If you've been playing MTG Arena recently, you've probably realized that the ranking system has some rather major flaws. The amount of points you gain or lose seems completely random, there are no rewards or incentives to perform well, and perhaps most notably of all, the whole thing does absolutely nothing when it comes to the actual matchmaking.

With that in mind, you might be interested to hear that MTG Arena will finally be getting an actual ranking system, as well as more polished matchmaking, with the upcoming December 13th update. You'll find all of the details in the latest developer update right below, and don't worry, I'll also include my brief summary:

Before I say anything else, it's worth mentioning that this is going to be the very first version of the ranking system, so things might not go exactly as planned. What you can expect to see, however, is changes to how the matchmaking system works in both unranked and ranked modes. For unranked players everything is seemingly going to get much better as the improved "Deck Strength" matchmaking system will ensure you see a lot fewer mirror matches and a lot less tier 1 aggressive decks while you're playing some barely coherent meme deck.

For the more serious players among you, the changes are a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand there will be month-long seasons and rewards for doing well in the ranked ladder, but on the other hand the ranking system will also apply to the various other game modes (such as Draft or Singleton), meaning that breaking even on these types of paid events will be significantly harder. The biggest and most puzzling change here is the simple fact that best-of-three matches will not fall under the new ranked system, which is quite confusing given that it's the preferred format for any sort of Magic tournament.

I'll reserve my full judgment for when the update finally arrives this December 13th, but I can't help but feel like the developers are approaching the whole ranked play thing from a bit of a wrong position. Whatever the case may be, we'll find out more on December 12th once the developers release their "State of the Beta" update. Once it goes live I'll make sure to let you know, but until then I'd highly recommend you check out the video above. It's certainly an interesting one!