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.
You mean league of legends where you spent 3 hours playing great only to have everything ruined by a couple trolls on your team in 20 minutes?
Ranked does not feel rewarding at all.
Entire game doesn't.
But many players enjoy tho, what's wrong with me ?
Let me tell your:
Previous season I've spent considerable time and got R5.
I didn't have enough dust for complete top tire deck, I maybe don't have enough experience and time to get legend tho.
Did I have fun ? Well it was 50/50, because time to time I was facing opponents who's deck value was simply higher then mine and they also had good curve, so, couldn't do much against that. Also some Yogg Sarons and Tuskar summons did bad job against my satisfaction.
What are the rewards ?
In the start of this season I got all my efforts converted in 505 dust value.
Well, as average pack brings you at least ~50 dust (considering some gold drops and so) it can be compared to 10 packs right.
And 10 packs it is somewhat around 20$
So in the game where grind2win and pay2win aspects are quite strong I've spend 25-30 hours with 50/50 satisfaction to reach, what they say top 2% ? And I've got rewarded with ingame currency equal to 20$. It is 1-2 cups of coffee, depending on where you order it and what's the coffee...
And how does it feel ? Feels like I bettr pay to improve satisfaction or or get out, since nobody wants me here as F2P player.
And when you consider paying in HS it is not gonna be even 100$+ lifetime, you have to either play each day or spend maybe more than 100$ every new pack expansion if you happened to get bored with grind.
Still will you be consistently rewarded for your skill*(time or money) or will you will face some Yogg Sarons and Tuskars on your way ?
For me it was 50/50. And it does not feel enough.
One may tell me: "Hey want more gambling, random, and money rewards - go poker, want less random and F2P - go Chess!"
And you know what, after spending some considerable time in Hearthsone I am starting thinking about getting serious with Chess more and more. What about you ?
2016: When making a free $20 value for playing a game warrants complaining. What a time to be alive!
Why not do it like starcraft? No latter reset every month. That shit is dumb.
Yes, the game has problems and is far from perfect. But I'm not going to lash out on Mr. Brode here, not this time. I'm glad that the developers are being vocal about the problems they see with their game and sharing their plans on making it better.
I like that they are communicating and I hope the feedback from the community will be fair, productive, constructive and encouraging to lead to a more collaborating behaviour. Here's to Blizzard taking up arms and becoming a lot more proactive with HS development, let's see what they come up with.
as they said about feedback may be lifecoach have said them, as he is helping them, with new expansion and prob new rank system can come out with new expansion like wild format with an old gods
Player once reached Legend should stay at Legend.
Matches in Legend ladder should be Conquest BO3/BO5, possible even with ban.
Season rewards should be paid by wins count in that month.
No monthly MMR reset in Legend ladder.
For non-Legend Ladder Blizzard could copy ladder system from Elder Scrolls: Legends, it feels much better.
Can you pass the salt please?
We need a new mode where players can chose to not to play against certain classes *looking at you Shaman*.
Mr Ben Brode are you unhappy with the Arena mode too? Because you never want to talk about it
i used to reach rank 5 two times and i feel it is stressful with me, i like play fun deck to find happy and relax, with me HS is a game, a good game to relax, not a play where i increase my tiredness after a working day
As someone who's pretty in the middle of the pack as a Hearthstone player, I could definitely see the value in making the ranks feel more meaningful. When I'm playing HS regularly, I'd say I pretty regular get to around rank 10; my best I think is rank 4 or 5, and if I put the time in (and played more consistent, meta-y decks) I probably could hit Legend if I really tried, but it hasn't really been a priority. According to the percentage breakdowns, this is probably putting me in the top 15% or so of players, but yeah, being at level 12 or 11 right now definitely doesn't feel like much of a feat.
He forget to mention how the Shaman "nerf" was almost as stupid of a change as it was adding Purify to the worst class in the game?
But I haven't seen any face shaman winning a game since the nerf. That's a great accomplishment
You know nothing Ben Brode.
wtf, I do my dailies and thats about it and get rank 15 like nothing.
Ben Brode should be unhappy about a lot of things. Arena being laughably unbalanced for well over a year is a disgrace and incompetence. To close the massive gap between say Mage and Priest it requires major changes and one that brings excitement as well...
For example Firelands Portal and Flamestrike is probably the 2 most problematic commons while Priest has similar powered cards like Cabal Shadow Priest and Lightbomb which are both epics.
So we have 2 commons for Mage and 2 epics for Priest...Why not merge them all to the rare slot?? It's changes like that which makes a even playing field and makes waves.
What's even the current numbers??? Mage is 30-33% of Arena ladder while Priest is 3-4%?? Those 4 card changes alone would close that gap massively.
Constructed obviously ain't better off...Shaman holds similar numbers... There needs to be more survival options and punishments for over committing on the board.
Basically now it's flood the board with as much as you can and opponent has very limited tools to do anything about it is one of the huge problems in Standard today.
You raise a good point about Standard. A lot of games come down to "whoever uses all their removal first loses"