What the leaks actually showed is under the hood Wizards likely had some employee who didn't give two craps apply random values to cards and then never update it again (or something along those lines.) This laziness was never supposed to be seen by us the users and now that we've seen it they had to make a post about their incompetence and how they had good intentions for fair matches despite us being able to clearly see this was never the case. Of course they went back to obscuring it, because letting people know how bad it was and having zero accountability "just trust us bro" is what it's all about.
If you start winning more than 4 on a streak then suddenly the algorithm puts you against a deck that perfectly counters your deck, gives you bad draws, puts you at second to start the draw, etc … this shiii is so rigged
I've noticed that problem with people purposefully tanking their mmr in plat and diamond ranks for a long time now. Every month when I rank up from gold into plat, I notice you only get unwinnable opponents for the first 10-20 matchups or so. This probably means there's a lot of people with good decks, purposely tanking their mmr, thus making my fresh 50-60% winrate deck actually seem "good" to the mm engine and cause it to match me against the 70-80% winrate decks.
Yep, winrate tanking has been a huge problem for a while now, especially in Limited, where you can - additionally - still cheese the system by trying to go for crazy high upside drafts and retiring if you don't get there. It's essentially pay-to-win. But in constructed queues aswell, newer players often make Mythic with really bad decks and post about it on Reddit and then you see responses ranging from "well, you only really see meta decks played in Mythic anyways" to "I always play against fully kitted-out meta decks from low Silver onward". Basically, if you're an Arena veteran with a decent overall winrate, you get put up against tougher competition in any ranked queue than if you are a new or "bad" player - leading to MMR tanking.
@@Nr4747 100%. I'm an Arena "veteran" - I have a nice collection, I play meta decks, and I get to mythic pretty much each month I decide to dedicate the time, climbing up to numbers in a month with more time. And I pretty much only queue against meta decks and pretty tough opponents, no matter the rank. Also, frequently the same opponents. I played against streamers a bunch, some more than once. However, this month, as rank rested and I went again to plat 4, I was bored and decided to play with non meta, fun decks. I lost a LOT - not on purpose, but as I said I was being paired against pretty tough opponents, and I was playing jank. My win rate this month is about 30% (I normally have a 58% - 60% WR). I LOST and LOST. Yesterday I began to be paired against some non meta decks, and the meta decks I got were piloted... let's say, "sub optimally". So, that's my anecdotal confirmation for you.
Color based matchmaking IS one of their algorithmic tools, google will even confirm this, lol. The reason they use it is it brings down the rate at which people are unfairly matched as certain colors are more likely to beat out others. Play multi color and you will most likely be matched against some blue deck varient. Play black and you will most likely get matched against some white varient. Play green, and you will most likely get matched against another green or some red varient. This isn't in brawl or commander, though its in their ranked and unranked play.
Just so everyone is aware, this is objectively nonsense. You won't find any credible source online that states this with any proof, no matter how hard you google it. You will definitely find lots of random people stating it as fact in lots of different contradictory variations. If there's proof, I would love to see it, although no one seems to be able to provide it.
He simply discards evidence that goes against his position as _"unsubstantiated nonsense",_ and he then fails to recognize that these types of games are built to procure addiction and spending which is _the obvious core reason behind all of this._ Notice how in not one video, or even response to a comment does he ever acknowledge this as a factor. _Monetary incentives just don't exist despite multiple massive game/mobile phone/live service game industries worth billions being built around it!_
@@dagamingsalmon7668 of course the point of the game is to make profit. No one ever denied that. But if something is unsubstantiated nonsense that is asserted without evidence, then I will dismiss it, obviously. If there was some evidence that was actually credible and reliable, then it would be worth listening to. It's really not complicated.
@@gameschooldadMTG Oh, hit a nerve so I get the smug Redditor attitude I see. Imagine a flat-earther saying _"Sure, I get that you might believe in round Earth because it's the mainstream view, but if you look closely, you'll see that a lot of it is just unsubstantiated nonsense. They never provide credible or reliable sources for evidence to back it up, so I’m not going to take it seriously until they can prove it."_ You're main error that I am trying to point out is your using an aggressive/biased form of skepticism to dismiss evidence without engaging with it properly. Also there's a lot of contradictory positions: -It's not rigged, but the things that are rigged in it are understandable and reasonable. -It's not rigged, but if people abuse any knowledge to game the system due to this rigging, they're lame losers. -Wizards is in it to make a profit, but monetary incentives would never play into why it's rigged. -There's a massive insane market of games rigged in the same ways for addiction & profit and one is literally created every second, but this game is the magical exception despite having the same business model. If I consider you not a credible or reliable source(TM) are you not worth listening to then? What kind of credentialism do you need for me to listen to you? You're not the CEO of WOTC so why should I consider anything you say? You've made just as many assertions without evidence _against_ the evidence being put forth by the (entire) community of claims as "unsubstantiated nonsense" to hand wave it away and dismiss it _without having to explain why it should just be dismissed as such._
@@gameschooldadMTG you definitely can prove a negative. How do you think peer-reviewers are able to prove that results are incorrect? For example the controversial Felisa Wolfe-Simon paper, or academics who are proven to have fabricated their data because their results were not reproducible. As a matter of fact, the whole purpose of a null hypothesis is to be a standard for their being no evidence of a significant relationship in your regression.
Most people are ignoring the fact that weakening your deck, and winning more in the short term, increases your MMR and cancels out so good catch. Play mode also adjusts your Play/Draw ratio to try and get you to a 50% win rate over long term. Those of us who love data have been playing with this for years. Instead of conceding loads, just play with your most fun low powered deck for a while. This even works in ranked (just get to Plat 4, switch to an intro deck and have a great time, then when you start to get wins switch back to your Pro deck and cruise to mythic). My best win streak was 19 ranked Alchemy wins with the same mono black blood artist deck before they got rid of Meathook.
I haven't noticed it actually adjusting your play/draw ratio in unranked, I'll have to have a closer look at that and see if I notice any trends at all.
Matchmaking is based on deck strength before MMR so even in low ranks if your deck strength is high you will face a high deck strength opponent. What each card is worth however is a "soft" unknown factor and likely isn't logical since the leaks show they didn't bother to value the card's strengths properly so my guess is it's based on what is most popular and wins, and since that results in the "mid" problem it's very easy to get around this by playing decks that beat "the mid" players/decks for example I'll use Duskmourne limited. The Mid loves to draft Green/X so when you build a deck make sure it can beat Green/X and it may be best to stay out of green. In Ravnica Allegiance the mid loved to draft B/W so G/R was the answer. I'm oversimplifying it a bit, but that really is the gist of it!
Yep, this is one of the oldest and most successful abuses of the rank system. You soar through ranks by conceding dozens of matches when you reach a new medal (diamond 4, platinum 4, etc.) which will tank your MMR enough to where you play against players with very low MMR. You don't even have to play with a weak deck, just mulligan down to to 1 card, play the first turn, and then concede. With a meta deck, you should be able to go from gold to mythic in a fraction of the time then if you played honestly. This works in BO3 ranked as well.
The mm thing is....well it is what it is. My (and i think many other players) problem is, once youre in game, it still feels very fixed. From forced land draws to statistically anomolous situations. Obviously without hard data there is no way to say for sure, but can anyone here honestly say that frequently in game things can just feel suspicious? I play paper magic and if half the situations ive run into on arena happened at a local tournament, youd have judges breathing down your or your opponents neck wondering how a deck stack had happened. Its happened for and against us all, but in arena it seems to happen so frequently that it begs the question. We've all too decked like a god, and had the top deck go in favor of the opponent. But in arena it feels like it happens all the time. If i play 20 games in a day, i can notice it in fully 1/3 of the games or more. This is a phenomenon that almost never happens in paper. Just enough to know how random it is. I dont like the idea that my or my opponents draws may be manipulated by an algorithm on the excuse of making things "fair". When i play at my local shop and the perfect sequence of events happens either for or against me, it feels like luck. I dont really feel bad if i lose to it or great because i won from it. In MTG arena i feel scummy. I feel like i lost or won on something that wasnt my own merit. If i play bad or make a mistake or build a bad deck, im not mad if i lose, but when i feel like i lost because i was specifically set up to lose, that feels VERY shitty
I'm not sure I see the difference between this happening in paper or on Arena. I've had games on both where something incredibly unlikely or one-sided happens, drawn too many lands, not enough, mulligan down to 5 due to unplayable hands. The only difference I would say is that you can play a lot more games on Arena than you can on paper. At least I'm not going to be able to fit 20 paper games in a day, but on Arena that's easy! With higher sample sizes, you're going to see more statistical outliers. As much as it might instinctively 'feel weird' when you get the perfect top deck, there's absolutely no evidence or reason for the game to manipulate specific card draws or make player A beat player B.
@@gameschooldadMTG like I said, without the hard data from wizards, you of course can't say for sure. If you're going to legitimately put ten toes down and say youve never gotten the feeling, then I guess it is what it is. That being said I've heard it said far too many times to discount it outright. Let me ask you, do you honestly think Wizards is above doing something like that?
@@slaphappy-qb3jb I don't really think it would be worth their time to try to force player A to beat player B considering all the variables. People make the profit argument, but there's always one winner and one loser no matter what, and Wizards can also drive profits by making games less frustrating and more accessible, which improves retention. Most people who push the shuffler conspiracies make clearly biased arguments and have no data to back anything up, so there just isn't anything credible to go on.
I totally agree. F2p for a long time now and I'm getting nothing but terrible matches. If I was a content creator, I would have to spend weeks to get enough content for one video and these turkeys put one out every day with matches I never play. It's always a blowout by turn 3. Even if I'm winning. Doesn't feel like magic. Until wizards releases data publicly it's a strange hill to die on defending wotc. Neither side can actually prove it so I side with everyone else having the same experience as me vs the soulless corporation whose only goal is to make money.
I play a White/Green life gain deck, and a WUBGR Bridge deck. Omg I cant tell you the amount of times ive played against the EXACT same commander. When I play my Bridge deck its as if the only other opponents are Golos and Bridge. Super frustrating when I want to see how well my tweaks go against Control or Aggro or if my land totals need to changed, whatever. I definitely notice when I play more than 3-5+ games in a row, that my land draws are different, need more mulligans for 2+ lands, or I just keep getting shit hands
I just started using a plot deck in standard ranked and have been facing nothing but decks with more than 60 cards. Had a 250 card deck play 3 shelodred edicts by turn 6 and i have a 13% on the play rate after 50 matches. I feel like im constantly being punished for not paying money.
If you can share the deck list I'll try it on my paid and free acounts to see if there's any difference, but I'd be very surprised to see a 13% go first rate after 50 games, that would be a significant outlier.
You can’t tell someone how confirmation bias works, because to do so would confirm your own bias. The fact is they’ve admitted that they are trying to make “fair” matchups by manipulating the mm algorithm, which results in imbalanced experiences. They do this in order to make a profit, which isn’t bad, they are a company after all.
In what way do you think the matchmaking algorithm results in imbalanced matches? There's always going to be some level of natural imbalance between players of different skill level and different deck strengths or archetypes, but that evens out over the long term. If there wasn't any effort to balance the matches, you'd have much more imbalanced matches with new players getting farmed and experienced players getting bored. Fair matchmaking is an effort to reduce frustration (just like the hand smoothing), which should increase profits through greater customer retention. The longer people stay, the more they'll enjoy the game and the more money they'll spend.
@@gameschooldadMTG "Fair matchmaking is an effort to reduce frustration (just like the hand smoothing), which should increase profits through greater customer retention." Since there's a boatload of evidence to the contrary I'd like to see where you got that from. Literally every mobile game that exists today doesn't actually care about the player having an enjoyable time as that is not linked to spending or retention. Most of the most predatory churn out the average player and just look for milking whales since a single whale is worth 100s of regular players. (Your mistake here is not understanding how games are most effectively monetized from an actual/psychological level and your reasoning comes from the Just World Hypothesis/Fallacy.)
@@gameschooldadMTG What you are describing is essential engagement oriented matchmaking which prioritizes player retention by increasing challenges. However, this challenge usually does NOT involve skill in the matchmaking algorithms, and if anything will create matches where 1 side is more likely to win to give an artificial challenge. And you are conflating player retention with good experience. Most of the player retention in EOMM is achieved through severe phycological manipulation and pushing addictive tendencies. Blizzard has a patent on this, and there are peer-reviewed articles that specifically discuss how matching based on skill leads to worse player retention than other non-skilled based factors.
GTA gif plays: Awww sh_t, here we go again! Dude, it's blatantly rigged(like a ton of other competitive and mobile games right now.) Either due to sheer stupidity, malice, or whatever. It's only a matter of time before you eat all these words. You don't think anything else is going to get leaked down the road, and the current leaks aren't already ludicrous? Why would anyone play Arena when MTGO or Tabletop Simulator exist anyways? Really I feel something is going to change with what happened with COD, LOL, etc. Matchmaking has to change, and addiction+competition has to stop being used to abuse the player base for profits. Something is going to reach a head, and I feel like it's coming soon.
@@duckmrow3201 I'm only sharing the available information and dismissing unsubstantiated nonsense, so there are really any words to eat. If it was blatantly rigged then there would be actual evidence now, not just "one day there will be a leak that proves me right".
@@gameschooldadMTG -Don't bother with real questions/concerns. -Construct a model based on preconceived ideas. -Find data that agrees with model. -Discard data that does not align with model. -Shout unsubstantiated nonsense or call dissenters conspiracy theorists. "There would be actual evidence"
@@_APG_ are you also misunderstanding what the brawl card weight data actually is? Or are you referring to some other mystery evidence that I haven't seen yet?
They match based on cards too, I go months without facing certain cards. The one time I pick a deck I have with those cards I suddenly get matched against people who have those cards. The matching should be completely random. They should only have power categories they put you in, then it’s random
I hate modern ranked matchmaking rigging in every game, and then they have the audacity to talk about skill and stuff (talking about the other ones). The experience I have in this game in normal matches vs ranked is like heaven and earth but that could be probably said about all multiplayer games these days... On a side note, a funny thing was happening to me like 10~ years ago in Hearthstone, when a certain Super-Meta Mid-Range Shaman deck was occupying almost 40% of the ranked ladder and my Freeze Mage was the best counter to it, I queue'd and gotten the deck that hard-counters me pretty often, Control Warrior (like 3% of the ladder), probably at the same rate as I've gotten the desired Shamans if not more. Really hated the experience there as well... The devs in every game seem to have good intentions(being a blind optimist here for a moment) about balancing out players but it never ends well if you're not a bot-like aggro button-masher player who spams games and burns out his psyche (or just turns his brains off).
This is absurd, but I wouldn't be surprised, given that Wizzards has a pretty stupid ideology. I must admit that these things must be true. It's not possible! There are things that only happen in the Arena, and you can even ignore it, like “luck”, but it is suspicious. I had 10 games in a row that I didn't start, plus terrible draws. The result was terrible, so I “won” a streak of 6 wins in a row. What would this be? Does Wizzards make me lose some games, or do they work hard for this, and then give me “rigged” matches? It's frustrating, but I'm starting to understand why sometimes, on the 3 mulligan, you open without any mana! In the past, it was possible to make solid, very consistent decks. Now, the same decks often fail over and over again in multiple games! It's frustrating.
The issue is not about making the game more “balanced “, the issue is what is when something is suppose to random and it is manipulated is the issue. Regardless if it is for both players. Heck at least Las Vegas card games are random albeit stacked against you. Let’s be honest this manipulation is not to make the game more enjoyable it is to keep player retention this increasing profits . I believe if they were completely transparent and shared all this behind the curtain manipulation and everyone was aware of it, numbers would drastically decrease and it would be removed quickly
No one ever said matchmaking was supposed to be completely random. If it was, it would cause many games to be very imbalanced between players. Casual/jank/new players should not be paired up with super optimised tryhards when the unranked queue is intended to be casual. Making the game more balanced is literally a method to make it more enjoyable for everyone, which yes increases customer retention and ultimately profits. I don't see why people think those are mutually exclusive.
First off I enjoy your content and appreciate your commitment . No one ever said matching making was supposed to be completely random. Of course not. This would be a flat out lie since it intentionally manipulated. WOTC also never said match making was “manipulated” until leaks like this were revealed. I take issue with the deception. It’s a tactic to keep new players vested in the game. I easily reached mythic my first month after not playing Mtg (paper) for 10+ years and noticed if got increasingly harder. I do not have issue with matching up players with the same skill level but I doubt that is the only thing that is being controlled as evident in the card value/ranking system. I’m sorry but you would have to be gullible if you believe this manipulation was only in the unranked queue While I do enjoy Mtg as a whole . If I had known from the beginning there was behind to scenes manipulation to something I assumed was random. I would have not gotten into Arena let alone spend money on it . Speaking for myself . I rather lose by something random or my own skill even if I had a jank deck vs a try hard deck than to feel like I got cheated by a system.
@@mikeylikey0889 first you said it's supposed to be random, then you said no one said it's supposed to be random, and now you feel deceived because you assumed it was random... I'm a little confused. Wotc have always said that unranked games are matched by MMR and deck/commander weight. The only thing that's different is we have some specific numbers now, which are likely to change. Honestly don't see where the deception is 🤷♂️
I never said no one ever said it was random . I was quoting you saying “ no one ever said match making was completely random”. Yes when I first started playing arena I assumed I was playing a card game just like in real life would be random and not predetermined. As I said I don’t have issue with matching players based on skill (that it itself I can admit would happen and not feel deceived) but that is clearly not the only manipulation going on. Again if you believe this multimillion dollar company is only manipulating in the unranked queue then… 🤷♂️ They already admitted to hand smoothing in bo1 ranked after being caught with undeniable data.
@@mikeylikey0889 there's a big difference between having a matchmaking algorithm and the game being predetermined. If you play a game with someone on paper, would you not have any kind of discussion or agreement on the power level of the decks you're using? This algorithm is an effort to emulate that in an anonymous online game. I've also said it many times before, Hand Smoothing isn't a gotcha. They weren't 'caught' doing something devious. It's just an effort to reduce overly frustrating games for a short attention span online audience. If you don't like it, do BO3 and get 0 land hands more often if you prefer that.
I don't have that many cards and I like to create meme decks. I saw that putting or removing good cards could change matchmaking, so I already avoided putting too many epics and stuff like that but it was a half effort since we didn't have proof. What is an issue, that I even reported to them as feedback once, is that the weights are too sensitive. As it happened to a friend that tried to play Arena, it's very easy to add random epics to an almost starter deck and you go straight to "hell queue" getting paired against the top tournament decks. It's very demoralising to have few cards, you open maybe your first epics, and then lose every game against opponents that have complete decklists full of rare/epic cards (that a casual player might not even know exist!). It feels very unfair and makes the game look completely pay to win. Because of how it sums the elo, there seems to exist "tiers" of decks with certain rating, which are probably starter decks, decks with epics (maybe 1 maybe many like the greedy control decks you see in casual), and competitive. And it's easy for a few cards to move you absurdly up or down in rating. According to Untapped, the most common best decks are mostly aggro, so if you don't raise your MMR or put high rated cards you won't play against them. Which also means that the higher your total MMR, the more you should adjust to good aggro and vice versa. This is something that used to happen in Hearthstone. It was well known that in less competitive tiers there were plenty of gimmick and greedy decks, which means that aggro wins and you find a lot of aggro in higher tiers. This last point does change how I build decks. Now I know for sure that if I make a new deck, play 2-3 games and get paired against a tournament deck, then my deck MMR is probably high and I should tweak it to be specifically better against the most common best decks (which means answers to certain 1-3 drops). On the other hand, if my deck has a low MMR, then I should play more greedy or aggressive cards to handle more mid-range and control. This also addresses the "lifegain doesn't get paired against aggro" conspiracy. You will get paired against aggro and have a huge win rate as long as you have a high total MMR that puts you in a range where aggro is very common. Maybe the person was playing against aggro just before, but when they changed to the lower rated lifegain deck (plus they probably lost games before that), their MMR dropped a lot and now they are playing in the meme control tier.
I don't think the deck weighting is very sensitive, as it's just a sum of all the individual card strengths put together, changing just one or two cards shouldn't affect the total deck score too much. What can happen sometimes is people get matched outside of their relative deck strength just because there are fewer people online in the queue and it just matches you against the best option. If almost everyone is playing the best deck they have, then this will feel like it comes up a lot. Aggro decks are the most common usually, but that doesn't necessarily link to higher MMR. Many aggro decks use only a few rares, so they can have a low matchmaking score generally. I don't think the different tiers of decks are likely to relate directly to deck types. I doubt there's a tier for Aggro, another tier for Control, etc. Because you can have an aggro deck with any number of rares in in for example. There might be small bands where some deck types clump together, but there's so many variables involved that it wouldn't be easy to confirm with any certainty. What you could do is use something like Untapped or MTGA Assistant to track your games to see what archetypes you face most often and see where your weak points are, then adjust your deck to counter those decks a little better.
Yeah - this is what I call the average player effect - if you play a weight of deck that means the average ability player will likely have a specific deck then you’ll see it more. Loose a few and that deck changes, win some and you’ll be back against it! And if you change your deck to counter it - your deck rating changes so your opponents do too!
@@gameschooldadMTG I think my comment mixed the rare/epic thing with the deck archetype question. At least from my experience it does happen that very silly initial decks you make can get paired easily with higher quality decks when you change a few cards. It's probably due to the lack of players like you said, because in the edge of the distribution, where the new players are, a small change in rating gets amplified when you are forced to expand the matching range. Which is very annoying when you are an actual new player. Now when we talk about the other side of the distribution, I do believe that any matchmaking system will make aggro show more often in higher elos (as long as aggro is viable) like it did in HS. The reason for that is a mixture of aggro playing more matches (which inflates ranking and makes them more likely to be in the matchmaking pool at any given time) and high frequency aggro working as sort of a gatekeeper for other archetypes. In arena you also have the rewards factor, so a fast mono color deck is a good deck to play, experienced players know and will do that. From the Untapped data it looks like this is the case in Arena like it was in HS, and at least my deck tracker agrees. When my MMR is low I get a diverse pool of opponents, something like 2 colors repetitions in 30+ matches, which probably means a diverse distribution of archetypes too. But when high, the distribution collapses very fast to the few aggro meta decks. I will see the good competitive control decks, but they are way less common.
@@snackplaylove I guess you can also make yourself miserable by achieving good player rating with a bad deck and then switching to the highest rated deck.
In the end I still don't like the matchmaking and not sure they will be able to (or even want to) come up with something better. At this point, I would be happy if they could just fix the go first/second mechanic. There are still way too many times I'm going second multiple games in a row and it's really no fun when I've having to do it against the aggro decks. And I know it's not me because I use untapped and can see the log.
@@gameschooldadMTG overall as in the current season, i've played 77 matches so far and have gone 2nd 37 times. in the previous season, out of 844 total matches played, i believe i went 2nd 422 times but i may have miscounted. but i will say that these long streaks (say 5+) happen every 3-4 days and in between, plenty of times i was going 3-4 times in a row on draw. above is for standard, best of 1. also last season w/l record was 421 to 423 and current season is record is 35-42. so it's not like i'm going 2nd because i'm good. also i do play a lot of different decks from META to not very un-META.
@@Tony_Z__ long sequences of repetitions is a way to tell that something is truly random. You can argue that it should be more pseudo-random and avoid doing that to not be boring though.
@@luisfelipehs6176 As far as the go first or second mechanic, I'd rather it not be random as I'm finding it to be unfair as well as not fun at all when I have to sit through those long strings of going second and then having to do that every 3-4 days.
@@Tony_Z__ it might be frustrating to have long streaks of going second, but the stats you shared show you're going first at least 50% of the time, so I'm guessing you most likely have long streaks of going first as well.
I think the saddest thing is not that people need to manipulate the game to have wins because they just fight back against the company who rigged a game. Why is that most of the time when I win or lose either me or the opponent cannot do anything because no land or land flood. If I made a mistake and I lose I accept it. It's my fault but when they just use me as puppet to manage the win rate of people they are wasting my time and I will write a bot playing instead of me than just play personally with friends to have fun. They approach to micromanaging the players statistic is horrible is cause just harm to the community. If there's no matchmaking system the games would be more random (with certain desk I always have enemies playing the perfect counter against it) in ranked it's okay they choose from the same rank but in random games shouldn't be like this. If anyone likes the idea or want to add anymore please like it and comment it. Thanks
@@sandorottoplesko4891 if there was no matchmaking system at all, then it would increase the likelihood of games that are wildly unbalanced, which would be more frustrating for the majority of players. The company doesn't micromanage people's win rates, they just create a system where matches are more balanced, which means neither player has an unfair advantage, which naturally flattens win rates. That means while some individual games in BO1 will be against perfect counters or mana problems, the main factor in your overall win rate over time will be skill, not luck.
@@gameschooldadMTG They gave opponents that are very good counter of my creature deck the obliterator I made obliterator deck now I never face any creature deck or if I get one won't get any land. That old creature deck it performed much better. So the conclusion to me that they check what is in your deck and there's no randomness in the matchmaking, what should be. They decide which you loose or win. Most likely they can manipulate the shuffler too. I will upload vidoes what will prove my point.
@@sandorottoplesko4891 you lost some games. It's a very big leap of the imagination to assume the game decided to make you lose by checking your deck and matching you against someone who you couldn't win against.
This dude has been playing ball for Wizards and ignoring all the real arguments against his pandering position in all of his videos like this. He cherry picks data that agrees with him, then ignores or hand waves everything else away. He won't engage with the idea that EOMM exists and _that's_ the reason it's not fair in the first place is that their is a monetary incentive is what he won't talk about as it disproves his entire position. There's zillions of other mobile games like this, it's existed forever, it's nothing new, and yet he refuses to engage with this criticism or explanation. Instead he just says "you lost some games bruh", "other person wins too bruh." He fails to see the larger picture, or understand why those incentives exist and have created the situation in MTG Arena in the first place. _(Even sillier is this isn't an issue in MTGO!)_ There's entire guides out there already on how to manipulate match-ups now, and they work. Just keep in mind the reason any game pushes W/L/W/L/W/L is it fuels spending and addiction. It's science. It sucks that it's true, but living in denial (or outright lying about it) isn't helping anyone.
@@_APG_ Honestly it's probably because of what happened with Magic Online. They are probably afraid not rigging it will cause it to be become something that can't get rid of and that isn't very profitable(if Magic Online is profitable at all at this point.)
I am glad of this reveal, because it confirms that brawl is something of a phony format. The excuse given towards criticism of brawl has always been regarding how the ranking system 'balances' things... yet now we know for actual certainty that it does not, purely because the ranking weights are so stupidly random and arbitrarily assigned. Why is Ornithopter a 32 compared to The One Ring's 9? Why is Irencrag valued ludicrously higher than arcane signet? Why the hell is Zenith flare 216? This isn't Ikoria limited, why is Zenith flare literally enemy number 1? Imagine going to a paper tourney, but the banlist is not made public. You have no idea whether your deck can play until you sit down and whip out your deck, whereupon a Judge places their hand on your shoulder and shakes their head meaningfully. If this weighting system is inherently flawed, then what does that say about a format that entirely relies upon that system for its balancing?
I really wish this information had never been found. I have not enjoyed playing Arena for the past 4 days. At all. It’s been an everloving nightmare. I went from maybe a 33% win rate to below 10%. Do you know how much fun it is to feel like the game is purposefully throwing you against people who perpetually counter you? It’s only gotten WORSE. I like playing Red / Green. Nope…can’t do that anymore. It seems like all I face now is friggen control. Nothing….but…control. It feels like EVERYONE has tuned their decks to deliberately only face low MMR people, and I’m being punished for it. I honestly have gotten to where I spend 9 games doing my daily and then honestly debate if I’d rather play more…or throw myself down a flight of stairs. When you get 1 win out of 9 games, the game goes from “I’ll get them next time,” to “great…another person spamming cheap kill and control spells…again…for the 8th game in a row”. They either need to massively lower the amount of exile and kill spells, or make them a MUCH higher point cost, because I am just…done dealing with perpetual losses and spending 5 turns watching 5 versions of “Cut Down”, “Ossification”, or “Heroes Downfall” thrown against me every…single…turn.
@@gameschooldadMTG I think when I looked they were lower valued than spells that can target opponents for damage. Personally, I think that's backwards--I have always played where I could care less about damage until I'm under 6 life points. But I have seen a marked increase in facing decks that are absolutely loaded down with removal. As I have said--getting at least 4 wins the past few days has been like headbutting a wall. As a lifelong Washington Football fan and migraine sufferer, I know the kind of headache that causes. I think exile and removal needs to be somehow reigned in. I have no issue with most non-white wrath spells--Black/Red/Green/Blue AoE removal tend to require substantial mana, while White I feel takes far less mana than it should. My friend made a deck that is literally 24 lands, 4 Urubrask's Forges, 4 Churning Reservoirs, and nothing but black removal spells. It cleaves thru most of Arena, because nearly every spell is 2 mana and can take out 75% of the threats you see the next turn. That deck should have an insane point value, but it doesn't seem to. Same with the new Green/Red Urubrask's Forge deck I have seen. A ton of green fight spells and power-up spells, and 4/4 Forges/Reservoir...and it has annihilated me every match.
And I just went 0/15, dropped from Platinum 2 to Platinum 4, and had the game not let me play 5 turns in the last match...against a Mono-Green deck, so there is no way they could keep me from using my turn. So not only is my luck just...horrible, I'm also having the game outright force losses.
@@gameschooldadMTG Form you for ur lies and miss direction from other video's trying to white wash what the hell is really going on with Arena and the endless ways it's poor quality at the same time Hyper rigged per Dota 2, which should be illegal. Once again.. Hyper rigged MMR, broken if not broken/ rigged shuffler. F.. F- quality product. Non legit Magic, unplayable... should be shutdown ASAP... But won't for Profit of course. No credibility once again from WOTC, every move that make is super scamy, shady, and shameless. Fire Mark Rosewater today... rebuild arena make it right... Let's make magic Great Again instead of this hot trash everybody knows as Arena.... Thank You...
@@gameschooldadMTG From you Hasbro / WOTC it's all hyper rigged garbage on multiple levels.. joke scam shady cash grab con... Everybody knows.. everybody talks about it. Even the paid streamers talk about it, i've talked to the big ones Ashizzle-AliEldrazi-Crockeys-Voxy-Amazonian... we all talk about it.
What the leaks actually showed is under the hood Wizards likely had some employee who didn't give two craps apply random values to cards and then never update it again (or something along those lines.) This laziness was never supposed to be seen by us the users and now that we've seen it they had to make a post about their incompetence and how they had good intentions for fair matches despite us being able to clearly see this was never the case.
Of course they went back to obscuring it, because letting people know how bad it was and having zero accountability "just trust us bro" is what it's all about.
If you start winning more than 4 on a streak then suddenly the algorithm puts you against a deck that perfectly counters your deck, gives you bad draws, puts you at second to start the draw, etc … this shiii is so rigged
Funny how I've had multiple winning streaks of 10 or more...
yah can see it on the data of every win/loss graph over time, welcome to the rigged Hero/Zero Arena algorithm
I've noticed that problem with people purposefully tanking their mmr in plat and diamond ranks for a long time now. Every month when I rank up from gold into plat, I notice you only get unwinnable opponents for the first 10-20 matchups or so. This probably means there's a lot of people with good decks, purposely tanking their mmr, thus making my fresh 50-60% winrate deck actually seem "good" to the mm engine and cause it to match me against the 70-80% winrate decks.
Yep, winrate tanking has been a huge problem for a while now, especially in Limited, where you can - additionally - still cheese the system by trying to go for crazy high upside drafts and retiring if you don't get there. It's essentially pay-to-win. But in constructed queues aswell, newer players often make Mythic with really bad decks and post about it on Reddit and then you see responses ranging from "well, you only really see meta decks played in Mythic anyways" to "I always play against fully kitted-out meta decks from low Silver onward". Basically, if you're an Arena veteran with a decent overall winrate, you get put up against tougher competition in any ranked queue than if you are a new or "bad" player - leading to MMR tanking.
@@Nr4747 100%. I'm an Arena "veteran" - I have a nice collection, I play meta decks, and I get to mythic pretty much each month I decide to dedicate the time, climbing up to numbers in a month with more time. And I pretty much only queue against meta decks and pretty tough opponents, no matter the rank. Also, frequently the same opponents. I played against streamers a bunch, some more than once. However, this month, as rank rested and I went again to plat 4, I was bored and decided to play with non meta, fun decks. I lost a LOT - not on purpose, but as I said I was being paired against pretty tough opponents, and I was playing jank. My win rate this month is about 30% (I normally have a 58% - 60% WR). I LOST and LOST. Yesterday I began to be paired against some non meta decks, and the meta decks I got were piloted... let's say, "sub optimally". So, that's my anecdotal confirmation for you.
Color based matchmaking IS one of their algorithmic tools, google will even confirm this, lol.
The reason they use it is it brings down the rate at which people are unfairly matched as certain colors are more likely to beat out others. Play multi color and you will most likely be matched against some blue deck varient. Play black and you will most likely get matched against some white varient. Play green, and you will most likely get matched against another green or some red varient. This isn't in brawl or commander, though its in their ranked and unranked play.
Just so everyone is aware, this is objectively nonsense. You won't find any credible source online that states this with any proof, no matter how hard you google it. You will definitely find lots of random people stating it as fact in lots of different contradictory variations. If there's proof, I would love to see it, although no one seems to be able to provide it.
7:18 how can we know for sure weights are not applied to Ranked? Where is the proof of that?
You can't prove a negative, but there's also no reason for it to be and no evidence that it is.
He simply discards evidence that goes against his position as _"unsubstantiated nonsense",_ and he then fails to recognize that these types of games are built to procure addiction and spending which is _the obvious core reason behind all of this._ Notice how in not one video, or even response to a comment does he ever acknowledge this as a factor. _Monetary incentives just don't exist despite multiple massive game/mobile phone/live service game industries worth billions being built around it!_
@@dagamingsalmon7668 of course the point of the game is to make profit. No one ever denied that. But if something is unsubstantiated nonsense that is asserted without evidence, then I will dismiss it, obviously. If there was some evidence that was actually credible and reliable, then it would be worth listening to. It's really not complicated.
@@gameschooldadMTG Oh, hit a nerve so I get the smug Redditor attitude I see. Imagine a flat-earther saying _"Sure, I get that you might believe in round Earth because it's the mainstream view, but if you look closely, you'll see that a lot of it is just unsubstantiated nonsense. They never provide credible or reliable sources for evidence to back it up, so I’m not going to take it seriously until they can prove it."_ You're main error that I am trying to point out is your using an aggressive/biased form of skepticism to dismiss evidence without engaging with it properly.
Also there's a lot of contradictory positions:
-It's not rigged, but the things that are rigged in it are understandable and reasonable.
-It's not rigged, but if people abuse any knowledge to game the system due to this rigging, they're lame losers.
-Wizards is in it to make a profit, but monetary incentives would never play into why it's rigged.
-There's a massive insane market of games rigged in the same ways for addiction & profit and one is literally created every second, but this game is the magical exception despite having the same business model.
If I consider you not a credible or reliable source(TM) are you not worth listening to then? What kind of credentialism do you need for me to listen to you? You're not the CEO of WOTC so why should I consider anything you say? You've made just as many assertions without evidence _against_ the evidence being put forth by the (entire) community of claims as "unsubstantiated nonsense" to hand wave it away and dismiss it _without having to explain why it should just be dismissed as such._
@@gameschooldadMTG you definitely can prove a negative. How do you think peer-reviewers are able to prove that results are incorrect? For example the controversial Felisa Wolfe-Simon paper, or academics who are proven to have fabricated their data because their results were not reproducible.
As a matter of fact, the whole purpose of a null hypothesis is to be a standard for their being no evidence of a significant relationship in your regression.
Most people are ignoring the fact that weakening your deck, and winning more in the short term, increases your MMR and cancels out so good catch. Play mode also adjusts your Play/Draw ratio to try and get you to a 50% win rate over long term.
Those of us who love data have been playing with this for years. Instead of conceding loads, just play with your most fun low powered deck for a while. This even works in ranked (just get to Plat 4, switch to an intro deck and have a great time, then when you start to get wins switch back to your Pro deck and cruise to mythic).
My best win streak was 19 ranked Alchemy wins with the same mono black blood artist deck before they got rid of Meathook.
I haven't noticed it actually adjusting your play/draw ratio in unranked, I'll have to have a closer look at that and see if I notice any trends at all.
Meathook abuser... boooooo
In my tracking I never noticed anything with play/draw, It looks 50/50 over 100+ games.
Matchmaking is based on deck strength before MMR so even in low ranks if your deck strength is high you will face a high deck strength opponent. What each card is worth however is a "soft" unknown factor and likely isn't logical since the leaks show they didn't bother to value the card's strengths properly so my guess is it's based on what is most popular and wins, and since that results in the "mid" problem it's very easy to get around this by playing decks that beat "the mid" players/decks for example I'll use Duskmourne limited. The Mid loves to draft Green/X so when you build a deck make sure it can beat Green/X and it may be best to stay out of green. In Ravnica Allegiance the mid loved to draft B/W so G/R was the answer. I'm oversimplifying it a bit, but that really is the gist of it!
Yep, this is one of the oldest and most successful abuses of the rank system. You soar through ranks by conceding dozens of matches when you reach a new medal (diamond 4, platinum 4, etc.) which will tank your MMR enough to where you play against players with very low MMR. You don't even have to play with a weak deck, just mulligan down to to 1 card, play the first turn, and then concede. With a meta deck, you should be able to go from gold to mythic in a fraction of the time then if you played honestly.
This works in BO3 ranked as well.
The mm thing is....well it is what it is. My (and i think many other players) problem is, once youre in game, it still feels very fixed. From forced land draws to statistically anomolous situations. Obviously without hard data there is no way to say for sure, but can anyone here honestly say that frequently in game things can just feel suspicious? I play paper magic and if half the situations ive run into on arena happened at a local tournament, youd have judges breathing down your or your opponents neck wondering how a deck stack had happened. Its happened for and against us all, but in arena it seems to happen so frequently that it begs the question.
We've all too decked like a god, and had the top deck go in favor of the opponent. But in arena it feels like it happens all the time. If i play 20 games in a day, i can notice it in fully 1/3 of the games or more. This is a phenomenon that almost never happens in paper. Just enough to know how random it is. I dont like the idea that my or my opponents draws may be manipulated by an algorithm on the excuse of making things "fair". When i play at my local shop and the perfect sequence of events happens either for or against me, it feels like luck. I dont really feel bad if i lose to it or great because i won from it. In MTG arena i feel scummy. I feel like i lost or won on something that wasnt my own merit. If i play bad or make a mistake or build a bad deck, im not mad if i lose, but when i feel like i lost because i was specifically set up to lose, that feels VERY shitty
I'm not sure I see the difference between this happening in paper or on Arena. I've had games on both where something incredibly unlikely or one-sided happens, drawn too many lands, not enough, mulligan down to 5 due to unplayable hands. The only difference I would say is that you can play a lot more games on Arena than you can on paper. At least I'm not going to be able to fit 20 paper games in a day, but on Arena that's easy! With higher sample sizes, you're going to see more statistical outliers. As much as it might instinctively 'feel weird' when you get the perfect top deck, there's absolutely no evidence or reason for the game to manipulate specific card draws or make player A beat player B.
@@gameschooldadMTG like I said, without the hard data from wizards, you of course can't say for sure. If you're going to legitimately put ten toes down and say youve never gotten the feeling, then I guess it is what it is. That being said I've heard it said far too many times to discount it outright.
Let me ask you, do you honestly think Wizards is above doing something like that?
@@slaphappy-qb3jb I don't really think it would be worth their time to try to force player A to beat player B considering all the variables. People make the profit argument, but there's always one winner and one loser no matter what, and Wizards can also drive profits by making games less frustrating and more accessible, which improves retention. Most people who push the shuffler conspiracies make clearly biased arguments and have no data to back anything up, so there just isn't anything credible to go on.
I totally agree. F2p for a long time now and I'm getting nothing but terrible matches. If I was a content creator, I would have to spend weeks to get enough content for one video and these turkeys put one out every day with matches I never play. It's always a blowout by turn 3. Even if I'm winning. Doesn't feel like magic. Until wizards releases data publicly it's a strange hill to die on defending wotc. Neither side can actually prove it so I side with everyone else having the same experience as me vs the soulless corporation whose only goal is to make money.
I play a White/Green life gain deck, and a WUBGR Bridge deck. Omg I cant tell you the amount of times ive played against the EXACT same commander. When I play my Bridge deck its as if the only other opponents are Golos and Bridge. Super frustrating when I want to see how well my tweaks go against Control or Aggro or if my land totals need to changed, whatever. I definitely notice when I play more than 3-5+ games in a row, that my land draws are different, need more mulligans for 2+ lands, or I just keep getting shit hands
I just started using a plot deck in standard ranked and have been facing nothing but decks with more than 60 cards. Had a 250 card deck play 3 shelodred edicts by turn 6 and i have a 13% on the play rate after 50 matches. I feel like im constantly being punished for not paying money.
If you can share the deck list I'll try it on my paid and free acounts to see if there's any difference, but I'd be very surprised to see a 13% go first rate after 50 games, that would be a significant outlier.
Oh, I guarantee you, I CAN have a negative-rating deck.
You can’t tell someone how confirmation bias works, because to do so would confirm your own bias. The fact is they’ve admitted that they are trying to make “fair” matchups by manipulating the mm algorithm, which results in imbalanced experiences. They do this in order to make a profit, which isn’t bad, they are a company after all.
In what way do you think the matchmaking algorithm results in imbalanced matches? There's always going to be some level of natural imbalance between players of different skill level and different deck strengths or archetypes, but that evens out over the long term. If there wasn't any effort to balance the matches, you'd have much more imbalanced matches with new players getting farmed and experienced players getting bored. Fair matchmaking is an effort to reduce frustration (just like the hand smoothing), which should increase profits through greater customer retention. The longer people stay, the more they'll enjoy the game and the more money they'll spend.
@@gameschooldadMTG "Fair matchmaking is an effort to reduce frustration (just like the hand smoothing), which should increase profits through greater customer retention." Since there's a boatload of evidence to the contrary I'd like to see where you got that from. Literally every mobile game that exists today doesn't actually care about the player having an enjoyable time as that is not linked to spending or retention. Most of the most predatory churn out the average player and just look for milking whales since a single whale is worth 100s of regular players.
(Your mistake here is not understanding how games are most effectively monetized from an actual/psychological level and your reasoning comes from the Just World Hypothesis/Fallacy.)
@@gameschooldadMTG What you are describing is essential engagement oriented matchmaking which prioritizes player retention by increasing challenges. However, this challenge usually does NOT involve skill in the matchmaking algorithms, and if anything will create matches where 1 side is more likely to win to give an artificial challenge. And you are conflating player retention with good experience. Most of the player retention in EOMM is achieved through severe phycological manipulation and pushing addictive tendencies. Blizzard has a patent on this, and there are peer-reviewed articles that specifically discuss how matching based on skill leads to worse player retention than other non-skilled based factors.
GTA gif plays: Awww sh_t, here we go again!
Dude, it's blatantly rigged(like a ton of other competitive and mobile games right now.) Either due to sheer stupidity, malice, or whatever. It's only a matter of time before you eat all these words. You don't think anything else is going to get leaked down the road, and the current leaks aren't already ludicrous? Why would anyone play Arena when MTGO or Tabletop Simulator exist anyways?
Really I feel something is going to change with what happened with COD, LOL, etc. Matchmaking has to change, and addiction+competition has to stop being used to abuse the player base for profits. Something is going to reach a head, and I feel like it's coming soon.
@@duckmrow3201 I'm only sharing the available information and dismissing unsubstantiated nonsense, so there are really any words to eat. If it was blatantly rigged then there would be actual evidence now, not just "one day there will be a leak that proves me right".
@@gameschooldadMTG -Don't bother with real questions/concerns.
-Construct a model based on preconceived ideas.
-Find data that agrees with model.
-Discard data that does not align with model.
-Shout unsubstantiated nonsense or call dissenters conspiracy theorists.
"There would be actual evidence"
@@duckmrow3201 _🎯🎯🎯
@@gameschooldadMTG That... day has already come my friend. Pretending it didn't come already is another thing entirely.
@@_APG_ are you also misunderstanding what the brawl card weight data actually is? Or are you referring to some other mystery evidence that I haven't seen yet?
They match based on cards too, I go months without facing certain cards. The one time I pick a deck I have with those cards I suddenly get matched against people who have those cards. The matching should be completely random. They should only have power categories they put you in, then it’s random
Just getting back into arena after a couple years.
Interesting stuff.
Cool channel; thanks for all the content that I’m about to binge. 😂 👍
@@adriandelacroix enjoy! 😊👍
Or pick a deck that uses a ton of basics effectively (I'm assuming basics add 0 ranking?)
Basics are listed as 0 points 👍
I hate modern ranked matchmaking rigging in every game, and then they have the audacity to talk about skill and stuff (talking about the other ones). The experience I have in this game in normal matches vs ranked is like heaven and earth but that could be probably said about all multiplayer games these days...
On a side note, a funny thing was happening to me like 10~ years ago in Hearthstone, when a certain Super-Meta Mid-Range Shaman deck was occupying almost 40% of the ranked ladder and my Freeze Mage was the best counter to it, I queue'd and gotten the deck that hard-counters me pretty often, Control Warrior (like 3% of the ladder), probably at the same rate as I've gotten the desired Shamans if not more. Really hated the experience there as well...
The devs in every game seem to have good intentions(being a blind optimist here for a moment) about balancing out players but it never ends well if you're not a bot-like aggro button-masher player who spams games and burns out his psyche (or just turns his brains off).
This is absurd, but I wouldn't be surprised, given that Wizzards has a pretty stupid ideology.
I must admit that these things must be true. It's not possible! There are things that only happen in the Arena, and you can even ignore it, like “luck”, but it is suspicious.
I had 10 games in a row that I didn't start, plus terrible draws. The result was terrible, so I “won” a streak of 6 wins in a row. What would this be? Does Wizzards make me lose some games, or do they work hard for this, and then give me “rigged” matches?
It's frustrating, but I'm starting to understand why sometimes, on the 3 mulligan, you open without any mana!
In the past, it was possible to make solid, very consistent decks. Now, the same decks often fail over and over again in multiple games! It's frustrating.
The issue is not about making the game more “balanced “, the issue is what is when something is suppose to random and it is manipulated is the issue. Regardless if it is for both players.
Heck at least Las Vegas card games are random albeit stacked against you.
Let’s be honest this manipulation is not to make the game more enjoyable it is to keep player retention this increasing profits . I believe if they were completely transparent and shared all this behind the curtain manipulation and everyone was aware of it, numbers would drastically decrease and it would be removed quickly
No one ever said matchmaking was supposed to be completely random. If it was, it would cause many games to be very imbalanced between players. Casual/jank/new players should not be paired up with super optimised tryhards when the unranked queue is intended to be casual. Making the game more balanced is literally a method to make it more enjoyable for everyone, which yes increases customer retention and ultimately profits. I don't see why people think those are mutually exclusive.
First off I enjoy your content and appreciate your commitment .
No one ever said matching making was supposed to be completely random. Of course not. This would be a flat out lie since it intentionally manipulated. WOTC also never said match making was “manipulated” until leaks like this were revealed.
I take issue with the deception. It’s a tactic to keep new players vested in the game. I easily reached mythic my first month after not playing Mtg (paper) for 10+ years and noticed if got increasingly harder.
I do not have issue with matching up players with the same skill level but I doubt that is the only thing that is being controlled as evident in the card value/ranking system. I’m sorry but you would have to be gullible if you believe this manipulation was only in the unranked queue
While I do enjoy Mtg as a whole . If I had known from the beginning there was behind to scenes manipulation to something I assumed was random. I would have not gotten into Arena let alone spend money on it . Speaking for myself . I rather lose by something random or my own skill even if I had a jank deck vs a try hard deck than to feel like I got cheated by a system.
@@mikeylikey0889 first you said it's supposed to be random, then you said no one said it's supposed to be random, and now you feel deceived because you assumed it was random...
I'm a little confused.
Wotc have always said that unranked games are matched by MMR and deck/commander weight. The only thing that's different is we have some specific numbers now, which are likely to change. Honestly don't see where the deception is 🤷♂️
I never said no one ever said it was random . I was quoting you saying “ no one ever said match making was completely random”.
Yes when I first started playing arena I assumed I was playing a card game just like in real life would be random and not predetermined. As I said I don’t have issue with matching players based on skill (that it itself I can admit would happen and not feel deceived) but that is clearly not the only manipulation going on.
Again if you believe this multimillion dollar company is only manipulating in the unranked queue then… 🤷♂️
They already admitted to hand smoothing in bo1 ranked after being caught with undeniable data.
@@mikeylikey0889 there's a big difference between having a matchmaking algorithm and the game being predetermined. If you play a game with someone on paper, would you not have any kind of discussion or agreement on the power level of the decks you're using? This algorithm is an effort to emulate that in an anonymous online game.
I've also said it many times before, Hand Smoothing isn't a gotcha. They weren't 'caught' doing something devious. It's just an effort to reduce overly frustrating games for a short attention span online audience. If you don't like it, do BO3 and get 0 land hands more often if you prefer that.
Thanks, Martin. I always appreciate your analysis, even though I've gone back to Chess 😉
At least in Chess they can't blame the shuffler :)
@@gameschooldadMTG, they'll find a way 😉
What if you just run into decks you dont enjoy playing against 4 to 5 times in a row. Some ppl are just picky not "mmr tanking".
I don't have that many cards and I like to create meme decks. I saw that putting or removing good cards could change matchmaking, so I already avoided putting too many epics and stuff like that but it was a half effort since we didn't have proof.
What is an issue, that I even reported to them as feedback once, is that the weights are too sensitive. As it happened to a friend that tried to play Arena, it's very easy to add random epics to an almost starter deck and you go straight to "hell queue" getting paired against the top tournament decks. It's very demoralising to have few cards, you open maybe your first epics, and then lose every game against opponents that have complete decklists full of rare/epic cards (that a casual player might not even know exist!). It feels very unfair and makes the game look completely pay to win.
Because of how it sums the elo, there seems to exist "tiers" of decks with certain rating, which are probably starter decks, decks with epics (maybe 1 maybe many like the greedy control decks you see in casual), and competitive. And it's easy for a few cards to move you absurdly up or down in rating.
According to Untapped, the most common best decks are mostly aggro, so if you don't raise your MMR or put high rated cards you won't play against them. Which also means that the higher your total MMR, the more you should adjust to good aggro and vice versa.
This is something that used to happen in Hearthstone. It was well known that in less competitive tiers there were plenty of gimmick and greedy decks, which means that aggro wins and you find a lot of aggro in higher tiers.
This last point does change how I build decks. Now I know for sure that if I make a new deck, play 2-3 games and get paired against a tournament deck, then my deck MMR is probably high and I should tweak it to be specifically better against the most common best decks (which means answers to certain 1-3 drops). On the other hand, if my deck has a low MMR, then I should play more greedy or aggressive cards to handle more mid-range and control.
This also addresses the "lifegain doesn't get paired against aggro" conspiracy. You will get paired against aggro and have a huge win rate as long as you have a high total MMR that puts you in a range where aggro is very common. Maybe the person was playing against aggro just before, but when they changed to the lower rated lifegain deck (plus they probably lost games before that), their MMR dropped a lot and now they are playing in the meme control tier.
I don't think the deck weighting is very sensitive, as it's just a sum of all the individual card strengths put together, changing just one or two cards shouldn't affect the total deck score too much. What can happen sometimes is people get matched outside of their relative deck strength just because there are fewer people online in the queue and it just matches you against the best option. If almost everyone is playing the best deck they have, then this will feel like it comes up a lot.
Aggro decks are the most common usually, but that doesn't necessarily link to higher MMR. Many aggro decks use only a few rares, so they can have a low matchmaking score generally.
I don't think the different tiers of decks are likely to relate directly to deck types. I doubt there's a tier for Aggro, another tier for Control, etc. Because you can have an aggro deck with any number of rares in in for example. There might be small bands where some deck types clump together, but there's so many variables involved that it wouldn't be easy to confirm with any certainty.
What you could do is use something like Untapped or MTGA Assistant to track your games to see what archetypes you face most often and see where your weak points are, then adjust your deck to counter those decks a little better.
Yeah - this is what I call the average player effect - if you play a weight of deck that means the average ability player will likely have a specific deck then you’ll see it more.
Loose a few and that deck changes, win some and you’ll be back against it! And if you change your deck to counter it - your deck rating changes so your opponents do too!
@@gameschooldadMTG I think my comment mixed the rare/epic thing with the deck archetype question.
At least from my experience it does happen that very silly initial decks you make can get paired easily with higher quality decks when you change a few cards. It's probably due to the lack of players like you said, because in the edge of the distribution, where the new players are, a small change in rating gets amplified when you are forced to expand the matching range. Which is very annoying when you are an actual new player.
Now when we talk about the other side of the distribution, I do believe that any matchmaking system will make aggro show more often in higher elos (as long as aggro is viable) like it did in HS. The reason for that is a mixture of aggro playing more matches (which inflates ranking and makes them more likely to be in the matchmaking pool at any given time) and high frequency aggro working as sort of a gatekeeper for other archetypes. In arena you also have the rewards factor, so a fast mono color deck is a good deck to play, experienced players know and will do that.
From the Untapped data it looks like this is the case in Arena like it was in HS, and at least my deck tracker agrees. When my MMR is low I get a diverse pool of opponents, something like 2 colors repetitions in 30+ matches, which probably means a diverse distribution of archetypes too. But when high, the distribution collapses very fast to the few aggro meta decks. I will see the good competitive control decks, but they are way less common.
@@snackplaylove I guess you can also make yourself miserable by achieving good player rating with a bad deck and then switching to the highest rated deck.
Every deck gets its own personal hell
In the end I still don't like the matchmaking and not sure they will be able to (or even want to) come up with something better. At this point, I would be happy if they could just fix the go first/second mechanic. There are still way too many times I'm going second multiple games in a row and it's really no fun when I've having to do it against the aggro decks. And I know it's not me because I use untapped and can see the log.
Do you find that you go second more times overall, or just have long streaks of it happening occasionally?
@@gameschooldadMTG overall as in the current season, i've played 77 matches so far and have gone 2nd 37 times. in the previous season, out of 844 total matches played, i believe i went 2nd 422 times but i may have miscounted.
but i will say that these long streaks (say 5+) happen every 3-4 days and in between, plenty of times i was going 3-4 times in a row on draw.
above is for standard, best of 1. also last season w/l record was 421 to 423 and current season is record is 35-42. so it's not like i'm going 2nd because i'm good.
also i do play a lot of different decks from META to not very un-META.
@@Tony_Z__ long sequences of repetitions is a way to tell that something is truly random. You can argue that it should be more pseudo-random and avoid doing that to not be boring though.
@@luisfelipehs6176 As far as the go first or second mechanic, I'd rather it not be random as I'm finding it to be unfair as well as not fun at all when I have to sit through those long strings of going second and then having to do that every 3-4 days.
@@Tony_Z__ it might be frustrating to have long streaks of going second, but the stats you shared show you're going first at least 50% of the time, so I'm guessing you most likely have long streaks of going first as well.
I think the saddest thing is not that people need to manipulate the game to have wins because they just fight back against the company who rigged a game. Why is that most of the time when I win or lose either me or the opponent cannot do anything because no land or land flood. If I made a mistake and I lose I accept it. It's my fault but when they just use me as puppet to manage the win rate of people they are wasting my time and I will write a bot playing instead of me than just play personally with friends to have fun. They approach to micromanaging the players statistic is horrible is cause just harm to the community. If there's no matchmaking system the games would be more random (with certain desk I always have enemies playing the perfect counter against it) in ranked it's okay they choose from the same rank but in random games shouldn't be like this.
If anyone likes the idea or want to add anymore please like it and comment it.
Thanks
@@sandorottoplesko4891 if there was no matchmaking system at all, then it would increase the likelihood of games that are wildly unbalanced, which would be more frustrating for the majority of players. The company doesn't micromanage people's win rates, they just create a system where matches are more balanced, which means neither player has an unfair advantage, which naturally flattens win rates. That means while some individual games in BO1 will be against perfect counters or mana problems, the main factor in your overall win rate over time will be skill, not luck.
@@gameschooldadMTG They gave opponents that are very good counter of my creature deck the obliterator I made obliterator deck now I never face any creature deck or if I get one won't get any land. That old creature deck it performed much better.
So the conclusion to me that they check what is in your deck and there's no randomness in the matchmaking, what should be. They decide which you loose or win. Most likely they can manipulate the shuffler too.
I will upload vidoes what will prove my point.
@@sandorottoplesko4891 you lost some games. It's a very big leap of the imagination to assume the game decided to make you lose by checking your deck and matching you against someone who you couldn't win against.
This dude has been playing ball for Wizards and ignoring all the real arguments against his pandering position in all of his videos like this. He cherry picks data that agrees with him, then ignores or hand waves everything else away.
He won't engage with the idea that EOMM exists and _that's_ the reason it's not fair in the first place is that their is a monetary incentive is what he won't talk about as it disproves his entire position. There's zillions of other mobile games like this, it's existed forever, it's nothing new, and yet he refuses to engage with this criticism or explanation. Instead he just says "you lost some games bruh", "other person wins too bruh." He fails to see the larger picture, or understand why those incentives exist and have created the situation in MTG Arena in the first place. _(Even sillier is this isn't an issue in MTGO!)_
There's entire guides out there already on how to manipulate match-ups now, and they work. Just keep in mind the reason any game pushes W/L/W/L/W/L is it fuels spending and addiction. It's science. It sucks that it's true, but living in denial (or outright lying about it) isn't helping anyone.
@@_APG_ Honestly it's probably because of what happened with Magic Online. They are probably afraid not rigging it will cause it to be become something that can't get rid of and that isn't very profitable(if Magic Online is profitable at all at this point.)
I am glad of this reveal, because it confirms that brawl is something of a phony format. The excuse given towards criticism of brawl has always been regarding how the ranking system 'balances' things... yet now we know for actual certainty that it does not, purely because the ranking weights are so stupidly random and arbitrarily assigned. Why is Ornithopter a 32 compared to The One Ring's 9? Why is Irencrag valued ludicrously higher than arcane signet? Why the hell is Zenith flare 216? This isn't Ikoria limited, why is Zenith flare literally enemy number 1?
Imagine going to a paper tourney, but the banlist is not made public. You have no idea whether your deck can play until you sit down and whip out your deck, whereupon a Judge places their hand on your shoulder and shakes their head meaningfully. If this weighting system is inherently flawed, then what does that say about a format that entirely relies upon that system for its balancing?
I really wish this information had never been found. I have not enjoyed playing Arena for the past 4 days. At all.
It’s been an everloving nightmare. I went from maybe a 33% win rate to below 10%.
Do you know how much fun it is to feel like the game is purposefully throwing you against people who perpetually counter you? It’s only gotten WORSE. I like playing Red / Green. Nope…can’t do that anymore. It seems like all I face now is friggen control. Nothing….but…control. It feels like EVERYONE has tuned their decks to deliberately only face low MMR people, and I’m being punished for it.
I honestly have gotten to where I spend 9 games doing my daily and then honestly debate if I’d rather play more…or throw myself down a flight of stairs. When you get 1 win out of 9 games, the game goes from “I’ll get them next time,” to “great…another person spamming cheap kill and control spells…again…for the 8th game in a row”.
They either need to massively lower the amount of exile and kill spells, or make them a MUCH higher point cost, because I am just…done dealing with perpetual losses and spending 5 turns watching 5 versions of “Cut Down”, “Ossification”, or “Heroes Downfall” thrown against me every…single…turn.
I haven't looked into the individual values too much, but I thought removal tends to be highly valued.
@@gameschooldadMTG I think when I looked they were lower valued than spells that can target opponents for damage. Personally, I think that's backwards--I have always played where I could care less about damage until I'm under 6 life points. But I have seen a marked increase in facing decks that are absolutely loaded down with removal. As I have said--getting at least 4 wins the past few days has been like headbutting a wall. As a lifelong Washington Football fan and migraine sufferer, I know the kind of headache that causes.
I think exile and removal needs to be somehow reigned in. I have no issue with most non-white wrath spells--Black/Red/Green/Blue AoE removal tend to require substantial mana, while White I feel takes far less mana than it should. My friend made a deck that is literally 24 lands, 4 Urubrask's Forges, 4 Churning Reservoirs, and nothing but black removal spells. It cleaves thru most of Arena, because nearly every spell is 2 mana and can take out 75% of the threats you see the next turn. That deck should have an insane point value, but it doesn't seem to. Same with the new Green/Red Urubrask's Forge deck I have seen. A ton of green fight spells and power-up spells, and 4/4 Forges/Reservoir...and it has annihilated me every match.
And I just went 0/15, dropped from Platinum 2 to Platinum 4, and had the game not let me play 5 turns in the last match...against a Mono-Green deck, so there is no way they could keep me from using my turn. So not only is my luck just...horrible, I'm also having the game outright force losses.
Every deck gets its own personal hell.
Yep Hyper rigged all formats with a broken shuffler... cash grab scam,,, unplayable product. Waiting for my apology....
Lol 😂
@@gameschooldadMTG That I'm not gonna get....
@@LxLore-j5b are you expecting WotC to send you a personal apology because you think the game is rigged somehow against you specifically?
@@gameschooldadMTG Form you for ur lies and miss direction from other video's trying to white wash what the hell is really going on with Arena and the endless ways it's poor quality at the same time Hyper rigged per Dota 2, which should be illegal. Once again.. Hyper rigged MMR, broken if not broken/ rigged shuffler. F.. F- quality product. Non legit Magic, unplayable... should be shutdown ASAP... But won't for Profit of course. No credibility once again from WOTC, every move that make is super scamy, shady, and shameless. Fire Mark Rosewater today... rebuild arena make it right... Let's make magic Great Again instead of this hot trash everybody knows as Arena.... Thank You...
@@gameschooldadMTG From you Hasbro / WOTC it's all hyper rigged garbage on multiple levels.. joke scam shady cash grab con... Everybody knows.. everybody talks about it. Even the paid streamers talk about it, i've talked to the big ones Ashizzle-AliEldrazi-Crockeys-Voxy-Amazonian... we all talk about it.