Copy and pasted from the feedback channel in discord with a few edits. When talking in a call-to-action tone, I'm talking towards the devs.
You might notice I'm the only one who did it without going to mythic. This is because straight after getting that, I immediately swapped from my rune control magic deck to zoo death, the ladder of which being substantially worse and it didn't take me long to get all the way down to sub 1150 MMR (from 1300+) and shadow rank. Why did I do this? Easy: I get more wins in a short amount of time, even if my win-rate takes a serious dip. I am able to get a win every 6 minutes at the least, and that's pretty damn impressive. How did I do that? Here are the unhealthy behaviors that I had to practice in order to get there:
-> Concede as soon as I see the possibility of losing, sometimes even before turn 3 (what's the point of spending more minutes on something that reaps no wins?). I didn't use the "cancel your loss" glitch because I wanted to lose; the lower rank I am, the easier the fights are.
-> Play a deck that is designed to win as fast and as brain-dead as possible, causing wins to be more RNG than skill (unless I was playing in lower levels, where their lack of skill won me matches). Doesn't matter if it's a bad deck in the meta, I just want fast wins.
-> Completely avoid higher ranks so that I avoid higher leveled players that I'm more likely to lose to, and immediately conceded to players where I know I only have a 10% chance of winning.
Disgusting, right? Thing is, with how the system is working, there's no other viable choice. Playing a control deck just wastes time, or, if you have a busy life, makes it impossible to get certain rewards in time. Fixing this does not mean banning people who practice this behavior; that's a band-aid solution that will continue to to be abused by people who are not banned yet, and it will cause a sort of ambiguity between who's smurfing and who's not (I wasn't intentionally losing, just playing a bad but fast deck, so is what I'm doing technically wrong?). Not only that, but it's not the people using this tactic that is the problem, it is the fundamental system that is. How do we fix it then? Simple: make a healthier behavior just as, if not more rewarding.
I have an idea for a solution that does this. What if we make it to where wins in higher ranks gave more "wins"? Like, let's say a mythic win is worth 1.5 wins instead of 1 (for weekend ranked only). This way, you are encouraged to keep winning and stay in your rank and to rank up, and that even if you can get a win every 6 minutes in shadow, it's not worth sacrificing that win multiplier. This would also provide incentive to reach mythic in the first place; right now, unless you have a high MMR, there is no reason to reach mythic; this could be that reason, and a very good one at that. I have no idea what the multipliers would be, but it should be higher for every rank starting at shadow; this is because if it's the same level between two ranks, I'll just want to lose streak back into the lower one every now and then to avoid more difficult opponents if I know I can't get a higher rank than that.
This could be applied to experience too. I don't like the win streak idea for that; causes the same problems as the win requirement does.
Finally, I should probably mention that linking these problems to the deck itself (namely zoo death) is not a good idea either. Zoo light, zoo viking warrior, tempo deception, and many other decks are just as capable of doing the same thing. Play-rate isn't attached to viability; please don't nerf them until you are sure it has an overpowering presence in the meta. At least at the moment, mythic is not a reliable way to base balance around.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk, have a wonderful day!
Fair points you make! Immutable announced at some point that they will ban people intentionally losing, but as you said, you arent losing intentionally, just not ranking up.
Its really hard to make the reward system fair. I think if you consider both wins and rank, there will always be a certain sweet spot. Maybe your suggestion would help a bit, but it wouldnt solve the problem. In Hearthstone, only your rank mattered and I disliked the system even more.
Maybe you could give out trinkets for every win in mythic at the end of the month or something? Like cardbacks, statues, etc. This way every player could decide on his own whether he wants to farm cards or go for that sweet tradeable but useless thingy...just from the top of my head 😅
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I mean, the problem is that it's the quantity of wins that matters right now, not the quality. It shouldn't be that way. There will always be a sweet spot, but how about making that mythic? The current problem is that I'm being rewarded to put in less effort into winning the game, which is inherently broken. We already have different rewards for the rank tier you reach, and that's healthy, so how would this other incentive to be higher ranked be any different? Answer: it's not. I don't know why you bring up Hearthstone; there are almost no similarities in this. Hearthstone was about your win-rate as you climbed, as that's it. GU's base climbing system is very similar, and it works. It's the weekend ranked wins that's the problem here, not the gate-keeping. Trinkets wouldn't help as even though they have worth, I'm playing for cards, not trinkets, and I'm not getting cards fast if I'm maintaining mythic. Of course, nothing will entirely fix the problem, but we should at least have some sort of incentive to stay in your rank when you get there and some sort of incentive not just to mindlessly rush wins.
Maybe solution isn´t made more valuable wins at higher ranks, but make more valuable wins at higher turn, similar to xp gaining.
this would made strategy you mentioned meaningless and it would not disadvantage new or lower ranks players
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STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!