How does the League matchmaking work? Is it similar to how you're paired in normal ranked matches, where it'll try to pair you with someone of a similar rating? The question popped up in the game chat earlier and now I'm genuinely curious.
League matchmaking pairs players in the league queue. It doesn't matter what their MP ranking is. A 900 will play a 1700, this happens in every league. I have no official knowledge of this, this is just based on long-time practical obervation.
Yeah see, that's the impression I got from my observations but people are adamant that it isn't the case. In the last league I had fights against 2 17+ rating folks and 2 fights against people below 1000.
I believe there is some special matching code that tries to set up games for players who haven't played four games yet ahead of players who have.
I think this special matching is not active for the last x minutes of a league. When I play my matches latly, I often get paired against players who already have played their four matches.
My crackpot theory is that a player's current success rate / win % is also taken into account (along with all the other factors already mentioned). Otherwise, what's to stop a player staying at a very low ELO by only playing league, and then being constantly matched against new players?
You know, high-ranked players are constantly matched against low-ranked players in leagues. Just look at any league while it's running. This is perfectly commonplace. Why would the matchmaking bother with win percentages or any such esoterica when even ranking seems to have no effect? Also, there has never been any mention of player win percentage tracking from devs. I don't think it exists in the game. It's only tracked outside the game, in Farbs' league system.
I'm not saying that high ELO players never get matched with low ELO players in league. The point you're missing of my theory of win % over last X games (or even total win %) influencing match-ups is that it's just one of several factors influencing match-ups. I know for certain that there are a number of players who have maintained or do maintain very low ELO rankings by only playing league, never or very rarely ranked MP. How are you certain that most of the low ELO players you mention playing 1700s aren't these guys? I can tell you that, apart from these low ELO campers (who I recognise through repeated match-ups, and no I'm not going to name names, although I easily could), I almost never match up against a new player with a sub-1000 ELO in league. Otherwise, either the match-up system is completely broken (possible), or the devs are okay with low ELO campers constantly beating up on new players.
Unless things have changed radically since I wrote the first league matchmaking routing, rating is not a factor.
Since most Leagues give players close to similar cards/draws, i don't see any difference between 1100 and 1800. It's became contest of skill, game knowledge and a bit of luck. It is about similar chance for me to loose to 1000-1100 or to win 1800.
I know there is some matchmaking that occurs because I'll queue up immediately when a league starts and sometimes see 2 or 3 games start before I get matched with someone.
