How different are the results you get if you use something like Elo or Glicko-2 to rate the players, updating ratings for each match? Crunching that table would probably take a while...
I suspect the results would turn out pretty similar and allow you to rank players with fewer runs more accurately.
It's possible, we don't currently use any type of rating for players in arena as they are just matched by record and that record is wiped at the end of each run. I think if we were to use a system like that to rank players we should also use it to match them, which is a longer and more complicated topic worth discussing but not in this message :).
Don't these players already think mage has the highest win rate and has mage as one of their most played class?
It appears that way yes, I think it's a question of whether or not perpetuating the cycle I describe is a good thing or not. If you played WoW at all, there are some similarities there when it comes to ranking different specs against one another. Simulation sites might say Fire Mage does 100k DPS and Frost Mage does 95k DPS. Other sites like worldoflogs would then display actual performances of Fire vs Frost and would show Fire outdps'ing Frost by a margin significantly higher than 5%. This isn't necessarily because the sims are wrong (they sometimes are) but more as a result that the informed and researching population is all playing fire, and the less informed and researched population chooses frost at a higher rate. This of course isn't the only example of how perception bias affects actual data, but it's the particular example in which I learned about it. To be clear, this sort of thing isn't a situation where we throw our hands up in the air and say "welp, it's not us it's the players!" but just another point we have to consider when trying to get arena to a place where most of the classes have a similar play rate.
Wouldn't it be better to be transparent with the stats if you want people to pick more diverse classes? If they see that mage isn't actually that much better, they might want to pick other classes. Since the players want to be diverse with what they play, so that they might justify to themselves that it is okay to not play mage cause I enjoy warrior a lot and the win percentage difference isn't that large.
I disagree that it is the better players that pick mage(and not the weaker players). Better more experienced players has tried all the classes and have personal preferences and have found success in other classes than mage. It is the weaker players that just takes a glance at the internet for maybe a guide or two and is told mage is by far the best and chooses mage every time. Most people playing in arena thinks mage is the best I believe, since if you spend any reasonable time on arena you have probably at least used a couple of minutes on the internet reading about arena. Since arena is so hard to get into, that you to have a positive experience most likely have read guides/tier lists in advance.
I think the point I'm trying to make is if there is a post Mage had the highest win rate, the people that read that post (engaged, informed, researching players) will likely play Mage more often. Because those players play Mage more often, win rates rise, then we post new data, then the same cycle repeats itself in a slightly lower capacity.
I understand why blizzard might not want to publish them, but I'd like to see overall winrates / average number of wins for each class
I can't remember if I made this same reply buried somewhere on this thread or another one, but this is one reason I think it's incorrect for us to contribute to class bias by showing win rates::::
In general I think it's best for us to not bias the class you choose to pick because the perception that that class is 1% better on average across all players. We don't matchmake based on MMR in arena, so class power level perception plays a fairly big role in the win rates of each class.
Just for example, consider the following scenario. Player A is an awesome arena player and averages around 7 wins per run. Player A follows the Hearthstone scene and is of the opinion that Mage is the best arena class by far, and picks that class whenever they see it. Player B is a player who is less experienced, and doesn't follow the Hearthstone scene at all. They don't have any idea which are the 'best' and 'worst' arena classes, and just pick whatever class they think is the coolest. Player A picks Mage, and Player B picks another class, say Shaman.... and they match against each other.
At this point, it doesn't really matter what the actual power level of Mage or Shaman are (to a reasonable degree) because the Mage player is going to be favored due to a more experienced and informed player playing the deck. Whenever you have a system that is not matching players by some form of true skill, this is something to take into consideration. I think when Mage gets to around 52-53% win rate it will probably be 'balanced', but it will take awhile for the perception surrounding Mage and the other classes to change enough that the best players aren't picking that class at a much higher rate than the others.
I mean, it'd be nice to see the winrates of the classes, winrates of going first/second etc. You know, stats that matter, not to sound like an asshole but it's very strange to withhold meaningful stats even if they make the devs look bad because then you look bad AND get flak for trying to hide it. Being honest and failing is much less likely to get hate than attempting to hide it.
In general I think it's best for us to not bias the class you choose to pick because the perception that that class is 1% better on average across all players. We don't matchmake based on MMR in arena, so class power level perception plays a fairly big role in the win rates of each class.
Just for example, consider the following scenario. Player A is an awesome arena player and averages around 7 wins per run. Player A follows the Hearthstone scene and is of the opinion that Mage is the best arena class by far, and picks that class whenever they see it. Player B is a player who is less experienced, and doesn't follow the Hearthstone scene at all. They don't have any idea which are the 'best' and 'worst' arena classes, and just pick whatever class they think is the coolest. Player A picks Mage, and Player B picks another class, say Shaman.... and they match against each other.
At this point, it doesn't really matter what the actual power level of Mage or Shaman are (to a reasonable degree) because the Mage player is going to be favored due to a more experienced and informed player playing the deck. Whenever you have a system that is not matching players by some form of true skill, this is something to take into consideration. I think when Mage gets to around 52-53% win rate it will probably be 'balanced', but it will take awhile for the perception surrounding Mage and the other classes to change enough that the best players aren't picking that class at a much higher rate than the others.
Hey Iksar, thanks for putting out this info. I remember something similar to these stats appeared a year or two ago as well. The biggest question on my mind is this...can we expect a regular leaderboard or ranking system anytime soon for Arena? I know that many members of the competitive Arena community would enjoy a leaderboard like they have in the Asia server.
The problem with releasing stats intermittently is that it does not allow for a truly competitive environment. I've spoken with other Arena streamers, and I can confidently say that we all want the challenge of facing each other head to head to see who can get a higher average. But there's currently no format for this competition. When we are not aware of what is being tracked or when/if rankings are coming out, there is no incentive to play the best class and put the focus on winning. On one hand, I want to play the "lesser" classes because I find them fun...I also want to experiment with all the cards and make joke decks. After all, there's no official ranking system, so it doesn't matter. But whenever something like this pops up, the competitive fire in me starts burning and I want to see if I can climb to the top...but how? Do I start not playing the worst classes for 9 months and hope that a report comes out? Do I stop experimenting and making fun decks? I am forever caught between the "winning" choice and the "fun" or "inquisitive" choice. This would be solved with a leaderboard. For a specified time period, all the competitive Arena players could duke it out, tryhard to their heart's delight, and earn bragging rights. There would be no more questions of if/when stats come out.
In the end, I hope blizzard will consider regular reporting of these stats or something like a monthly leaderboard. All of us in the arena community have been asking for official stat tracking for a long time now. I'm glad to see that the dev team is turning its eye towards more competitive players with the Heroic Tavern Brawl. Hopefully changes geared towards competitive Arena players will be coming as well.
I think a monthly release on the web (similar to constructed) is a reasonable request. I wonder what is the best way to track those players. Here are a couple ideas...
Highest Win Rate over X Runs Monthly. Maybe X is around 30.
Highest SCORE over X Runs Monthly. Where score is determined by a formula we think is a fair representation of the best arena players.
Some examples of SCORE Formula:
A: Wins / Losses +12.
One 12-0 Run would net a score of 12/12. (1.0 Score)
Five 12-2 Runs would net a score of 60/22. (2.73 Score)
Fifty 10-3 Runs would net a score of 500/162. (3.08 Score)
The idea behind formula A would be to not have a minimum or maximum amount of runs, but to have a score formula that rewards consistency over many runs at a reasonable rate. The difference between 10 runs and 100 runs with the given formula is huge, but the difference between 200 runs and 300 runs is pretty small. This is the formula we had originally, but ended up swapping for an easier to understand one. The original top player using this formula was Chessdude, who had something like a 9.3 win average over 25ish runs in 9 months.
Formula (sort of) B:
Add your highest win totals with each class together. Bonuses for multiple 12 wins with one class. Example:
If you have one 12-win run with each class, your monthly score would be 108. So you are motivated to keep playing after achieving this (really difficult to achieve) we could award a bonus (maybe 1-2 Score) for each successive 12-win run with that class. The upside to this score is that it motivates playing with each class, the downside is it awards playing more runs as opposed to having a high win rate. Of course, in order to achieve a high score here you would have to be an insane player, but the downsides still apply. Anyway, still looking forward to more feedback thanks for everything so far!
Would love more feedback here as to what statistics you all think best represent who the top arena players are.
For some added clarity, the top 3 players were sorted by average wins per run with a minimum of 100 runs over that 9 month period. There were players with higher wins per run over 9 months, but most of them had <25 runs. Ranking arena players is a bit tricky because there is no MMR to rank them by. We have wins per run as a statistic, but have to pick a minimum run amount in order to have wins per run represent the best players. (One is too few, 1000 is probably too many) I'll be reading everything here and go over some of things we tried a little while later after some more feedback rolls through.
Mike Donais
Yep, it is confirmed.
Iksar
It's possible, we don't currently use any type of rating for players in arena as they are just matched by record and that record is wiped at the end of each run. I think if we were to use a system like that to rank players we should also use it to match them, which is a longer and more complicated topic worth discussing but not in this message :).
Iksar
It appears that way yes, I think it's a question of whether or not perpetuating the cycle I describe is a good thing or not. If you played WoW at all, there are some similarities there when it comes to ranking different specs against one another. Simulation sites might say Fire Mage does 100k DPS and Frost Mage does 95k DPS. Other sites like worldoflogs would then display actual performances of Fire vs Frost and would show Fire outdps'ing Frost by a margin significantly higher than 5%. This isn't necessarily because the sims are wrong (they sometimes are) but more as a result that the informed and researching population is all playing fire, and the less informed and researched population chooses frost at a higher rate. This of course isn't the only example of how perception bias affects actual data, but it's the particular example in which I learned about it. To be clear, this sort of thing isn't a situation where we throw our hands up in the air and say "welp, it's not us it's the players!" but just another point we have to consider when trying to get arena to a place where most of the classes have a similar play rate.
Iksar
I think the point I'm trying to make is if there is a post Mage had the highest win rate, the people that read that post (engaged, informed, researching players) will likely play Mage more often. Because those players play Mage more often, win rates rise, then we post new data, then the same cycle repeats itself in a slightly lower capacity.
Iksar
I can't remember if I made this same reply buried somewhere on this thread or another one, but this is one reason I think it's incorrect for us to contribute to class bias by showing win rates::::
In general I think it's best for us to not bias the class you choose to pick because the perception that that class is 1% better on average across all players. We don't matchmake based on MMR in arena, so class power level perception plays a fairly big role in the win rates of each class.
Just for example, consider the following scenario. Player A is an awesome arena player and averages around 7 wins per run. Player A follows the Hearthstone scene and is of the opinion that Mage is the best arena class by far, and picks that class whenever they see it. Player B is a player who is less experienced, and doesn't follow the Hearthstone scene at all. They don't have any idea which are the 'best' and 'worst' arena classes, and just pick whatever class they think is the coolest. Player A picks Mage, and Player B picks another class, say Shaman.... and they match against each other.
At this point, it doesn't really matter what the actual power level of Mage or Shaman are (to a reasonable degree) because the Mage player is going to be favored due to a more experienced and informed player playing the deck. Whenever you have a system that is not matching players by some form of true skill, this is something to take into consideration. I think when Mage gets to around 52-53% win rate it will probably be 'balanced', but it will take awhile for the perception surrounding Mage and the other classes to change enough that the best players aren't picking that class at a much higher rate than the others.
Iksar
In general I think it's best for us to not bias the class you choose to pick because the perception that that class is 1% better on average across all players. We don't matchmake based on MMR in arena, so class power level perception plays a fairly big role in the win rates of each class.
Just for example, consider the following scenario. Player A is an awesome arena player and averages around 7 wins per run. Player A follows the Hearthstone scene and is of the opinion that Mage is the best arena class by far, and picks that class whenever they see it. Player B is a player who is less experienced, and doesn't follow the Hearthstone scene at all. They don't have any idea which are the 'best' and 'worst' arena classes, and just pick whatever class they think is the coolest. Player A picks Mage, and Player B picks another class, say Shaman.... and they match against each other.
At this point, it doesn't really matter what the actual power level of Mage or Shaman are (to a reasonable degree) because the Mage player is going to be favored due to a more experienced and informed player playing the deck. Whenever you have a system that is not matching players by some form of true skill, this is something to take into consideration. I think when Mage gets to around 52-53% win rate it will probably be 'balanced', but it will take awhile for the perception surrounding Mage and the other classes to change enough that the best players aren't picking that class at a much higher rate than the others.
Iksar
I think a monthly release on the web (similar to constructed) is a reasonable request. I wonder what is the best way to track those players. Here are a couple ideas...
Highest Win Rate over X Runs Monthly. Maybe X is around 30.
Highest SCORE over X Runs Monthly. Where score is determined by a formula we think is a fair representation of the best arena players.
Some examples of SCORE Formula:
A: Wins / Losses +12.
The idea behind formula A would be to not have a minimum or maximum amount of runs, but to have a score formula that rewards consistency over many runs at a reasonable rate. The difference between 10 runs and 100 runs with the given formula is huge, but the difference between 200 runs and 300 runs is pretty small. This is the formula we had originally, but ended up swapping for an easier to understand one. The original top player using this formula was Chessdude, who had something like a 9.3 win average over 25ish runs in 9 months.
Formula (sort of) B:
Add your highest win totals with each class together. Bonuses for multiple 12 wins with one class. Example:
If you have one 12-win run with each class, your monthly score would be 108. So you are motivated to keep playing after achieving this (really difficult to achieve) we could award a bonus (maybe 1-2 Score) for each successive 12-win run with that class. The upside to this score is that it motivates playing with each class, the downside is it awards playing more runs as opposed to having a high win rate. Of course, in order to achieve a high score here you would have to be an insane player, but the downsides still apply. Anyway, still looking forward to more feedback thanks for everything so far!
Iksar
3-3 :(
Iksar
Would love more feedback here as to what statistics you all think best represent who the top arena players are.
For some added clarity, the top 3 players were sorted by average wins per run with a minimum of 100 runs over that 9 month period. There were players with higher wins per run over 9 months, but most of them had <25 runs. Ranking arena players is a bit tricky because there is no MMR to rank them by. We have wins per run as a statistic, but have to pick a minimum run amount in order to have wins per run represent the best players. (One is too few, 1000 is probably too many) I'll be reading everything here and go over some of things we tried a little while later after some more feedback rolls through.