My main motivation when playing Card Hunter is to collect gear. Having said that, then the most efficient use of MP is to play just a few games per day as fast as possible and not sweat the outcomes. With the ELO system, I'm going to win about half of my MP matches over time. Period. There's no reason to worry about individual outcomes too much. My approach is one of the (possibly) unintended consequences of incentivized PvP. But here's what I think is a little odd: If I'm interested in collecting gear while playing SP then it DOES matter to me if I win. A loss is just wasted time, rather than the "price of admission" that it is in MP. So... I care if I win SP. But not if I win MP. Weird.
The top players win about 2/3 (or more) of their matches. Consistently. The penalty for that is harder opposition. Ratings aside, whether the time saved by needing fewer matches to get to, say, the third chest (4.5 games if your win rate is 2/3 vs. 6 games if you bat .500) makes up for the presumably longer games is hard to estimate. But if "caring" increases your win rate for any reason it might be worth it. You are not doomed to 50% wins. I never care about losing MP if I don't notice any of my mistakes. Otherwise I'm pissed.
Because of the scarcity of active players with extremely high or low ratings and the small number of total active players, your win rate can actually deviate quite a bit from 50% if you play particularly well or poorly. Lower ranked players will tend to play opponents with elo higher than their own, meaning they'll have a lower win rate if they maintain their elo. Conversely, higher ranked players will tend to play opponents with elo lower than their own, and will have a higher win rate if they maintain their elo.
My suspicion is that [Mid-Tier Ranking + Fast Games] is still faster than [High Winning Percentage + Games That Aren't As Fast]. The Median time of my last 33 games is exactly 5:00. (300 seconds) A player with a 66% winning percentage would need to be finishing games in 400 seconds or faster to be as time-efficient. (300 x 1.33) That's 6:40. Are the high-ranked games wrapping up in under 7 minutes? Just eyeballing all of the results -- it looks like the Median game length of all games (regardless of rank) is somewhere in the 7-9 minute range. If I was told the Median game length is 8 minutes I'd believe it. I'm assuming somebody's got an API that will reveal the actual Median MP game length?
Absolutely not. I can think of numerous 1700+ opponents who will always take the timer to under 10 minutes.
imo, what is weird, is your 1st sentence: "My main motivation when playing Card Hunter is to collect gear." If that's true then it's better to have lower rating and faster games, nothing weird there. My main motivation is to obtain as high rank and rating as possible. Items are only tools to achieve that. Also, my average game time over last 801 games is 16 minutes.
I like the way the nickname "Avarice" accurately reflects the mindset. I want a full set of everything too! What's weird about that? I still don't like MP, but I do try to play to the first chest. Some days. When I remember.
Okay: then it is weird that he finds it weird that if he has such mindset then winning is not important in MP.
It's entirely subjective. I have a pretty high ELO, but I don't actually care what my (or anyone else's) ELO is, it's just a reflection of wanting to use a good deck because it's fun to compete (speaking for myself). Above all else I prefer to collect items. I do find it a lot more frustrating to be confounded by a difficult SP scenario, which used to happen much of the time. People have different priorities, I don't find that weird.
If the mindset is: "Maximize gear gain per time invested" And we're reasonably confident that when it comes to acquiring gear quickly that: Faster > Winning Where Faster = 50% win rate and 5 minute games Winning = 66% win rate and 10 minute games Then it follows that: Winning is not important in MP. Speed is.
I guess you made your intented point you aimed for. What you forgot to mention is, that there is no point comparing SP to MP when the goal is to get the most items with the least investment in time because SP always beats MP in that case. So to answers your topic, the whole topic is pointless and unlogical because you have to win to get items. The items/hour discussion is a seperate matter for each part of the game.
Not me. I play as if the game ends in 10 minutes. Granted it might go over slightly, but I generally play super fast (thinking and planning on the enemy's turn? WHO KNEW?). Granted it probably has cost me a few games, but I feel like the time I've saved has been put to better use in playing (and winning) more matches. But that's just me.
