Infinity Wars TCG #HO

We are excited to announce two new features in Infinity Wars that we have had our eye on for quite some time: matchmaking and ranked play!

Matchmaking
Previously in Infinity Wars, when a player queued up in Instant Play, they simply got matched against the first other player that queued up too. However, those two players could have wildly different levels of experience, skills and collections. From now on, however, each time you play a matchmaking game, Infinity Wars will adjust a behind-the-scenes matchmaking value. This value is based on the popular ELO system, and Infinity Wars will also attempt to match new players together as well. For the purposes of this instant-play matchmaking, it's all just math on the server's side to try to match players against people of equal skill levels.

At the launch of this system, every player is considered to have an equal rating, and also considered to be a new player by the system, so players will still get matched against opponents of an inappropriate skill level for a while. In time as people play Infinity Wars, the system will start matching players against more appropriate opponents.

Ranked Play!
Matchmaking is nice and healthy for the game and all, but Ranked play is what we're really excited about. At last, with Ranked play, we are able to start Infinity Wars on the path towards hardcore, competitive play. What is Ranked, and how does it work? I'll explain in full below.

In the Play menu, you can now choose Ranked. Ranked is locked until you are level 7. When you choose Ranked, you can either Search or Host a Ranked game (Search is recommended, you'll find a game faster). Currently, you can choose options other than the standard game modes, but we will most likely be forcing Ranked games to be a standardized game mode/speed/deck format in the future.

Each player starts with a rating of 0, or 'Unranked'. When you win a Ranked game, your rating will increase, and when you lose a game, it will go down. The actual mathematics behind your rating are a bit complex, but here's the general idea:

Each player has a matchmaking rating that is used to match players against each other. At the start, this will be the same for everybody. Your actual rating starts at 0, but constantly moves towards your matchmaking rating as you win games, until your matchmaking rating and actual rating will sync up. This period of 'warm up' until your actual rating is so that each player, even the ones much worse than you, can feel some progression as they play ranked.

Rating is based on the ELO system. For those unfamiliar with ELO, the system rates players based on their performance. Winning a game against a high rated player will raise your rating (and lower theirs by an equal amount, it's a zero-sum equation), while if you lose a game your rating will go down. It's a harsh, competitive system, but if you're ready for the harsh, competitive world of ranked play then dive on in! The average player's rating will stabilize around the 1400 mark, which is about the average (of the people active in Ranked play, anyway), higher than that and you know you're very good at Infinity Wars.

In the future we plan to have a leaderboard within the in-game UI itself, but there is a leaderboard on our website at http://infinitywarsgame.com/leaderboards.

As this game is very much still in beta, we are aware that there are bugs and possibly exploits that exist in the game. We thank players who report these bugs to us, and are always working towards fixing them. With this reality in mind, we'll want to make sure that any shenanigans that happen in beta that affect ratings don't carry over into actual release, and encourage players that do find exploits to report them to us so that we can fix them, abusing exploits in Ranked will not be tolerated.

With that in mind, after beta we will be most likely be looking at hosting different ranked 'seasons', tied to the release of each set. If this is the case (and as a company, we are still debating exactly the details of it, so we can't commit to anything being set in stone yet), at the end of each season we would be resetting the rankings and ladder and giving out rewards based on placement. If this is the case, the end of the beta would mark the end of the first season, and a rating reset as well.

Have fun honing your skills in Infinity Wars, and we wish everybody the best of luck in Ranked, if you choose to test your might there!

• Ian Underwood

Change Log:

• Fixed an error that caused no store images to display correctly.
• Fixed many memory leak issues related to animated cards.
• Changed Preemtive effects to go off after movement between zones, which should fix some desync issues, particularly those from Controlled Temporal Anomaly.
• Shrine to the Heavens will now check each target that it's still legal before exhausting it and increasing.
• Grave Rob will now check to make sure the target is still legal (ie it hasn't been raised from the dead) before resolving and removing it from the game.
• Demon of Gluttony will no longer attack on just one client, causing a desync, if the character it was eating is killed before it can sacrifice it.
• Leaving the game while in Targeting Mode should no longer cause the mouse cursor to disappear.
• Fixed a bug that allowed Heaven's Bell to target enemy characters.
• Fixed a bug that allowed Lanstead to target enemy characters.
• Updated Splatter's text to reflect that it cannot hit the command zone.
• The 'shuffle away' option of trading post trading post has been slightly modified. Rather than shuffling in the selected card then drawing from the deck, it will now draw a card and then shuffle. This is how the trading post worked previously. Additionally, if you have no cards left in your deck, you cannot shuffle away, or draw a card.
• The Enter key on the keyboard numpad now ends the turn as well.
• Veroria, the Lone Keep's text now properly states you lose 4 morale each turn.
• Ancient Egg now gives characters of the appropriate size after the number doubling change.
• Demon of Fear should now properly refund the resources spend on its ability when undone.
• Mega Unit 02's immolate now properly deals 5 damage.
• Implemented a possible fix for Dehumanize causing strange desync issues.

Balance Changes:

• Max health and power of a character are now capped at 999, rather than 99.
• Agent Coyle, Immovable now gains +0/+3 for every character, up from +0/+2.
• Agent Coyle, Primal Hunter's Hunt ability now costs 5, down from 6.
• Sinister Corruption now only causes the enemy player to lose 4 morale a turn.
• Lethargy Stone now only causes the enemy player to lose 4 morale a turn.
• Mega Unit 02's ability's initial damage is now 5, down from 6. Also fixed an issue where the text said 3 damage, rather than 6.
• We've decided that the game would be healthier if players had access to a factionless way to deal with flying characters. We've decided to make Defense Golem be able to block flying, which is a nice buff for this classic card.