Hearthstone China is Getting Tournament Mode
A special thanks to @CelestialSinn (/u/Curemew) for the translation!
Hearthstone players in China are getting a sanctioned tournament mode through a secondary application called Hearthstone Box which is developed by NETEASE. This will allow players to compete in automatic tournaments by installing the application on their computer and having it read data from the game client.
Not only is this application a gateway into tournaments, but players can also stay up to date with the latest in news as well!
Below we've got screenshots and a description of how it works courtesy of @CelestialSinn (/u/Curemew).
Hearthstone BOX - Alpha Test v0.9
Hearthstone tournament mode by Hearthstone BOX.
General
This guide applies only to PC version of the game, the mobile version of the game are not supported by this program.
Players need to ensure a good internet connection for the event, the tournament mode feature must be turned on during the whole event.
Click the refresh button at the upper right corner if it hasn't been receiving any new notifications for a while.
Download
Download the latest version of the program, click on "Tournament mode" to enter.
Registration
Select the event you want to participate in, click to view the event details.
The Account Binding
If it's your first time to use this program you need to bind your battlenet acc and your mobile phone to it.
Then refresh.
Check In
Check in starts 60 minutes before the start of the event. Players haven’t checked in 5 min before the start of the event will forfeit the tournament.
Bracket
Bracket will be generated 5 min before the start of the event.
Waiting for the Game to Start
After entering the event, there will be 5 minutes of preparation time, both players can now add friends and get ready to play.
The Preparatory Stage
Players of both sides have 15 minutes to adjust their decks, after adjustment, please make sure that the program has recorded your decklists.
Now, please challenge your opponent to play the match (wild / standard).
Go to the battle preparation interface of the program, and click the Ready button to confirm.
After both sides are ready, you will go to next phase.
Pick / Ban
In the Pick phase, players will have 5 minutes to choose their decks, players need to make sure that they are already in the challenge lobby.
The decks that you can select are from the decks that you’ve previously recorded using this program.
If you don’t select decks in 5 min the program will automatically rule the match lost.
After the Pick phase, you will go to the Ban phase. Players can Ban a certain number of the opponent's classes.
Note: If the player uses a deck that’s not recorded, or a deck that’s not picked during pick phase, or a deck that’s banned in ban phase, the program will report a forfeit win for your opponent automatically.
Match Start
At this point the program will show both players classes information, if you forget which deck of the class you have it recorded/picked, you can mouse over the icon and it will show you the name.
After a game is complete the program will automatically record the result of the game process. In some cases the record will have a few minutes delay, players can directly start next game without waiting for it to process.
When all games of this matchup are complete please wait for the program to process and show the final results, it might take a few min. If nothing happens after more than 10 min, please contact admin.
Into the Next Round
After confirming the results, click “back” button on the top right corner, and then click on bracket to view your next opponent, click to enter the next round.
Oh look! the rest of the world still don't have tournament mode
awesome news. lets hope we get it also in a short period
China always getting exclusive things, America always gets things early, and EU always gets a kick in a balls.. FeelsEUMan
ans yet APAC always gets last of all of these. FeelsAPACMan
Hey Trump, after you reform NAFTA, you think you could get China to bring some of their exclusives over, like Call of Duty: Online and Hearthstone Box? kthnxbai
You EU kids all complain so much. The entire eSports and video game industry is favored for Europe, so I don't wan't to hear anything out of your guys' mouths.
How come?
EU has the best streamers.
The main point of people wanting tournaments is to be able to schedule game time and get results without having to endure the ladder grind which just rewards game time. there's no point in grinding the ladder if you get to legend on day 28 so lots of people just don't even try and farm noobs at rank 15 when they want to play and endup between 10-5 depending on how much they played that month. Being a good tournament player doesn't require you to play over 150 games per month. I qualified for a MTG Pro Tour while playing exactly, at most, 12 games per week (that's winning an 8 round swiss tournament with top 8)
I continue not to understand why anybody wants or cares about a "tournament mode". Want to organize a tournament with your friends? Just do it. Nothing is stopping you, and literally nothing additional in the game is required for that. Want to play against strangers online? Play ranked; it's substantively the exact same play experience you would get.
I've repeatedly asked proponents of a tournament mode what it would actually do, and they never seem to have any idea what it even is that they want. Even this tournament mode program here adds nothing to the game. It's no wonder Blizzard doesn't waste their time with it.
As expected, I get downvoted but nobody actually replies because they can't argue that I'm wrong. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The thing that you don't get is that a tournament needs a lot of organizations : Decklist, players, doing all the encounters while others wait/are not there.
I think that you've never tried to organize a tournament because believe me, it's really not as easy as it seems. I've tried to do a tournament a few times with IRL friends, and even having their skype and stuff it's really hard to coordinate because everybody cheat, have to go somewhere etc...
This program is exactly what we need, everything is automated, if you are not here you're just kicked out, you can do tournaments with people you don't know without having to request on a forum or other bs stuff that you're usually too lazy to do. This is very flexible, you can add more tournament modes, apparently it's preventing you from cheating.
Honestly I'd be extremly happy if I had this, because i could do a tournament in a sec without having to do all the shitty stuff that comes with it, it's clean, it's Hearthstone offficial , really , what more ?
And yeah, downvoted you not for your POV that I respect but for your hate dripping out of every word
EDIT : And some people would send you to hell for saying that ranked is the same experience as tournaments
An automatic queue of tournament mode would allow a majority of the players to enjoy the Tournament meta, which was previously exclusive only to players who participated in a real live event and only for a short period. The tournament meta has several benefits as it allows for more variety of deck types, for examples: Deck types that counter a specific class can be competitively viable here, which include control decks that are zoned out by the meta, purify priests and more varieties of things that people can think of. Also, it gives a bigger window for more players to enter the competitive scenes; more upward mobility in this game per say- for examples players who are busy and don't have time to travel, or people in more physically isolated region.
No you are getting downvoted, because you talk down to people. When you say that ladder = tournament, It show how little you understand of what a tournament is, and there is no reason to argue with you when you say nonsense like that.
Oh goody, actual responses now! Unfortunately, they can mostly be summed up by "Organizing tournaments is hard" (no, it's not) or "You're mean" (I don't think so, but that'd still be irrelevant). The only argument that isn't irrelevant nonsense is the one that the tournament mode meta would be very different from the ranked meta. That would potentially be a very fair and considerable point, if we had any reason to believe it were true, which we don't. Yes, current high-level Hearthstone tournaments have different metas than what most people currently experience in Hearthstone ranked, but unfortunately that means pretty much nothing because high-level competitive spaces often have different metas than the average anyway. I think it's naive to assume that giving most players some vaguely-defined "tournament mode" is going to change their meta when the gameplay and stakes are no different.
So you're still thinking that you're right ? That a Tournament mode or addon is basically useless ? After like 5 people brought solid arguments (And the only response you can provide is "No, this is not true lul") + tons of downvotes on you ? Something is wrong with you and Tournament apparently
Despite the fact that you're still very haughty, the only thing I can conclude is that you have no idea of what you're talking about saying things like "organizing a tournament is not hard" (honestly almost laughed on this one) and that ranked = tournament except for High Level players.
You're probably the only guy in the world who would spite on a tournament mode, really i don't understand why you keep saying it is useless while it is clearly not, and even if we can already do some kind of handmade tournament i would really appreciate a well organized addon such as the Chinese one that would make things a lot easier on every single point
5 people didn't bring solid arguments. 5 people brought the same poorly thought-out vagueness that I've gotten every other time I've asked folks what it is that they want from a "tournament mode". Everybody seems to want it, but nobody seems to be able to get specific about what it is that they want or why, and this becomes apparent when you actually ask about it and see that everybody has completely different ideas of what it would even be. If anything, the responses here have only continued that pattern.
Either way, organizing a tournament with your friends still isn't hard at all, and if what you want is constructed tournaments with strangers online, just ask them to give better ranked rewards for winning streaks and you'll get the same effect. Sure, tournament metas could be different from the ranked meta in theory, but everybody thinks the casual meta should be different from the ranked meta too in theory, and we see how that plays our in practice. I'll believe it when I'm given a reason to believe it.
I'm not even closed off to the possibility of additional modes of play. I just think they need to be better justified and more significantly different such that you can't get the same effects with minor adjustments/improvements to ranked play. If you think it's "clearly" a good idea, then it should be easy to justify, but apparently it's not if it all falls apart with even a bit of scrutiny, as it always seems to.
Get specific about what "tournament mode" would even be and how it's justifiably different from what we already have and can already do, and then also get everybody who wants it to actually agree, and then we'll talk and Blizzard might actually listen. Until then, there doesn't seem to be any point.
For those wondering why Blizzard doesn't develop certain features for their games...
People will do it for them. For free. Played WoW for 9 years and they didn't improve much by way of quality of life features until the very end. Why? People made addons. Tons of them. For free. They developed features of their game for them. Pretty neat isn't it.