There's been a lingering feeling within the Hearthstone community that Blizzard simply neglect the game's launch 'Arena' mode in favor of its 'paid' expansions. While it makes sense to imagine this as the case, the game's designer and senior producer have both been making rounds to let players know this simply isn't true.
Talking to Twitch streamer 'Trump' and later Reddit, both Dead Ayala and Yong Woo discussed the potential changes that could affect Arena mode - in which players select from 3 random classes and build a deck similar to other TCG 'draft pick' systems.
The current concerns between players cite how too much of the Arena meta is based around simply zerging or 'snowballing' a match with constant 'Minion' spams and little 'Spell' play. With high-powered creatures like Spider Tank and River Crocolisk spelling the end of an Arena match in most cases, the team will be looking into reducing the appearance rate of similar cards while increasing the rate of spell-based plays.
Sitting on a few WoW tokens? You may soon be able to use those to bolster your Hearthstone decks.
Ayala ended the Reddit Q&A with the following thoughts; “Spells appearing more often is the direction we are leaning. Cards like Spider Tank (powerful vanillas) showing up less and cards like Shadow Madness, Lightbomb, Hellfire (power board swings) showing up more seems like a better experience to have. Too many games come to getting ahead early and snowballing a victory rather than evaluating the risk of expending all your resources into a board clear effect.”
And rest assured, the time-honored tradition of calling out a hidden MMR rating when it comes to random matchmaking simply doesn't hold the Arena game mode.Ayala confirmed it works simply through your current Arena record.