Arena 6 Win Scam

This happens to me way too often for it to be a coincidence: I'm strolling along with a good deck I put together doing well and encountering players that have equal decks to mine.

Then I hit six wins and suddenly boss mode is enabled. My opponents have perfect decks and make perfect plays while the primo cards that helped get me to 6 suddenly fail to show up or curve is bust.

Not in my head. This is crafty business decisions to not want to give away anything for free because otherwise decent players like myself could string winning arena runs more often and not really need to pay cash.

Which is fine... If it was transparent. Instead I get this frustrating experience where I can't enjoy the game on a level playing field. I wouldn't be surprised if they have bots set up for it 

Ok, now it's your turn to reply with the obsequious "this belongs in a salt thread" and "I can't agree with anything upset so I 100% disagree even though i don't know how it really works" comments. Go:

Bots?  Who knows!  But they do match you with people of different records and deck power if they can't find an opponent similar to you play against you after X amount of time in a queue.  So maybe with the decline of Arena's popularity you are actually just getting matched against really good players, with really good decks that are better than your deck around the point you get to the 6 win mark because there aren't enough people around your deck's level to play against at that point?

Keep in mind, the average number of Arena wins per run is 3 (or at least it used to be several years ago).  This occurred because some people go 0-3, and very few people go 12-0, 12-1, or 12-2.  So it actually averaged out that 3-3 was the typical Arena run when the mode was much more popular.

Why do you have to be salty about it? I mean, you getting to 6 wins in Arena is totally above average. Many people including me had a hard time to even get a nice 3 or 4 wins. Even I can only reach 7 wins in arena in my whole time playing Hearthstone.

Besides, arena is all about getting the best RNG. making the custom deck, getting the best mulligan, best counter, best draws etc. The fact that you can't get past 6 maybe because your RNG is not as good as others.

I know how you feel bro XD

Similarly, if I come back to an arena run after a while, it doesn't matter if I went 5-0, 7-0 or whatever, I instantly lose the next 3 matches no matter what.

I can understand your sentiment, but I think this is a case of confirmation bias. Blizzard has no motive to rig the MM against you as in a given game there is always one winner and one loser. The issue here in my opinion is as following: The MM matches people with similiar win/loss ratios if possible. At low level this means that I as a pretty experienced Arena player can face a fair amount of less experienced opponents who tend to draft worse and make more mistakes. Once I hit around 5-6 wins this changes as the less experienced players are mostly eliminated by then and leaves me with the good players and the crazy decks. Also the deck quality is significantly up at this point. I hit 7 wins quite regular and at that level you have to expect crazy shit like combos, high value legendaries or perfect counter plays pretty much every game. So nothig special about that. One of my more memorable runs last week ended at around 8 or 9 wins facing a rogue who managed to play no less than three Alex and one Ysera that game (mostly generated via that stupid lackey). But that is only slightly out of the ordinary at that level.

Well, that's kinda the same experience anyone whos ever gone that far with arena in hearthstone. Post 7 wins nearly every deck reaches some sort of psuedo constructed levels of power and you either match their level or get rekt 3 times in a row.

I wouldn't say that there's anything scummy behind this. I mean, just look at the bots in the adventures and tell me that blizz is capable of building AI that can truly pilot a deck the same way a human can, and not get found out immediately.

If somebody doesn't know, he's salty because there's a big reward gap between 6 and 7 wins, around 70+ gold. Yes, 6 wins is above average, but 7 wins is the sweet spot.

Technically, it could be profitable for them to match 6 wins with better decks on 7+ scale, or with a better deck (since they track relative deck power as well), but it just wasn't the case in my experience. I haven't noticed any significant difference when I am on 6w, except that my nervousness goes up and my thinking sharpens to try to break the threshold. Also, I remember adding people in that range a few times, asking for their w/l, and we had the same score most of the time (it's usually more mixed once you reach higher, say 10 wins).

So I don't think they do it. Even if you get matched with someone who has 1 win more, the difficulty difference shouldn't be that high.

Of all the Hearthstone conspiracy theories I have heard, this is probably the most delusional. I could theoretically see blizzard rigging packs to keep you from getting good cards without paying money, or rigging your ranked games to keep you from . . . something? Getting the legend card back? I don't know. But there is no way blizzard is rigging arena of all things to keep you at exactly 6 wins. Of all the ways blizzard could cheat, scam, or hoodwink it's players, arena has to be amongst the least profitable.

As Thraxus mentioned above, the shift in the power of both your opponents draft and skill luck is likely due to the fact that at that point in the run you are only being paired with other people who have gotten around 6 wins. In other words, you are only being paired with people who have very strong decks. Whereas in the early part of your run you could be paired with anybody.

I can understand being suspicious about the fairness of the matchmaking, but where you really lost all your credibility (though little it was) was when you accused blizzard of using bots to keep you away from 7 wins. This notion is ridiculous for many reasons. First it is unlikely that blizzard is rigging arena at all. And even if they were they would likely do it in the drafting phase rather than in the match making. And even if they were to rig the match making they could just match your 6 win deck against say, an 11 win deck to decrease your chances of winning and it would be a million times easier. But even if blizzard were so despicable, maniacal, and devious to wave a shiny 150 gold reward in your face, and then proceed to rig the matchmaking to keep you away from it, programming bots to get the luckiest possible draws would be a whole new level of cruel. Also, based on all of the solo content available in Hearthstone so far, blizzard doesn't yet have the technology to make an impressive AI, let alone a realistic one who could accurately mimic a human in terms of things like hovering over the board and the time taken between plays.

I go 0-3 all the time anyways ... :( probably because of my deck score