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.
TES Legends appears to be having a positive effect on HS and is making them up their ante. Thank god for this competition!
Then do it as an alternative to ladder. A third option that has some "ranked" aspects for semi-casual players which need some form of progress (like me). ... and leave ladder to the hardcore competitive players.
This is a great idea. In this case, there will be more incentive to play in the ladder.
Exactly, this is good thing Blizz can take from TES:Legends. I have started to play TES this month too, and achieving rank 5 was really easy since I collected quite decent decklist. But on rank 5 lots of good opponents appeared too. And now I'm playing few days on rank 4 and it is very interesting, as most of players are good and decks are strong. I see that I need to make real progress on tuning deck and improve my play skill even to pass this rank. But I read that lots of players are taking rank 1 all 3 seasons but still didn't achieved legend yet, so it is not so easy even without ranks loose.
But anyway playing this game is really competitive and exciting :)
Well said! Blizz should hire you... ;)
Another thing that bothers me is that in order to progress on the ladder system, it has to be consecutive wins. I've been stuck within one rank so many times (rank 18 comes to mind) because I couldnt get consecutive wins but I am actually staying within the same star area. This is incredibly frustrating.
If you actually stay stuck there, that means you have about a 50% win rate, which unfortunately means that you're right at the rank you're good enough to get to (at least that's what the ladder system tells us)
Yeah, I see what you mean. But on the flipside why should anyone be rewarded for 'happenstance' consecutive wins?
All tournaments are played thorough conquer matchups, why not have have it like that. We can have best of three games( basically 2 wins with 2 decks) this way we can also increase the no.of stars given for each match and also a 1 class banning mechanic will also allow players to avoid shitamans. I really think its doable and for new players the 25-20 ranks can be left as the same so that they will still get the minimum rewards before being able to make two playable deck :/
Damn so much hate, anyways having 5-6 tiers such that you drop just one tier at the end of each season is a very fine option with ranking given for the top 2 tiers
Erm, who is Bob Ross ?
Bob Ross was a great artist that had his television show in mostly 80's. He died in 1992.
How u dont know him LUL
They reworked the ranking system in Overwatch too lately, it looks like SC2 now, maybe we'll get something similar.
more rewards for ranking, more rewards for hitting legend..at least give the poor sods a special card back every once in a while
It sucks to get from legend to rank 17 every month just to grind again
In my experience the ranking system has four distinct tiers where your experience of progression feels very different:
This may sound like a simple change, but I am wondering if the re-branding of these tiers might make the feeling of progression more rewarding:
As a side note, I would like to see the ability to ban a class when playing Casual. (Enough with facing Shamans 1 in every 4 games, even in casual...)
Maybe the Heroic ranks you suggested could be some kind of promos?
1) At the start of each season, instead of the bonus stars, everyone should simply lose 5 levels.
2) If you want players to better understand the value of their rank show it visually (with a graph) instead of numerically. For example seeing a bell curve with 77% highlighted would feel much better than being "a top 23% player"