Hearthstone Battlegrounds was released for everyone a few hours ago, but even during the initial early access testing players have encountered some issues with the current MMR system. While everything was alright with the first 20-30 games, after that the MMR gains and loses began to slowly decrease to the point of getting very little points of wins (and losing very little for defeats). While it wasn’t unfair on individual basis – you more or less gained as much for a 1st place as you lost for 8th – it created big MMR differences between players depending on the order of their games. For example, a player who first lost 50 games and then won 50 games would most likely be below his starting rank. On the other hand, a player who first won 50 games and then lost 50 games would still be high on the leaderboard, even though they both have the same win rate. At least that’s what it seems like the current system is working.
Mike Donais just addressed those issues on reddit. He said that they’re planning to do two things. First of all – explain better how MMR works. This is really appreciated, because every game has a slightly different approach to their matchmaking and ranking system. Knowing how it works will make it much easier for players to not get frustrated about it. The second thing they’re planning is increasing the amount of rating gained or lost for wins/loses. If that happens, players will no longer be more or less stuck around the rating they got after finishing X first matches.
Thanks for all the feedback on battlegrounds MMR and how it feels.
We sat with engineers and talked through how it works and decided on a change that will help with the issues.
We are going do 2 things. 1. Post explaining how it works. 2. Make a change so that people get more points for a win and for a loss.
The future post will go into more details on this.
Thanks for the polite, clear feedback – it really helped us know what to look for and how to address it.
While at first I didn’t like it either as it seemed like progression up the rating charts grinded to a halt, I now think I like being able to bounce out of a match when I know it’s lost. If I have to sit an extra round or 2 to still come in 5th just so i don’t lose too much rating I’ll be sad.
Is there any rewards for ranks?
Will they reset every rank progress each month (like ranked play)?
No rewards currently, but this mode is just a beta.
That said: once it does release, I would expect them to treat it either like an extremely long Brawl (i.e., every month or so they do a new “season” and everyone gets a legendary quest to play a few games with a reward of a free pack or two) or like Arena (you pay either 150 gold or $2 to play a certain number of games and then get rewards based on how well you did). I can’t see them making this like Ranked Play where you can always get significant monthly rewards without investing either fixed entrance fee or card collection just because that’s a poor business model.
But all of this still in theory right? I mean they never gave info such as this. (or did I miss anything?).
then again, if Battlegrounds ranks doesn’t do anything, it seems like a waste of time to do something with no actual gain. Not even gaining XP for original hero class neither total win in ranked play for said class.
It’s a pity tho. Such unique gameplay with no purpose other than rankings (bragging right).
You forgot the most important aspect of playing games: having fun 🙂
On the more serious note, I pretty much agree with the og’s theory, but since nothing has been confirmed yet, we will have to find out after beta.
IMO, a gamer will be more pro-active if the game is rewarding. The bigger the rewards, the better it is. I myself will play more seriously if I knew I’m gonna get something out of it, aside from having fun.
(Playing battlegrounds after 10 times in a row feels boring for me, doesn’t matter if it wins or losses)
What you are saying is all true. On the other hand however, other auto-battler games don’t give any rewards either, and there are still tons of players playing them.
Yup; just a theory from a cynic. Blizzard has been cagey about their long term plans.
We can always hope. 🙂