If matchmaking is rigged...?

https://i.imgur.com/RqXn8cL.png

It’s not that broad. It specially limits it to manipulating the match making, for monetary benefit and clearly outside the scope of a regular “fair opponent” MMR system.

Try rereading and thinking

Read the rest of the reply but I’ll rephrase it again. The broadness isn’t an enough answer to anything here. The legal text is specific on manipulation of gameplay for monetary benefit and clearly outside the scope of a regular MMR system that only aims to achieve “fair opponent”.

It is not clearly outside that scope. There is nothing about matching people who purchased X microtransaction onto Y map, which necessarily means that the various players won’t be of similar MMR

It doesn’t necessarily mean anything in the scope of a wild hypothetical if we stretch it to the furthest reaches of “lawyering” yes. But this is clearly a text that defines in multiple points and with specific examples that they manipulate the opinion of people with the express purpose to make them buy more stuff to make you richer, so the main goal it has is clearly profiteering and not good gameplay.

The core problem is that you’re assuming something I call rigging believer reverse psychology — that is, the belief that the way to get people to buy things is to get them to feel bad. Rigging believer reverse psychology is stupid.

Here’s how you get people to buy things: you create some participation trophy ranks where it’s either literally impossible to lose rank (Bronze) or it’s possible to climb with a 45.34% winrate, so just a few days into the month the good players climb out (Silver thru Platinum). Then you give them names like Gold and Platinum so that getting to them sounds significant and feels good. Then a new player gets out of Apprentice and hits Bronze Ranked on the 22nd of a month, climbs quickly and somewhat easily, and because of the rank names they think they’re really, really good, even though in reality they’re below average.

Then this new player starts to bump into reality, and they lose a couple games. But they don’t get frustrated yet, because they’ve been programmed to believe that they’re the new hotness. So they figure that they did pretty darn good with relatively few cards, and they just need more cards to keep competing. They’re still feeling very good about the game so they reach for the credit card and buy some packs.

It’s only after continuing to bump their head against the skill wall, when they finally get frustrated. They won’t buy any packs from this; indeed, they vow to never again spend a dime. But this frustration isn’t the manipulation that causes them to buy; it’s the hangover, the withdrawal from the manipulation that made them happier than they had any right to be. They’re upset because the evidence is clearly telling them they’re not as skilled as they were led to believe, and they don’t want to let go of that belief of their greatness.

What the patent is trying to do isn’t make anyone miserable. It’s not matching players who bought a microtransaction with players who haven’t and would be at a disadvantage — or at the very least, it only mentions so in the context of non-owners being on the same team as owners, allies not opponents. The patent is about putting all the people who recently bought a microtransaction on the same game together, using the map that showcases that microtransaction. The patent doesn’t subscribe to rigging believer reverse psychology. If course it wouldn’t; no corporation would take rigging believer reverse psychology seriously.

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I like when you go into psychoanalyzing the foolishness of gamers (from your experience in MtG overspending I guess?). I don’t disagree with any of that (carrot on a stick instead of punishment logic) and and it’s not a direct refutation to anything I said.

Though it could be easily argued that indirectly those methods still make a worse game; yes you may not make the system too annoying that way; but it’s more rich for the gameplay system to be just plain and fair like an old sport.

It decides based on you and your opponent’s win/loss rate. If you win too much it will make you lose. If you lose too much it will make you win. So to answer WHO, it depends.

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I agree, but that’s why the rigging believers bother me so much. It’s not that they’re not being manipulated, it’s that they’re completely blind to how they’ve been manipulated and are obsessed with blaming figments of their imagination instead.

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Well they can’t possibly lose, they must had been cheated. Curious how they only have those thoughts when they lose and never when they highroll.

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It’s not that the casino is rigged, it’s that the lights and the sounds trigger a hypnotizing release of dopamine. Hearthstone’s visual and sound design is similarly manipulative; BGs bartenders in particular are hypnotist bots, and obviously so if you listen critically. Neither is a safe environment to allow yourself to go lizard brain.

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Well the patent is technically a real thing, even if what most people believe about it is 100% pure projection. Reminds me of a certain finance mogol who’s often the target of conspiracy theories.

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They made me lose, because it was too obvious to me they were full of it.

It was almost like being trolled by them.

You CANNOT leave us on edge like that. You have to tell us which one you are talking about as there are so many. I love listening to these finance Guru’s talk their BS Ponzi Schemes to people as if they have revolutionized finance.

There’s only one Activision patent about it, easy to google, just search activision patent hearthstone or something.

Oh, G S is not that kind of finance guy.

I could care less about any patent Activision or Blizzard has. I wanted to know who the finance guru was.

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Depends on what? How did the code decide I should be one of the people who hits legend easily?