Matchmaking does NOT seem Random to me (with explanation)

Multiplayer Discussion
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Note: I was Legend last season. I am Diamond 2 now.

I’ve been playing a ton of constructed lately and I’ve been noticing several odd instances of so-called “random” matchmaking, but to me they do not seem random at all.

First I thought I was paranoid or simply unlucky, but this proceeded to occur every single day, and the statistics and data seemed to support this odd phenomenon calling into the question the reliability of Hearthstone matchmaking.

I switch between five decks or so and my opponent’s classes seem to correlate to the class I picked. For example, I created a Brann Warrior yesterday and played about 40 games since then. Warriors usually (last week’ish) make up about 10 to 20% of my opponents. However, when I played my Warrior deck, I played against other Warriors 43% of the time! I’ve almost played against more Warriors than every other class combined, and the unusual thing about this is that whenever I switch to another deck I go back to the usual numbers, 10 to 20%. By the way, when I say 20% I’m being generous… It’s usually 10 to 15%, as the Meta has been dominated by Hunter and Demon Hunter. The funny thing is that this deck is built to counter Demon Hunter, and I’ve only played against Demon Hunter 10% of the time with this deck! And as soon as I switch to Druid I’ll play 3 or 4 Demon Hunters in a row. My Druid plays against DH 24% of the time, and my Mage plays against DH 25% of the time. Therefore, my Warrior games (intended to counter DH) turn into incredibly toxic competitions entirely decided by whomever draws/plays Brann first. I know Warrior is popular right now and I admit that my deck also largely revolves around Brann, but my issue that the numbers simply do not make sense. I quit after I played against another Warrior 4 times in a row, while I usually play against them maybe 1 in 3 games MAX. This deck also counters Hunters, and somehow I haven’t played against a SINGLE hunter; not one. But of course, when I play my slower Mage deck, I seem to play nothing besides Hunters and Aggro DH. I simply might just be going crazy, but the numbers don’t say I am, so I am wondering if other people are experiencing this. I’ll give you another example. I often choose a class and play 10-20 games with them and after some time I encounter a ton of Demon Hunters or a ton of Hunter, so I switch to another deck to adapt to the Meta. However, then, whenever I switch, my first game will always be against classes I rarely play against. I’ll play a random Rogue who summons 3 8/8’s by turn 5 or 6, or a Zarimi who wins by turn 7 or 8, perfectly countering my anti-DH/Hunter decks.

I think I am going to take a break from matchmaking because instances like this and several more keep happening and it does not seem random to me at all. Again, I might just be losing my marbles, but I seriously doubt it. I never post on this forum… I never post on forums in general, but this just kept happening every single day for weeks leaving me with no other option. Anyway, thanks.

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Hearthstone matchmaking was never “random”. There is everything rigged in this game. Matchmaking, mulligan, draw, discover, “rng” effects… all manipulated.

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Patent #9789406

“played for 10 years” yet doesnt know about this…sure bud :wink:

(and yes, they claimed they werent gonna use it. but can how many promises has blizzard kept?)

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If all of those other things are manipulated by Blizzard (50% win rate seems to be a popular reasoning), why would they also need to manipulate the Matchmaking? By your reasoning it couldn’t possibly be to help decide the outcome.

As for OP, there is nothing wrong with taking a break when you stop having fun. This is just a game after all. As for your data, I can’t really comment on it without seeing more than your few examples. However, you seem to be heavily focused on Your Meta. Your Meta and the Actual Meta will rarely, if ever, align.

Let’s say I play 50 games today and 10 of them are against a Warrior. All that means is that there was at least 1 Warrior of similar rank/skill who also hit the ‘Play’ button around the same time as me for those 10 games. That’s it. It’s really not something I can use to estimate what everyone is playing today, let alone what they will play tomorrow or what they were playing last week.

My daily data almost never looks normal, but by the end of each month it’s fairly consistent. Although, I rarely switch decks once I’ve found something I enjoy, so this part might not even be relevant to your concerns lol. Best of luck.

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Matchmaking is random.

The reason you think it isn’t is because it’s random.

Players become so focused on decks & counter decks that they can’t conceive of a matchmaking system not being equally focused.

The decks you see are a function of popularity; that is all.

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It is blatantly rigged MM. When I play Warrior all I play against are Plague DK or other Warrior. If I play something like Priest or Warlock, I get DK 1/15 games.

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It is not random. At diamond 4 I made a stupid big mage deck. First game I faced another big mage roflmao. Random right…

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I mean, the game is NOT rigged, but I don’t know if I agree with the statement “matchmaking is random.”

Matchmaking in Hearthstone doesn’t make any RNG calls. What it does is: after you queue up, it sets a range of acceptable matchmaking scores. If you’re not Legend and you don’t have bonus stars, this is by rank; it you’re Legend or have bonus stars, this is by MMR, a hidden score that tries to assess skill. If there’s already someone in queue whose rank/MMR is close enough, you get matched to whoever has been waiting longest. If there isn’t anyone close enough, after a while the acceptable range will broaden, so your opponent doesn’t need to be as close in rank/MMR.

So there’s a rank/MMR thing layered on top, but for the most part matchmaking is a queue, like getting in line. First in, first out. And although there are elements about who is in front of you in a line that are randomish, it’s not like perfectly random. Anyone else here play against the exact same opponent in Ranked twice in a row? It’s happened to me. Why? Well, it seems one game wasn’t enough to get our rank/MMR that far apart, and we queued up at almost exactly the same time after the first game ended.

So I don’t like to say that matchmaking is random. I like to say that it’s non-rigged matchmaking by skill. The “by skill” thing is important because one of the intended effects of fair matchmaking is to pair you against players of higher skill the more you win, which will tend to normalize winrates towards 50%. It’s not that this effect doesn’t happen, it’s that it’s fully expected to happen under fair matchmaking.

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I have very little sympathy for those who play that kinds of Warrior deck, but otherwise, you’ve noticed what has been noticed for years, probably. For example: Hearthstone RNG Has to Be Rigged LOL - #25 by SparkyElf-2852, Rigging: Win condition drawing - #2 by SparkyElf-2852 etc.

Well, at least you admit it. :grinning:

No, you’re not, and yes, they (other people) are, but usually, resident forum trolls and shills — typically the same ones — would start to gaslight you about it at this point.

As for the number-based approach, allow me to cite myself again:

Not a bad idea: if ‘The Algorithm’ decides it’s not your day, so to speak, there’s no point trying to go against it if you wanna play for fun.

One more time I gotta use the word ‘kayfabe’ here.

The game’s gotta look like a real deal, so that anyone can feel like someone — regarding the mass appeal and that ‘50%’ thing, as per this kind of reasoning, for example:

Of course, ‘Big Streamers’ and their particular RNG are another story — these serve essentially as advertisements for the product.

Besides, if they decide to go down that road, why can’t they experiment with various supposedly ‘random’ effects and not focus on just one?

Please, indulge my yet another act of copying and pasting (this is very repetitive — as is the notion of repetitiveness itself, i.e. the statement is recursive :rofl:):

So, yeah, there’s Optimotron, Zephrys, why not matchmaking as well?

You know, even con artists practicing the old ‘shell game’ would sometimes add a few somewhat new tricks to their show, so that even those who fancy themselves as ‘genre savvy’ would still keep falling for it.

Proof? Or ‘evidence’, as you forum self-annointed (sic) judges like to say? :grinning:

PS

Or perhaps also trolls, ignorant ones and those whose whole hubristic self-esteem is founded on attacking random ‘conspiracy nuts’, as they perceive it, on random internet forums.

What’s wrong with having played the game casually? Have you read every letter in every ‘legal’ document regarding the company and so on?

You’ve bothered to dig up the number of some ‘patent’ — fine, which doesn’t mean everyone cares about them (I don’t, especially for some US so-called ‘patents’).

Good point.

They have used so-called pseudorandom numbers instead of truly ones in practice, though.

Or also:

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The problem with this whole idea is that “60-70-IQ” players NEVER play against pros. At all. And there would be absolutely nothing for Blizzard to gain by matching them against each other. If they want bad players to keep playing then by far the best strategy on Blizzard’s part to keep them playing is to keep their winrates above 30% — psychologically speaking 30% is known to be the minimum where bad players don’t quit — and by far the easiest way to do that is to simply match bad players against equally bad players, normalizing for 50% winrate.

This idea is so profoundly narcissistic that it becomes stupid. No, your game of Hearthstone is not a big deal. Blizzard wouldn’t script it even if they had the time to, and there is no massive stadium audience for the game that you’re playing. Your game of Hearthstone is not a multi million dollar event. Rigging wrestling makes sense. Rigging Hearthstone does not.

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But what about the Blizzard secret Hearthstone gambling casino where they broadcast random games and take bets and rig those bets so they can make multi million dollar profits off the gambling. They have a patent that says that such a thing exists.

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It isnt random at all

I will go and try to play some experimental deck and be matched over and over against highlander warrior who gets brann on turn 6 followed by tnt on turn 7 then azerite ox on 8

Then i go plague DK to shut down the highlander decks and immediately stop seeing them and suddenly its aggro DH every game which shuts down my plague DK

What deck you are playing 100% has some influence on what opponents you get matched into. It happens too often to be more than chance

Already conceding 50% of my games this morning because i loaded into DH

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Sure about that? :grinning: Define ‘pros’, by the way.

By the way, sometimes those, ahem, players are pros, for instance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jenlSf2E8o

And if you mean the ‘e-sports’ scene, i.e. those guys regurlarly receiving personal invitations to rournaments and so on — you know, generally they don’t let just anyone in there. For some games like Gwent, so-called ‘win trading’, practiced by so-called ‘pros’, was more or less an open secret for the community, HS has had those ‘Big Streamers’ (including their supposed own version of ‘RNG’), invited entertainers to put on a good show and so on — it’s quite a showbiz in its own right. On the other hand, it doesn’t mean that letting some occasional random person in there is impossible — if it sells, anything goes.

On the contrary, see the next point…

But why stop there and not sell the ‘We ArE aLl EqUaL’ concept? It’s a powerful message — that anyone can be someone, any bozo can become a ‘Legend’ — no need to study, train hard and so on, like in chess, which is, by the way, extremely hard to monetise, unlike games like this: the more… ‘accessible’ to masses (simple and flashy is usually good enough), the better.

PS Think I might be repeating myself again, but gonna expand on that idea a bit more: in boxing, chess, tennis or whatnot, an ordinary guy has practically no chances against a ‘pro’, grandmaster or champion. In this game, any hillbilly can kick their virtual butt and feel good about it — isn’t it quite something?

Hmm… Gotta say, you’ve played Dr Watson for me: even if what you’re writing is… let’s say utterly wrong :grinning: , your mistakes are illuminating, since correcting them can lead to some interesting conclusions — gotta thank you for that.

You know, HS is such a small indie low-budget unpopular game, that they payed Kasparov, so that he’d play it as an advertisement for the product. Something tells me it’s a bit more expensive than adding a couple of functions (‘Optimotron’) etc to the code.

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Secret??

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I do not.

Because the game very obviously has matchmaking by skill, which means that rank is very obviously a mostly accurate measurement of skill. You don’t need to go through a million silly hoops to have a very weak player have a reasonable chance against a very strong player if you implement the most basic and fair matchmaking algorithm that they teach in game design 101, which prevents the very weak player from ever even encountering the very strong player (except, perhaps, in the hours immediately after a rank reset).

:rofl:
No, they would have essentially no chance whatsoever.

In Ranked players are consistently matched against opponents of similar skill, unless one of the players is still below their deserved rank; once players get to their deserved rank, their winrate approaches 50% because there is no significant skill gap between players. The entire function of the system is to eliminate skill differences via matchmaking.

If you are not Legend, it’s either because you don’t play long enough, or it’s a skill issue. Period.

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First off, ty for taking the time to reply with an answer. I don’t really agree with it though and here’s a few reasons why.

1- " The game’s gotta look like a real deal"

  • A normal ranked system like we supposedly have would accomplish this. The “intellectually challenged players” would play against each until they improve. No extra help is needed for the average player to reach an average win rate of 50%. (none of this even pertains to the actual MM though since you specifically mention “adjust random effects and especially card draw to help more”)

2- " Besides, if they decide to go down that road, why can’t they experiment with various supposedly ‘random’ effects and not focus on just one?"

  • They absolutely can. I wasn’t asking if they could, I was asking why they would. Specifically why they would do both at the same time. Remember, the person I was responding to claimed everything that takes place inside a game isn’t random. This is a thread started by someone suspicious of just the MM though. Frustrated by repeated ‘Counter Matchups’. My point is there is zero reason for repeated ‘Counter Matchups’ if all the RNG was leading to a loss anyway.

3- “So, yeah, there’s Optimotron, Zephrys, why not matchmaking as well?”

  • “Why not?” This isn’t an answer, at least not to my specific question. I am not stating that the game is or isn’t rigged. I was just pointing out the flaw in the persons response.

If the game is rigged, it would likely have to be akin to what you have suggested and fairly advanced to target many individuals in many different ways in order to stay hidden. I can think of no other reason why so many “The game is rigged” threads contradict each other with claims that can’t be replicated/predicted and recorded.

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add a chogall to your deck, make it truely random

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What is the maximum % of players would the It’s rigged cult say get rigged in games of Hearthstone?

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There’s your answer.