Is Matchmaking Rigged? Max McCall Explains the Hearthstone Matchmaker
Max returns to the forums, this time to discuss MMR in Hearthstone.
- Skill rating, or MMR, is the only variable that determines who your opponent will be.
- MMR is a formula that looks at your wins, losses, current rating, opponent's rating, and your rating history.
- Casual and Legend gamemodes use MMR to determine who you will fight.
- Ranked players below Legend don't use MMR. Instead, it's only based off your current rank number and stars.
- If no other players near your ranking or rating are available to battle, they widen the range of acceptable opponents every few seconds.
Quote from Max McCallI know that its not rigged, but its really hard to think it isnt sometimes. [...] How does it always seem that when you switch decks to counter what you are facing, you literally stop facing those decks??? I just dont get it sometimes.I saw this post last week, but didn’t have time to respond to it. I’ll do that now: when you go into a game, the only variable that affects who your opponent will be is your skill rating.
Matchmaking works as follows:
We use a formula to assess player skill. After every game, the formula looks at if you won or lost and uses your current rating, your opponent’s rating, and your rating history to generate your new rating. We call this rating MMR for short. In casual and at Legend rank, we pair players with similar MMRs. In Ranked below legend, we pair people with similar star ranks instead of similar MMRs. Your rating is the only input that the matchmaker receives. It doesn’t know what deck you’re playing, what deck you just played with or against, or anything else, except for your rating.
When you press ‘play’ you enter a queue for your chosen game mode. The matchmaker looks at your MMR and compares it to the MMR of everyone else in the queue. If it finds someone else with the same MMR as you, it pairs you into a game. If it doesn’t, it will wait a few seconds and look again. The second time, it doesn’t look just for someone with your MMR; it will also look for someone with an MMR that’s almost the same as yours. If it still doesn’t find a match, it waits another few seconds and looks again. The bound for what MMRs are considered a good match keep widening the longer you’re in the queue; this is to ensure that you don’t have to wait too long to play. Usually a match is found so quickly that the widening bounds never really matter. After the game, your rating is updated, and the process is repeated the next time you queue up.
Relevant comic, my good sir.
And what is the "rational" behind a secret formula and hidden rating? Players have no control over matchups outside of queue snipping so why not just display the rating, and even what the resulting changes will be, just like in Chess.
Because of other games. Other online card games I've played/tried don't tell you either. It's more for trade secrets reasons that anything else. If your algorythm is public, then you guarantee the competition will use that, or better. The competition won't use a worse one since they know yours. And AFAIK you can't © algorythms.
I appreciate their honesty.
I'm still pretty sure that the only time I play against a Mill Rogue is when I'm also playing Mill Rogue. Not complaining, just bewildered.
we know its not "rigged" but damn it sure does feel like it sometimes, also i swear theres some algorithm for warriors to have fiery war axe in their opening hand every game. honestly i have somewhere around 10k total played games and i have yet to see a warrior not have fiery war axe in their first 3 cards unless they threw it back because they want some aggro nonsense
Then try to play warrior yourself and check whether it's true. If you get fiery war axe every game, climbing to rank 1 legend will be pretty easy, i'm sure of it.
i guess you cant make everyone happy
In the brave year of 2017, we finally learned that scholars were wrong: truth doesn't make you free, it only makes you stubborn.
As long as some guy in the boonies thinks The Man is against him because he switched from pirate warrior to reno mage and OMG he TOTALLY gets 5 jade druids in a row (even if he forgets the two poor rogues that he massacred in less than 2 minutes) there will be someone saying the system is rigged.
Gambler fallacy, confirmation bias, sample size.....all fancy words by the man to keep the sheeple numb, amirite?
It's all about the available pool of players at any given time.
"Ranks 1 and 2" is such a small pool that it has to reach outside it often to quickly find a match. There simply aren't enough players to ALWAYS be two of you who pushed "play" within a few seconds of each other.
They could easily restrict you to playing against your own rank, but then your average wait time between matches would increase.
i already know that. instead explaining things already known, answer theese questions pls
- when we can reach our stats through hearthstone? is coding too hard? or servers are not enough for keeping information? i want better statistics. i'm using tracker offcourse but making theese things is too hard?
- why card designs are like cheap 5. class card games? is warcraft lore ran out? or did you choose your target group under 14 ? do they scare when card paintings are a little bit darker.
- emotes are insufficient for transfering emotions. wow is a good emote but still, changing of " sorry " emote was absurd. there isnt an emote means: "i feel bad for you". do you think emotes are satisfactory?
- Even when a new hero comes to dota or league of legends, patch is approximate 300 megabyte. when 5 cards were nerfed in hearthstone, patch is minimum 500 megabyte. why? did you code this game with C or EMU 8086 :D maybe excel :D
- did you play another card game before making hearthstone like magic the gathering? if you cant find new basic mechanics like enrage, battlecry, deathrattle at least can you steal some new mechanics like support cards, trample, vigilance, first strike, life steal etc from other games. because even tes:legends (still in beta) has extra mechanics compared with hearthstone.
thank god. i am chill now...
Whether it's rigged or not, they'd NEVER, repeat: NEVER confirm it is. Just as general politics work, they just lie if needed, and get away with that, even if these lies end up busted sometime after. We'll never get a confirmation on such case, so whatever you feel about the system, you gotta accept it as it is. And play Patches ofc.
Rigging conspiracy? I don't buy it.
In the scenario presented by the OP, the system looks at what deck you are playing against if you lose, then looks at a deck you build after losing, then makes sure to pair you with a deck to make your new adjustments pointless. Sounds like a lot of weird coding work.
Is it just to spite the user base? I don't know who benefits in that scenario. Hearthstone: "Let's make our players hate the game!"
If they are talking about rigging things to make players have a better experience, go for it. It would be a nerf of the matchmaking.
Example: If a combination of X cards in a deck crosses a certain threshold (more than 30% of decks let's say), then you will be matched with people playing similar decks, or those decks that have succeeded against your deck more.
I'm not saying I want that, but that seems like a "rigged" version that is trying to benefit people. The OP's example benefits no one.
What you say it's possible and true.. but what's the motive. Not only only is there no proof, but there's no motive either. And it also doesn't make sense either. If you queue into a bad matchup, your opponent just queued into a good matchup. The matchmaking sysem is a code, it doesn't make favors, and doesn't have favorites.
"what's the motive?" - keep high volume of active users.
Imagine two guys playing Hearthstone:
First one has a pending quest which he wants to complete and quit for a day.
Second has no pending quests (all completed earlier), he continues playing for fun.
if we decrease the win ratio of first guy and increase win ratio of second guy, we hook them both up:
First one will have to complete more games to finish the quest.
The second guy will play more just because of win streak.
Thanks for the reply. That is an explanation I didn't think of. Still seems like a lot of coding, secrecy and lies to keep that wheel spinning, so I don't think that is what's happening, but it is a better example of why the OP's post would make sense.