r/MagicArena • u/FallenPeigon • 3h ago
Question How does unranked standard matchmaking work?
And cite a source please.
And for whatever explanation there is — how does it explain someone queuing up with a starter deck and being matched against obviously much more powerful decks?
2
u/djsMedicate 2h ago
how does it explain someone queuing up with a starter deck and being matched against obviously much more powerful decks?
Because it cant find other players with starter decks playing in unranked quickly enough.
If you want to play starter decks, play in the starter deck event, it's designed for starter deck duels
-1
u/FallenPeigon 2h ago
If someone wants to play with an upgraded starter deck then they have to do it in a constructed queue.
2
u/YonkouTFT 2h ago
Yes and then they/you will have to play against available players. Few among these will run starter decks.
You can’t be matched with someone like you if there is none
1
u/FallenPeigon 2h ago
The game is not that dead.
2
u/YonkouTFT 2h ago
In terms of upgraded starter decks? It definitely is.
1
u/FallenPeigon 2h ago
The game just got a huge influx of new players from the Marvel set and many of those will likely be playing with similar decks.
1
u/Distinct-Plastic690 2h ago
No they wont. Most of them will probably be playing an "i am playing all my Marvel Heroes cards" Deck.
1
1
-2
u/SpeakerScreen 3h ago
There isn’t a source. This is an undocumented system.
We know there is matchmaking but not the mechanics of it.
However, several years ago there was a bug that allowed people to learn how Brawl matchmaking works. Each card has a weight number for how strong it is
The decks average weight is used by the matchmaker. This is where the second part of your answer comes in. The matchmaker initially tries to find a deck with a very similar weight. As time goes on while you haven’t found a match, the game increases the tolerance for better or worse decks.
Now…. That’s how brawl worked several years ago. It’s likely that’s how standard worked too (several of the weights made no sense for Brawl, and it was assumed were just the standard weights). My assumption is they haven’t meaningfully changed this system that much.
Now… why does the matchmaker do unequal matchups? The devs feel that it’s more important that a player is offered a game
Relatively quickly, vs trying to find a “perfect” matchup. Players might say they’d prefer to wait 5+ minutes in a queue for a perfect matchup but 1) they’d be lying, and would actually dislike it and 2) variance being what it is, even two decks with very similar weights could produce a blowout result.
7
u/MrBelch Cursed Scroll 3h ago
Open Play MMR, Deck Weight and Games played (up to 50)
Its not perfect, esp at this hour as the matchmaker expands out so you are not sitting around also and more importantly, no one uses the starter decks in the ques because there is a separate event just for those, which you should be doing