Bluetracker
Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.
An analysis of Casual Play Matchmaking and its impact on new and F2P players
This is what we know of casual matchmaking (where most new players will want to complete quests). This thread has nothing to do with ranked or arena play.
- MMR is adjusted after each match, depending on the outcome of the match, and the MMR of each player.
- MMR is gained with wins and lost with losses.
- The amount of MMR gained or lost is dependent on the MMR of your opponent.
- MMR adjustments are not affected by the duration of the match; or what cards are in either player's deck.
- Casual Play mode MMR is adjusted quickly when a player experiences a win or lose streak.
- Casual Play mode matchmaking includes a new player pool. Players are initially placed in a separate pool, allowing them to play exclusively against other new players. After a certain period, players are introduced into the main matchmaking pool. According to Ben Brode, as of April 2016 players remain in the new player pool until they have played 10 games, or have obtained 2 legendary cards. However, this is something that the developers tweak regularly. <li>When a player enters the matchmaking queue the system will attempt to find another player in the queue with an identical matchmaking value. If one is found, the two players will be entered into a match with each other. If a perfect match is not found, the matchmaking system will "wait a few seconds" and then search again. However, each time the system fails to find a match its matchmaking parameters are widened, allowing for increasingly rough match-ups. This ensures players are not left waiting for too long, but as a result, players may occasionally be matched with opponents of significantly different rating, rank or record.
SOURCE: http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Matchmaking
The biggest issues with Hearthstone matchmaking is:
- It keeps one MMR for that region on your account across all decks you have there. You may have a great mage deck but need to complete win quests on a weak priest deck. Well if you've been playing on your mage deck for a while your account MMR will go much higher than you'd go with your priest. So switching to priest means you'll have to accept many losses before you get back to the proper MMR. SOLUTION: track MMR per deck or at least per class on each account in each region. A single MMR over all your decks in that region makes no sense and just creates poor matches at times</li>
- "MMR adjustments are not affected by ... what cards are in either player's deck." This is why players with crummy decks are often thrown against strong net decks. SOLUTION: There are several possible solutions. One is to actually have the matchmaker analyze the deck in some way to try and gauge it's strength or closeness to known decks. It would also analyze to check if the deck has legendaries or is mostly filled with basic common cards. Another solution is to apply some sort of strength per card, ala heartharena. These types of solutions would require a lot of trial and error to get right, but it would make the matchmaking experience that much better. A third option would be to allow casual players to select filters, such as limiting the sets the opponents can choose from or rarity of cards and such. Blizzard hates adding choices to the interface so this is unlikely.
- If a perfect match is not found, the matchmaking system will "wait a few seconds" and then search again. However, each time the system fails to find a match its matchmaking parameters are widened, allowing for increasingly rough match-ups. - This system makes sense on the surface but it removes choice from the player. What if I'm willing to wait longer to get a fair matchup? SOLUTION: have an advanced option popup for things like this. Let the advanced user increase the timer used to find strong and fair matches. There are tons of things I could think of adding to an obfuscated advanced option page to improve the player experience.
Matchmaking for new players should be designed to keep them interested and playing, not discourage them. It's my opinion that Blizzard owes it to the community to provide the best and fairest "casual play" matchmaking possible. Once you go into ranked you're on your own. I've found the current matchmaking on a fresh account to be the worst I've ever experienced thanks to the power creep of this expansion plus the pre-existing strong decks.
Ben Brode
I think it depends on what solution we decide to go with and what else goes on our schedule. But we're homing in on some things I'm excited about. Ranked floors was pretty modular and a good first step, but it didn't solve most of our problems.
Ben Brode
We experienced an issue where some players had their Casual MMR reset with this rotation, and it's causing poor matchmaking for some players. We are working on a fix, but before this issue, new player winrates were way up. They were close to 50% after starting around 30% about 2 years ago. We've been steadily making improvements, but 50% is as good as it gets in a 1v1 game.
Funny enough, new players win so much more now, that instead of waiting about 7 days to try out "ranked" mode, they now average about 3 days before entering that mode, where sadly, matchmaking is much worse.
We are still working on changes to ranked to improve the general experience and the low-end matchmaking.
Ben Brode
It cuts both ways. While you'd expect some strategy and skill to carry over when you try a new class, you'd also expect some new learning and and a less tuned deck. For an experienced player, they have a lot more skill. If they are quite good with 7 of the classes, and then try class 8, having a new MMR means they are going to face new players again. We would essentially lose data we have about that player when they swap classes.
Ben Brode
Actual farming happens less than people expect, given our data. Most active players end up around rank 20, though, so matchmaking is especially bad there. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between someone starting their climb for the month and 'farming'.
That's not to say it isn't something we should be considering as we continue to explore new options. I tend to like systems that favor fair play (like our ranked rewards system).