We did all the rarities as equal outside of legendary. It felt a little too strange picking legendary cards against commons/rares/epics. I think all rarities outside of legendary showing up together is still a reasonable possibility we just didn't see enough upside to change the system from commons/rares/epics showing up together.
Well, it certainly depends on what you would consider substantive. I would expect these changes to go through in <= than a month if there are no major setbacks.
I think one of the things that makes arena appealing is that sometimes you draft a really crazy deck with lots of synergies and 'op' cards. Other times you have a poor deck and have to barely squeeze by on a singular win condition. I would say balance between all 9 classes is a goal we have, but balance between any individual deck you draft is not a goal.
Changing rarity feels more like a band-aid fix to me. Adjusting the offer rate gives the ability to change how much a card appears to exactly how much we think is correct. Changing rarity gives us 3 set options. Flamestrike is a basic card you get during the beginning user flow, and on the flip side if we changed a card from epic to common I think those users would expect a dust refund for the difference. In the end it seems like a bunch of added complications for a worse solution. The upside is there are no hidden rules, but in this case I think the downsides outweigh the upsides by a fair margin.
Most of the time, yes. For specific cards like Flamestrike and Abyssal I would consider an update fairly important. When the change/notes do go out I would expect that to be a part of it. On the other hand, we've been discussing doing things like making Silithid Swarmer show up more in weapon classes than it does for non-weapon classes. Something like that is slightly less important for us to post a blog about.
There are more people working on ranked solutions than arena ones, it just so happens that these changes are a pretty quick turnaround now that we have the tool, so you are seeing them faster. One feature being worked on doesn't necessarily mean all other features are not being worked on.
I think we'll start with 30-50% reduced rate for Flamestrike and Abyssal Enforcer. Those are the only two cards we want to adjust the individual rate on though, at least initially.
There is no arena specific team, but a lot of the card designers take some time away from working on sets to work on other features when we feel something needs improvement.
Iksar
I don't actually know what you are referring to. If you have a question, feel free to ask it!
Iksar
We did all the rarities as equal outside of legendary. It felt a little too strange picking legendary cards against commons/rares/epics. I think all rarities outside of legendary showing up together is still a reasonable possibility we just didn't see enough upside to change the system from commons/rares/epics showing up together.
Iksar
Well, it certainly depends on what you would consider substantive. I would expect these changes to go through in <= than a month if there are no major setbacks.
Iksar
I think one of the things that makes arena appealing is that sometimes you draft a really crazy deck with lots of synergies and 'op' cards. Other times you have a poor deck and have to barely squeeze by on a singular win condition. I would say balance between all 9 classes is a goal we have, but balance between any individual deck you draft is not a goal.
Iksar
Changing rarity feels more like a band-aid fix to me. Adjusting the offer rate gives the ability to change how much a card appears to exactly how much we think is correct. Changing rarity gives us 3 set options. Flamestrike is a basic card you get during the beginning user flow, and on the flip side if we changed a card from epic to common I think those users would expect a dust refund for the difference. In the end it seems like a bunch of added complications for a worse solution. The upside is there are no hidden rules, but in this case I think the downsides outweigh the upsides by a fair margin.
Iksar
Most of the time, yes. For specific cards like Flamestrike and Abyssal I would consider an update fairly important. When the change/notes do go out I would expect that to be a part of it. On the other hand, we've been discussing doing things like making Silithid Swarmer show up more in weapon classes than it does for non-weapon classes. Something like that is slightly less important for us to post a blog about.
Iksar
There are more people working on ranked solutions than arena ones, it just so happens that these changes are a pretty quick turnaround now that we have the tool, so you are seeing them faster. One feature being worked on doesn't necessarily mean all other features are not being worked on.
Iksar
I think we'll start with 30-50% reduced rate for Flamestrike and Abyssal Enforcer. Those are the only two cards we want to adjust the individual rate on though, at least initially.
Iksar
There is no arena specific team, but a lot of the card designers take some time away from working on sets to work on other features when we feel something needs improvement.