Blizzard Should Change the Current Ranked Ladder System
by JR Cook - 9 years ago show comments
One of the most controversial aspects of Hearthstone is the current ladder system for ranked play. New players start at rank 25, and earn one star for each win (and a bonus star if you achieve a three or more game winning streak up to rank 5). Once a five star rank 1 player earns his or her next win, the player achieves legend rank, and subsequently a hidden MMR is used to calculate one’s rank based on wins and losses. A ranked play season lasts for one month. At the end of each season, Blizzard awards world championship points based on what rank legend players finish the season.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, I want to highlight my biggest gripe with the current system. Since most people reading this probably do not play Hearthstone for a living, I am going to focus on the ladder from a slightly more casual perspective. I’m not breaking any new ground here, but the ladder rewards quantity of games played as much as, if not more than, win percentage. This skews the meta towards a higher prevalence of faster paced decks, at least in the early parts of the season. It takes a very large number of wins, even at an above average win percentage, to earn enough stars to reach legend rank. What follows is a common scenario encountered on the ladder. If I am piloting control warrior and play two long games against a dragon priest and handlock and win, that feels pretty rewarding. But those two matches might have been 24 minutes long, and if I lose to an aggro paladin by turn 6 in the next game, I have netted one star in 30 minutes, and haven’t progressed very far. However, in that same 30 minute span, I could have played six games as face hunter, went 4-2, and progressed anywhere between 2 and 4 stars, depending on if there was a win streak involved. Both times I won the same percentage of games, but in the latter scenario, I progressed much further. When the design of the ranked play system dictates a preference towards a certain play style, that design is flawed.
My favorite story that underscores this design flaw was told to me by one of my friends who had just started playing the game. At this point in his Hearthstone career, he was still very inexperienced, and every win was a valuable treasure. He was watching a well-known streamer play warlock zoo on the ladder, since he had the cards for a pretty similar deck. The streamer is about rank 5, and mulligans into a Flame Imp, Voidwalker, and Dire Wolf Alpha – not a bad hand. She drops the Flame Imp on turn 1, and passes. Her opponent coins, Innervates, and plays a Keeper of the Grove, killing the Flame Imp. The streamer looks at her hand for a couple of seconds, and concedes. Concedes! On turn 2! My friend was blown away. But based on the structure of the current ladder system, this was probably the correct play. The keeper probably would have traded 3 for 1 against her early minions, and though there was a chance she could slog her way back into the game through hero powering, her opponent had a big lead on board, and it would take too much time to fight for the chance to maybe win the game. So it made more sense to click concede and live to fight another day. A system where purposefully conceding on turn 2 is the smart play is not a system I want to play in.
The correct response to all of this whining constructive criticism is, well Josh, what is your magical fix for ranked play? People much smarter than me have attempted to tackle this issue. Some people like the ladder mostly as it is, and might just make minor tweaks, such as giving bonus stars through all ranks, or adding another cut off around rank 5 where a player couldn’t fall below. On the opposite end, people have called for a complete overhaul, like something akin to the league system of Starcraft. I think the most simple and elegant idea is to increase the length of the season to somewhere in the two month range. That duration would allow for the Average Joe’s of the world, with a full time school/career/family/oh-man-the-baby-just-woke-up-and-is-crying-in-the-middle-of-my-ranked-game workload to have a chance to hit legend rank, if he or she is an actually skilled player who puts some commitment into joining the highest echelon of Hearthstone.
I imagine the most common response to this proposed system would be “Aren’t you ignoring the fact that the same highly skilled legend players are finishing at the top of the ladder each month, so the ladder is doing its job?” And I would agree that the same players are consistently finished highly ranked on the ladder, and it should not be a walk in the park to hit legend. But even the current system has its flaws for the Firebat’s and Lifecoach’s of the world. Should the last few days of the season (and the rat race that accompanies it as legend rank players actually start trying to get into the top 20) matter more than the multiple weeks that player has already been at legend? Why should it only matter if you hit legend rank 1 on the very last minute of the very last hour of the very last day of the season? To go along with a 2 month season, I would implement what I am going to call “checkpoints”. One week into the season, at X o’clock, Blizzard would take a snapshot of the current legend ladder, and award world championship points. This would reward the Xixo’s of the world, and add some incentive for more of the best players to hit legend early. There would be another checkpoint two weeks later, a third two weeks after that, and a final one at the end of the two months. With the addition of multiple checkpoints, keeping your rank high throughout the entire season would matter more. You could also add more tiers of world championship ladder points, with maybe 10 person tiers from ranks 20-100, so it matters that one finished 51st instead of 99th. This would also emphasize ladder play more for BlizzCon than tournament wins. It always confused me that a player could win a relatively small number of matches and take home twice as many WCS points as someone who finished first over an entire month’s worth of play.
Maybe you agree with me; more likely, you vehemently disagree with me. Whichever the case, if you feel the ranked ladder system needs to be changed, NOW is the time to speak up. Qualification for the world championships has concluded, and the only reasonable time Blizzard could change the ranked ladder system is in this lull between qualification for the WCS and the announcement of next year’s WCS points system. It is highly unlikely (and probably unfair) for Blizzard to announce a qualification system for BlizzCon, and then change it mid-year because they revamped the ranked play system. While the addition of the new ranked play rewards suggests Blizzard isn’t looking to change the system in the near future, you never know what might be in the works.
Do you think the ranked play system needs revamping? If so, do you have a brilliant idea? Post your thoughts below!
I like your ideas. I have given Legendary Ranking no thought at all, so it was interesting to learn how that level of play works. I tried to hit legend in the first few months after Beta, but quickly gave up that dream because I simply do not have the time to play that many games in a month. So made different goals for myself, completing the Single Player Heroics (check), getting Golden Portraits (1/9 so far!), re-rolling for 60g quests for extra gold, and playing Arena whenever I have 150g.
For the rest of us, slogging through the ranks, I was thinking something along the lines of what you stated, about increasing the threshold to every 5 ranks. At the end of the season, Legendary players would drop down to Rank 5. 1-5 would drop to Rank 10, 6-10 would drop to 15, etc. This would eventually allow decay down to Rank 25 after months of not playing but the beginning of the season would be less crazy and inexperienced players would not keep getting crushed by higher skilled players that are battling their way back up the ladder.
I know that Legendary players are back up into the single digits with hours of a new season beginning, but they are doing that climbing by stepping on the heads of the little guys. And really, what is the point of making pro players destroy new/casual players at the beginning of each month? The same players end up on top anyway and have hours and hours worth of time to play, so forcing them to climb up the lower ranks every month is like making the rest of us pass the tutorial every month before we can start playing the game again! 😛
I don’t think you can solve the efficiency of aggro decks with ranking system changes, unfortunately. The best you can do is make the ladder feel like less of a grind. Longer seasons could work here, but they have their own issues in terms of immediacy which could cause the ladder overall to become a lot more stale. If we’d just lower the decay rate of stars I think things’d be a lot more manageable for everyone.
I agree that the champion ship points should probably be awarded differently though. Maybe some sort of average MMR over the month instead of a set point in time (creating more set points would just create more “race” moments)?
This isn’t a real solution to the aggro issue or for full time Joe in fact you made it much much worse. Now you have to clutch legend and grind last minute every 2 weeks instead of once and month the only thing you have done is remove the monthly decay which doesn’t compensate for having to last minute grind two more times to only have one less rank reset each time.