Bluetracker
Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.
Team 5: You Don't Understand Why We Want Tournament Mode.
Peter Whalen was on The Angry Chicken and they asked about the upcoming tournament mode. The crew did a great job of making it VERY CLEAR that what they are worried about is NOT HAVING BANS, but they didn't pick up after his response. I think they were trying to be polite.
I'll type out a mini transcript just to make sure we're all clear here:
Dills: And uh, still planning to launch without Bans, or has that been altered at all?
Peter: for the first version of the Beta we're going launch without bans (at least that's the plan) and then see what the uses are that the community has for the system and then see what the features are that we most need to implement, and then see where we go from there.
Joce: What's the best want to be like PLEASE GIVE US BANS?
Peter: Well, play with the tournament system, then you know send us feedback
Garrett: (double r double t, I got you bro) I wanted to know if you are already taking feedback.
Peter: I think it would be best for people to play with what we've got and then give us feedback [suggests places and ways people might use it]
Here is the problem with this...what we want is to PLAY THE SAME GAME THAT OUR PROS PLAY.
When I watch Hearthstone tournaments they play a format THAT DOES NOT EXIST IN THE GAME.
I simply CANNOT play a game the way the pros do, unless I use a gentleman's agreement not to cheat, after setting up every rule with a friend in advance.
The REASON WE WANT A TOURNAMENT MODE IS TO PLAY LIKE WE WOULD IN A TOURNAMENT.
The fact that Team 5 does not seem to understand that EVERYBODY ASKING FOR TOURNAMENT MODE WANTS TO HAVE AN EXPERIENCE LIKE AN ACTUAL HEARTHSTONE TOURNAMENT is unsettling.
If tournament play is going to continue using bans, then your tournament mode better have bans.
And "use our mode and then give feedback" Why? What reason do I have to play your new mode? It literally doesn't do THE ONE THING I CAN'T DO WITHOUT THE MODE. So it's a crappy tool to let me play the exact same way I've always played...instead of actually playing a tournament format.
If you're giving us a new mode called tournament mode...you'd damn well better let me play like I would in a hearthstone tournament. If not..there's literally no point.
Iksar
Features take time. Tournaments are a long requested game mode and we want to put something in the hands of the community as soon as possible. When we first announced tournaments as a beta, we meant that as a true beta. There might be some bugs, and there might be some features missing from it you thought were really important. We still think it will be really cool. Because tournaments mean so many different things to different people, it made sense to get together the pieces of a tournament that are absolutely necessary, then build on it one piece at a time as we gathered community feedback.