Best of 3 Exploits and Quality of Life Update Request
In paper, deciding whether to play best of 1 or best of 3 is either a gentleman’s rule or a function of the tournament. After the most recent backend update, players can ignore this agreement in the best of 3 queues ranked if they choose for extra benefits.
During the last patch for Historic Horizons, the way players earn pips toward ranking up was changed such that if a player concedes during sideboarding after the first match and either receive or lose one pip. I believe this works between games 2 and 3 if players choose to. Before, if an opponent conceded before the end of a Best of 3 match, they would lose 2 pips toward rank no matter how many games had been played that match. With this system, players can strategically concede to make their good matchups better without a penalty to their rank from conceding during sideboarding. If you run into a bad matchup, you can simply play out game one and no matter the outcome, leave the game before game 2, and effectively treat it as a best of 1 game. If it's a good matchup, you play games 2 and 3 with a better chance of scoring two wins off the same player.
Ladder exploits are a part of any ranked game. The ins and outs of a quick Mythic exploit on MTGA are even detailed in this article that was circulating around the community in June/July, linked below.
https://hareeb.com/2021/05/23/inside-the-mtg-arena-rating-system/
Before the ladder update, exploits like this didn't really bother me much from a quality of life perspective because I was never punished for my opponent conceding instantly to boost their hidden ELO. They would drop to the bottom of the tier, I would get 2 wins. Next game happened quickly. Under this system, there's no penalty to leaving at the most opportune moment, and I can't even reliably play a Best of 3 match anymore. Even though I like laddering Best of 3, at this point I would just be happy to have a place to play Best of 3 Historic without all my opponents conceding after game 1. I understand if this was on purpose as a business decision to push the Best of 1 queues, though I think decision this could scare off some pretty enfranchised players, probably me included. If the change to ladder climbing wasn't intentional, a fix would be great, I'm sure a lot of players would agree. If it was intentional, please, please, give players a place to play Best of 3 magic separate from the ladder grinders so we can continue to enjoy Best of 3 constructed magic with fewer interruptions. Yes, there's a play zone for Standard, but there's none for Historic. I was personally very happy with the old penalty system, but any step toward a better player experience is mutually exclusive for obvious reasons. Sorry for the book of a post, and Thanks for your time!