Matchmaking intentionally making us lose when playing too much?

[Boo Seta]

I've noticed that when I don't play much, matchmaking is somewhat balanced. But when I'm playing a lot in a row, there is a point when I start losing 9 out of 10 matches. I've been playing for 300 hours by now and I see a pattern. I'm not changing the way I play, it's just that after a lot of matches, every match I get paired against the strongest counters for my main cards. This is doesn't seem a coincidence. Does someone notice it too? Is matchmaking really programed this way?

I know Clash Royale used this kind of algorithm too in the begining. Everywhere on Reddit people confirmed that after compliting daily quests etc, if they kept playing, they were constantly paired to "lose". Does this game use the same mechanic for the matchmaking?


EDIT: just to add, we all love this game! It's just good to know if this is happening and, if it is, to provide some feedback that it was a bit too much.

[3LGVL-XSR1L-A1SPQ@酊暝霛擱븚託夬禯扼珑用苏곁턧]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย AngoraFish:

The situation is pretty straight forward.

For your first few games of the day you are easily matched against people of similar rank. Often this means fairly easy wins because in practice you are likely not playing often enough to ascend to your 'true' rank. In this mode of play it won't be uncommon to experience several long win streaks.

The longer you play in a single session the further outside your rank you end up being matched.

If that was the explanation, it would be obvious from the rank of the other player, which is displayed before the match (and which almost always matches mine +/- 1 or sometimes 2 steps).

[AngoraFish]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย 🌈 Milo 🌈:

If that was the explanation, it would be obvious from the rank of the other player, which is displayed before the match (and which almost always matches mine +/- 1 or sometimes 2 steps).

Okay, you've convinced me. Let's all just go with the more likely explanation that the devs have developed and are running a series of complex algorithms just to ♥♥♥♥ with you.

[Zanga]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย AngoraFish:

Okay, you've convinced me. Let's all just go with the more likely explanation that the devs have developed and are running a series of complex algorithms just to ♥♥♥♥ with you.

Yeah, why would a programmer put some effort to an algorithm if he hopes to earn more money with that. Sounds unrealistic for sure! Especially if the same programmer is involved in a highly addictive, loot box heavy game. Sure he has moral sence and he would never cross that line.

[PartTimePoet]

I mean, it's blatantly obvious at this point that the developers have implemented an algorithm to sabotage anyone who's climbing too quickly so that they lose, rage, play more, lose, rage, play more, etc.
Quite despicable, greedy, and underhanded of them but hey, in the end it's a business. And they never explicitly claimed that their matchmaking was fair and unbiased either.
What's even sadder is that this occurs in virtually every game too nowadays e.g. League of Legends with its loss queue and Clash Royale with its similar elo-sabotaging algorithm to that of Minion Master's

[THARN]

only thing that pisses me off is getting a random who must have left for an ibs break or watching porn on another monitor because they dont start playing until 2 minutes in...

[The Laughing Traitor]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Part Time Poet:

I mean, it's blatantly obvious at this point that the developers have implemented an algorithm to sabotage anyone who's climbing too quickly so that they lose, rage, play more, lose, rage, play more, etc.
Quite despicable, greedy, and underhanded of them but hey, in the end it's a business. And they never explicitly claimed that their matchmaking was fair and unbiased either.
What's even sadder is that this occurs in virtually every game too nowadays e.g. League of Legends with its loss queue and Clash Royale with its similar elo-sabotaging algorithm to that of Minion Master's

I'm not sure you know how matchmaking works, if you're doing well you get matched with better opponents, that's all that matchmaking does or has ever done. Usually there are certain skills that delineate the walls that you've observed, for example vision control in League holding the keys to Gold or so IIRC. You can theoretically succeed still, if your other skills are exceptional, but things start feeling unfair because on average most other people in the match have tools that you just aren't utilizing. In this game, some examples are competent deck building and counting your opponent's cards to optimize counters.

[fdmfdm]

Once again, matchmaking does NOT in ANY WAY try to make you lose, it does not put you against people that counter you, it does not try to put bad players in your team, or stronger people in your opponents team, noone is being targeted like that. Winstreaks are irrelevant in this, you can win 10.000 games in a row and still not get unfair matchmaking like that. It is always possible you get a better opponent because of queuetimes, available opponents, or just bad luck that someones rank is lower than his skill, but we are not making you lose on purpose AT ALL.

[JustATextBox]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Part Time Poet:

I mean, it's blatantly obvious at this point that the developers have implemented an algorithm to sabotage anyone who's climbing too quickly so that they lose, rage, play more, lose, rage, play more, etc.
Quite despicable, greedy, and underhanded of them but hey, in the end it's a business. And they never explicitly claimed that their matchmaking was fair and unbiased either.
What's even sadder is that this occurs in virtually every game too nowadays e.g. League of Legends with its loss queue and Clash Royale with its similar elo-sabotaging algorithm to that of Minion Master's

How do you think they would even do this? Do you think the matchmaking is intelligent enough to know the ins and outs of every deck ever created, and know for sure whether you'll win or lose your next match? If that's the case, why do the better players still always make it to the top of the leaderboard? Surely the fact that people consistently do that proves that skill is the determining factor - which is exactly what matchmaking does, it places people based on their skill

If you win a lot, you go up in rank. The higher you are in rank, the better players you'll face. This is how matchmaking works in every game that's ever used a ranked matchmaking system. It is the sole purpose of having ranked matchmaking. If you were to do it any other way then it wouldn't be considered ranked, you could just throw any random 2 players together and hope they have a fun and fair game. Which they almost certainly won't, that system would result in a stomp for one player more often than not

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย The Laughing Traitor:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Part Time Poet:

snip

Usually there are certain skills that delineate the walls that you've observed, for example vision control in League holding the keys to Gold or so IIRC. You can theoretically succeed still, if your other skills are exceptional, but things start feeling unfair because on average most other people in the match have tools that you just aren't utilizing. In this game, some examples are competent deck building and counting your opponent's cards to optimize counters.

I think that's a great thing to make note of. You can have certain skill(s) or be winning for certain reasons and then suddenly hit that wall and not know why.

A good MM example of that would be a deck based solely around Colossus. Colossus *can* do well, but it does significantly better against new players because they unknowingly play directly into it and lose all of their units for 0 value. If you were to play a Colossus deck and win a lot of games early on due to this, but then suddenly you get matched with players who know how to play against Colossus, well now you're going to get your ass kicked until you learn to adapt.

I have a similar issue in CSGO - Almost all of my playtime (~500 hours) was spent in the Demolition game mode, which is more or less just a slightly different death match. So my aim is relatively decent, but having never played the main game mode I know very little about anything other than aim. I don't know the maps, I don't know when to buy or save money, I don't focus on footsteps as much as the average player, etc etc. As such matchmaking doesn't really know what to do with me, because aim wise I'm probably above average, but in everything else I'm completely awful.

Because of that I can have games where I just destroy due to my aim, but then I'll have games where I get destroyed because the enemies aim might not be amazing but their game knowledge and tactics far surpass mine.

[3LGVL-XSR1L-A1SPQ@酊暝霛擱븚託夬禯扼珑用苏곁턧]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Signild:

How do you think they would even do this? Do you think the matchmaking is intelligent enough to know the ins and outs of every deck ever created, and know for sure whether you'll win or lose your next match?

That's actually feasible to some extent (wouldn't be a "sure" thing, but they sure could bend the odds a lot).

But even without going into deep deck analysis, here's a trivial observation that I've seen countless times. Imagine you match together 4 people, with ranks GM100, GM300, GM400 and M1.
Obviously, the most balanced way to match them together would be GM100 + M1 vs GM300 + GM400. Still, many many times, I've seen combinations such as GM100 + GM300 vs GM400 + M1, or GM100 + GM400 vs GM300 + M1.
Those are obviously less balanced, yet the game constantly makes those.

[Euphytose]

The devs don't want to admit to there being bots even though it's been proven by the vets many times.

Before Master, if you lose 3 games in a row, your next one will automatically be against bots. Again, they will say this is wrong and I'm misinformed. I still believe the matchmaker looks at your deck.

The same behavior over several years: If you switch up your deck, the next search will take much longer. This is something I've observed and several people I play with have also observed. But just like the other things, the devs will either say this is wrong, or will not comment.

[3LGVL-XSR1L-A1SPQ@酊暝霛擱븚託夬禯扼珑用苏곁턧]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Euphytose:

The devs don't want to admit to there being bots even though it's been proven by the vets many times.

Before Master, if you lose 3 games in a row, your next one will automatically be against bots. Again, they will say this is wrong and I'm misinformed. I still believe the matchmaker looks at your deck.

The same behavior over several years: If you switch up your deck, the next search will take much longer. This is something I've observed and several people I play with have also observed. But just like the other things, the devs will either say this is wrong, or will not comment.

Yup, if the devs were Pinocchios, you'd be able to see their noses from the Moon by now

[JustATextBox]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย 🌈 Milo 🌈:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Signild:

How do you think they would even do this? Do you think the matchmaking is intelligent enough to know the ins and outs of every deck ever created, and know for sure whether you'll win or lose your next match?

That's actually feasible to some extent (wouldn't be a "sure" thing, but they sure could bend the odds a lot).

But even without going into deep deck analysis, here's a trivial observation that I've seen countless times. Imagine you match together 4 people, with ranks GM100, GM300, GM400 and M1.
Obviously, the most balanced way to match them together would be GM100 + M1 vs GM300 + GM400. Still, many many times, I've seen combinations such as GM100 + GM300 vs GM400 + M1, or GM100 + GM400 vs GM300 + M1.
Those are obviously less balanced, yet the game constantly makes those.

There can be a lot more to a ranking system than the visible rank you're given, tho. That's also not taking into account the fact that those players could just be queued together.

Generally (MM could be different, I don't have access to the actual matchmaking code) games can give you a different ELO to what your rank actually is. For example, when you're a new player / a new account, the game doesn't really know what your real ELO is. It might say "eh, you're silver 4" - but you can both gain and lose rating much easier because it isn't really sure.

Whereas if you've played 7000 games and you're still silver 4, then chances are.. you actually are silver 4. As such, it makes sense that you shouldn't gain or lose much ELO, because you don't want to get 3 lucky games in a row and suddenly you're playing against people that are 5x better than you.

As an exact example - https://na.whatismymmr.com/thedomain - this is a friends League account. He is technically ranked Silver 1, and has actually been climbing for the last couple of weeks, might even hit gold today. BUT.. his MMR claims that he's actually significantly below Silver 1. This means it's much harder for him to climb, and if he were to make a smurf he might hit gold fairly easily.

- Anyways, let's just say the devs were actually doing this.. why? Again, this is completely ignoring the fact that the same players can easily make it to top 50 every season, what would they gain from it?

Making players lose for no reason doesn't benefit them, in reality that would more likely just force people to stop playing. I'm not denying that they could theoretically do it, just that.. it doesn't seem like they are, and if they are I don't know what they'd possibly gain from it, or why they'd choose not to do it to certain players.

Personally I don't feel like I'm an amazing player - I only beat Katt for the first time yesterday and even then I almost lost because he's just better than I am - there are a lot of players that I feel are better than me. And yet I can still make it to GM every season, and usually hitting top 50 if I really bother to try. With that in mind, how is that possible if the matchmaking system is intentionally causing people to lose if they win too much?

Shrug, doesn't make any sense to me.

[Wilson]

Does anyone has a Match identification Number for when they fought a BOT?
Just curious. I just wanna see them.

[Boo Seta]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Wilson:

Does anyone has a Match identification Number for when they fought a BOT?
Just curious. I just wanna see them.

I don't have the game installed anymore, but it's easy to play against a bot. At the end of the season, you start at a lower rank. Don't play some game mode (eg. 1v1) so it will be intentionally low. Wait for a few days, so there will be less players in this low rank. Then lose 3 or 4 matches in a row. Just observe what is going to happen, you'll be playing against a bot.

The bot behavior is pretty standard also. People in this forum has already described it. It's easy to identify.

[dr_m]

noticed similar, you go on a long win streak suddenly you will hit a losing streak for no other reason than the matchmaking, often being put up against gm/contenders when master. you can also *game* the matchmaking by holding certain cards, i.e blastmancer you wont see a scratbo... there are some other obvious ones too.
if you pick a deck similar to the top100 use you will get matches with/against them. some more depth in the matchmaking ai would be welcome and a removal of the negative aspects. if i'm running blastmancer that should be just tough luck for the guy with the scrat deck.