New features

A "Seasonal Rating" system has been implemented for both Ranked play and Pandora.

A "Rating Decay" system has been implemented for both Ranked play and Pandora.

Dropping a run in Pandora will now reduce your "Seasonal Rating" for Pandora

Bug fixes

Ancient Herald and Spring Mochi will now properly bestow their gifts after being transformed.

Fixed a bug involving multiple Magdas on board and her cost reduction to Legendaries

Fixed a bug where Windborne Emissary's attack increase was sometimes not being removed until the end of turn

Some bugs involving the Linux version working properly have been fixed

What is Seasonal Rating?

A Seasonal Rating system is being added on top of the current rating system. The overall purpose of implementing Seasonal Rating is to allow the ladder positions of each season to remain fresh, while still matching players against one another according to their skill levels. Each player will now have two Elo ratings - their public "Seasonal Elo" which is the official ranking and will be displayed on our eSports website as normal, and a hidden "Matchmaking Elo" which the game server will use to match players against one another.

Seasonal Rating is different from Matchmaking Rating in three ways:

Seasonal Rating is affected by Rating Decay

Seasonal Rating will be reset toward the baseline of 1500 at the end of each season, but not all the way. This is intended to maintain some previous progress for all players from season to season.

Seasonal Rating is not used for calculations when matching players against one another

The first thing you should know about Seasonal Rating is that your current rating will remain the same after today's patch, and you will remain the same place you are currently in the ladder. After today, a new Rating Decay system will be in effect. While we cannot reveal the exact details of how the decay is calculated or applied to prevent abuse of the system, it works by slightly reducing your Seasonal Elo after a certain period of time of playing no games. You can avoid any rating decay at all by following the Golden Rule:

The Golden Rule of Rating Decay

In Ranked or Pandora, from the beginning of a season - play one game every three days and you will never experience any Rating Decay.

It's that simple!

Note that in today's update, everyone is starting fresh as far as rating decay is concerned. Decay will only begin to accumulate after today.

Thanks, everybody. As a side note, we have moved the announcements for the special invitees in the Monthly Cup to Fridays, to correspond with each Faeria Friday. This means this week's announcement will be delayed by two days.

Have a good day!