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.
My issue issue with the new player experience is the size of the classic set compared to the expansions and adventures. It's daunting to collect all those cards and many good decks use a good amount of cards from the classic set. I remember it being daunting for me when it was just the classic set, especially being F2P at the time. Nevermind having to collect cards from a couple expansions and adventures too.
I think they should make more mechanics in the ladder rather than boosting everyone.
Example
Rush decks should have higher chance to be matched up together aswell as control decks.
Control decks that have high winrate should be matched more often against rush decks.
More stars to gain at each rank. Don't loose rank. No more winning spree.
More ranks.
Very high rate winning decks should be matched against eachother.
At end of season rewards should 3 types
1. based upon total number or wins (don't care about looses)
2. Rank achieved
3. Number of games (if your win ratio is above 50% to avoid concede abuse).
More rules to the matchmaking. Make very efficient decks match against other very efficient decks. win ratio should be a matchup rule
i like how Ben said "perceived as good" because alot of people dont realize that ladder isnt something every player is supposed to dominate. im not saying its perfect, but its designed to see how you compare against other players. if someone cant pass a certain rank (because they lose more than they win) then they should have to grind and get better. Lastly, card collection does play a big role in any card game but skill plays an equal if not bigger one. people will say things like "this game is pay to win" when there are tons of people who hit legend on free to play accounts and people who have every card in golden but cant pass rank 15
''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%''
Well that's also because you're pretty obviously not in the 50% of best players at rank 18... Just the 50% who took the small effort to get there.
I'm pretty sure that about any player who has a decent card pool and some experience can reach at least rank 15 in a day.
What if they change the ranking to a win-rate system? Both, per class and also a general average win-rate, so you could see how really good you are depending of the number of matches and be ranked in that way.
Honestly I don't have enough free time to play too much hours to reach high ranks or legend, but I love the game and I would like to be ranked depending of my efficiency and effectiveness.
For instance, if I play only 150 ranked games in one month (around 5 per day) with a win-rate of 75% or higher, I think I deserve to be well ranked and rewarded by the end of the month. It wouldn't be necessary to expend so many hours playing to be well rewarded.
Blizzard profit? It's ok, despite I don't play too many hours, I always pre-purchase expansions, adventures and buy tons of packs during month, etc. That's not the point.
Couldn't agree more with your idea of a system. Getting to legend does require skill....but mostly hours of free time to use a +50% win-rate to grind your way there (just look at last meta's Shamans and pirate warriors). However, a win-rate based rank system would reward players that do have skill but don't play for hours a day. I think this could also impact the amount of face-aggro decks on the ladder mainly because they are popular because of how many quick games you can play through in comparison to a control game which requires more turn thought and skill per game/turn (ok I may be biased because I love control games.)
Obviously I understand that win-rate does not solely rely on skill as there is RNG based on the quality of the opponent, their style of deck and in-game RNG. Also, win-rate also depends on sample size so there would have to be some sort of minimum. The down side of this system is that you wouldn't know how you stacked up until the end of the month vs. slowly moving up the ranks.
That being said, I would rather play multiple decks that are fun and work on my turn-by-turn decision process, then see how I stacked up at the end of the month than play 1 deck for hours a day slowly climbing the ranks (and not to mention play those style of net decks match after match).
The buggiest issue I see is the fact that you lose ranks in addition to stars when you lose a game. This makes the grind longer and intimidates some players to keep playing in fear that they will lose ranks on the ladder. For example if you're at rank 12 with one star and lets say you lose a game. Now you're at rank 12 with zero stars. Lose one more game and now you're back to rank 11. The suggest change is that you only lose stars. In this situation you would when you lose a game you would stay at rank 12 when losing a match with zero stars and not go back to rank 11. Plants VS Zombies Heroes has this exact system. I believe it would work for this game.
Im sorry but that's a pretty bad solution... There's no satisfaction in earning a rank if there's no risk in losing one.
The only implementation of this idea i could ever see happen is having checkpoints like LoL has; Once you reach rank 15 you can't go down past 15. Same for 10 and 5.
That's the kind of inflation you want to avoid in this game. It used to be that way before they added the current ladder system and every one got to "3-star master" (idk if you read the post but that's what Brode talked about) so no they can't do this.
Can you offer some real constructive feedback of why it wouldn't work? All you have said so far is that you don't like my suggestion.
There's almost no competitive game that lets you say lose infinitely without dropping a league/rank. Why wouldn't work? Because you'll eventually be able to reach high ranks by simply luck and a decent win streak.
There has to be a punishment for it and the current ladder has it more or less (not the best system) but it allows the filtering go through. I do agree that adding a "grace period" like losing up to 3 times without dropping a rank would be nice but it's all subjective. People need to stop being "pussies" and understand that the trick to climb is hitting that big PLAY button. Funny thing is, there's barely any punishment since once you obtain a rank you secure your reward for the season even if you drop out of it. Take for example League of Legends, if you keep getting lose streaks you'll reach a point that gaining "lp" would be marginal in comparison to what you were gaining at the start. Hell, lose "infinitely" and you'll drop leagues on the long run because the system would detect you don't belong there. I would such prefer an "MMR" system than the current ladder but it's all about time. Hopefully we get some new improvements during the new rotation.
I belive they have hidden "mmr" or "elo" systems, just like league has both elo and ranks. They also need to find you matching opponents in casual, which is not possible without some system.
Your first statement is false. I'm not talking about ALL competitive games because that would be irreverent to a discussion about CCG games. Duelyst, PVZ Heroes, and Chronicle RuneScape Legends all new CCGs where you don't lose league only ranks. All new competitive CCGs released with in the last year or more. I would say it's the new standard. So in these games if you gain a certain amount of ranks you get to the next league. They use a ranking system bronze, silver, gold, platinum, etc. Hearthstone is behind the times is using a better ranking system. Here is what I would suggest for a league ranking system and once you get there you can't fall back a league for the season.
Bronze Ranks 24-19
Silver Ranks 18-13
Gold Ranks 12-6
Platinum Ranks 5-1
It's not just the new player experience, it's the overall player experience...
Blizzard seems to be focusing so much on getting new players (or spenders) that they totally forget the ''old'' players.
A good example of this is how they've always wanted the cards to be (super!) simple, which makes no sense. It makes the game less interesting for the long time players, while it does NOTHING for the new players - the main letdown for the new players is that they die on turn 6 as soon as they get above rank 18...
- The thing i enjoy the most about HS is talking with other players about it. :)
(also what is with this ''I've been playing since beta'' thing? Does people think that makes their arguments stronger or something like that? :D)
I didn't get offended, it's just weird that ppl always say that :D
Didn't we hear all of that 3 months ago? And did anything change since then? The current coin flip ladder sucks anyway. If you are playing e. g. Reno mage and you queue into two dumpster Jade druids you will lose 200 ranks. No matter how good you played with your deck before. Also high ranks (not top Legend) only means that you spent a lot of time, not that you're a good player.