thought I'd ask, just out of curiosity, to see if anyone else has seen the same thing. I keep seeing the AI playing cards and saying "huh, I had a copy of that card, too", often multiple times in the same game; sometimes it feels like the AI is using nearly the exact same pool of cards to make its deck.

[stassy]

*cough*>>><<<*cough*

Until the AI base value is not complete for the current 16k cards, there will be cards that always be favored in Sealed because the current ranking is awkward (you can also see it in Momir mode, AI love to always get a deadly Duplicant at 6 mana step), but rejoice because the 3/4 are done .

[Aquillion]

I kept meaning to update this: I don't think it's just that.

What I mean is that, frequently, I'll see enemies get the exact same rares I do. For some reason it happens a lot with Lifeline -- I never just see one person in a sealed tournament get Lifeline. Usually it doesn't show up at all. But if I get Lifeline, I know with near-certainty that nearly every opponent I encounter in that duel is going to get a copy of Lifeline. I never just see one opponent in the duel using it, either; if one opponent uses Lifeline, almost all of them will, while if the first opponent in a sealed duel doesn't use Lifeline, chances are none of them will. (It happens with many other cards, but it's very noticeable with Lifeline because of its drastic impact on the duel, to the point where if I get a Lifeline in my sealed decks, I will almost always deliberately put creatures that work well with it in my deck, even if I'm not using it, because I know that getting one myself means that nearly every opponent is going to have one.)

Are the packs for sealed given to each player supposed to be generated independently? Because it feels like they aren't -- what I mean isn't that there are certain cards that are favored in an absolute sense; what I mean is that in a particular sealed tournament, there will often be several cards that both showed up in my packs and which every single opponent has and uses, when these cards don't show up at all in other sealed tournaments.

It could just be weird luck, I guess, but it really feels to me like there's a problem with the random generator. Right now I'm staring at my opponent's Lifeline, Flayer Husk, and Myr Galvanizer across the table from my Lifeline, Flayer Husk, and Myr Galvanizer. (Well, I didn't put the Lifeline I got in my packs in my deck, because I knew it was a waste to put it in when every opponent would be playing it anyway, but you get the idea.) I should mention that I'm playing with every card in the game stuffed into 4th edition, which might cause odd effects but should also prevent things like this from happening at random -- with 13000+ cards to choose from, it stands out when something like this happens. And it happens repeatedly.

EDIT: I won, and my opponent's next card was Mishra's Helix, which I likewise got from my sealed decks. Is it artifacts specifically? Hrm.

[gmzombie]

I think there might be something wrong with the generator code. It maybe that it can't handle the amount of cards we have now. Iean I hope we can figure out the sealed deck and be able to choose other sets.

[Aquillion]

I think there might be something wrong with the generator code. It maybe that it can't handle the amount of cards we have now. Iean I hope we can figure out the sealed deck and be able to choose other sets.

Though, with the number of sets we have now, the current interface wouldn't be sufficient, either. Even if we could add every single set Magic has ever had, clicking through them all would be unthinkable.

It seems likely that the best solution would be an external program that customizes the existing sets somehow on the fly, possibly tied into Manalink's launcher somehow. (How easy is it to change the launcher?)

EDIT: Update to the above! It appears I'd accidentally broken the script I use to modify sealed decks and hadn't noticed, so when I switched to the latest version, it was using a smaller cardset than I thought. So perhaps I was wrong. I'll post again if I keep seeing it now that it's properly using all 13000+ cards.

[gmzombie]

For switching between sets why couldnt we eliminate the pack and deck picker persay ad replace it with a menu like q ave to choose std in the deck builder now