Opinion: The Case for Tournament Mode

Story Time

It’s a Sunday morning. I wake up to my phone blasting my morning alarm and climb groggily out of bed. 7:00 AM is too early to be awake. I turn on my PC and head to the bathroom to shower and brush my teeth. After the bathroom routine is finished, I make a cup of coffee and sit down at my computer. Logging on to Battlefy, I check into the open cup I registered for last night. Only 2 more points and I will have secured my spot for America’s HCT Preliminary tournament. Unfortunately, I have the graveyard shift at work tonight and can’t grind the legend ladder and since I’m sitting around rank 3,500 legend on the last day, it’s unlikely I grind to top 100 (which was the threshold for extra points at the time), let alone hold any spot I grind up to.

The open cup fires and it starts smoothly with me taking the first round in very convincing fashion. My lineup is solid and I have practiced all of the decks a ton on ladder so I feel like my chances are good of making top 8 of the cup. It’s a 9 round total event (due to the amount of players presumably grinding for the last points of the season like me), which means a solid time sink for my day, but I’m not worried. The next four rounds pass by without a hitch, with me going 3-1, 3-2, 3-0, and 3-2. The 6th round starts and I am up against someone who’s name I do not recognize. The first four games go by smoothly, with us trading games each time. It comes down to the fifth and final game, me fighting for my top 8 berth with Zoo versus Combo Druid (a good matchup for me).

The game runs smoothly, my deck operating like a well-oiled machine. One-drop, into two-drop, into 3-drop, into Defender of Argus, into Doomguard. He draws his card for his fifth turn and then nothing happens. The turn seems to take ages as I can almost taste the much-needed second HCT point that I’ll get for top 8-ing the event. A message suddenly pops up: Your Opponent Left. I throw my hands in the air and let out a cheer. My turn comes and I input an action and his face-plate shatters. I jump up and call my best friend to tell him I made prelims and he’s really happy for me. I sit back down at my computer and open up Battlefy to report the score and see a notification in the chat room, so I check it out. It turns out my opponent claims he disconnected during our match and in my excitement, I forgot to take a screenshot of the victory screen. I have screenshots of all of the other victory/defeat screens, but not one for the 5th game. The admins eventually rule in his favor (as they can’t justify giving me a free win in their eyes and want to remain as fair as possible to all parties) and we are forced to replay the 5th game. This time I am not so lucky as he Innervates out an early Piloted Shredder and picks apart my board until he can land a Dr. Boom and take over the game. Just like that, the tournament was over. I lost out on that much needed point and ended up finishing rank 209 that season.

The Problem

Obviously, this is only one specific example but system abuse like this happens all of the time in open cups and other third party tournaments. This kind of thing even happens in Blizzard-sanctioned events, because the admins are people and try to remain fair to everyone and obviously cannot be right all of the time. This is no fault of their own. As the system exists now, players are responsible to watch out for their own necks as there is no in-client system to track match wins and the competition is extremely cutthroat. A shot at multiple thousands of dollars will make people do crazy things.

The problem here lies within the system. The problem here is that human error plays a big role in Hearthstone tournaments. People are going to cheat and not everyone is going to get caught. For the sake of competitive Hearthstone, we need a better system that not only dissuades (or punishes) cheaters regularly, but also rewards those who work hard to make it in the competitive scene. This article is focused on a few proposals I have for Hearthstone’s development team.

Tournament Mode 

First and foremost, we absolutely need an in-client tournament mode that players can use at their leisure. A player who is looking into getting competitive in Hearthstone should not go to the Hearthstone web-page and find a schedule that redirects them to a third-party website they have never heard of. This experience portrays a sense of laziness from the developers in the players’ eyes as Blizzard acknowledges the need for tournaments, but outsources that problem to other entities instead of taking responsibility for their competitive players.

There are plenty of arguments for a tournament mode, but I will only touch on a few below. I will also be highlighting some important things I believe Blizzard should heavily consider adding and/or changing when they inevitably add the mode.

The Real Question

“Appa, how can you expect them to implement tournament mode into the game without having to rework their entire User Interface?”

There are quite a few ways that Blizzard can efficiently implement a mode for tournaments into their UI without trashing their current system.

For a little background, Ben Brode has addressed a tournament mode before via reddit posts. Here is a recap of one of those discussions. Essentially, Brode puts forth two potential possibilities they have looked at closely for a tournament mode in Hearthstone. One of these is a large bracket, where players can join and play until the conclusion of the tournament or the elimination of that player. The other option is similar to that of the Heroic Tavern Brawl, where players can play in asynchronous events at their leisure.

Personally, I think the two approaches are shortsighted in nature. Here’s the honest truth: Hearthstone is the gold standard for digital card games. This game is the top dog. It is the innovator that other digital card games try to replicate. This does not mean Hearthstone is perfect. In fact, this just shows a lack of innovation in the industry. Hearthstone has changed very little in terms of game features since its release and has focused on polishing its original User Interface and balancing cards as ways of making the game feel fresh. This could be accomplished with some hard work from the programmers and a true commitment to making the game the best version it can be.

I am not a programmer. My programming background comes from taking two entry-level coding classes, so I am by no means an authority on what developing code for a game like Hearthstone entails. What I do know is that the developers get paid to create the best version of the game for a living, which means they should be working tirelessly to achieve that goal. If developing a better system takes a long time, so be it but we need to know that Blizzard is truly working on a better system and really listening to community feedback from people who have legitimate ideas to make the game a better place to foster the competitive scene.

Recently, the game has become a much more hostile environment on ladder to newer players getting into the game from casual. They jump into rank 25, climb a couple of ranks and are almost immediately hit over the head with countless overpowered Jade Druid decks. This stems from the problem of Druid being busted and the ladder being the only competitive outlet for the vast majority of Hearthstone players.

It would be great for players to have a mode they could jump into and play a small, on-demand tournament that granted them in-game rewards as well as having larger tournaments that start at specified times clearly communicated by Blizzard for HCT points.

Flaws with Conquest and Last Hero Standing

Speaking of competition, let’s talk about the two tournament formats Blizzard has created for the game.

The first of these tournament formats is called conquest. In conquest, each player brings three to four classes (depending on the specific tournament) and either plays a best of five with all three classes or bans a class from their opponent and then proceeds to play a best of five with the three remaining classes. When a class wins a game, that class is retired for the series. For instance, if I bring Druid, Rogue, and Mage, I will need to win with each of those classes to win the match.

Last Hero Standing is a bit different in that the setup is the same as conquest, but when a player wins with a deck they keep playing with it until it is defeated. For example, if I bring the same lineup as above (Druid, Rogue, and Mage) and I win the first game with Druid I will keep playing with it until it is defeated. At that point, unless I 3-0 sweep with Druid, I will switch to one of my remaining classes and continue playing until I win three games and take the match or lose three games and lose the match.

What are the flaws of these systems? The main criticism of conquest is that it is inherently random. It is considered a “random” format because you have no idea what class your opponent is going to queue up against you unless they are playing with their last available class. When you start a conquest match, there is no way of knowing what class your opponent is going to lead off against you, so the two dominant strategies are to either lead off with your class that has the best matchups across the board (and hope your opponent doesn’t queue a deck that counters it) or to just pick randomly by rolling dice so your opponent can’t make a read on what you will lead off with.

For Last Hero standing, the main criticism is that the sweeping potential of certain decks is way too high. For decks like Aggro Druid or Pirate Warrior (decks that are very consistent, have extremely explosive potential opening draws, and punish stumbling from your opponent) the sweeping potential is enormous. Frequently, even in bad matchups, the decks will just have explosive draws and knock out your opponent’s deck they were using as a counter and then sweep the series. This happens quite frequently in Last Hero Standing and it is a very frustrating experience to spend weeks pouring over statistics and developing an intricate lineup just to lose because you stumbled in a game versus Pirate Warrior.

A One-Class Proposition

Before we continue, let me just say one thing: Yes, I do come from a background playing Magic: The Gathering. Yes, some of the propositions listed below sound like they come from Magic because they do. There is a reason Magic has been around and successful for more than twenty years. It’s because their system works. I believe Hearthstone’s tournament system can benefit from operating a bit more like a Magic event.

It is my belief that a one-class tournament system can solve the problems of both Last Hero Standing and Conquest and make the meta healthier all at the same time. There are a few separate propositions I have to make a one-class system work, so I will get into them one at a time to avoid confusion.

What is a one-class system? Well it is exactly what it sounds like – players bring and play with one class to a tournament. This may sound like it would make tournaments more dull as it would encourage players to bring the best decks, but here’s the thing: Best decks nearly always have one or more deck that counter them, and those decks have counters that beats them, and those decks also have counters, etc. This kind of matchup dynamic should theoretically foster greater deck and class diversity as opposed to less (assuming Blizzard isn’t making one class absurdly overpowered with multiple busted archetypes).

A one-class system would benefit best from having a sideboarding system within the game. For those who don’t know, a sideboard is a set of cards (usually 15 in Magic) that players have the option of trading out with cards in their main deck between games. A match would consist of a best of three (or best of five in high-stakes matches, like top 16 scenarios), with players having the opportunity to sideboard cards in or out between each game. The player who wins two games (or three in the high-stakes matches) is the winner of the match. Simple, right?

Decks increase or decrease their percentages versus certain decks by including “tech” cards (cards like Hungry Crab, Golakka Crawler, Skulking Geist, Eater of Secrets, etc.) with high opportunity costs. These cards are not inherently main deck cards and Blizzard keeps printing these sorts of high-impact, high-opportunity cost situational tech cards. In a one-class system with, let’s say, a five card sideboard players would be able to not water down their main deck with tech cards and still have the option to bring in the high impact tech cards in matchups where they really need them.

Again, I am not going to go into how Blizzard could best implement this, because I don’t know how they code the game, but at the very least I do know they have a collection menu that they could more than likely utilize between games during a match, maybe just showing the five cards in the collection that players dedicated to their sideboards. This is just one way I can see Blizzard implementing it using their pre-existing User Interface.

Another perk to the one-class system is the fact that it would foster a healthy environment for class-specialists. There are many players (professionals included) who demonstrate a high level of skill with a specific class or archetype. Popular examples would be: Fibonacci with Control Warrior, StanCifka with Control Warlock, Pinpingho with Shaman, JAB with Midrange Hunter, Laughing with Freeze Mage, Zetalot with Priest, and the list goes on. There are plenty of metagames where certain classes cannot compete with the other options and players forego bringing their favorite classes completely. A sideboarding system can completely change that, as it allows players to build their main decks against an expected field and construct a sideboard to beat the decks they feel they are weakest to. This would encourage players to focus on tuning their decks and becoming the best at them as opposed to having to learn every “best deck” that pops up from week to week before a tournament’s decklist submission deadline.

How High is Your APM?

The last change (and arguably the least realistic one) that I would like to see in a tournament environment is to change the rope system (75 seconds per turn) to that of a chess clock system. For those of you that are not familiar, a chess clock is one that gives each player an allotted amount of time and each time a player ends their turn, their clock stops. Basically, this gives each player as much time as they want to think and act on their turn, but also forces them to manage their time with their overall time in mind. This would allow players who bring APM (actions-per-minute) intensive decks to play out their turns without rushing. How many times have you seen a player on stream think before playing a Gadgetzan Auctioneer and then miss a crucial play because they were trying to keep up with the rope while it was burning? This is not good for the player, it’s not good for the viewer and it’s bad for competitive integrity. With that being said, we have had the rope system for forever and while it isn’t the most efficient for tournaments, it is definitely the best system for laddering and would most likely be a difficult change to make.

Optimism

I think Blizzard is a great company and they have been doing great things for Hearthstone to push it to be a better game. They are constantly pushing themselves and testing the waters in terms of what they can and cannot do, and I truly believe the game is in good hands with the developers. I am optimistic moving forward about how they will implement a tournament mode and hope they will do what is best for the game.