Update 9:55 PM EST: Added update regarding Golden Cards in the Arena! Woot!
Upcoming Changes to Hearthstone Arena - Standard Format, More Spells, & More
Changes are coming to Hearthstone's Arena Mode and things are being changed up quite a bit. Say goodbye to the Wild format as Arena takes on the Standard card pool, among other changes.
- Arena drafts will be using the Standard format.
- Common and Basic cards will show up less than before.
- We will see more spells in our drafts.
- Neutral Classic cards will show up less frequently.
- Flamestrike and Abyssal Enforcer specifically will show up 50% less.
- Golden cards will now appear in the Arena
- If you own 1 golden copy of a card, the first copy of the card you get in the Arena will be Golden.
- If you own 2 golden copies of a card, all copies of the card you get in the Arena will be golden.
- Owning a golden legendary makes every copy of that legendary in Arena golden.
Dean "Iksar" Ayala provided some additional information.
- 68% Common, 20% Rare, 9% Epic, 3% Legendary on 26 of the 30 picks.
- The other 4 picks are 'Rare' picks that have a chance to be upgraded to Epic or Legendary at a slightly higher rate.
- Flamestrike and Abyssal Enforcer being 50% less likely to show up refers to it being 50% less likely to show up in terms of cards of its type.
- Flamestrike's card type in terms of the draft tree is ClassCard/Spell/NotMostRecentSet.
- Abyssal Enforcer is defined as a ClassCard/Minion/MostRecentSet.
- Commons as a whole show up more often that Rares, but any individual common will show up about as much as any individual Rare (or close to it). This means you should see a similar amount of Blizzards to Fireballs.
- They want realistic synergies in to draft in the Arena.
- They want drafting the set that just came out a fun way to discover the cards.
- He does not consider these changes to be forever ones.
- Dean could see rotating different sets in and out of the pool at some point. (Not exactly Standard, or Wild)
- If you have a draft that is currently using the Wild pool, you will keep that draft until you complete it.
Dean will be on hand throughout the day to talk more about the changes. We'll keep updating this post throughout the day.
Poll Time!
Official Announcement
Quote from ZeriyahIn our next update, we will be making a few changes to the Arena that should make it more interesting for our players and offer a much different experience with each set release.
• Arena will change from Wild format to Standard
- As more cards are added to the Arena pool, having each game feel meaningfully different actually becomes harder to accomplish. Many of the cool synergies between cards, such as Jade Golems or Mechs, live within each individual set release. Attempting to create decks that utilize these meaningful synergies in a wide and diluted card pool will become more and more difficult as the Wild card pool grows larger. Arena runs then becomes less about card synergies and smart deck choices and more about being fortunate enough to be presented with the best card from each set. This change should put the focus back on the player for good, synergistic Arena choices and make Arena decks feel more cohesive.
- We’ll be monitoring using the Standard format in Arena carefully, and we may add additional changes or formats in the future if it doesn’t meet our goals of having Arena feel interesting and different with each set release.
• Changes to Card Rarity Distribution
- We’re making a change to the frequency in which Common and Basic cards show up in the Arena. Common cards were about 78% of all Arena cards, and we felt that number was too high considering that many of the cards that focus around individual class identity and power level rely on the common cards of any given class. After this change, the number of Common and Basic cards that show up overall should be lower, giving more room for fun Rare, Epic, and Legendary cards to show up in an Arena run. In addition, the cards Abyssal Enforcer and Flamestrike will show up approximately 50% less in Arena.
• More Spells in a Run
- Spells have the power to swing a board state, generally more than minions do. Obviously, there are some exceptions to this. When the distribution of spells to minions is too low, the game usually ends up in the favor of the player that gets out their minions faster and more efficiently than the other player, because there aren’t enough cards that punish overextending. Bringing the distributions of spells and minions closer together allows for more room to have an Arena game that is more strategic and facilitates more plays and counter-plays to occur.
• Neutral Classic Cards Show Up Less
- A lot of neutral Classic cards tend to be minions without any text that lack interesting effects. While they are great for introducing newer players to Hearthstone and providing baselines for power level comparisons, they don’t make for compelling Arena run choices. This helps make more room for spells, class cards, and expansion cards to show up at a higher rate.
Golden Cards in Arena
- If you own golden cards in your collection, copies of that card that appear in your Arena run will show up as golden. If you own a single golden card, the first copy of it you choose will be golden. If you own two copies of a golden card, every copy of that card you choose in the Arena will be golden. If you own one golden Legendary, every copy of that Legendary you choose in Arena will be golden.
These changes will occur in an upcoming update near the end of February. We’ll see you in the Tavern!
Dean Ayala Comments on the Changes
Quote from Dean AyalaFor context, the numbers are around 68% Common, 20% Rare, 9% Epic, 3% Legendary on 26 of the 30 picks. The other 4 picks are 'Rare' picks that have a chance to be upgraded to Epic or Legendary at a slightly higher rate. Flamestrike is 50% less likely to show up refers to it being 50% less likely to show up in terms of cards of its type. For Flamestrike, its definition in terms of the draft tree is ClassCard/Spell/NotMostRecentSet. Meaning cards that share that definition will show up around 50% more often. Abyssal Enforcer is defined as a ClassCard/Minion/MostRecentSet, so it will show up ~50% less than cards in that bucket.
As a further note, rares and commons specifically have a very similar chance to show up on a card by card basis. What I mean by this is Commons as a whole show up more often that Rares, but any individual common will show up about as much as any individual Rare (or close to it). This means you should see a similar amount of Blizzards to Fireballs. This is a little strange so I'm curious what the feedback will be on it.
Talking about the exact chances to get any particular card could be a blog on its own. Each of the classes vary slightly because of the differences in #cards available and minion/spell ratio within each rarity. I recently asked a bunch of friends (who very, very heavily play arena) if they had an idea what the current ratio of commons/rares was and they had no idea. Makes me wonder how necessary a full report on that kind of thing is. In any case, I'm happy to clear up any outstanding questions you all have of the new system. The blog post for this was not the place to go over 100's of numeric details.
Have Team 5 considered making those changes without making Arena wild? I love everything you plan for arena, but I'm scared it might be boring in standard. Now we can risk to build synergistic deck like mech anything, dragon priest, beast druid etc. Making Arena standard will remove the risk part and introduce "meta" to arena, at least I'm afraid It might.
We did consider it. One of the most difficult draft problems for us to overcome is the ever-increasing card pool. Something I'm relatively sure of is that when a new set comes out, it would be cool to go to arena to draft that new set and check out what its synergies are all about. It becomes difficult to accomplish that when there start to be 1500+ cards available to draft. We want there to be realistic synergies to draft in arena, and we want drafting the set that just came out to be a fun way to discover the latest and greatest new cards.
That said, making arena standard is just one way to do this. I would not consider these current changes to be forever ones. The main takeaway for me in this development time was that smaller card pools lead to more interesting draft experiences, standard-arena specifically was a simple way for us to accomplish that. I could definitely see us rotating older sets in and out of the pool at some point, but for now I'm curious how these current changes will play out. Looking forward to getting feedback once the changes are released. (Source)
Why not have every areana run randomly generate 3 or four sets (also with classic/basic cards) so that each run has consistency but the arena itself has diversity. At the beginig of the run it might tell you that you rolled WOG GVG Naxx and MSG, you know what sets will appear and can plan your choices accordingly. The way this Change is I fell that arena will lose its fun identity and people will attempt to draft the same sort of decks that are being played in standard. I understand wanting consistency but I feel there are better ways to do that then taking away so many fun and memorable cards that have already been taken away in many formats.
I think this is a cool idea and one we've talked about in the past. I think it's a pretty reasonable solution but we decided to go with the simplest form of this for now and see how it plays out in practice. From doing a few hundred standard arena drafts myself, I think it's a pretty fun and different draft experience. Constructed and Arena decks on average are still a good distance apart even if they are using the same cards. I mentioned this above, but unless standard only arena gets overwhelmingly positive feedback post-release, I would expect there to be continued changes over time to the format. (Source)
What if I had drafted a arena deck before the changes go live with wild cards, am I still able to play or do I have to draft a new deck?
Will still be able to play. New drafts will have no Wild cards, but you will still run into a deck that does have them from time to time because it was an older draft that is being completed. (Source)
As a game developer, I know for a fack that what they are burying will come back, and they should have a group of people working on these dead cards, so they won't come back as zombies of "World War Z" and more like "The Walking Dead" kinda of zombies
I'd personaly like to have a "wild arena format" next to that one of "standard arena format".
I'm not particulary against standard arena format, it's just it kinda sucks to force so many cards to not appear at all anywhere.
On the other hand, many of these changes are actually good (no more 4xFlamestrike/Abyssal? Sign me in!)
WHAT THE FUCK? This is basically constructed now! Rip the only fun mode in Hearthstone..
PS: What I absolutely hate about HS team is that making arena 'standard only' was a possibility 2 weeks ago and now they are forcingly putting it in the game without asking community anything. And it's not just this, they always end up doing that. "Yea classic cards will be in standard FOREVAA" 1 rotation later- random post from HS designer "yea we'll be removing 6 classic cards we don't like FOREVER from standard". I can't enjoyably play the game with such unpredictable and unreliable game designers. This game is becoming unstable.
Although i would hope the HS team allows for a wild format draft it is certainly a welcome change to have draft in the limited format. Playing two classes in order to win in the draft has gotten a bit stale in the last year.
I'm starting to hate more of the hearthstone community (I really hate saying this). But come on, blizzard is doing more changes this year to make hearthstone better (Talking more, and making more changes) and yet you guys yell at them for not liking what they said or doing. Do i like the idea of a standard arena? no, but i'm not going to yell at blizzard or threaten to quit their game. If you would actually read the post you would've read this:
Blizzard even admits these changes could just be temporary ones, they even say that rotating old sets in and out will happen at some point. Right now there isn't enough sets to do that to make rotating sets change arena too much, so making it standard will work for now. Just calm down and relax, people say that this new arena will be standard meta but that is unlikely at all since Common Neutral cards will appear less and spells will appear more. Just wait and play with these changes for a few months before you start yelling at blizzard or quit the game.
I don't understand why so many people are complaining about this change. Sure, it could be better, but at least its a step in the right direction.
To people complaining that Arena will become like Standard ladder: it won't! Its very unlikely to be able to draft a good hyper-Aggro deck in Arena, because you may not always be offered low cost cards, and forcing a certain archetype in Arena means you sometimes have to pick the worse/worst of the 3 options, which then lowers the overall deck quality (its still possible to draft good non-hyper Aggro decks). Without good hyper-Aggro decks in Arena, the meta is slower, allowing more viable archetypes, especially in the Midrange department, which counters the Jade decks that people are so worried about. Control also remains viable with the increase to draft Spells.
the CORE problem of HS was addressed... NOT enough cards to PUNISH overextending...
that is what needs to fixed for every mode across the board. If not, check out some other CCGs.
im not ever playing arena again. it's the complete RNG factor that's the fun.
I also expected to see some arena rewards change . I mean I'm tired to get a common or a rare card from one of those reward packs. That's all i wanted . Guess i still have to wait ...
46 % are not looking forward for the changes, that number is huge
The majority of people in America Voted for Hillary more then 3 million people voted for her. I don't see your point.
I like the changes, except limiting arena to standard. I would rather have something like seasons with a different card pool each season, with one set receiving a draft bonus. That would make each season unique and you could try to draft certain types of decks with cool synergies every season.
Goodbye Wild arena! You will be missed.
Arena with standard set is so fucking sad. Many players dont want play ladder in arena. You can just lower chances to draw wild cards and all players will be glad. I m very upset with this news.
If we're being realistic then having every card ever printed in a game mode is not a sustainable plan. Changing arena to standard had to happen sooner or later. Without this change there would be no reason to play around anything and the game would become more and more about the cards you drafted and less about your knowledge of the game. People might be sad to see the wild cards leave but this is a healthy change.