Is that a real question? There is only one ladder: Ranked play mode of course.
It was a rhetorical question.
A ladder in a card game could be organized in many ways. Deck building is a skill itself and it is absolutely missing in the current ranked play mode, because everyone picks a META deck and plays it.
The aim of this thread is to create a different type of ladder, where deck innovation matters most.
Is that a real question? There is only one ladder: Ranked play mode of course.
It was a rhetorical question.
A ladder in a card game could be organized in many ways. Deck building is a skill itself and it is absolutely missing in the current ranked play mode, because everyone picks a META deck and plays it.
The aim of this thread is to create a different type of ladder, where deck innovation matters most.
As I said, you are aiming at the wrong mode. Casual is the place where it might make sense to implement your idea if it works. Ranked is the place where People try to beat each other to get stars (and pros eventually get HTC Points). Why should you allow to provide suboptimal decks with weaker opponents. That is not a competetive Approach and, thus, shouldn't be used in a competetive environment.
All you really need is the card ban option. Give me that in a true casual mode and I can ban my least favourite meta decks by selecting about 5 cards (Shadowreaper, Jade Idol, Explosive Runes, Patches & Doomguard).
Oh and this post is a fine idea. Those arguing otherwise are the ones whining, stfu and stop telling every slightly negative post to go to the salt thread you sound like children.
This sort of comment always amuses me.
"I want to ban any decks that are strong matches up against my personal favourite homebrew deck..." Then wonders why he never gets any matches, since the people who hate his deck have banned his deck as well.....
The entire premise of this thread seems entirely wrong-headed - the OP wants a play mode that prevents people from playing the decks that they want to play, because he wants to play against a more diverse line-up of opponents.
Nothing currently prevents the OP from playing off-meta decks himself - indeed, any half-decent player can already pilot any half-decent home-brew successfully. This is particularly true in Wild - DaneHS, Day[9], and Kripp have all had a great deal of success piloting crazy home-brews in the older format. Conveniently, a number of sites track Wild - looking at the numbers from VS and HSReplays, the format currently features 22 different decks with play-rates above 2%. During Un'Goro, that number once peaked at 26. The most commonly played deck for four of nine classes in Wild is "Other." Of course, there are Tier One decks - Paladin currently features three different flavours at the top of the tier lists, and Warlock and Priest are also quite prevalent. But you'll also see the sorts of decks I mentioned in an earlier post - FWIW, I mostly pilot Reno Hunter, Reno Rogue and Curator Paladin to rank 5 each month, and the format is filled with similar sorts of decks being piloted by my opponents, including all the way to Legend. This was one of the aspects of laddering in Wild which captured Kripp's interest this month.
Conversely, in a competitive game, there simply isn't much need to cater to players who aren't half-decent, or who can't throw together a decent home-brew. They just lose. If they want to play with crazy decks, or against crazy decks, HS already has a "Challenge" mode which caters specifically to that interest.
However, none of this seems to matter to the OP. He isn't simply wishing that he could pilot home-brews successfully. Instead, he wants to prevent everyone else from playing anything but their own home-brew - except, they won't actually have free reign to play any crazy home-brew they want. The OP wants to prevent players from piloting a deck like Reno Pirate Mech Priest, because the OP wants to ban Kazakus and Raza and Ship's Cannon. Folks won't be able to play a deck like Big Rogue, because the OP wants to ban Carnivorous Cube. You get the idea - crazy off-meta decks regularly use lots of "good" cards, but attempt to exploit the potential design space of those cards in unusual ways. I find it to be the most interesting and alluring aspect of deck-building and playing.
Looking at the numbers, Wild currently enjoys a play-rate about one-eighth that of Standard. I'm not exactly convinced that the OP's proposed Play Mode - forcing players to build uninteresting home-brews, while changing the deck-building rules every time a card becomes "too popular" - would develop a sustainable player-base. Among other things, players will simply be priced out of the format - do they dust Raza and Patches when they are banned, in order to gain the dust they need to craft all the expensive cards they don't have, but which would be required in the OP's new format? And what happens when the OP decides to ban those cards? I just spent 800 dust on a pair of epics that don't see play in Standard, and now they've been banned in the "Perpetual Waterfall" Play Mode as well. It doesn't exactly require precognition to guess what the community reaction to any of this might be.
As much as i like homebrewing, what you suggest is yet not fair, within the same ladder.
Same or different ladder - it doesn't really matter - deck building deserves to be recognized as a major part of the skill game and as I pointed out it is simply not rewarded in the current ranked play mode.
crazy off-meta decks regularly use lots of "good" cards, but attempt to exploit the potential design space of those cards in unusual ways. I find it to be the most interesting and alluring aspect of deck-building and playing.
Crazy off-meta decks will be still off-meta as long as they use a reasonable amount of "good" cards. No troubles here.
META decks "kill" all other already released cards in the game and create a boring game without much deck experimenting/building. We need a new mode with the new ladder that is coming later in 2018, which would:
- Match players with OFF-META decks against others with such
- Give an option for a class/card ban
Explanation: A deck has 30 cards. Each card has a percent of usage in the last 24 hours. Your deck is considered a META one if the sum of the percent of usage from your cards goes above a certain number. In this case you will be matched against another META deck.
No we dont need anything of these..crawl back to your hole
once you match off-meta decks againsst off-meta decks they will construct their own meta. The Meta isn't something that is madated by Blizzard, it appears ogranically based how people build their decks.
class bans make no sense on ladder and will only increase wait time. Class bans are useful in a tournament format where every play brings a specific deck for each class, but not on a ladder where winning with a specific deck is less important than your overall win ratio.
Another one more of these people that don't get competitive games in general. Not just hearthstone.
Dude, this change has the intention to strengthen the competitive deck building. Such ladder won't be about copy/paste anymore. You totally missed the point.
As much as i like homebrewing, what you suggest is yet not fair, within the same ladder.
Same or different ladder - it doesn't really matter - deck building deserves to be recognized as a major part of the skill game and as I pointed out it is simply not rewarded in the current ranked play mode.
Fine. A different ladder then which you can access only with off-meta decks, automatically marked by the system.
But then, what are you being rewarded for? You are being rewarded for being alternative. Good at choosing the best substitutions in a deck. Good at creating sub-optimal stuff, which need ad hoc environment to live.
META decks "kill" all other already released cards in the game
If you think that is the main problem, then solve just this problem. And I think the solution would be that either the best decks are not way stronger than any other deck, or the power level of all (or let's say most of) other released cards should be on par with the best in a set. So, either reduce the power level of the meta-defining decks, or introduce more cards that can realistically challenge those decks. Or do a bit of both.
While reducing the powerlevel of decks is more difficult, it seems like the better solution to me in the long run, because otherwise it becomes an arms race between decks and classes. Pretty much what happens right now in the game.
Introducing a new mode with a complex ruleset and constant monitoring is cumbersome and raises a lot of questions. I think, in the long run we'd be better off, if the final design team at Blizzard reconsiders some of their descisions and alters their plans for future expansions accordingly. They wanted to avoid power creep with Standard, but since MSG, every expansion was stronger and more polarizing than the last.
No, it is not. You can have a competition with off-meta decks - it is perfectly fine.
An Off-meta deck is such because it is not competitive, don't you see it?
You would not be good at creating good decks. Just at creating wacky stuff.
That being said, you are ofc free to stay in your fantasy, but it's not contributing to the issue of stale meta and lack of variety, in a genuinely competitive environment.
META decks "kill" all other already released cards in the game and create a boring game without much deck experimenting/building. We need a new mode with the new ladder that is coming later in 2018, which would:
- Match players with OFF-META decks against others with such
- Give an option for a class/card ban
Some questions -
what are "meta decks" and "off meta-decks", and how does the new play mode identify them?
how would the new mode be able to prevent people from playing meta-decks? couldn't they just tweak a meta-deck by a few cards to "cheat" the new mode?
how would the card ban work? do players choose a single card among the 1000 cards available in Standard? do they choose from among a handful of options selected by Team 5? do they choose a bunch of cards and "personalize" their own individual play mode - "i never want to play against these dozen cards again!"
what happens when players simply figure out the best "off-meta" meta decks for the new format? do we get another new play mode which bans meta-decks and off-meta meta decks?
When playing IRL card games, people rarely bring crazy home-brews to the local store to play against a bunch of perfect strangers - HS is the same. If you want to play crazy home-brews, you'll get stomped at the local store, and you'll get stomped on ladder or casual mode in HS. The most straight-forward course of action in each case is to simply play your crazy decks against your friends, and let all the other perfect strangers who enjoy the game play whatever decks they want, without yelling at them on social media. Problem solved.
hsreplay and other tracker sites can identify decks (even with a card or two deviations for tech choices)... if they can easily do that... I can only imagine what blizzard is able to pull from stats... so it's is possible to guess what deck you're playing and also guess (know actually) what deck is good or bad match-up... and pair it to one or not...
and: yes:: I think blizzard is tailoring matching system to not allow to good (or bad) streak and win rate percentages....
so:: I think it's in their power to create that kind of mode... the question is: do they want (aka have something to gain by it) to do it...
on the side note:: I tot agree that if you have problem with good deck (deemed cancer by those who do not like (or can't afford them or whatever...)) ...just pass on the laddering and go challenge a friend to bo5 or something.... :D
either reduce the power level of the meta-defining decks, or introduce more cards that can realistically challenge those decks. Or do a bit of both
I'd love to see that, but it is a LOT harder than the proposed mode in the OP (it also creates problems for the current tournament play since optimally you want to have an average number of meta decks there, not a very high number). Plus they won't go against their power creep philosophy since it makes them cash and strong legendary cards are best sellers.
Same or different ladder - it doesn't really matter - deck building deserves to be recognized as a major part of the skill game and as I pointed out it is simply not rewarded in the current ranked play mode.
I would argue it is, all the meta decks have been built and refined by someone and their success is evident and rewarded. I suspect your issue is the people who didn't actively build them using them i.e. netdeckers. Other than the complexity of implementing it, I have no bother with the core of your suggestion in casual however personally feel that the current ladder sufficiently recognises good deck building, playing ability and time invested.
My big issue with your suggestion is the yo-yo effect it would create between the off-meta and meta decks. So lets call off-meta what it will actually be un-optimised/meme decks that can't compete anywhere else. At some point the best of the bad will rise to the top thus establishing them as the off-meta-meta. Then if I understand your description of the algorithm correctly these would be grouped with the good meta decks and hence utterly crushed to the point that their rating drops and they drop back to the off-meta where they are again the best of the bad and the yo-yo loop continues.
Also how do you actually grade your deck building skills if it isn't against the whole community.
I'm totally against banning in any kind of ladder format. It works in tournaments because your opponent is already decided however for ladder I feel it would be unfair for other peoples wait time to be increased just because people don't like particular cards/classes.
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Arguing on the internet is like playing chess with a pigeon. You may be good at chess, but the pigeon is just going to knock all the pieces down, take a shit on the table, and strut around like its victorious.
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But you want to give a bonus to innovation, regardless of real efficacy.
As much as i like homebrewing, what you suggest is yet not fair, within the same ladder.
A good deck should still prevail against an innovative but bad deck, and be rewarded consequently.
Competition is about fairyness, not equality.
Then wonders why he never gets any matches, since the people who hate his deck have banned his deck as well.....
The entire premise of this thread seems entirely wrong-headed - the OP wants a play mode that prevents people from playing the decks that they want to play, because he wants to play against a more diverse line-up of opponents.
Nothing currently prevents the OP from playing off-meta decks himself - indeed, any half-decent player can already pilot any half-decent home-brew successfully. This is particularly true in Wild - DaneHS, Day[9], and Kripp have all had a great deal of success piloting crazy home-brews in the older format. Conveniently, a number of sites track Wild - looking at the numbers from VS and HSReplays, the format currently features 22 different decks with play-rates above 2%. During Un'Goro, that number once peaked at 26. The most commonly played deck for four of nine classes in Wild is "Other." Of course, there are Tier One decks - Paladin currently features three different flavours at the top of the tier lists, and Warlock and Priest are also quite prevalent. But you'll also see the sorts of decks I mentioned in an earlier post - FWIW, I mostly pilot Reno Hunter, Reno Rogue and Curator Paladin to rank 5 each month, and the format is filled with similar sorts of decks being piloted by my opponents, including all the way to Legend. This was one of the aspects of laddering in Wild which captured Kripp's interest this month.
Conversely, in a competitive game, there simply isn't much need to cater to players who aren't half-decent, or who can't throw together a decent home-brew. They just lose. If they want to play with crazy decks, or against crazy decks, HS already has a "Challenge" mode which caters specifically to that interest.
However, none of this seems to matter to the OP. He isn't simply wishing that he could pilot home-brews successfully. Instead, he wants to prevent everyone else from playing anything but their own home-brew - except, they won't actually have free reign to play any crazy home-brew they want. The OP wants to prevent players from piloting a deck like Reno Pirate Mech Priest, because the OP wants to ban Kazakus and Raza and Ship's Cannon. Folks won't be able to play a deck like Big Rogue, because the OP wants to ban Carnivorous Cube. You get the idea - crazy off-meta decks regularly use lots of "good" cards, but attempt to exploit the potential design space of those cards in unusual ways. I find it to be the most interesting and alluring aspect of deck-building and playing.
Looking at the numbers, Wild currently enjoys a play-rate about one-eighth that of Standard. I'm not exactly convinced that the OP's proposed Play Mode - forcing players to build uninteresting home-brews, while changing the deck-building rules every time a card becomes "too popular" - would develop a sustainable player-base. Among other things, players will simply be priced out of the format - do they dust Raza and Patches when they are banned, in order to gain the dust they need to craft all the expensive cards they don't have, but which would be required in the OP's new format? And what happens when the OP decides to ban those cards? I just spent 800 dust on a pair of epics that don't see play in Standard, and now they've been banned in the "Perpetual Waterfall" Play Mode as well. It doesn't exactly require precognition to guess what the community reaction to any of this might be.
once you match off-meta decks againsst off-meta decks they will construct their own meta. The Meta isn't something that is madated by Blizzard, it appears ogranically based how people build their decks.
class bans make no sense on ladder and will only increase wait time. Class bans are useful in a tournament format where every play brings a specific deck for each class, but not on a ladder where winning with a specific deck is less important than your overall win ratio.
I tried having fun once. It was awful.
"competitive off-meta deck" is an oxymoron, just as much as "good bad deck".
No, it is not. You can have a competition with off-meta decks - it is perfectly fine.
Arguing on the internet is like playing chess with a pigeon. You may be good at chess, but the pigeon is just going to knock all the pieces down, take a shit on the table, and strut around like its victorious.