Hearthpwn

Quote from Happensdance >>

People try to find meaning everywhere. The idea that there is a rigging on the matchmaking that isn't disclosed by Blizzard is a conspiracy theory, that would include a good bunch of insiders in the company who would have the knowledge that such algorithm is in place. There has been no such leeks or indications. Such algorithm would have little benefits compared to the backlash that would ensue if it was discovered. There are many arguments against this idea, but as always with conspiracy theories such as this one, a debate feels like a waste of time. If you disclose any evidence (statistical data on a large sample, or indications in the matchmaking code), that could indeed grow into an interesting story, but I doubt that will happen.

 First, it s highly unlikely that "a good bunch of insiders" at Blizzard would have intimate knowledge regarding precisely how their matchmaking algorithm for a game like HS works. This sort of thing is quite technical and knowledge pertaining to the actual state/inner working of such algorithms is likely restricted to a very small group of coders that maintain/develop said algorithms. Second, these individuals have almost certainly signed NDAs, which would make any release of information pertaining to their work illegal (i.e. they would lose their jobs and face legal action if they released information). This is common industry practice. Of course, concrete evidence for something like what we have been discussing would be virtually impossible to come by seeing as no one on this forum has direct access to the matchmaking algo for HS and thus would not be able to uncover "indications in the matchmaking code".  Nor is the sort of manipulation that we have been discussing something that would show up in statistical data unless values were skewed to extremes and the system were only matching up brand new players to 11x gamers, which obviously is not happening. So I suppose you could assert that matchmaking manipulation is a theory, but certainly not one that could be disproven on the grounds that you cited in this response.

Quote from YourPersonalGuru >>

So now we have a new theory up! "Is there an algorithm that cues people up against players that have invested in better cards, to promote microtransactions?" 

So apparently there is such a code for call of duty. That's of course not a proof or HS, but a "could be"

I think that match making is more restricted by player experience and WR. I don't run into players without decent cards at least. Unlike in the previous MM system, where you'd face anyone on your rank and thereby face all from day 1 players to pro's. I think the main profiting strategy is to keep people hooked. Wouldn't you rather make them play all their spare time away, than piss them off and hope for a rage purchase? The devs seem to have a hard enough time keeping up the player experience at least.

Could your opponent be prioritized to have a fancy skin or legendary card? Maybe. But how heavy can that goal be weighed in the code before it ruins the match making?

 I think you may have misinterpreted my argument and the premise of the patent filed by Activision, although understandably so. The idea is not that players would be matched in accordance to which cards they do or do not have, but rather, as you say, player experience and WR. To reiterate, here is a pertinent quote from the abstract of said patent:

"...the system may match a more expert/marquee player with a junior player to encourage the junior player to make game-related purchases of items possessed/used by the marquee player. A junior player may wish to emulate the marquee player by obtaining weapons or other items used by the marquee player".

So the idea, as I imagine it would pertain to Hearthstone, is that as a consequence of queuing into relatively experienced players or players with a higher WR, players that have less experience or a lower WR will seek to purchase card packs in order to "emulate" the aforementioned experienced/stronger player (presuming that they do not have those cards already).  I also do want to reiterate that I do not and cannot know whether such an impetus has been integrated into the existing matchmaking algorithm. I simply wished to make the case that something like this could be feasible and would make good business sense from Blizzard's perspective.

I'm not even sure if you're just trolling now tbh. Pretty sure if you went out into the streets and asked someone to cheat someone else for 100 bucks, they would do it. lol. But seeing as you can't seem to come up with any legitimate answers to any aspect of my argument or any of the questions I posed in my last response and have now come to the point that you're spouting vague platitudes about human nature, I don't see how there's anything else to be gained from this conversation. So far as I'm concerned, you've now essentially admitted that you are incorrect. 

Again, you're acting as if the developers at Blizzard have complete autonomy and can and would choose to simply ignore the fact that they need their game to make money. At this stage it's not even a question of whether they would be repulsed on principle by the idea of manipulating matchmaking for the sake of profit (which is an exceptionally questionable assertion in and of itself), but whether they actually have the agency to refuse to do so, which they absolutely do not. And besides, doing something like that is hardly equivalent to selling oneself. That's another strawman and an hilariously non-accurate analogy. Your argument, so far as I can tell, has been reduced to an appeal to emotion and absurd comparisons that fail to represent what we are actually talking about. Do you have any direct rebuttal for anything I've been saying other than your relatively warped opinion about the ethics of capitalism? What do you have to say about the fact that Hearthstones developers do not actually have final say regarding the direction of their game, and that they must make decisions with the profitability of the game in mind? How can you even know that said developers would be opposed on an ethical level to doing something like implementing matchmaking that encourages microtransactions? Can you make any argument on this topic that is not directly predicated on your personal opinion and nothing else of genuine substance?

Quote from Aventurier >>

yep. you look much  smarter. you're the best, man. a champion.   you won again. gg

 Ok, I apologize. You're entitled to spell any word however you want. On me. I will stick with everything else I said though. I do genuinely believe that Blizzard would have very good reason to mess with matchmaking if it would lead to players spending more money, and I think I have provided sufficient evidence that this is the case via my previous responses. If you have a logical counterargument to my last response, I'd love to hear it. I will clarify that I don't believe that development oriented around player enjoyment and development focused on maximizing profit are necessarily mutually exclusive, but they most certainly are not necessarily always in total alignment either. It stands to reason that there will be and have been scenarios in which either the player bases gratification or revenue need to be prioritized by Team 6. In this particular instance, it seems to me that we have more reason to believe that whoever works on Hearthstones matchmaking algorithm would prioritize potential profit for all of the aforementioned reasons outlined in my previous responses.

Quote from Aventurier >>

I can also file a patent for a nuclear warhead. doesnt mean i will use it.

you get a point. agreed that capitalism is making company objective similar to a sociopath. doesnt mean devs or any employee abide by it or adhere to it. i would be glad HS goes open source living on donations. sadly, they went the complete opposite polar direction.

loosing trust of gamers / clients is not "good for business" and fits the thread though.

and talking about human motives is not irrelevant.  answers "why?"

 Your nuclear warhead analogy is an excellent example of the strawman fallacy, if nothing else. A nuclear warhead is not even remotely similar to an algorithm that is designed to encourage players to spend money on a virtual card game: one is a weapon of mass destruction intended to be used as a last resort, the other is a mechanism that is intended to ensure that a video game is profitable and is consequently quite literally the opposite of a "last resort". It would not make sense for you to actually use a nuclear warhead unless you had absolutely no other choice, whereas it would make perfect sense for Blizzard to manipulate matchmaking in HS order to boost their profit margins. A very bad analogy. 

It's impossible for us to know with absolute certainty one way or another whether Blizz is actually manipulating matchmaking with the intent of encouraging players to participate in microtransactions. With that said, we do know that they have access to a patent that explicitly sets forth how they might do exactly that. And doing so would hypothetically contribute to players spending money on HS, so it wouldn't make sense for them not to at least attempt to implement something in this vein. Moreover, of course devs would have to adhere to profit oriented direction from Blizzard. You really think they could just tell their board of directors and investors to go screw themselves and that they don't care about making money? They are employees and they can be replaced. To assert otherwise is absurd in the extreme. And regardless, most players don't care that much about any of this stuff. The vast majority of people that play HS aren't on any forums and play casually during lunch breaks or in the bathroom, etc. So even if someone somehow uncovered the source code for Blizzards matchmaking algorithm and discovered that manipulation with the intent of ensuring players lose matches to facilitate microtransactions was occurring, it would be very difficult to make the argument that a massive loss of trust from the entire HS community would be incurred. With all that said, I do admire your commitment to misspelling lose despite having been told how to spell it correctly. You are certainly dedicated to making yourself look unintelligent, haha.

Quote from Aventurier >>

you base your assumptions on how you perceive other humans (ie purely driven by greed). first it is not the truth, but anyway:

like someone above said, it does not make sense regarding business. if you get detected rigging games, your business is over. not worth the risk. and giving how paranoid every player is here already...

now a developer of a game is mostly driven by the will to give others fun. therefor your theory is lacking motivation to be more probable than pink unicorns.

 

 

 Your fairly irrelevant presumptions about human nature and how it pertains to business notwithstanding, I have already made a case as to why manipulating matchmaking would indeed be profitable for Blizzard. I cited a patent filed by Activision (Blizzards parent company) in which the process by which said manipulation would be conducted is quite literally laid out in considerable detail. Your counterargument, which is essentially "if you get detected rigging games, your business is over" has absolutely no basis in anything other than your own opinion and fails to take any context whatsoever into account. The primary directive of any game developer that is employed by a publicly traded company (i.e. Activision Blizzard) is to ensure that the game that they are developing is profitable, not to "give others fun". This is unfortunate for players, but it's also how the world works. So, in short, matchmaking manipulation would not only be exceedingly worthy of "the risk" as you put it, but also exceedingly conducive to profit if it were to incentivize players to spend money on microtransactions (read: card packs), which is the entire idea behind said manipulation in the first place.

Quote from YourPersonalGuru >>

Quote from Sevasmios >

 I like how you spelled everything else perfectly but somehow don't know how to spell "lose", lol. In all seriousness, it would make sense from a business perspective (if they had the capability) for Blizzard to implement a matchmaking system in Hearthstone that ensures that players lose matches at least as frequently as they win them, but this is hardly a topic that hasn't been explored before. How exactly they would do such a thing is a matter of no little debate, but I don't think it's as improbable as "pink unicorns, invisible cooties, and angry gremlins... messing with your astrological karma".

 

 Now nobody disagrees that match making is partially made for ensuring a more even win/loss rate for people. Because the whole point is to make sure that you feel sufficiently challenged which should mean that you neither win or lose too much. Otherwise you'll be bored and stop playing. Your opponents should be somewhat equal to you or the business will die. The only disagreement is weather your deck list is matched too. I've seen way too many meta decks to believe that. I've farmed enough meta decks to get a 65+% WR and I've seen others do the same. Sure I've also "felt" the opposite. Like I've played backgammon and not rolled a 6 for ages or bet on a number over and over, only to see it after I switch. Try playing some dice games, you'll see crazier shit than in your average yogg-video. If you try to go anti 5% of the meta, you're basically trying to roll a 6 on 50% of your rolls so... Don't do that. 

 Right, player engagement is certainly a critical component of any popular games' success and would definitely serve as sufficient motivation for matchmaking manipulation on Blizz's end. As for whether decklists are taken into consideration by the matchmaking algorithm, for me it seems a bit gratuitous to argue about bc there is no way for any of us to know one way or another exactly how Blizzard would go about manipulating matchmaking (or if said manipulation is even occurring on a statistically significant level in the first place). To me it seems unlikely that the algorithm would be sophisticated enough to incorporate parameters like deck archetypes, player experience, etc into matchmaking, but I'm hardly an expert on that topic. Particulars are virtually impossible to elucidate in this instance. I think that all that we can say for certain is that it is feasible that Blizzard is actively manipulating matchmaking in HS to some extent, and that said manipulation would be incentivized by potential profit. 

Actually it would make perfect business sense for Blizzard to manipulate matchmaking in order to ensure that players lose more frequently than they would otherwise due to say, variance. The reasoning is quite logical and is laid out directly in a patent filed by Activision in 2014 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160005270). To quote myself from another thread:

"In essence, the premise of the patent as is communicated directly in the abstract is to facilitate players participation in microtransactions via matchmaking. The hypothetical situation in which this might be achieved is related as follows: "...the system may match a more expert/marquee player with a junior player to encourage the junior player to make game-related purchases of items possessed/used by the marquee player. A junior player may wish to emulate the marquee player by obtaining weapons or other items used by the marquee player". This is quite ingenious in that, as you noted, humans generally do not enjoy losing; Blizzard would be able to take maximal advantage of this psychological bias towards winning by artificially producing unfavorable matches and subsequently offering players a means to achieve the same success their opponents had by purchasing card packs (i.e. microtransactions). So you see, if this methodology were actually being implemented in Hearthstones matchmaking algorithm, it is quite clear that ensuring that players win matches would not exactly be Blizzards objective. If anything, it would be quite the opposite." 

So yes, the hypothetical scenario in which such a system might be employed in a game such as HS is decidedly more probable than "pink unicorns".

Quote from Aventurier >>

Blizzard has built an AI to spy your mood from webcam, keyboard, touchscreen and basically everything which relates to you. whenever you win too much they throw a deck archetype counter at you right from the MM. because pissing you off is there main objective, all day, everyday. they mess with your deck, your draws and basically whatever feeds your paranoia. you dont loose because you simply loose, no no. impossibru. you re too good for that. you loose because Blizzard, pink unicorns, invisible cooties and angry gremlins are messing with your astrological karma. that makes perfect sense.

 I like how you spelled everything else perfectly but somehow don't know how to spell "lose", lol. In all seriousness, it would make sense from a business perspective (if they had the capability) for Blizzard to implement a matchmaking system in Hearthstone that ensures that players lose matches at least as frequently as they win them, but this is hardly a topic that hasn't been explored before. How exactly they would do such a thing is a matter of no little debate, but I don't think it's as improbable as "pink unicorns, invisible cooties, and angry gremlins... messing with your astrological karma".

Quote from poppae >>

Now that I've played some games it seems that you need to play quite a lot actually to keep your rank. I've now played in two days 35 games with win rate of 62 % and lost 450 ranks. 

Well, I think it is not worth the game time trying to keep very high rank by the end of month.

 

 Alternatively, you could play wild. Less people play wild than standard in your region, so the de-ranking you're experiencing would be considerably less severe and consequently 11x rank would be easier to attain and retain over the course of the month. Which of course makes climbing to legend/high legend next month considerably easier. The rewards are exactly the same as well. The only thing that you're missing out on is the opportunity to go pro, which I would imagine you probably aren't interested in anyway

It depends on what region you're in as well. In NA I have it on very good authority that you'll need to be around top 1,000 to safely attain 11x, so if you are in NA you certainly shouldn't settle for anything lower if you can help it.

Quote from T1p1t1p >>

Quote from Sevasmios >>

 Power creep. In order to incentivize players to purchase packs of cards from the latest expansions and to effectively move the game forward, Team 5 has progressively increased the power level of new cards over the last several years. This is something that happens in virtually every TCG and is perfectly normal and reasonable to expect. Ultimately, doing this is in the interest of the players and the longevity/profitability of the game.

 But over the last few years value of cards has grown exponentially. And that is the point.

 Hard to say if the collective power level of cards in HS has grown "exponentially", but I addressed this via the response that you quoted in your comment. Unless you're referring to something else when you say "value"?

Quote from Ronninji >>

Im not sure if im complaining or its just funny.  But what happend with the value of cards ? They are like 3x better then before.

I dont even know whats happening on the board cus im laughing at all the value that happends lol

 

 Power creep. In order to incentivize players to purchase packs of cards from the latest expansions and to effectively move the game forward, Team 5 has progressively increased the power level of new cards over the last several years. This is something that happens in virtually every TCG and is perfectly normal and reasonable to expect. Ultimately, doing this is in the interest of the players and the longevity/profitability of the game.

 With respect, quite a few people care about Wild. And that would appear to include the dev team if the latest balance patch is any indication, as most of the changes were ostensibly directed towards balancing wild.

There are quite a few people on this site that play wild as well: maybe you ought to follow your own advice and try not to insinuate that the format that they play and enjoy is irrelevant.