I mean that while my record was 1-1 or 2-1 — so not even good — I’ll get matched against another top player with a bad start
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Yeah, I agree in that case the probability shifts in favor of MMR
My conspiracy theory is they match even by Standard, because I rarely find a total loser on the 1st game of Arena. But I may be imagining things because I’m a total Arena noob.
I have been suspicious about them using an MMR rating in the Arena matchmaking process, and I think it’s probable that they track player skill in Arena by using an MMR, but I do recall two instances where Ben Brode (in 2016) and Dan Ayala (in 2021) stated that MMR did not play a role in matchmaking. I have no knowledge if anything has changed about the use of MMR in Arena matchmaking since 2021 or not.
The following quote is from a summary of an interview between Hafu and Ben Brode:
“For months, the Arena community has wondered if there was a hidden Matchmaker Rating (MMR) in Arena that pairs not only players on similar scores, but also players of similar skill. Lead Game Designer, [Ben Brode], joined Hafu on her channel to clear up the matter once and for all. He was also asked about some other smaller things.
The key point made, was that Matchmaking only looks at win-loss records when pairing players in Arena. The only exception is made for “brand new players”, who are treated as if they have one more loss than they actually have, and will be matched with other new players if possible. The exact numbers are still being tweaked, but this lasts for your first “two or three runs” on a new account.”
https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/20151-hearthstones-ben-brode-clarifies-that-there-is-no-mmr-in-arena/
https://youtu.be/HM1ByFwTjOw?si=B1nzYAX-0y1BReO8
The following is a link to an article summarizing a Tweet made by Dan Ayala about how Arena matchmaking works:
https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/dean-ayala-explains-how-matchmaking-works-in-arena/
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I haven’t played since the patch yesterday that reset everything. Before that drafting a deck that appeared to be barcode was not all that difficult. I did my 4 tickets and 2 of them i drafted decks that were 10+ wins. one was a 12-0 but that deck was beyond broken and my opponents never had a chance it was so good. The other two i believe were a 4 and a 5 win which is still respectable.
I wish they would go back to the bucket system but they like this whole “curated pool” nonsense that has a solid chance of handing you a degenerate deck as long as you can draft correctly. It’s just too easy IMO.
Do you think this ^ REALLY sums up my “logic” for how to identify if your opponent is using a barcode account in Arena?
A new Arena season started yesterday. How many legitimate players do you think, in the last day, have done the 30 required runs needed to put them on the Leaderboard?
The answer is zero, but there are over 30 barcode accounts already on today’s Arena leaderboards. Look at their naming conventions. Look at their average wins per run, which currently ranges from 0.18 to 1.16!
https://imgur.com/a/br57CzP
I have over 400 people on my friend lists for each of my old accounts, I looked at the account that I playing on last night to see how many of my friends used a suggested account name like AzureTurtle, and the answer was only one: a player who was named MightyOwl.
Most players prefer to think up better names to represent themselves rather than use a name with random characters or a game suggested name like AzureLion. Bot accounts regularly use such lazy name conventions, because bot farmers are creating disposable accounts and they’re not going to put much effort into creating a special name for each bot account.
This is why I run into names like Djwcb, AzureLion, EbonyWight, RustEagle, JadeBidon, and Xiaoming over and over again in Arena.
I don’t know how barcode account sales actually work, but I imagine that many of them go like this:
1). The bot farmer creates and retires Arena drafts until they get a god-draft, then the account is listed for sale, which include any information that adds value to the account, like the amount of gold remaining on the account, etc…
2). Once a buyer uses up the god-draft, they are free to use any remaining gold in attempts to get more super-drafts.
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Why would you buy that though? It won’t have your card collection.
I still don’t get why it’s so valuable to exist in the first place.
I don’t think you grasp how many people get joy from cheating, whether it’s using hacks to lift the “fog of war” in StarCraft, or to be invulnerable in Diablo (the item dupe hack was pretty popular in Diablo as well), or buying and using barcode accounts and god-drafts to ROFL-stomp non-cheating Arena players or to play a deck so strong that the barcoder has a chance of contending with Arena experts.
Just look at the recent Twist cheating incident:
“The first, and biggest issue is cheaters. Some people have found a way to abuse the mode by modifying the client and using custom decks containing cards letting them win the game on Turn 1. Good news is that the issue is already being dealt with. The cheaters are getting banned in waves and the devs are working on a hotfix.”
https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/twist-update-cheaters-balance-and-bugs/
I don’t know what the grand total would be for all the bot accounts that have been banned during the history of HS, but I bet it’s phenomenal number, and for every bot account that’s been banned, I bet there is some multiplier of bot accounts that went undetected and may never be banned.
There’s an entire market for these decks that you can find and buy on NA server. It used to be exclusive to the China server but when they shut those down they migrated to US and APAC. It’s FAR FAR worse here on APAC.
Ya, I think a quick look at the Arena leaderboards gives some insight into which servers are plagued more with barcodes. Right now, here are the number of barcode accounts on the Arena leaderboards by server:
Asia server: 55
Americas: 11
Europe: 7
https://imgur.com/a/2XQomM4
BTW, does anybody remember stories about how Chinese prisoners were forced to farm WoW gold?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2011/06/02/chinese-prisoners-forced-to-farm-world-of-warcraft-gold/
Do they just buy 1 account, to have 1 draft? That sounds very dumb; I still find it hard to believe; is it really the only thing they buy?
Same question as above: do they just buy 1 account, to have 1 draft? That sounds very dumb; I still find it hard to believe; is it really the only thing they buy?
I posted a reply with similar content, replying to Carnivore, in another thread. But I’ll try to make the style different here.
There is a rare but business-critical creature called the Arena Whale. For the majority of Hearthstone’s history, this is what they have done:
- Purchase Arena entry with real money from Blizzard.
- Have a mediocre Arena run.
- Go to 1
Over and over and over again, $2 at a time. (Is it more now? I don’t know. I haven’t bought an Arena run for real money since Naxxramas.)
You might notice that there’s no mention of Ranked in there. That’s because the Arena Whale hates all game modes that aren’t Arena, and they will pay real money to avoid them.
The target market for botters is the Arena Whale. They are selling exactly the same product — Arena runs — for exactly the same payment — real money. They are directly competing with Blizzard for marketshare.
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I concluded in the other thread, I think they do exist, but since it’s so dumb to buy a tiny collection for just 1 arena run (even if it’s cheap) then I tend to think the confirmation bias of people tends to see a lot of false positives; maybe the false positives are way more than the real cases; I mean I’ve seen many testimonies being basically “well they had a chinese name”.
I understand the Arena Whale deeply.
First off, for about one month of my life, I was one. I very quickly became an extremely good Arena player, with some impressive finishes on the leaderboards. I gained the skill to go infinite. But um, I didn’t just magically gain that skill out of nowhere. I probably bought about 50 Arena runs in the span of 5 weeks sometime close to when Naxxramas came out. It took a bit to git gud.
Second, I was already very familiar with similar formats, meaning I was already most of the way to gitting gud before Hearthstone was even released. Before Hearthstone ever came out, I was a Magic the Gathering booster draft whale for YEARS. I spent THOUSANDS of dollars on booster packs, NOT for constructed purposes, but for booster drafts. Essentially the IRL version of Hearthstone’s Arena mode. I sold all of my singles to buy more packs. Easily five figures spent over the course of three years. (I want to believe that the first of those five figures was a 1, but that’s probably being too optimistic.)
I wasn’t alone. A proper booster draft requires eight people. It was sometimes less, because addiction, but this was seen as suboptimal. There were people going broke with me. Not nearly as many as would show up for the Friday night constructed MTG tournament, but still.
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That sounds dumb. Why did you have to buy them anyway and didn’t just become good by playing on a normal account? Even if you run out of gold why would you buy accounts and not go to another region or buy tickets?
It was extraordinarily dumb. It was junkie levels of unwise.
The point I’m trying to make is: dumb doesn’t prevent it from happening. Fun and addictive can override a LOT of dumb.
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I don’t know how I developed this healthy skill, but I find enjoyment in becoming good in a game by not paying anything; I’m just aware I’m not “good” in a game if I paid to do it; I guess it’s just basic logic working.
It’s why I don’t pay for this game and I have no issue with it; it’s part of the “game” for me; I can afford it but I’m not doing it as a system.
I thought like that for quite a long time, after I quit MTG the first time. It’s a good defense mechanism against an addiction spiraling out of control.
It’s not really true though. Time is money, and there’s no difference between spending 65 minutes grinding for F2P rewards and just buying the same thing with the real money you’d make (after taxes) in one hour, assuming that the purchase takes 5 minutes.
Still, I have a powerful respect for useful fictions. And you bring up one of the most useful of them here. I will not argue with you further on this point. It isn’t worth it to substitute a safe falsehood for a dangerous truth.
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Yes and no. I mean I agree with you if you find it painful to do it that way. I find some enjoyment in “minmaxing” the f2p thing; e.g. I plan exactly how to open packs and how many and when; e.g. I haven’t opened 10 golden standards(for the leggo) yet and I plan to do it after the ROTATION (…lol).