I have a request - for the players this time, instead of the developers.
The Firemind queue has been often empty recently. That's a waste of resources. One of the best short-term ways of increasing the AI strength I can think of is finding decks that suit it better. Mike's made a massive effort in that regard, creating I believe a couple hundred or more decks in there. I've put together a few dozens as well. At this point, I've really stretched my repertoire: every now and then I remember something I haven't tried yet with the currently implemented cards and try it, but it would be really important to have more people trying new ideas over there.
So if you're a Magarena player and want to help the AI get a little bit stronger quickly, please go to
http://www.firemind.ch, create an account and try to get some decks to the top of the rating lists. From player feedback, it seems like the top Firemind decks are used a lot by players trying to increase the level of challenge in the game. Some formats, like Standard or Vintage, currently have very few decks and I'm sure some can be found that would be played a couple hundred rating points higher by the AI.
Getting a deck to the top of the list in Firemind can be a fun challenge. It's not easy to do at all. I've created a bunch and only a couple have managed to get there. What I've found out after some experience is that you really want to try simpler decks, those are the ones the AI handles better. Something that involves complex strategy, too many decisions or precise timing will probably not perform very well. Also, most of the current decks were created when Firemind was running the Vegas AI. This was recently changed to MCTS, so better fits for this specific AI are surely waiting to be found.
So please help if this interests you at all. Maybe later I'll do a metagame breakdown to see how things have changed since the last time I've made a clumsy attempt to do that. Again, if we could reach like a thousand decks per format, I've no doubt this would net a significant rating gain for MCTS while playing with its best fitting decks, and I doubt there's too many other ways of getting a comparable improvement as quickly. Sign up! It's really quick, and can be fun to try out!