I know arena just got a revamp but hear me out.
I don’t know how other players feel about the current state of arena, but I think it kinda sucks. The disparity between classes each rotation is crazy (as it has been for a long time) and most of the time your deck can be doomed by which choice of classes or legendaries you’re offered (or, if not doomed, at least put you at a major disadvantage).
In my mind, draft modes in card games should be about finding cool synergies while deck-building and playing decks that are less defined by the meta, but it feels like arena always gets a meta super quickly and if you don’t play by the meta or manage to build a counter-meta deck, you lose. I also feel like its really weird and backwards to make arena matchmaking mmr based at the same time as letting players tweak their decks when they lose, since that means the people you meet might have two losses and have a more refined deck than you, but maybe I’m just bad idk.
How would I redesign arena? Here are my two main ideas:
Solution 1: Dual class
Let the player pick two classes at the start of a run and give them access to both the card pools of those classes when drafting their deck. At the end of the draft they pick which of their two hero powers they want, then you start your run.
Solution 2: Remove the class-based card pools
This one is a bit more extreme, but I honestly like this idea more. Remove the class-based card pools. Give the player a choice of class at the start for the hero power and maybe make the legendary choices class-based (as it is now), but then just have one pool of cards that everyone drafts from. Have some cards from each class and a bunch of neutral cards. Then you could also theme the different arena rotations around certain types of cards. Have a rotation with a bunch of murloc synergy. Beasts, demons, maybe even something wacky like legendaries only, you name it. With the starting legendaries still being partially class based there would technically still be a meta, but it would be far looser and less oppressive than it currently is.
I honestly think both of these ideas are improvements over the current state of arena, but let me know what you think if you’ve read this far.
Thanks for reading.