Anyone else feel hard done by unfair RNG?
I've recently found climbing the ladder to be near-impossible due to insane bouts of terrible luck/RNG. It feels like no matter how well I play my opponent seems to have everything they need, meanwhile I get stuck with a dead hand and am unable to set up no matter how much I try.
I initially chocked it up to poor luck until my 600-point self faced the same person in ultra rank (~1350-ish points) twice in a row, and in both games despite having a bad starter mon, they found everything they needed - multiple supporters, ultra balls, energies. Meanwhile, I found nothing in both games. I'd start with a research in hand and would draw into nothing.
It feels like I keep running into similar issues very frequently, and makes grinding the ladder that much more frustrating, and any points I seem to gain are lost just as quickly due to horrific luck, contrary to the amount of effort it took to win those same points.
I really can't be the only person facing these issues. I had plently bad luck in PTCGO (the game would love to give me a dead hand in the finals of tournaments), but I never felt like I frequently had dud games as I do in Live.
To note, I was trying out a Darkrai V-star deck I had just built, and had some practice with it beforehand via the NPC so knew how it worked.
Answers
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Aye it sucks when that happens, not to rag on the ladder itself but 20 win 20 loss hurts (G-ball league) when you get shafted by RNG :(
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Your opponent having better luck than you could mean:
1) simply a bad day: everyone gets bad luck sometimes.
2) deckbuilding issue: maybe what you need to do is looking at your deck, try to figure out which cards are underperforming and replace them for more of the cards you're consistently not drawing (or ways to search for those cards), if your opponent keeps drawing what they need, it may be because they have a more consistent deck.
3) Gameplay errors: sometimes not finding the correct cards is cause by poor sequencing or planning. Some players don't ultra ball before research and miss the opportunity to discard a pokemon that's not necessary in this matchup, which reduces the number of bad cards in your deck, increasing the chance of drawing what you want. Sometimes they burn their pokegears the moment they draw them (even if they can't use a supporter that turn) and end up losing to not drawing a supporter out of a judge. And again, your opponent always finding everything could just mean they are not making those mistakes.
The easiest way to climb the ladder is mentally reviewing your games after a loss (even if it was due to "poor RNG) and think if there was a way to play that game better, or if you kept missing the same cards in multiple games and try to improve your deck or gameplay.
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You only have one Roxanne, every game in the beginning, you have Roxanne in your hand. You have four arceus, four quick balls, four ultra balls, two capture energy. But every game, you only have one bidoof. That's what often happens to me.
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Yeah i feel that, it really feels like my 1x cards are always in my opening hand, but can struggle to find my 4x copy cards in the same game lol
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Pokemon TCG is a relic of a trading card game, they honestly should have updated the game a bit when making it into an online version adding in the possibility to get cards that don't start in your deck and such since it's online. It's just not as fun as something like hearthstone where you get more free cards than in pokemon to make decks and every game is different, you aren't just looking for a good starting hand or you lose. That combined with the fact that you can have 23 minutes left on your clock while your opponent has 15 and they're losing just makes it so this game feels too old. There's 0 decision making based on match to match besides bosses orders and that's a very un-interactive card to play around as the opponent to begin with. It's ALMOST like the card game war where you just draw cards and see who's cards were better every time. something like what Edurandomnumber said in this post just isn't true in the slightest, this game is not complex at all as you can have 4 copies of cards in your deck and 60 cards leading you to an average of 15-20 cards in your deck after accounting for energies/cards you have lower copies of that's just not a lot of options to choose from, when you get cards to choose other cards from your deck up and running first you win that game almost 100% of the time. I wish there was some possibility for a mental skill gap that made this game worth playing but it really is just RNG until you get the cards to search which isn't a rewarding climbing experience, also why the pokemon TCG is as dead as it is now when pokemon is arguably the most popular game ever.
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This post, might be a year old, but yeah. I'm in a 2 day bad luck streak. Been swaping between a Chien Pao deck and a Gardevoir deck, and in both decks I have 4 copies of the essentials. For the Chien Pao deck, I got 4 iridas, I have my Radiant Greninja, a couple of Ionos, buddy buddy puffins, but I've been getting stuck with frigibax or bidoof with no other pokémon to play on my bench. Not a single Irida is ever drawn. If Frigibax is in play, I've haven't ever seen in these last 2 days both Baxcalibur and rare candy in the same hand.
Same happens with the Gardevoir deck, 4 copies of Arven, 4 Ionos, 4 Raltz, 4 Krilias, a couple of TM: Evolution. 4 Buddy buddy puffins. And again, I get stuck with Raltz as an active pokémon, and sometimes on my starting hand that's the only pokémon and the rest of my hand might be Gardevoir, energies and super rod.
I've been playing since probably November last year, I've had this bad luck before once every bunch of games, but I've never had THIS bad luck last this long (2 days), this consistently (every game).
It almost feels like it's on purpose.1
