From my understanding of how Hearthstone works on the backend -
They have multiple versions of the game available when new patches are about to hit. When you connect, you get routed to a pool based on your client version. This is due to mobile clients not getting updated as fast as desktop, but they can't just prevent them from playing.
So, because of this, when a Tavern Brawl hits right before a patch is about to go out, they only activate the brawl on the new pool of connections and not the old one. Maybe some tech prevents it from being live on both the old version and about to release version, or maybe they just don't really care much. The moment we can patch our clients and login, we'll be able to play brawl right away.
Edit: The comment I was responding to was deleted =(
Considering they're actually generating interest, they're going to be kept for the time being. Lots of people don't log in to Arena every day so it is a good way to know if something is available you're interested in.
One could say a lot of things posted on any site are zero value. You could very easily see the decks we spotlight by visiting a deck database. You could go right to Blizzard's blog if you want to see patch notes they post or follow all the developer Twitter accounts to see what they have to say.
At the end of the day, we're covering news and if people are consuming it, its worth posting about!
Interesting to see how this turned out. All 8 finalists were very close in their final score. Only 0.3 separate 1st from 8th place! This does kinda make me wonder if this is the right scoring system to be using? I wasn't sure how scoring was being done, I voted for my own card and didn't vote for the other finalists in the final round. I guess it incentivizes me to give them all 1 star? That feels lame and I didn't want to do that. Might be a good call to not let finalists vote in the final round?
It is nice that later entries (like mine) were still able to compete and still received a good number of views and votes, which was a problem back on hearthpwn.
I don't know if any changes need to be made just yet. But I will say that I already like this better than the old system on Hearthpwn.
Hm, you know, that never actually came up as a problem "finalists voting on themselves". Since it isn't possible to vote on yourself in the submission phase of the competition, it only makes sense we wouldn't allow it in the finalists.
Though, it would be funny if someone forgot to give their own card 5 stars in the finals :D
We'll have to leave that open for now and continue to collect feedback and hold an internal discussion. I think we have a lot of really great people in the community though that legitimately vote so it may not be an issue right now.
The close scores are also an interesting point to bring up. Although I'd personally like to wait and see how things turn out over multiple competitions before anything changes, we maybe could have done a better job at getting people to go and vote in the finals, even those that don't take part in the competitions themselves.
I love the feedback we've gotten on the system so far though and I agree, things are MUCH better here! The best part about it though is that they're only going to improve because we actually have the ability to make changes without needing to go through processes on top of processes. I'm super stoked we have the competitions back and I can't wait for us to extend them to other titles we cover, breaking some ground there.
Anyway, I'll be leaving much of the decision making up to the Fan Creations team to see how we're going to proceed with any changes since they are much better than I at figuring it out - I'll just be the code monkey getting any potential changes out to everyone :D
One thing to throw out there, I would love to implement a progress bar showing how many cards you've voted on and how many you have to go. I can't say for certain it'll appear during competition 2 but maybe by 3 I'll be able to get that out there. Anything that can improve the voting experience is A+.
Zilliax to me is very much in-between. There were a lot of fun moments with him which made it a great card and one that will certainly be missed for that reason, but looking at it overall from a game health perspective, Zilliax had some very evil moments.
I noticed that the Fan Creations menu doesn't appear in the Hearthstone dropdown menu that appears on other portals, the only way to access it is to go into the Hearthstone portal first.
I've actually got a fix for this that'll go out in the next site update
<3
We don't have one yet, though there's plans for that with the introduction of our Battlegrounds section coming in the future :D
Yup
From my understanding of how Hearthstone works on the backend -
They have multiple versions of the game available when new patches are about to hit. When you connect, you get routed to a pool based on your client version. This is due to mobile clients not getting updated as fast as desktop, but they can't just prevent them from playing.
So, because of this, when a Tavern Brawl hits right before a patch is about to go out, they only activate the brawl on the new pool of connections and not the old one. Maybe some tech prevents it from being live on both the old version and about to release version, or maybe they just don't really care much. The moment we can patch our clients and login, we'll be able to play brawl right away.
Edit: The comment I was responding to was deleted =(
Nevermind, I do see this problem while logged out. Going to get a deploy out to fix it immediately. Thanks for the report!
Can you give me an exact URL where you're seeing a greyed-out thread and the URL of that thread? Thanks!
Considering they're actually generating interest, they're going to be kept for the time being. Lots of people don't log in to Arena every day so it is a good way to know if something is available you're interested in.
One could say a lot of things posted on any site are zero value. You could very easily see the decks we spotlight by visiting a deck database. You could go right to Blizzard's blog if you want to see patch notes they post or follow all the developer Twitter accounts to see what they have to say.
At the end of the day, we're covering news and if people are consuming it, its worth posting about!
Google Drive is bad for file hosting. Use a site like imgur.com
Ugh, why'd you have to remind me of Blue Ez hahaha. That was some interesting times in bot lane.
Yeah, I don't really expect to see Overkill again. Other mechanics definitely made up for it being lackluster, but damn that was a shame!
Yes please!
Congrats!
You should have a new avatar border to celebrate :D
Hm, you know, that never actually came up as a problem "finalists voting on themselves". Since it isn't possible to vote on yourself in the submission phase of the competition, it only makes sense we wouldn't allow it in the finalists.
Though, it would be funny if someone forgot to give their own card 5 stars in the finals :D
We'll have to leave that open for now and continue to collect feedback and hold an internal discussion. I think we have a lot of really great people in the community though that legitimately vote so it may not be an issue right now.
The close scores are also an interesting point to bring up. Although I'd personally like to wait and see how things turn out over multiple competitions before anything changes, we maybe could have done a better job at getting people to go and vote in the finals, even those that don't take part in the competitions themselves.
I love the feedback we've gotten on the system so far though and I agree, things are MUCH better here! The best part about it though is that they're only going to improve because we actually have the ability to make changes without needing to go through processes on top of processes. I'm super stoked we have the competitions back and I can't wait for us to extend them to other titles we cover, breaking some ground there.
Anyway, I'll be leaving much of the decision making up to the Fan Creations team to see how we're going to proceed with any changes since they are much better than I at figuring it out - I'll just be the code monkey getting any potential changes out to everyone :D
One thing to throw out there, I would love to implement a progress bar showing how many cards you've voted on and how many you have to go. I can't say for certain it'll appear during competition 2 but maybe by 3 I'll be able to get that out there. Anything that can improve the voting experience is A+.
New Features
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Zilliax to me is very much in-between. There were a lot of fun moments with him which made it a great card and one that will certainly be missed for that reason, but looking at it overall from a game health perspective, Zilliax had some very evil moments.
I've actually got a fix for this that'll go out in the next site update
I especially love this since most of these cards won't be in Standard much longer!
Yeah, this is some INSANE art.
The next 5 weeks each give out 3 cards with a shared theme so its a great time to join in the Magic fun :)
Ah, they never covered that in the livestream, or if they did, huge mistake on my part.
Thanks!
Also, Demon pointed out that the latest round of card nerfs didn't have card images. That was just resolved.