We've got a couple of fun tweets today from Cora "Songbird" Georgiou regarding Hearthstone's Arena mode. Although no updates has been confirmed for certain, Cora mentioned that she misses Arena and would love to breathe new life into it.
Blizzard's Annual Hackathon, Free Your Mind, which previously saw developers work on a VR Prototype for Hearthstone, takes place during a few weeks in December before everyone leaves for the holiday break. It is at this event that Cora began work last year on some change(s) to Arena but with her being so busy on other projects, like leading the design of a set, she hasn't had the time to finish work on it. Luckily, the current plan is to work on it more this winter, so maybe we'll see something manifest next year for the mode.
Hearthstone has gotten crazy busy within the team with so much content to support and it being pushed aside to make Mercenaries the main focus to get the new mode out after multiple development delays due to increases in scope. With Mercenaries releasing in October though, that hopefully frees up some additional bandwidth for team members to continue supporting modes like Tavern Brawl, Duels, the aforementioned Arena, and even maybe some more single-player content like Adventures.
Regardless, even if we don't see anything in the short-term for Arena, we're happy to see its being talked about and that Cora is championing it internally. Let's hope everything goes to plan!
What improvements would you make to Hearthstone's Arena mode? Let us know in the comments below!
Quote From Cora I like Arena :( @GallonHS watched me get a 12 win Warlock run the other day. I'm kind of a big deal.
but remember when people cared about getting a good leaderboard finish? or 100/10 challenge, twitch rivals, gold cup… IS ALL GONE
I miss those days :( I'd like to bring some new life to Arena. Haven't had much time to work on things yet but hopefully at some point.
I believe in you Cora, find some time between your first and second lunch to make it happen
But when will I have time to roll in my piles of money then?! We have a couple weeks around Christmas to work on other projects. I started something last year, but between leading a set and other tasks I haven't had time to follow through. Plan is to work more this winter. :)
Was this the same kind of "Free Your Mind" event that saw the Hearthstone VR prototype?
Yep! FYM is basically just the few weeks in December where we have the freedom to work on personal projects. A lot of people take those weeks off for extended vacation. It's where a lot of small quality of life improvements are made.
Comments
I like the idea of Tavern Tickets being more of a thing. Mode rewards could also be used to nudge you towards other modes:
A good Arena run nets you a "pick from all 10 heroes" on your next Duels run.
A good Duels run nets you a "revise 3 draft picks" on your next Arena run.
Winning the Tavern Brawl with all 10 classes nets you an extra Mercenaries campfire quest.
Hear me out, this idea was suggested ages ago for Arena but I'd make a slight adjustment due to Blizzard's "greed".
A new "Keep Cards drafted" option could appear in Arena, where you can permanently keep the cards you draft in your arena deck. Blizzard may want to attach an extra 500 gold fee or something, but it could be an interesting way to get cards you don't own. It would be a great incentive coz of the rotating sets in Arena every few months and you could collect wild and standard cards. Ofc, that would incentivize you to pick only cards you don't own instead of making a decent deck, but you wouldn't really feel bad at the end of the run coz you'd have collected a bunch of new cards anyway. There'd have to be some UI changes ofc, like a glowing boarder around cards you don't own.
Some form of obtaining cards from your draft would be an amazing addition to the mode. It would be very tricky to figure out the economy of it, but damn, it would be so much more thrilling to play it if you didn't have much of a collection.
Without much work they could 1) Make Tavern Tickets an official in-game currency. 2) Award 1 free Tavern Ticket per week for completing a quest or objective (i.e. complete 2 weekly quests to earn it). For the last several cycles I've been so focused on saving up 2000 gold for the mini-set, that I don't spend my gold on Arena like I used to. They need greater rewards all around, but the two changes above would go a long way towards creating the interest and player base again for Arena and Heroic Duels (I think Casual Duels should be eliminated with easier ways to earn Tavern Tickets).
This sounds eerily similar to Legends of Runeterra. Weekly chests, that upon earning enough weekly experience, gives you an expedition token (the equivalent of a tavern ticket.) Which I would approve of. I think casual duels should go bye-bye and as long as duels is a supported and balanced mode, heroic duels should just be...duels. We should get a tavern ticket with our weekly "win 5 ranked games" quest.
Also we should be getting slightly more rewards in general since the new mercenaries mode apparently is going to be stretching gold resources even thinner.
Yep, just like Runeterra. Hearthstone implemented the Tavern Tickets years ago before Runeterra existed, but I know on at least one occasion - pre Rewards-track - I was supposed to have multiple, but I was only able to cash one in. It wasn't tracked anywhere in the client that I could see as a player. I expected them to get more formalized when they started offering them in the Rewards Track, but it's still this quasi-feature that's also easily confused with the Tavern Pass and the Battlegrounds Perks (which offer Tavern Tickets). Formalizing it would be so easy, and put them on par with their main competitor, but instead we get vague hints that Cora might work on something as an individual around Christmas when she should otherwise be taking vacation. For her sake, I'd rather have her go on vacation. Have it be a team priority for the game, not a passion project.
She'll still end up getting vacation, its just that some folks take an extended vacation instead.
I know it can be very rewarding to get to work on something out of passion, so much so that it can in itself feel like a vacation. I try to carve out some time every week to work one something passion related instead of necessity for this very reason.
Of course, I'd also like her to not feel like she must go and work on it and to take that time off if its needed.
Not sure what happened with your tickets, but the OG Arena tickets definitely stacked and they also got converted to Tavern tickets when that change came. I have like 5-7 on Asia and US server each, over the years banked up still, and new tickets keep stacking, so im talking from personal experience.
I have like 18 tickets on the US server atm, lol. I spent one the other day to check out a thing in Heroic duels and I'm glad I can do that from a content perspective whenever I want.
I'd love to see more use cases for them though. Maybe improvements to Arena will get me interested in the mode again.