Peter Whalen on Witchwood, Tournaments, Arena - The Angry Chicken #262
Last week, Hearthstone's Peter Whalen guested on The Angry Chicken to talk about many things Hearthstone. Here's some highlights of what he had to say.
- There are no plans to make the arena more competitive.
- There is one person who does data analytics for the arena, which contributes to the micro-adjustments.
- They don't know the best way to get all the arena offering odds data out there.
- "Do we just give you guys a spreadsheet? Is that useful? Is that confusing? How do we do that without costing a bunch of dev resources?"
- Tournament mode won't be launched with a bans feature.
- Peter thinks it would be best for players to play tournament mode before giving feedback.
- Their ultimate goal is for every class to have fun archetypes to play that you can be excited about and feel good about playing.
Watch episode #262 of The Angry Chicken below! You can find previous episodes over on their YouTube channel and you can give the cast a follow over on @TACPodcast on Twitter. You can also find the gang over on Patreon.
Tournament mode won't be launched with a bans feature... This was quite painstaking to read. Bans would have added so much strategy and, without it, would have simply felt like a best of 3. Seriously disappointed by this news
Their point is that they wont launch the beta with bans. It is still a feature that they may include for the full release.
Painstaking
adj. Done with or employing great care and thoroughness.
I can't read spreadsheets, please remove Enrage Blizzard its too confusing.
Their ultimate goal is for every class to have fun archetypes to play that you can be excited about and feel good about playing.
Are these archetypes meant to be just "fun", or are they also supposed to win at least one in ten games? And are they supposed to feel unique?
I mean, we do have archetypes for every class, sort of. Like Spiteful Druid, and Spiteful Priest, and Spiteful Mage and Spiteful Warrior. And some classes even have more than one type, like Even Paladin, and Odd Paladin, and Murloc Paladin, and Aggro Paladin. But I guess people are having different opinions about how good they feel about playing them, and more importantly playing against them. And I think "excited" is the wrong word to describe the experience playing the game right now.
All jokes aside, Peter is a nice guy, and I don't want to be cynical here. I'm just curious if that "ultimate goal" is something in the far distant future, or if we are supposed to be halfway there already. My guess is the far distant future, and I'd be a bit worried if the devs think we are halfway there.
Hearthstone is really the slowest game when it comes to balancing...
And if you are so concerned about casual players then why haven't you nerfed pally and warlock already?
Yes. I don’t want to think about the Naga. I would cry about that. It is 6 months that we are waiting. I don’t know what they are doing. It seems very complicated change a card, we have also to wait a standard turnament for a wild card, I really don’t know. When I think about this stuffs Blizzard really seems the company with the wrost management ever seen. Blizzard has to change his management now and fast, this stuffs are cancer for a company. People will remember this stuffs.
They didn't even really need to do any nerf if they would have paid attention to what cards were going out of the meta at the rotation and which cards were staying. Some flexibility in making changes to the evergreen set would really go a long way to fix some class balance issues. Unfortunately they don;t want any cards in the evergreen set to be to playable to force players to buy packs continuously.
Amani is in one deck and so is Avenging Wrath. Argent commander has seen play many times before and MC tech has always existed in every meta. Raid Leader and SW Champion do not see play in seriously competitive decks.
Picking a few cards in the WW expansion is not the ENTIRE standard meta. Try looking at ALL available sets in standard.
No. If you cannot understand that a change in a card game is not the same as a change in a complex game like Warcraft I don’t know what can I say to you. So I will say you only please don’t argue.
They're probably concerned with the confusion of younger, casual players if such data was released. But honestly, those people don't care and wouldn't look at it. If they simply released a spreadsheet for the more mature playerbase, such as those on hearthpwn, I'm sure people would be more than happy to do with it as they will.
If you go out of your way to find the spreadsheet I think you know how to use it. I think it would be beneficial for the general audience to have the spreadsheet released.