I decided to make this thread because I recently saw a lot of posts of people claiming that Hearthstone's MM is rigged and if you go over 50% win rate it "cheats" you by queueing you against your counters, give you bad cards in the mulligan or draw, etc.
Of course, like everyone else, I had my highs and lows (with win/lose streaks going on two digits range at times), but I never felt that the system is rigged or that I'm cheated in any way, and by tracking my win rates at the end of each month I was able to notice two things: that each and every month I got over 50% win rate and that the win rate was pretty consistent at the end of each month.
But enough with the "feeling"; I should better get to the facts and give you the cold numbers. But, before that, I should probably give some details about my play style to better get the context: I play at most six games per day, which take an hour at most (so I usually average less than 180 games per month), with the best possible deck that matches my daily quest (so that means that I don't play a deck enough to really master it and that I don't always play tier 1 decks because not all classes have them). I'm also a decent player (reaching legend in most months and having a couple of top legend rankings), but I'm definitely nowhere close to calling myself an expert, a hardcore, or a pro player.
And now the numbers (print screens to prove them will be provided at the end of the post):
December 2017: 61% win rate (83-52) January 2018: 68% win rate (57-27) February 2018: 68% win rate (61-29) March 2018: 62% win rate (92-56) April 2018: 58% win rate (104-76) May 2018: 57% win rate (79-59) June 2018: 67% win rate (85-41)
--- that was my best month ever, ending the month in top 5 legend and holding for a while even the #1 legend, at which point I had a hard time finding new challenges in the game so took a half-year break ---
January 2019: 66% win rate (129-65) February 2019: 57% win rate (112-85) March 2019: 61% win rate (114-72) April 2019: 61% win rate (81-51) May 2019: 57% win rate (79-59) June 2019: 74% win rate (34-12) July 2019: 67% (8-4) August 2019: 57% (134-100) September 2019: 61% (17-11) October 2019: 57% (79-59) November 2019: 57% (75-57) December 2019: 57% (75-57) January 2020: 57% (35-26) February 2020: 58% (50-36) March 2020: 61% (35-22) April 2020: 57% (103-77)
The average (excluding the two months with less than 50 games) was 60.1%; out of the 21 tracked months only four months (two which were during the old system where we were all resetted back to rank 18, so first few games were almost auto wins and two during which I had a lot of luck and managed to end the month in top 10 legend) had a variation of more than 3% from my average 60% win rate, while during the rest of 17 out of 21 I consistently had between 57% and 63% win rate. And, btw, this month I'm also at 58% win rate far now.
I think that, while it can still somehow be seen as anecdotical evidence since they're just my personal games, there is enough evidence to see that there is a pattern that says that no, the game is not forcing everyone at 50% win rate, but it just aims too point everyone toward that value via MMR, but, ultimately, everyone's win rate is a personal constant dependent of their skill compared with the skill of the average player - a better player will have higher than 50% win rate (the better the player, the better the win rate) and a bad player will have lower than 50% win rate (the worse the player, the lower the win rate) - the MMR is simply trying to limit those variations so we don't end up having people with 80% and people with 20% win rates.
So, seriously, if you think Blizzard is artificially capping your win rate at 50% win rate and it simply doesn't let you break over it, how you explain the fact that in 23 tracked months, spawning over three years and a lot of various expansions and metas my win rate never fall bellow 57% (and that while still being a rather regular/casual player playing at most one hour a day and switching decks/classes depending on whatever daily quest I get)?
I'm personally very skeptical by nature - it's not impossible that there's some sort of matchmaking fixing in place, but there's also no solid evidence for it, and according to Ockham's Razor the simplest explanation is probably confirmation bias from those claiming that there's fixing going on.
I also think people underestimate how hard it is to account for the metagame and deck selection parts of the game. While I haven't had a competitive run on the HS ladder in a year or so, and never played it 'really' competitively (aiming for high legend would be my definition of this), I did play MTG competitively back in the day - and for me, the hardest part of any tournament was deck selection. I'm sure some people find this part easier than piloting, but compared to piloting a deck on the day, actually trying to figure out the best deck to take when there were ~10 viable metagame options was the real difficulty.
And my point is that sometimes you'd choose what you thought was the right deck for whatever reason/s you had, and just come up against a few bad matchups and fail to make day 2 or the top 8. Doesn't mean the pairings were rigged - you just rolled some bad matchups when you may have been pretty close to breaking through (the analogy being that you might be getting close to legend, but then you hit some bad matchups and it can be super frustrating, especially if it seemed like you made the right metagame call up to that point).
Also, thank god there are rank floors now. Imagine hitting one of these rough patches and sinking below D5.
I also think people underestimate how hard it is to account for the metagame and deck selection parts of the game. While I haven't had a competitive run on the HS ladder in a year or so, and never played it 'really' competitively (aiming for high legend would be my definition of this), I did play MTG competitively back in the day - and for me, the hardest part of any tournament was deck selection. I'm sure some people find this part easier than piloting, but compared to piloting a deck on the day, actually trying to figure out the best deck to take when there were ~10 viable metagame options was the real difficulty.
And my point is that sometimes you'd choose what you thought was the right deck for whatever reason/s you had, and just come up against a few bad matchups and fail to make day 2 or the top 8. Doesn't mean the pairings were rigged - you just rolled some bad matchups when you may have been pretty close to breaking through (the analogy being that you might be getting close to legend, but then you hit some bad matchups and it can be super frustrating, especially if it seemed like you made the right metagame call up to that point).
While you are absolutely right on what you're saying, I think you're overcomplicating things.
While being able to accurately predict the current local meta could definitely boost your win rate by a lot, it is definitely not needed in order to achieve a positive win rate and/or reach legend; as I said in my personal example I never played the top deck, but I just picked one of the good decks for the class that I had the daily quest and I would say that it worked quite decent for me, simply on the premises that I was a somehow better technical player than the average player.
And, in some cases, trying to read the meta and keep switching decks can become detrimental even if you manage to do the reading, for the simple reason that (almost) any deck requires a "training" period before you can say you fully understand its playstyle, potential, and matchmaking. Actually, for anyone except the top players that are playing at high legend meta, I would recommend to just pick a good (tier 1) deck and stick with it for the whole (most of the) month since they will probably be able to win more from the fact that they'll get to master the deck.
I'm just trying to think from the shoes of the people that may make this claim, or get frustrated to the point of considering it - there's a possibility that, consciously or otherwise, they feel like they have chosen the right deck for the meta, and may even feel like their results up to this point have shown that (if they get like a 65%+ winrate leading into high diamond) - and then all of a sudden, they start on a losing streak, and the feel like it can't possibly be the deck choice based on their previous results and their decision making into choosing the deck. It can't be a pocket on the ladder with a different meta, because why would they suddenly hit a pocket at this final hurdle - no, it has to be rigged, because everything was working well up to that point.
That certainly would be the mindset of every player, but that is one potential mindset that comes to mind based on my own experiences.
I'm actually shocked the naysayers haven't made it here yet, but I have to give kudos to you at least going to an incredible amount of effort to keep such data over that long a period.
Most of the folks who have tried to prove the opposite, that is, that the matchmaking is non-random and aimed at compensating for win streaks (no one bothers to explain why it wouldn't also compensate for loss streaks, but the anecdotes always seem to be the other direction), have not come anywhere remotely close to this level of time series study.
I guess to be the ultimate devil's advocate, since I have certainly shit on a lot of "rigged" posters, in order for your data to really point the direction you'd want, you'd have to have tracked the deck type you played, and now that I'm thinking of it, it may have been necessary to just play one deck each month to truly reach what some of these people are claiming and disprove. I don't know; I'd have to think about it and try to figure out exactly how the experiment would be framed.
In any case, kudos.
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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.
They have a massive esports following... If they were discovered to be manipulating winrates, They'd be ripped a new one... I can't imagine any scenario where rigging outcomes for random players would be beneficial enough to risk the backlash of being caught rigging the software. It's pretty silly.
I hope most of the people who post about the game being rigged are just coming down off a rage quit, and can think more reasonably once they've cooled down... Otherwise they're likely also against vaccines, and hide from airplanes.
so according to a lot of people here in the forum: that means your terrible and should get good!?
Yes, either that or he's playing a bad deck. Those are the only explanations for a winrate that bad.
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Standard, Wild, and Classic player.
Losing to Sire Denathrius makes me not want to play this game anymore. The Sire Denathrius nerf makes me want to play this game again. Losing to Deathrattle Rogue makes me not want to play this game anymore. The Prince Renathal nerf makes me not want to play this game anymore.
A: Since each player starts at the bottom of the ladder at start, we want fair matches for everyone (aka. win-rate close to 50%)."
First, nice work on trying to prove your point but the game developers are on record saying they want a win-rate close to 50% for everyone. They didn't elaborate on what that means (perhaps they will at some point in the future) but it's quite an odd statement.
Matchmaking is not rigged, until you get to the gatekeeper matches. 9 out of 10 those are so bad matches, it's impossible to win. So you have to keep grinding and grinding.
A: Since each player starts at the bottom of the ladder at start, we want fair matches for everyone (aka. win-rate close to 50%)."
First, nice work on trying to prove your point but the game developers are on record saying they want a win-rate close to 50% for everyone. They didn't elaborate on what that means (perhaps they will at some point in the future) but it's quite an odd statement.
It is very simple. You get matched to someone close to your MMR. Therefore the 'better' you are (according to MMR) the better players/decks you face, thus it is highly unlikely that your win rate deviates significantly from 50% no matter how good/bad you are
I guess to be the ultimate devil's advocate, since I have certainly shit on a lot of "rigged" posters, in order for your data to really point the direction you'd want, you'd have to have tracked the deck type you played, and now that I'm thinking of it, it may have been necessary to just play one deck each month to truly reach what some of these people are claiming and disprove. I don't know; I'd have to think about it and try to figure out exactly how the experiment would be framed.
In any case, kudos.
Hey and thanks for the nice words!
If you'd check the print screens you'd see that deck types (or at least classes) were already tracked.
Also, while my typical behaviour was to switch decks on a daily basis to match them with my daily quest (just because I had limited time I could put into the game), there were also months when I did exactly that and sticked with one deck for the whole month (or at least for most of the month) as it follows:
December 2017: 61% win rate (83-52) - all decks played with a single deck (aggro paladin) January 2018: 68% win rate (57-27) - played a variety of decks February 2018: 68% win rate (61-29) - played a variety of decks March 2018: 62% win rate (92-56) - played a variety of decks, but 75% of games were with a single deck (aggro paladin) with a 63% win rate (overall +1%) April 2018: 58% win rate (104-76) - played a variety of decks May 2018: 57% win rate (79-59) - played a variety of decks June 2018: 67% win rate (85-41) - played a variety of decks January 2019: 66% win rate (129-65) - all decks played with a single deck (shaman) February 2019: 57% win rate (112-85) - played a variety of decks March 2019: 61% win rate (114-72) - played a variety of decks, but 76% of games were with a single deck (shaman) with a 59% win rate (overall -2%) April 2019: 61% win rate (81-51) - played a variety of decks May 2019: 57% win rate (79-59) - played a variety of decks June 2019: 74% win rate (34-12) - all decks played with a single deck (shaman) July 2019: 67% (8-4) - ignored because too few games were played August 2019: 57% (134-100) - played a variety of decks September 2019: 61% (17-11) - ignored because too few games were played October 2019: 57% (79-59) - played a variety of decks, but 87% of games were with a single deck (mage) with a 54% win rate (overall -5%) November 2019: 57% (75-57) - all decks played with a single deck (mage) December 2019: 57% (75-57) - played a variety of decks, but 77% of games were with a single deck (mage) with a 60% win rate (overall +3%) January 2020: 57% (35-26) - played a variety of decks February 2020: 58% (50-36) - played a variety of decks March 2020: 61% (35-22) - played a variety of decks April 2020: 57% (103-77) - played a variety of decks
As you can for yourself there were: - four months during which I played a single deck, with the average win rate (ignoring the big outlier I previously told you about when I end up with a top 5 legend finish) was 61.33% - four months during which I played a variety of decks, but one of the decks/classes were highly prevalent, with the average win rate of 59.25% - 13 months during which I played a variety of decks, with the average win rate of 60.23% - and, from the original post, the average for all 21 months was 60.1%
As you can see, the variations depending my playstyle were really minimal, which I think reinforces my conclusion that, in the end, it's not so much the deck you're playing, but your technical skill as a player and that there is definitely no compensation/rigging mechanism to keep you at 50%.
As a fun coincidence (or not), my arena's average win rate on my last 300 runs is also very close to my ranking games win rate (61.5%, with an average of 4.92 wins per run) - if required I can provide the exact distribution too.
A: Since each player starts at the bottom of the ladder at start, we want fair matches for everyone (aka. win-rate close to 50%)."
First, nice work on trying to prove your point but the game developers are on record saying they want a win-rate close to 50% for everyone. They didn't elaborate on what that means (perhaps they will at some point in the future) but it's quite an odd statement.
That is something all game developers want.
If you win too much you get bored, if you lose to much you get frustrated, in order to be entertained you need to feel both the challenge and the achievement and that's happening when you have a lot of close calls and you end up anywhere around 50% win rate.
The thing that I'm saying is that you don't need to rig the system to achieve that, you just have to try to find opponents with similar skills.
It is happening in the swiss tournaments by matching you with someone with a similar record with you. It is happening in the arenas by matching you with someone with a similar win rate with you. It is happening in the battlegrounds by matching you with people with similar MMR with you. It was happening in the old rank system by matching you with someone with a similar rank with you. It is happening the new rank system, in the casual games, and in the tavern brawls my matching you with someone with a similar MMR with you.
If you climb too much, you will get tougher opponents that will push you back down where you belong. If you drop too much, you will get easier opponents that will push you back up where you belong. In the end, in all game modes, after an initial climb/drop, to about your level, you will maintain a more or less steady win rate, but not because the system is rigged (because in this case, it will keep everyone at 50%, not different people at different levels), but just because it tries to match you with "a worthy opponent".
Again, I think that if the system would be indeed rigged to punish you for win streaks and force everyone to about 50%, then in all my records (24 months of tracked ranked games [about 5000 games] and arena runs [about 500 runs, which average to about 4000 games]) I wouldn't show consistently about the same win rate, which is different enough than 50% to prove that is not just the error margin (not having even a single month with a lower than 55% win rate in neither ranked or arena). And, remember, I'm just a regular player, not a pro player or anything like that.
IMO it's true but not in the way that people would think.
It's very common for the average player to ultimately go 100-100 (or something close to it), but that's it, an average player.
The game is checking the decisions you make, and your MMR. You're getting matched accordingly. So if it is true, it just means that when you win you're getting match against more skilled opponents, and making bad decisions and losing. Then the opposite is true when you get random winstreaks. Your MMR has swung low, and now you're playing better than them.
I had my tinfoil hat on years ago and thought the same thing, but then I realized: if it's true, then why do I not keep getting legend, while pros consistently do? They are playing way better than most of their opponents on average. Then, when they get to their approriate skill level in high legend, it stops being so easy.
A: Since each player starts at the bottom of the ladder at start, we want fair matches for everyone (aka. win-rate close to 50%)."
First, nice work on trying to prove your point but the game developers are on record saying they want a win-rate close to 50% for everyone. They didn't elaborate on what that means (perhaps they will at some point in the future) but it's quite an odd statement.
You're completely misunderstanding that answer. Aiming to keep people at a 50 ish percent win rate by ensuring players are matched with people of a similar skill level is not the same as rigging it to make sure people lose in order to achieve 50%.
An exceptional player starting at rank 40 would have a much, much higher than 50% win rate. Let's be low ball and say it's over 80%, they move quickly up the ladder never sitting and staying within any given pool of players, allowing that pool of players to get a somewhat close to 50% win rate, playing others of their skill level whilst the good player moveson and leaves them to it.
Our pro player breezes through the ranks u tilt they eventually hit a point that they are meeting similarly skilled players. At that point they will end up close to 50% than they were at any point during their climb.
If you're absolutely stuck at gold 5, it's because that's your level pretty much. Same for diamond 1-5 etc. There will be people at the upper end of the ability levels in those groupings and with enough playing and/a touch of luck then they'll push into the next bracket. That next bracket will likely be a bit difficult and it's likely they will struggle to consistency get into it. There will be pmayers who achieved diamond 1 each month and always push for legend but only actually achieve it sporadically or when they out significantly more time than usual in.
It works in a similar way in sport. If you or Manchester United into the semi professional leagues, they would instantly win promotion and keep doing so until they reach the top ends of the premier league. If Manchester United play Chelsea 500 times, the win rate will likely not be 80/20 in anyones favour but far closer to 50% than when they were playing in the lower leagues. There are teams who bounce between the top 2 leagues constantly, or the 3rd and 4the tier. Others will never make it to the premier league. Obviously there are differences but the point is the same.
No one wants to watch or participate in a competition where they lose 99% of the time. That's why league systems and tiers exist across most competitive activities.
This is what the matchmaking system does. It keeps people grouped with similarly skilled players so that each division can at least be competitive for the people within those groups.
The ladder is essentially a hierarchy of competence and isn't too far removed from the same way loads of other things go. Good salesmen will generally work for bigger firms, having demonstrated and maintained a high level of competence. Whereas someone less capable likely works for a worse firm and earns less money. No one will ever say they're a bad salesmen though they too will give a million reasons why they aren't at the top of their field.......
Hey everyone!
I decided to make this thread because I recently saw a lot of posts of people claiming that Hearthstone's MM is rigged and if you go over 50% win rate it "cheats" you by queueing you against your counters, give you bad cards in the mulligan or draw, etc.
Of course, like everyone else, I had my highs and lows (with win/lose streaks going on two digits range at times), but I never felt that the system is rigged or that I'm cheated in any way, and by tracking my win rates at the end of each month I was able to notice two things: that each and every month I got over 50% win rate and that the win rate was pretty consistent at the end of each month.
But enough with the "feeling"; I should better get to the facts and give you the cold numbers. But, before that, I should probably give some details about my play style to better get the context: I play at most six games per day, which take an hour at most (so I usually average less than 180 games per month), with the best possible deck that matches my daily quest (so that means that I don't play a deck enough to really master it and that I don't always play tier 1 decks because not all classes have them). I'm also a decent player (reaching legend in most months and having a couple of top legend rankings), but I'm definitely nowhere close to calling myself an expert, a hardcore, or a pro player.
And now the numbers (print screens to prove them will be provided at the end of the post):
December 2017: 61% win rate (83-52)
January 2018: 68% win rate (57-27)
February 2018: 68% win rate (61-29)
March 2018: 62% win rate (92-56)
April 2018: 58% win rate (104-76)
May 2018: 57% win rate (79-59)
June 2018: 67% win rate (85-41)
--- that was my best month ever, ending the month in top 5 legend and holding for a while even the #1 legend, at which point I had a hard time finding new challenges in the game so took a half-year break ---
January 2019: 66% win rate (129-65)
February 2019: 57% win rate (112-85)
March 2019: 61% win rate (114-72)
April 2019: 61% win rate (81-51)
May 2019: 57% win rate (79-59)
June 2019: 74% win rate (34-12)
July 2019: 67% (8-4)
August 2019: 57% (134-100)
September 2019: 61% (17-11)
October 2019: 57% (79-59)
November 2019: 57% (75-57)
December 2019: 57% (75-57)
January 2020: 57% (35-26)
February 2020: 58% (50-36)
March 2020: 61% (35-22)
April 2020: 57% (103-77)
The average (excluding the two months with less than 50 games) was 60.1%; out of the 21 tracked months only four months (two which were during the old system where we were all resetted back to rank 18, so first few games were almost auto wins and two during which I had a lot of luck and managed to end the month in top 10 legend) had a variation of more than 3% from my average 60% win rate, while during the rest of 17 out of 21 I consistently had between 57% and 63% win rate. And, btw, this month I'm also at 58% win rate far now.
I think that, while it can still somehow be seen as anecdotical evidence since they're just my personal games, there is enough evidence to see that there is a pattern that says that no, the game is not forcing everyone at 50% win rate, but it just aims too point everyone toward that value via MMR, but, ultimately, everyone's win rate is a personal constant dependent of their skill compared with the skill of the average player - a better player will have higher than 50% win rate (the better the player, the better the win rate) and a bad player will have lower than 50% win rate (the worse the player, the lower the win rate) - the MMR is simply trying to limit those variations so we don't end up having people with 80% and people with 20% win rates.
So, seriously, if you think Blizzard is artificially capping your win rate at 50% win rate and it simply doesn't let you break over it, how you explain the fact that in 23 tracked months, spawning over three years and a lot of various expansions and metas my win rate never fall bellow 57% (and that while still being a rather regular/casual player playing at most one hour a day and switching decks/classes depending on whatever daily quest I get)?
And, as I promised, here are all the referenced screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/xNIoA1u
I further detailed my playstyle and win rates depending on deck variation in this answer: https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/general-discussion/242896-hearthstones-mm-is-not-rigged-and-is-not-keeping?comment=16
I'm personally very skeptical by nature - it's not impossible that there's some sort of matchmaking fixing in place, but there's also no solid evidence for it, and according to Ockham's Razor the simplest explanation is probably confirmation bias from those claiming that there's fixing going on.
I also think people underestimate how hard it is to account for the metagame and deck selection parts of the game. While I haven't had a competitive run on the HS ladder in a year or so, and never played it 'really' competitively (aiming for high legend would be my definition of this), I did play MTG competitively back in the day - and for me, the hardest part of any tournament was deck selection. I'm sure some people find this part easier than piloting, but compared to piloting a deck on the day, actually trying to figure out the best deck to take when there were ~10 viable metagame options was the real difficulty.
And my point is that sometimes you'd choose what you thought was the right deck for whatever reason/s you had, and just come up against a few bad matchups and fail to make day 2 or the top 8. Doesn't mean the pairings were rigged - you just rolled some bad matchups when you may have been pretty close to breaking through (the analogy being that you might be getting close to legend, but then you hit some bad matchups and it can be super frustrating, especially if it seemed like you made the right metagame call up to that point).
Also, thank god there are rank floors now. Imagine hitting one of these rough patches and sinking below D5.
If the MM is rigged to keep everyone at around 50% it sure hasn’t been working lately. This month I’m something like 6 / 34, can’t seem to buy a win.
Missing lethal since June 2015.
While you are absolutely right on what you're saying, I think you're overcomplicating things.
While being able to accurately predict the current local meta could definitely boost your win rate by a lot, it is definitely not needed in order to achieve a positive win rate and/or reach legend; as I said in my personal example I never played the top deck, but I just picked one of the good decks for the class that I had the daily quest and I would say that it worked quite decent for me, simply on the premises that I was a somehow better technical player than the average player.
And, in some cases, trying to read the meta and keep switching decks can become detrimental even if you manage to do the reading, for the simple reason that (almost) any deck requires a "training" period before you can say you fully understand its playstyle, potential, and matchmaking. Actually, for anyone except the top players that are playing at high legend meta, I would recommend to just pick a good (tier 1) deck and stick with it for the whole (most of the) month since they will probably be able to win more from the fact that they'll get to master the deck.
I'm just trying to think from the shoes of the people that may make this claim, or get frustrated to the point of considering it - there's a possibility that, consciously or otherwise, they feel like they have chosen the right deck for the meta, and may even feel like their results up to this point have shown that (if they get like a 65%+ winrate leading into high diamond) - and then all of a sudden, they start on a losing streak, and the feel like it can't possibly be the deck choice based on their previous results and their decision making into choosing the deck. It can't be a pocket on the ladder with a different meta, because why would they suddenly hit a pocket at this final hurdle - no, it has to be rigged, because everything was working well up to that point.
That certainly would be the mindset of every player, but that is one potential mindset that comes to mind based on my own experiences.
I'm actually shocked the naysayers haven't made it here yet, but I have to give kudos to you at least going to an incredible amount of effort to keep such data over that long a period.
Most of the folks who have tried to prove the opposite, that is, that the matchmaking is non-random and aimed at compensating for win streaks (no one bothers to explain why it wouldn't also compensate for loss streaks, but the anecdotes always seem to be the other direction), have not come anywhere remotely close to this level of time series study.
I guess to be the ultimate devil's advocate, since I have certainly shit on a lot of "rigged" posters, in order for your data to really point the direction you'd want, you'd have to have tracked the deck type you played, and now that I'm thinking of it, it may have been necessary to just play one deck each month to truly reach what some of these people are claiming and disprove. I don't know; I'd have to think about it and try to figure out exactly how the experiment would be framed.
In any case, kudos.
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.
so according to a lot of people here in the forum: that means your terrible and should get good!?
If u think ranked is rigged imagine casual take a look
But if it's not rigged, that means I'm bad. No thanks.
They have a massive esports following... If they were discovered to be manipulating winrates, They'd be ripped a new one... I can't imagine any scenario where rigging outcomes for random players would be beneficial enough to risk the backlash of being caught rigging the software. It's pretty silly.
I hope most of the people who post about the game being rigged are just coming down off a rage quit, and can think more reasonably once they've cooled down... Otherwise they're likely also against vaccines, and hide from airplanes.
Yes, either that or he's playing a bad deck. Those are the only explanations for a winrate that bad.
Standard, Wild, and Classic player.Losing to Sire Denathrius makes me not want to play this game anymore.The Sire Denathrius nerf makes me want to play this game again.
Losing to Deathrattle Rogue makes me not want to play this game anymore.
The Prince Renathal nerf makes me not want to play this game anymore.
"Q: Why are there two matchmaking pools?
A: Since each player starts at the bottom of the ladder at start, we want fair matches for everyone (aka. win-rate close to 50%)."
First, nice work on trying to prove your point but the game developers are on record saying they want a win-rate close to 50% for everyone. They didn't elaborate on what that means (perhaps they will at some point in the future) but it's quite an odd statement.
Matchmaking is not rigged, until you get to the gatekeeper matches. 9 out of 10 those are so bad matches, it's impossible to win. So you have to keep grinding and grinding.
It is very simple. You get matched to someone close to your MMR. Therefore the 'better' you are (according to MMR) the better players/decks you face, thus it is highly unlikely that your win rate deviates significantly from 50% no matter how good/bad you are
Maybe, but it's for sure rigged for packs openings.
Hey and thanks for the nice words!
If you'd check the print screens you'd see that deck types (or at least classes) were already tracked.
Also, while my typical behaviour was to switch decks on a daily basis to match them with my daily quest (just because I had limited time I could put into the game), there were also months when I did exactly that and sticked with one deck for the whole month (or at least for most of the month) as it follows:
December 2017: 61% win rate (83-52) - all decks played with a single deck (aggro paladin)
January 2018: 68% win rate (57-27) - played a variety of decks
February 2018: 68% win rate (61-29) - played a variety of decks
March 2018: 62% win rate (92-56) - played a variety of decks, but 75% of games were with a single deck (aggro paladin) with a 63% win rate (overall +1%)
April 2018: 58% win rate (104-76) - played a variety of decks
May 2018: 57% win rate (79-59) - played a variety of decks
June 2018: 67% win rate (85-41) - played a variety of decks
January 2019: 66% win rate (129-65) - all decks played with a single deck (shaman)
February 2019: 57% win rate (112-85) - played a variety of decks
March 2019: 61% win rate (114-72) - played a variety of decks, but 76% of games were with a single deck (shaman) with a 59% win rate (overall -2%)
April 2019: 61% win rate (81-51) - played a variety of decks
May 2019: 57% win rate (79-59) - played a variety of decks
June 2019: 74% win rate (34-12) - all decks played with a single deck (shaman)
July 2019: 67% (8-4) - ignored because too few games were played
August 2019: 57% (134-100) - played a variety of decks
September 2019: 61% (17-11) - ignored because too few games were played
October 2019: 57% (79-59) - played a variety of decks, but 87% of games were with a single deck (mage) with a 54% win rate (overall -5%)
November 2019: 57% (75-57) - all decks played with a single deck (mage)
December 2019: 57% (75-57) - played a variety of decks, but 77% of games were with a single deck (mage) with a 60% win rate (overall +3%)
January 2020: 57% (35-26) - played a variety of decks
February 2020: 58% (50-36) - played a variety of decks
March 2020: 61% (35-22) - played a variety of decks
April 2020: 57% (103-77) - played a variety of decks
As you can for yourself there were:
- four months during which I played a single deck, with the average win rate (ignoring the big outlier I previously told you about when I end up with a top 5 legend finish) was 61.33%
- four months during which I played a variety of decks, but one of the decks/classes were highly prevalent, with the average win rate of 59.25%
- 13 months during which I played a variety of decks, with the average win rate of 60.23%
- and, from the original post, the average for all 21 months was 60.1%
As you can see, the variations depending my playstyle were really minimal, which I think reinforces my conclusion that, in the end, it's not so much the deck you're playing, but your technical skill as a player and that there is definitely no compensation/rigging mechanism to keep you at 50%.
As a fun coincidence (or not), my arena's average win rate on my last 300 runs is also very close to my ranking games win rate (61.5%, with an average of 4.92 wins per run) - if required I can provide the exact distribution too.
That is something all game developers want.
If you win too much you get bored, if you lose to much you get frustrated, in order to be entertained you need to feel both the challenge and the achievement and that's happening when you have a lot of close calls and you end up anywhere around 50% win rate.
The thing that I'm saying is that you don't need to rig the system to achieve that, you just have to try to find opponents with similar skills.
It is happening in the swiss tournaments by matching you with someone with a similar record with you.
It is happening in the arenas by matching you with someone with a similar win rate with you.
It is happening in the battlegrounds by matching you with people with similar MMR with you.
It was happening in the old rank system by matching you with someone with a similar rank with you.
It is happening the new rank system, in the casual games, and in the tavern brawls my matching you with someone with a similar MMR with you.
If you climb too much, you will get tougher opponents that will push you back down where you belong.
If you drop too much, you will get easier opponents that will push you back up where you belong.
In the end, in all game modes, after an initial climb/drop, to about your level, you will maintain a more or less steady win rate, but not because the system is rigged (because in this case, it will keep everyone at 50%, not different people at different levels), but just because it tries to match you with "a worthy opponent".
Again, I think that if the system would be indeed rigged to punish you for win streaks and force everyone to about 50%, then in all my records (24 months of tracked ranked games [about 5000 games] and arena runs [about 500 runs, which average to about 4000 games]) I wouldn't show consistently about the same win rate, which is different enough than 50% to prove that is not just the error margin (not having even a single month with a lower than 55% win rate in neither ranked or arena). And, remember, I'm just a regular player, not a pro player or anything like that.
IMO it's true but not in the way that people would think.
It's very common for the average player to ultimately go 100-100 (or something close to it), but that's it, an average player.
The game is checking the decisions you make, and your MMR. You're getting matched accordingly. So if it is true, it just means that when you win you're getting match against more skilled opponents, and making bad decisions and losing. Then the opposite is true when you get random winstreaks. Your MMR has swung low, and now you're playing better than them.
I had my tinfoil hat on years ago and thought the same thing, but then I realized: if it's true, then why do I not keep getting legend, while pros consistently do? They are playing way better than most of their opponents on average. Then, when they get to their approriate skill level in high legend, it stops being so easy.
You're completely misunderstanding that answer. Aiming to keep people at a 50 ish percent win rate by ensuring players are matched with people of a similar skill level is not the same as rigging it to make sure people lose in order to achieve 50%.
An exceptional player starting at rank 40 would have a much, much higher than 50% win rate. Let's be low ball and say it's over 80%, they move quickly up the ladder never sitting and staying within any given pool of players, allowing that pool of players to get a somewhat close to 50% win rate, playing others of their skill level whilst the good player moveson and leaves them to it.
Our pro player breezes through the ranks u tilt they eventually hit a point that they are meeting similarly skilled players. At that point they will end up close to 50% than they were at any point during their climb.
If you're absolutely stuck at gold 5, it's because that's your level pretty much. Same for diamond 1-5 etc. There will be people at the upper end of the ability levels in those groupings and with enough playing and/a touch of luck then they'll push into the next bracket. That next bracket will likely be a bit difficult and it's likely they will struggle to consistency get into it. There will be pmayers who achieved diamond 1 each month and always push for legend but only actually achieve it sporadically or when they out significantly more time than usual in.
It works in a similar way in sport. If you or Manchester United into the semi professional leagues, they would instantly win promotion and keep doing so until they reach the top ends of the premier league. If Manchester United play Chelsea 500 times, the win rate will likely not be 80/20 in anyones favour but far closer to 50% than when they were playing in the lower leagues. There are teams who bounce between the top 2 leagues constantly, or the 3rd and 4the tier. Others will never make it to the premier league. Obviously there are differences but the point is the same.
No one wants to watch or participate in a competition where they lose 99% of the time. That's why league systems and tiers exist across most competitive activities.
This is what the matchmaking system does. It keeps people grouped with similarly skilled players so that each division can at least be competitive for the people within those groups.
The ladder is essentially a hierarchy of competence and isn't too far removed from the same way loads of other things go. Good salesmen will generally work for bigger firms, having demonstrated and maintained a high level of competence. Whereas someone less capable likely works for a worse firm and earns less money. No one will ever say they're a bad salesmen though they too will give a million reasons why they aren't at the top of their field.......
Correct! I have no doubt I suck at the game though. Just don't have enough time to play it...
Missing lethal since June 2015.