Deck value is a metric that we use in Play, yes. Without going too far into specifics, this only prevents you from matching with decks that are very far away from yours. The matchmaker does not prefer (and is not even aware of) specific matchups, be they mirrors, counters, or anything else.

To your question, a deck's reach still covers a fairly broad range, but excluding some options by definition increases the probability of facing any given deck that remains. I can't speak to anyone's personal experience, but we believe the current setup still provides a diverse spread of opponents.

That's why you were specifically selected to face the opponent and why my life loss rakdos pile keeps getting nine live opponents as well

We do not do this - not in ranked, not in any queue in the game. Even if we thought it was a good idea for some reason (which we don't), it would be extremely difficult to implement. We've got plenty to do already.

Well, GreatSeaBattle, I will tell you.

In order to be a good fit for Omniscience draft, a set has to pass two main criteria: the cards have to work the way you expect, and the cards have to be fun and different to use in a mana-safeties-off world. Throne of Eldraine failed both criteria in a variety of ways:

• Adamant costs couldn't be paid.
• Our Omniscience emblem only works on cards played from the hand, so creatures couldn't be cast from exile after going on Adventures.
• Most of the "powerful but hard to cast" budget went into strict color requirements (Adamant, the four-hybrid-mana uncommon cycle, etc), which didn't leave a ton of expensive stuff in the set to slam for free. Roving Keeps are...not exactly aspirational.

Theros and Ikoria both also had some challenges. Our emblem doesn't affect Escape costs or Mutate costs, plus both sets have mechanics that really suffer from smaller opening hands (Constellation asks yo...

I could easily imagine "reveal the top card of your library. If it's a creature, it deals damage equal to its power to any target." or a similar ability in black-border too! #wotc_staff

What's happening here is that our code for "prevent damage ... by [something]" is supposed to tell the client what objects damage is prevented by (so you're less likely to accidentally attack with such an object etc.). The bug here is that that code doesn't have any guards for the visibility of that [something] currently - until now, no words on a card in Arena could point to an object that wasn't publicly visible (they'd refer to spells or permanents, search for historic cards with "prevent" and "by" in their text!). #wotc_staff

We've deployed a server-side fix to solve this. If you exit & re-launch your client this issue will be fixed.

We've deployed a server-side fix to solve this. If you exit & re-launch your client this issue will be fixed.