How does the Competitive meter work?
TappedOut forum
Posted on Aug. 13, 2023, 4:33 p.m. by MKTuba
I am curious to know how the competitive meter in a deck works. I recently replaced a basic with a shockland and it brought my score by 3% which seemed like a lot for such a small change.
FormOverFunction says... #3
The most important aspect of the bar, in my opinion, is the user input. We should be nudging that score in the “proper” direction ourselves! I’ve been trying to remember to do it any time I look at a list... and this is a good reminder that I’ve been failing. Time to score some decks, everyone!
August 13, 2023 8:26 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #4
The competitive meter is based on how people vote on decks that advertise themselves as casual / competitive and then also mixes in finer vote info whether it needs to be higher or lower per deck.
August 13, 2023 11:19 p.m.
Femme_Fatale Do you have any information on the finer vote info that adjusts the score? What sort of criteria is considered?
August 13, 2023 11:22 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #6
Nah I just searched for some of yeago's responses on the many numerous posts and questions asked about this in the past and posted it here. I think there was a more detailed response at one point but I can't find it.
August 14, 2023 3:27 a.m.
indieinside says... #7
It is based on rare, commons, etc. The less commons you have the higher your rank on the meter.
August 15, 2023 3:46 p.m.
indieinside says... #8
here is an example.
https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/30-06-23-colorless-giants/
August 15, 2023 3:47 p.m.
indieinside The proportions of different rarities might have some effect, but it can't be all. Here's a couple of my Pauper decks, using only commons, that are just 2% less "competitive" than your example. (Does it mean anything if they're all 74% competitive?)
Northwest Passage: Fire From Ice
Pauper
SCORE: 4 | 417 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER
Golgari Beats
Pauper
SCORE: 2 | 3 COMMENTS | 181 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER
Practical Applications of Algebra and Geometry
Pauper
SCORE: 2 | 2 COMMENTS | 296 VIEWS | IN 2 FOLDERS
August 15, 2023 4:01 p.m.
As a follow-up point, some of my other Pauper decks are lower, so just having 60 commons doesn't determine the ranking.
August 15, 2023 4:02 p.m.
Apologies for comment spamming, but as one more touch, this is apparently a 100% competitive deck, and it uses as many commons as mythic rates.
August 15, 2023 4:09 p.m.
I had a 100% competitive deck awhile back, it was notably free of creatures and planeswalkers, though I'm pretty sure the system doesn't reward that stuff as heavily now. It did run lots of cards that did see some play, but it was hardly an optimal list I'd say. What I took from that (and other decks, including the seemingly random fluctuations in rating for a given deck) is that there is an element of guess work going on, the system tries to figure out if a deck 'works', likely using known card interactions/combos to make an educated guess. This would explain why results are wildly varying, and can change dramatically (ie someone takes a look at a deck with some of the interactions you use and gives them a competitive rating). This is also why decks that are full of staple cards are often more competitive, while decks running random unknown cards (or cards rarely seen together) often start with an abysmal competitive rating, it's like an actual person needs to do something to make the system work, possibly people rating less or more competitive?
There was a time when almost every new Legacy deck just defaulted to ~80% competitive, almost regardless of what people ran. It was weird because they were all the same value. I think this bug has been worked out, but yeah, not the most trustworthy thing.
In my experience, if you want to chase a higher competitive rating look at other popular archetypes that are 'known to work' and start from those rather than homebrewing something with cards that see very little play.
If I had to stake my life savings on a bet as to whether the competitive rating is, in the end (at the moment) a useful tool, I would probably bet that it's not, but only because it's so secretive that it's impossible to use the knowledge effectively, it's like if our decks had a rating of 43.721 quignards. What is a quignard, and is 43 of them good? How many quignards can a deck have? What are the mean and median values? We know nothing and as such the information shouldn't be weighted very heavily (yes % means 'out of 100', but you can have 103% of a value). That said, my decks that tend to play better often tend to have better competitivity, it's just not universal enough to matter.
legendofa says... #2
That is one of the great mysteries of TappedOut. I tried to figure it out once, and the best I got is that cards that show up in decks under the Competitive hub tend to move the competitive meter over, so there's some self-selection. Foils and variants seem to also have an effect. For all I know, if you divide the phase of the moon by next week's weather forecast, that will move the competitive meter one way or the other.
It's kind of useful as a rough guideline, but it shouldn't be taken too seriously.
August 13, 2023 6:16 p.m.