So my experience is that following a day when you won more than 50% of the games, the following day you cannot win. I also find that on the days I lose all the time I'm playing against decks that essentially auto-win, with perfect hands that cause you to lose at turn 2 or 3. I've also found that on the days I lose a lot I'm struggling for mana, yet the opponent never suffers this problem. I also find that on the days I lose the opponent always has the perfect answer to everything in hand, so if I play an enchantment deck they have a fist full of enchantment removal, if I play a creature deck they have to destroy and board wipe if I have anything else they have counters.

I've been playing magic for over 24 years and I know the game inside and out, the quality of my play doesn't fluctuate to such extremes, so yeah... Magic Arena is 100% rigged!

Let's talk about how rigged your pay to win game is. Let me go ahead and create a deck, find an opponent, play a game. This opponent will be the EXACT COUNTER to the deck I made. What the ****?! DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME, RIGGED = NO FUN, WASTE OF TIME.

Apparently, this issue, which was raised a long time ago, has still not been fixed. I just created a new fun and interesting Historic deck. It is nowhere near a tier 1 deck and that is the point. I have played two games so far in the Play queue. This is the one and only queue in Arena in which deck strength is supposedly evaluated for matchmaking. In game 1, my opponent was on the play and won on their turn 3 with the Neoform combo. In game 2, my opponent crushed me with the meta white-green Angel CoCo deck. How is this supposed to be fun?

Please fix the Play queue matchmaking algorithm so that your customers can actually have fun playing Arena. Either that or create a different queue for non-meta decks.

I have 70 lands in a deck of 170 cards and no lands coming in the five first rounds in 6 games in a row. You'll never fix the algorithm are you?

Agree! So lame how they try to match it up to make it fun for everyone (low level players)

Great strategy for company to make money because you have lots more people who don't know anybetter to play. Really ****** because it's rigged. I have always said mtgo is like simulation and arena is like arcade version. Like NBA live versus NBA jam!

MTG arena is HIGHLY rigged and every subreddit sucks your D***s defending your terrible company.

I stopped buying your cards and went full proxy back in 2015.

I recommend everyone go proxy and boycott WOTC for disrespecting there loyal customers

I also have this issue I have a 80% go 2nd rate. I have manually recorded this data. I am curious what to search within the logs to find the data though.

Game rigged 100% certified.
The game keep anoying patterns already identified in other posts.
Tier IV rigged games against antagonist decks calculated by the matching system. More than 1000 games played and recorded whit opponents start more than 750 games (75% of opponent start) it´s out of statistic distribution. Games riggeds giving no lands, no usefull cards or crucial opponets draws in 98% of games. I always play whit top tier tournament decks. The patterns are insane, indeed I can predict the opponent play whit 96% of accuracy!!! Last week when i puchase a boster box climbed to diamon whit no issues. Now with the same decks it´s total impossible. Too much "luck" for the opponent in more than 200 games. No matter the deck you play, rigged matching system takes you out

I agree. Honestly I quit ranked at this point.

basically this.
play with g/w ramp --> get all sorts of control or removal decks matched.
play with u/w control --> get all sorts of fast ramp/control decks matched.
they don't even try to hide it.

had a conversation over email with wotc support about letting us have technical insight how matchmaking and shuffling algorithms work. got as a reply:

"I assure you that our algorithms, including matchmaking, the shuffler, coin flips, and others, have been tested at length and are working as intended. All players are on the same playing field using the exact same rules."
i answered with some more detailed questions and received a standard "Your feedback about MTG Arena is very valuable to us" blah blah reply. pathetic!

this is aggressive ignorance.

even though i beat #93 in mythic....my rewards was moving up 10 positions....its really unfair i hate to be that guy but Wizards of the Coast ....You literally had one job FFS

AND making me play against someone who is 1100 positions infront of me is absolutley unacceptable.
ME Ranked #1250
THEM ranked #93
How does that make sense at all ?!?! easy wins for them i guess i recommend anyone reading this just uninstall the game it is a trap to get you to spend more money and than more money. until you get the deck that YouTube says will win, just to find out you you have to compete with professional gamers. i wont spend another penny on this game. no more season passes. when you are a customer and you are dissatisfied you dont return...so that was i recommend i am done with this BS.

i was mid 800 in mythics yesterday until all the sudden i started getting matched up with people in the top #50 of mythic how is that even remotly fair??? now im in the 1200....im not mad that i lost the games but my decks are decent. it not fair to make me compete with literallty #20 in mythic when i am 850...

There is zero reason to have an algorithm meddle in what should be random matches. It really makes the game tedious and predictable in the worst way. Nobody wants to play mirror matches and nobody wants to play hard counters unless they are 1 in 10 due to chance. Please remove it immediately.

It's hard to understand why the matchmaking is rigged. In bo3 ranked I match with nothing but dimir rogues every time. Again and again amd again and again and again this really made me crazy.

I aö not exeggerating. Almost 8 of each 10 games I match with dimir rogues when I play dimir control. If I reconfigure my deck agaimt rogues than I start to match nothing but gruul agggro. This is just top mıch anoing. It really sucks to play mirror matches again anad again. Please fix this ridiculous problem. I understand that by favoring aggro decks you make happy low skill players and this is a good commercial strategy but just know that you **** on this game.

The matchmaking in drafts is either trying to make you lose on purpose or seriously flawed. If I proceed to start a draft having Bronze tier, being matched with gold or even platinum tier players shows how something isn't working as it would in a fair, playable, enjoyable gameplay.

Here I report the details of the event, attaching images of the particularly mismatched opponents :

Event : Quick Draft Core 2021 , accessed paying 5000 gold fee on date 2021-01-15
Matches log :
1st match : Bronze opponent, resulting in win, score 1-0
2nd match : Bronze opponent, resulting in win, score 2-0
3rd match : Bronze opponent, resulting in win, score 3-0
4th match : Platinum opponent, resulting in win, score 4-0
5th match : Gold opponent, resulting in loss, score 4-1
6th match : Silver opponent, resulting in win, score 5-1
7th match : Silver opponent, resulting in loss, score 5-2
8th match : Silver opponent, resulting in win, score 6-2
9th match : Silver opponent, resulting in win, score 7-2

Since I started the event at the lowest bronze tier, i ended it in bronze tier 1. Therefore, most of the matchmakings here listed were far away from being balanced with my tier.

Please, revise your algorithms.

It would be really nice if WotC would cease with their blatant manipulation of wins and losses via the rigged matchmaking system in RANKED STANDARD, a supposed competitive esports product, as well as cease with the blatant shuffler manipulation which in tandem with the rigging who you match up against is literally deciding wins and losses before a card is drawn in this "strategy" game.

This product is only a fancier version of the three card monte scam.

#BoycottHasbro

It's pretty clear from observation that the Arena matchmaker favors specific types of matchups and prevents others.

This makes sense if it were ensuring similar power level decks were paired together, but in practice it leads to a surprisingly high amount of repetitive matches, either mirrors or counter-decks.

To illustrtate this, you can see the odds of being matched against a Gruul Adventures mirror or a Rogues player, of facing a Yorion player while doing BR Midrange, or facing RDW while playing slower decks with higher CMC blue, black or white cards. I've also noticed analogue cases in less competitive archetypes: you have much higher odds of being paired against mono-blue mill while playing UR Spells, for instance. I'm also suspecting this could be due to similar card rarity distributions between decklists, but it's hard to tell without the matchup algorithm or a much larger data set.

I can understand if the spirit behind the matchmaker design is to prevent players with a wide range in power gap from facing each other and having a bad time. However, this is having unintended consequences both in quality of life and deck brewing data gathering.

It's no fun for either player if they get constantly paired against opponents with the same or wildly similar decks, especially if the matchup leans heavily towards one end of the scale or the other, such as Rakdos vs Yorion archetypes, where the BR player has virtually no tools to interact with their opponent's board, or if matches are frequently decided by card sequencing rather than skillful interaction, such as most mirrors between players of similar skill levels.

Moreover, having a matchup frequency bias is probably discouraging deckbuilding experimentation. Players who constantly face their worst matchup in random play will be disinclined to try new options that might improve the overall win rate against a more diverse field. You can see an example of this in the underrepresentation of Underworld Breach in the field, which is an amazing card for BR and UR strategies but a significant liability in their worst matchups.

This also has major implications for seasonal ladder progression: players who rely on random matches to level up will be much more inclined to play decks that have a better overall game against the decks the MATCHMAKER pairs them against, while those who favored matchmaker hard counters will be left behind even though their decks and skills are much higher tier.

I'm not sure what's the best response to this is, and like I said before, I can understand the spirit behind the algorithm, but considering that Arena is one of the few large-community play options for the foreseeable future, I'm worried about the playtesting implications for the community in the long run.

Play mill deck - 9/10 times get matched against either Lurrus or Kroxa deck
Play rogue deck - 9/10 times get matched against rogue deck

Atm I'm playing control deck without any outliners (no winning through milling, no rogues in deck) and it's refreshing to be actually matched against different decks. Use any other deck an it's hilarious how repetetive the games become.

Yet another draft, same results. Land flood, no chance of winning.

I just went 8 games in a row with the opponent going first. Their matchmaking is SO broken.