I think they quietly renamed Historic Brawl to "Brawl" and then Brawl became "Standard Brawl". That's just from what I've seen online but I don't if that's formal or anything.
I've always loved this artwork, and just how gross it is
I think they have to be doing some player-skill-based matchmaking in those queues. I think it would just be really un-fun if they didn't, and I'd bet Arena is optimizing for player hours over anything else. Nothing ends an Arena session like getting dunked on multiple games in a row in a ranked queue lol.
I’d bet that each format – Standard, Explorer, Alchemy, etc. – has its own set of weights.
I never thought about that but I'd bet you're right and I'd hope they're getting updated a lot more regularly than the Brawl ones.
Just out of curiosity, they must be using this for unranked and the play queue right? If not, there has to be something else they're using for those matchups because I still never see a wide deck/player disparity even in the unranked queues.
I also think most of the frustration was due to the improper weighting on cards. I think that indicated to people that they don't give a shit enough to keep them current or perhaps they don't have the resources to, both of which are bad news for players.
For me, the best change they could make would be to display the MMR/Deck Strength numbers everywhere in matches. The way you can see the Elo in all chess matches I think helps people understand why they're matched up against their opponent. Having everything in the dark makes people come up with conspiracy theories.
Damn, this is so beautiful
I think they should have dropped the 2,300 gem cost to unlock it, and just allowed everyone to accumulate tickets accordingly. I don't mind a new currency in the game, but this is really just another bundle sold to us for gems/money. And you have to do work to accumulate the rewards after you pay.
Not really in love with this, as it kinda reads like a second Mastery Pass that costs less but with fewer (worse?) rewards. Still just kind of comes off like another complicated and confusing system to extract more money up front from the players.
I’m wondering if I can use this to build a deck full of draft chaff and get myself matched against similar things.
Yea you absolutely can. I was reading some other comments online about people doing it, and I'm about to spin up a modified Rocco deck to see if I start seeing different opponent commanders and all that.
This is really amazing actually, and validates some things I think a lot of players thought for a long time.
I was able to tune down by Rocco Street Chef deck to below 1080 so now I shouldn't be hitting the ridiculous commanders any more.
I think this makes the most sense. It's a shame they won't be included for people who want them but I would be annoyed if I didn't play Timeless.
I don't play Legacy but I've always been a big fan of the format. It's very interesting to hear their thoughts on how negatively impactful Grief has been for the format. I think it's frustrating but expected that Wizards delays banning a card from the current active set that they're promoting. They haven't even shipped out Gift Bundles yet (July) so to ban a card from the set before people even receive the product is definitely never happening.
I do think that Grief creates non-games, and I think non-games are truly antithetical to "fun" and fun should be the #1 concern for every game in existence. The fact that they're not banning it means they care more about money than fun.