Hi everyone! We hope you’re all keeping safe out there in these uncertain times. What you can be certain of is that the team is still working hard on bringing lots of new features to Warhammer Combat Cards, albeit from the comfort of our own homes! Working from home comes with its own challenges so this update won’t be as detailed as some, but we’re doing our best to keep you informed and ensure you have a fun and rewarding experience.
We’ve recently released v29.12, which should be appearing in app stores soon. This is one of a number of smaller updates the team has released recently, addressing some smaller issues while working on some larger features which will start to appear in the game in the coming months.
We recently released an oft-requested feature in the turn indicator. This allowed people to follow the flow of the game and know which cards to deploy at the opportune moment. Unfortunately there was an issue causing the icon to appear in the wrong place. With this update, this issue should now be fixed and the turn indicator should be on the correct side of the battlefield.
You might also notice a change to where your name sits on the front page. It’s a little bit small on some devices so will be increasing in size soon, but it’s a small change to allow for new things to come. Watch this space…
Ranked Season 4
This week sees the end of Ranked Season 3 on Thursday 2nd April. We will be taking a short break between seasons to deploy some changes to the matchmaking. Alex, one of the designers on Warhammer Combat Cards, gave the following update on these changes:
Ranked mode has been running for three seasons now. We’ve been paying close attention as everyone made their journey towards Terra. Whilst a handful of players are storming to the final arena, the majority are not getting as far as we’d hoped, and we’ve been wondering why.
In a competitive ranked mode, most players are eventually going to reach a point where their progress stalls, where their skill and the strength of their deck are evenly matched by the opponents at that level. That’s exactly what we expected to happen. What we didn’t expect was that most players wouldn’t get very far before reaching that point.
We grabbed all the battle data and crunched the numbers, trying to find out why it was happening. Perhaps players were not playing enough battles? It wasn’t that. Between seasons 1 and 2, we doubled the number of trophies earned per battle. This was to make sure everyone could reach their right level by playing 4 or 5 battles a day. If you play less than that, you will still get there eventually, since you carry some of your trophies into the next season.
Surely it couldn’t be the matchmaking at fault! Looking at the data, most battles were played against opponents with well matched trophy counts. It seemed like the matchmaking was working well. What we discovered was that even when the trophy counts were well matched, players were getting tough matches more often than we expected.
To understand why, imagine a player with really strong decks, but with one of their factions they only play a couple of battles. That neglected deck stays in the pool of opponents, but its trophy count never gets any higher. So when the game is choosing an opponent for you, if you also have a low trophy count, it thinks this deck is going to be a great match – but unless you also have a powerful deck, you’re going to get beaten.
That’s an extreme example, but the same thing happens for every faction of every player while they are on the way up. Every faction starts out with fewer trophies than it ‘should’ have, which means very often what looks like a good match turns out to be a tough one. When matches are tougher than they should be, players lose more trophies and can’t get as high up the ladder.
For season 4, we’re attempting to improve this. Our new matchmaking system places less importance on getting a close trophy match, and more on getting the right level of challenge for each battle. What difference will you notice? Mostly, you’ll notice you’re battling opponents whose trophy counts are further from yours. This could make it seem like the matchmaking has got worse, but in fact those opponents should give a more appropriate level of challenge. When your faction starts out, you’ll probably get a lot of easy wins, but as you gain trophies the range of opponents will narrow until you’re evenly matched. Finally, you should find you get a lot further through the arenas than before, so you’ll pick up bigger prizes!
As always, we’ll be keeping an eye on how these changes pan out, and look forward to hearing what you think!
Ranked Season 4 is scheduled to begin on Tuesday 7th April. We look forward to seeing you on the battlefield!
We’re also working on another balance pass to boost cards who don’t see much playtime or reign in those who are over-performing, and we’ll have more details on those changes in the next update.
The team are currently hard at work on a number of features including Clans, new traits, new Warlords, and other things mentioned in last week’s Design Blog. We’ll provide more details on these features individually in future updates.
Why not head over to our in-game forums, r/WarhammerCombatCards, and Discord for discussion and let us know what you’re looking forward to?
You can also get in touch via our Facebook page, leaving a comment here, or mailing [email protected].
I will tell you something. Take this into account as well. Why do players not reach Terra? Because they don’t have as much time to play as they would like. You have to be either an avid wh40k fanatic or have no other duties (work, school etc) other than spending time on the phone …also take this into account … Let most people enjoy your wonderful product and do not limit yourself to the chosen ones …
Let the Emperor’s Light light up your paths ..
Thanks for the comment.
We view the ranked seasons in the same way as the weekly campaigns – you don’t have to at the top of the leaderboard to make them worth taking part in. Players naturally settle into relative positions based on how long they have to play, how powerful their decks are, and so on. The concept of a leaderboard means some players must be placed higher / lower than others, so reaching Terra is a goal for high level players and those with a lot of spare time.
We’ve spent quite a bit of effort (hopefully) making Combat Cards suitable for players who like to grind for progress and those who just want a few quick battles each session. However, this will evolve over time so it’s always interesting and useful to get feedback like this.
What’s the situation with deck filters?
Also the ‘finish download’ bug is still problematic
One of the problems we’ve learned about is that splitting our team across too many areas of work means everything takes too long to get finished, so we’re trying to focus on a few improvements at a time. As a result, upgrading the deck editing and collection screens had to be placed on hold so we can get things like the battle system rework and clans implemented first.
I’m not certain what you mean by the ‘finish download’ bug. Could you provide some more details so I can check with the team? Thanks!
Person which make so ridiculous change in system NEVER played ranked. I’m getting +25 points per win – 99 per lose because some Incompetent dev which NEVER Play any ranked game above 1000 only read data (fail with that) make some changes which he “think” are good. How even this company operate ¿
What Dace said, im at 8500 points right now and im getting between 25 and 50 for a win but losse 60.
Also just played a match against a deck that had a level 5 Longshot in it, die Commons were around level 10.
I have one level 3 Legendary and no common card higher than 6.
Im not being matched against other players skills, as im playing against an A.I controlled deck anyway.
Im being matched against their wallet.
Hi Bernd, we had a couple of players email re. the season scoring, so here’s the reply I sent them. Hope it helps clarify some details.
Re. ranked mode season 3. I brought up your comments with the team and this is their response:
We’re looking at the ranked mode data to see how it corresponds to feedback like yours. At the moment, our reading of the data is that the new system is working well for the vast majority of players, but for the top end who are grinding ahead of the pack the changes result in harder matches, and because they’re usually ahead in trophies, they on average get smaller rewards for winning and bigger punishments for losing.
In previous seasons, players were able to grind indefinitely and get very high trophy counts – this is now much harder to do because your progress is curtailed when you get ahead. Nevertheless, 137 players have already made it to Terra, with several weeks still to go.
However, we are investigating some specific reports, such as some players meeting overpowered decks, so work is continuing on improving and fixing issues with the ranked mode.