Magic The Gathering: Arena Dev Tracker

(2019) Paid Entry Events Should Not Be Matched By Rank

This thread was added on March 27, 2019, with posts from WotC_Megan.

Original Post

Today's patch notes mentioned that Sealed events will now try pairing people of similar (presumably Limited) ranks, something which doesn't occur in Traditional Draft events, but does to some unknown extent in Ranked Draft.

This is nonsense in both cases, but particularly with Sealed which doesn't even have a ranked component. As has been pointed out by many others, yet bears repeating, players should not be punished for good performances when their resources are at stake.

If MTGA devs want a limited mode where rank or MMR matters in the matchmaking, they should create a F2P mode where the only thing at stake is your rank and not your money (hint: make Ranked Draft a phantom one).

Re: Sealed - It's a typo!

Internal patch note was 'rating', which my brain and/or my keyboard auto-corrected to 'ranking' at some point. It's been fixed, and the patch note now reads:

  • Updates to matchmaking in the Sealed queue so players with similar MMR are more likely to match against each other.

We've been using MMR as secondary check in our Sealed matchmaking since December, and this is update is one of those adjustments we predicted we would have to make. Your Win/Loss record is still the primary factor when determining your opponents.

Apologies for the confusion, and if you have any other feedback RE: the matchmaking adjustments with this update please continue to share them!