by JR Cook - 8 years ago     show comments

Last week, we determined that while the current ladder system wasn’t the best for competitive play, it was actually pretty genius as a game system. But what about the serious players? That % of the player base that doesn’t want to be just a casual players, those who strive to be the best?

First of all, a new system shouldn’t undermine the current ladder. You could create a new system and call it Ranked, switch the name to the current Ranked ladder to Casual, and then change the name of the current casual play to practice. But if you do that, why would people want to play the currently successful Ladder? Sure, maybe the chests would be enough incentive, but you are basically telling your players that they aren’t good enough.

Maybe you have to take a page out of Diablo and call the new current system something like “Hardcore” or “Extreme”, something that is telling the people that the new Ranked System is not something they are expected to partake on, but a little extra for those who can’t get enough competition. You can even make it so having the Legend Cardback is a requirement to enter this “Hardcore Mode”.

But what would this “Hardcore Mode” be? Well, for starters it needs to be based on a Matchmaking Rating (MMR). MMR decay should be highly tested and calibrated to a point where it feels satisfactory. The new Automated Tournament feature that was introduced to Starcraft with Legacy of the Void is something that I’d love to see included on Hearthstone. The Monthly Reset is something I feel is not really interesting for players at this level, maybe there’s an alternative we can use to lessen the grind, and allow players to spend all of their time refining their competitive decks.

The key here is transparency, you are designing a system that is made for those players who are at the top of the game. There’s no need to hide information because it will be too complex and will scare new players. Those who are trying to make a living out of this game deserve to know exactly how the system works, so I’m a firm believer that in such a system, your actual MMR should be public.

We have gone over the basic concepts that would make the basis for a truly competitive playing experience. But what about the fine details? Lets give it a try!

MMR divisions

Lots of games divide their players in tier or ranks, most of them have Hidden MMR and some sort of promotion system. I’m not opposed to stuff like that, in fact it feels a bit more intuitive. If you tell a friend that you are Grandmaster rank in Hearthstone they know you are good at it, if you tell him you have 5000 MMR they probably won’t understand one bit. While separating players in Leagues can add some flavor to the system, I’d still insist of keeping the actual MMR numbers available to the public. This is not a system meant for the casual player, that’s the whole idea of keeping the current ladder and adding this “Hardcore Mode” as something extra.

MMR decay

MMR decay is absolutely needed in some fashion, what if you hit a 20 game winning streak against quality opposition? Maybe you just drew like a god, or queued into favorable match-ups over and over. In any case, a player with such an streak could choose to sit and allow that streak to keep his ranking high. MMR decay is needed so people can’t sit on lucky streaks, and they are forced to keep competing.

Now the question is, how much should MMR decay, and how long would you have to wait until it starts decaying? As I mentioned earlier, transparency is key, and this information should be available to the public. I believe your MMR shouldn’t decay as long as you’ve played “X” games during the last “Y” days. Now, finding the correct values for “X” and “Y” is a bit harder, but I’m sure we can come up with reasonable numbers.

Handling Luck

We all know that Hearthstone has a certain degree of luck involved, but how does this affect a ranking system? I mean in Hearthstone you can easily lose to a lesser opponent if you end up in an incorrect matchup, or if the draws aren’t favoring you. Generally, losing to a lesser opponent will hit your MMR harder than a loss against somebody of your skill level. But can players be hurt by this variance? Can players consistently get bad luck against lesser opponents, so their losses drag them down more? Or do players have enough games so it ends up evening up in the long run? This is something that needs to be researched, and maybe the MMR formulas should be adjusted accordingly.

All about the Win Rate

For a game such as Hearthstone, I’m inclined to thing that Win Rate is the most important statistic of them all. I mean, with the wild variance of Hearthstone is not so much about who you beat in ladder, but how consistent you are.  If you have a League Based system where you are consistently matched up against people of your own skill level, your win% is probably the most important stat that will reflect how good you are. Maybe instead of a traditional MMR system, Hearthstone could measure 3 different values: Last Season’s Win Rate, Current Season Win Rate, Last “X” games Win Rate. Maybe if you weigh down those three properly, could come up with an alternative MMR, that would be better suited to the game of Hearthstone.

Player Pool

The one thing you really have to consider when introducing a different matchmaking and ranking system, is the game queue time. Sure, we could craft a system that is perfect for competition, but its no fun if you have to wait 15 minutes for the game to find you a suitable opponent. Whatever your suggestion is for a new system, keep in mind that you still need to make sure that players are able to queue into games and not have to wait forever.

Well, it looks like crafting a new Ranked system is more complicated than it looks like. Next week we will look at how a new system would fit in the Hearthstone World Championship Tour 2015, and how points would be scored. Also, tournament modes! Stay tuned to BlizzPro to see what we can come up with! Also, leave any suggestions for a new ranked system using the comment section below.