Unfortunately MCoC's RNG does not work like a "coinflip", its similar to the RNG of a slot machine. It resets the previous result and makes every result a "new one", I understand that being a 50/50 chance makes it hard to believe; but its as if you were stuck on "groundhog's day". Coinflip stats are based on the result of previous flips. An example (not the greatest) would be the crystal % RNG, opening exactly 100 crystals does not ensure a result since the % is based on each crystal.
Coin flip stats are not based on previous flips. The result of a coin flip is never based on the outcome of the previous toss. For a given toss it is always 50%. Those are the odds that were mentioned. Even with that, the odds of getting a sequence of 40 or 100 consecutive heads or tails is almost zero.
If the ordering system is random, my probability of placing first in the next match is 50%. The probability of placing first 10 matches down the line is also 50%, irrespective of what happened in the earlier 9 matches. But if it was truly random the probability of placing first consecutively in the next 10 matches is 0.5^10 which is ~1 in ten thousand, even though the probability of placing first in the 10th match alone is 50%. Hope that helps.
But, is it actually more advantageous to pick first instead of second?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess "In chess, there is a consensus among players and theorists that the player who makes the first move (White) has an inherent advantage, albeit not one large enough to win under perfect play. This view has been the consensus since at least 1889, when the first World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, addressed the issue, although chess has not yet been solved. "
Also: "Some writers have challenged the view that White has an inherent advantage. GM András Adorján wrote a series of books on the theme that "Black is OK!", arguing that the general perception that White has an advantage is founded more in psychology than reality. Though computer analysis disagrees with his wider claim, it agrees with Adorján that some openings are better than others for Black, and thoughts on the relative strengths of openings have long informed the opening choices in games between top players."
Not a perfect comparison, as MCOC also complicates things by having player's go first twice (in the Draft, and in the Rounds).
As an opposing viewpoint, one could argue that picking first let's you dictate how the rest of the draft will go (ie. Player A picks Human Torch, Player B then avoids drafting Mystic defenders the rest of the match).
I don't know what the right answer is. If there is any advantage to picking first or second, it can be largely obscured by one player's talent level vs another.
I do agree that psychologically it seems like picking first is a disadvantage, but it could be the opposite in reality, or it could be non-existent as well.
I have played a lot of BG this season, went all the way from bronze to the GC, I had to start placing a defender first literally all matches before I reached GC. Right now it’s a little bit more random.
It was frustrating, not going to lie about that and I did lose some matches because of it. But once you accept it and already make a game plan based on first pick you can also turn it into your advantage.
Either by sacrificing a champ to force a player to use a certain champ, or by choosing the toughest defender first so you almost certainly win the first round.. In the end of the day, it’s not an excuse for losing.
But, is it actually more advantageous to pick first instead of second?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess "In chess, there is a consensus among players and theorists that the player who makes the first move (White) has an inherent advantage, albeit not one large enough to win under perfect play. This view has been the consensus since at least 1889, when the first World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, addressed the issue, although chess has not yet been solved. "
Also: "Some writers have challenged the view that White has an inherent advantage. GM András Adorján wrote a series of books on the theme that "Black is OK!", arguing that the general perception that White has an advantage is founded more in psychology than reality. Though computer analysis disagrees with his wider claim, it agrees with Adorján that some openings are better than others for Black, and thoughts on the relative strengths of openings have long informed the opening choices in games between top players."
Not a perfect comparison, as MCOC also complicates things by having player's go first twice (in the Draft, and in the Rounds).
As an opposing viewpoint, one could argue that picking first let's you dictate how the rest of the draft will go (ie. Player A picks Human Torch, Player B then avoids drafting Mystic defenders the rest of the match).
I don't know what the right answer is. If there is any advantage to picking first or second, it can be largely obscured by one player's talent level vs another.
I do agree that psychologically it seems like picking first is a disadvantage, but it could be the opposite in reality, or it could be non-existent as well.
Usually the impact of picking first is felt in the round 3, where both players have 3 champs left. The person placing second can force imbalanced match-ups in a way the person placing first cannot. A simple example was if I had 2 mystics and a non-mystic and the opponent had a HT + 2 others, while placing first I had no chance of avoiding a HT vs. mystic fight because one of my mystics has to play. If I was placing second, I can definitely avoid a mystic vs. HT fight because I know beforehand where HT can play. While placing first, my only real play in this situation is to force the HT on defense and win with an unfavourable match-up.
Even the odds of getting champs you want from your deck are slightly lower while picking first vs. second. The order for first pick is 1 champ out of 3 from a deck of 30, then 2 out of 5/29, 2 out of 5/27 and 2 out of 5/25. This adds up to a cumulative probability of ~65.8%. If you are going second, you get 2 out of 5/30, 2 out of 5/28, 2 out of 5/26 and 1 out of 3/24. That adds up to ~66.3% chance of getting a particular champ. 0.5% better chance overall.
There are lots of slight advantages to picking second. Over a course of a season these add up.
Some folks picking first mostly and some picking second mostly is still a random system overall. Your ~100 matches is way too small of a sample size to prove anything.
Actually, when the random event is a coinflip, 100 events is a plenty large sample size to gauge the shape of the probability distribution.
Take my own experience. I would estimate I've gone 40 matches picking first every single time. If the odds on any given match are truly 50/50, then the odds of my streak would be 1 in 2^40, which is less than 1 in a TRILLION.
That would mean, if a billion people on this planet each had a thousand accounts, ONE of those accounts for ONE of those people would see that streak, if the odds were indeed 50/50.
Given that at least a dozen people on this forum have complained about this issue, we can conclude definitively that the selection odds are not truly 50/50 - at least, not for those of us affected by this bug.
100 out of the thousands and thousands of matches is not a "plenty large sample size". You need to review how stats work.
I genuinely wish I had your confidence of making assertions on topics you are clearly ignorant about. Though I feel you are going a bit soft considering you didn't just waltz in with your trademark "Wrong." comment. Never change.
That said, you could have just read the three sentences which explained why 100 coinflips in a particular sequence can demonstrate bias and saved yourself the trouble.
Unfortunately MCoC's RNG does not work like a "coinflip", its similar to the RNG of a slot machine. It resets the previous result and makes every result a "new one", I understand that being a 50/50 chance makes it hard to believe; but its as if you were stuck on "groundhog's day". Coinflip stats are based on the result of previous flips. An example (not the greatest) would be the crystal % RNG, opening exactly 100 crystals does not ensure a result since the % is based on each crystal.
I'm not sure I understand the distinction you are making between "coinflips" and slot machines, but if I understand what you're saying that's not how (most) slot machines work. Most slot machines work by implementing a computational pRNG (in fact, I've been told by people who know that Mersenne Twister is still in common usage, even though it is proven to have flaws: those flaws are irrelevant to the random requirements of a slot machine) and then using the timing of the players' button pushes to select a random number from that random sequence, essentially injecting entropy into every slot pull.
To be precise, the pRNG in a slot machine (slot machines can be different: I'm describing a common implementation) simply generates random numbers like a hundred times per second or something, and the moment you push a button it uses whichever number has been generated last. Because the player can't see the generator they cannot directly influence which number gets chosen: they can only pick an essentially random number from a pseudo-random sequence.
This is done to eliminate otherwise potentially exploitable flaws in the pRNGs that slot machines use, which can sometimes be surprisingly weak by modern standards. Weak though they are, they are "random enough" for a multibillion dollar industry.
In effect, MCOC crystals (probably) work in a rather similar fashion. Instead of constantly generating random numbers and throwing them away, MCOC probably uses just a few random generators in their software and thousands of players are constantly opening crystals using those generators, in a sense standing in line waiting for them to drop a result. So the instant that you choose to open a crystal has a very similar effect to a slot machine player choosing when to pull the handle or push a button: a certain (generally unknowable) number of random numbers will get used up by the generator (by other players) and you'll get some fairly random selection from that pseudo random sequence. The act of players opening crystals has less entropy, but the pRNGs in use by the game are probably much stronger than Mersenne (because the generators that come with most language compilers are much stronger by default these days).
None of this matters to non-technical people. Non-technically, the crystals and other random effects in the game are just random (assuming they were implemented properly). The fact that they use pRNGs is only a technical detail that matters to, and can only reasonably be dissected by mathematically knowledgeable people. Google and wikipedia are insufficient for this purpose.
Even the odds of getting champs you want from your deck are slightly lower while picking first vs. second. The order for first pick is 1 champ out of 3 from a deck of 30, then 2 out of 5/29, 2 out of 5/27 and 2 out of 5/25. This adds up to a cumulative probability of ~65.8%. If you are going second, you get 2 out of 5/30, 2 out of 5/28, 2 out of 5/26 and 1 out of 3/24. That adds up to ~66.3% chance of getting a particular champ. 0.5% better chance overall.
You can't add probabilities like that, because those odds are not independent and exclusive. In effect you are adding the probability of pulling what you want in round one to the probability of pulling what you want in round two, but if you pull what you want in round one the probability of pulling that same champ in round two is zero, not ~17%.
The correct thing to do is to calculate the odds of missing the champ you want in each round and multiply them together to get the overall probability of missing that champ in all four rounds of the draft assuming that happens in every round. The odds of pulling the champ you want then becomes the inverse of that. Doing so you get the odds of pulling a specific champ in the draft if you draft first as 51.45% and the odds of doing so if you draft second as 51.62%, a difference of about 0.17%.
Considering what you want to draft is likely going to change once your opponent begins drafting champions (and you start reacting to those drafts), this is likely to be an immaterial advantage.
For anyone curious about where the advantage lies, it lies not in the fact that you draft first or second, but in the fact that the player who drafts first picks one champ in their first round while the player who drafts second picks two champs in their first round. In effect, the player who drafts second eliminates champs from the draft pool slightly quicker (their draft pool starts at 30 then drops to 28, 26, and then 24 while the player who drafts first reduces their pool from 30 to 29 to 27 to 25, which very slightly increases the odds that the champ they want will get pulled in later rounds).
Again, I think this particular advantage is an immaterial one. You're going to draft a champ you want one more time than your opponents out of every 600 matches or so. Assume that getting your first choice while your opponent doesn't increases your expected win rate by a whopping 25 percentage points. This means you will win one more match out of every 2353 matches if you always pick second. For most players, that's an advantage whose average cumulative effects they haven't played enough matches since the launch of the game mode to have seen yet.
As to the picking first vs second in general, I think there is an advantage to picking second, but it is hard to determine what this is because my strategy for drafting and even playing the matches changes depending on whether I pick first or second. If I know the player is placing first in round three, that changes how I play rounds one and two. If I know I am placing first in round three, that changes how I draft in the first place to attempt to neutralize that advantage.
My guess is that for players of my strength and skill, drafting second might be a hypothetical single digit percentage advantage. In a season of, say, 150 matches, I would guess that if I had picked second in every single one, I might have won maybe four or five more matches than if I had picked first in every single one. I typically average across an entire season between 55% and 65% total average win percentage, so that would be the difference between say 90 and 95 wins, changing my win percentage from about 60% to about 63%, in this hypothetical.
These are guesses, because this is really an unknowable thing in general. Statistically, I suppose we could datamine the game and try to determine what the second drafter advantage is, but those would be statistical averages that individual players might diverge wildly from.
One thing I note is that about 61% of my wins are 2-0 wins, and 50% of my losses are 0-2 losses. Now, there might be some draft order advantage baked into those numbers, but I believe a lot of the draft order advantage shows up in matches that go the distance. More than half my matches do not go the distance, which I think would blunt any draft order advantage across a season.
Even the odds of getting champs you want from your deck are slightly lower while picking first vs. second. The order for first pick is 1 champ out of 3 from a deck of 30, then 2 out of 5/29, 2 out of 5/27 and 2 out of 5/25. This adds up to a cumulative probability of ~65.8%. If you are going second, you get 2 out of 5/30, 2 out of 5/28, 2 out of 5/26 and 1 out of 3/24. That adds up to ~66.3% chance of getting a particular champ. 0.5% better chance overall.
You can't add probabilities like that, because those odds are not independent and exclusive. In effect you are adding the probability of pulling what you want in round one to the probability of pulling what you want in round two, but if you pull what you want in round one the probability of pulling that same champ in round two is zero, not ~17%.
The correct thing to do is to calculate the odds of missing the champ you want in each round and multiply them together to get the overall probability of missing that champ in all four rounds of the draft assuming that happens in every round. The odds of pulling the champ you want then becomes the inverse of that. Doing so you get the odds of pulling a specific champ in the draft if you draft first as 51.45% and the odds of doing so if you draft second as 51.62%, a difference of about 0.17%.
Considering what you want to draft is likely going to change once your opponent begins drafting champions (and you start reacting to those drafts), this is likely to be an immaterial advantage.
For anyone curious about where the advantage lies, it lies not in the fact that you draft first or second, but in the fact that the player who drafts first picks one champ in their first round while the player who drafts second picks two champs in their first round. In effect, the player who drafts second eliminates champs from the draft pool slightly quicker (their draft pool starts at 30 then drops to 28, 26, and then 24 while the player who drafts first reduces their pool from 30 to 29 to 27 to 25, which very slightly increases the odds that the champ they want will get pulled in later rounds).
Again, I think this particular advantage is an immaterial one. You're going to draft a champ you want one more time than your opponents out of every 600 matches or so. Assume that getting your first choice while your opponent doesn't increases your expected win rate by a whopping 25 percentage points. This means you will win one more match out of every 2353 matches if you always pick second. For most players, that's an advantage whose average cumulative effects they haven't played enough matches since the launch of the game mode to have seen yet.
Thanks. I thought there might be something wrong in that calculation.
As to the picking first vs second in general, I think there is an advantage to picking second, but it is hard to determine what this is because my strategy for drafting and even playing the matches changes depending on whether I pick first or second. If I know the player is placing first in round three, that changes how I play rounds one and two. If I know I am placing first in round three, that changes how I draft in the first place to attempt to neutralize that advantage.
My guess is that for players of my strength and skill, drafting second might be a hypothetical single digit percentage advantage. In a season of, say, 150 matches, I would guess that if I had picked second in every single one, I might have won maybe four or five more matches than if I had picked first in every single one. I typically average across an entire season between 55% and 65% total average win percentage, so that would be the difference between say 90 and 95 wins, changing my win percentage from about 60% to about 63%, in this hypothetical.
These are guesses, because this is really an unknowable thing in general. Statistically, I suppose we could datamine the game and try to determine what the second drafter advantage is, but those would be statistical averages that individual players might diverge wildly from.
One thing I note is that about 61% of my wins are 2-0 wins, and 50% of my losses are 0-2 losses. Now, there might be some draft order advantage baked into those numbers, but I believe a lot of the draft order advantage shows up in matches that go the distance. More than half my matches do not go the distance, which I think would blunt any draft order advantage across a season.
In interest of transparency. I did get to pick second for the second time this season with 3 medals left to get to GC. After that I have reverted back to picking first, now I'm in GC and only doing the two day objectives - nothing has changed from VT to GC. So, there won't be many more matches to add to my personal sample set.
Even if you assume the shift in win rates is only 3%, then the impact on individual players is substantial. This is your data from an earlier thread on how win rates affect progression for individual players.
Moving win rates from 55% to 65% adds 8-9 matches extra in just one Vibranium tier. If someone is locked into 3% lower win rate through Plat 1 to GC, they are definitely playing a lot more matches than they need to.
There are potential quick fixes to address this, even if the bug is not resolved. The team could just make the change to allow players picking first to place defense second - that'll go a long way in neutralising the advantage, by splitting the information advantage between both players, instead of having it one-sided throughout. I hope something gets done before the next season starts.
As to the picking first vs second in general, I think there is an advantage to picking second, but it is hard to determine what this is because my strategy for drafting and even playing the matches changes depending on whether I pick first or second. If I know the player is placing first in round three, that changes how I play rounds one and two. If I know I am placing first in round three, that changes how I draft in the first place to attempt to neutralize that advantage.
My guess is that for players of my strength and skill, drafting second might be a hypothetical single digit percentage advantage. In a season of, say, 150 matches, I would guess that if I had picked second in every single one, I might have won maybe four or five more matches than if I had picked first in every single one. I typically average across an entire season between 55% and 65% total average win percentage, so that would be the difference between say 90 and 95 wins, changing my win percentage from about 60% to about 63%, in this hypothetical.
These are guesses, because this is really an unknowable thing in general. Statistically, I suppose we could datamine the game and try to determine what the second drafter advantage is, but those would be statistical averages that individual players might diverge wildly from.
One thing I note is that about 61% of my wins are 2-0 wins, and 50% of my losses are 0-2 losses. Now, there might be some draft order advantage baked into those numbers, but I believe a lot of the draft order advantage shows up in matches that go the distance. More than half my matches do not go the distance, which I think would blunt any draft order advantage across a season.
In interest of transparency. I did get to pick second for the second time this season with 3 medals left to get to GC. After that I have reverted back to picking first, now I'm in GC and only doing the two day objectives - nothing has changed from VT to GC. So, there won't be many more matches to add to my personal sample set.
Even if you assume the shift in win rates is only 3%, then the impact on individual players is substantial. This is your data from an earlier thread on how win rates affect progression for individual players.
Moving win rates from 55% to 65% adds 8-9 matches extra in just one Vibranium tier. If someone is locked into 3% lower win rate through Plat 1 to GC, they are definitely playing a lot more matches than they need to.
There are potential quick fixes to address this, even if the bug is not resolved. The team could just make the change to allow players picking first to place defense second - that'll go a long way in neutralising the advantage, by splitting the information advantage between both players, instead of having it one-sided throughout. I hope something gets done before the next season starts.
Odd (and unfortunate) that nothing changed when you hit GC. Since I got there I’ve been picking first more or less 50% of the time. I had concluded that the issue was limited to VT… guess not.
As to the picking first vs second in general, I think there is an advantage to picking second, but it is hard to determine what this is because my strategy for drafting and even playing the matches changes depending on whether I pick first or second. If I know the player is placing first in round three, that changes how I play rounds one and two. If I know I am placing first in round three, that changes how I draft in the first place to attempt to neutralize that advantage.
My guess is that for players of my strength and skill, drafting second might be a hypothetical single digit percentage advantage. In a season of, say, 150 matches, I would guess that if I had picked second in every single one, I might have won maybe four or five more matches than if I had picked first in every single one. I typically average across an entire season between 55% and 65% total average win percentage, so that would be the difference between say 90 and 95 wins, changing my win percentage from about 60% to about 63%, in this hypothetical.
These are guesses, because this is really an unknowable thing in general. Statistically, I suppose we could datamine the game and try to determine what the second drafter advantage is, but those would be statistical averages that individual players might diverge wildly from.
One thing I note is that about 61% of my wins are 2-0 wins, and 50% of my losses are 0-2 losses. Now, there might be some draft order advantage baked into those numbers, but I believe a lot of the draft order advantage shows up in matches that go the distance. More than half my matches do not go the distance, which I think would blunt any draft order advantage across a season.
In interest of transparency. I did get to pick second for the second time this season with 3 medals left to get to GC. After that I have reverted back to picking first, now I'm in GC and only doing the two day objectives - nothing has changed from VT to GC. So, there won't be many more matches to add to my personal sample set.
Even if you assume the shift in win rates is only 3%, then the impact on individual players is substantial. This is your data from an earlier thread on how win rates affect progression for individual players.
Moving win rates from 55% to 65% adds 8-9 matches extra in just one Vibranium tier. If someone is locked into 3% lower win rate through Plat 1 to GC, they are definitely playing a lot more matches than they need to.
There are potential quick fixes to address this, even if the bug is not resolved. The team could just make the change to allow players picking first to place defense second - that'll go a long way in neutralising the advantage, by splitting the information advantage between both players, instead of having it one-sided throughout. I hope something gets done before the next season starts.
Odd (and unfortunate) that nothing changed when you hit GC. Since I got there I’ve been picking first more or less 50% of the time. I had concluded that the issue was limited to VT… guess not.
This has been my experience too. I actually feel like I might be placing second more than 50% of the time now that I'm in GC, but I haven't been paying close enough attention. It feels very much closer to the 50/50 chance we are supposedly supposed to have, at least.
I think DNA summed it up pretty well, there's not enough evidence or sample size to definitively say there's a bug but there's more than enough people reporting nearly the same exact experience that I feel it merits some kind of investigation or explanation on Kabams end.
Comments
If the ordering system is random, my probability of placing first in the next match is 50%. The probability of placing first 10 matches down the line is also 50%, irrespective of what happened in the earlier 9 matches. But if it was truly random the probability of placing first consecutively in the next 10 matches is 0.5^10 which is ~1 in ten thousand, even though the probability of placing first in the 10th match alone is 50%. Hope that helps.
But, is it actually more advantageous to pick first instead of second?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess
"In chess, there is a consensus among players and theorists that the player who makes the first move (White) has an inherent advantage, albeit not one large enough to win under perfect play. This view has been the consensus since at least 1889, when the first World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, addressed the issue, although chess has not yet been solved. "
Also: "Some writers have challenged the view that White has an inherent advantage. GM András Adorján wrote a series of books on the theme that "Black is OK!", arguing that the general perception that White has an advantage is founded more in psychology than reality. Though computer analysis disagrees with his wider claim, it agrees with Adorján that some openings are better than others for Black, and thoughts on the relative strengths of openings have long informed the opening choices in games between top players."
Not a perfect comparison, as MCOC also complicates things by having player's go first twice (in the Draft, and in the Rounds).
As an opposing viewpoint, one could argue that picking first let's you dictate how the rest of the draft will go (ie. Player A picks Human Torch, Player B then avoids drafting Mystic defenders the rest of the match).
I don't know what the right answer is. If there is any advantage to picking first or second, it can be largely obscured by one player's talent level vs another.
I do agree that psychologically it seems like picking first is a disadvantage, but it could be the opposite in reality, or it could be non-existent as well.
It was frustrating, not going to lie about that and I did lose some matches because of it. But once you accept it and already make a game plan based on first pick you can also turn it into your advantage.
Either by sacrificing a champ to force a player to use a certain champ, or by choosing the toughest defender first so you almost certainly win the first round.. In the end of the day, it’s not an excuse for losing.
Even the odds of getting champs you want from your deck are slightly lower while picking first vs. second. The order for first pick is 1 champ out of 3 from a deck of 30, then 2 out of 5/29, 2 out of 5/27 and 2 out of 5/25. This adds up to a cumulative probability of ~65.8%. If you are going second, you get 2 out of 5/30, 2 out of 5/28, 2 out of 5/26 and 1 out of 3/24. That adds up to ~66.3% chance of getting a particular champ. 0.5% better chance overall.
There are lots of slight advantages to picking second. Over a course of a season these add up.
To be precise, the pRNG in a slot machine (slot machines can be different: I'm describing a common implementation) simply generates random numbers like a hundred times per second or something, and the moment you push a button it uses whichever number has been generated last. Because the player can't see the generator they cannot directly influence which number gets chosen: they can only pick an essentially random number from a pseudo-random sequence.
This is done to eliminate otherwise potentially exploitable flaws in the pRNGs that slot machines use, which can sometimes be surprisingly weak by modern standards. Weak though they are, they are "random enough" for a multibillion dollar industry.
In effect, MCOC crystals (probably) work in a rather similar fashion. Instead of constantly generating random numbers and throwing them away, MCOC probably uses just a few random generators in their software and thousands of players are constantly opening crystals using those generators, in a sense standing in line waiting for them to drop a result. So the instant that you choose to open a crystal has a very similar effect to a slot machine player choosing when to pull the handle or push a button: a certain (generally unknowable) number of random numbers will get used up by the generator (by other players) and you'll get some fairly random selection from that pseudo random sequence. The act of players opening crystals has less entropy, but the pRNGs in use by the game are probably much stronger than Mersenne (because the generators that come with most language compilers are much stronger by default these days).
None of this matters to non-technical people. Non-technically, the crystals and other random effects in the game are just random (assuming they were implemented properly). The fact that they use pRNGs is only a technical detail that matters to, and can only reasonably be dissected by mathematically knowledgeable people. Google and wikipedia are insufficient for this purpose.
The correct thing to do is to calculate the odds of missing the champ you want in each round and multiply them together to get the overall probability of missing that champ in all four rounds of the draft assuming that happens in every round. The odds of pulling the champ you want then becomes the inverse of that. Doing so you get the odds of pulling a specific champ in the draft if you draft first as 51.45% and the odds of doing so if you draft second as 51.62%, a difference of about 0.17%.
Considering what you want to draft is likely going to change once your opponent begins drafting champions (and you start reacting to those drafts), this is likely to be an immaterial advantage.
For anyone curious about where the advantage lies, it lies not in the fact that you draft first or second, but in the fact that the player who drafts first picks one champ in their first round while the player who drafts second picks two champs in their first round. In effect, the player who drafts second eliminates champs from the draft pool slightly quicker (their draft pool starts at 30 then drops to 28, 26, and then 24 while the player who drafts first reduces their pool from 30 to 29 to 27 to 25, which very slightly increases the odds that the champ they want will get pulled in later rounds).
Again, I think this particular advantage is an immaterial one. You're going to draft a champ you want one more time than your opponents out of every 600 matches or so. Assume that getting your first choice while your opponent doesn't increases your expected win rate by a whopping 25 percentage points. This means you will win one more match out of every 2353 matches if you always pick second. For most players, that's an advantage whose average cumulative effects they haven't played enough matches since the launch of the game mode to have seen yet.
My guess is that for players of my strength and skill, drafting second might be a hypothetical single digit percentage advantage. In a season of, say, 150 matches, I would guess that if I had picked second in every single one, I might have won maybe four or five more matches than if I had picked first in every single one. I typically average across an entire season between 55% and 65% total average win percentage, so that would be the difference between say 90 and 95 wins, changing my win percentage from about 60% to about 63%, in this hypothetical.
These are guesses, because this is really an unknowable thing in general. Statistically, I suppose we could datamine the game and try to determine what the second drafter advantage is, but those would be statistical averages that individual players might diverge wildly from.
One thing I note is that about 61% of my wins are 2-0 wins, and 50% of my losses are 0-2 losses. Now, there might be some draft order advantage baked into those numbers, but I believe a lot of the draft order advantage shows up in matches that go the distance. More than half my matches do not go the distance, which I think would blunt any draft order advantage across a season.
Even if you assume the shift in win rates is only 3%, then the impact on individual players is substantial. This is your data from an earlier thread on how win rates affect progression for individual players.
Moving win rates from 55% to 65% adds 8-9 matches extra in just one Vibranium tier. If someone is locked into 3% lower win rate through Plat 1 to GC, they are definitely playing a lot more matches than they need to.
There are potential quick fixes to address this, even if the bug is not resolved. The team could just make the change to allow players picking first to place defense second - that'll go a long way in neutralising the advantage, by splitting the information advantage between both players, instead of having it one-sided throughout. I hope something gets done before the next season starts.
I think DNA summed it up pretty well, there's not enough evidence or sample size to definitively say there's a bug but there's more than enough people reporting nearly the same exact experience that I feel it merits some kind of investigation or explanation on Kabams end.