Battlegrounds: Changes

Multiplayer Discussion
1

I’ve been on a bit of a winning streak. I came back around 5400 MMR for the dragons update. Lost my way down to 4500. Climbed back to 6100 steadily and recently had a few losses back just below 6k.

In my wins, I feel I can’t do wrong. I have 5 Golden including 6 stars. I have 8 cards in my hand I can’t even play because my board is too good.

In my losses, I feel helpless, especially 8th, can’t win a single round, bad hero options, bad minion options, no token early, still get 1 stars after upgrading to 2 star or even 3 stars and don’t have a token so all I can do is buy 1 and roll and freeze if I get anything and I don’t even get that.

I start to go dragons because it is the best option I have and then don’t get dragons so my single whelp falls flat, my 2/3 taunt quickly becomes useless, my star is a 3/4 and I’ve lost every single round.

I’ve been on both sides of it. The RNG goes my way almost every time to get me draws I don’t deserve, wins that could’ve went the other way.

Or the attack order goes the worst it possibly can and instead of getting a draw or losing to a 1 star token I end up taking 10-20 damage and finding a way to lose every single round until I’m finished in 8th super early.

I’ve had games I should’ve lost 8th place and then I get paired with a ghost, get a free turn to upgrade and improve, and come back and win 1st or close. Literally fighting that ghost every other match and watching the bottom 4 get knocked out when they all would’ve beat me easily on that 1st turn.

On the other hand some games I get paired against the worst possible match up for me every other round and get eliminated before I can do anything.

I’m asking what can be done to reduce the RNG elements? To make it so that all 8 players have a fair and decent shot at not only surviving until top 4 but winning it all.

1 Like
2

I think damage to face should be toned down a bit

Maybe the hero shouldn’t deal damage, maybe tokens shouldn’t deal damage or deal a maximum of the minion who originated them, maybe the damage of minion should be dimished if it is damaged

A few matchs ago I faced someone with a much better board than me, I had good RNG and managed to survive with a 2/1 brann…he took 11 damage to face (tier 6 + brann) and died even with the battle being super even, I felt really sorry for him

3

Yeah I think starting HP could be moved up to 60 or even 80 to allow everyone a chance to make it to later rounds and actually build a board and compete for resources. That’s essentially toning down damage by 25% or half.

And I feel the same way. A lot of battles I win on some BS and I’m sitting here like dang sorry man, when he pops my rat for 7 damage instead of 2, or worse with deathrattles that summon full cost minions and can tack on +12 damage or more. It seems very disproportionate when you’re taking 2-3-5 damage early then suddenly you get hit with 20-30 damage for lethal because of bad RNG all around.

4

It’s a joke format because of how luck dictated it is. Make 5 triples and they all yield junk while the other guys triples to all the perfect minions.

2 Likes
5

It isn’t as rng as you think. Just watch youtubers and pause the video everytime before they pick a card and ask yourself what you would pick. A lot of my boards that get me 3rd/4th ( games that I am low rolling in) are just random stat cards that have no synergy.

When I was sub 5k my biggest faults was holding out on selling my board looking for synergies. Also not selling big stat minions later on to build synergies. It is all extremely intricate and not as rng based as you think. Yes some games you are guaranteed 8th place but your lack of IG knowledge is probably making you miss out on more wins to balance that out.

Also websites like hsreplay paid version give you a huge advantage to newer players more than experts. Since it shows you when the average player that got first place tiered up and what deck types have best synergies with your hero. Also what hero is the best odds of winning to begin with.

I hate the idea of more hp because longer games is hard for some people that don’t want to sit there for like 30-40 minutes playing a game.

4 Likes
6

They tried to reduce the number of times you play the same player in a row, and I think it is along those lines that they could improve the game.

There are a couple of hero’s that produce high damage boards early like death wing and Millhouse and on turn 3 AFK and if you get matched against these guys over and over you will take an immense amount of damage.

Then there is the times where like you say you match against one of the ‘leaver’ ghosts who you have no chance to lose against and you can be super greedy.

Don’t know what the best way to fix that is, but I think the average game could be vastly improved if that was limited

7

I’ve got 615 hours played and have been up to 9k rating. RNG dictates the format in every way. Sure, there is skill involved in deciding what to do with what you are given, but luck will dictate who wins. People say don’t high roll. But, if you don’t go big, you won’t win. I had to stop playing competitively because it was too frustrating. Now, I just concede games that aren’t going well and hope luckier next time, lol. I’m not gonna frustrate myself trying to piece together crap to hope to mitigate rating loss which means nothing.

8

I am at 9k as well and the fact is if you look at every game as a snap shot they sure it is luck based. But if you look at a course of 10 games or 100 games then you realize your luck is just a portion of what is happening. The fun sometimes is figuring out how to minimize your low roll games and turn mid roll games into 1st places.

It is the same with ladder. When a deck you make wins 55% of the time you consider that great. Although unlucky hands/matches can cause you to lose 20 in a row with no amount of skill helping that. Then you could end up winning your next 40 when rng is being stupid.

Battlegrounds has a lot more decisions involved and no p2w aspect so skill will shine hard and if you smurfed an account at 4k you could win way more games than any other person at that level.

9

I also think the damage you take per turn is way too high now. If it happens (and it happens ALL THE TIME to me) you pop that beast last and it fills the board so you take 15 damage instead of 6 or 7 or whatever that isn’t right. I don’t think you should take damage for tokens.

The other thing that is frustrating is picking a tribe based hero and then rarely or never getting those draws. Would think those heros should have a small advantage drawing those minions. Yesterday I played Fungalmancer and didn’t see a murloc until turn 7. Thats just wrong and the last thing I will say is that I am slowly not caring about MMR but losing to someone insane luck gets old fast.

10

Once you hit like 9k+ mmr it’s all luck. Don’t get offered good minions or make value trades. Loss.

11

Anyone who looks through my history I’ve been a supporter of Battlegrounds, I’ve criticized certain aspect of it at times but always been pretty supportive.

Right now Battlegrounds is pure garbage in which your position is based far to much on luck. I’ve played quite a bit of Battlegrounds before quarantine. Now that I’m stuck at home it’s so bad I often fire it up and then quit before the first game is even over because it’s just awful.

1 Like
12

Yep just got two 8th places in a row because my all my opponents rolled high. Deathwing with two Voidlords and Malganis super early in the game, like okay game.

13

Its a mode built entirely on rng so hard to do what u want.

They should increase all minions shown by 1 to even out rng and make discovers have 4 options to do same. This hurts daryl a bit but whatevs daryl is better than alot of heros.

14

One thing I can say for certain is this mode felt way better before the inclusion of dragons, though I don’t blame the dragons directly.

Suddenly it is much harder to find a decent comp in the early game, but there are still S tier and F tier minions at every tavern tier, as well as synergy cards that can push the game way out of sync depending on tavern offerings.

It definitely feels more luck driven after the dragons patch, and with most of the hero powers now being relatively equal, early highrolls more easily translate into easy top 4 finishes.

The lack of ability to find early synergy naturally translates to the need to tavern up faster, which means comps naturally run higher tier minions so wins and losses are more damaging, meaning shorter games. Shorter games mean highrolling is even more important, because there is less opportunity to find a winning comp before you are eliminated.

All that being said, here are the changes I would make to try to shift the game back toward more skill and less luck.

Reduce the number of minions in each tier.

Tier 1: 10 minions
Tier 2-5: 14 minions
Tier 6: 10 minions

Without going into details here I’m advocating for cutting some of the strongest minions as well as the weakest. The objective is to make it easier for players to find synergy.

With 5 tribes that allows for 2 tribal minions at each tier, and 16 non tribal minions that provide alternative synergies in the mid game (battlecry, deathrattle, taunt, etc.)

Next issue I see, token generators on T1 provide too strong of an early boost to most heros, allowing them to easily push up to Tier 3 without taking much damage. I’m not exactly sure how to correct this disparity, but it seemed much less prevalent when there were fewer minions per tavern tier. Probably due to increased chance of hitting a token generator on turn 1 if you wanted it.

Another issue I see is that we just don’t get enough minions from our current tier to pick from. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hit a refresh on tier 4 or 5 just to see a tavern full of 1 and 2 stars. The tavern should always contain at least 1 minion of the current tier.

The final issue I see is just that games are a little too fast right now, this is again due to the inability to find synergies, so players take higher tier minions for minor stat boosts that result in much higher damage dealt for a win. The primary thing I’d like to see is matches in general take about 1-2 rounds more than they currently do, as such I’d bump starting health to 50 (65 for patchwerk).

15

Every time they changes it generally backfires and makes things worse. Dragons are unbalanced, the hero’s are crap except for like 5 of them. The damage you take each turn is so much now you can barely make adjustments in time. The matchmaking in the game is hit or miss. If you lose the first around or two it seems like you are paired with the stronger opponents so they can kill you off quicker. The game in nothing but a level race for the 4 or 5 god minions that win most games. They have removed the adventure and tinkering in the game where you could try to find newer builds or technics.

I mean get it and all, but like most game they build now it doesn’t have any real substance.

16

Don’t overthink it… Battlegrounds is a glorified slot machine… Nothing else.

17

All skill does is dictate if you place 3-4 or 5-6. RNG determines who gets to be 1-2 and 7-8.

18

Just have fun, LOL. Why do you need that rank? Bad hero - concede. Bad luck and no synergy by turn 3/4 - concede. I practice that and have a lot of fun, also getting those 10 coins faster.

It’s just a video game, adjust your methods to make it enjoyable for you or quit. How do you people compete in real life if such a meaningless game mode can affect your mood or something?

Remember, you are not forced to be good at it or play it at all.

19

I am happier with this meta than I have been with the last couple. I feel like you can last long enough for your decisions to matter. I actually beat giant divine shield poison murlocs with giant dragons earlier (1/3 deathrattle to kill his shields, then the tier 6 to give my dragons shields). At least I have had a few games where I had the opportunity to actually use strategy to counter my opponent’s superior board in this meta.

20

Everyone is getting RNG screwed, not just you. It sounds as if you are trying to force comp super early every game and when it works out you steam roll everyone, and when it doesn’t you crash.

The addition of extra minions means forcing early comps is a high reward, high risk play style.

You can’t control the RNG level, but you can control your play style.

I rarely know what my comp is going to be before turn 5. I got second 4 games ago and at the end I still didn’t know what my comp was.

You have to learn to play Frankenstein comps as well as the pretty comps in YouTube highlights videos to be more consistent.