They're not cheaters but Haven is right that rank 100 will mostly be the players who quit out when things don't go their way. Rank 100 will be nothing to fear. I think rank 80-90 will be much scarier.

One thing I've noticed lately is a player who lets the clock run out on the first turn, then everything sort of just sits there for a while and if you don't quit, the other player does. I think this is probably a +ve expected value move since i assume most players would quit that match out of frustration, the player would net 30 gold and then go and do it again. Faster than playing a match probably. Anyway, I've run into that a bunch in the last two weeks.

Beast, I think you'e right. I don't remember ever having to close the app or dashboard to launch matchmaking again like we have to do now.

Why not cheaters? I'm not talking about who reboots his internet connection.

oh, I'm on xbox one so we don't have those

You don't have many players either...so, yeah.

? That's a weird knock. It's just incredibly difficult to hack or cheat using a console. I think it's a pretty nice plus for playing on console. i haven't had any issues finding players to play against. It's the matchmaking that's busted, not lack of players.

it's like people that knock on Macs for not having viruses because so many fewer people use them that no one bothers to code viruses. Yeah... but there's still no viruses practically, it's wonderful. And I'm not a Mac fan or anything but boy do I never have trouble with my home computer anymore.

For them to fix the goddamn "waiting" glitch on xbone. I'm willing to accept that much of xbones matchmaking problems are simply due to a low player base, but for **** sake let me back out properly if I get tired of searching and just want to get in a quick game vs AI to clear a quest before I go to sleep.

The "waiting" glitch is nothing compared to "searching for players"

The only reason i don't think the problem is lack of players is that this problem has been consistent from day one. When Duels used to cost money you had half a million downloads on xbox. This one is free so i can only imagine the number being higher.

This. I have no hope from them.

There may well be a glitch that causes it to not find players (tho at least that always times out on its own for me), but the thing that makes me think it may just be smaller pool of players from other platforms is that I notice a difference in success rates if I'm playing during peek hours on the weekend or playing close to midnight pacific time. The former I have less trouble in both finding players AND getting paired up with people closer to my rank. I tend to think it's a mix of both (that there is a connectivity bug that requires a reboot to escape and that it's also worsened by player pool).

Sadly I doubt we will see anything new other than the new cards and probably a nod to sleeves again. I don't know how it fares on consoles but the deck builder and deck collection take progressively longer to load on iOS but it's the platform I guess so will just keep getting longer.

It would be nice to think more time = more content but in a commercial world it just means on time, on budget and bonus to the developers. There was a time when more thought got put into play modes but bar fixing 2HG there has been nothing truly new apart from interface tweaks and the last gimmicky extras.

If the player base was low, I'd feel like I'd have played Gem at least 30 times by now since we're both always on.

I've played Gem a couple times... same with Chiang when he used to play, and I notice the the same name low level randos throughout the week. Someone posted a statistical breakdown of Duels downloads per platform some months back and xbone was by far the lowest of the three. Like I said, I don't believe it's the sole problem with xbone matchmaking but I'm willing to believe it plays some part in it.

that is completely unsupported by previous Duels games which never had matchmaking problems and all cost money. All signs would lead to say that this iteration has a higher player base than previous ones. I've also only played Gem once or twice in a year and we're playing at the same time often.

It seems clear that there is a very significant issue with this iteration's matchmaking on Xbox. Really weird.

I would rather they replace the current system with one that is based on win percentage. Something like the way Starcraft used to do it. Players could start off at 1000 with wins increasing and losses decreasing their rank, the amount gained or lost would diminish as one got farther from 1000 in either direction thus allowing players settle into a number that accurately represents their skill level.

A better ranking system would also increase number of cheaters I reckon, not that I'm saying it should prevent that but just saying as a small retort to there being only 1 main cheater.

Yeah, wouldn't people boost more if ranking had meaning ?

Okay, then the other "Quality of Life" improvement would be to ban cheaters.

ez game

The best QoL improvement is the one that takes less effort from stainless and is thus the hardest to **** up.

I see a lot of discussion centered around XBone and Steam. Am I the only sucker playing on iOs?

This.
This is the type of ranking system I want. I've played another game that used this kind of ranking and it worked very well.

Right now rank 40 means very little as there still is a wide range of skill and decks at that rank.