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!
Nowadays they make ladder changes quite often.
This will be good for new players
It is a change to make new players experience better. If you are constantly legend, you now that wining 25-30 in the beggining of the season is annoying as hell (everyone playing the same decks).
Now new players wont play againts a Razakus Priest in rank 23, they will face it and rank 20.
Please change RNG system, it's unfair BibleThump
I personally like these changes. As a player who can climb the ladder, but chooses not to because the rewards are so low, this might convince me to climb again. I never have had the time to grind legend, but I have hit R5 easily before, but it wasnt worth it at all. It didn't even reset me past R15, and that felt really stupid. Now I will be much more likely to go for R5 again, because the climb from R9 seems pretty small.
ok and with without any reason I can not add friend to friend list now. Somebody with same problem?
You probably have too many friends, try removing some friends that you don't have contact with anymore and then you should be able to add more friends
I have actually around 8 friends is it too much for adding next? I don't think so.
The fact that people are downvoting you is really sad and petty for them.
People often complain about changes coming in too slowly because they don't understand how much effort needs to go into making sure the change has the intended effect. A hasty patch that wasn't tested enough could create way more problems than it fixes. I for one am much happier with occasional forward looking changes than constant patches that each break the game in their own way.
I think it's good Blizzard is doing something with the ladder, but I hope this is just the first step in the journey to improved Ranked. I agree with people calling for a better reward system, and I hope Blizzard is testing a couple of possibilities.
Because it takes you 1 second and two mouse clicks.
I use the HSReplay client almost exclusively for this option.
Ben Brode Explains Why Even "Simple" Solutions Take Time
Well well ben brode let me say that you guys have not clue of is going on with the game. This game is pathetic, the design, the theory, sincerely, you guys have not fix any meta or bug(like in video above) since 2014. GOOD GAME BLIZZARD !. Yea Downvote little kid.
What's that? You took time out of your day to crawl onto a Hearthstone forum and whine about this"pathetic" game? Hard to hear over all the crying you're doing.
The ironic thing is you have to be a little kid to not understand what's involved in your request. You just let everyone know you're too dumb to understand that, good job.
Every month gettin rank 5 for gold epic. So its easyer to get that rank with new update i gues.
I have question. Normally when I decide to stay on rank 15 I have two reasons to do it:
1) Reward doesn't really stimulate me to climb.
2) Grinding even to rank 10 sometimes is very anoying because I have to earn too much star (which means I should play to some stupid tier 1 deck).
So my question is. What is difference now, if I once go to rank 3-4 and than every month climb to it, instead of staying on rank 15 and every month climb to rank 15? This is the most problematic part for me, that actually right now lower rank will be the same as higher rank. Of course on rank 15 maybe people has less cards, but this is not really true. I play constantly vs same tier 1 decks as on rank 5. Even on rank 5 I think that people has more cards and sometimes experiment. I am a bit confused how good is this for HS at all.
And even more. I though that 1 of their problem is that actually lower ranks never climb to 15 even. How the hell this is fixing this problem? They will put more imbalanced common cards in order even F2P people to be able to reach higher rank or what?
It fixes a lot, because the players on rank 21 can still face much higher ranked players at the beginning of season. It give them more fitting opponent from the begging and can lead to higher final rank that now. Of course how higher you are then you profit more from the new system.
If I'm correct rank5*** means still something like rank 17 next season, in new system it will be rank 9*** - WOW. It boosts the progress so much, you actually will skip 20-50 games needed to be at the same depends on the winstreak and winrate. Legend to rank4 is even more insane.
But if you are not interested in reward and rank itself neither be faced by top players at your level, the answer is easy - play Casual mode, not ranked, because ranked will be still kind of grind.
Very good and welcome changes.