Even if the Ladder is rigged and someone figured it out they wouldn't reveal it because they'd get owned by Blizzard
If the matchmaking is rigged we have to know it. They should state it clearly and the players should know about this. But if this information is not public and it is true, they are wasting the players' time in ways that will bring THEM problems.
To make myself more clear:
If player X is matched against specific opponents and player X does NOT know that, this is a VIOLATION of player X rights.
If player X is matched against random opponents, everything is ok.
If player X is matched against specific opponents and player X knows that (it is stated in the ToS), everything is ok.
In addition to people asking the valid question "Why would Blizzard even do this?", there's a bigger fundamental flaw in the hypothesis: If the match making system is rigged against you, then it is rigged FOR someone else. Which contradicts the entire hypothesis.
Do you honestly think it’s that hard to create code that recognizes tech cards and mana cost? They already tamper with arena draw and matchmaking, yet the standard ladder is such a stretch.
No, I don't think it, I know it, not all code is equal no matter how similar you think they should be. Adjusting arena draw is likely modifying a field in a database and I assume when you talk about tampering with matchmaking you're referring to MMR. Assessing and matching MMR is based on a fairly simple formula so in very basic terms not that difficult to code, to introduce some kind of deck assessment factor into this matching adds hundreds of different criteria into the assessment, so for me yes it is actually a stretch that they'd waste time and resource on maintaining this.
If you think it would be wasted time you obviously don’t know much about business. Do you not grasp the importance of a fair and even matchup? Do you think people want it skewed one way or the other? No. Blizzard is Vegas...they do better with the win rate staying around 50%. Not to mention it’s the easiest way to balance the game without nerfing cards into oblivion. I don’t think it’s as rigged as if x meets this condition, do y. But the probability of x happening if y is present does increase or decrease. I view it like a video game slider. If this kind of matchmaking didn’t exist, new players would get obliterated
Apologies, I wasn't trying to suggest that matchmaking didn't exist and I thought that would be clear from my comment but you obviously don't know much about literacy.
I completely understand the importance of a fair and even matchup which is delivered to us by the exiting MMR rating which we know about and have been told tends towards a 50% win-rate. There's nothing nefarious about that, your rating adjusts as you play so you match with people around your skill level. You seem to be suggesting something different exists and all I was saying was that to make that work is significantly more difficult than coding MMR which was the comparison you originally made.
Hope that was clear enough for you to follow.
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Arguing on the internet is like playing chess with a pigeon. You may be good at chess, but the pigeon is just going to knock all the pieces down, take a shit on the table, and strut around like its victorious.
1. Make claim with no proof. 2. Call out Blizzard to prove that false claim is false. 3. IF a. Blizzard ignores false claim, then declare victory. b. Blizzard responds, claim that they must be hiding something. 4. Become President of United States.
The most pathetic comment i've ever seen in my life <3
Do you honestly think it’s that hard to create code that recognizes tech cards and mana cost? They already tamper with arena draw and matchmaking, yet the standard ladder is such a stretch.
No, I don't think it, I know it, not all code is equal no matter how similar you think they should be. Adjusting arena draw is likely modifying a field in a database and I assume when you talk about tampering with matchmaking you're referring to MMR. Assessing and matching MMR is based on a fairly simple formula so in very basic terms not that difficult to code, to introduce some kind of deck assessment factor into this matching adds hundreds of different criteria into the assessment, so for me yes it is actually a stretch that they'd waste time and resource on maintaining this.
If you think it would be wasted time you obviously don’t know much about business. Do you not grasp the importance of a fair and even matchup? Do you think people want it skewed one way or the other? No. Blizzard is Vegas...they do better with the win rate staying around 50%. Not to mention it’s the easiest way to balance the game without nerfing cards into oblivion. I don’t think it’s as rigged as if x meets this condition, do y. But the probability of x happening if y is present does increase or decrease. I view it like a video game slider. If this kind of matchmaking didn’t exist, new players would get obliterated
Apologies, I wasn't trying to suggest that matchmaking didn't exist and I thought that would be clear from my comment but you obviously don't know much about literacy.
I completely understand the importance of a fair and even matchup which is delivered to us by the exiting MMR rating which we know about and have been told tends towards a 50% win-rate. There's nothing nefarious about that, your rating adjusts as you play so you match with people around your skill level. You seem to be suggesting something different exists and all I was saying was that to make that work is significantly more difficult than coding MMR which was the comparison you originally made.
Hope that was clear enough for you to follow.
It’s clear. Another naive tube who doesn’t understand programming or business.
Even if he had supplied proof, I doubt the claim of being statistician. You'd understand that the sample size is not only small but absolutely minuscule - to such a degree that, what you "experienced" is utterly pointless in even mentioning.
So. I also have a professional background in statistical analysis (specifically, the fabrication of microchips and the controlling of various defect percentages) and I think everybody who is criticizing this test for 'sample size' needs to be taught a lesson in statistics.
What he is doing is verifying that each sample from each grouping belongs to the same greater population by using a t-test to compare the two probabilities. If we assume that there is a static percentage of players who are cubelock players at rank X at any given moment, if he can show that the variance between the two sets of samples are sufficiently different, we can say with certain sets of certainty that they do not belong to the same population sets.
The important aspect of this, however, is that 1) certainty is never 100%, but that anything above about an 85% certainty should not be considered a coincidence and 2) that using t-tests does not require 'thousands' of data points. The fact that he has 150 data points in each grouping is more than sufficient to make pretty reasonable statistical guesses on it.
HOWEVER. There are some individual details I would like clarified before I would go and just say that his claims are entirely solid. I'd definitely want to see some of his data in a recorded sense. Additionally, I'd like to see time periods where he ran the tests, since I've found that class/deck ratios tend to change over the course of a day, so some of that information may be muddling his results.
I actually was one of the first people to raise the point in hearthpwn that Activision/Blizzard did own a patent on utilizing matchmaking to drive sales, so it matches up with Activision/Blizzard's motives and I am liable to believe OP's data in a broad sense, but that I'm not yet fully convinced since I haven't seen verifying information or anything other than self reported information.
@SlydE I feel like you didnt understand me (maybe i didnt understand you). Im saying the system is not random becouse it can't be. Not becouse blizz is rigging it. In my other post in this thread I explained this more, that match making system is an algorithm and follows rules and thus you can have observation like thread author.
This community actually disovered the pity timer, that packs were actually rigged to always contain a legendary if you had opened 39 of a kind without getting one. It took a while and was difficult, but it was in fact proven, and eventually confirmed by blizzard.
Now, let's talk about the "rigged" matchmaking:
There are thousands of people spending a big portion of their lives climbing the hearthstone ladder, and many have Hearthstone as their profession. Tech cards, decks, archetypes, winrates, matchups... everything is being studied with a microscope all the time. Still, noone has ever come remotely close to find a way to use the matchmaking system to their favour or disfavour, by avoiding matchups by adding tech cards etc.
This OP is either a troll attempt or another small-sample size "proof". You need 1000s of games, and doing multiple tests in different metas.
If this is about personal experience, I have played my fair share of ladder games too. Some times my tech-cards strike gold, some times they fail, some times I get very lucky, some times my opponent does, and if I play a good deck which is on top of the meta, I do better. I have no reason to suspect that there is anything fishy going on.
I'm not trying to say that there is a rigged chance or not, since i have no proof of either.
I would however like to see OP's evidence through a Decktracker or just... Anything. It's easy to manifacture random numbers, to support a specific case.
Also note that we mods have no ties to Blizzard whatsoever, i'm not trying to defend Blizzard, but it's hard to believe a claim without any sort of data or evidence to back it up.
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I want a new title, but Flux won't let me have one,
So i played over 150 games with Murloc Paladin as well this season and my conclusion is probably less controversial as this mathematical whatever this is. My conclusion Call to Arms is a pretty good card.
The matchmaking could be rigged in a way which protects non-legend players who spend money. Also, there is no way to exploit this since when you tech your deck against another, you are not gaining anything by skipping the match-up, in fact you are losing a potential favorable win rate match-up.
The way I see things:
1) If OP data is correct (not troll, not different times during the day), the statistical evidence is enough to be considered not random matchmaking
2) If 1) is present, there are two possible reasons:
2.1) They test things in non-legend match-ups
2.2) They rig the game in favor of people who spend money
If we are indeed in the 2.2) case, this has to be declared in the ToS.
Since we are talking about a probability experiment there is a chance that your statistics are unreliable. it could be that from 15:00-16:00(random times) nobody wants to play cubelock. and then from 16:00-17:00 everybody decides that they do want to play cubelock.
Also you do not take into consideration that people switch decks. imagine you see no cubelocks on ladder and only paladin, then people switch to cubes.
you need to have an even bigger sample size and play on different days on different times to make this reliable. there are a lot of variables that you didnt take into consideration, so this is not (yet) mathematical proof that ranked is rigded.
It’s clear. Another naive tube who doesn’t understand programming or business.
Sorry now it's me who needs to seek clarity. Are you accepting your own weaknesses here and presenting them as the reason you didn't understand my points, or conceding that you are unable to respond to them hence resorting to an attack.
Either is fine just trying to assess what kind of individual you are.
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Arguing on the internet is like playing chess with a pigeon. You may be good at chess, but the pigeon is just going to knock all the pieces down, take a shit on the table, and strut around like its victorious.
I just did a similar test. As OP I took two paladin decks that only differ in third silence vs. second Knifejuggler and queued at rank 5, 0 stars.
Before each game I tossed a coin and either used the deck with or without silence tech. Then I marked each opponent with an o if it was a control warlock and with a x if it wasn't. I stopped after 100 games, because I got fatigued.
The sample size is pretty small, of course, but I'm pretty sure if the discrepancies were as big as OP stated my findings would have been different. I also have recorded the whole thing and could provide the video in a few hours.
I'd love some proof to, but just to make a point, let's assume you're right and your idea holds weight.
I have the following questions;
What is your hypothesis? Would it be correct to say that it is: "Hearthstone has a matchmaking system that tries to lower the chance that decks including specific tech-cards matches up against the decks that they are intended to counter."?
If so, what would you say motivates them to arrange such a system? I argue that it would just lower the incentive to craft tech cards if it's not working out. You may say it's because they want the expensive tier 1 decks to be mandatory to craft, but I'd maintain that people would still craft these decks as long as they're posted on Hearthpwn, reddit or twitter or whatever. Wouldn't blizzard make more money on tech cards actually working? That way the meta changes more and people will need to try out more decks. Blizzard has nothing to win on a stale meta as people would only build one or two decks.
My second point is the risk involved from such a move from Blizzard. It's pretty easy to test using a quantitative method as you did. Requires fairly low effort, especially if many are doing it. Even more considering various meta reports and third party stat trackers. If Blizzard would be found out that they're rigging the ladder, that would be HUGE and may just destroy a huge part of the community, especially the competitive scene (which I would say is what keep Hearthstone alive). It seems like a huge risk for a low benefit and I see this being sort of a defeater for any conspiracy theory. It just makes no sense, at least for me. But someone can provide more proof and data about this, on a much larger scale as well, then I'd definitely be willing to trust that data and wonder if there's something weird going on from Blizzards side.
Also, data like that wouldn't necessarily conclude that Blizzard made this intentionally, we'd need more proof for that. It might as well originate from an unintentional glitch in the game, or whatever.
i can say what motivates Blizzard to arrange A System like that. If meta is stable and you can climb ladder with any cards or any decks you dont need any New cards to change meta anymore. Because it is stable and every deck is equal. Also you will know that the first deck you have created can climb ladder even after 2 years and you motivate yourself like " ı really dont need New cards to climb so i can spend my money for more challenging stuff ". After that only fun players spend money for try New cards. Competitive players will keep climbing ladder with older decks. Guess what? Blizzard's main money source is competitive players, not fun players. So it seems fair for A company which gains money from these.
Yes, but I argue that rigging it like this would make it more stable than if people needed to change techs and decks to react to tough match ups instead of the game actively trying to nullify tech cards. Nullifying tech cards means that strong decks change less, because they are less challenged.
it is a win-win condition between community and Blizzard. Community makes money from hearthstone too. If you can't provide people to play those netdecks neither Blizzard nor community groups like hearthpwn can't make money from hearthstone. It is one way of forcing players to keep playing netdecks. It is like blizzard's way of saying '' yes we made those tech cards but even if you have those you have to play netdecks and you have to try winning by drawing your win condition first or you will lose. " like it or not netdecks and tournements keeps the game alive and tournements are not presenting for Joy of people only. If community stops persuading people about hearthstone and netdecks, hearthstone enda dramatically. Nowadays the only reason that keeps alive companies is popularity. If they lose popularity they Die. It seems there is a paradox in this manner about rigging matchmaking like that as if community finds A clue about it, it brings the end of the game but believe me there is not. As i say before it is a win win condition. Community apprecietes about tech cards' existence but noone uses them for real so it gives Blizzard an advantage.
Anyway, we re speaking about this rigging stuff as considering it is real but we have no clue and It will never become. Firstly it is hard to prove and secondly there are tons of fanboys that could easily refuse by simplifying. Simplyfying is one of the best argument against conspiracy theories. Even if you believe and know the truth about something, you can't prove it because your theories are conspiracy theories. It is a common bias. So we really don't need this kind of arguments. If you want protection you can choose to not play but if you want to play you can only choose to not spend real money because the rules are theirs and you cant do anything about it. Actually you can but it can cause to lose the game which you play everyday and it earns nothing to you. Will you be proud to be the one Who causes to end hearthstone? If you own A card game and trying make money, yes but otherwise I don't think so. :D
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Memedeck-seeker. Always tries to build new decks. Hates tournements, streamers, netdecks and poor-o players. ah, but a tournement mode could be great !!!
Being a social scientist who works data driven as well. I have my problems with calling the data gathered a PROOF. For me, your data collected provides some evidence that there indeed may be a strange interaction between how you tech your deck and who you are being matched against.
Of course, having more data points is always nice to have, especially when taking additional variables like time of the day etc. into account. In my opinion, the biggest flaw of OP's design lies in his way of gathering the data itself, as conceding over and over is not the normal way the game is played. Thus, the results might be biased through the unobserved variable of MMR for notorious losers. It makes sense for Blizzard, in order to keep those people hooked, to give them easier matchups to boost their motivation.
In a perfect world, the player base should gather and play the game in a normal way. I also like the coin toss idea of the poster with the video, as it might get rid of the time bias. Gathering the data across multiple players, servers and time zones should then reveal the real problem, if there is any.
Blizzard claims that for (non-legend) matchmaking in ranked mode only your rank is taken into account. If you could get abnormal matchmaking by repeatedly conceding, it would still suggest matchmaking doesn't work as communicated.
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In addition to people asking the valid question "Why would Blizzard even do this?", there's a bigger fundamental flaw in the hypothesis: If the match making system is rigged against you, then it is rigged FOR someone else. Which contradicts the entire hypothesis.
Arguing on the internet is like playing chess with a pigeon. You may be good at chess, but the pigeon is just going to knock all the pieces down, take a shit on the table, and strut around like its victorious.
Wow that make sense.. definitely there is special algorithm for every rank and every mode. I will better stop posting there...
What he is doing is verifying that each sample from each grouping belongs to the same greater population by using a t-test to compare the two probabilities. If we assume that there is a static percentage of players who are cubelock players at rank X at any given moment, if he can show that the variance between the two sets of samples are sufficiently different, we can say with certain sets of certainty that they do not belong to the same population sets.
The important aspect of this, however, is that 1) certainty is never 100%, but that anything above about an 85% certainty should not be considered a coincidence and 2) that using t-tests does not require 'thousands' of data points. The fact that he has 150 data points in each grouping is more than sufficient to make pretty reasonable statistical guesses on it.
I play hunter I SMorc and I don't give a damn who I'm facing.
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide
I'm not trying to say that there is a rigged chance or not, since i have no proof of either.
I would however like to see OP's evidence through a Decktracker or just... Anything. It's easy to manifacture random numbers, to support a specific case.
Also note that we mods have no ties to Blizzard whatsoever, i'm not trying to defend Blizzard, but it's hard to believe a claim without any sort of data or evidence to back it up.
I want a new title, but Flux won't let me have one,
So i played over 150 games with Murloc Paladin as well this season and my conclusion is probably less controversial as this mathematical whatever this is. My conclusion Call to Arms is a pretty good card.
Since we are talking about a probability experiment there is a chance that your statistics are unreliable. it could be that from 15:00-16:00(random times) nobody wants to play cubelock. and then from 16:00-17:00 everybody decides that they do want to play cubelock.
Also you do not take into consideration that people switch decks. imagine you see no cubelocks on ladder and only paladin, then people switch to cubes.
you need to have an even bigger sample size and play on different days on different times to make this reliable. there are a lot of variables that you didnt take into consideration, so this is not (yet) mathematical proof that ranked is rigded.
Arguing on the internet is like playing chess with a pigeon. You may be good at chess, but the pigeon is just going to knock all the pieces down, take a shit on the table, and strut around like its victorious.
I just did a similar test. As OP I took two paladin decks that only differ in third silence vs. second Knifejuggler and queued at rank 5, 0 stars.
Before each game I tossed a coin and either used the deck with or without silence tech. Then I marked each opponent with an o if it was a control warlock and with a x if it wasn't. I stopped after 100 games, because I got fatigued.
The sample size is pretty small, of course, but I'm pretty sure if the discrepancies were as big as OP stated my findings would have been different. I also have recorded the whole thing and could provide the video in a few hours.
Edit: Video
Memedeck-seeker. Always tries to build new decks. Hates tournements, streamers, netdecks and poor-o players.
ah, but a tournement mode could be great !!!
Being a social scientist who works data driven as well. I have my problems with calling the data gathered a PROOF. For me, your data collected provides some evidence that there indeed may be a strange interaction between how you tech your deck and who you are being matched against.
Of course, having more data points is always nice to have, especially when taking additional variables like time of the day etc. into account. In my opinion, the biggest flaw of OP's design lies in his way of gathering the data itself, as conceding over and over is not the normal way the game is played. Thus, the results might be biased through the unobserved variable of MMR for notorious losers. It makes sense for Blizzard, in order to keep those people hooked, to give them easier matchups to boost their motivation.
In a perfect world, the player base should gather and play the game in a normal way. I also like the coin toss idea of the poster with the video, as it might get rid of the time bias. Gathering the data across multiple players, servers and time zones should then reveal the real problem, if there is any.
Blizzard claims that for (non-legend) matchmaking in ranked mode only your rank is taken into account. If you could get abnormal matchmaking by repeatedly conceding, it would still suggest matchmaking doesn't work as communicated.