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.
What I really want to know about is this mythical casual arena player. I am pretty sure that the "average" arena player ranks above average on the hardcore gamer scale. From everything I can glean if u are casual u are pretty much playing casual mode, tavern brawl, or PVE. Arena seems to be the most hardcore format so just give us hardcore s our damn data.
Why?
My thoughts exactly. Just give us the data. Why would that be confusing? It's way less confusing than going into a mode with no idea how RNG is being influenced.
It's not so much that it's confusing but more so that if it becomes a game where good players are referencing spreadsheets, more casual players just aren't going to bother playing. You also have to realize that the players who are find it complex aren't going to say so.
You mean spreadsheets like the ones provided by vicious syndicate or hsreplay for ranked? Isn't the bigger problem the price point of arena?
One solution could be to make the entrance 50 gold cheaper and offering a (heartharena like) draft guide for 50 gold.
Amazing how they think that giving data will be "confusing". Meanwhile in Asia the company that is working on HS had made Tournaments, datas and replay avaible in game more than a year ago without facing any kind of "confusing" issues by the players.
I really hope that Artifact's release will make Blizzard innovate more in HS to keep up into the market.
It is widely known that most of the Asians can count and click heads, while many people in NA and EU are getting confused with such kind of tasks.
Also I am crying a bit (inside).
So they admit it just one person doing whatever he/she wants to arena... keyword “one”... shouldn’t there be a review process or something ?
One doing data analytics. That doesn't mean one person is working on balancing and whatever jobs need to be done.
Peter thinks it would be best for players to play tournament mode before giving feedback.
It hurts me inside that this even needs saying. But I'm sure that there'll be plenty of folks who think they know just how to design things without even trying them.
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?" YES!
"Is that useful?" HELL YES!