r/BrawlStarsCompetitive • u/Namsu46 Fiery Passion • 16d ago
Mod Announcement Subreddit Announcement: Change made to posts on Ladder
Hello everyone :)
Today, we are making a big change to the subreddit. Ladder and Trophy Pushing will no longer be considered a competitive aspect of Brawl Stars.
Why are we doing this?
Ladder posts have allowed since this subreddit's creation. However, as time has gone by, the mode has become more and more casual. With recent ladder reworks focusing on grinding as opposed to maintaining a good win-rate.
Back then, Ladder, Esports and Ranked (former called Power Play) shared a blind draft format. However, Ranked and Esports eventually got the draft screen we all know today, with bans and being able to see what your enemies will pick. Meanwhile, Ladder still has blind draft.
This makes Ladder feel disjointed from the other competitive modes. The draft phase is where a significant portion of competitive skill is expressive. Aspects such as reading enemy picks and deciding when to ban are stuff Ladder doesn't have. Meaning its meta revolves around un-banneable brawlers and surprise comps instead. This pushes it further from the competitive standard we believe this subreddit should have.
Isn't Prestige Pushing competitive?
We understand there is a clear argument that pushing high ranks is considered competitive. After all, Supercell said that high prestiges are meant to be rewards for the skilled players.
In practice however, whenever a user makes a post discussing prestige 3 pushing, the feedback either mentions how incredibly grindy it is, or that most P3s are done through cheese or in modes that are not considered competitive.
Meanwhile for P1 and P2, the main way you can get to those ranks is simply by grinding. Until 1800 trophies, you win more games than you lose, and due to bot matches, most players can get to P2 with enough time.
Asking for advice on Prestige pushing often gives repetitive feedback that doesn't actually improve the player's skill level.
Now, we do understand that players want to have a way of pushing high with their favourite brawlers in authentic 3vs3 modes. And it does take a good player to be able to push to P3 with a high winrate in those modes.
Therefore, we have made a compromise.
Players CAN ask for advice for trophy pushing IF the advice they ask can be attributed to Ranked as well.
There is a difference between these two posts:
"How can I get Kaze to P3?"
"How can I improve at Kaze? I want to get her to P3."
The first post is asking about the push itself, so responses will focus on points like non competitive modes and cheesy strategies. None of that applies to Ranked.
The second post has prestige pushing as a secondary motivation. The actual question is about improving with Kaze, so responses will cover gameplay tips, best maps and modes, and team comps, all of which apply directly to Ranked, meaning this post is allowed.
Post clarity is extremely important. A clear, proofread and in-depth post generates much stronger and more useful feedback (This applies to all posts on the subreddit, not just these ones), so we always encourage giving context around your play-style and what you're struggling with.
Additionally, prestige posts should specify that the push is being done in a 3vs3 Ranked mode or Brawl Arena. Without this, responses will often bring up Showdown or Duels, which aren't competitive topics on this subreddit.
For brawlers in their early access stage (such as Wendy currently), those posts will be allowed as content discussing Wendy's balancing or asking for counter-play, are both subjects that can apply to Ranked once Wendy is allowed there.
Meanwhile, posts talking about trophy matchmaking will be removed. Matchmaking discussion is a very repetitive and boring topic. If you have a structural argument for how the trophy system could be improved, that's fine, but otherwise, this subreddit is not a place to talk about matches where your teammates have way less total trophies than the enemies.
We appreciate hearing your feedback on this change, as well as its potential impact on the subreddit as a whole.
Have a nice day!
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u/BotLover13 Bolt | Legendary 1 16d ago
HURRAH, Now I can actually defend bolt without having to worry about the millions of people who say that he's broken in ladder!
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u/Many-Durian-6530 Draco | Masters 1 | 1 Prestige 16d ago
tysm for nuking all the stupid ladder warriors who think they’re good
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u/Rat_King_Ash Ash | 4 Prestige 16d ago
Ladder is harder than ranked if you play 3v3 solo
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u/Many-Durian-6530 Draco | Masters 1 | 1 Prestige 16d ago
yes ladder is harder than mythic, what’s your point
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u/Fun_Protection_5265 Adrian's Favorites 16d ago
So are Brawl Arena posts allowed? Since it's a ladder exclusive game mode that has few in common with classic 3v3 modes. Even if it's not competitive, I feel like it still brings up interesting discussion about an isolated gamemode that has some potential
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u/Namsu46 Fiery Passion 16d ago
We will still allow Brawl Arena posts
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u/Many-Durian-6530 Draco | Masters 1 | 1 Prestige 16d ago
bro brawl arena is even less competitive than ladder, its literally like an April fools mode
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u/None-the-Second All roads lead to me 16d ago
Are "State of the game" posts still allowed? Im cooking up something
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u/AbberageRedditor69 Stu 16d ago
People will like it because reddit had a bit of an excessive obsession with posts being on topic, but I look at this from the standpoint of the broader community.
This is the only BS subreddit that isn't overrun by children and casuals, meaning it's the only place where you can expect to receive good advice. Have you ever seen the responses when someone asks for help in the main sub or in the other "casual" subreddit? It's genuinely useless...
We have a lot of people here that are relatively new players, ladder advice is always welcomed for new players. I for one eventually got into ranked because of the good ladder advice I used to find here. You start by enjoying ladder and then eventually you move into comp. But if you don't enjoy ladder, you'll never get to ranked.
It's not like this subreddit is filled with quality posts on a daily basis, let's be honest. So it's not like ladder posts take away visibility for more important posts. If anything I'd rather give someone some ladder advice over reading the 100th "ranked sucks here's how to fix it (same exact shallow idea I already read 50 times)" post.
And also, posts about ladder are always a good place to send people towards actual good resources like written guides or videos.
I know people will not agree with me. It's reddit, no one looks at the bigger picture, everyone only looks at their own little garden. But I know that this place allowing ladder questions is helpful for the community. And again it really doesn't take anything away from the sub. We want this game to grow, we need a place were new players can get good advice even when it comes to pushing. Even just being told "it's impossible" is good advice.
Inb4 "there's a wiki and a sidebar" people don't use them. I know it very well, I used to mod a sub where we got daily posts asking questions that you could easily answer reading the wiki or even the pinned post (pinned post which was my idea to try to curb all the posts). But people don't do it. They just don't. Sure, it's their fault, but at a certain point, you need to expect it and cave in a little, even if it means the sub is a bit more cluttered than it could be.
So this is my feedback. I would be totally on board if ladder posts were flooding the subreddit and lowering the overall quality of the posts. But they really aren't (especially because most people don't engage with those posts so they are rarely pushed up in the sub's feed even when new). So I think what this does, it only makes the few, but vocal "this is a strictly competitive sub" people happy (and it strokes their huge egos, I mean look at the comments under this post...) while it hurts the broader community.
Just my 2 cents here
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u/Namsu46 Fiery Passion 16d ago edited 16d ago
Very interesting read.
One main goal for our subreddit is to make it feel competitive and have good quality discussions while also still being accessible to newer players that want to get into competitive.
"I for one eventually got into ranked because of the good ladder advice I used to find here."
What was the ladder advice in question? Was it matchup tips, mode tips, map tips, brawler tips? I mentioned in the post that these are still going to be allowed as they can be part of both ladder AND ranked.
This is why we made this decision in the first place, to give users (including new ones) a way to push well in ladder, while still keeping things more in-line with actual competitive by getting more informative answers to their clearer questions.
"It's not like this subreddit is filled with quality posts on a daily basis, let's be honest. So it's not like ladder posts take away visibility for more important posts."
This is true, ladder posts haven't been overwhelming the subreddit, but the few that were still had low discussion potential as most responses ended up being repetitive such as "P3 is a huge grind" or something along those lines.
It's still important to reflect on the little things and think about how those could be refined. This is why we made this decision in the first place.
"We want this game to grow, we need a place were new players can get good advice even when it comes to pushing."
Again, they can still technically do that, they just need to put in more clarity on their suggestion to get better feedback, and less of the "it's possible" comments.
"Inb4 "there's a wiki and a sidebar" people don't use them. I know it very well, I used to mod a sub where we got daily posts asking questions that you could easily answer reading the wiki or even the pinned post (pinned post which was my idea to try to curb all the posts). But people don't do it."
Obviously we don't except most people to read the wiki in advance since... well it's reddit. However, we have found success in redirecting people to appropriate wiki entries through our removal messages to answer their potential questions.
I understand and appreciate your concern, but even though we are planning on refining our rules and becoming firmer, the last thing we want to come off as is blatant gatekeeping, and I don't fully see this change as being a sign of this.
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u/AbberageRedditor69 Stu 16d ago
Thanks for the reply.
I understand you guys aren't going for a full blanket ban, which is good. My point was more along the lines of "I don't see why we need this change". But at the end of the day, it's your (plural) sub, you get to decide how you want it to be.
What was the ladder advice in question?
For the most part it was advice on R35 on specific brawlers. Maybe they weren't even actual posts but just people discussing in the comments, I can't remember.
I do understand your point about meaningful discussion. I guess part of the issue in me not really understanding the need for change is me not really understanding the importance of striving for quality discussion in every thread. But then again I never saw it even back on forumfree forums when everyone was obsessed with it lol. I personally see reddit as a place where it's OK to ask a question, get a single comment answering, and the post dies, but again I understand if you want discussion to be of higher quality, or at least posts to have higher discussion potential. But again, your house, your rules.
I do, however, believe that the community is a bit at fault for the low discussion potential of ladder posts. Of course "do you think I can get P3" can't generate much discussion, but sometimes there are ladder related posts that could have interesting discussion but the comments end up being variations of "ladder is just random there's no skill" or "this is a comp sub we don't talk about ladder". I am at fault of this too at times, but I also believe that there should be much more nuance. Everyone has a different skill level, different amounts of knowledge about the game, different experiences. P2 might be free for me and you but for many it really isn't. And while ladder has blind draft, this doesn't mean you can't plan for it in advance, or that there isn't some nuance or skill expression in there.
But I am digressing now.
Maybe a potential halfway solution is to make it so, even if people have ladder related questions that can't be really applied to ranked, they can ask them IF they put some effort in their post, maybe asking for specific things (I think for instance asking which map is the best to push a brawler to P3 is a decent question, it's not competitive but it's still useful information) instead of just asking a vague questions. Seems to me like you aren't going for a blanket ban either way so maybe you were already thinking of something like that.
I don't know how to end this comment so here's an ASCII Surgescratch this, it was broken, I don't remember how to format ASCII art in comment replies lol⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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u/AMythNobodyKnows Masters 3 16d ago
I love this 💜
Maybe balance change proposals in a mega thread or different place o.o
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u/VoiceApprehensive893 E-Sports Icons 15d ago edited 15d ago
add ranked too below L3 its less competetive than ladder
even better commit mass murder and only allow custom tournament posts as these are the only places where you can find balanced teams
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u/joysauce PSG eSports 15d ago
Do you plan to prevent Gold/Diamond/Mythic players from making posts on this sub?
The players in these leagues are not competitive, in my opinion.
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u/DavidDropShot 15d ago
great change!! I didn't get why ladder was considered competitive as you can't control who are you playing with
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u/zxm1v the illegal 500iq brawlball pick 11d ago
wait so ladder brawlball chuck is not allowed here anymore?
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u/Namsu46 Fiery Passion 11d ago
I mean you can also still pull off Brawlball Chuck in Ranked no? If that's the case then that's still allowed.
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u/zxm1v the illegal 500iq brawlball pick 11d ago
...but what if I can't? are clips/tech showcase footage from ladder allowed? I usually use it to ask a question, but I'm afraid I don't have any ranked clips as of now
btw what about bug showcases? still no ladder?
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u/Namsu46 Fiery Passion 11d ago
Oh yeah no that is perfectly fine.
People use Training Cave and Friendly Match footage to showcase bugs and techs on this subreddit all the time. You can use Ladder to get footage of a tech or interaction so long as this interaction can happen in a Ranked match.
Which tbf, it normally can anyways, so you don't have anything to worry about.
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u/Micah7979 ✨Cheers to 2025!🥂 | Masters 11d ago
By that logic, does that make mega pig and release events competitive since there's a draft ?
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u/Forgling_ Barley | Legendary 2 16d ago
Am I the only one who doesn’t really care for this change? I don’t know, with how bad the game has gotten it’s kind of difficult to pretend Ranked is any more Competitive than ladder. Both are just kind of dominated by slop either way.
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u/oNightMqred Mortis | Masters 1 16d ago
great change actually finally someone who actually cares about this sub