MTG ARENA MATCHMAK1NG AND YOU

万智牌：竞技场匹配系统以及你

A couple of weeks ago we shipped a bug on MTG Arena that allowed players to reverse engineer some of the logic behind our matchmaking. While there is no security risk in this bug, it did create some conversation on the topic, so we wanted to take a minute to discuss what our goals are with matchmaking and what players can expect moving forward.

几周前，我们在万智牌：竞技场上弄出了一个BUG，这个BUG让玩家能够逆向出我们匹配系统背后的一些逻辑。虽然这个漏洞没有安全风险，但确实引发了一些讨论，所以我们想花点时间讨论一下我们匹配系统的目标以及玩家在未来可以期待什么。

Our vision for MTG Arena is "Fast, fun Magic for everyone, anywhere." Applying this to matchmaking in unranked modes, our goal is to let players build whatever decks that interest them and then provide as fair a match as possible. This means we're looking to pair high-power decks against each other so those players can have the epic battles they're looking for. Meanwhile, players who are building for fun, thematic matches are more likely to pair against others who are doing the same.

我们对万智牌：竞技场的愿景是“在任何地方让所有人玩上快速、有趣的万智牌”。将这一愿景应用到非排位模式的匹配中来说，我们的目标则是让玩家构建他们感兴趣的任何套牌，并提供尽可能公平的匹配。这意味着我们会将高强度的套牌配对在一起，让这些玩家可以进行他们期待的史诗战斗。同时，为了娱乐和主题对战构建套牌的玩家则更有可能与其他做同样事情的玩家配对。

With a game as complex as Magic, however, no system will perfectly account for all the strategies, variables, and deck-building options available to players, let alone the myriad motivations those players have. In addition, we must make compromises between matchmaking precision and how long it takes players to find a match.

然而，对于像万智牌这样复杂的游戏，没有任何系统能完美地考虑到所有策略、变量和玩家可用的套牌构建选项，更不用说玩家的各种动机。此外，我们必须在匹配精度和玩家找到匹配的时间之间做出妥协。

So, let's discuss how we manage this (after a couple of caveats) …

所以，让我们在说明几点注意事项之后，讨论一下我们是如何管理这一点的……

First, the matchmaking we're discussing today only applies to the Best-of-One play queues (and occasional pass events, like Midweek Magic, where you get to play for a timed duration instead of a set number of matches), and does not apply to Ranked play, Best-of-Three play, premier events, or events that have win/loss targets.

首先，我们今天讨论的匹配系统仅适用于BO1的匹配队列（以及偶尔出现的活动，比如周中万智牌，这些活动中可以在一段时间内不断游玩而不是有固定比赛场次），也不适用于排位比赛、BO3比赛、竞技赛事或有胜负目标的赛事。

Second, we're not going to share specific matchmaking details. While we know some players won't like this choice, it helps us achieve our goal of fair matchmaking. When players have full transparency on how the system works, it is easier for certain players to exploit this information to create imbalanced match-ups. When this happens, predictably, more players adopt this strategy over time for fear of being disadvantaged, which means that not only are they creating even more imbalanced matches, they may not even be playing decks that they think are fun or interesting.

其次，我们不会分享具体的匹配细节。虽然我们知道有些玩家不喜欢这个选择，但这有助于我们实现公平匹配的目标。当玩家完全了解系统的工作原理时，某些玩家更容易利用这些信息来制造不平衡的匹配。当这种情况发生时，可以预见到随着时间的推移，更多玩家会因为害怕处于劣势而采用这种策略，这不仅会制造更多不平衡的匹配，他们可能甚至不会使用他们认为有趣的套牌。

Now on to the discussion.

现在进入讨论。

For Brawl (and Standard Brawl), the system looks at both your Commander and your deck, roughly evaluates the combined power level, with an emphasis on the Commander, and then tries to match you against decks of similar power level. If it is taking too long to find a good match, the system periodically increases the acceptable power level discrepancies until you are paired. As a rule of thumb, we're hoping players are never waiting more than a minute or two for a match. For non-Brawl matches, the process is the same, but without the commander.

对于争锋（和标准争锋），系统会查看你的指挥官和你的套牌，大致评估组合的实力水平，重点是指挥官，然后尝试将你与相似实力水平的套牌配对。如果找到合适的匹配花费的时间过长，系统会定期增加可接受的实力水平差异，直到你被配对。一般来说，我们希望玩家等待匹配的时间不超过一两分钟。对于非争锋匹配，过程是相同的，但没有指挥官。

There are two key things to point out here. First, new cards will need play data before they are integrated into the power calculation, so they are the most likely to change between evaluations. Second, when making changes, we're going to prioritize statistical outliers or the most popular cards for adjustment. Granularly managing thousands of cards is unlikely to be the best use of our team resources, so we're going to focus on the most important areas first.

这里有两个关键点。首先，新卡需要游戏数据才能被整合到强度计算中，因此它们在两次评估之间最有可能发生变化。其次，在进行更改时，我们将优先考虑对统计异常值或最受欢迎的卡牌进行调整。细致地管理数千张卡牌不太可能是我们团队资源的最佳利用方式，因此我们将首先关注最重要的领域。

Beyond the relative power of the commander and the cards in a player's deck, we incorporate player skill as part of our matchmaking in further service to finding fun and compelling matches for players. While it can be fun to win convincingly, we don't want to regularly pit newer players who are learning the ropes against seasoned veterans with advanced skillsets and create situations where these outcomes are much more likely. Combining deck power and skill helps prevent that, while still allowing for these players to occasionally battle.

除了指挥官和玩家套牌中卡牌的相对强度，我们还将玩家的技巧作为匹配的一部分，进一步服务于为玩家找到有趣且引人入胜的比赛。虽然赢得信心满满很有趣，但我们不希望让正在学习的新人玩家经常与具有高级技巧的老手对抗，也不希望创造出导致这些结果更有可能发生的情况。结合套牌强度和玩家技巧有助于防止这种情况，同时仍允许这些玩家偶尔进行战斗。

Moving forward, you can expect a few things. 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. Again, our goal is for players to have fun, engaging matches that appropriately test their skill level.

展望未来，你可以期待几件事情。首先，我们将修复导致玩家获得过多信息的问题。这将很快发生。与此同时或者在此之后不久，我们将根据过去几周的游戏模式对我们的强度评级进行调整。同样，我们的目标是让玩家享受有趣且引人入胜的比赛，并适当地测试他们的技能水平。

Beyond this, we'll 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. We're not going to provide explicit timelines or windows in which this will happen, because doing so creates windows of opportunity for players to try and circumvent the system.

除此之外，我们将继续探索如何以可持续响应的方式管理匹配的实力水平部分，其中变化会定期考虑环境的变化，但不会影响我们运行游戏其他部分的能力。我们不会提供明确的时间表或时间窗口，因为这样做会为玩家提供尝试规避系统的机会。

We've seen strong growth in Brawl over the last year, and we're excited to find ways to better support Brawl players. While we know it is imperfect, using deck power matchmaking has been a cornerstone of supporting engaging games of Magic, and we'll continue explore ways to make it even better.

过去一年中，我们看到了争锋模式的强劲增长，我们很高兴能找到更好地支持争锋玩家的方法。虽然我们知道它并不完美，但使用套牌强度匹配一直是支持引人入胜的万智牌：竞技场游戏的基石，我们将继续探索使其变得更好的方法。

来源：magic.wizards.com/en/news/mtg-arena/mtg-arena-announcements-june-3-2024#matchmaking