Ben Brode Unhappy with Ranked Ladder System
There is a bug (or as Bob Ross would say, a happy accident) right now where you'll get a win streak after 2 wins instead of 3. After a lot of discussion about it Ben Brode came to reddit to announce that it's indeed a bug and explained some of Team 5's thoughts about the current ranked 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.
Have you considered not making the fall in rank so severe in the start of the new season? When I was a new player at rank 21 it didn't feel good to lose against a wicked good deck all the time with my inferior cards.
Yes, that's what I meant by this: We are reanalyzing [...] the number of bonus stars given out at the start of the season.
We think it's a reasonable direction to explore in, but in general it's hard to predict the results on the population distribution among the ranks. Hoping to do some simulation there and make sure there aren't other, better options, too.
Is this really that bad considering legend has its own internal ranking system?
Yes, I think so. Imagine just one bucket and we sort by MMR. There aren't breakpoints with rewards as you increase in skill. There isn't an obvious way to communicate with others about how good you are. It's also difficult to know if you are bad or good. (Is Legend 135003 good? What about Legend 27809?)
The way we communicate our skill or progress is important. Ever heard a friend say "dude! I got to rank 5 this month!"? What is that achievement in a world where everyone is in the same bucket? Watching discreet rank buckets go by (and feeling that progression) and feeling the thrill of reaching a new rank that you've never hit before... those are pretty important, I think.
Oh, absolutely. I like the idea of tiers, and if they're changing the laddering system anyway there's no reason not to change the rewards as well to coinside with the new ladder. I think I'd be a little sad to see the rewards disappear entirely, but it would be nice to have achievements. I suppose it would all depend on how it gets implemented.
I think a system that limits how much progress you can make in a day would be good. E.g. at the start of each day your rank snaps back to the highest achieved point. Or you have a limit of 3 losses per day in ranked mode, and when you hit that you go back to playing casual.
I'm afraid they are going to over correct. As a f2p player, I've hit legend once and feel pretty awesome about the achievement. I don't want to start seeing everyone with that card back
Ladder is what it is because of the pool of cards. Every single time they gives us a new set of cards, we just get one new deck/playstyle, while for the rest is just a refreshment. Freeze Mage, zoo, Ctrl Warrior, Miracle Rogue, etc are archetypes from 2014, and they are still "a thing" in this meta.
I'm not saying that archetypes should die, but I'm just pointing out that with 100 new cards (which includes 50 trash/non-playable cards) it is kinda obvious that the best thing one can do is only to tweak a good and well optimized old deck.
One possibility is to give a huge new set of cards. As far as I've seen in HS, 160 new cards aren't enough to make a real difference. Another solution could be a new hero power for each class. That would be revolutionary, and it obviously will give tons of new archetypes.
People would just auto concede if they have an unfavorable match up, and further encourage short games with agro decks.
Everyone telling that the ladder system is not good but noone telling any solutions. I am more interested in how exactly they could make another ladder system because if they go for the average wins/losses including games played, the ladder system right now is kinda like this system. People with a higher win percentage are on the upper half while people with higher ranks that don't play much or that are actually on lower win percentages are downside. The only thing they could do is to add the global "number" on top of the rank but then again these numbers would be way too high. Anyone any ideas?
I agree with Ben in the fact that ladder is a dumb System and it shouldnt be something to stress about in whole. but the ladder system would be alot better if we Actually got more cards in a less of a time span then having to wait over 4-6 months for a new set of cards ( also in terms of balance would be nice)
I think they will be force to do that ultimately. It's getting worse and worse from season to season. I would want to try some interesting decks, but everything needs to be contructed around retarded shaman that is 80% of ladder.
Not losing ranks? That's just nonsense. With that system everyone would reach legend eventually. Even a player with, for exemple, 5% winrate would hit legend if he played a lot.
That would totally nullify the purpose of the ladder, the game would only be competitive at legend ranks, the road till rank 1 would be exactly the same as casual mode!
- Oh, I don't like my opponent's deck *concedes*
- Oh, My opp is playing shaman *concedes*
- Oh, my opp didn't greet me back *concedes*
- Oh, my name is Reynad and I'm super salty today *concedes*
A good ranking system has to have rewards and penalties, otherwise it would be pointless.
The ladder isn't perfect, but I think any flaws in a ladder system is only amplified to the level of frustration once the "major set" dominate class/deck meta is established.
I had no problem grinding ladder when Old Gods was new and Standard was introduced. I made it to rank 5 playing a lot of fun decks and Hearthstone was fresh again. Now, I am rank 11 and have no desire to queue into BrokeBack Shaman or Maly Druid to gain ranks. The same thing happened when secret paladin dominated ladder for *6 months*, or when patron warrior made you want to uninstall the game (even if a lot of player misplayed it), or facing Undertaker hunter 7 games in a row and getting pounded into oblivion.
Point is, focusing on scoring, or rewards, or win streaks should be *secondary* to focusing on how to not let the meta get to the point where is it so utterly dominated by a class/deck.
They are just about to release something similar for starcraft 2 - different ladder rank per race played. Seems like a perfect idea for Hearthstone, different ladder ranking per class played, that would encourage people to play different decks if the rewards/incentives are properly setup. If the incentives aren't done per class this might just further pigeon hole people into only playing 1 class per season because you'd have to start fresh with every class.
No time to grind for legend is just an excuse. I know many people who has job(some has kid), but still hit legend multiple times.
If you have decent win rate, you can hit legend under 200 games. If you don't have time for 200 games a month, maybe legend is not for you.
My suggestion is don't grind ladder if you can't enjoy it, not worth the time.
this.
if we could lose stars, but not ranks, ladder would feel more fun and compelling, because there's less to lose: in the worst case, you just stall at your rank, up and down in internal stars.
Increasing the number of internal stars by 1 per rank would also help balancing out such a system where you can lose stars but not ranks (so that it's a bit harder to get past each rank).
ofc, I don't have statistics, but as a semi-casual player I know I'd enjoy such a system, and I'd play much more ladder that way, without the fear of having to go all the way back because I screwed a few matches.
It's even easier now that they introduce the Hero Brawl for competitive players. Ladder could stay in the middle of that and casual.
I like this idea very much. Ok, I do not know if this would really work, but let Blizzard's simulator-thingy figure this out.
What about this idea plus this: on every rank there is a special rule. No Sylvanas on rank 10 to 12, or no Shaman on rank x. You get the idea. This would nourish more diversity of decks, or think of it as mini-metas per rank (or rank-range). Of course this would change every month (at least).