Hearthpwn

I have played since early beta. I have almost 1000 hours sunk in this mode. I wanted to share my observation of the course of the years. 

Battleground features heavily predetermined mmr brackets. Once you hit yours, (for me its around 6000) it becomes impossible to climb. The points you get for winning are so low compared to the points you lose. This is on purpose. 

There are other ways the system screws you over as well. Last game I was playing patches. Game lasted quite a long time. I didn't get a single triple. What are the odds of that as patches? Very, very, low. 

The way the system favors a winner is by allotting triples. This is NOT random in my observation. I also suspect it can read your board state and heavily favor certain units and tribes as well. I have found that if you intentionally concede a bunch of games you suddenly start to get more favorable matches. 

Another blatant example of rigging is fighting ghosts. If I am on a big win streak and in my predetermined mmr-bracket then the system will do its best to avoid giving me a ghost fight. Some games it borders the absurd. I can be losing 5-6 fights in a row, and still it refuses to let me play the ghost. 

If you want to enjoy BG, accept it for what it is, a rigged slot machine. If you attempt to climb you are in for a really miserable time. Instead, just concede a bunch of games when you hit your MMR-ceiling and focus on just having fun. 

It might just be that your skill level is around 6000, and if you don't consistently place in the upper half you will never climb. But there's nothing wrong with that, every player has a different potential.

I believe the patch that rigged the whole game was purposefuly set live around the Alien Probe day. 

This sounds to me like a mediocre player unsatisfied with their ability to climb and looking for something external to explain it. Very common sadly - not just in Hearthstone, but in gaming overall.
Every matchmaking system aims to get players to their respective "correct" rating. If you don't improve you wont climb any further. Picking some random observations to "prove" anything is... oof

Its easy to see for yourself. Just concede a bunch of games and watch the system give you more benefits and favorable rolls. 

Not only battleground 

Quote from user-18143276 >>

Its easy to see for yourself. Just concede a bunch of games and watch the system give you more benefits and favorable rolls. 

 Even if that would randomly work for me it would not prove anything at all. Literally nothing.

I consistently place around 8000/9000, never had a problem climbing out of 6000, maybe instead of putting all the blame to the game you should consider improving 

Quote from Livesage >>

Use some basic common sense, please. What would be the point of rigging BG in this fashion? Why waste resources to assign each player a custom MMR cap and then adjust their triple rates on a case-by-case basis, just to make players unhappy?

 This actually is an even better point than anything i've said!

Not every person can be a winner. Keep trying and one day you might make it close to the top. You can do it!

Life is rigged. Every soul is forced into their body by "the system" at birth and made to do a specific task that "they" deem appropriate.

Not everyone will be a famous movie star with more money than they could ever use, or a billionaire CEO of X company.

Accept that you have no control and stop thinking about it. You'll be happier this way.

It doesn't even matter if it's not rigged as long it feels rigged.

And there are indeed rigged elements in Hearthstone. Some games in solo adventures have rigged card draw (drawing the correct card to satisfy the story telling). 

Also take in consideration that Zephrys the Great is a card they have been working on since early Hearthstone (as devs said) and a big business like Blizzard would not allow a card out of 135 from the set to be that demanding unless the code behind can be reused to force that ideal 50 % win-rate that keeps the customers.

Quote from RandomNoob >>

It doesn't even matter if it's not rigged as long it feels rigged.

And there are indeed rigged elements in Hearthstone. Some games in solo adventures have rigged card draw (drawing the correct card to satisfy the story telling). 

Also take in consideration that Zephrys the Great is a card they have been working on since early Hearthstone (as devs said) and a big business like Blizzard would not allow a card out of 135 from the set to be that demanding unless the code behind can be reused to force that ideal 50 % win-rate that keeps the customers.

 Using Zeph as an example is bad. Many situations where the perfect cards he offers are not perfect, even within the very limited selection he can offer. Doesn't give transform removal for deathrattles under about 7/7s, for example, and can't handle multiple things to deal with. Opp has a secret, a weapon, and a board? Time for a bad value option, ST removal and a boardwipe, no flare or ooze. It gets even worse when you make bad plays in order to increase the odds of a good Zeph (via remaining mana manipulation) and then he just... whiffs.

Zeph's logic is nowhere near as powerful as people make it out to be. Can almost always see a lethal (there's a few times he's missed it for me, though, because the logic doesn't take ongoing effects from quests into account), and will sometimes give you a good card.

On the actual topic, I've been stuck at 4k in one meta due to how heavily weighted the good heroes were (no pass), whilst my rating is usually significantly higher. My rating usually notably shifts when there's a meta change, which will be down to skill level relative to the lobby. Both of these act completely contrary to your hypothesis. I will say that there's extremely small gains in higher finishes relative to losses when you lose - one 7th loses you more than you gain in 2nd, one sixth usually loses about 60 whilst a third gives 30-40ish, but that's how the mode goes. If you're not averaging above fourth, you're not climbing. 

Rigged matchmaking has been the perfect scapegoat since MMR was introduced to competitive games. Every single popular competitive game has gone through this argument sooner or later, since it's just easier to cope with losses if you can blame them on something solid like a system designed to make some players lose, compared to something abstract such as luck, or even worse, thinking that you're not as good as you think you are.

Now, the reason why MMR exists and is used, is of course profit. If matchmaking is fully random, then Timmy who just started playing the game would get matched against xXslayer420Xx who's been playing for hundreds of hours, and poor Timmy would get so mad at being outskilled that he'd just never play again. This scenario is a complete loss in profits for the dev team or whoever owns them, because it's in their interest to keep every single player hooked to the game. Hence, MMR, where every player gets assigned a magic number that goes up when they win and goes down when they lose; and when they play, they get matched with other players in proximity of that number. It's not a perfect system, but it's easy to implement and it works most of the time.

The reason why I went into detail about the definition of MMR as I see it, is because it has an interesting little side-effect: once you reach your skill ceiling, the magic number stops going up, simply because you play against people of your skill level who might not have reached their ceiling yet. From this point, it can either go up in increments as you're getting better at the game, or it can plateau at a 50% winrate, hence the common myth. This is a fully natural process as a result of the implementation of MMR, and any company who would actually invest in enforcing a system that favors some players but not others would be straight up burning money.

Besides, talking about Battlegrounds specifically, I thought it's official that only the bottom three players have a chance at fighting the ghost?

I do think Battlegrounds has rigging in it.

I think the game is definitely rigged.  You can't watch the opponent's first 4 attacks with AI-like precision dismantle your board doing a 1 in 700 sequence of events several times and come to the "it's just random" conclusion.

It's clearly not always random.

Do they do this to shorten the games?  To make the games more exciting?

So the important thing is to have Taunts to somewhat suppress the ability of the game to screw you.

Say it with me... 1 , 2 , 3 ...

        CONFIRMATION BIAS ...again.... CONFIRMATION BIAS 

What would be the point in rigging a game like battegrounds? There is no money involved, we're not talking about gambling here. The mode, like all of hearthstone is inherently full of RNG.

There is a whole wealth of streamers playing at different ratings levels that literally livestreaming evidence against your theory. If you are a decent enough player you can deliberately pitch to rough rating level by adapting how you play...For example, if I want to play at around 7k I know I can afford to make slightly more 'memey' decsions and plays than if I were trying to tread water at 9k.

If you peak at 6k it's obviously pretty hard to notice this - and I am telling you, if you are peaking at 6k then you are making a shitload of mistakes in terms of optimal play, every single game. So what would be the point in Blizzard rigging games against you? You are doing that quite adequately all by yourself.

Quote from Livesage >>

Use some basic common sense, please. What would be the point of rigging BG in this fashion? Why waste resources to assign each player a custom MMR cap and then adjust their triple rates on a case-by-case basis, just to make players unhappy?

Uh-oh! You know who this talk summons! After all, Blizzard has a patent you know...

High School math really needs to include some basic statistical literacy.  Magical thinking and conspiratorial belief can be really dangerous to society, and a basic understanding of probability might be able to put a dent in at least some of it.

Uncommon things happen all the time, but there are all sorts of uncommon things.  Think about poker, how just about any specific set of cards is really unlikely.  But the odds of getting no more than a high card?  About 50%.  Half the time, you'll have a pair or better.  If you've got a 7 card hand in poker, the chance of not getting a pair drops to just over 17%.  All those unlikely things like flushes or straights or full houses?  Odds are something is going to happen.

I was playing dragons the other day.  Couldn't get an Eliza or a Kalecgos until my third triple for a 6* unit.  Seems likely, right?  But with about 13 or 14 minions in the pool, you only have around a 40% to get one of them, and a 60% chance to miss (approximately... the number of each 6* minion already accounted for from the pool would impact things, but this is close enough).  Following a basic geometric distribution, it's not at all uncommon not to have a success until the third trial.

Ever get eliminated on a 5% lethal?  Ever play Dungeons and Dragons and roll a natural 1?

//

So the OP said:

I have found that if you intentionally concede a bunch of games you suddenly start to get more favorable matches.

Well... that's exactly how MMR or Elo ought to work.  Concede and you lose ranking and the matchmaking system will match you against weaker opponents.  Being matched with weaker opponents means games are easier.  Then you'll win games, and raise your Elo and face better players.  Players better than you.  Players who win.

Professor Arpad Elo came up with a really good system for ranking comparative strength.  Using something like it for matchmaking is rather effective.

//

I guess what irks me is that there are actual times things are rigged.  Slot machines, scratch tickets.  They're rigged to have a fixed payout rate, but also to have small wins at small intervals to keep people addicted and playing.  Loot boxes in games like Hearthstone (they're called "packs") and Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm are likewise designed to prey on some folks to extract money.  "Collect them all" traps, "must act now" seasonal offers that exploit a fear of missing out (ever buy anything--from groceries to electronics to whatever--because the sale was about to expire?).  There's actually nasty stuff going that doesn't involve rigging RNG in specific games, and could behave exactly as statistically described and still be exploitative.

But what probably isn't happening... is what the OP describes.  The system almost surely isn't manipulating the fine details of individual fights.  There just isn't a point.  The combination of matchmaking and high RNG will do the trick well enough.  Meanwhile, there's like no upside to doing it for BGs--the really flat purchase curve means it just doesn't matter.

And someone whining about losses when they're unable to understand probabilities just obscures the real issues.

//

One last point: if Bliz was rigging things, people would know.  Someone has to program these games.  We know that people have revealed a massive internal structure of abuse and exploitation of workers within the games industry--Blizzard included.  And yet there haven't been leaks or whistleblowers about rigged RNG.

Because abuse is real, and rigged RNG isn't.

Quote from Toribasher >>

I do think Battlegrounds has rigging in it.

I think the game is definitely rigged.  You can't watch the opponent's first 4 attacks with AI-like precision dismantle your board doing a 1 in 700 sequence of events several times and come to the "it's just random" conclusion.

It's clearly not always random.

Do they do this to shorten the games?  To make the games more exciting?

So the important thing is to have Taunts to somewhat suppress the ability of the game to screw you.

 Wait, what?  In order for it to be rigged against you, it would need to be rigged FOR other players.  BGs are a zero-sum play mode.  If you're thinking "crap, those attacks sucked", your opponent is thinking "wow!  Those were some lucky attacks".  

Odds are odds.  I've won 0.4% rounds and I've lost 99.6% rounds.  Sometimes the randomness blesses you, sometimes it curses you.  

It's like going to the casino, seeing that a roulette wheel has hit black 4 times in a row, throwing all your money on red and then yelling that the wheel is rigged when it hits black for a 5th time.  It's not rigged, it's just how randomness works in the world.