The basics of the product are good. All the fancy extra bullcrap/modifications they throw in is what ruins it. You should see the official MTG Arena forums under feedback. People are constantly complaining about the shuffler and the match up system being broken. I HATE the fact that they are OBVIOUSLY using the matchmaker in the ranked system. The RANK is what should determine your opponent.
I honestly don't remember them using a matchmaking system like this for bo1 in the past. I was amazed at the diversity of decks I would play against. Those days have been gone for over a month now though. I'm getting back into online poker and considering Hearthstone if they don't fix this problem. Right now I'm playing just a couple of games a day to try and roll through my gold quests so I can draft.
The limited environment is pretty good still I find. Also, you don't run into the multiple copies of the same card problem because most limited decks have only 1-2 copies of a card.
I'm right there with you. I'm playing much less Arena these days. I had a couple of glorious weeks where I could take a pre-randomized text file of cards, import it, and get to play REAL games of Magic. Then they fixed that work around and it's back to the land pockets and multiple copies of the same card. IT WAS SO AMAZING to be able to play Arena with a truly random deck. Now I've had the taste and it's gone, playing Arena just sucks.
I wonder if Wizards will ever fix this. I'm pretty skeptical as they still haven't done it yet, nor even admitted there is a problem. It's gotten so bad I've considered starting to play Hearthstone or something else entirely, something I haven't done in my 8 years straight of playing Magic.
I just switched from Gruul Midrange to Mono-Red aggro. I see WAY more mono-red aggro, as a mirror match now. Additionally, I have noticed big swings in opponents when working on my Gruul deck. If I made enough changes to it, while also importing a new list as text, I would receive MANY new opponents. I though Merfolk were long dead! Until I put a "new" decklist in that is.
I had 3 mono-red opponents in a row just recently in bo1 ranked. Many more besides that. My games are like 60-75% mono red right now. In addition, I keep seeing the Electro-static Wall version of the deck. This is probably due to the fact that it's better against the mirror, which you keep running up against in mono-red.
I am absolutely disgusted with Wizards right now. They have denied the shuffler problem (see the threads in this forum pertaining to it), not admitted the match making going on in bo1 at the very least, and once I figured out a work around to the shuffler problem, the got rid of it on this most recent patch 3/27/19. BTW, they didn't mention the changes in the patch notes. They made the bo1 hand decider even worse by giving it a 3rd hand to choose from, and also choosing from 3 hands even after a mulligan as well.
Hope this changes soon. I'll be writing to Wizards soon and you should too. They do try to cater towards their customers, eventually, after a ton of them have an outcry.
I honestly don't remember them using a matchmaking system like this for bo1 in the past. I was amazed at the diversity of decks I would play against. Those days have been gone for over a month now though. I'm getting back into online poker and considering Hearthstone if they don't fix this problem. Right now I'm playing just a couple of games a day to try and roll through my gold quests so I can draft.
The limited environment is pretty good still I find. Also, you don't run into the multiple copies of the same card problem because most limited decks have only 1-2 copies of a card.
I wonder if Wizards will ever fix this. I'm pretty skeptical as they still haven't done it yet, nor even admitted there is a problem. It's gotten so bad I've considered starting to play Hearthstone or something else entirely, something I haven't done in my 8 years straight of playing Magic.
I just switched from Gruul Midrange to Mono-Red aggro. I see WAY more mono-red aggro, as a mirror match now. Additionally, I have noticed big swings in opponents when working on my Gruul deck. If I made enough changes to it, while also importing a new list as text, I would receive MANY new opponents. I though Merfolk were long dead! Until I put a "new" decklist in that is.
I had 3 mono-red opponents in a row just recently in bo1 ranked. Many more besides that. My games are like 60-75% mono red right now. In addition, I keep seeing the Electro-static Wall version of the deck. This is probably due to the fact that it's better against the mirror, which you keep running up against in mono-red.
I am absolutely disgusted with Wizards right now. They have denied the shuffler problem (see the threads in this forum pertaining to it), not admitted the match making going on in bo1 at the very least, and once I figured out a work around to the shuffler problem, the got rid of it on this most recent patch 3/27/19. BTW, they didn't mention the changes in the patch notes. They made the bo1 hand decider even worse by giving it a 3rd hand to choose from, and also choosing from 3 hands even after a mulligan as well.
Hope this changes soon. I'll be writing to Wizards soon and you should too. They do try to cater towards their customers, eventually, after a ton of them have an outcry.