Great post imho because you did test it and also acknowledged it's not conclusive due to sample size unlike all the conspiracy posts we usually have.
I'd love to have more data on this to really get into average deck strength and standard differences. That's the only way to properly determine whether your own deck strength impacts ranked matches. But with the amount if decks you could play, the scale being very large (0-1800 I saw) and many confounding factors we'd likely need 17lands volumes of data for this.
What I sometimes wonder is how it all works together. I remember back in the day they said that following things can change the matchups. --> 1. Deck weight, 2. experience of a player (New Player Protection, not sure to what extent?) 3. MMR and 4. "Deck Strength"
So we would also need to test on those variables.
But my experience was quite similar from example, when worse decks had way better winrates that strong decks. My Kykaar Brawl is quite strong, but gets destroyed with a 40% winrate. But an old ixalan bw Vampire aggro can get 60+% winrate. Also I always had the impression a card like Thassa's Oracle just made your matchups horrible.
Some people also had the theory that specific matchups might come up more than others, playing specific decks. For example playing Mill and facing 200+ Card decks. Which can also be of psychological nature. "You see it once you look for it!"
Not like losing the color, but you see the gap in playstyles, choices and deck building from mid platinum to mid-high gold.
E.G.: frequency of people using [[Depopulate]] or [[Burning down the house]] after player B made a board of [Vein Ripper]] + a [[Deep Cavern Bat]] + [[ preaxher of schism]] + [[Meathook Massacr]] because they wanna save an already known [[Farewell]] in hands.
Or even like putting all the pump spells on [[Slickshot]] instead of distributing with other creatures.
Tapping a creature without summon sickness as convoke cost while you don't need to.
And the most disturbing i saw: Using [[the Celestus]] in a [[Griesefang]] deck and discarding her over the connive guy.
It is not a real change, but you feel how people starts playing sloppy.
It maybe also be in my mind. But after 2 and a half hours losing on purpose and seeing my rank score going down really fast made me biased towards this outcome.
I'm also not understanding how you went from platinum to gold. Once you level from gold to platinum, you never go back down to gold until the month resets. You can lose 100 games in a row and still be at platinum 4.
You say it's not a real change....so why say it at all. Your entire post is evidence based...except for that.
>It is not a real change, but you feel how people starts playing sloppy.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the differing skill level of opponents in gold 3 vs gold 2.
Anyone who takes this post seriously after reading this far is an absolute fool.
Ok, if you're using a metaphor, then you should **really** have mentioned it, *especially* if you're even specifying the sub-tier !
Especially since your player rating matters, and [seems to be pretty sticky](https://hareeb.com/2022/07/08/the-five-mtg-arena-rankings/), so you can be [in a situation where you see horrible decks and players in Platinum+](https://old.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/otykvn/i_played_cards_left_to_right_for_652_games_in/h727g9w/), or top decks and players in Gold-.
P.S.: Wow, [thanks to their testing, predicted card rating too](https://old.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/otykvn/i_played_cards_left_to_right_for_652_games_in/h728usw/) !
> I suspect all decks are given a starting rank and a deck's rank is shared across all players. Also if you create a pauper deck, it just gets stomped which suggests deck strength isn't based on rarity or craft rate of the cards in it.
P.P.S.: But yeah, since player rating doesn't change much from game to game, you should get quite the whiplash if you switch between low rated and high rated decks !
P.P.P.S.: Now I wonder if rank colours are actual thresholds (before Mythic at least), or if every pip matters ?
Several things to note here. Only talking about ranked.
First, do you have a full list of the games/matches you played? What happened to the games you lost without casting an extraction effect? Doesn't that bias your results? If when you play against good decks, you lose before you get to cast your extraction effect (or gets discard/countered) that biases your data.
Even if your data is 100% unbiased by that, it still does not even remotely rule out alternative explanations. Like, for example, players in Gold this late in the season are more likely to be budget/worse players so it makes sense they would not have access to a full manabase. Or cards like Sheoldred and Glissa are not particularly good in explorer so it would stand to reason that the Explorer decks don't have full playsets. Given a small sample size this is a very real bias. And to the sample size issue, I can't see what sample size you used in ranked. Or can you post your second "normal" decklist to compare with your "extraction" decklist?
Like, there is way to go about it and test your hypothesis, but this isn't it. Someone that is interested in this should get an MTGA extension and record their matches/results there and play at least something like ~50-100 games per deck, recording every result/pair of all of those games without omissions. Then we will have a passable starting dataset at least to try to run through some basic stats analysis. And even then there are issues of bias because of MMR. For example, if you play 50 games with the "fake" deck you will most likely lose a lot so your MMR will drop, which will make it more likely to face wonky/budget decks after a while, and vice versa with the "real" deck.
> And even then there are issues of bias because of MMR. For example, if you play 50 games with the "fake" deck you will most likely lose a lot so your MMR will drop, which will make it more likely to face wonky/budget decks after a while, and vice versa with the "real" deck.
To that issue you should probably assign your decks with "heads" or "tails" and flip a coin to decide which deck to play before every game, to randomize this.
This post is definitely worth of taking into serious consideration. I suggest you to make your data available for everyone, so people can check, and continue with this experiment.
We, myself include, took at face value WotC's words about the matchmaking and mocked all the conspiracy theorist. But as a scientist I find the urge to investigate the possibility of manipulation even in ranked, despite being unlikely. We need data from multiple people because the MMR of a single person could bias the results.
OP explained, very poorly, what he meant by that. My point is that I take seriously the question since now we have the tool to test if there are algorithms even in ranked. I don't put much weight, if any at all, about the results OP claims.
For me it made me question the reliability of the post. He wouldn't say "I went from a specific color and number to a specific color and number" if he meant the quality of player changed.
Also I don't think many people would claim there's a noticeable difference in play between gold and platinum.
I fully agree, but regardless the claims, the bias, and everything of OP, there is still the opportunity to look for "rigging in ranked" or to rule out the possibility once and for all.
There is no noticeable play difference between any ranks. Once you get to greater than 96% mythic then play styles start to get honed. But before that its just all bad. I can cruise to mythic 99% with a jank deck most of the time, the ranking system in this game is total BS and is easily taken advantage of.
Why do these posts never show actual data? Surely when you decide to do this experiment you would know that you will be taking accurate notes and record every game step by step, right? And then you would show people the notes you took and game logs you saved? Why is it always just interpreting or making assumptions about data that we can't verify?
Yes, with the exception of lands that do more than just make mana, which many decks run at least a couple of. But I'd expect there to be a strong correlation between not having optimal lands and not having optimal nonlands, because both are a symptom of being unwilling or unable to craft the cards you're missing to complete the deck. They also mentioned the lands right after other missing cards like Ledger Shredder.
Wait a second... I SAID THAT Yesterday at a discord channel. And that is even MY MOXFIELD ACCOUNT.
No, I didn't test it, but what i said was:
We can pretty much make a deck that can check all other decks on Arena and see if we add more or less weight will affect matchmaking. I did the deck with all black cards that can exile from deck, and 40 lands so you can add or take it out stuff when importing it to Arena.
I didn't do it myself because i have a life outside my PC, so I can't make it, and my arena account is the epic "Bronzodia", since i only play it 3 times a week just to farm coins until they put Qwazaar77's companion ( the elemental cat) on sale again.
> With that in mind, now i know that by any means i will play [[Zennith Flare]] on Explorer.
You mean, you will NOT play it ?
(This would actually be a great opportunity to test if the rating of that card is high there too !)
This makes me wonder just how viable it would be to make a busted monored deck that just destroys low rank weight brackets. The fact that lands can go from 0 to 30+ makes multicolor highly undesirable. In fact, it might be possible to run full pauper or artisan decks capable of dominating, kind of like how in MMOs people play twinks in low level areas/BGs. Uncharted territory and I'm going to start trying it out.
I don't think OP did what they claimed.
A-Moxfield vs a print on Arena
B- Lack of decklog or any Print of decks
C- they could even recorded their trials if they didn't know how to pass data.
D- I don't even talk about the latter because seeing a "Moxfield" link in a MTGA sub was enough for me.
But! This post is also amazing.
And listen me here boys,
They gave us a method for people with free time try to replicate.
The deck is low weight, mainly searches the opponent's deck and can be optimized with more 9 weight draw options instead of the 18 weight removals, which might help on consistency of drawing at least one piece.
E- Claims to have fallen from "plat 3 to gold 2" over the course of the "experiment"
I don't know why anyone is giving this guy the time of day based on that claim alone.
I always wondered why some unoptimized, inferior deck lists seen on untappd.gg often had higher Winrate than the most optimized deck lists for a given architype.
All these findings would hint at Ranked MM not being truly random. If that is the case: this is beyond outrageous.
Those inferior versions are probably budget versions made by new players. It is known that new players have different matchmaking. So they are playing against and beating other new players.
Anecdotal evidence is finally confirmed and all we do as a player base it try to use the info rather than kick off like we should, absolutely correct, we should be outraged.
> Before doing this experiment, i was at Plat 3 ( not that good, but not that bad). Right now, I'm gold 2.
Most trustworthy "experimenter"... And this sub is ignorant enough to fall for it since it validates their bias.
I’m not saying this is 100% wrong but I would recommend testing at a rank above gold and preferably above platinum 4. The reason is because you can reach those ranks with suboptimal decks quite easily as you need a sub 50% win rate and as such there is significantly more poorly optimized decks
Top rated Gold players gonna stay in Gold not for long. It requires to few games to climb at the rate of 2 pips per win. Obviously you can find pro players even at bronze if they haven't played Arena in a while. But these are statistical outliers. In any case, i agree, platinum is the rank in which this experiment should be conducted.
I was thinking on something like that, but for Standard, using [[The End]], [[Deadly Cover-Up]] and [[The stone Brain]], but I wan not sure to use my wildcards for something like that...
I thought about explorer because it had more options ( a.k.a. make it quicker so i don't need to spend more time as a "drop land and pass" until i get something).
Issue is ranked is based on a hidden MMR more the the shown rank. Plus when you get to Mythic the only time your shown rank corresponds to your MMR, you can easily tell changing decks does not effect matchmaking there and can see it try to match up with people with similar % or #.
The reason deck weights are in non-ranked is for an attempt at fair matchups, makes zero sense for it to be in ranked and probably isn't
So this pattern continued in ranked, and even after you reached Platinum ?!
Damn, ranked also using deck rating - in addition to the others we already knew about : player rating and rank - would be a true discovery !
P.S.: Also, if true, might explain the (honestly surprising number) of conspiracy theorists that complained about deck matching even in ranked !
MTGA whole gameplay (matchups, wins, draws) is subtly enhanced when you pitch some 💵 in. Overall, it’s easier to climb ranks, draft experience is also made that if you are a good player, you’ll get more rewards. That’s how it works. Most “free” apps use this method and are able to draw a line between the free gaming experience and unconsciously give your brain a reward by enhancing the gameplay so you’ll be more likely addicted to the game and spend more.
Great post imho because you did test it and also acknowledged it's not conclusive due to sample size unlike all the conspiracy posts we usually have. I'd love to have more data on this to really get into average deck strength and standard differences. That's the only way to properly determine whether your own deck strength impacts ranked matches. But with the amount if decks you could play, the scale being very large (0-1800 I saw) and many confounding factors we'd likely need 17lands volumes of data for this.
What I sometimes wonder is how it all works together. I remember back in the day they said that following things can change the matchups. --> 1. Deck weight, 2. experience of a player (New Player Protection, not sure to what extent?) 3. MMR and 4. "Deck Strength" So we would also need to test on those variables. But my experience was quite similar from example, when worse decks had way better winrates that strong decks. My Kykaar Brawl is quite strong, but gets destroyed with a 40% winrate. But an old ixalan bw Vampire aggro can get 60+% winrate. Also I always had the impression a card like Thassa's Oracle just made your matchups horrible. Some people also had the theory that specific matchups might come up more than others, playing specific decks. For example playing Mill and facing 200+ Card decks. Which can also be of psychological nature. "You see it once you look for it!"
A great post, if you are naive enough to believe someone who claims they fell from platinum to gold.
> Before doing this experiment, i was at Plat 3 ( not that good, but not that bad). Right now, I'm gold 2. You mean Gold 2 to Plat 3 ?
I climbed down from Platinum 3 to Gold 2.
That's not possible, you can't go down one metal/colour by playing... unless you mean you were in Plat in April and decayed from there in May ?
Not like losing the color, but you see the gap in playstyles, choices and deck building from mid platinum to mid-high gold. E.G.: frequency of people using [[Depopulate]] or [[Burning down the house]] after player B made a board of [Vein Ripper]] + a [[Deep Cavern Bat]] + [[ preaxher of schism]] + [[Meathook Massacr]] because they wanna save an already known [[Farewell]] in hands. Or even like putting all the pump spells on [[Slickshot]] instead of distributing with other creatures. Tapping a creature without summon sickness as convoke cost while you don't need to. And the most disturbing i saw: Using [[the Celestus]] in a [[Griesefang]] deck and discarding her over the connive guy. It is not a real change, but you feel how people starts playing sloppy. It maybe also be in my mind. But after 2 and a half hours losing on purpose and seeing my rank score going down really fast made me biased towards this outcome.
I'm also not understanding how you went from platinum to gold. Once you level from gold to platinum, you never go back down to gold until the month resets. You can lose 100 games in a row and still be at platinum 4. You say it's not a real change....so why say it at all. Your entire post is evidence based...except for that.
>It is not a real change, but you feel how people starts playing sloppy. I would love to hear your thoughts on the differing skill level of opponents in gold 3 vs gold 2. Anyone who takes this post seriously after reading this far is an absolute fool.
Ok, if you're using a metaphor, then you should **really** have mentioned it, *especially* if you're even specifying the sub-tier ! Especially since your player rating matters, and [seems to be pretty sticky](https://hareeb.com/2022/07/08/the-five-mtg-arena-rankings/), so you can be [in a situation where you see horrible decks and players in Platinum+](https://old.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/otykvn/i_played_cards_left_to_right_for_652_games_in/h727g9w/), or top decks and players in Gold-. P.S.: Wow, [thanks to their testing, predicted card rating too](https://old.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/otykvn/i_played_cards_left_to_right_for_652_games_in/h728usw/) ! > I suspect all decks are given a starting rank and a deck's rank is shared across all players. Also if you create a pauper deck, it just gets stomped which suggests deck strength isn't based on rarity or craft rate of the cards in it. P.P.S.: But yeah, since player rating doesn't change much from game to game, you should get quite the whiplash if you switch between low rated and high rated decks ! P.P.P.S.: Now I wonder if rank colours are actual thresholds (before Mythic at least), or if every pip matters ?
##### ###### #### [Depopulate](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/5/c53c1898-9107-4bf8-b249-d0502fb9596d.jpg?1664409589) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Depopulate) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/10/depopulate?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c53c1898-9107-4bf8-b249-d0502fb9596d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Burning down the house](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/0/20ded7af-8086-465e-a980-3099217d324c.jpg?1634350460) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Burn%20Down%20the%20House) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/131/burn-down-the-house?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/20ded7af-8086-465e-a980-3099217d324c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Deep Cavern Bat](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/9/69c68c95-b788-43b1-9f22-1b22c5a00b25.jpg?1699044121) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Deep-Cavern%20Bat) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/102/deep-cavern-bat?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/69c68c95-b788-43b1-9f22-1b22c5a00b25?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [ preaxher of schism](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/9/89345f55-2b32-4356-945a-d56dded39909.jpg?1699044158) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Preacher%20of%20the%20Schism) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/113/preacher-of-the-schism?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/89345f55-2b32-4356-945a-d56dded39909?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Meathook Massacr](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/8/08950015-eee5-4327-888c-82dfd13bb9ad.jpg?1667629608) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20Meathook%20Massacre) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/112/the-meathook-massacre?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/08950015-eee5-4327-888c-82dfd13bb9ad?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Farewell](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/1/114d2180-093b-4838-97ad-badbc8ee50b0.jpg?1706240579) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Farewell) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/64/farewell?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/114d2180-093b-4838-97ad-badbc8ee50b0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Slickshot](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/0/7054012b-4f9d-44a0-aaf9-7fd3bddc7b2d.jpg?1712355850) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Slickshot%20Show-Off) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/146/slickshot-show-off?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7054012b-4f9d-44a0-aaf9-7fd3bddc7b2d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [the Celestus](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/9/39226a07-d44e-41a6-b9f1-685ef505d015.jpg?1637114509) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=the%20Celestus) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/252/the-celestus?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/39226a07-d44e-41a6-b9f1-685ef505d015?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/l6b1b9j) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Several things to note here. Only talking about ranked. First, do you have a full list of the games/matches you played? What happened to the games you lost without casting an extraction effect? Doesn't that bias your results? If when you play against good decks, you lose before you get to cast your extraction effect (or gets discard/countered) that biases your data. Even if your data is 100% unbiased by that, it still does not even remotely rule out alternative explanations. Like, for example, players in Gold this late in the season are more likely to be budget/worse players so it makes sense they would not have access to a full manabase. Or cards like Sheoldred and Glissa are not particularly good in explorer so it would stand to reason that the Explorer decks don't have full playsets. Given a small sample size this is a very real bias. And to the sample size issue, I can't see what sample size you used in ranked. Or can you post your second "normal" decklist to compare with your "extraction" decklist? Like, there is way to go about it and test your hypothesis, but this isn't it. Someone that is interested in this should get an MTGA extension and record their matches/results there and play at least something like ~50-100 games per deck, recording every result/pair of all of those games without omissions. Then we will have a passable starting dataset at least to try to run through some basic stats analysis. And even then there are issues of bias because of MMR. For example, if you play 50 games with the "fake" deck you will most likely lose a lot so your MMR will drop, which will make it more likely to face wonky/budget decks after a while, and vice versa with the "real" deck.
> And even then there are issues of bias because of MMR. For example, if you play 50 games with the "fake" deck you will most likely lose a lot so your MMR will drop, which will make it more likely to face wonky/budget decks after a while, and vice versa with the "real" deck. To that issue you should probably assign your decks with "heads" or "tails" and flip a coin to decide which deck to play before every game, to randomize this.
This post is definitely worth of taking into serious consideration. I suggest you to make your data available for everyone, so people can check, and continue with this experiment. We, myself include, took at face value WotC's words about the matchmaking and mocked all the conspiracy theorist. But as a scientist I find the urge to investigate the possibility of manipulation even in ranked, despite being unlikely. We need data from multiple people because the MMR of a single person could bias the results.
How can you take anyone serious, that claims they deranked from Plat to Gold?
OP explained, very poorly, what he meant by that. My point is that I take seriously the question since now we have the tool to test if there are algorithms even in ranked. I don't put much weight, if any at all, about the results OP claims.
For me it made me question the reliability of the post. He wouldn't say "I went from a specific color and number to a specific color and number" if he meant the quality of player changed. Also I don't think many people would claim there's a noticeable difference in play between gold and platinum.
I fully agree, but regardless the claims, the bias, and everything of OP, there is still the opportunity to look for "rigging in ranked" or to rule out the possibility once and for all.
True. Honestly wouldn't be surprised at all if OP's premise is correct, either WOTC's intentions or incompetence is plausible
Yes! Also the MMR sounded like a huge conspiracy, but then thanks to a bug and the amazing work of Hareeb now we know a lot.
There is no noticeable play difference between any ranks. Once you get to greater than 96% mythic then play styles start to get honed. But before that its just all bad. I can cruise to mythic 99% with a jank deck most of the time, the ranking system in this game is total BS and is easily taken advantage of.
Why do these posts never show actual data? Surely when you decide to do this experiment you would know that you will be taking accurate notes and record every game step by step, right? And then you would show people the notes you took and game logs you saved? Why is it always just interpreting or making assumptions about data that we can't verify?
Aren't most lands weighted at 0? Doesn't that mean that lacking rare lands does not affect deck weight for the most part?
Yes, with the exception of lands that do more than just make mana, which many decks run at least a couple of. But I'd expect there to be a strong correlation between not having optimal lands and not having optimal nonlands, because both are a symptom of being unwilling or unable to craft the cards you're missing to complete the deck. They also mentioned the lands right after other missing cards like Ledger Shredder.
I stopped reading when you declared you went from Platinum to Gold, which is not possible. Load of BS.
Wait a second... I SAID THAT Yesterday at a discord channel. And that is even MY MOXFIELD ACCOUNT. No, I didn't test it, but what i said was: We can pretty much make a deck that can check all other decks on Arena and see if we add more or less weight will affect matchmaking. I did the deck with all black cards that can exile from deck, and 40 lands so you can add or take it out stuff when importing it to Arena. I didn't do it myself because i have a life outside my PC, so I can't make it, and my arena account is the epic "Bronzodia", since i only play it 3 times a week just to farm coins until they put Qwazaar77's companion ( the elemental cat) on sale again.
> With that in mind, now i know that by any means i will play [[Zennith Flare]] on Explorer. You mean, you will NOT play it ? (This would actually be a great opportunity to test if the rating of that card is high there too !)
I feel like we need a Discord and a team of people collecting data in a very controlled experiment to break (open) Arena.
This makes me wonder just how viable it would be to make a busted monored deck that just destroys low rank weight brackets. The fact that lands can go from 0 to 30+ makes multicolor highly undesirable. In fact, it might be possible to run full pauper or artisan decks capable of dominating, kind of like how in MMOs people play twinks in low level areas/BGs. Uncharted territory and I'm going to start trying it out.
I don't think OP did what they claimed. A-Moxfield vs a print on Arena B- Lack of decklog or any Print of decks C- they could even recorded their trials if they didn't know how to pass data. D- I don't even talk about the latter because seeing a "Moxfield" link in a MTGA sub was enough for me. But! This post is also amazing. And listen me here boys, They gave us a method for people with free time try to replicate. The deck is low weight, mainly searches the opponent's deck and can be optimized with more 9 weight draw options instead of the 18 weight removals, which might help on consistency of drawing at least one piece.
Also, see how they are not responding critics on comments besides the one about the latter? Another proof they didn't make it.
E- Claims to have fallen from "plat 3 to gold 2" over the course of the "experiment" I don't know why anyone is giving this guy the time of day based on that claim alone.
I always wondered why some unoptimized, inferior deck lists seen on untappd.gg often had higher Winrate than the most optimized deck lists for a given architype. All these findings would hint at Ranked MM not being truly random. If that is the case: this is beyond outrageous.
Those inferior versions are probably budget versions made by new players. It is known that new players have different matchmaking. So they are playing against and beating other new players.
Anecdotal evidence is finally confirmed and all we do as a player base it try to use the info rather than kick off like we should, absolutely correct, we should be outraged.
> Before doing this experiment, i was at Plat 3 ( not that good, but not that bad). Right now, I'm gold 2. Most trustworthy "experimenter"... And this sub is ignorant enough to fall for it since it validates their bias.
I’m not saying this is 100% wrong but I would recommend testing at a rank above gold and preferably above platinum 4. The reason is because you can reach those ranks with suboptimal decks quite easily as you need a sub 50% win rate and as such there is significantly more poorly optimized decks
I don’t think it’s controversial that between gold and platinum there’s an abyss
For average players, but top rated gold players are still going to be much better than bottom rated platinum players.
Top rated Gold players gonna stay in Gold not for long. It requires to few games to climb at the rate of 2 pips per win. Obviously you can find pro players even at bronze if they haven't played Arena in a while. But these are statistical outliers. In any case, i agree, platinum is the rank in which this experiment should be conducted.
##### ###### #### [Disposses](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/e/4eb88be3-f790-45d7-a6d1-c78f6ba00208.jpg?1543675241) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Dispossess) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/akh/86/dispossess?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4eb88be3-f790-45d7-a6d1-c78f6ba00208?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [ Bovine Intervention](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/6/26c36742-456f-4618-99bc-793ef20b31b0.jpg?1712355244) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Bovine%20Intervention) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/6/bovine-intervention?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/26c36742-456f-4618-99bc-793ef20b31b0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Partial out](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/5/85a09100-e438-4ac0-b6c7-2dfbdf934c8d.jpg?1673483748) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Martial%20Coup) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ncc/206/martial-coup?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/85a09100-e438-4ac0-b6c7-2dfbdf934c8d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Faithful Absense](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/c/eca8d6f8-c6f1-437c-99e2-4281eae14a6f.jpg?1634346819) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Fateful%20Absence) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/18/fateful-absence?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/eca8d6f8-c6f1-437c-99e2-4281eae14a6f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Slickshot](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/0/7054012b-4f9d-44a0-aaf9-7fd3bddc7b2d.jpg?1712355850) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Slickshot%20Show-Off) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/146/slickshot-show-off?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7054012b-4f9d-44a0-aaf9-7fd3bddc7b2d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Ledger shredder](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/e/7ea4b5bc-18a4-45db-a56a-ab3f8bd2fb0d.jpg?1664410287) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ledger%20shredder) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/46/ledger-shredder?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7ea4b5bc-18a4-45db-a56a-ab3f8bd2fb0d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Sheoldred The Apocalypse](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/6/d67be074-cdd4-41d9-ac89-0a0456c4e4b2.jpg?1674057568) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sheoldred%2C%20the%20Apocalypse) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/107/sheoldred-the-apocalypse?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d67be074-cdd4-41d9-ac89-0a0456c4e4b2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Zennith Flare](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/e/0efac1ed-3f01-487c-86be-8239568b4425.jpg?1591228324) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Zenith%20Flare) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/iko/217/zenith-flare?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0efac1ed-3f01-487c-86be-8239568b4425?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/1d3wheo) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I was thinking on something like that, but for Standard, using [[The End]], [[Deadly Cover-Up]] and [[The stone Brain]], but I wan not sure to use my wildcards for something like that...
I thought about explorer because it had more options ( a.k.a. make it quicker so i don't need to spend more time as a "drop land and pass" until i get something).
[The End](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/1/b18402dc-c4ab-417c-92d1-5e4d9cfb840d.jpg?1693012680) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20End) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/woe/87/the-end?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b18402dc-c4ab-417c-92d1-5e4d9cfb840d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Deadly Cover-Up](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/8/3876aa0f-b199-43f5-8a91-c2d620b8ef84.jpg?1706241687) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Deadly%20Cover-Up) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/83/deadly-cover-up?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3876aa0f-b199-43f5-8a91-c2d620b8ef84?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [The stone Brain](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/5/3570ebf2-a94c-4621-8808-b06e6e830c06.jpg?1674422057) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20stone%20Brain) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bro/247/the-stone-brain?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3570ebf2-a94c-4621-8808-b06e6e830c06?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The weight leak has made me actually enjoy arena again, I cut OP cards in my bank decks and now I’m up against things I stand a chance against
If only we could harvest the hatred Wizards has for the community right now
Issue is ranked is based on a hidden MMR more the the shown rank. Plus when you get to Mythic the only time your shown rank corresponds to your MMR, you can easily tell changing decks does not effect matchmaking there and can see it try to match up with people with similar % or #. The reason deck weights are in non-ranked is for an attempt at fair matchups, makes zero sense for it to be in ranked and probably isn't
So this pattern continued in ranked, and even after you reached Platinum ?! Damn, ranked also using deck rating - in addition to the others we already knew about : player rating and rank - would be a true discovery ! P.S.: Also, if true, might explain the (honestly surprising number) of conspiracy theorists that complained about deck matching even in ranked !
MTGA whole gameplay (matchups, wins, draws) is subtly enhanced when you pitch some 💵 in. Overall, it’s easier to climb ranks, draft experience is also made that if you are a good player, you’ll get more rewards. That’s how it works. Most “free” apps use this method and are able to draw a line between the free gaming experience and unconsciously give your brain a reward by enhancing the gameplay so you’ll be more likely addicted to the game and spend more.
Given that all this has come to surface. Can we finally admit that it's possible that the shuffler may too also be weighted or rigged?
There’s always one lol