I think this is excellent for arena moving forward. This is pure speculation, but I find it very unlikely that they are manually changing card rates. I think it is far more likely that rates are changing based on pick/win % of each individual card. If I'm right about this it's really interesting.
There is a lot of math/data involved in choosing the correct cards and rates to adjust by but a human still monitors those values and runs automation tests to make sure each of the classes still has a reasonable distribution of cards to make them feel like Druid still feels like Druid, Mage still feels like Mage, etc. That said, I still like to call this task 'machines balance arena' internally because it sounds cool.
Slightly less cool than machines having free reign to balance arena, but good to know nonetheless! Do you guys have any long term goals for balancing arena this way?
Get to a place where very engaged arena players can see a pick between three classes and choose one based on what they feel like playing rather than an obligation to play one based on power level.
Keep the adjustments small enough that they don't impact a players gameplay or decision making. It isn't a disaster in the opposite circumstance, but we would prefer the correct way to play arena not involve having a long list of rules next to your keyboard as you pick cards.
Make sure the card pool stays diverse enough that each class maintains a unique identity.
Iksar
There is a lot of math/data involved in choosing the correct cards and rates to adjust by but a human still monitors those values and runs automation tests to make sure each of the classes still has a reasonable distribution of cards to make them feel like Druid still feels like Druid, Mage still feels like Mage, etc. That said, I still like to call this task 'machines balance arena' internally because it sounds cool.
Iksar
Get to a place where very engaged arena players can see a pick between three classes and choose one based on what they feel like playing rather than an obligation to play one based on power level.
Keep the adjustments small enough that they don't impact a players gameplay or decision making. It isn't a disaster in the opposite circumstance, but we would prefer the correct way to play arena not involve having a long list of rules next to your keyboard as you pick cards.
Make sure the card pool stays diverse enough that each class maintains a unique identity.