This is just an observation on my part. I am a very casual player who usually only play homebrew decks in casual and lower ranks.
Been playing a greedy control deck in wild, and 30-40% of my matches are against mill rougue which does hardcounter my very greedy deck.
So i thought i would have some fun and made my idea of a anti mill deck. I was only at rank 18 anyway, so i can just concede until i play a mill rogue. I have now conceded 68 times in a row, i was matched against 7 rogues, but i conceded when i confirmed they were playing tesspionage rogue. Not a single mill rogue.
Played another 10 matches with my control deck, and met 3 mill rogues.
I don't spend a lot of time on this forum, but what is the consensus of the hearthpwn community?
I seem to remember threads about tinfoil hat conspiracy popping up from time to time, has anything ever been confirmed?
I rarely see people talk about the other side of the coin. Wouldn’t that mean that others are getting matched up against consistently favored matchups?
To listen to the forums, the consensus is that "everyone BUT ME" (meaning everyone speaking) gets supernaturally great or rigged RNG and matchmaking. No amount of conclusive statistics to the contrary can move them off that certainty.
Fortunately, consensus and fact enjoy zero relationship.
The issue stems from the framing of anecdotes.
A frequent story archetype: "I win 7 games in a row and then the RNG starts turning against me, I got hard countered by matchmaking, then Rexxar was in the bottom 3 cards, then etc. etc." A perfectly reasonable way to restate this story is, "I had 7 positive outcomes and then some number of negative outcomes", but that doesn't sound as conspiratorial.
I don't blame them, though. With the state of education in my country, I give them credit for being able to count to 7 in the first place.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
A lot of people also don't understand what random means. Like you flip a coin 10 times and it comes out 50/50. No often it comes out 90/10, that is the nature of random.
I just find my experience right now weird from a statistical viewpoint. Getting close to 100 concedes now, still no mill rogue.
If i concede a 1000 times with no mill, and i get 3 out of 10 with my control deck, i will find that very very weird, random or not.
22 games trying to make work a non Exodia mage deck with the quest, I play vs only agressive decks like midrange hunter, odd paladin, Keleseth rogue, etc... and of course, lose miserably the majority of the games, get salty and try my old CW to destroy the insane amount of agressive decks, what the cursed matching system put in my way?
Druid Togwaggle.
RAGEQUIT.
The matching system probably is designed to destroy all players never spend money in the game in favor to ones who spend, this is the only possible explanation for this behavior.
22 games trying to make work a non Exodia mage deck with the quest, I play vs only agressive decks like midrange hunter, odd paladin, Keleseth rogue, etc... and of course, lose miserably for the majority of the games, get salty and try my old CW to destroy the insane amount of agressive decks, what the cursed matching system put in my way?
Druid Togwaggle.
RAGEQUIT.
The matching system probably is designed to destroy all players never spend money in the game in favor to ones who spend, this is the only possible explanation for this behavior.
Yeah, but that does not prove anything. I mean that you did not see aggro decks for the next 10 matches proves nothing.
But when we are getting into triple digit numbers, that is another matter.
Hillandder provides a clear cut example of misunderstanding.
Statements like, "this is the only explanation" or "how much proof do you need?" evidence a clear lack of education on how large scale iterative processes interact with probability.
There is an answer to the question "how much proof do you need?". I could write several pages on exactly how large a data set you would need to reject the null hypothesis that matchmaking within the understood rating framework is random with a certain amount of confidence, and it would involve knowing how many games are played on a given day or in a current month. Regardless of not knowing the exact number of games played, I can tell you the answer is "more than one person can collect in that time period". That quite literally means that no one person's data set alone has ANYTHING to say on this issue.
None of which is me saying there isn't some sort of rigged matchmaking. I have no idea whether there is or not. I can say that all of the stats I've seen aggregated at various point of the game don't point to the conclusion that the game is rigged. And I can say, with absolute confidence, that you have no idea whether or not the game is rigged either, no matter what your feelings tell you.
Since we're all sharing anecdotes, I will say that I play on two accounts, one of which is probably one of the largest real money spenders in the entire player base, and one of which has had zero real dollars spent on it. I have seen absolutely nothing to believe that one receives more preferential matchmaking than the other, and my data set over the years of playing contains tens of thousands of games.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
Hillandder provides a clear cut example of misunderstanding.
Statements like, "this is the only explanation" or "how much proof do you need?" evidence a clear lack of education on how large scale iterative processes interact with probability.
There is an answer to the question "how much proof do you need?". I could write several pages on exactly how large a data set you would need to reject the null hypothesis that matchmaking within the understood rating framework is random with a certain amount of confidence, and it would involve knowing how many games are played on a given day or in a current month. Regardless of not knowing the exact number of games played, I can tell you the answer is "more than one person can collect in that time period". That quite literally means that no one person's data set alone has ANYTHING to say on this issue.
None of which is me saying there isn't some sort of rigged matchmaking. I have no idea whether there is or not. I can say that all of the stats I've seen aggregated at various point of the game don't point to the conclusion that the game is rigged. And I can say, with absolute confidence, that you have no idea whether or not the game is rigged either, no matter what your feelings tell you.
Since we're all sharing anecdotes, I will say that I play on two accounts, one of which is probably one of the largest real money spenders in the entire player base, and one of which has had zero real dollars spent on it. I have seen absolutely nothing to believe that one receives more preferential matchmaking than the other, and my data set over the years of playing contains tens of thousands of games.
Well that is good to know atleast.
Yeah i am definitley not saying the game is rigged. I am just saying i am having a really weird night with hearthstone.
Hillandder provides a clear cut example of misunderstanding.
Statements like, "this is the only explanation" or "how much proof do you need?" evidence a clear lack of education on how large scale iterative processes interact with probability.
I call certain times of the day "aggro hour" when all I see are decks designed to become lethal before turn 6. Generally, though I noticed two phenomena. The first is that certain cards in my deck (like cubes and key legendaries) will trigger unfavorable matches, and not others. You can see that if you remove them, then replace them. I also noticed that the decks I play over and over without changing out cards become less effective (i.e. even out the win rate to 50 percent). Again, could be my playing is getting riskier or an aggro hour issue, can't be sure.
One thing you always have to consider with these conspiracy theory is motive. I mean yeah, Blizzard don't want decks to overperform (i.e. go above a certain global winrate), and they do in fact take steps to control this (by nerfing overperforming decks/cards) - but that's not a conspiracy, of course. Balance changes happen out in the open.
So I invite you to consider, OP... why would your home brew deck, which is probably tier 4 or 5 in power level, be targeted in this way? What's the motive? What's the gain? How, exactly is such a deck disruptive to the meta, and why would they want to keep it down? I played control priest to rank 3 in standard last season with a near 70% winrate - you'd think I'd be queuing into Odd Warriors every other game, right?
That is an interesting thought. Again, i am not saying matchmaking is rigged in anyway, just to be clear.
But considering Blizzard are targeting a casual audience and want to attract as many players as possible, i guess if something was manipulated, it would not be related to powerlevel as you suggest, but to hard counters.
In my example, the problem is not that my homebrew deck (which is not even tier 5, it is a anti mill deck, with quest hunter and multiple shufflling and bounce cards/zola/bankers/ellek, to disrupt the mill plan) All other matchups are a autoloss with this deck, it is designed against mill.
So the problem is not that i meet deck with higher powerlevels, or that i meet only aggro or only control.
You are approaching this from a balance issue and making it about power levels, i am talking about obscure hard counters.
The weird thing is that the only deck that i HARD counter with a mess of a deck, i have not seen in 135 and counting matches.
But when i switch back to any other tier 1 or 2 deck, all i see is mill.
TLDR: Blizzard want as many casual players as possible to have a interactive and fun experience, therefore extreme hard counters like my deck, get targeted. And since it is such a niche example for casual players like myself , nobody else really notices, or cares :)
At this point, not a single person who claims such a thing bring.. not even evidence, just SOMETHING. At least someone who could put down "I was wondering about this so I ran a test. I played X games with this deck and tracked my games...."
At least that would offer SOME kind of discussion. NOTHING like that shows up beyond some vague "I played some 20 games or so.. or was it 50, or 5..." or just like, 3 games then that's ABSOLUTE PROOF.
That and a whole ton of theorycrafting. And conspiracies. You know, because nothing makes people want to buy more packs than making all of the cards they just opened absolutely worthless.
At this point, we've heard so many folks who SWEAR there's a conspiracy and so little actual evidence that these threads just get locked after a while.
I'm guessing if someone brought even some actual testing it may stay longer. Otherwise.. meh.
Always wondered a bit myself if they weren't doing a little behavioral work with the matchmaking based on how many packs you bought with real money. Most likely I'm just like the OP and seeing things that aren't even there, but it does seem at times that the longer I go without buying packs with real money, the more I encounter unfavorable matchups. The paranoia is real... Lol
Always wondered a bit myself if they weren't doing a little behavioral work with the matchmaking based on how many packs you bought with real money. Most likely I'm just like the OP and seeing things that aren't even there, but it does seem at times that the longer I go without buying packs with real money, the more I encounter unfavorable matchups. The paranoia is real... Lol
Go do some research on biases. It can get REALLY scary how the brain will manipulate what you think you see for its own agenda.
An easy way to defeat it? Data. Track your games. Track your wins ans losses, your opponents ext. There's deck trackers that will do that. Bah hsreplay will save entire games for replay.
Stop thinking your brain is on your side. It's just like acomputer that can get things very wrong. Trust the data. Either you'll break out of your paranoia and see there's no conspiracy or you'll FIND the conspiracy and have evidence to prove it exists. Win either way.
At this point, not a single person who claims such a thing bring.. not even evidence, just SOMETHING. At least someone who could put down "I was wondering about this so I ran a test. I played X games with this deck and tracked my games...."
At least that would offer SOME kind of discussion. NOTHING like that shows up beyond some vague "I played some 20 games or so.. or was it 50, or 5..." or just like, 3 games then that's ABSOLUTE PROOF.
That and a whole ton of theorycrafting. And conspiracies. You know, because nothing makes people want to buy more packs than making all of the cards they just opened absolutely worthless.
At this point, we've heard so many folks who SWEAR there's a conspiracy and so little actual evidence that these threads just get locked after a while.
I'm guessing if someone brought even some actual testing it may stay longer. Otherwise.. meh.
There's little point in bringing statistical evidence because most people don't understand the technical and mathematical aspects of statistical arguments particularly well. They just trot out the glib attack phrases like "confirmation bias" "small sample size" and the ever-witty "tinfoil hat" It becomes frustrating discussing stats with people who don't get the maths and trot out all kinds of irrelevant side arguments that seem logical on the surface but in fact are often not only irrelevant they are completely incorrect.
It's also the case that significant statistical evidence is usually formally defined to be the occurrence of some test statistic taking a particular value which is unlikely under some particular set of assumptions. This means that if you get a significant result, say something happens with p < 0.05, it could simply be "bad luck" -- statistical evidence is never irrefutable. For example if I assume a coin is fair and toss it 20 times and get 15 heads, then I have statistical evidence against the assumption of a fair coin (in this case the chance of seeing 15 or more heads is around 0.02) ... but it could just be a weird run of luck. Idiots would still try to argue small sample size.
Post hoc analysis of aggregate historical samples taken from a non-stationary time-varying population (like most large hearthstone datasets) can't really tell you much. Most people reading this simply will not get that. Good statistical exploration of hearthstone matchmaking would most likely require a smallish number of games played under a short time frame with randomisation aspects and coordination of multiple accounts.
I don't know for sure that ladder matchmaking is NOT completely random within your rank and NOT affected by the cards you run... but based on 17000+ ladder wins, a few goes at collecting statistical evidence, and a graduate diploma in applied statistics over the top of degree in pure mathematics, it's my strong feeling that matchmaking is manipulated in ways that Blizzard have been lying about for a long time.
At this point, not a single person who claims such a thing bring.. not even evidence, just SOMETHING. At least someone who could put down "I was wondering about this so I ran a test. I played X games with this deck and tracked my games...."
At least that would offer SOME kind of discussion. NOTHING like that shows up beyond some vague "I played some 20 games or so.. or was it 50, or 5..." or just like, 3 games then that's ABSOLUTE PROOF.
That and a whole ton of theorycrafting. And conspiracies. You know, because nothing makes people want to buy more packs than making all of the cards they just opened absolutely worthless.
At this point, we've heard so many folks who SWEAR there's a conspiracy and so little actual evidence that these threads just get locked after a while.
I'm guessing if someone brought even some actual testing it may stay longer. Otherwise.. meh.
There's little point in bringing statistical evidence because most people don't understand the technical and mathematical aspects of statistical arguments particularly well. They just trot out the glib attack phrases like "confirmation bias" "small sample size" and the ever-witty "tinfoil hat" It becomes frustrating discussing stats with people who don't get the maths and trot out all kinds of irrelevant side arguments that seem logical on the surface but in fact are often not only irrelevant they are completely incorrect.
It's also the case that significant statistical evidence is usually formally defined to be the occurrence of some test statistic taking a particular value which is unlikely under some particular set of assumptions. This means that if you get a significant result, say something happens with p < 0.05, it could simply be "bad luck" -- statistical evidence is never irrefutable. For example if I assume a coin is fair and toss it 20 times and get 15 heads, then I have statistical evidence against the assumption of a fair coin (in this case the chance of seeing 15 or more heads is around 0.02) ... but it could just be a weird run of luck. Idiots would still try to argue small sample size.
Post hoc analysis of aggregate historical samples taken from a non-stationary time-varying population (like most large hearthstone datasets) can't really tell you much. Most people reading this simply will not get that. Good statistical exploration of hearthstone matchmaking would most likely require a smallish number of games played under a short time frame with randomisation aspects and coordination of multiple accounts.
I don't know for sure that ladder matchmaking is NOT completely random within your rank and NOT affected by the cards you run... but based on 17000+ ladder wins, a few goes at collecting statistical evidence, and a graduate diploma in applied statistics over the top of degree in pure mathematics, it's my strong feeling that matchmaking is manipulated in ways that Blizzard have been lying about for a long time.
Nice to see someone who actually knows what they are talking about take on this subject
At this point, not a single person who claims such a thing bring.. not even evidence, just SOMETHING. At least someone who could put down "I was wondering about this so I ran a test. I played X games with this deck and tracked my games...."
At least that would offer SOME kind of discussion. NOTHING like that shows up beyond some vague "I played some 20 games or so.. or was it 50, or 5..." or just like, 3 games then that's ABSOLUTE PROOF.
That and a whole ton of theorycrafting. And conspiracies. You know, because nothing makes people want to buy more packs than making all of the cards they just opened absolutely worthless.
At this point, we've heard so many folks who SWEAR there's a conspiracy and so little actual evidence that these threads just get locked after a while.
I'm guessing if someone brought even some actual testing it may stay longer. Otherwise.. meh.
There's little point in bringing statistical evidence because most people don't understand the technical and mathematical aspects of statistical arguments particularly well. They just trot out the glib attack phrases like "confirmation bias" "small sample size" and the ever-witty "tinfoil hat" It becomes frustrating discussing stats with people who don't get the maths and trot out all kinds of irrelevant side arguments that seem logical on the surface but in fact are often not only irrelevant they are completely incorrect.
It's also the case that significant statistical evidence is usually formally defined to be the occurrence of some test statistic taking a particular value which is unlikely under some particular set of assumptions. This means that if you get a significant result, say something happens with p < 0.05, it could simply be "bad luck" -- statistical evidence is never irrefutable. For example if I assume a coin is fair and toss it 20 times and get 15 heads, then I have statistical evidence against the assumption of a fair coin (in this case the chance of seeing 15 or more heads is around 0.02) ... but it could just be a weird run of luck. Idiots would still try to argue small sample size.
Post hoc analysis of aggregate historical samples taken from a non-stationary time-varying population (like most large hearthstone datasets) can't really tell you much. Most people reading this simply will not get that. Good statistical exploration of hearthstone matchmaking would most likely require a smallish number of games played under a short time frame with randomisation aspects and coordination of multiple accounts.
I don't know for sure that ladder matchmaking is NOT completely random within your rank and NOT affected by the cards you run... but based on 17000+ ladder wins, a few goes at collecting statistical evidence, and a graduate diploma in applied statistics over the top of degree in pure mathematics, it's my strong feeling that matchmaking is manipulated in ways that Blizzard have been lying about for a long time.
To add to this, in a small way, ActiBlizzard has been confirmed to be in the ownership of a patent for the specific mechanisms by which matchmaking itself is used to drive microtransaction sales - in their words, matching a marquee player with a junior player based on psyche profiles and the junior players current availability of items.
It is not outside of the realm of possibility that Blizzard has been using this patent to push pack sales by intentionally weighing matchmaking to be strong-weak matchups,or other mechanisms unrelated to rank.
Not going to say that they are absolutely 100% rigging matchmaking using this system, but it is a possibility that cannot be ruled out, especially since it would be literally impossible to prove one way or the other without looking at the server side code which... is obviously not going to happen.
(For reference, I'm talking about U.S. Patent US2016/0005270 A1)
This is just an observation on my part. I am a very casual player who usually only play homebrew decks in casual and lower ranks.
Been playing a greedy control deck in wild, and 30-40% of my matches are against mill rougue which does hardcounter my very greedy deck.
So i thought i would have some fun and made my idea of a anti mill deck. I was only at rank 18 anyway, so i can just concede until i play a mill rogue. I have now conceded 68 times in a row, i was matched against 7 rogues, but i conceded when i confirmed they were playing tesspionage rogue. Not a single mill rogue.
Played another 10 matches with my control deck, and met 3 mill rogues.
I don't spend a lot of time on this forum, but what is the consensus of the hearthpwn community?
I seem to remember threads about tinfoil hat conspiracy popping up from time to time, has anything ever been confirmed?
I rarely see people talk about the other side of the coin. Wouldn’t that mean that others are getting matched up against consistently favored matchups?
Yes i guess it would. I just find it annoying that it is impossible for me to ruin even one mill rogues afternoon when they are ruining mine :)
To listen to the forums, the consensus is that "everyone BUT ME" (meaning everyone speaking) gets supernaturally great or rigged RNG and matchmaking. No amount of conclusive statistics to the contrary can move them off that certainty.
Fortunately, consensus and fact enjoy zero relationship.
The issue stems from the framing of anecdotes.
A frequent story archetype: "I win 7 games in a row and then the RNG starts turning against me, I got hard countered by matchmaking, then Rexxar was in the bottom 3 cards, then etc. etc." A perfectly reasonable way to restate this story is, "I had 7 positive outcomes and then some number of negative outcomes", but that doesn't sound as conspiratorial.
I don't blame them, though. With the state of education in my country, I give them credit for being able to count to 7 in the first place.
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
There's no evidence to support the idea that anything besides rank/MMR will affect your matchmaking.
A lot of people also don't understand what random means. Like you flip a coin 10 times and it comes out 50/50. No often it comes out 90/10, that is the nature of random.
I just find my experience right now weird from a statistical viewpoint. Getting close to 100 concedes now, still no mill rogue.
If i concede a 1000 times with no mill, and i get 3 out of 10 with my control deck, i will find that very very weird, random or not.
Play 23 games yesterday.
22 games trying to make work a non Exodia mage deck with the quest, I play vs only agressive decks like midrange hunter, odd paladin, Keleseth rogue, etc... and of course, lose miserably the majority of the games, get salty and try my old CW to destroy the insane amount of agressive decks, what the cursed matching system put in my way?
Druid Togwaggle.
RAGEQUIT.
The matching system probably is designed to destroy all players never spend money in the game in favor to ones who spend, this is the only possible explanation for this behavior.
Yeah, but that does not prove anything. I mean that you did not see aggro decks for the next 10 matches proves nothing.
But when we are getting into triple digit numbers, that is another matter.
Hillandder provides a clear cut example of misunderstanding.
Statements like, "this is the only explanation" or "how much proof do you need?" evidence a clear lack of education on how large scale iterative processes interact with probability.
There is an answer to the question "how much proof do you need?". I could write several pages on exactly how large a data set you would need to reject the null hypothesis that matchmaking within the understood rating framework is random with a certain amount of confidence, and it would involve knowing how many games are played on a given day or in a current month. Regardless of not knowing the exact number of games played, I can tell you the answer is "more than one person can collect in that time period". That quite literally means that no one person's data set alone has ANYTHING to say on this issue.
None of which is me saying there isn't some sort of rigged matchmaking. I have no idea whether there is or not. I can say that all of the stats I've seen aggregated at various point of the game don't point to the conclusion that the game is rigged. And I can say, with absolute confidence, that you have no idea whether or not the game is rigged either, no matter what your feelings tell you.
Since we're all sharing anecdotes, I will say that I play on two accounts, one of which is probably one of the largest real money spenders in the entire player base, and one of which has had zero real dollars spent on it. I have seen absolutely nothing to believe that one receives more preferential matchmaking than the other, and my data set over the years of playing contains tens of thousands of games.
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
Well that is good to know atleast.
Yeah i am definitley not saying the game is rigged. I am just saying i am having a really weird night with hearthstone.
So clear looks like I joking and...
OPS!!! :P
I HATE mill rogue,
however talking statistically the sites that track games would see this and report blizzard for doing this, too much data in public domain,
i personally think its a meta shift, if i played mjill rogue and then after 8 - 9 matches i started meeting your deck id switch to another archetype
Matchup stats
I call certain times of the day "aggro hour" when all I see are decks designed to become lethal before turn 6. Generally, though I noticed two phenomena. The first is that certain cards in my deck (like cubes and key legendaries) will trigger unfavorable matches, and not others. You can see that if you remove them, then replace them. I also noticed that the decks I play over and over without changing out cards become less effective (i.e. even out the win rate to 50 percent). Again, could be my playing is getting riskier or an aggro hour issue, can't be sure.
That is an interesting thought. Again, i am not saying matchmaking is rigged in anyway, just to be clear.
But considering Blizzard are targeting a casual audience and want to attract as many players as possible, i guess if something was manipulated, it would not be related to powerlevel as you suggest, but to hard counters.
In my example, the problem is not that my homebrew deck (which is not even tier 5, it is a anti mill deck, with quest hunter and multiple shufflling and bounce cards/zola/bankers/ellek, to disrupt the mill plan) All other matchups are a autoloss with this deck, it is designed against mill.
So the problem is not that i meet deck with higher powerlevels, or that i meet only aggro or only control.
You are approaching this from a balance issue and making it about power levels, i am talking about obscure hard counters.
The weird thing is that the only deck that i HARD counter with a mess of a deck, i have not seen in 135 and counting matches.
But when i switch back to any other tier 1 or 2 deck, all i see is mill.
TLDR: Blizzard want as many casual players as possible to have a interactive and fun experience, therefore extreme hard counters like my deck, get targeted. And since it is such a niche example for casual players like myself , nobody else really notices, or cares :)
At this point, not a single person who claims such a thing bring.. not even evidence, just SOMETHING. At least someone who could put down "I was wondering about this so I ran a test. I played X games with this deck and tracked my games...."
At least that would offer SOME kind of discussion. NOTHING like that shows up beyond some vague "I played some 20 games or so.. or was it 50, or 5..." or just like, 3 games then that's ABSOLUTE PROOF.
That and a whole ton of theorycrafting. And conspiracies. You know, because nothing makes people want to buy more packs than making all of the cards they just opened absolutely worthless.
At this point, we've heard so many folks who SWEAR there's a conspiracy and so little actual evidence that these threads just get locked after a while.
I'm guessing if someone brought even some actual testing it may stay longer. Otherwise.. meh.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Always wondered a bit myself if they weren't doing a little behavioral work with the matchmaking based on how many packs you bought with real money. Most likely I'm just like the OP and seeing things that aren't even there, but it does seem at times that the longer I go without buying packs with real money, the more I encounter unfavorable matchups. The paranoia is real... Lol
Go do some research on biases. It can get REALLY scary how the brain will manipulate what you think you see for its own agenda.
An easy way to defeat it? Data. Track your games. Track your wins ans losses, your opponents ext. There's deck trackers that will do that. Bah hsreplay will save entire games for replay.
Stop thinking your brain is on your side. It's just like acomputer that can get things very wrong. Trust the data. Either you'll break out of your paranoia and see there's no conspiracy or you'll FIND the conspiracy and have evidence to prove it exists. Win either way.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
There's little point in bringing statistical evidence because most people don't understand the technical and mathematical aspects of statistical arguments particularly well. They just trot out the glib attack phrases like "confirmation bias" "small sample size" and the ever-witty "tinfoil hat" It becomes frustrating discussing stats with people who don't get the maths and trot out all kinds of irrelevant side arguments that seem logical on the surface but in fact are often not only irrelevant they are completely incorrect.
It's also the case that significant statistical evidence is usually formally defined to be the occurrence of some test statistic taking a particular value which is unlikely under some particular set of assumptions. This means that if you get a significant result, say something happens with p < 0.05, it could simply be "bad luck" -- statistical evidence is never irrefutable. For example if I assume a coin is fair and toss it 20 times and get 15 heads, then I have statistical evidence against the assumption of a fair coin (in this case the chance of seeing 15 or more heads is around 0.02) ... but it could just be a weird run of luck. Idiots would still try to argue small sample size.
Post hoc analysis of aggregate historical samples taken from a non-stationary time-varying population (like most large hearthstone datasets) can't really tell you much. Most people reading this simply will not get that. Good statistical exploration of hearthstone matchmaking would most likely require a smallish number of games played under a short time frame with randomisation aspects and coordination of multiple accounts.
I don't know for sure that ladder matchmaking is NOT completely random within your rank and NOT affected by the cards you run... but based on 17000+ ladder wins, a few goes at collecting statistical evidence, and a graduate diploma in applied statistics over the top of degree in pure mathematics, it's my strong feeling that matchmaking is manipulated in ways that Blizzard have been lying about for a long time.
Nice to see someone who actually knows what they are talking about take on this subject
To add to this, in a small way, ActiBlizzard has been confirmed to be in the ownership of a patent for the specific mechanisms by which matchmaking itself is used to drive microtransaction sales - in their words, matching a marquee player with a junior player based on psyche profiles and the junior players current availability of items.
It is not outside of the realm of possibility that Blizzard has been using this patent to push pack sales by intentionally weighing matchmaking to be strong-weak matchups,or other mechanisms unrelated to rank.
Not going to say that they are absolutely 100% rigging matchmaking using this system, but it is a possibility that cannot be ruled out, especially since it would be literally impossible to prove one way or the other without looking at the server side code which... is obviously not going to happen.
(For reference, I'm talking about U.S. Patent US2016/0005270 A1)