New BattleGrounds Rank System. What are they smoking?

What on earth was the person who designed the new battlegrounds rank system thinking?
Literally, the best thing about the previous system was the ability to keep and maintain your rank (for those of us who can’t play 6 hours a day like some dogmatic streamer on steroids).
It was something we could work on daily and keep progressing with a sense of accomplishment. And now we lose our rank evrery season?! That is precisely why I don’t play ladder much any more other than to get a few packs. The progression is completely lost.
Not only that, but you now have some stupid hidden MMR forcing you to keep playing high level players when you get reset every month as if that’s somehow fair?
All it does is encourage people to create a new smurf account for Battlegrounds each month to get around the system. I’ve watched Kripparian do this on multiple occasions.
For those of us who like to play on our main accounts as the game was supposed to be played, this change is a real and brutal FU kick to the groin.

Seriously, what are they smoking over there?
There was nothing wrong with the previous system. A simple reset would have been fine and acceptable if there was an actual point to competing. This change basically kills the whole game mode.

3 Likes

“Kripp was already doing this”

Doesn’t that go against your argument? If people were already doing it, then I can’t see it making a difference on that one front.

Even though I only play occasionally for fun, so don’t care about my rating, I do agree that unless a reason is added, it does seem a bit pointless.

Were you really only playing the mode to improve your rating? Personally that’s never something I’m been interested in, outside of the very short term, unless there’s a reason, usually a reward.

Tl:dr I don’t really care but do agree to the “why?”

"Doesn’t that go against your argument? "
No, but it is also not the crux of the point I am making in my post. (Just an example of undesirable behaviour that (while previously evident, but far less prevalent) is likely to increase from the change made.)

"Were you really only playing the mode to improve your rating? "
Honestly? Yes - completely! Don’t get me wrong, I love the mode and it is fun to play, but the retention factor was the progression of rank. It’s like people who play those games at arcades to win tickets. The game might be fun, but the motivation to play is to win those tickets for prizes.
In BG, I relied on my progression rank to know how I fared skill-wise in regards to other players and could see when I was getting things wrong and improve my game and see a positive effect.

You can look at the Dungeon Run mode as an example of how this went bad from a design perspective. I loved Dungeon Run. Absolutely loved it. But there was no progression. No way to find reward for playing. (The reward from BG previously had been simply a rank number to feel proud of, but it was a reward nonetheless).
So we saw Dungeon Run falling away as people got bored.
I see the same happening with BG overall - there will likely be some hardcore fans of the mode who will play purely for the enjoyment (power to them, of course). But for me (personally), I can see myself getting frustrated with losing my reward every month simply because I can’t put in the same hours every day as people with less IRL responsibilities can.

Fair enough.

Maybe they’ll introduce something for reaching 6500+ every season. Not sure what exactly, seeing as packs makes no sense. Would say alternate hero portraits but that could lead to issues if they want to rotate them in the future.

The old rating system was so much better, you had to work to rise up the ladder, you also had the ability to see your progress and maintain it. Who ever thought it was a smart idea should go back to the drawingboard cause this is literally garbage!

#BringBackTheOldRatingSystem.

But dude, how long is the season - I dont think its a month after all season one lasted pretty much a whole year…

“But dude, how long is the season - I dont think its a month”

Hearthstone already has seasons. And yes, they are monthly.
I think you are thinking about Expansions / “Year of the …”

“The old rating system was so much better, you had to work to rise up the ladder, you also had the ability to see your progress and maintain it.”

Agreed. I wouldn’t even mind so much if there was a slow degredation for people who don’t play for a while. For example, you start to lose 10 ranks points per day after 24 hours of not playing, etc (or somthing similar) - as long as you got to maintain your good progress and not feel like you’ve had a swift kick in the balls at the end of each “season” for some arbitrary pointless reason.

I agree BGS are a mess to many heros, to many of everything. Its RNG base and the stats show Battleground are not played as much and with this new system even less. They may revert the change in January 2021 once they replace several people which have left HS team.

I’ve managed to play 2 games of Battlegrounds since the change. I got a couple of top 3 wins. And then the desire to continue simply dissipated, knowing that it was pointless (since I would lose my rank in a few weeks) and even though I started at rank 0, I was continually being matched up with other players at rank 10k+ or so (assuming the MMR carried over).
I think Battlegrounds was more or less the only thing keeping me playing Hearthstone these days. Ladder is a mess with the new ranking system screwing you over each month and Arena is boring as hell. (Let alone a money sink)

Howgh. I am done as well

Right, so if your rank was 10k last season (assuming the MMR carried over), you prefer to rip through lower rank players rather players of your correct rank?

Imagine if Manchester City played a Sunday League team every week…

“so if your rank was 10k last season (assuming the MMR carried over), you prefer a level playing for everyone when you start rather than screwing over people who have invested in the mode?”

Absolutely right, yes. Thanks for clarifying.

Just when I found BGs fun and was really high in the ladder, this reset happend and now I don´t find it fun anymore. Hearthstone is not my main game. I use to play it usualy on my tablet before my sleep, but this new ranking system is pushing players to play more, if they want to get back into their rank. And let´s face it - rank in RNG games is nut fun at all. This new system made things even worse.

Exactly right.
You can’t combine a losable rank with a game that is so heavily reliant on RnG. It becomes doubly problematic when you combine two independent negative effects on a player’s game and rank position.

The best is to not take the ranking seriously, this game mode is mostly for fun due to the rng aspect. The highest I got to was 7.5k and thought that must suck, but the stats show that only about 5-3% of players are at that rating, made me feel a bit better knowing I did get there at least even if I drop back down. :slight_smile: It is just discouraging if you have a bad loosing streak and you drop far down, that’s where people might just rage quit. I think blizz is just trying to prevent that, as bad streaks do end eventually and you often climb back up or higher.

does it reset every month tho?

man city are a sunday league team.

You beat me to it. Lol