...which tracked card winrates and then adjusted occurrence in drafting accordingly, can we trial something like this on ladder as part of a (desperately needed) serious overhaul to the system?
The algorithm could track what is in your deck and reward your win accordingly, so essentially, if you are playing a pure tier 1 or 2 netdeck or a highly popular aggro deck for fast games (both huge problems with the ladder system as is) your rewards are lower, relatively, while you are rewarded for creativity. Note I mean rewards as in rank-up stars, as the system currently stands.
So as a very rough example to give you the idea - a win with tier 1 meta aggro paladin is worth half a star, based on current popularity and game speed, a meta cubelock win is one star, while a win with an off meta Yip armor warrior would be worth 2 stars, and a win with a full blown meme deck with cards no one is using at all is worth three. You could easily apply this to gold rewards to shake up the game's economy as well as just rank-up points, and discourage endless bot farming with wild pirate warrior and such like.
How's the deck algorithm gonna know that my barely functional C'Thun Control Rogue is infact tier 8 deck?
The gritty details would be down to blizzard (did say my example above was very rough :P), but essentially it would judge your deck based the popularity of the cards in your deck relative to rest of the ladder, while also taking into account the average mana cost/speed of the deck. If C'thun rogue started to rise in popularity, rewards would lower accordingly.
No, absolutely no. The ladder should emphasize FAIR PLAY. There should be no MMR, no deck evaluations, or anything of the like on the ladder. You should be matched against a player with the same total stars, and a win provides a star, period. Player perception is not reality. Only once in the history of the game was the meta so polarized they had to take action - Undertaker.
That being said, yes, the entire ladder needs to be scrapped and redone, but differential rewards are not the answer. How is it fun if I cant play my favorite class unless I put bad cards in it or accept lesser progress? Why is it my fault everyone suddenly wants to play Warlock?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
History has proven that communism is a bad idea. Learn to play the game and stop wishing that 'system' will provide any benefits to losers.
I've been to legend a few times mate, and rank 5 minimum every season. I can play just fine. The ladder system is awful and gets worse as time goes on. It was supposed to be a place-holder for a better sytem...
No, absolutely no. The ladder should emphasize FAIR PLAY. There should be no MMR, no deck evaluations, or anything of the like on the ladder. You should be matched against a player with the same total stars, and a win provides a star, period. Player perception is not reality. Only once in the history of the game was the meta so polarized they had to take action - Undertaker.
That being said, yes, the entire ladder needs to be scrapped and redone, but differential rewards are not the answer. How is it fun if I cant play my favorite class unless I put bad cards in it or accept lesser progress? Why is it my fault everyone suddenly wants to play Warlock?
You could still play warlock, make a few changes from what the algorithm expects you to play and reap the benefit. You would be rewarded for your efforts and ladder becomes less stale immediately.
@OP: I think something like this HAS to come with the new ladder at least for the casual mode. New players and people who love experimenting with decks are at high disadvantage when matched with meta decks. The ladder should reflect who is the most skilled player, not who plays 24/7 with meta decks.
I don't like it. I mean, it just artificially increases the climb rate of bad decks. I don't believe a deck which can only win one out of three games should get three wins worth of credit for each win. Likewise, I don't want to disproportionately punish folks who play "top tier" decks--some number of the folks out there just have the Paladin quest and just want their gold. If Blizzard wants to curb aggro, they ought to release fewer aggro cards.
Plus, your levels of reward or drawback are way too high. When Heroes of the Storm tried to incorporate a performance-based bonus into their games, the degree of adjustment was just too high. A typical game has 200 rank points at steak, and having as many as 50 being from performance was something which felt way too high.
I think the fact that Blizzard has put in the "you can't lose stars" every 5 ranks means that if you want to play a meme deck or just a more oddball variant, get to the next "5" and you can play a deck which won't rank you up and not worry about being down-ranked. I mean, Cardback is at Rank 20, and the other rewards are small, so getting "high rank" doesn't mean too much.
Different players look for different things in Hearthstone. Some people like knowing exactly what they can expect from their opponent's deck from just seeing the class and some like figuring it out while they play. Some people like playing the same deck over and over and some like to play many different decks. The problem is that both types form a single pool for matchmaking.
In theory casual should be a different pool than ladder and it probably is at a technical level, but in practice I don't notice much difference between them. There are many people practicing or grinding netdecks in casual too. The rank floors help a bit against this, since it allows players to try different decks without risking their ranking if they are at 5/10/15, but it's not enough. What might help against grinding is not counting wins in casual mode towards daily quests and 3-wins bonuses. Quests of the "play N cards" variety could still count.
Another issue is that the ladder reset puts a lot of people into ranks where they do not belong. At rank 20 you'll see everything from tier 1 decks to new players (River Crocolisk is a good tell). Having a less severe reset would keep the tryhards and the just-for-fun players more separated.
Using an algorithm like you describe to match people with original decks to each other sounds interesting, but it might have some undesired consequences. One is that rank would become less meaningful, since popular-deck rank 5 might not be comparable to original-deck rank 5. Another is that people will likely try to game the system by changing some cards in a netdeck to bypass the detection (teching against the matchmaker). There is no objective way to say what is the same deck or not, for example is a hunter deck with Barnes + Y'Shaarj as its only minions the same deck as a no-minions list? This could be mitigated by using a fuzzy matcher instead of a hard popular-or-original detection, so that the closer your deck is to popular decks, the more likely you'll be matched to popular decks.
How's the deck algorithm gonna know that my barely functional C'Thun Control Rogue is infact tier 8 deck?
The gritty details would be down to blizzard (did say my example above was very rough :P), but essentially it would judge your deck based the popularity of the cards in your deck relative to rest of the ladder, while also taking into account the average mana cost/speed of the deck. If C'thun rogue started to rise in popularity, rewards would lower accordingly.
i can see one problem with doing it on popularity of cards over the whole meta. neutral cards would always show up more often than class cards. ontop of that tech cards might make you win more but could cost you rewards at the end. Spellbreaker is showing up a lot at the moment but would it be better to use Ironbeak Owl instead as its less used, yeah its not as good but might make you losse less overall.
then you have stuff like Northshire Cleric or Backstab they are in basically every priest and rogue deck so would start dragging you deck down. if they ever added cards that didnt get taken into account of these balancing algorithms maybe basic cards that would start giving stuff with a strong basic set a big bump up over classes who rely on new cards more.
im not saying i have all the anwsers to this, and ladder is preaty crap atm, but i think something like you are suggesting could be hell to balance and even a small mistake in the values of cards could lead to a massive hole that could be exploited to get loads of stars very fast.
The algorithm would incorporate the likelihood of cards being played together as well, which cards are better with particualr classes, combos, etc - in fact it could be as inifnitely complex as blizzard wished to make, to cover all aspects of deckbuilding. The whole thing could be incredibly flexible and toned by blizzard on the fly to improve it over time.
No, absolutely no. The ladder should emphasize FAIR PLAY. There should be no MMR, no deck evaluations, or anything of the like on the ladder. You should be matched against a player with the same total stars, and a win provides a star, period. Player perception is not reality. Only once in the history of the game was the meta so polarized they had to take action - Undertaker.
That being said, yes, the entire ladder needs to be scrapped and redone, but differential rewards are not the answer. How is it fun if I cant play my favorite class unless I put bad cards in it or accept lesser progress? Why is it my fault everyone suddenly wants to play Warlock?
Also, I've got to say, considering people seem to like this response, what part of constructed ladder play is about FAIR PLAY? The decks that dominate the ladder are always inherently unfair in comparison with other possible decks at the time. Ladder being 1 win = 1 star is precisely what causes all of the problems with it. People want to feel they are using their time efficiently, cuasing them to gravitate towards the most degenerative, unfair decks available at the time.
History has proven that communism is a bad idea. Learn to play the game and stop wishing that 'system' will provide any benefits to losers.
History has not yet proven that, but I do agree that this system is dumb. It is normal to have best decks and it is normal to netdeck.
The request of a lot of people that they should play homebrewed, unoptimised decks on ladder and have a winrate like on of the meta decks is absurd. I can't even imagine a system that would allow for this, and not destroy the game at the same time.
The current system creates stale metas and punishes just straight bad luck. You could have a home brew deck that does well against a lot of decks but suffers against one and get totally shafted by facing that one deck a lot. Anyone who thinks the current system is good for the future of the game is delusional or just likes to netdeck everything and reap the rewards. There's nothing inherently wrong with netdecking, but if you live and die by what other people perfect you don't deserve the same rewards for a win as someone who put some actual time and effort into making something of their own and make it work. On top of this having lower ranks flooded with raz priests and cubelocks and aggro paladins and tempo rogues isn't good for growing a player base.
But not in ranked. The idea that if I homebrew a deck that's very good, good enough for folks to take notice then I should get punished because my work became good enough to get popular. That IS how all of these netdecks started off: an individual coming up with an idea, working witha few others to perfect it, then doing well enough with it to get noticed by the community, many times because they are a streamer or a tournament goer.
For example, those aggro paladins were originally made to stop raz priests and cubelocks. The system would basically hyperencourage that by giving it 3 stars over the meta decks.
Why is it bad for Ranked? Because this is the main competitive system and we really shouldn't base who goes to blizzcon on who were the closest friends of folks who jumped on the aggro paladin first.
Now a separate mode with these features sounds interesting. It WOULD have to tell you as you are making the deck how 'meta' the deck is, say a score that goes up and down with 'checkpoints' that determine when it rises and drops in 'star rewards'. The idea would be to make the idea of 'gaming the system' baked into the design of the mode.
As far as how to determine what's 'good' or not, doing it by deck results in FAR to easy a way to 'fake' the deck enough to score great wins. I'm thinking just have it based on the average win rates of a card with the deck's 'rate' a basic sum of all of the cards added. Yes that means making a bad deck full of 'top winning cards' means you made an off-meta deck that's half a star per win but the system doesn't have to be perfect, just something 'Interesting'.
Honestly I'd play the #()$# out of it simply because it's loony as (#)$)(#.
I think this is a bad idea. The ranked ladder should be "competitive" (by hs standards) and the only thing it should reward is playing the best deck for whatever decks you're facing. This does mean that the fact that it also rewards aggro decks the most is somewhat problematic, but that's just such a fundamental thing within the game (quick decks play more games) that I'm fairly sure there's not really an appropriate answer. (Most peoples answer is to make it unfairly favor some other type of deck, but really that's just as problematic as making it favor aggro decks.)
I actually think the fundamentals of ranked mode are fine. For most players it's an easy to understand ranking system that they can engage with competitively, for those who put in the time and effort it turns into a somewhat more appropriate mmr system. The issues come with the details of it, how the reset works, how unrewarding hs in general is to play (which isn't an issue only in ranked mode...)
I also think casual wouldn't benefit from this change obviously. It'd just make bad decks loose more there.
So, overall, I don't think this change really has a place in hearthstone. It might be (as most otherwise bad suggestions are) fitting to have it's own mode. But hs doesn't really need or want more modes that don't offer something really interesting. A slightly differently working ladder is probably not worth it's own mode slot.
...which tracked card winrates and then adjusted occurrence in drafting accordingly, can we trial something like this on ladder as part of a (desperately needed) serious overhaul to the system?
The algorithm could track what is in your deck and reward your win accordingly, so essentially, if you are playing a pure tier 1 or 2 netdeck or a highly popular aggro deck for fast games (both huge problems with the ladder system as is) your rewards are lower, relatively, while you are rewarded for creativity. Note I mean rewards as in rank-up stars, as the system currently stands.
So as a very rough example to give you the idea - a win with tier 1 meta aggro paladin is worth half a star, based on current popularity and game speed, a meta cubelock win is one star, while a win with an off meta Yip armor warrior would be worth 2 stars, and a win with a full blown meme deck with cards no one is using at all is worth three. You could easily apply this to gold rewards to shake up the game's economy as well as just rank-up points, and discourage endless bot farming with wild pirate warrior and such like.
How's the deck algorithm gonna know that my barely functional C'Thun Control Rogue is infact tier 8 deck?
But if you limit performances, you are also limiting creativity.
Also, deck tiers says nothing of either creativity or popularity or effectiveness or whatnot, especially if contextualised in micro-meta.
Also, how do you define how similar my deck is to a netdeck? Where does alteration switches to a different deck and reward?
No, absolutely no. The ladder should emphasize FAIR PLAY. There should be no MMR, no deck evaluations, or anything of the like on the ladder. You should be matched against a player with the same total stars, and a win provides a star, period. Player perception is not reality. Only once in the history of the game was the meta so polarized they had to take action - Undertaker.
That being said, yes, the entire ladder needs to be scrapped and redone, but differential rewards are not the answer. How is it fun if I cant play my favorite class unless I put bad cards in it or accept lesser progress? Why is it my fault everyone suddenly wants to play Warlock?
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
Fine with me as long as it is a new system seperated from ladder.
Ladder is for players who wants to compete at the top level with all the cards available so skills, luck and time are the only factors. Pure.
However I would approve of a card that had some kind of ability that prevents you from win-streaking but would be sleightly more powerful.
@OP: I think something like this HAS to come with the new ladder at least for the casual mode. New players and people who love experimenting with decks are at high disadvantage when matched with meta decks. The ladder should reflect who is the most skilled player, not who plays 24/7 with meta decks.
I don't like it. I mean, it just artificially increases the climb rate of bad decks. I don't believe a deck which can only win one out of three games should get three wins worth of credit for each win. Likewise, I don't want to disproportionately punish folks who play "top tier" decks--some number of the folks out there just have the Paladin quest and just want their gold. If Blizzard wants to curb aggro, they ought to release fewer aggro cards.
Plus, your levels of reward or drawback are way too high. When Heroes of the Storm tried to incorporate a performance-based bonus into their games, the degree of adjustment was just too high. A typical game has 200 rank points at steak, and having as many as 50 being from performance was something which felt way too high.
I think the fact that Blizzard has put in the "you can't lose stars" every 5 ranks means that if you want to play a meme deck or just a more oddball variant, get to the next "5" and you can play a deck which won't rank you up and not worry about being down-ranked. I mean, Cardback is at Rank 20, and the other rewards are small, so getting "high rank" doesn't mean too much.
Different players look for different things in Hearthstone. Some people like knowing exactly what they can expect from their opponent's deck from just seeing the class and some like figuring it out while they play. Some people like playing the same deck over and over and some like to play many different decks. The problem is that both types form a single pool for matchmaking.
In theory casual should be a different pool than ladder and it probably is at a technical level, but in practice I don't notice much difference between them. There are many people practicing or grinding netdecks in casual too. The rank floors help a bit against this, since it allows players to try different decks without risking their ranking if they are at 5/10/15, but it's not enough. What might help against grinding is not counting wins in casual mode towards daily quests and 3-wins bonuses. Quests of the "play N cards" variety could still count.
Another issue is that the ladder reset puts a lot of people into ranks where they do not belong. At rank 20 you'll see everything from tier 1 decks to new players (River Crocolisk is a good tell). Having a less severe reset would keep the tryhards and the just-for-fun players more separated.
Using an algorithm like you describe to match people with original decks to each other sounds interesting, but it might have some undesired consequences. One is that rank would become less meaningful, since popular-deck rank 5 might not be comparable to original-deck rank 5. Another is that people will likely try to game the system by changing some cards in a netdeck to bypass the detection (teching against the matchmaker). There is no objective way to say what is the same deck or not, for example is a hunter deck with Barnes + Y'Shaarj as its only minions the same deck as a no-minions list? This could be mitigated by using a fuzzy matcher instead of a hard popular-or-original detection, so that the closer your deck is to popular decks, the more likely you'll be matched to popular decks.
What ladder needs is the system to be changed to a bo3 mode with a ban (conquest, lhs, or whatever new thing blizzard may come up with).
And sure, rethink the current grinding cheme to do something else.
Greatness, at any cost.
The current system creates stale metas and punishes just straight bad luck. You could have a home brew deck that does well against a lot of decks but suffers against one and get totally shafted by facing that one deck a lot. Anyone who thinks the current system is good for the future of the game is delusional or just likes to netdeck everything and reap the rewards. There's nothing inherently wrong with netdecking, but if you live and die by what other people perfect you don't deserve the same rewards for a win as someone who put some actual time and effort into making something of their own and make it work. On top of this having lower ranks flooded with raz priests and cubelocks and aggro paladins and tempo rogues isn't good for growing a player base.
This system............could be interesting.
But not in ranked. The idea that if I homebrew a deck that's very good, good enough for folks to take notice then I should get punished because my work became good enough to get popular. That IS how all of these netdecks started off: an individual coming up with an idea, working witha few others to perfect it, then doing well enough with it to get noticed by the community, many times because they are a streamer or a tournament goer.
For example, those aggro paladins were originally made to stop raz priests and cubelocks. The system would basically hyperencourage that by giving it 3 stars over the meta decks.
Why is it bad for Ranked? Because this is the main competitive system and we really shouldn't base who goes to blizzcon on who were the closest friends of folks who jumped on the aggro paladin first.
Now a separate mode with these features sounds interesting. It WOULD have to tell you as you are making the deck how 'meta' the deck is, say a score that goes up and down with 'checkpoints' that determine when it rises and drops in 'star rewards'. The idea would be to make the idea of 'gaming the system' baked into the design of the mode.
As far as how to determine what's 'good' or not, doing it by deck results in FAR to easy a way to 'fake' the deck enough to score great wins. I'm thinking just have it based on the average win rates of a card with the deck's 'rate' a basic sum of all of the cards added. Yes that means making a bad deck full of 'top winning cards' means you made an off-meta deck that's half a star per win but the system doesn't have to be perfect, just something 'Interesting'.
Honestly I'd play the #()$# out of it simply because it's loony as (#)$)(#.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
I think this is a bad idea. The ranked ladder should be "competitive" (by hs standards) and the only thing it should reward is playing the best deck for whatever decks you're facing. This does mean that the fact that it also rewards aggro decks the most is somewhat problematic, but that's just such a fundamental thing within the game (quick decks play more games) that I'm fairly sure there's not really an appropriate answer. (Most peoples answer is to make it unfairly favor some other type of deck, but really that's just as problematic as making it favor aggro decks.)
I actually think the fundamentals of ranked mode are fine. For most players it's an easy to understand ranking system that they can engage with competitively, for those who put in the time and effort it turns into a somewhat more appropriate mmr system. The issues come with the details of it, how the reset works, how unrewarding hs in general is to play (which isn't an issue only in ranked mode...)
I also think casual wouldn't benefit from this change obviously. It'd just make bad decks loose more there.
So, overall, I don't think this change really has a place in hearthstone. It might be (as most otherwise bad suggestions are) fitting to have it's own mode. But hs doesn't really need or want more modes that don't offer something really interesting. A slightly differently working ladder is probably not worth it's own mode slot.
Gotta love 12 yr olds that play this game with their extremely dumb ideas...
-Those who do not understand true pain, can never understand true peace.-
Short answer: No
When life gives you lemons, trade'em for limes and get some Coronas!