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.
>Their ultimate goal is for every class to have fun archetypes to play that you can be excited about and feel good about playing
if this is their ultimate goal, well, they definitely doing something wrong. There are theoretically a lot of fun archetypes, true, but you just can't play it if you want to win at least 50% of the games.
If you want to win against paladin or odd rogues, you have to fill your deck with fireflies, tar creepers, boardclears, taunts and heals (depending on class). And you need A LOT of it, coz they just keep spamming their dudes for free and other cheap bullshit if you let some of them survive, you will just get rect by bufs and smorc.
If you want to win against warlocks, you need exactly opposite: strong face damage or tempo, weapon removals, silences and non-killing removal (hex, scream, mind control). And against Quest rogues you need face damage and tempo only.
So how can i play fun decks, if i have to fill my deck with 15 cards against sick aggro decks, and 15 cards against warlocks and quest rogues (just exaggerate, you know what i mean)? Right, you just play one of them, coz it is just ultimative aggro decks, you just cant create more aggressive deck. Same for control, you cant create better control deck then existed warlocks and priests.
So yea, i gave up with my steal rogue, quest and odd-quest hunter, egglock, odd shaman (lul) and quest elemental mage, and started to play quest rogue as the only cancerous deck that I somehow like. You can condemn me, i would, but sometimes you just want to play for at least some fun. And losing over and over to pals and warlocks is not fun at all.
Also somehow i never hated spiteful, I mean, if only they didnt get prince at the start, you need just 1 removal like vilespine or taunt + doomsayer to deal with it. Lack of spells is really big deal, so im ok with spitefuls. Still wouldn't play it tho, pure random. At least not that cancerous as barnes priests
Interesting, not big fan of long-drawn warrior's games (tried dead man's recruit tho), but i thought about shaman (dont have Hagatha and Shudderwock, so i deferred it), otk pal and warlock with all of that, almost crafted Glinda and gnomeferatu recently. But was upset and angry so I choose
cancequest rogue. Actually it sounds good, coz i almost forgot about them.Thanks man, somehow you gave me hope, lol. I also deferred (
i can say "deferred" like this, right?) OTK pal coz didnt want to craft Beardo, but now I can try it. This will be the first I try from your list :DJust make the ban an option to be allowed or disabled by the tournament host
I wonder if there's any aspect of Hearthstone that Peter doesn't think are "amazing", "awesome" or "really fun"? Don't get me wrong, I appreciate positivity, but his constant saccharine grin gives me a stomach ache.
I often get the impression that he's like a 5 year old kid in a toy store. :D
This was really hard to watch. Peter is the king of just plain not answering the question he was asked, but rather rambling on about some other shit.
I miss Ben.
I think Ben misses us, too.
This basically kills the mode before its even launched. There is a reason why every hearthstone tournament uses class bans. Its neccessary to build a lineup strategy.
Whithout thats its just copy paste the top tier decks by winrate without any strategy and hope you roll lucky in matchmaking.
This realy realy sucks and ruins tournament mode before its even launched.
I think they could update the tournament system to have the option to include class bans, or not. Some players want to ban classes, others don't. Flexibility should be a huge consideration with and addition to the game like this.
I honestly can't wait for Tournament Mode to launch into Beta.
"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?"
I don't even..
...shaman?
What if i don`t care about arena? I don`t play it at all, because never lucky with the draw... Hope tournament mode can develop in future.
What if I don't care about ladder? I don't play at all after I get the cardback, because running against the same decks back to back to back is boring... Still, I don't see what it has to do with anything
Ben Brode's departure is the elephant in the room they obviously weren't allowed to ask about.