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.
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.
It is not random. At diamond 4 I made a stupid big mage deck. First game I faced another big mage roflmao. Random right…
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.
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. 
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 
):
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?
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:
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.
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.
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
Sure about that? 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 , 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.
Secret??
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).
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.
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"
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?"
3- “So, yeah, there’s Optimotron, Zephrys, why not matchmaking as well?”
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.
add a chogall to your deck, make it truely random
What is the maximum % of players would the It’s rigged cult say get rigged in games of Hearthstone?
There’s your answer.
It’s impossible that 100% of players are rigged. There is always the player on the other end that remain unrigged in any given game. The maximum that can ever be achieved is 50% rigging and at that point why would they even bother when you get the same results by not doing anything. Rigging a 2 player match gets Blizzard nothing because 1 player always escapes the rigging.
Idk man if I’m being honest that argument feels extremely semantic, to the point of being lame. I mean, if the maximum that can ever be achieved is 50% by some measurement, then achieving 50% by that measurement is 100% of what is possible. Essentially, I think there’s always an argument that the maximum that can be achieved is tautologically 100%.
(That’s why I measure a 55-45 matchup as 10% polarization btw. You could say that it’s 5% off of 50-50, and that’s cool, but that’d mean that a 100-0 matchup is only 50% polarization. Nah, that’s as polarized as possible, it deserves 100%.)
We’re on the side of truth, we shouldn’t need to use arguments of low quality. It’s nowhere near 50% rigged anyway.
‘Obviously’.
There are plenty of adepts of the cult of so-called ‘Matchmaking’ and ‘MMR’, yet I haven’t seen anyone present something — at least a formula.
Btw, Mercs are a different mode, but there’s at least a ‘MMR’ number presented to players, no matter how horrible the PvP system there might be (and that’s an opinion by one of the most avid Mercs afficionados here) — and the way it works is a total mess, to put it very mildly, that bogus number being indicative of essentially nothing — apart from the amount of time/games spent there (by the way, the top of the ‘rating’ are bots farming it non-stop).
Oh, the ‘player’ factor plays a vanishigly small part here, noticeable only over a large number of games, perhaps. It’s mostly factors like decks (budget/starter vs optimised ‘meta’ etc) and so on.
Dunno what ‘101’ is supposed to mean, but go on, enlighten me about that algorithm. Formula!
Oh, and I know of things such as Elo’s rating and so on, which works very well where it’s applicable. What’s going on in this game is apparently some sloppy mess, hidden behind obscurity, and some mumbo-humbo fancy words about some supposed MMR, which probably measures objectively nothing.
Supposedly not:
Casual mode, Ranked at Legend rank, and non-cooperative Tavern Brawls determine pairings using each player’s matchmaking rating (MMR).[1] [2] Ranked play without a Star Bonus is determined by each player’s rank …
https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Matchmaking
So, in the beginning of a season, those ‘pros’ should be separated from beginners by that ‘MMR’ magic.
However, lemme tell you that in the recent years I’ve played from the very bottom all the way to Legend without a star bonus at least twice (in Classic and Standard respectively), having been inactive for so long that my supposedly oh-so-high ‘MMR’ would be erased or irrelevant for the reasons listed above. Gotta tell you: there’s practically no visible difference in terms of opponents’ skill, decks and so on, except for there being a bit more budget, beginner or ‘unconventional’ decks at the very, very bottom (below Gold or such).
The only noticeable difference in ‘skill’ is like that:
Yep, that’s indeed one of the moment where remaining silent is better than revealing one’s ignorance (well, at least I adhere to this opinion), including via giggling at what one can’t comprehend, because:
That’s just factually wrong, for it can be easily disproved by counterexamples, such as this one (yes, posted it already many times, but what of it — it’s one of my favourite ones):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tav_ttqyv9Q
It’s a rather crude bot, playing very sloppily, vs a skilled player.
Only in theory, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.
Even if the actual matchmaking is not rigged, it’d better be , since otherwise it’s just a sloppy mess.
Hmm, speaking of ‘normal’ — what’de be approximately normal (literally so) is the distribution of players by win rate (if you’re not familiar with Gaussian, or normal, distribution, I’d suggest reading up if you’re interested). That is far from the ‘all are equal’ picture, i.e. a nearly-rectangular, or ‘supergaussian’, distribution. So, in order to achieve the latter, you’d need to actively meddle in order to flatten the ‘bell curve’, as it is colloquially referred to, of the normal distribution, which would be expected to occur ‘naturally’.
Because it’s more efficient, besides, because they might aready have — having demonstrated at least two bits of technology with potential applications for rigging, I’m inclined to assume they’d explore a third one as well — seems more in line with the course of action they’ve taken.
Only that person can specify what he or she meant, I can’t answer for them, but I can provide my reasoning or my answers to your question, since I’ve found it interesting.
Yes, probably so — as said, I’ve correlated it with their advances in technology (functions like ‘Zephrys’ or ‘Optimotron’) and AI (for example, at some point the one used for single-player bosse was improved substantially, see, for example: Heroic Karazhan --- Free Medivh! in August 2022). In any case, I’ve described the way I’d probably approach and implement (in practice, not just with general concepts) rigging the game if I were tasked with it.
Just because some theories about the game being rigged are amateurish or wrong, it doesn’t mean that so is the notion in general.
In brief, I’ve touched three different aspects here.
My answer is yes for roughly the reasons that the topic-starter listed.
My answer is yes — see the part about ‘mass appeal’.
My answer: yes, with their advances in AI and some technology with such applications already having been implemented and demonstrated.
The actual contentious issue at hand, once we strip all the name calling and unproductive text (ie you’re a shill, or you’re a conspiracy nutcase) can actually be tenable from both sides.
Let me concisely put into words what I believe is the issue being argued:
Blizzard may be using information other than a players estimated skill (MMR) in matching players.
In the patent describing their match making algorithm they neither confirm nor deny the above is happening.
So whether you believe the onus of proof is on the side of the Blizzard shills or the conspiracy nut cases is completely dependent on what you believe to be true before you come to the argument rather than any objective fact.
You may think allegations that Blizzard uses information such as what deck you are playing to match you as ridiculous and therefore your stance will be that you require proof before you even consider the possiblity.
Or you may be convinced you keep getting matched against hard counters and therefore in your mind you require proof they are not purposefully matching you against your hard counter.
All that said, I will say there is a financial incentive for Blizzard to match unpaying players against their hard counters in order to spur them into buying the dust needed to play a stronger deck that may have less counters.
Open your mind folks, there’s valid arguments on both sides of this divisive issue.
Activision Blizzard patent. This is how Hearthstone’s algorithm works.
Forced winrate is also typical for this company.
Hearthstone is obviously a rigged game, everything is manipulated with fake “rng”, randomness is pure illusion.