Hearthstone's Tournament Mode Will Be A True Beta
When it was first announced that Hearthstone was going to get a tournament mode at the start of this year, it was stated we'd initially see it as a beta. Dean Ayala has further confirmed that we should expect this to be a true beta. Here's what we know about the tournament mode so far:
- Tournament Mode Beta is to launch "around the middle of the year".
- Everything will be handled in the client.
- You can play in the tournaments anywhere whether you're at home or out at a Fireside Gathering.
- Initial functionality will include matchmaking and deck checking with more features coming over time.
- Bans will not be included at the start. They're looking forward to community feedback to direct the mode.
- The mode will be a "true beta". Expect bugs. Expect missing features.
A screenshot of the accept / decline interface.
Quote from Dean AyalaIt boggles my mind why they insist on keeping everything as barebones as possible. Constantly pretending they are a team of 5 with a game that barely keeps them afloat.
Features take time. Tournaments are a long requested game mode and we want to put something in the hands of the community as soon as possible. When we first announced tournaments as a beta, we meant that as a true beta. There might be some bugs, and there might be some features missing from it you thought were really important. We still think it will be really cool. Because tournaments mean so many different things to different people, it made sense to get together the pieces of a tournament that are absolutely necessary, then build on it one piece at a time as we gathered community feedback.
From what I understand, tournament organizers will send out invitations; I suspect that the mode itself will be free but to participate you may need an invite, which could come with a price tag.
Everyone is talking about the lack of the ban functionality, but I can kind of see their point in not including it at first. It's a true beta, so they want to implement the gamemode in it's most basic forms and get feedback on it. The banning functionality is probabily quite easy to implement, and they probably will as the beta gets fleshed out with more feedback and experimentation.
I, for one, would like to see banning as a functionality.
If a tournament setup is based on rank than it's cool. If not, then I wouldn't be much of a fan.
Rank means literally nothing in Hearthstone. (Except at the 2 extremes where you dropped yourself to rank 25 to smash noobs, or you grinded to Legend for the first time and everyone you play is net decking or streaming)
Keeping in mind that ban feature will prolly come in future, what's even the point of tournament mode if you can't ban decks you hate playing against? Wasn't that why most of us begged for this mode? To finally take a break from the meta? Also tournament mode without bans is just missing the point of tournaments.
I'm really looking forward to upcoming balance changes and now this. Overall seems things will change in HS for better but as usual, it will just take too long for my taste.
Tournament mode will be such a nice addition to the game. I am assuming it will only be limited to standard. It would be nice to see a tournament mode for both standard and wild, but even if it’s only standard I am super happy about it
Don't assume that. The only assumptions are:
1. It will have matchmaking and deck verification.
2. It will be in client
3. It will be buggy
4. It will need a LOT of feedback.
If the community demands it to host wild games they'll add wild functionality. If they don't, they probably won't. They can't add EVERYTHING right away so they want to know what we want right now.
And having hte ability to customize it would be awesome.
They should make sure to have making bans a feature as one of their top priorities, one of the large reasons as to why players want a tournament mode is so they can get the experience that the pro's have when they play in one.
"It boggles my mind why they insist on keeping everything as barebones as possible. Constantly pretending they are a team of 5 with a game that barely keeps them afloat."
I wrote that. you can see the responses here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/8ispmz/team_5_you_dont_understand_why_we_want_tournament/dyuj4kg/?context=3
I'm super glad this is happening. My only grievance is that I'm an NA player who now lives in Europe, so I can't add nor compete with my friends locally. Kind of takes the whole social aspect of hearthstone away when the game is server region-locked. We talk about the game, watch each other play, but can't actually play or spectate each other in game :(
"Bans will not be included at the start." - this might be a problem as it is an important part of every single just-for-fun, minor or major tournament out there. I believe it is not difficult feature to implement so I wonder why they decided to not to do so.
Edit: I have seen some people were downvoting me so I try to explain. I am not complaining, I am really happy to see things moving. But, whole tournament deckbuilding and line-up strategy is based on what you are going to ban, otherwise tournament meta would be very same as the ladder one, which is not that great in my opinion.