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.
So this is why I always get wrecked next game after a big win.
Bullshit, if you try to play Miracle don't matter if 1 or 15 games you will play always vs pirate warrior or aggro shaman, ragequit from this games and try to play CW and nothing than Renolocks and Jade Druids will appears...
Considering your words, PW and aggro shamans always meet Miracle and Reno / Jade always meet CW right ?
So if you try Jade - you will always meet CW ... or Reno - and be fine right ?
But it ain't happening wit you right ? How can that be - Blizzard identified you as excessively high skilled player and protect ladder from you ?
I see.
The better the player, the better your match ups will be. Bad players get bad match ups. I guess you're bad.
Ima play control warrior
*Queues Jade Druid*
*Breaks Screen*
RIP now I have no one to blame for me always getting "bad" matchups
Perception of skill is what's really rigged.
so still no answer about why it feels rigged. meh.
I can answer why it feels rigged, in a situation where you are flipping a coin, flipping all heads eight times in a row is the same likelihood as flipping heads tails heads tails heads tails heads tails. random strings of one thing happen constantly, this happens with decks too, there are more than two options but the same idea occurs, encountering a very high number of one deck and switching to counter it is statistically just as likely to encounter none of it as it is to encounter the proportional average, as it is to encounter the ratio you saw previously, 2 of those 3 options are less than the rate you were encountering before so the perception that the deck was super common before leads you to think that it is super uncommon after. the human brain likes to find patterns, and randomness often acts counterintuitively. so next time you see a lot of a deck in a short period, don't immediately switch to a deck that counter it, because more often than not you will be dissapointed.
if this is confusing to you, don't worry, it took me like 5 hours to figure out why probability is so weird and counterintuitive to humans. just know that it is weird and counterintuitive, so don't expect it to act like you expect it to.
No you made it very clear how randomness can counteract on you. Thanks. I was more thinking in the lines of micro meta's. So whenever you lose against a specific deck and decide to switch to different strategies you're actually already too late because your MMR is just too different from the group players you're trying to counter. Yea of course my theory is totally broken because generally you would say deck types are evenly distributed over all ranks. But i don't think this 100% true. There is a lot about timing, the meta is constantly in motion and so i think it's not only about randomness.
It cannot be rigged because of simple logic - if you alter it to make someone lose more - you essentially make someone win more.
And what's the point of such a change ? Hearthstone is not casino vs Innkeeper - it is PvP game.
The most suspicious could consider that it can possibly try to auto-balance meta:
Like if you are a Pirate warrior - go face some more shamans rather then Reno decks.
And if you are shaman - go get bad starting hands little more often.
But meta does not feel "auto-balanced" atm, otherwise where are those rigged Paladins and Hunters ?
I was going to post pretty much exactly your first point.
embarassing that the devs have to respond to dumb shit like this.
"Oh no i tried to counter one specific person and got matched against someone else. Must be rigged!"
first. ima go kms
First?