A bug within MTG Arena revealed back-end data on how matchmaking works within the casual Brawl format, and Wizards of the Coast addressed the issue within the June 3 Magic: the Gathering Arena announcements.
Matchmaking details on MTG Arena within formats like Brawl went viral last week through an Amy the Amazonian video, where a bug secretly revealed data on how opponents were chosen from the digital queue. WotC responded to the bug within the June 3 MTG Arena announcements, breaking down how matchmaking is accomplished within the digital casual format queues and changes being made going forward.
“Moving forward, you can expect a few things,” WotC said. “First, we’re going to fix the issue that gave players too much information. This will happen soon. Alongside that change, or shortly thereafter, we’ll make changes to our power ratings based on play patterns over the past few weeks.”
Exploits revealed from the MTG Arena bug don’t affect ranked queues, Premier events, or events that have a win/loss target, according to WotC. The behind-the-scenes matchmaking reveals were only for best-of-one casual queues and formats like Brawl or Midweek Magic. The Brawl format uses the power level of your commander to decide who you might get matched with. Player skill is also accounted for. And with Modern Horizons 3 getting added to MTG Arena, the power level of commanders is expected to increase.
The bottom line, however, is that WotC doesn’t want players to understand how matchmaking works on MTG Arena, to prevent individuals from exploiting the system. Devs are planning to “continue to explore how we manage the power level portion of matchmaking in a sustainably responsive manner, where changes are regularly accounting for shifts in the metagame but don’t impact our ability to run other parts of the game,” according to WotC.
In addition to the matchmaking changes, WotC also pre-banned 13 MH3 cards today from the Historic format. There isn’t a set timeline for the MTG Arena matchmaking changes, but players can expect the revealing data bug to get removed in the coming weeks.
