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at least on the US server this is extreme.
it's nothing new that people join games and instantly concede in ladder to not level up too quickly or even to meet the noobs at rank 20-17.
actually the opponents become easier around rank 15 because there are less farming abusers there.
but what is worse, is that even casual mode is full of abuse now.
why is this so bad? because that is the only place to do daily quests for beginners and new accounts.
I believe that there are Soooooooo many abusers on rank 20-17 now, that it has became too hard to farm there, and therefor people head over to the casual mode now.
I have access to several EU accounts and 2 months ago I started to do daily quests on the US server. this means, it's like a new fresh account with 0 cards.
my goal was to do daily quests in order to practice arena a lot.
on one account you need 3 days of questing to pay for a single arena. that's not good for practice.
since I only play there to practice arena, I don't buy any packs.
therefor these accounts only have about 5-10 expert packs + the free Naxxramas Wings cards.
this means, that I basically play FREE decks. not like those dust crafted F2P legendary decks.. they're free decks with 95% free cards. like a complete beginner. the few expert packs mostly dropped bad or even unplayable cards as usual.
I know that casual and ranked matchmaking are independent. therefor I always used the strong free heroes and decks in ranked mode, and the weak decks in casual mode, because the good decks would push the level so, that the weak ones wouldn't have any chance to win anymore.
however, after 2 months of doing this I started to only encounter people with complete decks that belong in tournaments or in the legendary rank.
lots of legendariers, complete control warriors, handlocks, ramp druids, ...
but most shocking of all. complete golden decks or golden Naxxramas cards.
why are golden Naxxaramas cards shocking? because you can't get them from packs. you can only craft them.
but why would people use their precious dust to craft golden cards of cards that you already own? the only answer to this is, that they already have a complete collection, or all important cards at least.
betweens lots of complete complete control warriors, handlocks, ramp druids and priests I've even met a Paladin who's cards all were golden.
That's also a proof for that they are not a new players who spend a lot of money, because the golden class cards come from playing a lot.also there were some golden heroes.
here's a screenshot from a game I just had, trying to do my two, 2 wins with Paladin/Rogue Paladin/Warrior quests..
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/ScXfS0H.jpg)
the account I played with has only 5 packs open. all crap.
this is the humble deck I played against Mr. full collection, all golden, let's concede and meet noobs:
http://i.imgur.com/N1w1bSd.png
Spellbreaker and Abusive Sergeant being the only expert cards. 3 Naxxramas cards from the free first wing. the other decks I used on that account don't look better. is this fair matchmaking?
Yes I'm not talking about ranked mode level 20 famers.
I'm talking about 2 months of playing casual mode with only the weakest classes with decks that contain 2-3 common/rare expert cards at best, rest being free cards.
how can I get matched up against such opponents? I'm not even playing there when it's deep in the night or early morning in the middle of the week. I'm playing at mainstream times.
there's only 2 explanations why I could meet such opponents
- I'm the God of Hearthstone
- people concede a lot to meet new players and farm wins with a nearly 100% winrate
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Logically, the number of free wins you receive from this should be equivalent (or even higher) to the number of times you get stomped by somebody with a lot of expensive/rare cards.
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There is no casual mode anymore in the sense that you understand.
In the beginning of hs let's say in March it was like that you would want, hell I was playing mid range lock deck with a lot of healing becouse I had nothing better in my collection and I thought heals synergizes well with hero power.
You will not met decks like that in casual, maybe one in 40 games played.
With the deck from back there I would win maybe 10% of my games or even no?
Sometimes even with decent decks but not top of the meta I am having streaks of 4-5 looses.
Casual is the same meta is ranked with the same deck but without stress of loosing your precious stars.
It's important mode becouse if you play ranked you often end in the situation when you are on 50% win ratio and you are getting nowehre for few days. This become boring after awhile.
Cards are hard to get if you are f2p. But there are not that hard to get like a year from beta invites. This game right now is close to year old. Ladders are wiped evry month but collections are not.
Tbh I don't really know what I would do now to play this game as a new player without spending money.
Back than the first what I did was stay away from ladder and ranked games for like 3 months becouse I could not comepete.
Nowadays it's easier becouse there are a lot cheap agressive decks or even control ones that do very well.
But the problem with is the new cards are coming very soon and you will have to decide where to spend your resources. On old cards or new gvg ones.
And casual is not your freindly asylum to play few constructed games or even do quest with diffrent classes.
People tell you to play zoo/hunter but I don't know how much you can play those kinda boring decks and we have 9 classes in hs right ?
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Firstly, I do this not entirely because I want to farm newbs and noobs (because I've probably lost to garbage players far more often than not when they play actual crap cards that counter my aggro deck like Frostwolf Grunt and Ironfur Grizzly), but because most people do generally play fast and don't take a billion years on each of their turns, especially when they try to piss me off even more playing slow ass decks like handlock, wallet warrior, and whatever version of priest.
Secondly, why do you care if they concede to you? Free win. For me if I have the crappiest of opening hands (this happens far too often in my aggro decks because I'm not lame playing Huntard or Zoo), or I queue into a Priest or Mage with some deck that is not designed at all to win against the, then you're damn right I will instant concede to not waste my time.
Thirdly, I don't know what you're trying to prove climbing or farming with "free cards" without spending a dime on your accounts. You're not Trump, you're not Reynad, you're not a popular streamer for that matter. It's been done before, and it's not Pre-Naxx anymore where there was no meta defined where you can outskill your opponent with cards that weren't entirely broken at a low cost level. Constructed is brutal and if you don't have your best deck out there you will lose period.
Fourthly. casual mode is 100x worse because there is a MMR system in play. Win more = face more tryhard opponents just as bad if not more stronger in terms of decks and skill... this is exactly why low ranked is better to stick at... plus portrait farming only counts in ranked play... not casual
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You're totally right, and it's a result of a broken mechanic in the game. The fastest way to get gold (apart from Arena and buying) is to win, no matter who you win against. The logical conclusion is to go after people at the bottom of the ladder. High ranks only give you bragging rights (or enjoyable gameplay, but who wants that, amirite?). So down the farmers go.
Solution is to give a gold bonus towards the end of the season for rank placed in. It'd add a bit more ladder fear and general tension, but whatever. Just so long as it gives new players a place. I remember when I started up. I was happy to have pretty terrible decks to beat. Now I'm a lot better, but it seems everyone has full card sets. That's just a little disappointing.
Second solution would be to have a dust-limited ladder that new players could play on. Grand total of maybe 1600 dust's worth of Expert and Naxx cards, with all basics allowed. Could even be fun to play on its own merits.
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Blizzard could do something like: after 3 fast-concedes in the same day, applies a 3 hour temp ban for that user. Some of them (very few I think) will be unlucky people who got disconnect three times due some internet issue, but still it could be a good action (the unlucky guys could use this 3 hours to try to fix the connection problem).
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You can't implement something based on disconnects or concedes- but you can give players an incentive to play at a higher level. Even something as simple as a gold reward per star or level you rank up. It's honestly a shockingly terrible system at the moment. You got to rank 20? Here's your cardback? Rank 1? Here's your cardback!
Oh you wanted something more for getting all the way from rank 20 to rank 1? Tough shit sailor, should've gotten Legend ONE TIME FOR THE CARDBACK.
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Seriously, just play ladder if you are getting this happening in casual mode... Getting outraged by other players is a waste of time and effort. It's casual mode, it's not meant to be competitive.
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On December 01 2014 09:49 Mortal wrote:
You can't implement something based on disconnects or concedes- but you can give players an incentive to play at a higher level. Even something as simple as a gold reward per star or level you rank up. It's honestly a shockingly terrible system at the moment. You got to rank 20? Here's your cardback? Rank 1? Here's your cardback!
Oh you wanted something more for getting all the way from rank 20 to rank 1? Tough shit sailor, should've gotten Legend ONE TIME FOR THE CARDBACK.
I think this would be a good idea if blizzard were marketing hs as the next best esports. but their goal is to cater to a casual audience. now doing a daily quest or playing some games to reach a certain rank while you can't lose stars is certainly doable for most people. but if there was a reward for reaching higher ranks people would feel like they should play more. like they are falling behind.
just look at the diablo 3 crowd. after they introduced a ladder (something the community wanted) people started complaining about how their class wasn't able to compete with demonhunters for the top spots. this problem lead to them redesigning several class sets. and people flocked to playing demonhunters although they would likely never reach those high greater rifts (used as the ladder metric).
now most of the time it doesn't matter if you play you goofy paladin deck that buffs tokens with Raid Leader or Stormwind Champion.
You will make your way to r20 eventually.
but if you could make 500 gold upon reaching legend, you will feel left behind and even more pressure to play hunter for that sweet gold reward. And you feel like you should play more to reach higher ranks.
but if you look at the ladder distribution it's quite clear that people at the top need to feed on people not at the top for their success. so you will just by design have a lot of people being (more) frustrated because they can't reach the top.
i don't think this is a good idea for a game that drives on enlarging their casual playerbase and is not very beginnerfriendly to start with.
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Give me a purpose for climbing ladder other than 10g/3 games, and sure. Even bonus gold towards win streaks would have some effect.
Right now there's no reason to ladder, since the decks get worse and worse, and the game likes matching me into horrible counters all the time. Why waste 15 minutes trying not to lose to a priest or control warrior when at r20 I can just insta concede and move on to the next game where I might have an actual chance of winning, or an even better chance of straight steamrolling my opponent?
If there was a temp ban for concedes, I would climb a few games and then afk to drop rank. Sounds like more fun games right? It's not our fault, fix the system, don't punish the player.
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On December 01 2014 09:49 Mortal wrote:
You can't implement something based on disconnects or concedes- but you can give players an incentive to play at a higher level. Even something as simple as a gold reward per star or level you rank up. It's honestly a shockingly terrible system at the moment. You got to rank 20? Here's your cardback? Rank 1? Here's your cardback!
Oh you wanted something more for getting all the way from rank 20 to rank 1? Tough shit sailor, should've gotten Legend ONE TIME FOR THE CARDBACK. That could fix ranked, but not casual, right? And OP was complaining about casual going to the same shit.
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On December 01 2014 10:59 ZephyranthesX wrote:
... don't punish the player.
Don't hate the playa, hate the game
Imo, it's too bad constructed is the lesser of 2 evils compared to arena which is an even bigger garbage mode
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On December 01 2014 11:01 figq wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2014 09:49 Mortal wrote:
You can't implement something based on disconnects or concedes- but you can give players an incentive to play at a higher level. Even something as simple as a gold reward per star or level you rank up. It's honestly a shockingly terrible system at the moment. You got to rank 20? Here's your cardback? Rank 1? Here's your cardback!
Oh you wanted something more for getting all the way from rank 20 to rank 1? Tough shit sailor, should've gotten Legend ONE TIME FOR THE CARDBACK. That could fix ranked, but not casual, right? And OP was complaining about casual going to the same shit.
Correct- for casual, a hidden MMR or something of the like seems like a decent idea. Although if you're annoyed with playing people outside your depth, play ranked? I know that's a shitty suggestion but in the meantime it would likely solve some problems.
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There is a hidden mmr in casual afaik.. which is why people concede to bring it down
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I think there's three main flaws:
1. Lack of adequate rank based reward
2. Rank based upon deck, not user. IE: What Mortal said "Play ranked" the issue is creating a new deck, or being forced to play some class you don't enjoy for dailies... which brings us to
3. The entire Daily system. In RPGs the idea is to focus on one, maybe two classes. Even in trading card games you should be able to focus on the few deck strategies you like. In this the daily is flawed, and worse for beginners as the game progresses. You have people with severely limited cards forced into being generalists instead of specialists.
And this is at all levels. I've got a win 5 for 2 classes I don't play as and of course am 20 now because of the reset. The first 4 I've gotten stomped against golden hand locks. Now I'm against a guy playing Shield Bearers and River Crocs. I should be somewhere between.
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On December 01 2014 09:49 Mortal wrote:
You can't implement something based on disconnects or concedes- but you can give players an incentive to play at a higher level. Even something as simple as a gold reward per star or level you rank up. It's honestly a shockingly terrible system at the moment. You got to rank 20? Here's your cardback? Rank 1? Here's your cardback!
Oh you wanted something more for getting all the way from rank 20 to rank 1? Tough shit sailor, should've gotten Legend ONE TIME FOR THE CARDBACK.
This is exactly the problem.
I've hit legend twice the only 2 seasons I was trying, and there is absolutely zero incentive for me to give any serious effort to hit it again. It really makes absolutely zero difference to me whether I win or lose so half the games I end up just using troll decks.
Also, starting at rank 15 after hitting legend is extremely stupid as well. When I come back to hearthstone 3 weeks into the season starting I really feel bad roflstomping some scrubs who I shouldn't be playing against.
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United Kingdom31255 Posts
This was an issue a year ago and with GvG coming out its just become worse and worse. Blizzard haven't made a sustainable economy with how gold is rewarded with hearthstone and they want to avoid revamping it completely.
They have a gold cap. I should know I hit it daily. There is no reason why they can't just give higher ranked players more gold per win as long as the gold cap is the same at all levels.
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Another huge issue is that with GvG and Naxxramus out it will take new players years to catch up in cards with the current gold system 
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This might be a crazy idea but what if Blizzard has this system so that more people will actually spend some money on the game??
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United Kingdom31255 Posts
On December 01 2014 23:36 Dizmaul wrote:
This might be a crazy idea but what if Blizzard has this system so that more people will actually spend some money on the game??
Having new players come in and get smashed isn't going to encourage people to pay.
Game needs to be inviting and open this isn't inviting and open.
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EPT
