Server Patch this Week for Missing Cards in Arena
Arena is bugged! A bug has been discovered internally which unflagged cards so they wouldn't appear in drafts. The Hearthstone team is ready to get a fix in place sometime this week if everything goes right.
Quote from Dean AyalaThere are 12 cards missing from arena. This was a bug that has been fixed internally and will go out with a server patch sometime this week (unless something goes wrong). Whether or not something is 'draftable' is a checkbox in our editor. Very late in KFT development, when we published any change to a card that checkbox would become unchecked due to an editor bug. This has also been fixed so it should no longer occur.
They probably weren't design iterations. Usually the changes that happen this late are rarity changes or word spacing changes to make the text boxes look a bit better. (Source)
Synergy Feedback
In the most recent patch notes, Blizzard stated there was a change to the Arena which made it more likely for the first two cards in a draft to include synergy-based cards. This has been met with some resistance from the community and the Hearthstone team is appreciative of the feedback. Dean also clarified that offering bonuses for individual cards should all be the same as they were prior to the patch.
Quote from Dean AyalaOffering bonus should be the same as stated in previous patch notes. I'll look into it this morning, though we did test before we launched to make sure it was the same bonus Un'Goro had when it launched.
[...]
As far as synergy picks go, it's only been a few days and we're still gathering feedback from here, our official forums, internally, and from our best arena players. We'll continue to monitor that and make whatever changes are necessary. We've been making small changes to the drafting process for quite some time now and will continue to do so. Appreciate all the feedback!
Ben Brode on Test Subjects
All of today's Arena discussion from the Hearthstone team stems from a post on reddit created by Adwcta, a high-end Arena player, stating that Arena should "not [be] a public test server" and that players don't deserve to be "experimented on with severely underdeveloped ideas". Ben Brode put light on the issue.
- Everything that gets added to Hearthstone is iterated on through community feedback. Let your voice be heard!
- The team does consult with high-end players on changes and those players always have access to speak with them about issues.
- They believe mixing up the Arena experience is a good thing.
- Synergy Picks can help make players feel more clever during the drafting phase.
- "We consider Arena, and hell, the entire game, to be a collaboration with the community."
So, really when you look at it, Arena players aren't being singled out; it happens to all types of players! Ben's quotes from today can be found below.
Personally, I think it's a pretty cool thing to be able to help shape the game through community feedback, and with Team 5 being willing to actually make crazy changes, it makes me trust in the long-term of the game. Yes, game balance reactions have arguably been slow, but it's never felt like they've been an enemy.
Quote from Ben BrodeWe do not deserve to be experimented on with severely underdeveloped ideas. Arena players deserve better.
With every new thing we add to the game, we learn from community feedback, and iterate. Community feedback is a critical part of the process, and the idea that we should only release perfect things that require no feedback is unrealistic.
We believe mixing the Arena experience up more frequently is better than leaving a single rule-set in place forever.
Regarding "synergy picks", one of the areas we think Arena is weak right now is the ability for players to feel really clever during the Arena drafting process. Often you pick cards that are individually powerful, but taking a card that is powerful given other cards you might see is very risky.
We've been experimenting with different prototypes to try and bring this level of gameplay to Arena, including paper printouts of Hearthstone cards so we can test without needing engineers to go in and change the whole system before we find out if a change is even fun.
It's been difficult to provide the ability for players to chase synergies (and to feel clever by doing so), while maintaining the "anything can happen" feel that makes Arena awesome. This was a first foray, and the community feedback will feed into our next iteration. We consider Arena, and hell, the entire game, to be a collaboration with the community.
I come to reddit every day. I love reading about and discussing Hearthstone, the development process, and how we can make things better together. I don't want our communities to have a "players vs developers" vibe. I want to work with players to make the game we all love to play even better.
Feedback is critical, but when it's delivered in a way that pits us against each other as factions, it is damaging. Let's work together!
Furthermore, we know for an absolute fact that they have historically consulted well known Constructed players on big changes to constructed, so why isn't this done for Arena /u/IksarHS ?
While I understand Constructed Standard is Hearthstone's flagship format, the introduction of the Arena leaderboard seemed to suggest you were granting Arena parity with Constructed. Changes like these though, without: A) Any announcement prior to the change (Can you imagine if Standard had just suddenly rolled in with the WOTOG patch? Or the mass of nerfs?) or; B) Consultation, suggests this strive for parity is going backwards.We do. Adwcta and Merps both know they can contact us directly and talk through changes or issues, we have done so in the past. We also talk with Kripp, Hafu, and some of the people in the Chinese community who are also very passionate about arena. (Source - Dean Ayala)
So why can't they do what every other game's draft/sealed mode does and do overdraft and cut? I'd actually be interested in arena if you drafted 35-40 cards then made your deck out of 30.
Because 18 deck slots was confusing enough
What? But I only ever see 9? If there are 18 then were are the other 8?
Also I only have 9 fingers, what am I supposed to do now? Take my shoes off whenever I need to count my decks out?
You want 5-10 more chances to get that Bonemare, don't ya?
Blizzard would potentially have to spend a lot of resources on coming up with an understandable overdraft UI as well as actually implementing that in game (with multiple iterations to get it right). This takes resources away from working on a future expansion and/or fixing bugs. I would love to see this feature implemented, but they have to prioritize it over other work.
Can we have a list of all those small little changes? I wanna know even if they are small!
I wanna know even the smallest changes, I might be paying to play arena, I wanna know all the smallest things
That picture though on the front page linked to this article is golden KappaPride
This. Hearthstone's balance strategy and policy is outdated; they should adapt to the new trends that make good use of Public Test Server / Region
I can see doing this with arena to test new forms and changes, but I don't like the idea of doing it with constructed. Having a public test server would mean the meta would be figured out before an expansion ever hit. The game would be stale in a week or two rather than than the month or two it takes now.
So I get that Adwcta was behind the post that he's replying to here or whatever, but the Hearthstone devs seem to be putting more and more faith into these Twitch and YouTube streamers as representatives of the entire community. Obviously that's not true, but it's starting to feel like Blizzard is using these guys as ambassadors for us, when the majority of us didn't necessarily "elect" them as such... The majority, in fact, probably don't even know who they are.
One of the problems with this is that these streamers are inherently linked to Blizzard's revenue... If Blizzard goes out of business, so do they. You can't be a truly objective participant when your career relies upon the success of the company you participate with. Another problem is more obvious, in that the feelings and feedback of these streamers won't always represent the majority of players. Sometimes it will, but sometimes it won't.
This whole streamer thing is one of the best things that could happen to gaming companies, on so many different levels. I mean, as it relates to this stuff, Blizzard gets to drastically scale back its Community Management, since dealing with a handful of streamers is a lot cheaper that dealing with thousands of people in forums and on social media. I'm sure Blizzard loves it, but I miss the days back in WoW when anyone on the forum could get the attention of a major dev just as easy as these streamers do today.
We do elect them, we choose to watch them, and thus is safe to assume we enjoy watching them because we like their views and ideas etc...
Point is we don't have to watch them
Well, I don't watch streamers. A lot of hardcore fans might watch them, but I know the majority of Hearthstone players don't. That might seem hard to believe, but you gotta remember that most people who play video games don't go online to browse forums and sites like this, let alone watch YouTube and Twitch streams.
But MY point wasn't about whether or not we have to watch them, or about their value as streamers. It was about how Blizzard is valuing them too much, in my opinion. In highly-technical stuff like with this Arena issue, then maybe it just so happens that the majority aligns with them. That certainly isn't the case all the time, though. But it won't matter if Blizzard stops listening to players completely, because they think that listening to the player base is the same thing as listening to a handful of the most popular streamers... Know what I mean?
There are tons of card games doing the discard thing, and you choose, and it works well. The discard mechanic DOES need complete revamp. A mechanic solely based on RNG is not healthy. The thing is, making the discard mechanic in Hearthstone reliable would mean to severly make some cards less powerful. Doomguard should have his stats decreased, zavas should not gain +2/+2, malchezar's imp should cost 1 or 2 more mana, etc. It would make for a very balanced and consistent archetype, not a coin toss where you either steamroll your opponent because you got the dream outcome, or on the contrary get destroyed because the key cards of the deck got discarded and it all went to shit.
Thinking the discard mechanic of Hearthstone, as of now, is fine, IS moronic, to take your own words.
edit: the guy removed his posts, this was evidently not an answer to volteon :')
Your post belongs squarely in the 99%.
"We believe mixing the Arena experience up more frequently is better than leaving a single rule-set in place forever."
I agree with this a lot.
GG to ADWCTA for this post, but I don't want this to cripple the development's bravery in shaking up arena.
This "shake up" was pretty dumb, considering all it did was force people into taking eggs, auctioneers and fight promoters they don't want.
Some synergy /eyeroll