This post was updated at 12:27 AM EDT on August 18, 2019 with additional posts by Iksar.
Dean "Iksar" Ayala was up late last night talking about upcoming changes to Hearthstone's Arena.
The buckets of cards we've been using in recent times are being removed.
Iksar states that this is in reaction to buckets not being well received and that it will let the team micro-adjust faster. These changes arrive with Patch 15.4, scheduled sometime before the next expansion releases, and appears to be a sort of test.
Quote From Iksar Microadjustment balance changes are based on a formula that takes into account the current bucket information, which is why they don't happen until at least a few days after bucket adjustments. I believe we sent over the public bucket information a few days ago to our community team but it's possible it didn't get to the right folks. I'll doublecheck Monday.
For 15.4, we're going to try doing an arena patch without buckets and have all cards be part of one giant pool. This is similar to how the early days of arena worked. Theoretically, buckets made individual arena decisions a little more interesting and put more weight behind how a card works in the deck you are drafting vs its power level in a vacuum. While I think there is some truth to this, I don't think it's been a well received change overall. For players new or inexperienced with Hearthstone, the idea of having 'obvious' choices is a win. For hardcore players, if the change to buckets is not a clear upside (which has been most of the feedback we've received here) then it's probably just not worth doing. One positive part of not doing buckets is that the micro-adjustment patches should happen faster in the future because there does not need to be a preliminary bucket adjustment patch to set the stage.
Welcome back 9+ flamestrike.
Arena in the original format just had way less cards which was mostly the reason individuals showed up more often. In the bucket system, cards that appear the most often show up around 1.5 times per draft. In a system with no buckets, that number is reduced to around 0.9. (Source)
I knew this would be a divided topic, but it's good to get it out in the open so it doesn't come as a huge surprise later. There are a bunch of benefits to having no buckets. We don't have to do a rebucket patch, so the initial balance patch should come out a week after the patch rather than 2+ weeks. Decks should feel more different from one another because there are no small buckets that made some groupings of cards appear more often than they would otherwise. As another result of getting rid of small buckets, the cards that appear the most often should be seen around 0.9-1 times on average, which is quite a bit less often than the cards that appear most in the current system (1.5ish). There, of course, is also some downside. This is true with every design decision. We already have buckets completed for 15.4 if we wanted to use them. It's not a question of doing the work, it's done. It's just a question of which system feels better. After spending so much time with the bucket system, my personal opinion is that buckets make drafting a little more interesting, but sacrifice the gameplay experience by making decks feel more similar than they would otherwise. Which is more important is subjective, but I think it's healthy to try different things. (Source)
Just for clarification, We are not going back to picks with same rarity ,are we ? I personally like this move it is more encouraging to casual players like me .
No picks by rarity. And great, I hope you enjoy the swap :o. (Source)
Comments
The bucket system is not ideal - as there still are significant differences between classes between classes (see Rogue vs. Warrior this expansion) - but throwing it all away really seems lazy. I am also not very sure if it will indeed benefit new players - they will have a much more higher chance to draft a bad deck or a mediocre one that they will not know how to play well. The drafting istelf will become more obvious but the results will be worse, in my opinion. And I hope this will cause a reversal of the decision in the next Arena rotaton.
How in the world is going with a different system, after having already done the work for the current system, "lazy"? This community seems overly fond of that word.
I believe in Dean's assessment, the thing with buckets is that, ultimately, decks are designed to be similar, and even though I liked the system, I think it can be done better.
Hell yeah, can’t wait for the good old days of three-four Spikeridged Steeds. Wasn’t annoying. At all
The intention was good... But buckets wasn't the best approach... You need to balance power level in less invasive way... Rarity is also kinda bad sorting though. Because not all epics are equal and some commons are better than some epics...
Now when he says, "have all cards be part of one giant pool" does he mean "ALL" cards, or all cards in the current arena meta?
Should be whatever the current set rotation is for Arena, unless a blog post that comes out says otherwise.
Do we get back greater rewards to go with the incoming s*** show of god drafts and laugh drafts?
While I disagree with the s*** show part of the comment (I enjoyed the older format's variability a little more, and statistically, as the developer said, multiples of the same card will actually be rarer in general than either the current or the old system now), I agree that the older, greater rewards were better in general.
The MAIN thing I HATE about the current rewards is that you often get some non-gold card you already have two to twenty of. IF they would make the rewards smart like pack openings, so that you ONLY get cards you dont have already, that would improve the Arena rewards experience quite a bit. If you have ALL of the current rarity, it should either go to gold for that rarity or up to the next rarity to check for gaps in your collection. If you have the whole set in non-gold, it should automatically level up to a gold card you dont have in the set, of at least the lowest rarity where you have a gap. Although completing gold sets would STILL be ridiculously hard, it would put completing at least some gold decks within grasp - a middle ground many collectors would enjoy.
This would make the cards actually useful to ALL players. Casual players and serious FTP players would get cards that fill collection gaps, PTP and FTP players with larger collections would enjoy the gaps filled for their collections, and even the customers who spend the most and try to collect gold cards would greatly improve their chances of filling in gold card gaps.
Imo this is how arena should have worked originally. Arena should be modeled after physical card game tournies' blind pack drafts, not some artificially manipulated drafting format.
Sweet. Changing things up! love it when team 5 makes changes.
Oh god no, this has to be a joke. Why revert the best feature (in theory) to arena? It just needed some fine tuning by having a decent algorithm for correct bucketing in place. Instead this change will make drafting so bland and obvious again, great job Team 5...
This is a lazy move because they don't want to balance the buckets after every 2-month arena rotation (not that they did it successfully in the first place). They're admitting defeat without admitting the rotating arena sets idea is a disaster. It sounded fun but in reality it was always going to be difficult to balance.
But... it's not a disaster. It doesn't just sound fun. It is fun.
I think they are just unable to balance it well enough which is a damn shame. If they would put some more effort into it, improve bucketing and make it to adjust faster, it could be fine.
Instead, they don't want to put more effort, revert it, and want to depend on micro-adjusts... btw. they should call it correctly, its more of a MACRO-adjusts...
I think, they are understood, it's too hard, coz of you must change different cards too many times, and HS team very busy with other difficult things like often balance changes, new mods and other new things. Ok then, i guess arena content is not priority.
Is there somewhere that explains these buckets?
If you’re wondering how the bucket system worked, basically the current system placed every card into various groups (called buckets) based off of generally how good they were. That’s why usually when you get offered a good card in arena, you’ll have a choice between 3 good cards, and the same with bad cards as well
Hmm. It is not that I love the buckets. They make drafting better in some regards, but fundentally it is not a super great way to design a game since you kind of hand over an already solved problem to the players. It feels like a fix to a problem, which works, but it would be better to present a solution without a huge problem in the first place.
But the way arena used to be was not great. One thing I am worried about is that pre-bucket, you sometimes had to pick between 3 actual unplayables. The worst bucket right now is pretty big. What will happen to these cards? On the other hand, you could have such a big portion of the draft being totally auto pick with super easy decisions. Is that how it will be again?
I think that ultimately maybe they should figure out a better game mode than arena. The fundamental problem is that 30 see 3, pick one is not a very good game. It is not the worst game either, mind you - it is fine, but nothing else. I would love to see them come out with something with more ambition.
I liked both modes but cannot deny I won more in the old mode. I am only a slightly good player, but a great drafter. I take it that I did better in the old system to mean the buckets minimized the impact of my drafting talents because they minimized the variability of card impact for each pick. This left drafting talent only exploitable in the overall build, lessening its impact, while overall deck strengths became much closer across the Arena meta, making play skill level more important.
That bucket system impact sounds great (and probably is for the most talented players), but everything is a trade-off and there are players like me who are not pro level players who WILL benefit from the fact that sometimes pro level players will get crap decks now, and in general, being a great drafter will carry some additional weight to shift win rates for that category of player a bit higher. This can level the field between players who are better in game mode and players who are better in draft mode.
Because pros need the rewards the least (with all their winning, sponsors, etc.), it feels potentially fairer to tier 2 and lower players to me, which comprise the bulk of players, I'd bet. I would expect it will mean complaints from most of the streamers, though (most of them are pretty good players, many of them pros), and that may cause them to revert back again since I expect more criticism in the streamer channels as a result.