So the main reason why it matches exotic league with unranked, is because unranked is 1000 elo by default, and you can get limited by losing a game, so approximately 980 elo. The system itself works fine, it's the top down interpretation (limited, exotic, etc.), small playerbase, and matchmaking expansion (elo range for matchmaking expands the longer you wait in queue).
Well you could make the top 5 go with more stars to make it even harder to get there (let alone stay in there)? For example from rank 6 to rank 5 and 5-4, 4-3, 3-2 you wouldn't need 3 more wins than losses, but 5 more and to go from rank 2-1 you would need to get 10 more wins. Now have fun trying to get rank 1, I challenge you to do it quikly! And yes I agree with your points, though a few of the problems you mentioned aren't going away anytime soon, with my proposed system, they would be way less of an issue. I disagree, if we can assume that a steam launch brings in 3x as much players we would be fine. As that would mean more players would dare to step into the PVP part of this game (as it's easier to get into with the core start), let's say you would have 90 people playing ranked games at all time than, that would mean on average 3 people of each rank would be online, now let's say the system allows you to fight with someone 2 ranks higher and 2 ranks lower, this opens up too 15 people you would be able to get matched up against (of course it would first scan people off your rank in Q, than people 1 rank lower/higher, than people 2 ranks lower/higher). I do agree though, that currently it might not be ideal as there aren't enough players, so Q's could take fairly long (if we want fair ones), but on the other hand, now we have relatively short Q's but a lot of unfair match ups. Sincerely, Josh753
You need 90 players actively looking for a match, not playing ranked. Since the vast majority of your time in ranked is spent playing, not looking for matches, not to mention that the rank distribution is unlikely to be even. To achieve a critical mass of players looking for a match at any given time, you need tons of active players to begin with. It could work, but it's a huge risk. It's already frustrating to play against a much stronger opponent, imagine what it would feel like if a loss would send you down a notch the same way as a loss to a lower rated opponent, and a win would be equally just the same. And imagine the amount of queue dodging that would encourage (Hearthstone of course doesn't even show you who's in the lobby, my guess is that the list would be too long to be useful anyway). I have no idea how many concurrent users Hearthstone has (I couldn't find any statistics), but I think it's safe to say that we are talking about different dimensions. Dota 2 at any given time has over 500.000 concurrent users (and even there the matchmaking takes a lot of time, although that's apples and oranges).
I agree that this system would take a large population to allow for it to properly work, though I love the concept and similarity it holds with Hearthstone. Primarily, my interest is finding a league of sorts which is more structured than "throw all the Legs and Exos you can afford into a theme." I don't like the idea of Core Only, but I'd be more interested in seeing limitations put on Rare+ runes. This would allow full customization of decks, but create a level playing field in relation to the power of the runes able to be played.
I would like to see Legendaries redesigned to a point where it's unsuitable to have more than a couple or so in the deck. I.e. Legendaries would allow for unique strategies or deploying that one expensive champ that carries the late game, but the base of any deck should be efficient runes which are more common. That's actually how the game used to be, before it got flooded with a bunch of super efficient Legendaries on every expansion...
I honestly did not think of that (while I should have). But I have to agree with you, we would need at least 10.000 active ranked players at all times (preferably even more) for this ranked model not to have gigantic long Q's. Though I think from the moment we have around 3.000 active ranked players at all times Q time would definitely be bearable. I think if Poxnora were to reach numbers anywhere near that (which it has the ability too), it would be worth it to revisit this thread. Sincerely, Josh753
I don't think Pox had 3k active players at all times even at it's peak. Highest player's online which I recall is somewhere in the 1.6k range the day of an expansion.
