Dean Ayala had some news to share this evening regarding Arena Balance and micro-adjustments to card appearance rates.
According to Dean, Tian Ding, who was the team's Lead Data Scientist prior to leaving Blizzard and joining Second Dinner, was the "father" of the micro-adjustments that happened in Arena and with him gone from the company, they aren't entirely sure how to next approach Arena balance. The adjustments were not completely automated and still required some manual intervention, which Tian was the sole provider of, a rarity on the Hearthstone team.
Dean says that there are two options they are currently looking at going forward for Arena balance:
- Keep micro-adjustments but move responsibility to dev.
- Come up with a simpler and less manual solution for balancing cards.
The second option would result in more timely balance changes and wouldn't require any schedule adjustments from the dev team. The ultimate goal of the rethinking process is to find a solution that lets Hearthstone maintain Arena balance easier and on a more predictable release schedule. Until then, we might not see many micro-adjustments.
How are you feeling about Arena balance right now? What would you change if you were given the chance? Let us know in the comments below.
Quote From Dean Ayala Arena adjustments coming anytime soon?
The true and unfortunate story about microadjustments is that the father of microadjustments @sky_tding has moved off the team (good luck and we love you @sky_tding) and we're trying to figure out what the best path forward is now.
Because Tian was awesome, he came up with a cool math/programming based solution that required some manual effort but he was capable of doing it (microadjusts).
However, there are some downsides and abnormalities with that process. One, it's pretty rare for a feature to be maintained by someone off the dev team. His team might have other priorities and planning can be more difficult.
Two, there was some pretty complex manual effort involved that meant multiple people from different teams had to be free at a moment's notice when we wanted microadjustments to happen.
So, now, we're considering a couple options. One is to keep microadjustments as is but move the responsibility back to dev (and adjusting our schedule as a result). Another is to come up with a simpler and less manual solution that allows us to be more timely with class balance.
TL:DR we're rethinking how we do arena balance. The goal is to have a solution that is easier to maintain and has more predictable timelines. We may fall back on current microadjustments until that happens.
Comments
It's not only the balance between classes that needs to be addressed, the power spikes from certain cards need to be toned down as well. I just got crushed by 3 Snowfall Guardians in a row. From turn 6 to 8 one of these got played. It's hard not to get salty as something like this happens so many times. Whether it's this or a discovered Ysera, Hollow Abomination clearing your entire board, Abominable Lieutenant being discovered from a Glaciate, and I could go on. Arena has always had moments like this and they are fun as long as it's a rare occurrence, but Alterac Valley brought in an awful lot of these moments. You can't always afford it play around a Knight-Captain or a Bunker Sergeant on curve, but these cards can be instantly game winning and are among the most commonly picked cards.
It's just sad to me that a billion dollar company cant afford to devote 1 person to manage a game mode that costs players money (gold) to play.
Arena is yet another unworkable relic of Hearthstone's attempt to emulate physical card games. They wanted a draft mode, but they couldn't figure out how to do an actual draft, so we got this abomination. It needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.
In all honesty, seeing over the years that they don't want to dedicate any people to Arena, feels very sad.
The only reasonable solution in this situation is to introduce some kind of auto-balancing mechanism.
Set some rules, set timelines for balancing (to have some time to collect data).
For example, after 3 days, 7 days, 30 days, 60 days of an expansion, auto balancing happens.
And then, just let someone check from time to time, if there are no bugs, if something isn't broken.
As an arena player i am definitely biased here, but i don't understand why they cannot dedicate someone to take care of arena balancing.
From my understanding this doesn't even have to be a full time job, maybe someone of the team works 2 days of the week on arena.
The base tools for this seem to already exist and Tian Ding doesn't seem to have worked on those exclusively either, but did his own job too.
Its a shame that arena is often just an afterthought to the team, when it has a really dedicated player base.
I am only a casual Arena player, playing only from time to time recently.
Arena offers something unique comparing to all other game modes. Drafting and trading actually matters (which was so core to Hearthstone experience for quite some time).
Currently many people complain about crazy Combo decks in Constructed modes. I'm afraid that's just the direction HS is going, whether we like it or not.
In Arena, those Combo decks are not existent (Yes, sometimes crazy Combo happens, but not that often). So it offers something different comparing to Constructed.
Except... Arena has it's own problems, mainly - 1. Not regular enough balancing, 2. Crazy power level differences between some cards (creates unfun moments and increases the feeling of being hopeless).
So it's a real shame, I agree. Arena does not need that much workforce to maintain it and keep in reasonable balance state...
And yet, Team5 somehow can't deliver even that.
Despite many years of non-existent balancing, Arena survived, and keeps some dedicated playerbase.