Developer Insights Live - Potential Arena & Ranked Changes, Community Q&A
The live edition of Developer insights featuring Ben Brode and Dean Ayala has concluded. You can find our recap of the stream below, or watch the vod further below that.
Please note that some stuff below is simply the team sharing ideas of changes that could come and doesn't mean we'll see everything implemented. The team loves to hear feedback and are really interested in the points on Arena changes and ranked ladder.
Top 3 Takeaways
- Arena may change into a Standard format.
- Ranked is currently too grindy so new breakpoints, bonus stars, and and win-streaks past rank 5 could help with that.
- If Pirates don't lose some steam, the team will likely intervene.
Recap
Quote from Ben and DeanIntroduction
- They've never done a live Q&A before so this will be a bit different than past experiences.
- Ben thinks video format is helpful for communication and they should do more of it.
New Player Experience
- Most new players play against AI, some hit up casual, and few hit up ranked right away.
- They've adjusted the matchmaking experience over time to ensure new players get introduced to the game better.
Ranked Ladder
- The current system is very clear how it works, there's no behind the scenes calculations outside of Legend.
- It's too grindy right, especially with it always resetting.
- Monthly seasons are a good duration.
- A short-term fix is to increase the amount of bonus stars you gain so you can get back up to where you were faster.
- Trying to move more players away from Rank 20 can help with the new player experience.
- They don't want everyone to be a Legend player, that would devalue the ranking. Ladder changes shouldn't inflate this count much.
- Win-streaks stopping at Rank 5 was due to the team wanting people to get to Legend "Legit". This could change.
- They have a meeting on Wednesday to see how they can attack the Ranked Ladder issue.
The Arena
- Making Arena Standard is a consideration. New sets become more important to the card pool instead of further diluting it.
- They'd like to reduce the amount of Commons and "useless" cards you get.
- Arena shouldn't feel like constructed, but it also shouldn't just be about picking things to play on curve. More strategy / synergy would be good.
- In February, they're going to release a Top 100 ranking for Arena. It will be calculated based on highest avg wins per run with a minimum 30 run requirement.
- Some changes for Arena are already ready to be added to the game, they're evaluating the best time to patch them in.
Wild Format
- Moving specific cards from Classic and Basic sets keeps them available to that format without nerfing them to keep Standard different.
- They expect Wild to increase in popularity once the next rotation happens. Wild will have 5 format sets instead of just 2.
- Standard is about twice as popular as wild right now.
- Ben would love to see more Wild events, Blizzard has to promote them more.
Pirates
- Pirate Warrior was 30% of the meta game near Gadgetzan launch but has fallen off.
- They're a little higher than they're comfortable with, but if it doesn't change, they're likely to do something about it.
- Patches the Pirate being in all the weapon classes is great from a design perspective even if Pirates may be a bit too strong.
Meta
- There's a lot of different stuff going on in their personal meta report. Lots of decks really close to 50%.
- The top deck and 11th deck were within 3% win-rate of each other with a high end of 52%.
- Hunters and Paladins should see more play once the meta slows down.
- A healthy meta is determined largely by feel. How the community feels and a personal level of the team is important but statistics also come into play.
- Win-rates over 55% for a deck can be a sign that something is wrong, or when 25-30% (or more) of players are playing a specific deck.
- Undertaker was being played in ~40% of games which is why it ended up being nerfed.
- It's really healthy when something is really powerful initially (Pirate Warrior) but then players find tools to combat those decks. They like it when players figure things out themselves without the team intervening.
Misc
- Before Naxx, Hunter was at the top in low-end play but not as good in the high end. They tried to solve it back then by creating cards for Hunters that were harder to play so bad players would do worse and the truly good could excel.
- It's important to have a variety of skill-testing decks in the top end of play.
- It's also okay to have cards that can just be fun and not super competitive.
- They like to do cards like Kun the Forgotten King but they have to be careful with testing to make sure they can't be abused. Malygos and Aviana were cited as being tested a ton with Kun.
- Reprinting nerfed cards could happen, but it hasn't been long enough since those original Standard nerfs. You could also have up to 4 of the same card in Wild then which is an issue.
- Silver Hand Recruits, Buffs, and Healing is the identity for Paladin. More buff synergy is planned. Heals should shine more once Reno Jackson drops out.
Team 5
- Team 5 has almost doubled in size each year since launch. They'll likely get larger.
- Ben spends much of his time in meetings nowadays.
- Dean, as a game designer, spends a lot of time play testing.
Video
The stream has concluded but you can watch the vod to experience the magic.
I WANNA BALANCE, I WANNA MORE NEW TACTIC AND NEW MEHANIC WITH STORY FROM VANILLA WOW, I DONT NEED PIG WITH MOTO, I DONT NEED ARENA/RANKED, I WANNA BETTER QUESTS AND MORE NEW INTEREST THINGS, NOT ARENA/RANKED and new "donat system"....!!!!!!!!!
HS now is really F2P (Free to Pirates)....
:c
Standard Arena? No! No you fools NO!
Anyone else want to see golden cards usable in arena?
I'm one of those (hopefully not few) players who enjoys collecting and crafting golden cards, but likes to spent 50ish% of my time doing arena. However, I feel like having those golden cards are all worthless in arena. I have two ideas for this:
1.) Have a selectable button at the end of constructing an arena deck for "play golden cards" where Hearthstone checks your collection and swaps any cards in your newly constructed arena deck with their golden version IF you have that golden card in your collection.
2.) Have the "play golden cards" button selectable at the beginning of the run so that as the 3 cards appear, you can see which of them you have the golden version of.
If I'm the only one curious about this, I'll lay it to rest, but there has to be other people that both collect the golden cards and play a lot of arena.
I also like golden cards, but I think add it to the arena is a silly thing, There are many more important things for them to focus on.
If they make Arena into Standard BS i`m out.
Enough time spent on this .
2017
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argent horsrider bug not fixed
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flying card bug not fixed
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ben and his henchman talking about future of hearthstone
What is the argent horserider bug?
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/hearthstone/topic/19137004904
For Arena, I would love to see arenas change in a way that you know your entire card pool in advance. This would encourage people to actually think about what 30 cards they want (finding good synergies, good curve, balanced removal and minions e.t.c) Right now Arena is just pick the best/ least bad of 3 cards that pop up. You can leave a help tool in for the new players that want it, but let people that actually want to perfect building their deck have that ability. An established card pool that rotates weekly might also be a good idea, that would reward players who are more familiar with what cards are currently in to play around and not worry about ones that aren't.
I wonder how much variation that includes, though... Because if 10 out of 11 of those decks were all Pirate Warrior with one or two different tech cards, then the statistic isn't that valuable. I'm sure it probably included more than one deck, but the question I'd like to know is, "How many?" Or, how many of those top 10 decks aren't variations on the same deck, with just a card or two different?
Blizzard is so guarded with its stats. I guess I can see why, because revealing some things would cause the community to go apeshit, while other things might reinforce negative perceptions. I just don't like it when they get all tricky-tricky with stats like this one, because you know there's a narrative they're trying to tell us. It's like they pick the narrative and then go looking for stats that appear to back that narrative up.
I'm pretty sure Blizzard has the tools to count all the same decks with different cards as same decks. I mean, even Hearthpwn deck builder can do that, so...
No they cant because of the way hearthstone is programmed
Well yeah, I'm sure they have the ability to differentiate between decks. What I'm saying is that Blizzard is sometimes purposefully opaque with the stats and data they release. Or that data is filtered and cherry-picked, in order to support whatever narrative they're trying to convey (for example, "The current meta is diverse, and Pirate aggro is not dominating.")... Like with this statistic, who's to say that most of those decks aren't virtually the same (e.g., Pirate Warrior)? Since Blizzard didn't say either way, we're left wondering. Yeah, they know, but they're not telling us, for whatever reason... Know what I mean?
Well I hope so. Because at the moment Paladin's hero power is completely useless. There is no synergy at all. The entire Grimy Goons meta is premised on the idea you buff BEFORE you drop a minion. So putting a 1/1 unit on the board is useless. This is an astounding design flaw to me and I really have to wonder how this slipped past them. Did they want to render Paladin an undesirable class for a few months???
Make doomsayer a 0/8
No. Don't print overpowered 1-drops. 7 health should be plenty for the early game.
Exactly this. No class / deck should be able to deal 7 damage to a minion (or face) on turn 2.
How to increase going first vs going second problem 101; increase average power-level of cards in Arena.
Commons are the opposite of low power level, especially since arena is tailored towards having no-synergy full-minion decks.