I have played since early beta. I have almost 1000 hours sunk in this mode. I wanted to share my observation of the course of the years.
Battleground features heavily predetermined mmr brackets. Once you hit yours, (for me its around 6000) it becomes impossible to climb. The points you get for winning are so low compared to the points you lose. This is on purpose.
There are other ways the system screws you over as well. Last game I was playing patches. Game lasted quite a long time. I didn’t get a single triple. What are the odds of that as patches? Very, very, low.
The way the system favors a winner is by allotting triples. This is NOT random in my observation. I also suspect it can read your board state and heavily favor certain units and tribes as well. I have found that if you intentionally concede a bunch of games you suddenly start to get more favorable matches.
Another blatant example of rigging is fighting ghosts. If I am on a big win streak and in my predetermined mmr-bracket then the system will do its best to avoid giving me a ghost fight. Some games it borders the absurd. I can be losing 5-6 fights in a row, and still it refuses to let me play the ghost.
What is also a fact is that battles are predetermined at the start. We know this from the famous “recruit” bug and achievements popping early. Its easy to rig the system to favor certain players based on their mmr, recent win-lose history, etc.
If you want to enjoy BG, accept it for what it is, a rigged slot machine. If you attempt to climb you are in for a really miserable time. Instead, just concede a bunch of games when you hit your MMR-ceiling and focus on just having fun.
I feel like they play with the occurrence of some minions in some games just to see how it affects players.
I went in game where we were 3 alive by turn 22, none of us found a single baron the entire game.
I personally rolled 63 times in 7 turns at tier 6, and still couldn’t see a single baron.
They’ve never released the number of minions of each tier, afaik, so you can’t say what the odds are, precisely.
There’s like 150 minions. You’re sampling 7 at tier 6. So your odds of finding a baron (assuming minions are evenly distributed in numbers, which again, not sure is the case) you’ve got a 7/150 or 4.6% shot per roll. So 95.6% chance of not finding a baron with every role. If you rolled 63 times that’s .956^63 for the cumulative probability of nog finding a baron.
That’s .0587 or roughly 6% chance of happening. Unlikely? Yes. But easily within the probability distribution of events likely to be observed, given the thousands of games played daily.
Edit:. I actually went and looked and there are fewer copies of the higher tier minions In the pool. So your experience was even less improbable.
All combat is on blizzard servers and takes a split second. The results are then sent to your client to display the animations only. This is how the game works and always have.
Until you figure out how to actually play the mode other than in a straight line high roll, but I don’t have high hopes for people who just assume they are leet and the game is actually rigged.
Let me guess, you know for a fact that yours is “around 6000” because you started losing more games? That is simply how MMR works. If I found myself unable to get past 4k and then let an 8k player use my account, he would absolutely be able to get past 4k. Because that’s how MMR works.
You are stuck at 6k, because the other people at 6k are about as good as you.
It’s been ages since the last time I did proba so it may be incorrect, but I actually wanted to know and tried to do the maths based on the numbers of this page :
hearthstone .fandom.com/wiki/Battlegrounds
Dragons/Elem/Quilboar were banned in my game, so numbers of cards available :
Beast : 188
Demon : 149
Mech : 196
Murloc : 145
Pirate : 175
None : 384
Total : 1 237
9 copies of tier 5 minions → 9 barons
Let’s say you have the same amount of chance to find one card independently of its tier.
Chance to have a specific tier 5 on 1 card in 1 roll : 9/1237 = 0.73%
Chance to have a specific tier 5 on 6 cards (tavern 6) in 1 roll : 9/1237 * 9/1236 * … = 4.37%
So chance of not happening in my game : 95.63%^63 = 5.97%
So you were very close.
I genuinely thought it would be lower than that.
Guess I’ll sleep a bit less dumb tonight. Thanks random stranger
Maybe it was changed but devs (or whoever was that from HS team) mentioned the visible MMR is just some random number you can laughably brag about but the matchmaking is done by some invisible MMR.
Can anybody confirm that btw? I am waaaay too lazy to search for it
It’s similar to the star bonus in ranked mode it seems. The star bonus or internal rating in this case represents your actual skill. The closer your external rating gets to your internal rating, the less points you will gain.
So you are always being paired against players of ‘equal’ skill. But just like with star bonuses, you don’t have to do all that well to progress your external rating until it matches your internal rating. Once reached, you will need to win more than you lose to make any real progress.
Edit-This was from a year ago. I don’t know if it has changed since.
After i wrote my reply i went to play a 1 match. Quess what, rigged.
I was battling same 4 players. I did dmg each one of them. I had good demon roll. Next i had battle with second place of the other group and won it too. Because i had demons with divine shield, had good hero pick. I bet i would have won against first player at top, who had taken no dmg.
Next 3 games i got only 2 demons out of countless rerolls, while other had multiple goldens, i could’nt find anything. I think there was only one other demon player, others was murloc, mixed and mech.
After few battle, I was matched against murloc that where super lucky with rolls and had them 20/20+. I lost it, like game chose there is no demon card and I loose that game.
How did the player groups got chosen so early, it’s not possible by random chance, that 3-4 player only battle themselfs. A battles B, A battles C, C and B battle between themselfs. While ABC could make hevy dmg to D,E,F. They let this D,E,F battle each other.
How 3 player had so strong murloc, each one of them multple goldens, while there were almost no demons.
How player knows, which type of minions are flooded in picks. It’s like game chose, it’s mech or murloc game and if you pick demon, you get nothing. Your only option is to rush lvl 6 deck and die doing so or constantly reroll nothing.Some games favors one or two type of minions, at some stage of game.
Next game after that, i was top with full hp and at some point i took 25dmg out of blue by some lucker at low hp, baam instantly after that i was matched with only dead player. Like game compensated, you get 1 turn to cooldown after we boosted that looser with lucky cards to dmg you. I was not last and had more hp then 3 of them.
I must have done something right. Maybe you should be nicer to the blizzards here on the forums so they will uncheck the box that makes you “loose” all the time.
I have played five BGs and won first or second in each one. I must be tight.
People usually think if they win they are skilled in BG. And if they loose, they got unlucky.
If you would follow the average luck, you would be in the middle because your board wouldnt be strong enough to smash high-roll players while it should be able to beat low-roll players.
You cant have lucky rolls all the time. I remember watching streamers and these lads and lasses were able to absolutely smash the opponents because they got so lucky it was hard to believe and then get recked at 7th place with laughably weak board because they got little to no synergy and scaling fast enough - have they mentioned the game was rigged to make them get owned? Nope.
What you describe isnt a proof the BGs are rigged. Its a proof if you highroll - you win. If you lowroll you lose.
Why do people keep seeing some conspiracies everywhere?
I think you don’t get it, but sure like to reply with nonsense.
If games matches, gives cards and chooses your opponets based on certain aspects of game or how it’s playing out. (makes matches last longer and more enjoyable for players). Then it’s not random and can easily be in favor or against you.
You say nothing proves. But everything proves this!
You take hevy dmg, you get matched with dead or leaver. Chance for this to constantly happen is close to 0%. Game chose it
You last, you get matched with leaver, then player, then leaver again. Game knows you had bad luck and now compensates.
Players are battling in predefined orders and in groups
Strong players are kept at last and don’t battle eachother, to have final epic battle. Game knows which decks are strong
And countless more
This all shows game does own logic, and as i sayd before. Can favor or be against you.
I say this is rigging, some may like to get triples out of 1 roll, when you behaind, which chance is maybe 4% if you count all the cards and how many ways they can appear to you. I don’t like it, because while it favors you, it might favor someone else even more. Makes whole battles pointless.
Why? Because at somepoint everybody knows how to play the game, which cards are doing good, it’s all based who gets them or is lucky. ← which is not fun game, who gets what first.
The point is that most games are in the middle, and if someone is interested in climbing the ranks they need to learn how to get to 4th or better when they don’t highroll.
There are so many things that people do wrong in a game, myself included.
I routinely see poor positions, taking minion that are just flat bad choices in any circumstance, and not knowing when to abandon a build for something better.
This idea that one picked X and didn’t see any so one lost is not how the game mode is done, tbh.
I just had half a good beast build going but was offered op demon turn (two Ur’zul and a voidlord in the tavern on an early turn) and switched 100% and won first place walking away… because I recognized the stronger comp for my lobby and went for it.
The luck was seeing the cards, the skill was knowing in that instant that my frogs and rats were trash immediately and without hesitation.
It’s random assignment until last four then it is round robin until everyone is dead. It’s possible to have two players play ghosts with only two players left.
The more you post the clearer the issues become, and they don’t belong to the game mode.
Yeah, the compounded probability of a likely event not occuring (or an unlikely event occuring) over a large sample size is way less impressive than our stubborn monkey brains want to admit. Kudos to you for doing the math to prove your intuition wrong.
This is my biggest barrier. I always worry I’m going to switch builds and get wrecked, even tho I know it’s probably the smart call
I’m not sure what the motive for rigging would even be. Maybe someone could elaborate.
I get nearly 100 points per win for a long time on the mmr climb, until you’re near the leaderboard and even then it’s a small drop. It’s very possible to climb. You just win more than lose, and to an extent, the OP is right that among similarly matched players, who wins or loses is largely (though not completely) determined by who gets to the right tier 5-6 cards first.
However, it hardly seems rigged to me. It’s no contest here, but I’ve got 1000hrs in BG and work with statistics and to me minions pools feel correct. For example, the chances of getting three of the same minion on the very first turn occur as few times as you’d think. There’s plenty of room to turn a low roll into a 4th or even 3rd placement without good luck. I think part of the fun is having to decide between a boom-or-bust strategy, which comes with a lot of disappointing moments, or a more consistent route for placement. I think if the OP did a more consistent strategy that hung on a lower tier, they wouldn’t feel so let down. Personally I go boom-or-bust and get a lot of first and seconds but also a lot of sad sevenths and the like. It definitely holds your mmr back and feels pointless if you want to climb but it’s fun. Midgame strategies with more consistency are much better for climbing and being less subjected to luck determining your placement.
Ah yes, rigging Battleground so Blizzard can… uhhhh… so uh, what exactly did you think was the goal of their nefarious plan? What big scheme did they devise to justify the coding required to create such a system and the backlash that would come from such a system being discovered?
