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)
This was changed a while ago. Oftentimes when you get a plain common card it was 5 dust before. They changed it to get newer players the cards instead of dust. You can still disenchant them for 5 dust, but if you still missed a copy it's better now.
omg this so much. i've called blizzard out on this so many times. this is by far my biggest gripe.
I can understand that if it's less than 5 or 6 wins, new players probably are not going to consistently get 7+, but it makes total sense that people consistently getting 7+ already have the card.
There should be regular rotations of sets, please do not just cut content from this game permanently. (yes you said you might revisit this idea, i just do not believe you).
To fix arena what you needed to do was increase the rate of spells in a draft - so people have more answers, AND increase the rate of poor/weak minion allowing peoples skill at the game to shine, cause frankly that was the main problem, and I have no faith in you not to introduce a crap-load more of broken 1 to 3 mana minions over the next three expansions, that will yet again, break ladder and start to ruin arena.
With more sets they could consider drafting sets to draft the cards from. Not yet, though. Maybe next year or the year after that.
No, god! Please, no! Noooooooooo!
You are ruing the last bit of fun which remained in HS! The only thing that was worth playing (at least for me) in this game, the only thing that kept me playing, and farming gold! I don't care about drop rate, I don't care about chance for common or legendary, I don't care about golden cards (you can shove them... wherever you like!) - arena can be completely unbalanced, and still it will be fun. But if you cut out all those good old cards - this game mode will immediately be turn to useless shit.
Initially, i dont like Arena being "Standardized", but lets see how it will work out ... fingers crossed :x
Golden cards in arena - hell been waiting for that since the game went live - A nice band aid for that silly transformation to standard. Look out my golden collection will destroy you!
Today, I played my last game of Hearthstone for weeks, at least. Played against pirate warrior with reno mage, my draws - absolutely terrible, but I managed to survive till round 10, then, he had no cards, he drew Finley, he chose warlock hero power into arcanite reapoer, I had 4 HP, so I was dead. FUCK BEN BRODE.
http://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/general-discussion/28947-group-therapy-need-to-blow-off-steam-mega-salty
I think that would be even better, please someone post that idea on reddit and lets see if it makes to team 5.
Kripp might have a golden deck every time! Just press the button....
For everyone complaining about how "arena is now going to be like constructed":
1) Power-wise, it really won't.
If you ever played e.g. MtG drafts from one expansion, you'd see that the decks are still much weaker compared to constructed. Basically it's like saying that the first HS Arenas back when the card pool was smaller were "same as constructed". They weren't.
There will be a bit more card synergy, which is likely a good thing (right now, e.g. Jade cards in Arena are rather useless).
2) You're missing out on one of the big motivator of why people play Arena (esp. any FTP and/or new players) - it gives one a sense of "even grounds". You're not playing someone's time or money invested in the game. The main point about Arena is that it's as close as you can get to playing the opponents skill only.
Sure, there is RNG in the draft and the draw, but you're both subject to it, and someone who has played for years and invested hundreds of dollars into the game has no advantage over you, the newbie who just arrived (except his skill and knowledge, which is perfectly fine).
If the Arena decks become stronger, more synergistic, have a few more combos in there - it is not a problem!
If anything, it's an improvement over "just pick the minion with highest total stats or net-ranking and fill the curve".
Also, when I see people complaining about "Blizz wants to push strategy into the Arena drafting" it makes me want to cry :)
It's about time they do! More thought involved in drafting is better than brainless drafting!
Arena should be about the deckbuilding skill and separation from owned card collection, not just about luck of the draft draw.
These changes are all an experiment in the right direction.
Because a smaller set will by default allow for more synergy. Think Jades, for example.
A new big set is upcoming which should be internally consistent, so let's not attack something we haven't seen yet (I assume they won't release many [XYZ] synergy cards unless they also print some new [XYZ] to go with them. Also, if all the mechs rotate out, but there are no mech synergy cards left either, then it's not an issue, just a different environment).
Also, more Dragons doesn't mean more chance to draft one. Having 10 Dragons in a pool of 100 is no worse than having 30 of them in a pool of 300. So, while your worry of what we're losing makes sense, it is not alarming until we see what we're getting instead. If anything, a smaller pool means less variance when hoping to get *that one card*, which would allow more intentional hunting for synergy.
My problem now is that you basically can't draft any synergies, exactly because the card pool is so diluted. You see a Jade card mid-draft and you know that you will maybe see one more in the whole draft. Maybe.
If they limit the pool, this issue (expansion-related mechanics) is helped and as long as they keep the ratio of Dragons/Murlocs/Demons/whatever on a decent level no new problem is created.
And if they print a bunch of "If you're holding a Dragon..." cards and no new Dragons, then I will join you in saying they have no clue what they're doing ;)
Edit: that said, as some others suggested, I would like to keep both wild and standard Arena formats, as seeing all those wild cards is still, well, nice :)
So basically all my golden collection is worthless, cause i even cant use them in arena to show cards? Lol. Why make goldens only now,1.5 years late and remove wild, that 90% of your golden cards never be played again. Just wow, basically it says why i even don't do dailies anymore, the game is dead
Wtf are you talking about, why is your golden collection worthless? It's not, it's better then before. You could only show your golden cards in play mode and tavern brawl. Now you can show your golden cards in arena too. That's a good thing.
Are you stupid or what? I'm talking about gvg, naxx and etc sets that are out of standart. Oh, wait, youre blizzard employee? fuck you
I have a doubt: is this "Standard" Arena rewarding non standard packs ? It will be nonsense then..
Did Arena ever reward non-standard packs?