Shuffle only once!

[Trevor]

It is annoying how frequently people spam shuffling their decks.

1 shuffle is no better or worse than a billion shuffles!

One shuffle makes the cards in the deck perfectly random. Shuffling more than once does nothing but spam the log with superfluous messages.

Also, remember that when you load a deck, it shuffles the deck automatically so you don't need to shuffle a deck explicitly unless a card tells you to, or you mulligan, or something like that.

Some people have asserted (completely without evidence) that there is a bug in Lackey's shuffling algorithm. There is no reason to believe this is true other than anecdotal reports. There is good reason to believe the shuffling algorithm works perfectly because it has been thoroughly tested via statistical means.

I suspect that perceived errors in the shuffling are caused by:
A. Confirmation bias
B. People being accustomed to the same "randomness" with real cards, but real cards tend not to be truly randomized. Shuffling real cards, people often "de-clump" cards.
C. People not realizing that "clumping" of kinds of cards should occur a decent percent of the time with truly random shuffles.

[Iceclaw]

It'd be nice if we could specific the automatic shuffling of certain superzones when a deck is loaded, currently only the 'Deck' superzone gets autoshuffled.

[Talon]

ehh, some people will always want to shuffle their decks more than once.  It has nothing to do with how efficient your algorithm is, they just want to feel like they are really shuffling their deck.  I've seen it in every virtual table top I've every used.  It's people, and except for asking them not to, they are going to do what makes them happy.

But I do concur ... one shuffle is enough.  I don't care that your only wasting a few computer cycles!

[Tokimo]

You could make the program ignore superfluous shuffles.

[Ripplez]

i shuffle my decks twice because thats how i used to do it in apprentice when i was just learning to play mtg. iv forgotten why i did it there but i pretty much always shuffle twice (thrice in lackey because it feels weird to shuffle with a mouse click rather than a key shortcut) from now on in any game

same reason i draw each card manually at the start of games rather than click "draw 7", it just feels right. even if your rng used white noise and was of such impeccable quality that chaos theorists around the world wept with joy in unison, id still shuffle twice and draw each card singly. sorry

[Burst]

Can we get this limit removed? 

I understand the argument that random is random and twice random isn't "more" random.

But...
First, is there any harm in humoring the players that want to shuffle multiple times?  If not, then why not allow them?

Second, there is a game function reason to allow reshuffle.

If I'm playing with cards revealed and an effect makes me shuffle my deck,  the shuffling does make a difference. 
yes, I could "mess" with my deck in order to trick lackey into letting me shuffle
but wouldn't it be simpler to just let me shuffle when I click shuffle?

[Trevor]

Can we get this limit removed? 

I understand the argument that random is random and twice random isn't "more" random.

But...
First, is there any harm in humoring the players that want to shuffle multiple times?  If not, then why not allow them?

Second, there is a game function reason to allow reshuffle.

If I'm playing with cards revealed and an effect makes me shuffle my deck,  the shuffling does make a difference. 
yes, I could "mess" with my deck in order to trick lackey into letting me shuffle
but wouldn't it be simpler to just let me shuffle when I click shuffle?

The harm is it's annoying, completely pointless, and it takes up bandwidth. I disagree philosophically with the idea that I should cater to those ignorant people that think there is a point to spamming the shuffle button.

Being able to spam the shuffle button is somewhat different than being able to shuffle whenever you want. The former is a misconception about how computerized shuffling works, and the later is more about wanting to do things exactly as instructed.

As far as a game function, if anyone ever looks at a deck, or moves any cards in it, Lackey will then allow you to shuffle it again. If it isn't doing exactly that at present, that is a bug that I will fix if you let me know about it.

The purpose of any shuffle is to randomize cards. "Randomize" in this sense means to put them in an indiscernible order. If the order of the cards is completely indiscernible by everyone, then they are random for all intents and purposes.

If you had a card that told you to shuffle your deck 100 times, some people would feel the need to do that or else they are not obeying the game rules. On the other hand, that's silly and the only thing it accomplishes is wasting time.

[Saethori]

"There's a bug in [game]'s [randomizer function]" has always meant, since the beginning of gaming, "I got unlucky a couple of times and think I should always win."

I've heard this excuse used on just about every program variation of a TCG, as well as very many video games with a non-TCG-related luck factor. It's as though some people just do not understand the concept of randomness.

This is especially jarring when they claim about how it differs from in paper. Many, many paper TCG players (for TCGs with resource systems) attempt to use unique shuffling methods to balance out their deck (Tends to be named [resource]-weaving by many TCGs.) and even out draws... but therein lies the kicker.
If, after balancing out the ratio of your resource cards (such as, say, the deck alternating between one land and two non-lands) and subsequently shuffling, if the deck has any increased level of consistency with your resources, then the deck is insufficiently random and you effectively just cheated. If the deck has no knowable alteration to its consistency and is sufficiently randomized, then none of the weaving you did earlier meant anything at all.

In summary: Most TCG players have been cheating (knowingly or unknowingly) for years, so when faced with actual randomness, they find it so alien to their shuffling methods that they immediately dismiss the problem as being with the external randomizer rather than their tried-and-true stacking the deck.

As for the actual Lackey program; keep the existing method! Keep the error message on redundant shuffle attempts. I've played on plenty of TCG simulators where this wasn't the case, and, yes, people will literally SPAM the shuffle button every single time.

[Burst]

"The harm is it's annoying"  - so what?  it's a game (regardless of which game) let people shuffle if they want to

"completely pointless" - so what? so is playing the game itself.  If you argue "fun" is worthwhile, maybe players "like" to shuffle

"it takes up bandwidth" - ok proxy games I'll concede, it's shared resources, but in a normal game I think I have to go back to "so what".  If it actually becomes a problem that somebody notices then disconnect and find a new player that doesn't have a click fetish.

"if anyone ever looks at a deck" - ok this is a bug. You can't shuffle while the deck is revealed

"or moves any cards in it" - yes this is the method I use to "trick" lackey into letting me shuffle when I need to.  I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm just saying "it's annoying"

How about this?  Add an option to allow superfluous shuffles.  Have it default to OFF so everyone starts with your personal preference enforced.
Even better, add another option that tells the opponent to NOT send shuffle notices to you if they are extra-shuffles.

That way local players can shuffle to their heart's content as long as they are "extra" shuffles and neither you, the proxy server, nor anyone else has to know until they become game-relevant.

Those should be relatively trivial additions.

For me personally - fixing the reveal/shuffle bug will be sufficient, but I think it would be nice for the shuffle-happy to be able to shuffle when they want to.  After all, isn't that sort of the point of Lackey? You can do online what you can do at the table?

[Trevor]

"it takes up bandwidth" - ok proxy games I'll concede, it's shared resources, but in a normal game I think I have to go back to "so what".  If it actually becomes a problem that somebody notices then disconnect and find a new player that doesn't have a click fetish.

"if anyone ever looks at a deck" - ok this is a bug. You can't shuffle while the deck is revealed

I will fix that bug and make sure you can shuffle while it's revealed.

Regarding taking up bandwidth, remember that with everyone on the server, that can add up. Shuffling is one of the most bandwidth intenstive actions you can do because it requires sending the entire zone's contents.



Come to think of it, you have convinced me. I will allow you to spam shuffle as much as you want, and you won't even need to adjust any preference. BUT any shuffle you do beyond the first won't appear in the chat log. (If you think the shuffles aren't actually being performed, send me some kind of evidence of this and I will fix the bug.)

[Burst]

so, just removing the "don't need to" message?

sounds good to me, as long as a revealed shuffle is possible I see no reason for anything else.

If I happen to come across something that lets me know the order of cards post-shuffle i'll let you know but I doubt it.