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Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

Message Regarding Recent Tour Stop Concerns

We're thrilled by HCT 2018's positive reception so far. As we are just starting the inaugural season of HCT 2018, we are trying new concepts and actively learning from the new challenges that we encounter. However, we're also aware of some recent issues that speak to the heart of what we all want Hearthstone esports to be. Today, we'll be talking about those issues, where we stand, and offerings some ideas about how we can improve things moving forward.

Harassment and Standards of Conduct

During a Challenger Cup on January 25, we received reports that a competitor was harassed. While the offending player's behavior was penalized per tournament policy, exchanges occurred in the wake of the event that were not in accordance with our values. We want to make it clear that we do not condone or excuse harassment of any kind, nor downplay harassment when it occurs, and Blizzard fully expects both competitors and tournament organizers to exhibit integrity and live up to a high standard of professional conduct.

We want to make sure we're doing our part, so we'll be working more closely with tournament organizers and clearly outlining existing guidelines to better ensure that Hearthstone tournaments exemplify our company value of Play Nice, Play Fair. Hearthstone esports should be an environment where ALL players can meet in a spirit of fellowship and competition, free from abuse.

Infractions and Fair Play

In the recent Sydney Tour Stop qualifier, a player was found to have played a deck that did not match his submitted list. After a thorough investigation we were able to confirm that the player in question had been playing the same mismatched deck for the entire tournament, and our tournament administrators penalized him with a game loss in accordance with the HCT 2018 rules (Player Handbook, Section 7.3):

7.3 Deck list mismatch This infraction occurs when a player enters a game with a deck that does not match the deck list the player submitted.

The penalty for this infraction is a game loss.

Most deck list errors we encounter aren't malicious. In the context of the existing rules and given the available evidence, we agree with the call that the admins made in this case. We want to reiterate that Blizzard Entertainment has a zero-tolerance policy towards cheating, with consequences including disqualification and competition bans. That's why it's so important for us to distinguish between cheating and honest mistakes-had there been evidence that this mismatch was intentional and intended to create an advantage, then the penalty would have been much more severe.

That said, we fully recognize the frustration surrounding this issue, and we're exploring improvements to our systems and tools to make sure that players run into these issues less frequently. We also take reports seriously-if you're a competitor and you encounter something that seems irregular, please let us know and we'll investigate promptly and thoroughly.

Better Organization

There's been discussion surrounding online qualifiers for Tour Stops, including some valid criticism about organizational challenges. First, please accept our sincere apologies for the long tournament durations and deck list submission frustrations.

We know that there's work to do to improve the online qualifiers, and we're examining some ways to improve the experience. For example, due to incredible interest in the new Tour Stop system, demand for Tour Stop registration has been outpacing supply, resulting in huge 1,024 player brackets. We're considering splitting these 1,024 player brackets into smaller, randomly-seeded flights, so we can accommodate a similar number of competitors while reducing tournament length and delays between matches. What do you think? Are there other improvements that you'd like to see?

To Sum Up

Your experiences and thoughts are incredibly important to us, and we want to hear what you think. You can share your feedback with us via social media (reddit / Twitter) and the official forums.

Thank you for your continuing support, and we'll see you in the tavern.

  • bdrago
    Posted 7 years, 11 months ago (Source)

    I'd like to see a format closer to a swiss bracket with potentially more "worth" to players. Right now we have these huge 1024 player bracket double elimination brackets and only 4 people making it far enough to get any worth. Double elimination feels like the worst format to make competitors feel good since you have to slowly trek through the gigantic losers bracket. Swiss would create more opportunities for players to get points if you allow more points for doing okay rather than just top 4 and single elimination would shorten times greatly for a tournament with such low expected value.

    We recognize that working your way through a 1,024 player bracket can be very demanding. Our plan is to split the bracket into smaller, randomly seeded brackets—reducing tournament length while still accommodating the increased interest in HCT this year. Our current plan is to utilize Swiss format where possible, but there are additional complexities associated with making that transition that we need more time to address.

  • bdrago
    Posted 7 years, 11 months ago (Source)

    Thanks for reaching out to the community with an update on your stance and asking for feedback. I think splitting a 1024 player bracket in two is a decent step forward.

    I do have some feedback based on what I've heard, seen and experienced in open qualifiers:

    • Open qualifiers are now a first-come-first-serve event, not limiting the amount of times a player signs up. For example, they have 4 separate qualifiers and some players play in all of them. It's a tough issue, because there are two sides to it. On the one hand: those players were there first. They risk overlap if one of their brackets extends to the next day, so that's their issue. On the other hand, some qualifiers are somewhat spontaneously announced on Twitter accounts relatively few pros follow. This grants a circle of friends a pretty unfair advantage. To improve this somewhat, it'd be great if the official HSEsports Twitter account would repeatedly announce sign-ups for qualifiers a few days beforehand in order to give more people an equal chance.

    • Decklists are one heck of an administrative hurdle in Hearthstone tournaments. I believe it was the Copa America qualifiers that used an abhorrently chaotic spreadsheet with deck codes to distribute each player's tournament line-up. It was a mess. TakeTV avoided this by having the players lock in 4 classes only - decklists within those classes could vary from round to round. Ideally, each tournament enforces the same rules as that makes the process easier for all parties involved. All in all I think it's best to have fully open decklists, all sent in 1 screenshot to the admins who then gather them and publish them. This omits clunky deck codes, weird rules and whatever else.

    • When it comes to rule enforcement, I'd love to see stricter rules in general. This is the pro circuit we're talking about, and for many people there's a lot of money on the line. When someone queues up the wrong decklist it should not result in a game loss, it should result in a match loss. If you want to be a pro player, you've got to make sure everything is correct. It's part of the game. This unprofessionalism, with or without malicious intent, should not have the possibility to stay in the upper bracket of a double elimination tournament and have the shortest road to qualification, if they should be allowed to stay in the bracket at all. Tough, perhaps, but again: it's the pro scene. Act like a pro and triple-check your lists.

    • When it comes to harassment, it'd be great if a player who according to the admins behaves inappropriately, not only gets disqualified from that tournament, but also won't be allowed to compete in the next 2 or so tournament qualifiers. Yes it's a competition and yes frustration can get to you, but there's no excuse for harassing your opponent. Rivalry: good. Harassment: bad.

    There's probably a lot more if I give it more thought, but this is what popped to mind now. Again, thanks for reaching out to the community, and I hope we can work together to improve the HCT 2018 season.

    1. Qualifier registration information should be more accessible, and we are working on adding additional details to our Tour Stop posts. We will continue to work with organizers to make opportunities to compete more visible.

    2. In the future, tournament platforms should seamlessly capture deck list information upon registration. We're in active conversations with partners who can facilitate this functionality.

    3. Different infractions should have different resolutions based on how disruptive they are to the tournament. Our goal is to ensure tournament integrity without creating negative experiences for competitors who make honest mistakes. In a situation where evidence confirms that a player has intentionally used a deck list they did not submit, a more severe penalty would apply.

    4. A more robust harassment policy is going to be included in a future HCT rule set update. We take all instances of reported harassment very seriously, and appreciate the additional feedback surrounding how to improve.

    Thanks for all of the great points.

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