They just need to reward not playing terrible dumb decks. Decks should have a "difficulty" score and that should tie into rewards. It wouldn't be perfect ... but it allows people to play dumb decks if you want, but you will get more rewards / climb the ladder faster for using harder decks.
But... why?
This may come as a shocker to the OP but skill is already rewarded in HS. I'm not even sure if it's worth elaborating on...
Yes there are brainless decks, however, there are decks that counter said decks and good pilots can easily climb with them.
EG: a well played Lyra/dragon deck beats quest warrior consistently. Un'goro zoolock can walk all over quest rogue. Maricle rogue (one of the hardest decks to play well, especially from a bad Mulligan) can be competitive against any deck.
And to this response, who decides deck difficulty because that's subjective at best based on player skill/experience and opponent matching.
If I queue zoolock into quest warrior do I automatically get a reward for getting matched against an opponent that's paper Vs rock? It's just illogical. It's cards..
Although a lot of players play aggro in order to rank up fast half of them are winning faster but 50% of them are losing their games at a faster rate than they would if they were playing control. Therefore there is already a built-in incentive for many players to play control decks - losing less games. Kappa.
@ShruteBucks; my apologies, I know you didn't say "mindless aggro" so maybe adding that was more loaded that intended. I don't have a better way of describing the concept most people have where proactive players doing proactive things (with shorter games) inherently have less merit than someone doing reactive (with longer games); I don't think you necessarily fall into that, nor does OP. I do think it's vastly underestimated that misplaying as Aggro costs you games no different than misplaying as Control.
MSoG for a good portion had Renolock and Renomage at the top, Control Warrior was (contrary to the circlejerk) competitive for even ladder, and Control Shaman was actually pretty beastly it just happened to share the same slot in tournament lineups as Aggro Shaman which was just better overall. Anyfin was kind of the adorable cherry on top that fit into tournament niches even if it never really performed amazingly on ladder. So objectively it's not that cut and dry unless you're reading tier lists and taking them as gospel truth.
Once again if you're consistently misplaying, you're going to be punished as Aggro. Putting yourself into a position where you've wasted a card in decks that run virtually no cycle is a big deal, because unless you're going to just eternally run hot and topdeck what you need it's easier than ever to run decks out of steam now. You can misplay with literally any deck and consistently beat the rest of the meta if your deck is strong enough, it has jack shit to do with the archetype and everything to do with the fact that straightforward refined decks are simply going to do some of the lifting by being straightforward refined decks. As long as we're only talking about something like ladder, I don't really think it's all that unhealthy since it generally doesn't convert into consistent Top 8s for people. I don't care that you lost to xXdem0nhunt3rXx on ladder because he misplayed Pirate Warrior, because god knows all of us have misplayed at some point and still won.
Lol, Tempo Mage has always been a list that's been full of cheap minions/spells. Welcome to the list since it was created? Tempo Rogue was no different, because one of your goals is to be removing something on your opponent's board while developing your own. Neither of those have anything to do with the speed of the meta. The meta is slow enough to allow for something like Control mage and Control Priest to run Medivh and heavy spells, Warrior to run at least 2 Primordial Drakes, Paladin to run every Legendary it's ever been given and Lay on Hands, and for Quest Rogue to drive people crazy because it would suffocate far more quickly in a meta that was legitimately fast.
Right now you have a ton of options for Control, with more lists cropping up this week to keep an eye on and Priest continuing to sort out which of its 3 options is actually the best. You're likely focusing on the two darling Control lists of the meta, but if you narrow your viewpoint like that then you'd have to do the same for Aggro/Midrange/Combo and they all have a handful of promising options to ladder with right now. A real meta is still a couple of weeks away, things are still developing. Not really anything to get worked up about.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Articles I suggest every player reads to improve at the game;
I just want to point out that there has always been an extrinsic reward for playing long games: You get an XP bonus for playing more cards and killing more minions.
I know this is irrelevant for a lot of people who are level 60 across the board, but the framework exists. Brode recently hinted that they might eventually increase the level cap. I assume this increase would come with new rewards, so there you go.
As for the broader discussion here, I really wish people would stop hating on the end of the speed spectrum that lies opposite their personal comfort zone. If you don't like losing to a certain archetype, its very easy to look up a deck that beats it. If you're not willing to do that, you're not truly interested in playing the competitive game.
In other words, be the Pirate killer you want to see in the world.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
They just need to reward not playing terrible dumb decks. Decks should have a "difficulty" score and that should tie into rewards. It wouldn't be perfect ... but it allows people to play dumb decks if you want, but you will get more rewards / climb the ladder faster for using harder decks.
How would the system rate decks with said difficulty score? Based on what criteria? Or are we assuming that everyone is netdecking and the scores are preset?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you say LUL in Twitch chat you are a moron. If you do it outside of Twitch - even more so!
They just need to reward not playing terrible dumb decks. Decks should have a "difficulty" score and that should tie into rewards. It wouldn't be perfect ... but it allows people to play dumb decks if you want, but you will get more rewards / climb the ladder faster for using harder decks.
How would the system rate decks with said difficulty score? Based on what criteria? Or are we assuming that everyone is netdecking and the scores are preset?
I mean there really aren't THAT many decks. I don't think it would be too difficult to know what type of deck is being played. Most players know what their opponent is playing within a turn or two. And any wonky decks will probably score pretty high difficulty.
Blizzard has data on what decks are being played and how often they win. It really wouldn't be that hard to have some AI learning to figure out which ones are difficult and which ones are easy.
The only other solution I can thin kof is rewarding players for using multiple decks/heroes to climb, so climbing with one aggro PW deck, for example, wouldn't be the most efficient way to climb. However, this penalizes people who like to play just one class.
@ArgentumEmperio; I think that's maybe something that gets glossed over in general. Just because a card exists doesn't mean it's a) going to find a place competitively, or b) aren't designed for non-competitive play. I'd also argue that people gloss over far too often the fact that proactive gameplay is healthy to have anyway, and that it's one of the inherent qualities of Hearthstone that's always been constant. Compare this to Magic or Eternal where blocker decides how combat resolves, and it's just worlds different (not better or worse, just different).
Right now slower decks are in a pretty good spot I think. Quest Warrior and Paladin aren't going to be killing you quickly but they're very good. Elemental or Control builds of Shaman just don't have an early game that's worrisome, and one of the most ubiquitous Aggro 1-drops is Fire Fly which doesn't have a lot of snowball potential. Mana Wyrm is really the only 1-drop that gets crazy anymore, and even that card is one I've never really had an issue with because Mage is a lot more limited in protecting or developing their board than Shaman ever was. Most of the aggressive strategies are board-centric which means you're generally capable of shutting them out if you don't just let them have free reign during the early game. Control options are a lot more proactive while still being defensive nowadays, which is a design I think has made it a lot more consistent in general.
From a competitive standpoint I think this meta has the potential to be amazing, because everything seems to have a place and its own set of good/bad matchups. Part of this is because every class has a strategy that doesn't rely on being hyper-janky, with Warlock being the one glaring exception this meta that hasn't really found a good niche (though I think it could, it's not far off). My only issue really is that Mage is a giant clown fiesta, and Primordial Glyph gives me flashbacks to Unstable Portal that I'd rather not have to deal with.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Articles I suggest every player reads to improve at the game;
@ArgentumEmperio; oh, by all means I'm definitely not as worried about Glyph as I was about Unstable. I actually really like the design, and I'm really not salty it turned out to be a good card because thematically it strikes me as really cool... I just have a tendency to get a little annoyed that their cards are so predicated (even outside of Waygate Mage) on random spells, especially when they high roll a bunch of times in a row. By all means though, I don't think it's all that toxic to have in the game and it really doesn't bother me to play against. So it's an issue to me, but not a gamebreaking one in the slightest and one I know will vary from person to person.
On topic, I do think arbitrarily weighing certain decks/playstyles to be worth more is beyond dumb. Not because I don't want more styles of play to be encouraged, but because the second you implement a system to specifically cater to slower players it will end up being too good and ladder turns into a 24/7 grindfest or it turns out horrible and those players are still unhappy. It's also convoluted, which is one reason we don't just have an ELO system for ranking up outside of Legend or Casual.
Forever ago there was the idea of promoting underplayed cards or classes and granting them a bonus, and that's an idea I'm more inclined to want implemented. It's much easier to say "Hey Warlock is super underplayed, if you play Warlock we'll make it worth your while!" instead of "Your deck has a complexity rating of 3, here are the rewards that complexity rating 3 decks get", because I know what kind of parameters I have to fulfill to receive the reward instead of trying to reverse-engineer an arbitrary rating system. Or exploit turn timers. Or play as many things as humanly possible. Or change classes every third game.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Articles I suggest every player reads to improve at the game;
On topic, I do think arbitrarily weighing certain decks/playstyles to be worth more is beyond dumb. Not because I don't want more styles of play to be encouraged, but because the second you implement a system to specifically cater to slower players it will end up being too good and ladder turns into a 24/7 grindfest or it turns out horrible and those players are still unhappy. It's also convoluted, which is one reason we don't just have an ELO system for ranking up outside of Legend or Casual.
What I was trying to suggest isn't meant to promote either play style. If you play aggro you can earn rewards - they would be smaller, but since you can earn more of them, you can still earn a lot. With a slower play style, even though you don't play as many games, you can still earn a lot because the games give larger rewards.
This may come as a shocker to the OP but skill is already rewarded in HS. I'm not even sure if it's worth elaborating on...
Yes there are brainless decks, however, there are decks that counter said decks and good pilots can easily climb with them.
Not a shock. I know that. It's a game of skill. Yes, there are brainless decks. People also get bad draws... that's the nature of a card game. As I posted originally, I genuinely like playing both aggro and control. I was just wondering out loud: if the rewards system could use some adjusting to make it equitable to play longer games. Right now, you get rewards based on the number of wins you can accumulate. It seems like there more incentive to play faster games (except, the fact that someone – myself included – can find longer games can be more fun).
Question: Doesn't Blizzard already have a mechanism/calculation for determining how much experience to give when you're ranking a character? Couldn't that be applied to gold/rank rewarding?
I agree with you about how decks people complain about being OP have counters. While I find decks like Quest Rogue and Pirate Warrior annoying it's mostly because at times soooooo many people are playing them, not because I hate the deck archetype. I just want to play against a wider variety of decks.
And I DEFINITELY don't think making a "deck difficulty" is a good idea.
@Splatacleze; and I realize you weren't on the "let's punish Aggro" train when you were proposing the idea, nor hopefully did it sound too harsh when I bluntly called it dumb to make one worth more than the other through a reward system. I do think it's dumb, but putting it kind of shortly like that might have made it sound like I was criticizing you or your suggestion more than I was really just criticizing how I feel a move like that would be on Blizzard's part. I'll try to explain myself a little better.
So currently I think we can all agree that without any changes to the ladder system as it is today, even with the new thresholds, fast and consistent decks are generally more appealing to bring. Since literally the only thing that ladder rewards is stars/ranks per hour, the idea is that you might trade 1-2% winrate with a slower deck like Taunt Warrior for quick games with Pirate Warrior, and in the end you'll theoretically hit your target rank hours ahead of schedule. People spam the efficient grinder decks because a portion of the playerbase legitimately enjoys those decks, and a part of them simply want to be over an on with their lives.
Now, the portion that loves Aggro is probably going to be like Control players today; they don't want to play another archetype because it's not as fun, so they'll simply dismiss the efficiency they're losing and play exactly what they want. The other portion that just wants to get it over and done with are the kind of people that just find the act of climbing fun, and they're going to swap whatever new method is most efficient because it will get them to higher ranks in a shorter timespan.
My point of contention is that if you introduce a system where you're encouraging an archetype (in this case the goal is to encourage slower decks, correct?), then that second group will immediately try to break it down into what path is the one of least resistance. If Aggro is still better for stars/ranks per hour, they'll go back to how it was and nothing's really changed; Control players will still feel like they're not being rewarded for their playstyle, and everyone will just sit here and rail on Team 5 for being bad at their jobs. If Control becomes better for stars/ranks per hour, then everything changes; all of a sudden people are locked in matchups that take 2-3 times as long, and the amount of games they can get in on a limited time frame drops. Maybe the second scenario doesn't slow it down enough to be detrimental, but it means that Control decks will need to all have a proactive win condition to avoid people feeling like every game is a 20 minute journey to Fatigue and that they're wasting their time if they lose.
In theory it could work if the rewards were minor enough that it was a very slight advantage. If Control is still worse for laddering but only by a small portion, then we're talking. People here railing against a fast meta may not be content with the fact they're still worse for laddering but players like myself who have laddered with Control Priest in the past and hated the speed would probably be a lot happier. For most people ladder remains populated by fast decks for the efficiency-fiends, average game time doesn't go up dramatically, and Control players feel like they got tossed a bone in regards to ladder design. The problem is, like most things in Hearthstone, that we operate on small numbers and minor adjustments of +/- 1 value can have an insane impact. It doesn't take much in regards to rewards to have Control suddenly become the best.
Part of gaming is learning to break systems and use the parts to build our own experiences. Maybe we want to break interactions and do something ridiculous, maybe we want to break the meta and create a deck that demolishes the top decks, maybe we just want to break down matchups and learn them inside and out so we can be a better competitive player. I'd wager the people who actively grind ladder efficiently will put us in the same position we're currently in (high representation of one archetype) far sooner than people would realize, because they're there to break the laddering process.
So to be clear, I don't actually mind the idea of equalizing play time to rewards. I just don't think it would turn out positively to directly reward one over the other, and I'd rather see the system change to where it encourages diversity in general instead of just breaking the problem into fast decks vs slow decks.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Articles I suggest every player reads to improve at the game;
@Tze Thanks for the follow up. I appreciate it. I think we're on the same page. I didn't mean to suggest I favor control deck over aggro. I was just trying to suggest a way to equalize the incentives for both styles. If you play fast and win: great, you get a reward equal to the effort it took to win. If you play a more involved game and win: great, you get a reward equal to the effort it took to win. Right now there definitely seems to be a reward bias toward decks that are fast (...and good, of course;)
The who idea was base around what you were saying at the end there: I want them to incentivize diverse styles of play. I might have worded it to simplistically, though. My B ;)
I don't think it's terrible, as is. I love the game and think the meta is actually more fun than it has been in a long time.
@Splatacleze; no worries, I think your intentions were definitely in the right place and if there could be a suitable system for that kind of thing I think it would be worth considering. Wanting to provide incentives to people so they don't feel bad playing decks they enjoy is definitely something I think is always good to be thinking about. :)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Articles I suggest every player reads to improve at the game;
Some decks on ladder are very tough to win with and their power level is higher than your pirate warrior for example but the fact that they require skill to play means weaker players won't play it anyway. Now that shaman is gone, you can find skill based decks and perform well if you are skilled. Rewards, punishments etc won't do much to shift the amount of bad Hearthstone players out there who only know how to play pirates. I am not even trying to be insulting, when these players make trades or have to do anything besides attack face, they instantly concede or make awful plays. The majority of players are just weak. Can't do anything about that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Although a lot of players play aggro in order to rank up fast half of them are winning faster but 50% of them are losing their games at a faster rate than they would if they were playing control. Therefore there is already a built-in incentive for many players to play control decks - losing less games. Kappa.
Kill jades and quest Rogue, not nerf them, KILL, that mecanic is horrible for the game.
Yo kill pirate Warrior: make war Axe can't go face, that will slow down that deck.
And also, put more heals, without heals/armor control decks are unplayable
@ShruteBucks; my apologies, I know you didn't say "mindless aggro" so maybe adding that was more loaded that intended. I don't have a better way of describing the concept most people have where proactive players doing proactive things (with shorter games) inherently have less merit than someone doing reactive (with longer games); I don't think you necessarily fall into that, nor does OP. I do think it's vastly underestimated that misplaying as Aggro costs you games no different than misplaying as Control.
MSoG for a good portion had Renolock and Renomage at the top, Control Warrior was (contrary to the circlejerk) competitive for even ladder, and Control Shaman was actually pretty beastly it just happened to share the same slot in tournament lineups as Aggro Shaman which was just better overall. Anyfin was kind of the adorable cherry on top that fit into tournament niches even if it never really performed amazingly on ladder. So objectively it's not that cut and dry unless you're reading tier lists and taking them as gospel truth.
Once again if you're consistently misplaying, you're going to be punished as Aggro. Putting yourself into a position where you've wasted a card in decks that run virtually no cycle is a big deal, because unless you're going to just eternally run hot and topdeck what you need it's easier than ever to run decks out of steam now. You can misplay with literally any deck and consistently beat the rest of the meta if your deck is strong enough, it has jack shit to do with the archetype and everything to do with the fact that straightforward refined decks are simply going to do some of the lifting by being straightforward refined decks. As long as we're only talking about something like ladder, I don't really think it's all that unhealthy since it generally doesn't convert into consistent Top 8s for people. I don't care that you lost to xXdem0nhunt3rXx on ladder because he misplayed Pirate Warrior, because god knows all of us have misplayed at some point and still won.
Lol, Tempo Mage has always been a list that's been full of cheap minions/spells. Welcome to the list since it was created? Tempo Rogue was no different, because one of your goals is to be removing something on your opponent's board while developing your own. Neither of those have anything to do with the speed of the meta. The meta is slow enough to allow for something like Control mage and Control Priest to run Medivh and heavy spells, Warrior to run at least 2 Primordial Drakes, Paladin to run every Legendary it's ever been given and Lay on Hands, and for Quest Rogue to drive people crazy because it would suffocate far more quickly in a meta that was legitimately fast.
Right now you have a ton of options for Control, with more lists cropping up this week to keep an eye on and Priest continuing to sort out which of its 3 options is actually the best. You're likely focusing on the two darling Control lists of the meta, but if you narrow your viewpoint like that then you'd have to do the same for Aggro/Midrange/Combo and they all have a handful of promising options to ladder with right now. A real meta is still a couple of weeks away, things are still developing. Not really anything to get worked up about.
Articles I suggest every player reads to improve at the game;
MTG/Hearthstone biases to avoid
Reframing negative Hearthstone experiences to improve at the game
Who's the Beatdown?
I just want to point out that there has always been an extrinsic reward for playing long games: You get an XP bonus for playing more cards and killing more minions.
I know this is irrelevant for a lot of people who are level 60 across the board, but the framework exists. Brode recently hinted that they might eventually increase the level cap. I assume this increase would come with new rewards, so there you go.
As for the broader discussion here, I really wish people would stop hating on the end of the speed spectrum that lies opposite their personal comfort zone. If you don't like losing to a certain archetype, its very easy to look up a deck that beats it. If you're not willing to do that, you're not truly interested in playing the competitive game.
In other words, be the Pirate killer you want to see in the world.
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
If you say LUL in Twitch chat you are a moron. If you do it outside of Twitch - even more so!
@ArgentumEmperio; I think that's maybe something that gets glossed over in general. Just because a card exists doesn't mean it's a) going to find a place competitively, or b) aren't designed for non-competitive play. I'd also argue that people gloss over far too often the fact that proactive gameplay is healthy to have anyway, and that it's one of the inherent qualities of Hearthstone that's always been constant. Compare this to Magic or Eternal where blocker decides how combat resolves, and it's just worlds different (not better or worse, just different).
Right now slower decks are in a pretty good spot I think. Quest Warrior and Paladin aren't going to be killing you quickly but they're very good. Elemental or Control builds of Shaman just don't have an early game that's worrisome, and one of the most ubiquitous Aggro 1-drops is Fire Fly which doesn't have a lot of snowball potential. Mana Wyrm is really the only 1-drop that gets crazy anymore, and even that card is one I've never really had an issue with because Mage is a lot more limited in protecting or developing their board than Shaman ever was. Most of the aggressive strategies are board-centric which means you're generally capable of shutting them out if you don't just let them have free reign during the early game. Control options are a lot more proactive while still being defensive nowadays, which is a design I think has made it a lot more consistent in general.
From a competitive standpoint I think this meta has the potential to be amazing, because everything seems to have a place and its own set of good/bad matchups. Part of this is because every class has a strategy that doesn't rely on being hyper-janky, with Warlock being the one glaring exception this meta that hasn't really found a good niche (though I think it could, it's not far off). My only issue really is that Mage is a giant clown fiesta, and Primordial Glyph gives me flashbacks to Unstable Portal that I'd rather not have to deal with.
Articles I suggest every player reads to improve at the game;
MTG/Hearthstone biases to avoid
Reframing negative Hearthstone experiences to improve at the game
Who's the Beatdown?
@ArgentumEmperio; oh, by all means I'm definitely not as worried about Glyph as I was about Unstable. I actually really like the design, and I'm really not salty it turned out to be a good card because thematically it strikes me as really cool... I just have a tendency to get a little annoyed that their cards are so predicated (even outside of Waygate Mage) on random spells, especially when they high roll a bunch of times in a row. By all means though, I don't think it's all that toxic to have in the game and it really doesn't bother me to play against. So it's an issue to me, but not a gamebreaking one in the slightest and one I know will vary from person to person.
On topic, I do think arbitrarily weighing certain decks/playstyles to be worth more is beyond dumb. Not because I don't want more styles of play to be encouraged, but because the second you implement a system to specifically cater to slower players it will end up being too good and ladder turns into a 24/7 grindfest or it turns out horrible and those players are still unhappy. It's also convoluted, which is one reason we don't just have an ELO system for ranking up outside of Legend or Casual.
Forever ago there was the idea of promoting underplayed cards or classes and granting them a bonus, and that's an idea I'm more inclined to want implemented. It's much easier to say "Hey Warlock is super underplayed, if you play Warlock we'll make it worth your while!" instead of "Your deck has a complexity rating of 3, here are the rewards that complexity rating 3 decks get", because I know what kind of parameters I have to fulfill to receive the reward instead of trying to reverse-engineer an arbitrary rating system. Or exploit turn timers. Or play as many things as humanly possible. Or change classes every third game.
Articles I suggest every player reads to improve at the game;
MTG/Hearthstone biases to avoid
Reframing negative Hearthstone experiences to improve at the game
Who's the Beatdown?
@Splatacleze; and I realize you weren't on the "let's punish Aggro" train when you were proposing the idea, nor hopefully did it sound too harsh when I bluntly called it dumb to make one worth more than the other through a reward system. I do think it's dumb, but putting it kind of shortly like that might have made it sound like I was criticizing you or your suggestion more than I was really just criticizing how I feel a move like that would be on Blizzard's part. I'll try to explain myself a little better.
So currently I think we can all agree that without any changes to the ladder system as it is today, even with the new thresholds, fast and consistent decks are generally more appealing to bring. Since literally the only thing that ladder rewards is stars/ranks per hour, the idea is that you might trade 1-2% winrate with a slower deck like Taunt Warrior for quick games with Pirate Warrior, and in the end you'll theoretically hit your target rank hours ahead of schedule. People spam the efficient grinder decks because a portion of the playerbase legitimately enjoys those decks, and a part of them simply want to be over an on with their lives.
Now, the portion that loves Aggro is probably going to be like Control players today; they don't want to play another archetype because it's not as fun, so they'll simply dismiss the efficiency they're losing and play exactly what they want. The other portion that just wants to get it over and done with are the kind of people that just find the act of climbing fun, and they're going to swap whatever new method is most efficient because it will get them to higher ranks in a shorter timespan.
My point of contention is that if you introduce a system where you're encouraging an archetype (in this case the goal is to encourage slower decks, correct?), then that second group will immediately try to break it down into what path is the one of least resistance. If Aggro is still better for stars/ranks per hour, they'll go back to how it was and nothing's really changed; Control players will still feel like they're not being rewarded for their playstyle, and everyone will just sit here and rail on Team 5 for being bad at their jobs. If Control becomes better for stars/ranks per hour, then everything changes; all of a sudden people are locked in matchups that take 2-3 times as long, and the amount of games they can get in on a limited time frame drops. Maybe the second scenario doesn't slow it down enough to be detrimental, but it means that Control decks will need to all have a proactive win condition to avoid people feeling like every game is a 20 minute journey to Fatigue and that they're wasting their time if they lose.
In theory it could work if the rewards were minor enough that it was a very slight advantage. If Control is still worse for laddering but only by a small portion, then we're talking. People here railing against a fast meta may not be content with the fact they're still worse for laddering but players like myself who have laddered with Control Priest in the past and hated the speed would probably be a lot happier. For most people ladder remains populated by fast decks for the efficiency-fiends, average game time doesn't go up dramatically, and Control players feel like they got tossed a bone in regards to ladder design. The problem is, like most things in Hearthstone, that we operate on small numbers and minor adjustments of +/- 1 value can have an insane impact. It doesn't take much in regards to rewards to have Control suddenly become the best.
Part of gaming is learning to break systems and use the parts to build our own experiences. Maybe we want to break interactions and do something ridiculous, maybe we want to break the meta and create a deck that demolishes the top decks, maybe we just want to break down matchups and learn them inside and out so we can be a better competitive player. I'd wager the people who actively grind ladder efficiently will put us in the same position we're currently in (high representation of one archetype) far sooner than people would realize, because they're there to break the laddering process.
So to be clear, I don't actually mind the idea of equalizing play time to rewards. I just don't think it would turn out positively to directly reward one over the other, and I'd rather see the system change to where it encourages diversity in general instead of just breaking the problem into fast decks vs slow decks.
Articles I suggest every player reads to improve at the game;
MTG/Hearthstone biases to avoid
Reframing negative Hearthstone experiences to improve at the game
Who's the Beatdown?
@Tze Thanks for the follow up. I appreciate it. I think we're on the same page. I didn't mean to suggest I favor control deck over aggro. I was just trying to suggest a way to equalize the incentives for both styles. If you play fast and win: great, you get a reward equal to the effort it took to win. If you play a more involved game and win: great, you get a reward equal to the effort it took to win. Right now there definitely seems to be a reward bias toward decks that are fast (...and good, of course;)
The who idea was base around what you were saying at the end there: I want them to incentivize diverse styles of play. I might have worded it to simplistically, though. My B ;)
I don't think it's terrible, as is. I love the game and think the meta is actually more fun than it has been in a long time.
@Splatacleze; no worries, I think your intentions were definitely in the right place and if there could be a suitable system for that kind of thing I think it would be worth considering. Wanting to provide incentives to people so they don't feel bad playing decks they enjoy is definitely something I think is always good to be thinking about. :)
Articles I suggest every player reads to improve at the game;
MTG/Hearthstone biases to avoid
Reframing negative Hearthstone experiences to improve at the game
Who's the Beatdown?
Some decks on ladder are very tough to win with and their power level is higher than your pirate warrior for example but the fact that they require skill to play means weaker players won't play it anyway. Now that shaman is gone, you can find skill based decks and perform well if you are skilled. Rewards, punishments etc won't do much to shift the amount of bad Hearthstone players out there who only know how to play pirates. I am not even trying to be insulting, when these players make trades or have to do anything besides attack face, they instantly concede or make awful plays. The majority of players are just weak. Can't do anything about that.