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In the last patch notes, we saw that the way matchmaking works has changed.
The previous system matched you by MMR (an internal metric supposed to represent your skill level, like ELO in chess) if you have stars multipliers or are legend, against players of similar skill. Without stars, you're matched by rank (if you're Gold 5 without stars, you face Gold 5 players).
The new system always matchs you by MMR, so basically you always face player of the same skill level. The argument behind it is that it's a way to prevent weird player experience, like facing normal players, then bots once you hit the no-star rank floor. So now, your rank level doesn't represent skills, it represents your "progression".
However, is it a good change for most players ? Might not be.
If you're matched by MMR, or if you're at your actual skill rank, the idea is that on average, you'll have a 50% winrate. With a lucky streak of 16 games, you can still climb the next floor. How do you get this lucky streak on average ? You need to play enough games.
Let's take an example : you're a Platinum player on average. Starting at Gold 5, in the new system, you're still matched by MMR, so you'll always have around 50% winrate. Quick maths show that the relation between your probability of going to the next floor and the number of games you play is as follow :
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CdacIz-7_K8u7RG-FttFBdH7hKb_ROS6Y9fyLtyzPV4/edit?gid=0#gid=0
100 games -> ~20%
200 games -> ~48%
300 games -> ~67%
500 games -> ~87%
Now, in the old system, your winrate was a bit higher because you're matched by rank, and since you usually get to Platinum, you're a bit better than the average Gold 5 player. So let's say you have a 55% winrate. The relation between your probability of going to the next floor and the number of games you play is as follow :
60 games -> ~20%
95 games -> ~48%
130 games -> ~67%
200 games -> ~87%
So basically, you need at least twice as many games to get the same probability of a going up a rank floor in the new system.
Now, if you don't play enough, what happens the next month ? You got stuck at Gold 5~1, so you get 1 less star (because stars are still decided by rank). And since your winrate will still be around 50% because you're still matched by MMR, you could repeat this the next month at Gold 10, and the next month at Silver 5, etc.
Of course, here we've made some simplifications : in practice, your MMR will not always match perfectly an opponent of your level. Deck matchups, meta analysis, win streaks and other factors might also influence this. But the idea is, on average, you will need to play more games to get to the same rewards. I might also have just made some mistake in my assumptions, so feel free to discuss them.
Another bad side effect is that this might promotes weird optimization strategy to climb up. Basically, lose lots of games, to lower your MMR, then play your best to climb up to the next floor before your MMR goes back up. Repeat at next floor rank. (Though the devs have said on Twitter they have a way to avoid this kind of exploit. I think I remember they said at some point that you can't tank your MMR below a certain point too quickly, but it all depends on how much you can tank it. A 5k legend player will have a better winrate winning against 20k legend players, and nothing currently prevents from going to the bottom of Legend).
Now, I think the intention behind this change, at least on surface, is laudable. But we recently saw a change to weekly quests which seems very likely to be intended to drive player engagement up by making people play more for reduced increase in EXP. So I can't completely erase from my mind the possibility that this change was also made to increase the number of games players need to reach the same rank (and thus the same monthly rewards) than before.
TL;DR : the new system might not be so good, because it turns your rank into a reflection of how much you grind, instead of how much skill you have, and now you need more games on average to get the same monthly rewards.
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