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.
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"We've received feedback that the ladder can feel like a grind."
No shit.
A grind with the same meta since 2 adventures. This is ridiculous!
What are you trying to tell us? Or are you just yet another fanboy?
So you want to tell me there is no more aggro shaman? There is no more midrange shaman? There is no more zoo? There is no more control warrior? There is no more druid ramp? And so on ...
Did I say 2 years ago? No. I said 2 adventures ago. And archetypes are defining the meta if you face these archetypes over and over. And that's the point. Nothing changed.
What Laddering Bug was Ben Brode referring to? What will cause an easier laddering experience?
Not sure why you're being downvoted because this is true. Happened a while back and got hotfixed in like 3 days since it was in the weekend. Can't remember what patch it was but i believe it was the most recent balance patch that caused this issue.
Many people think playing face shaman makes their laddering life easier. What they forget is that they don't know what to do when something gets changed. So they switch to HearthPwn and copy the face warrior deck.
Personally, the Legend Climb doesn't take that much specially if you play a T1 Deck since R5. I personally went last month from Rank 4 (4 stars) to Legend with Reno Lock landing stats of 36-19 (Avg. 65% WR). The trick is simply to use your best deck while staying competitive.
If i'm not wrong, it didn't took me more than 8 hours at most. Now, monthly i perform the R16/17 to R5 and it doesn't really take me more than 5 hours at tops with 80/90%+ WR. So technically speaking, it was a total of around 13 hours counting breaks. Now, this is not the given case for every player but take into count that the grind is not as hard as you point out. Specially not for experienced players who've been playing for so long. Now, this stats don't showcase every player but mostly anyone who've been playing for long can replicate my stats perfectly fine (considering they've a semi-decent collection).
The problem doesn't come from the GRIND but the LACK of REWARDS Hell, if they'd give better rewards like a Golden Legendary instead of a Golden Common i'd just tunnel vision the ladder monthly. However, giving you a Golden Common from R5-Legend is a total insult towards players and removes every single interest for me in re-pursuing that journey. I do it when i'm really bored and feel like training a new meta-deck which i feel i'm lacking practice/skill. That's about it.
I predict 2 years until something changes in ladder. Why? Because it is too difficult to implement 9 deck slots within a few months that is not confusing new players experience
they should just introduce leagues. like many others games.
My ideal ladder system :
REMOVE STAR SYSTEM >> INTRODUCE RATING.
Bronze, Silver, Gold and LEGEND.
everyone starts bronze. if you are good you can climb to the next league.
IF you want you can go down a league on your own. ( lets say you face the reality of how challeing legend is... and you only loose.. you can go back to gold league till you fill more confident to challenge LEGEND.
each league have it own ranking.
at the end of a season you go to the start of you league rank.
this would solve every problem HS have now.
bad players can stay at their leagues and good players can have a challenge match without the grind.
Every league coludl have better rewards too... but thats for another topic.
Great idea! For example, FIFA has 7 or 8 leagues, in league 1 you only play against Pro Players using only Real Madrid or Barcelona (so bored), however in lower leagues you can use the teams you really support and have a lot of fun.
Having something similar in Hearthstone, you could use the class you like or test new archetypes in lower leagues.
implying they don't do it rank 20 already.
I think the seasons are also to small... I don't have the luxury to play that much, been a regular dude with a job, so I don't even dream about legend, I would have to dedicate some holidays to it... this is not worth a virtual card back.
I would suggest a league system, top 1000 player jumps to the next league. Each leagues has its own ranking system (like the one we have today). If you can't reach level 20 in your league, you'll change to the lower league.
more or less it. when i get to the next league you can keep playing there.
if lets say you are at the last place on gold league in a losing streak for 10+ you get demoted to ranking silver.
First problem I see - the way you described it, nothing makes the players play in the league of their own skill level except for a two-sentences-long description somewhere in the game that says the better players are supposed to play in higher leagues.
Second - your idea had absolutely no specifics or details.
we can always give more rewards for better leagues... but like i said this is another topic.
Believe me. Legend players are fed up win farming and they actually don't need it.