Ben Brode: The New Player Experience Needs Work
Ben Brode took to reddit this morning to touch upon the new player experience.
- Tweaks made throughout the years have increased player retention.
- Casual matchmaker has been improved to increase new player winrates by around 15%.
- Ranked is becoming more difficult for new players.
- New players play in different pools with other newbies with similar sized collections.
- The introductory missions feel good but then it turns into a cliff.
How do you feel about the new player experience? Have any of your friends recently joined the game and turned away?
Quote from Ben BrodeHey there!We agree that the new player experience needs more work. We've been tweaking it for years and have seen significant increases in retention among new players since launch. Most new players start playing against the AI and then take on other players in Casual. The Casual matchmaker has gone through a lot of iteration and new player winrates have increased by ~15%.
Ranked is a different story. Ranked is becoming more difficult for new players over time. I spoke about some of the challenges we are currently facing with our ladder system before I left for paternity leave here: [See quote below - Ben on Ladder]
Something you may not realize is that new players actually play in a seperate matchmaking pool for their first several sessions. In Casual, we match them entirely against other brand new players with similarly-sized collections.
That all said, we think the introductory missions up through Illidan feel pretty good, and after that it still feels like a bit of a cliff. It's definitely something we're aware of. Thanks for your feedback, and for the feedback of everyone else who's been chiming in on this over the last few months.
Ben on the Ladder System
Quote from Ben BrodeSeeing some comments here about how people are enjoying easier laddering due to this bug, and hoping we leave it unfixed. I thought I might chime in and talk about the ladder a bit, and hopefully get some feedback!We have been discussing the ladder system a lot recently - we're not 100% happy with it.
Here are some things we are currently discussing:
Rank 18 players are higher ranked than 50% of HS players. That number doesn't make you feel like you are in the top 50%, and that's a missed opportunity. We try and counter this by telling you all over the place what the mapping is to the rest of the population, but it'd be better if expectations and reality matched here.
We've received feedback that the last-minute jostling for high Legend ranks at the end of a season doesn't feel all that great.
We've received feedback that the ladder can feel like a grind.
We are reanalyzing the number of ranks, the number of stars per rank, the number of bonus stars given out at the start of the season, and other parts of the system.
We are developing simulation systems that let us predict what changes to the ladder would do to the population curve. If we inflate too many stars, the whole population ends up in the Legend bucket and while that might feel great for a single month, the entire system falls apart eventually. People who played waaaay back may remember when "3-star master" was the pinnacle of achievement, and it meant nothing because so many people ended up in that bucket. With better simulation tools, we are planning on trying a lot of crazy things. Iteration is important in design, and getting the tools to iterate quickly is very important.
Something I want to emphasize is that while I think we can improve the ladder, the metric for that improvement isn't necessarily any one player's individual rank increasing. Players want the better rewards (and prestige) associated with high ranks, or the Legend card back, so any change we make that increases the chances of those are likely to be perceived as "good", at least for the short term. But part of what makes the ranked ladder compelling is that exists to rank players. If you want to see how you stack up, ranked is the place to do it. So while some inflation might improve the experience, we need to be careful and make sure we end up with a system that makes people feel rewarded for increases in personal skill or for finding a new deck that breaks the meta.
One thing I would think would greatly improve the Casual experience is to exclude "win games" quests from Casual.
It's absolutely soul-destroying if you're trying to have fun with your own built deck (for any number of valid reasons) only to lose game upon game against triehards completing their daily Warrior or Shaman quests in Casual rather than on ladder (despite them running Tier 1 decks), killing you repeatedly on turn 6 - or rather you just concede and move on at t3, only reinforcing the behaviour of your opponents because they get their wins so easily they'll come back for more.
Casual should be just that, casual - no reward for winning, apart from the 10 Gold which doesn't come at your opponents expense.
Then expand the 'protected' beginner ranks maybe from 30 to 20 so they can still get their wins on ladder.
Yeah then new players who gets this quests just get fucked... genius solution.
Not really because the new players are shielded in Ranked play (advanced players can't drop to below rank 20) so it should not be harder for them.
I kinda agree with that, but there are a lot of holes with it as well. I know there were times when I was playing ranked, repeatedly slamming my face into midrange shaman pre Gadgetzan, and completing a 60g quest for priest, or rouge wasn't really option (couldn't do rogue because I don't have van cleef or Malygos so i guess I can't play that class) so I had to do it in casual and crush some peoples fun decks. But then you do see the problem with doing that ends up being if somebody laddering gets a quest for a class that is completely irrelevant in the current meta, casual is the only option to do the quest quickly and efficiently.
BUT. There are a plethora of other quests which encourage fun decks. play 100 murlocs, 10 divine shields, 10 Enrage, 20 Taunt, 15 overload, 10 weapons, 10 secrets.... The list goes on. You can't expect players who are basically anywhere between rank 5 and legend to play, or WANT to play these types of decks while laddering because at the end of the day its suppose to be competitive, and if you go in there playing some weird Enrage deck, you can't expect them to win. They'd slide back down the ladder faster than somebody trying to find unicorn priest. Tavern brawl isn't always open for people to complete quests there either, and not always a choose-your-class brawl. Making Quests ranked only is just not plausible for people who plan to go high on the ladder while still trying to get maximum gold efficiency.
Just for clarity, I did state I only want to exclude "win X" quests from Casual.
I completely agree it would be nonsense to make people play 100 Murlocs ranked and force them to either drop ranks or replace the quest (to get win 3 with Hunter, ahah).
Whoops. I am dumb. Carry on.
I would never recommend someone start playing Hearthstone at this point. You start so far behind the curve of everyone else as a free to play player it's unbelievable. They need to increase the rewards from pretty much everything in the game. They need to allow you to buy entire older card sets for a single low price.
And they need to stop dropping you 12 ranks every time a new season begins. If you were above rank 5 - now you're rank 5. If you were above rank 10, now you're rank 10. Ladder grind is pathetic and FIXABLE.
I recently started to play on the NA server ( I'm normally playing on EU) and I think the ladder experience is normally fine, however I also believe that the AMM should consider your collection pool to reflect your skill. Playing with a basic set of cards against top tier decks at rank 20 doesn't feel good.
I remember when msog came out, and literally everyone played the jade Druid at rank 20. I realized after 10 games that my decks just didn't stand a chance against that power level / value from the jades, and auto conceded against Druid.
After a few more hours and getting the basic cards for different classes I just went back to the EU server and stopped playing on the NA for a month. If I was a completely new player I would probably just give up the game, as I would probably have to buy $200 worth of packs to be able to play competitive and advance from tier 4.
Now, when the meta changed up a bit, my basic decks ( with some expert cards) starts to work again around rank 18. And the experience is much better. If the AMM considered my deck collection vs my opponents ( atleast between rank 20-15) the experience would be much better. This could also be solved by letting people drop ranks from 20. The problem really started to escalate from rank 20, and the game experience was much more enjoyable at rank 24 in November. Being stuck with players that have a great collection at rank 20, and being unable to drop back to the ranks of people with similar cardpool can be very upsetting. As for the cardback you "earn" at rank 20? Beating rank 20 doesn't feel like an accomplishment. They could rather hand them out if you play 10 games +...
Sorry for my text wall..
Gl and HF
Edit: to be fair I bought the starter kit. I think the one time deal of 1 class legendary and the 15 packs are a too good offer to pass. However, from that point onwards it has been a F2P acc. I still believe that new players have more fun playing against decks from a similar cardpool. Atleast I loved to relive my vanilla experience from 2014.
As for the cardback you earn it for hitting 20+ as your highest ranking at that season
I sure am late to this party ...
SOURCES: I have my own paid account on which I've spent more than I care to admit as well as two F2P accounts -- one recently-created one and my son's long-standing F2P account.
The problem with the new player experience has everything to do with HOW THEY LOSE. When a player with limited experience and an even more limited collection faces their antithesis, that feeling after being thoroughly trounced is soul-crushing. (Then multiply that sometimes by umpteen times in a row.)
The root of the problem is that there is NO HAVEN to which a new player can retreat and be shielded from that experience.
My main account is EU, and I also built up 1-2 viable decks on my NA account, so I'm not sure if my newbie Asia side is considered "new player" or not, but if it is, then this is complete bullshit.
On Asia, my total Play mode wins are below a hundred, most of those came from by playing like a year ago. 2 weeks ago I logged in again, thinking I might have some fun in arena, complete the quests for the gold, so naturally (as a rank 25 with only a few viable cards for a tempo mage deck) I had to build a Priest deck, mostly basic cards.
Surely as someone, who has been legend early almost every month for the past year can grab some wins against fellow rank 20-25 players in casual, right? Well, out of my 6 games, I have faced 6 fully constructed netdecks with not a key card missing from them. Face shaman, face warrior, even a renolock. After my 6th loss, I decided to add the guy, trying to figure out that how is it possible for them to have such a good collection. The guy was 15 ranks ahead of me. Improved matchmaking, huh?
So either you are not considered a new player after a few games and you are put into the tryharding "meta", or someone at Blizzard has serious mental issues.
I do agree on this, there's no such "balance" going through as of now. Recently created a new account to obtain the Murloc Hero for my main account. Guess what? Finished the tutorial and tried Wild @ Rank 25 and faced a fully optimal Control Warrior & Jade Druid.
This would be terrible for the new player experience, because then new players would end up grouped with even more of the "meta" players they have no chance of winning against.
Fixing the ladder grind is more for the current/returning players and isn't necessarily mutually inclusive to fixing the new player experience.
I guess I don't see why there are complaints about the system as is. Rank 20 gets you a card back, Rank 5 gets a golden epic, etc. Do they want more ranks? (The comment seems to say less). I do still think a pool at the end is good. What else would it do? Be a counter for how many wins you had once you hit the final rank? I feel like the legendary rank system is perfectly fine at the moment (Getting to legendary puts you in a number system and you can push to be higher ranked). I don't know how you can fix something for example making it less of a grind without making the end result seem cheaper. (IF it's less of a grind, more people will hit legendary and that would lose its special feeling for those who don't get there often or haven't gotten there yet.)
IT is a tricky thing to fix. I could see a larger rank system where once you hit the top of a ladder, you continue on to the next ladder and can't drop back down. (This would work well for newbies to be all on the same ladder until they hit the top rank of that ladder from which they would get pushed into the next ladder.) The difficult part of that is how do you reward someone for getting high on a ladder but not getting to the next? How do you reward someone if you keep which ladder you have attained to the next season but start at the bottom of that ladder? This is a lot more complex of a problem than people think it is especially if you keep in mind ALL types of players.
Well its something... but idk would be nice to show all players some love... not just the new ones
Of course luck plays a role in the short game, but just like poker... the best players will always wind up on top in the long haul. If you think this game is all luck I challenge you to play against a high ranking legend player for several games and see who ends up with more wins. Spoiler, it wont be you...
That is true but the more random aspects there are to the game the less acurate the skill level translates into winrate. The basic principle is, in a game with no random aspects, the best player wins 100% of the time, and in a game with no skill aspects, there is no better player and everyone wins 50% of the time. All card games lie somewhere between those extremes, but hearthstone is certainly more to the random side.
With that said, this is what hearthstone is meant to be, it is definitly not supposed to be a skill game and this will never change. It is supposed to be a fun game, and the tournaments exist and are successful because they entertain an audience.
In my opinion, the element of RNG from MTG is reduced simply because you can draw/revive/search for specific cards in your deck/graveyard which reduce massively the RNG factor from your next couple of plays. Most of the decks in MTG have their own kind of engine and are good while performing their win-condition. Also, you start with a bigger hand which grants bigger consistency in your opening plays which plays a huge factor in the early stages of each match. Let's say Shaman doesn't get the Tunnel Trogg/Totem Golem/Small-Time Buccaneer opening and you can say they already lost like half their chances of winning on that match alone.
You don't have that option here, say the most basic mechanics we've here are inconsistent draw engines via Gadgetzan Auctioneer & Discover via certain cards that are unreliable and deck-specific.
In Hearthstone, we lack that kind of "in-depth" mechanics because they're maybe hard to code? or they simply want to keep it the most simple (friendly) possible and the only way of doing that is to depend on the RNG playing a winning factor. Not saying it's the best way of doing things, but if they're able to implement future mechanics maybe they'll get rid of some of the unnecessary RNG.
The problem which is with new players is that can't advance because at rank 20 you should be playing against people who are on par to that rank. At the moment you can have players at rank 20 but they are using decks which require a good number of cards from each of the available sets. Then there is the problem that some are just are grinding at the bottom to gold from quests or the 10g from 3 wins x10 times.
If the problem is to be fixed so that it shows how good a player really is, I would do a few things. First, if someone concedes too quickly a few times, they should be banned for a short time because it's clear that they only wish to farm gold.
Another thing which I remember reading before was that if you level in rank, you should be able to stay at that rank, but at the same time you would still need to win games in a row to be able to climb the ladder, that way players who don't win to often stay at the bottom, while those players who have the cards and skills to win matches go to the top.
Another option could also be allowing new players to talk about what they would like to see. Now it's true that experience players know how the game works better when compare to newer players, however if Blizzard was to send a short survey to players who have played for a month or two, they would hear what they would like to see which some of the more experienced players may have overlooked.