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Striking a Balance Between RPG Properties and Competitive Fairness
Goals
Develop a design that suits the following requirements:
1. Before entering the game for the first time, the player should choose one of the six basic classes. As the game progresses, the player should unlock the new ones. The choice the player will be provided with must depend on his earlier choices.
2. The player should earn money after winning PvE and PvP matches. The items that can be bought in the shop should increase the player stats when being equipped.
3. By leveling up, the player should earn the ability points, which can be used to learn new abilities and to level the already learned ones, and the attribute points, which can be distributed between stats to increase its values. The player should be able to redistribute the points no more than once a week, so the way you spent your ability and attribute points matter.
4. Learned abilities can be equipped into the ability pool. The player will be able to use only the abilities from his pool in the battle. The pool consists of 8 slots.
5. Ranked and tournament matches should allow players to fight on an equal footing: the chances of winning should depend only on players' skills and the quality of the communication between the teammates.
The biggest obstacle
The more the rules were adjusted to be fair for the ranked matches the less enjoyable the unranked matches became.
Result
Found a solution of splitting the matchmaking into the RPG queue and the competitive queue. Established the ruleset for the competitive queue that will ensure a level playing field.
Details
Main problems:
1. There's a huge emphasis on luck: whether you win or not is mostly determined by what skills will your enemy have in his ability pool. The player has no control over it. This is the major problem Hearthstone has.
2. If you're lucky and you have a rare sword your opponent doesn't, you have an obvious advantage over him. If this advantage is big, the game can't be called fair. If this advantage is small or the matchmaker considers equipped items, the items become gradually less valuable. If the advantage is average, both problems appear. A need for the valuable items forces players to either grind or donate which makes the game far less enjoyable.
3. There also can be a situation where you have fewer chances of winning just because the classes you unlocked are bad against his class. This, however, isn't that important because the player's success is mostly determined by the abilities he picked, not the tree he chose from. Most of the classes provide ability trees that allow for diverse playstyles.
Established competitive rules to solve that:
1. Draft phase (solves problem #1 and provides more variety)
In competitive matches, a player's ability pool is unused. Instead, the players fill up their ability pools during the draft phase.
Algorithm:
1. Both teams select one class they want to ban. Both teams won't be able to pick these two classes;
2. Teams are picking their classes in the following order: 122112, where 1 is the first team's turn to pick and 2 is the second team's turn to pick. One team cannot pick more than one unit of the same class;
3. All players are given the same amount of ability and attribute points. They can distribute the ability points freely during the third phase, however, they cannot redistribute the points they already invested. The enemy cannot see your distribution of the ability points on the tree, but he can partly figure it out using the information about the abilities in the apparent slots (see p. 4);
4. At the same time, the players pick learned abilities in turn. They have 2 options where to place it: either into the apparent slot or into the hidden slot. If the ability is placed into the apparent slot, the enemy can see it right away. There are four apparent and four hidden slots in an ability pool. Once the ability is placed into the slot, this cannot be reverted;
5. After every ability pool is full, the players have 20 seconds to distribute their attribute points. After that, the game starts.
2. Class availability (solves problem #3)
Every class is available for the players in the competitive queue. They are not limited by their RPG progress.
The players pick their classes before the ability drafting stage begins. This is obvious as the ability tree depends on the player's class.
3. Level (puts the players on an equal footing)
The levels of the players are equal and are randomly selected by the server in the range from 25 to 60. This range can be adjusted later to provide the best playing experience.
The information about the level is available from the very start (before any class is banned). As was stated before, the number of ability and attribute points is defined by the level of the player.
4. Items (solves problem #2)
Equipped items do not provide any bonuses. They only change the appearance of the player. This decision also leads to a situation where the players buy items only to look cool in the ranked games, which is a good thing, I think.
Predicted problem:
After the solution will be implemented there may be a problem that one of the queues (RPG or Competitive) will be neglected.
The solution is quite simple: different queues will have different purposes. RPG queue will be used for leveling up and earning money on the PvP arena and for the clan wars. The competitive queue will be used for ranked matches and tournaments. This will split the players based not only on their preference but also on their goals.