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.
I do agree to a certain extent. They should start adding a Weekly/Monthly Quest that grants strong rewards such as a Normal Random Legendary. At least that's free 400 dust if you already own a copy of it. Make it like a Raid Quest I.E. reaching Rank 10 or something like that. At least, that'll promote laddering more.
How to fix ladder:
- Better and more meaningful rewards
- Faster grinding - reduce stars needed for Rank 5 and 4 and make win streaks count. Rank 3 and above - no win streaks. Whoever wants to do the heavy grinding - grind in Legend. And give better rewards for this too.
- Make each month with a different flavor - encourage different play styles, ban certain cards, buff other cards
Just experiment with this game! It is digital, nothing can go wrong that can't be fixed. Being so slow, conservative and non-creative is what is most painful for the community.
Fix for new players:
- Make experience gain higher at lower ranks
- Make missions/puzzles, where you have certain situations and you need to find the right play. Starting from simple things to more complex thought processes, while also explaining why one choice is better than other
Thanks
My opinion on laddering:
Playing since open beta, reached legend many times, finished top 100 November 2016.
1. Yes it feels like a grind, having to win so many games to just reach where you were before.... also till half the month in there are still so many legend players at rank 5-8 etc...
2. Reaching legend and getting stomped into oblivion past Legend rank 1500? Feels terrible honestly, I dont think most legend players feel satisfaction from being low legend compared to rank 1 honestly.
3. The thing about 50% at rank 18 isn't true in my opinion. It states being legend is 0.25% of the population. Europe easily reaches 10000 legends a month. to reach 100% you need to do this 0.25 times 400, 400x 10000 = 4 million, I don't believe hearthstone has 4 million active players in EU. For this statistic Blizzard shouldn't count inactive accounts imo. Accounts shouldn't be counted as active for playing 1 game in that month or so. ( A new player making an account and quiting after 4 games, shouldnt be counted for example IMO )
4. I see so many legend card back in non legend as well. Even many times when I started climbing to legend after the 15th, Also in arena I see so many legend card backs and you have to remember that most legend players aren't even running the card back. I never run it, because I think the cardback is horribly looking :P
5. Hearthstone feels for new players decent from rank 25 to 20, at 20 the difficulty gets suddenly doubled and all new players get pushed to this eventually as you cant drop ranks below 20.
My solutions that I came up with while typing:
To reduce the grindy feeling you should really drop less every season, or we need a system more similar to League Of Legends. Have different tiers from Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum/Diamond/Master/Challenger. Legend in HS should be around high plat/Diamond in those tiers, Master should contain around 1000 players and challenger might be exact 200 always like League, which is also easy to help determine top legend finishes. Let the reset be 1 whole tier or so. This system also helps with the feeling of getting stomped into oblivion for legend players, as there is still a new tier.
To prevent from veteran players beating on new players, maybe there should be something like a tier below bronze, metal? And if your account is older than a certain time 1/2/3 months? You can't drop into metal tier anymore, this lets new players who do well climb, but not veteran stomp new players. However unlike the current system the new players can DROP BACK IN metal tier. If a new players passes rank 21 currently, they are getting stomped by veterans and can't fall back.
If we keep the current system I would recommend that only people who reached legend last month have the card back. If you reached legend you get it, but if you don't reach it next month you will lose it. This makes it more exclusive and feels like this card back is worth something at least.
Also different rewards based on your needs? This is just an example
Metal tier: 4 basic packs // Bronze tier: 3 basic packs + 1 other pack // Silver tier: 2 basic + 2 other packs // Gold tier: 4 non-basic packs // Platinum: 150 dust + 2 non basic pack + 1 ticket for a pack // Diamond 100 dust + 2 tickets for packs // Master + Challenger 3 tickets for packs
The tickets for packs can be redeemed for any pack you want and have no expire date, this allows veteran to save up those tickets for upcoming expensions. So if you were a top 200 player all the time, you would get 12 tickets for a new expension in a 4 month period.
too much truth in only one answer. +1
I think you would be shocked, it is probably easy 4 mil playing in EU
I won't be surprised if each region would be pulling at least 5 mil+/month. Given the data Blizzard supplied from their earnings in Hearthstone it's easy to see we're one of the biggest communities in Online Games as of now. No discussion as #1 TCG, not even close to MTGO.
Blizzard, hire him asap.
I wish you'd start the season only 5 ranks below what you've finished, E.G. if you were at 10 you start at 15, if you were at 5 you start at 10 and if you were at legend you start at 5, and you also can't drop below the rank you started at. That would make the lower ranks more noob-friendly and for legend players the grind wouldn't be as boring every month.
There are a couple of easy fixes they could make to Ranked play.
1. A handful of different random cards get banned from Ranked play each day. One day they could ban patches and small time buccaneer, the next day ban reno and mistress of mixtures, the following day ban some other tier one cards etc. This way you can avoid running into the same 3/4 top tier decks every time you are laddering. I also like the idea of doing some kind of arena/ ranked play hybrid. Maybe something like: Players open 40 packs and they must create their deck from those packs. Each player is also then limited to using a certain amount of Legendary, Epic cards etc.
I know that both of these ideas would have to be highly refined to work properly and fairly but I think their are several ways HS could make the game more fun while staying competitive. Overall, I love HS and usually climb to rank 5/10 but I do get pretty bored playing with and against the same handful of top tier decks.
The right refinement would be to have Standard swap sets each season instead of retiring full expansions each year permanently. Say this month we swap TGT into GvG. That way, at least you know your collection isn't going into a total full waste of dumpster mode and can still have access to it competitively. It brings many benefits into the meta. Keeps it fresh and renewed each month forcing players to build multiple decks each season bringing a fresh deck into ladder instead of defining the meta for the next 4-6 months.
That's a really nice idea but Blizzard would obviously find that too "confusing" for its playerbase :P
If they have time to create random Tavern Brawls weekly, rotating sets out wouldn't have any bad impact at all. Hell, i'd love to see new decks each season instead of tasting 6 months of Aggro Shaman & Pirate Warrior on ladder. It challenges the playerbase to create decks monthly to stay competitive and it'll bring a very unique meta into tournaments as well with the so called "unexpected" factor of not knowing what the opponent is gonna bring instead of just tunneling through the well-known decks. Reno Mech Mage, Reno Mech Warlock, Buff Undertaker Hunter, Tempo Mech Mage, etc. You get the point.
Either that, or make the season last longer instead of a 1-month period. Not only the grind takes quite long but most importantly the rewards are uber crap after Rank 5. I personally just do the Legend Grind when i'm really bored knowing i'm just gonna pull off that extra Golden Common VS 100+ Games.
You're idea of rotating sets is not to confusing, the header topic of this mini thread of banning different cards each day would be considered to confusing.
That would mean new players would need all of the old expansions and this wouldn't really improve the new player experience.
It would be enough if we have 3 o 4 strong decks between expansion (one type each, I mean, one strong control deck, one midrange, aggro and combo), having that you even could create/modify decks around them.
Plz add guilds with guild chat, achievements and rewards.
This is not World of Warcraft. If you want to voice-chat in Hearthstone might as well use Discord/TS3. Hell, even Blizzard have supplied you with the Battle.net app.
Community says since 2 years they need to work on new player experience. He's shouting it out now? Typical for Ben Brode. Do nothing and then just tell the community they need to work on it. When will it happen? Well, maybe in 5 years or so.
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