Matchmaking

MrStem0 · February 2017

Any chance G you are going to be lazy to build a pool of players that we automatically pull from, how about you just add more players to it if you can't be bothered to come up with something new?

I'm getting tired of playing the same people, mainly because they know they will be played and purposely build their decks to drag out games.

I don't have an issue with them doing that, I would if I was on the other end, however when play the same opponent 6 games in a row it just emphasises that you don't give a toss.

Also, how about getting people who play the game to build the decks for PvE events since they are ridiculously easy.

buscemi · February 2017

Volrak · February 2017

MrStem0 wrote:

I'm getting tired of playing the same people, mainly because they know they will be played and purposely build their decks to drag out games.

The Theory of Greg from thread #6 in the post above (viewtopic.php?f=31&t=55332#p604349) is worth a re-read - the idea being that people don't make their decks strong because they know the matchmaking algorithm selects them, so much as the matchmaking algorithm selects them because their decks are strong.

However, if Theory of Greg is correct, and the purpose is to make events harder for everyone and break up ties at the top, the limitation of the approach (as bken and maybe others have said) is that you can learn what's in those decks and sideboard and play specifically around their tricks. (Oh yeah, and someone might have said once that they don't like playing the same opponents repeatedly.)

My preferred alternative solution to reducing ties at the top would be to give the AI better playing skills. Examples (with relative estimates of difficulty of implementation):

Take one or more level of on-screen cascades into consideration when choosing a gem match (easy)
Use PW abilities more strategically and not wastefully. May need a bit of custom code per PW; this may be nice to give them a bit more of a unique personality, in addition to making them tougher opponents (medium)
Choose when to play cards and what sequence to charge/play them with some sense of tactics, e.g. responding to board state (hard in general)
Try introducing a small random element to card ordering - remove the predictability (easy - but care needed to tune it to just right level of randomness)

The AI's skill could also be graded by tier as necessary; e.g. no need to make bronze harder if there aren't lots of players getting perfect scores there.

ridfrenzy · February 2017

It is just boring to play the same players over and over, it does tend to be different PWsbut still....

Last **** event I got Longshaft 4/5 times for the black node. I want to play varied decks not what this one guy has

morgue427 · February 2017

i would like it if they were using decks relevent to the challenge, ie handicapped like we are to get the secondary goals, or at least choose them from people playing in those events like have one hey why dont we use the top ones from the last event for the next same event?

AresOmega · February 2017

ridfrenzy wrote:

It is just boring to play the same players over and over, it does tend to be different PWsbut still....

Last **** event I got Longshaft 4/5 times for the black node. I want to play varied decks not what this one guy has

I get Longshaft quite a lot too, only I get to play multiple decks from him.

wereotter · February 2017

morgue427 wrote:

i would like it if they were using decks relevent to the challenge, ie handicapped like we are to get the secondary goals, or at least choose them from people playing in those events like have one hey why dont we use the top ones from the last event for the next same event?

Completely agree with this. I'm sick to death of playing fully powered, Tyrant of Valakut into Abbot of Keral Keep to cascade to Olivia decks by Koth while I'm trying to get out spirits with Gideon. Decks that have nothing to do with the event that are intensely powerful up against my underpowered decks makes it feel bad when I inevitably loose the matchup.

Brigby · February 2017

Hey Everyone. I just wanted to reassure you all that Matchmaking is definitely something the developers are aware of and actively looking to improve. Unfortunately since these improvements are still in development though, these anticipated features could still change during this period of time.

I promise though that if I hear of any news I can announce, I will absolutely inform the community immediately.

Falizar · February 2017

Thanks Brigby.

I do gotta say that the matchmaking has been pretty random for me the last 4 event though.

I've been paired against a few of the same people but never more than once in an event.

Example for Emrakil's Corruption:

Polooc
catlady
lagorthon
BrandonBad
Dirk McCondron
Mersicide
Ylmir03
Wlblaze
Owling Mine
Yawgmoth
and two others at start of event that were completely random names i have never seen before.

Mainloop25 · February 2017

I've seen a lot of those same names. Should we all be facing the same people? Doesn't make sense to me, there must be hundreds if not thousands of people in Platinum at this point.

buscemi · February 2017

Brigby wrote:

Hey Everyone. I just wanted to reassure you all that Matchmaking is definitely something the developers are aware of and actively looking to improve. Unfortunately since these improvements are still in development though, these anticipated features could still change during this period of time.

I promise though that if I hear of any news I can announce, I will absolutely inform the community immediately.

From
viewtopic.php?f=31&t=53273&start=40#p586510

Hibernum_JC wrote:

As for matchmaking, it's a question I am asking our engineers right now, so I'll get back to you guys on that.

October 18th, 2016, back when the user interface was far less blue than it is now.

wink · February 2017

Again, I suspect that the matchmaking is designed to make you match decks that are as challenging as possible, since it is obvious that most people can just crush the AI in most situations. So the few decks that actually give people trouble are trotted out repeatedly to the top players because these few decks have been shown to be the only ones that test the players at all.

wereotter · February 2017

Mainloop25 wrote:

I've seen a lot of those same names. Should we all be facing the same people? Doesn't make sense to me, there must be hundreds if not thousands of people in Platinum at this point.

Yeah. I've thought that's strange too. In all these posts I've not once seen my user name listed as an opponent.

Mainloop25 · February 2017

Brigby wrote:

Hey Everyone. I just wanted to reassure you all that Matchmaking is definitely something the developers are aware of and actively looking to improve. Unfortunately since these improvements are still in development though, these anticipated features could still change during this period of time.

I promise though that if I hear of any news I can announce, I will absolutely inform the community immediately.

Can you give us an idea of what they see as the problem, and what they are thinking of to fix it? Any extra information will help to convince us that this more than lip service.

As more and more people tier up, this problem is only going to get more and more urgent.

Brigby · February 2017

Mainloop25 wrote:

Can you give us an idea of what they see as the problem, and what they are thinking of to fix it? Any extra information will help to convince us that this more than lip service.

Matchmaking is a topic that will be discussed in the Developer's Thread. The post is currently waiting on an image approval from Wizards of the Coast. Once Hibernum gets the green light though, they'll be sure to post it in the forum. Our anticipation is that the post will be ready this week.

Matchmaking

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