Hearthstone Competitive Ladder – Theorycrafting A New, Improved Ranked Format

From this month on, ladder resets will work differently. Instead of getting back the stars equal to how many ranks you’ve climbed, you’ll lose static 4 ranks every month. On top of that, every rank will now have 5 stars to counter the rank inflation the changes would cause on the lower ranks.

And this is something I really agree with. It addressed two major ladder problems – monthly Legend grind and new players not having enough “room” for themselves (because getting from R25 to R20 was way too quick). At the same time, I feel just a little bit disappointed, because I expected more. A bigger ladder rework that would incorporate some major changes to not how it resets, but how it works.

On the one hand, I understand why they didn’t change a lot. The current system works and most importantly, it’s simple. Simplicity is one of the main selling points of Hearthstone. Introducing a complicated ladder system might not only increase ladder anxiety (fear to play the ranked matches, commonly seen across multiple competitive online games), but also be seriously confusing for new players (and no, this time it’s not a meme). On the other hand, there is also this more competitive crowd. Players who expect something more from the ladder system. And those players will be the main focus of this idea.

Is The Current System Bad?

That’s the thing. If we look at the majority of the playerbase, all the low ranked, casual, often mobile-only users, the current system works just fine. It’s clear and simple, but most importantly gaining stars, which are visual representation of your accomplishment, just feels better than gaining some points. When you grind from 0 stars to 3 stars at some rank, everything is clear. But if you jump from 1184 to 1196 MMR, it might be harder to put everything in perspective – how much have you actually progressed?

However, that simplification also comes at a price. Since the current system is based on full stars, it’s impossible to make some small adjustments. For example, if they would want to speed up the whole progress a bit, they can’t simply make people earn 1.1 stars (they can reduce/increase the amount of stars on each rank, but it’s still somehow limited). If the system was MMR-based, it would be possible to tune it up from let’s say 10 to 11. Since you can’t realistically split stars, bonuses are also hard to give. You can either give nothing or give a full star, like for win streaks.

The system is good at visually representing your progress, but it’s also inaccurate. A lot of players don’t realize that, but behind the ranks and stars, MMR system also exists. It’s just ignored until you hit Legend. And you can notice that it indeed exists when doing exactly that. For example, two players can win their last game before Legend at exactly the same moment. One will get placed at Rank 500 and the other one at Rank 2,000. Why? Because the first player was having a much better climb. Maybe he had, for example, a 70% win rate, while the second could have 55%. However, if both of them are still at Rank 1, the game sees them as equals, even though one of them clearly has a higher MMR than the other. Which means that matchmaking based on ranks more often than not does not match players of an equal skill.

And so, after thinking for a while, I came up with an idea. Instead of reworking the current ladder system, which works just fine for majority of the players, why not make a separate ladder for the players who would actually like to play something more… competitive?

Competitive Ladder

Yes, competitive ladder. “But Stone, isn’t the ranked ladder supposed to be THE competitive mode?” Why yes, it’s supposed to be that, but it just isn’t working well enough. Blizzard is, for good reason, afraid to make big changes to the ranked ladder, because the majority of players on that ladder are NOT really competitive.

That’s why making a separate ladder, a new format, would be the best idea to solve that issue. Casual players would stay away from it, so it wouldn’t bother them. To discourage new players from playing it (because it would seriously be more difficult to understand at first), there could be some kind of requirement – for example, only players who have hit Rank 10 in the past can try themselves on the competitive ladder.

Competitive Ladder would look completely different than the current ranked format. It could be closer to the “tournament mode” people have been asking for a while. I will list the differences below, but remember that those are just examples. The main advantage of making a new, competitive format would be the ability to experiment. They could change a lot of things they just can’t mess around with on the regular ladder. And all of that to make a better experience for the more demanding players.

The only real issue I see with competitive ladder is splitting up the player base even more, but I don’t think it would be that big of a problem. Even though this format would appeal only to a small percent of the players, Hearthstone has more than enough players to support it.

Best Of Three Instead Of Single Games

This would be one of the advantages of introducing the competitive ladder. You could NOT do something like this on the regular one, because it would, to put it bluntly, piss so many people off. Casual players don’t care about Bo3 or any “competitive” system. Heck, a lot of them don’t even have more than one deck they want to play. Forcing them to pick something else and stay there for more than one game at a time would be really bad for the game.

But since we’re talking about a separate ladder, think about it. One of the biggest issues with Hearthstone is randomness. Even if the decks don’t have a lot of random effects, draw RNG is still a very important thing. Playing best of threes instead of just a single game, while not a perfect method, would reduce that RNG greatly. If you increase the sample size, randomness matters much less.

The way I see this is that instead of queueing a single deck, you’d queue a “pack” of three decks (yes, the UI would need to be adjusted to make that possible) – a bit like submitting your decks to the tournament. When you get matched against someone, you get to see their classes, and they get to see yours. Based on that, you pick one of the decks and get matched against the deck they picked.

Then, there are two ways to approach it. Either after you win with a deck, it’s no longer available and you have to pick something else, or after you win with a deck, you’re locked into that deck for the next round (so your opponent has a chance to counter-pick). I think that both systems have their merits, but details like that could be adjusted.

Bo3 format would also make players more familiar with the tournament system. Most of the tournaments, especially the early rounds, are best of three for exactly the reasons I’ve stated above – single matches are just too random and aren’t a great showcase of the player’s skill.

One thing I’m not sure about are bans. While yes, they would make the whole experience even more competitive, they might just not translate too well into the ladder. There is an upside and a downside – you could ban the deck you hate to play against to make your experience more fun, or ban a problematic deck before the nerfs are rolled out. At the same time, people could ban your favorite deck all the time, so you might have less fun playing. Some of the decks would be “removed” from the meta through bans, which would make the meta less diverse. Basically, I can see both sides of the argument.

New Ranking System

The current system – gaining stars for wins – is just not competitive. It doesn’t really tell a lot, it completely ignores the MMR etc. It looks nice, but that’s basically all.

What I would rather see is rating based on MMR. Of course, they would also need to put things into perspective. Just displaying a number, or your position on the ladder, wouldn’t really tell much and the system would be too… crude. That’s why players should also be placed in different Leagues, Divisions etc. (or however they would want to call it) It would serve as a visual representation of how high you are, but at the same time, you’d still see your exact MMR and your placement would be based exactly on that. Nothing should be hidden.

Instead of winning and losing stars, you’d win and lose MMR. Not a static number like 10 per win or loss – it would be adjusted based on a few variables (I talk about it below). After getting to a certain threshold, you advance into another “division”. Those could be based on percentage of players, like they are in Starcraft II. For example, if you’re in the bottom 10% of the players, you would be in the lowest division, then if you get enough MMR to put you in the 89^th percentile, you move to the next one. Top 1-3% of the ladder (depending on how broad they’d want to make it) would be the highest tier, like the Starcraft’s Master League, which would more or less correspond with the current Legend, but better. Then, at the very top, best let’s say 200 players would form a Grand Master League. Those players would, on top of the regular prizes, be rewarded with more HCT points at the end of the season (Master League should also get some, but not as much).

MMR Bonuses / Penalties

One of the main advantages of the MMR system over the stars system is that you don’t have to give out static MMR for every match. There are some ways to take advantage of that.

For example, the lower you are, the higher your MMR swings should be. It’s a bit like a win streak bonus in a way that players who have started later can catch up with the players who are on the top already easier. On the other hand, players who are near the top shouldn’t get or lose that much MMR, so the ladder wouldn’t be as swingy. You’d have a nice bonus early, but then once you get higher, you should have to work your way to the top slowly. At the bottom of the ladder you could gain/lose 40 MMR each match (of course taking other variables into account too), but then near the top it would be let’s say a few MMR points per match.

Another way to utilize penalties would be to give out some slight bonus MMR for being an “underdog”. Matchup RNG is a thing people don’t often discuss, but it really matters. Your line-up could be completely countered by someone’s else’s lineup just because you’ve rolled that player instead of someone else. Of course, I’m not saying that people with bad matchups should get twice as much MMR. Getting a good line-up is one of the skills you’d have to master when playing such format, but at the same time, matchup RNG could still needlessly punish you. I’m thinking about 5-10% difference. But how could the game tell which line-up is worse against which? Well… with the amount of data the game has on the matchups, I don’t think that it would be that difficult.

Another thing to consider would be giving out some bonus points for the game length. Why? First of all, to not punish people for playing really slow decks. That’s, in my opinion, a pretty big issue on the regular ladder. And then, people playing an hour long series deserve to get a bit more than those who have played a 15 minutes series. Once again, the bonus wouldn’t be big. It’s not like you’d get a double amount of points for double the amount of turns, so it wouldn’t actually be a good idea to try to play the longer game. People who play Control decks would just have a slightly easier climb than they have right now, but fast decks would still be most efficient.

And obviously a lot more. That’s the beauty of this system – it could be adjusted very easily. For example, if they didn’t like people getting to higher ranks quickly, they could reduce the amount of MMR gained in lower ranks. Or vice versa – if they felt like the progress is too slow, they could increase it.

Season Resets / MMR Decay

I have to say that this one thing got much better on the current ranked ladder. Going back by 4 ranks instead of Legend players getting back all the way to R16 is a great change. However, those four ranks are still basically pointless from the competitive point of view.

Competitive Ladder should also have some kind of reset. Maybe not necessarily monthly, and of course not necessarily a FULL reset, but players should definitely get rolled back by a bit from time to time. The reason for that is to make things more fair for newcomers. Sure, high ranked players would get less MMR per game, but they would still be, for example, 2 months ahead of someone who just started playing on the competitive ladder. With a slight reset, top players would get rolled back closer to the middle of the pack.

However, I feel like seasons should be longer than a month. This kind of MMR system works best over a longer period of time. You need to give players enough time to grind to their “true” MMR. I feel like two or three months should be fine.

Another thing is MMR decay, which also should happen. There should be a minimum amount of games you need to play weekly, and if you don’t meet that requirement, your MMR starts to go down. This would prevent the current ladder problem – hitting a lucky win streak and camping the rank.

Meaningful Rewards

To be completely honest, this should also apply to the normal ladder. Right now, there isn’t really a lot of incentive to grind. First time Legend gives you a card back (which a lot of people don’t care about anyway), and while the monthly chests are nice, once you get to R5, anything past that doesn’t really matter that much. Even then, only getting to R5 is really meaningful (as it awards you with a Golden Epic). The difference between, for example, R15 Chest (155 Dust) and R7 Chest (220 Dust) is very small, even though climbing through all those ranks is very difficult for majority of the playerbase. As for the normal ladder, I’d like to see some bigger monthly rewards, which scale well all the way to Legend. I mean, come on, R5 to Legend is the hardest part of the whole grind and you don’t really get anything special for it.

At the same time, competitive ladder should have even better rewards. Since the seasons would (probably) be longer, the rewards should scale up. Getting a better chest, with higher rarity cards, (like guaranteed Golden Legendary for getting into Master League) would be great, but cards aren’t everything… Most of the competitive players already have a big enough collection and more Dust, while always welcome, is not always a fun reward.

What I’d like to see instead is some sort of unique cosmetics, probably other than a card back. There is so much to discover in the cosmetic department, so much untapped potential. They could ship stuff like new Hero or Hero Power borders, small knick-knacks you could put on your side of the board (I mean, in the area with all the other decorations), maybe even alternative skins for some staple cards?

And of course, one of the main advantages of introducing this kind of ladder would be the Hearthstone Championship Tour, or World Championship to be specific. In order to qualify, players need to get a lot of HCT points, and this would be a better way to give those out than the regular ladder. Less RNG, more time to compete, no lucky streak & rank camping etc.

Closing

No matter if it’s Competitive Ladder, Tournament Mode or something completely different, I would just love to see a new format, format appeals mostly to the players who want to face a new challenge.

Of course, introducing this kind of thing would require a lot of resources. A completely new UI, a lot of testing to find the right balance in the system, then even more time to adjust the MMR gains and loses after players come in, probably some more time to create the meaningful rewards I was talking about.

And that might also be the reason why we will never see it. Those kind of things appeal only to a small percent of the playerbase. Remember that majority of the players never get to the higher ranks, play casually, and simply don’t care about features like that. HS dev team would have to invest a lot, but the gain just might not be big enough.

What do you think about this kind of system? Would you like to see it? Or maybe there are other competitive formats you’d see instead?

Be sure to let me know, and until next time!