this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2024
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Keep your Numbers Off of Me: Why Tournaments Support Better Communities than Ladders [Richard Garfield, 2022] (www.gamedeveloper.com)
submitted 7 months ago by mike@mtgzone.com to c/mtg@mtgzone.com
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Richard Garfield blogs about the differences between a ranked ladder and tournaments for competitive play.

Recently I started playing a digital game. There was a tournament announced for the top players. Although I wasn’t a top player – the game was new enough and there was enough luck in the play that I thought maybe I could qualify, and so I started paying attention to my ranking.

Quickly I noticed that I was having less fun because I was no longer experimenting and trying new things – I was focusing on what I knew worked. I began to lean more heavily on what other people said was correct rather than finding my own way. Losses were setbacks rather than learning experiences. When I rose to a level that corresponded to my actual skill, I stalled. Then the games became more samey, with the players mostly playing similar styles. I noticed that I felt like a mediocre player even though I was in the top 10%.

The experience brought into focus and made personal some of the misgivings I have had about extensive player rankings in games. [...]

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[–] mike@mtgzone.com 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I also wasn’t experimenting. I wanted to get to Mythic, so I stuck to decks that I knew were good and that I was experienced with.

To me this is a problem w/ ranked ladder games for sure, but it's also the main reason I don't play as much anymore. Card acquisition is so expensive for non-drafters that you pretty much cannot brew on Arena unless you pay a lot of money every set.

I still vividly remember crafting 4 mythic WCs for a playset of Body of Research for a bad combo deck. I played the deck 3 times, don't think I ever won with it, and then never played it again. Those wildcards are $20-30 of in-game currency never gonna get that back. Being able to dust/de-craft those cards would get me back. Still makes me mad when I think about it.

I’m still not sure I would want to play without one.

Yea I also have never played a constructed event on Arena, and have never had any desire to at all. I don't think those tournaments are better than a ladder, and I don't think asynchronous leagues work. I think the ladder is better than the alternatives, it would just be nice maybe if there was a literal play queue that wasn't using deck strength and/or mmr. I'd love to see what random brews people are playing with. It would be even better to share decklists mid-game or after the game.