I think my post may have been confusing because I may have tried to talk about things that are happening and things I would like to happen in the same breath.
Currently, the state of affairs is that if you’re battling and there is a connection issue, the game will display something like “connection lost” and then “[other side] win!”, and then you will lose a star and your opponent will gain a star.
What I’d like to see is a one-sided win when a connection issue happens. i.e. on your end it would display “connection lost!” but you would not lose a star. Your opponent would get an “opponent disconnected”, and gain a star.
From what I understand, a win equals a loss in this game so a player can’t disconnect from his/her internet on purpose (for instance, switch wi fi off and on) to avoid a loss (and thus a star loss). And wins and losses due to genuine connection issues should theoretically “even out” if everyone has the same number of issues, making the system seem “fair.”
But there are several problems with this.
For one, gaining rank requires a win rate above 50%. So even if I’m winning as often as I’m losing due to connection issues, I might be failing to advance and thus getting frustrated. Losing one game due to connection issues that I should have won means I might have to win at least 2 additional games to advance rank, at an opportunity cost of at least 20 minutes of my life (which assumes I keep winning, which assumes a lot), depending on what kind of deck I am playing.
Some people on this forum are convinced that there is a hack that some players use to win through connection issues. I don’t subscribe to this... but I also recognize my own limitations, understanding technology. Even the possibility of a hack is a much bigger problem than a player exploiting a one-sided win (disconnecting to avoid a loss, if that became possible). The hacker in this scenario is gaining an advantage at another player’s expense. If connection-error wins were one-sided, the same hacker could exploit the same hack and profit... but would not filch stars from his/her opponents in the process.
Here is the bottom line of my opinion. If connection errors were rare, I would not take issue with the current policy. In that case, stopping people from cheating (disconnect to avoid loss) to preserve the integrity of the game would supercede my occasional inconvenience. But connection errors are quite common... at least from where I’m standing. I saw at least one at every rank I’ve been on, probably. So I believe my inconvinience should supercede the integrity of the ranking system, at least until connection issues become less common. No one should be penalized for having a poor connection. No one should lose stars through no fault of their own.
Finally, when we talk about problems with stars, I think we’re all ultimately talking about the same thing. I think connection issues of one form or another are at the root of all the strange star calculations and stars gone missing.
