Ben Brode Explains Why Even "Simple" Solutions Take Time - Ladder Revamp
There have been a few posts out there asking why it took so long to arrive to these "simple" ladder changes that we'll see come March. Ben Brode answers!
- They go through multiple rounds of brainstorming and testing.
- The hardest part isn't always the implementation itself, it can be the testing itself.
- Simulations need to be run to see how things may look after certain amounts of time. "What's the experience like for players at each rank?"
Quote from Ben BrodeThe first phase is coming up with the right solution. Often when you land on the right solution, it feels "obvious". Derek's GDC presentation has some great examples of hard problems that look like they had obvious solutions in hindsight.
We actually went through multiple rounds of brainstorming and testing pitches – everything from completely changing the system, to subtly tweaking it to reach our goals.
Once we have a pitch, we model it. We run a simulation and test what the results will be after 1, 2, 3, 6 months, and a year. Does it spread players out more, to improve matchmaking? How much rank inflation does it cause over time? What's the experience like for players at each rank? We have a team of Data Scientists who try and model player behavior to give us as accurate a picture as we can, to help make the right decision.
Once we have a design we are confident in, then it's ready for implementation. Often during the implementation process we identify edge cases or other snags. For example: We can't line a patch up to launch at midnight in all regions and all platforms on March 1st, so we need to have both ranked play systems live in the client, and build a way to transition between them at the exact right moment. The current design requires a significant change to how players earn their monthly ranked rewards, and we added several warnings and UI call-outs to help reduce the chance players miss out on their card back for March. We had to change the victory screen and the Quest Log screen to accommodate the new flow.
But implementation isn't the biggest factor in a system like this. In this case, it was testing. When we create a new card, it's pretty straightforward to make sure that it works. One tester plays the card in a large variety of weird situations and logs bugs related to it. Our automation engineers force it to be played millions of times and check to make sure the servers don't explode. But a system like this presents a more challenging testing requirement. It involves large numbers of players, normal season resets, feb->march season resets, and coordination between developers, testers, and automation engineers to make sure everyone has the tools they need.
I'm glad people are enjoying the changes – please make sure to give us feedback after you play with it!
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)This isn’t a revamp at all you still play ladder the same way what a joke this is a tiny adjustment if anything. They should give an option to do best of threes or best of fives with a ban for 2 or even 3 stars. then you could actually come up with interesting line ups and strategies and play more types of decks on ladder instead of grinding and running into same terrible match ups you could see more diversity. Ladder is terrible tournaments are the shit and require much more thought when it comes to deck building and ban strategies and teching your decks for a certain strategy. Now this would be a ladder revamp even just to add this as another way to ladder or you could opt for the old terrible way.
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Posted Jan 26, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)Actually this would be nice addition to the ladder imo but lets be honest.. they could not do a simple tournament mode for such a long time so I am kinda hopeless
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)These changes did look a bit odd to me at first, but the more I consider them, the more I like them.
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)New/casual players should face a lot less of experienced players with bigger collection pools. If you are a player normally end up being at Rank 20-17. It will be much easier to win games than before and go to rank 15, especially during early time of the month. But still, you need to WIN (not only play) at least 20 games to get a better monthly reward. I think that is a bit too much for players in rank 20-15.
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)-
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Posted Jan 26, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)Yes you need to win a lot more than before but with the new system I think it's easier to rank up than before since most meta deck will end up in the top 10 ranks every season.
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)it doesnt really matter how long it took to get it, what matters is its coming tbh
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)So new players have to gain 25 stars just to get a common reward and 50 for a rare? I don't think that's a good change. Rewards should have been adjusted I think.
Good that legend players don't fall back so far though.
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)no, as ben brode mentioned it in the video you need 5 ranked wins to get monthly rewards
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)I thought that was just card back (I'm not counting that as a reward as it's cosmetic only)
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)New/casual players should face a lot less of experienced players with much more collection pools. If you are a player normally end up being at Rank 20-17. It will be much easier to win games than before and go to rank 15, especially during early time of the month. But still, you need to WIN (not play) at least 20 games to get a better monthly reward. I think that is a bit too much for players in rank 20-15.
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)While the system change isn't quite Shadowverse levels of good, it seems pretty damn good to me. For those who haven't tried Shadowverse, here's how their system works, and here are some of the pros and cons of it (the info on Master Ranks may be incorrect, I never got that far).
Like in Hearthstone, Shadowverse has rank floors. Say you're in rank C. Once you reach the maximum of your rank, i.e. maximum points (read, Stars) in C3, you face 3 (or is it 4?) trials. If you win 2, you progress to the next rank, in this case B0. Once you've passed those rank promotion trials, you won't derank from there. You can derank between B0, B1, B2, B3, but you are locked within that B rank now. Unlike Hearthstone, the ladder does not reset every month unless you're at Grandmaster rank (in which case you drop to Master Rank and have to climb to Grandmaster again). Once you've broken through the trials to a given rank, you stay at that rank forever, even if you take a 6 month break (like me).
The benefit of this system is that new players or players with small collections will NEVER play an experienced player with a large collection unless that player creates a smurf account. If you're playing at D rank, you're playing against people who are just as green as you are, since the more experienced players have long filtered through to higher ranks...unless they just don't play ranked and they build their collection and experience through the Arena. In that case, they'll storm through the ladder very fast and you'll never see them again. The downside of the system is that if you happen to brew yourself a pretty good deck and you climb high with it, you may find yourself forever locked in a region of the ladder where your other homebrews can't get a word in and you have to either play a really good deck and play it well or you'll just be the local punching bag. There is no falling down from there to a rank where you'd be more comfortable. Once you've beaten your way through the ladder to a given rank, that's where you're at. This brings an additional problem of taking a break. If you don't play the game for a while and your collection starts severely lagging behind, your return could be a painful one if the decks you used to play are no longer successful. Thankfully Shadowverse is very generous and you get TONS of free gold and packs constantly to allow you to catch up, but it can be a problem regardless. If you take a break in this new Hearthstone ladder system, you'll gradually demote to a rank where you can get by with an outdated collection and probably still do fine thanks to being more experienced.
TLDL: I like it. No more climbing from rank 17 every darn month on my way to rank 5 and occasionally stumbling into Legend players at rank 16 or so. The system also makes taking breaks easier, since you won't be hitting a wall at 20 the moment you get back. Most of the frequent and experienced players will be at single digit ranks forever so you never have to face them and their thick, throbbing decks.
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)Ok things take time.. but 2 years to implement such a simple thing? that's really not acceptable, changes are way too calculated when they come to simple stuff or stuff that could be changed all the time, but when you need to make a card like Corridor Creeper "lol, this card is fine". was probably as tested as commented on by the community (not much).
It's a fact other games like league of legends implemented massive changes to ranked every year (in the past, now the system is quite stable for them so they keep it as is) but a small and simple change to a star system that is only lose/win rather than having other parameters and is monthly rather than yearly is waaaaaaay too complicated.
Team 5 should stop overthinking simple matters and start having better tester teams that aren't lazy.
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)Im waiting for corridor creeper nerf cuz i have 1 golden and 3 normal copies
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)Dude, do you live on Earth? PTR spoils the game.
In WoW, players spoils themself the game by playing on PTR servers. They know exatcly what dialogue is supposed to happen months before the content get released.
Now take Hearthstone: the meta gets solved 2 weeks after being launched. do you really wanna solve the meta even before launch?
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)As someone who participates in every PTR that any of the games i play that have one i can tell you that the majority of the player base never uses them. Can you imagine telling the Hearthstone community that they have to develop ANOTHER card collection?? that wont go over well. And if you decided to maybe make all cards playable on the PTR then why would any player with an incomplete collection ever play live?? PTR isnt an easy thing to manage, thats why alot of games dont have them and the ones that do they arent very good
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)-
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)-
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Posted Jan 25, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)Who care how they will reset progress of PTR and etc. They can just give you account with all cards for testing. You are right, that decks will come before launch, but they will have abbility to tune up/down all imbalanced card before they release and on release day, we will have much more rich decks variaty. It is worth of sacraficing first 2 weeks of launch. The problem is that PTR should be live 2-3 months before release, which maybe for game as hearthstone is too early, to spoile next expansion. Actually we will know 1 expansion in advance almost what will happen. And how you know half of the hearthstone hype is based on the releasing of the cards and etc etc. What is the best solution is more constant nerfs. Right now we have PTR on the real server and after 2-3 months of testing they fix new expansion content, which is not really a good idea.
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Posted Jan 26, 2018 (Kobolds Patch)