Having dead/afk players in the game affects some heroes negatively. I’m thinking right now of heroes that steal other players minions, or those who rely on combat to buff their own minions. There are definitely other examples.
On the other hand, it greatly benefits other heroes, like ones that guess the outcome of a battle, or guess a minion in a warband to get a coin.
I’ve also been in many games where the number of times each player gets to go against a dead player - in other words get a free round to upgrade tier - is not even due to the way things happen to play out - the number of players is balanced before someones opportunity comes up. This is a huge advantage/disadvantage.
A lot of people might be tempted to think, well, this is just part of the random nature of battlegrounds and everyone just has to deal with it. But if you’re getting the short end of the stick in these situations, its a pretty difficult random disadvantage to have to deal with. I mean, your opponents are upgrading their tiers with much less consequence than you.
I have read a lot of other replies on the issue saying that it is only really occurring in lower brackets. But really, this is a problem whenever there are dead players, or players who leave early, even if they are not afk. And even if it were only occurring in the lower brackets, its still unpleasant to play through them and hope to encounter the problem less. Just accepting things are going to be that way isn’t really a solution.
After a player leaves, or dies, or is detected afk (a separate issue that needs to be addressed), perhaps a bot can take over and continue playing even though the player can no longer win - at least until there is an even number of players to face one another. Would this create any problems I’m just missing?
What do you all think?
Um, thats what Kel thuzad does with dead players. Whatever their warband was at the moment they left the game is the state kelthuzad plays it. things still happen in battle as they normally would minus any benefit of a hero power that might’ve affected them before. (Drekthar avenge, vanndarr avenge, ragnaros end of turn buffs, etc) but if the dead player was a beast board with all the works, it will still continue as it would before. Bot is being played on the corpse of the missing player’s behalf. Exactly as you proposed. However it will not progress or continue to grow in stats (for instance something that gets bigger and bigger turn after turn due to avenge or something) Penalty of being dead and all.
If you want a genuine AI to take over and continue playing and drawing cards out of the tavern turn after turn, then you’ve only created the issue of the ai sniping key cards someone else is in need of. Instead of the dead players cards going back into the pool you’d rather they remained missing from it and more go missing?
Yes some players will luck out and get a free round that doesnt have any risk for them to upgrade, but remember, combat gives rewards too. what about the needed minions to die off to grant avenge scaling minions, heroes that need like 12 minions to die before their hero power grants them their free minions to hand or buff to scale up?
This means that free pass to upgrade will come at a cost for them not being able to progress as expected that round and while they go up a tier, can still be falling behind just the same.
Thank you for your insights.
I don’t see why you couldn’t have an AI take over, and still have the cards returned to the pool. It could be like Kel’thuzad but improve the warband the way an actual player would. That way it’s not just a free turn for anyone who faces that player.
I may be incorrect, but I thought that it was only the tier 6 minions that were limited? It wouldn’t be impossible to design it so the bot, while able to pick tier 6 minions, would not actually remove any from the player pool. And as I said in the original post, its not like the bot would be playing indefinitely. It would only be until the number of players was even.
Avenge is one of the mechanics I was actually thinking about. If you are facing an empty board, it is nullified. If you are facing a weaker board - because the player is no longer actively playing AND you know exactly what their board will look like - it is a bit overpowered. Having the bot continue play for the absent player saves the mechanic.
All minions are finite, just there’s only 7 copies of each tier 6 minion. I forget how many of the other tier minions there are, i saw a chart once but its something much larger for each of the others the lower the tier they are far more abundant. But outside of copying mechanics the game provides, they arent infinite. There is a reason you can go an entire game and never be able to triple your hyena lol. or any other low tier but decent minion that can go the long haul for many matches. Heck, Ive gone the last several matches never encountering a single upbeat duo available to purchase. Id say at least 12 or more matches theyve been a no show in the taverns for me.
Its a double edge sword on purpose to let the ai play the board as it was for that player. Many a time I’ve l;ost to a ghost, most of the time it would be my best friend sitting beside me killing me from his grave as he got eliminated before i did and somehow still defeating me when it was my turn to face him because of rng shenanigans. I would hyperbolically lament to him how he was team killing me aloud as he would chuckle his victories even in death.
The fact that an early leaver means there is an empty board for players to face for someone each turn just means that if they notice it, they might upgrade risk free, sure, but again it might not be the payoff one might expect. Since you dont fight the same players twice in a row until you are down to just 2 people, that empty slot gets rotated thru the roster eventually so everyone can get a risk free turn in at least once. When it occurs can be important still, ill concede to that issue, but thats the nature of any turn in the game anyways. Leaving it as it is now is the only way I can see it being done in a balancing way and a fair way. I dont get why you would want the ghost player to continue to grow and get stronger. At that point the lobby wouldnt be winding down to the humans being left as the survival of the fittest, we’d all be getting edged out by the ghosts making all the best plays and picks possible to deny the humans any paths forward to victory, because thats what all ai does, be impossible to beat. Especially ones in a blizzard game. It can be humbling when you lose to kelthuzad using the fallen human’s board and still winning against you, but it would be demoralizing if you never stood a chance and neither did anyone else against them.
I’ve been arguing for years they do something about this. I don’t know what the fix is and don’t think I really like the idea of AI continuing to play those decks. As Cramer noted, the minions being returned to the pool is important to the current system.
I think my preference is that Kel’Thuzad stops running the dead decks, and instead has his own army, with a predetermined power level for each turn.
Mostly, though, there should always be at least one minion on the opposing side, and as the game progresses that ought to increase. By turn 6 or 7, he should have a full board of small minions, and if on every turn after that a minion picked up a random bonus from a pool (venemous, divine shield, reborn, deathrattle, +x/+x) that’d be, well, probably boring but totally adequate and a lot more fair and balanced than the existing setup.
If that’s not good enough for the thief heroes (Scabbs, Tess) give the Kel’Thuzad’s minion a “sells for 3 gold” tag so they can at least trade it in for another minion.
This is probably pointless, as I’m sure nobody’s pulling ideas for the game from the forums, but if I had ten minutes to invent a scheme for Kel’Thuzad’s army, this is what I’d do:
Turn 1: one 2/2 minion
Turn 2: same
Turn 3: two 2/2 minions
Turn 4: four 2/2 minions
Turn 5: five 2/2 minions
Turn 6: seven 2/2 minions
Turn 7: all minions get +1/+1 (so full board of 3/3’s) and become flagged Tier 2
Turn 8 onward: all minions get +1/+1 and one minion gets a bonus effect, pulled randomly from this list - taunt, reborn, venemous, divine shield, or deathrattle - summon a minion from a lower tier
On turn 9, 12, 15, and 18 bump up the tiers of the minions.
I wouldn’t count on blizzard to find the right balance for predetermined warbands. Imo the most balanced way to go about it is fighting a copy of one of the other players who’s still alive (not the actual player, that’d be unfair to them that there’s 2 chances for them to lose and take damage). Not sure how they’d indicate it in advance though, maybe by highlighting that player with a glow or something.
It’s even worse if you’re building a comp that relies upon deaths of minions to grow.
The only exact number per minion I know for sure is if I need it, it has been deleted from the game. I can only speak from experience, of course.
The real solution to this problem would be a greater (more than 4) selection of actually ballanced heroes, not blocked by a paywall.
I do agree they should have a board. So that you can get value from the combat if you are setup to do so. And also so you can get value from your hero power.
There is 2 different situations. A player dies and has a normal board. This is handled well by the game,sometimes you can die to the ghost but i dont see a problem with that tbh. You will still end up above the ghost in the ranking and you can count yourself lucky that you didnt see the ghost the turn before.
But the opponent having no board at all,that is to damaging for some hero powers and some builds. And all to often the algo somehow finds the worst turn to give you the ghost lol.
The cat now gets at least a coin when a player leaves at the start of the games. And so should the other hero powers that depend on the opponent having a minion. The people benefiting from combat mechanics should also not face an empty board.
So it should just be some generic boardstate at the minimum. It doesnt have to progress past the first few turns. And it should be more or less static so everyone knows what to expect from the ghost who left early. A generic 2/2 at turn 1 and 2. (maybe even simply the minion “mistake” would be good to fill the board). And then 2x2/2(tier1) for turn 3 and 4. Maybe 3x2/2 for turn 5 and after that it can stay like that,possibly go slightly higher but not much.
Or, you know, they could fix the game and people wouldn’t want to bolt before it starts. This really only became an epidemic after they paywalled four heroes.
While I agree with a lot of your suggestions guys, I do agree with Horatio and Neon that one of the biggest problems is the actual start of the game. Most people leave with empty boards only because their options sucked and prefer to go next.
I played my fair share of Auto-Battlers and this is a pretty common phenomena, but in BGs it’s so often that all my matches for a day had at least one afk.
when ive owned the pass, I would often be offered 4 awful choices constantly. I would bail just the same. SO the “paywall” isnt the actual root issue, tho I can see why some would assume it is. But more often than not, I am offered all trash heroes to choose from, lich lady/KT’s cat/the pirate orc/dragon that only has a power once in the game at tier 5/ etc. essentially non power having heroes.
That is really what i think the root issue is, too many heroes just dont really have a power at all. They get something once or sometimes even less than that. Every power should either be something that you click the button for to do a thing, or a passive that affects your board or hand.
The only real exceptions to this I could see their arguments for are AFKay and Reno. Their powers and gimmicks make perfect sense. However I would like to see an update to AFKay where if you literally go hands off for 2 rounds at a time you get another 2 discovered minions from 2 tiers above your current tier. and I mean hands off, no mouse moving, nothing. High risk gamble to do it but I could see it making her a more viable hero.
Outside of them, however, non passive and non activated hero powers are essentially trash to the game.
You refuse to play captain? What?
it sucks playing rag, and facing a dead player who had nothing
hero power doesnt advance and now your a turn behind everyone else
I feel this in my very soul.
Or Rylak builds, or undead builds…
rag is worse than those two
HP being behind sucks
not having a good board due to problems you caused by not seeing a player left is not the same
rag cant see who left before a game starts
Lower Hero pool/better balancing would definitely help with the problem, but I simply doubt Blizzard would do that because of the way the mode evolved. Only way I can describe it is “always more”.
Sure, they sometimes remove stuff, but more often than not, it’s because it was a recent thing (and they still keep some remains from it) or they replace with the new OP.
He effectively doesnt have a power. Saving up gold for a single cash in once per game. I dont see the signifigant advantage that gives to the board in terms of scaling them up, giving them any benefits like divine shields or reborns or stats. its just gold. most times you;d be eliminated because you lack any ability to keep up with others that do have useful hero powers long before you could usefully cash in on the savings. the hero is just awful. Ill admit im not a world class player or anything, i rarely ever see tier 4 5 or 6 minions ever offered to me in the tavern, and i rarely ever get to tier 6. But Im proud of my 5k rating as it is damn difficult to get it for me. But that hero is just worthless to me. less than worthless. I see more value in the kelthuzad taking over of a turn 1 leaver as more of a threat than that hero.