Barcodes in the new Arena season

Community Discussion
1

A barcode account is a bot account that was used to farm gold, which is then purchased by players who buy and retire Arena drafts until they find an insanely strong deck, which they then use to stomp other players.

So a new dual-class Arena season began August 20th, which forced-retired any incomplete barcode runs, and for the first 48 hours it was quite pleasant to face less barcode decks, while more regular players popped into Arena to check out the new season and meta.

But it’s 3 days later, and now there is no shortage of barcode accounts in Arena.

So what kind of names are common for barcode accounts. A look at current Arena boards gives plenty of insight, since the vast majority of accounts that have already completed the required 30 drafts or runs to get on the leaderboards are barcode accounts with a win rate, ranging from less than 2 wins per draft all the way down to a win rate of .02 (1 out of 50) wins per run.

The most common naming conventions of barcode accounts tends to be:

1). Names that include a color linked with an animal or creature type, such as BrownElekk, EbonShark, NavyWhale, BiegeBadger, GrayImp, EbonWight, etc…

2). A string of random or nearly random Latin letters (which may or may not include numbers), such as derutuppugo, hli5o4g5o08, jazdsjkig, xtcckdhqu, Djwcb, etc…

3). Names with Chinese characters are quite common as well.

4). Other kinds of barcode names that are a little less common include DeadlyPants, Jerry, James, xiaoming (a Chinese emperor), czq, SnarkyGoblin, etc.

Most barcode accounts are on the Asia Pacific server, followed the the Americas, with Europe having the fewest barcode accounts:

Screenshots of the Asia Arena leaderboard:

https://imgur.com/a/7Jetzt4

Screenshots of the Americas leaderboard:

https://imgur.com/a/9irIPyt

Screenshots of the Europe Arena leaderboard:

https://imgur.com/a/UVAWhYc

I find that it’s quite common for half my Arena opponents to be playing a barcode deck, but it does vary a lot by server and what time one plays.

A screenshot of my last 10 ten Arena opponents:

https://imgur.com/a/TNH5iL6

Some players do not believe that barcodes are very prevalent in Arena, but Blizzard has acknowledged the problem and the devs are attempting to address the problem.

I often try to bring “receipts” or data to support what I am talking about, so if you believe that barcodes are a problem in Arena, then please give this post a like. Thank you.

4 Likes
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I had no idea there were arena leader boards lol no wonder why this sort of thing is even a thing. I used to play arena the first few years of Hearthstone I was one of those “go infinite” players averaging 6-7 wins it was a lot of fun the drafting was great and no one would ever think of botting just to arena or retiring an arena run was unheard of. Funny how such a seemingly insignificant thing as “name on board” that most would not care about one bit at all, along with the changes to arena drafting and “buckets” and whatever else they’ve butchered with the mode, ultimately led to it becoming whatever it is now (aka, truly sad)

1 Like
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In 2014, most Arena players did not like to retire drafts, because they were trying to eke out as much value from their drafts as possible so they could afford to buy more Arena drafts.

There was no Arena leaderboards back then, so getting a good score on the board was not a motive for grinding out all of a player’s bad drafts.

Although, back then, I was involved in discussions with Arena players who complained that they hated playing their bad drafts and how it robbed the fun from playing Arena. My advice was if that’s un-fun, then just retire the bad drafts, accept those lost value, and move on to another draft. After all, the game is about having fun.

Barcodes just take retiring drafts to an extreme while they seek to play only broken decks.

By 2017, I had confirmation that barcodes in Arena was a thing, but I sat on this knowledge until 2022 or ‘23 for two reasons:

1). I did not want to deal with the clap back of disbelievers.
2). More importantly, I thought educating the player-base about the problem would only make the problem worse.

As soon as one other person voiced what was going on about barcodes, I decided: OK, the company is already upping their efforts against bots, and barcodes are so prevalent now in Arena—it’s time to help get this information out in the open, so that the company might feel compelled to increase efforts to combat it. This has led to the devs acknowledging the problem and they are beginning to try out some solutions:

1). Banning more bots faster. Ya, it’s not enough and it’s not fast enough yet, but I would rather they just ban the botters and not accidentally ban normal players with well established accounts—a few players have complained about being wrongfully banned for bottling. My father was fond of an expression: “you can’t remove the fat without getting a little lean.”

2). They are trying to create a separate Arena pool where super-drafters only play against other super-drafters. It’s probably too easy for barcodes to avoid being forced into the super-pool.

3). New Arena seasons are going to happen more frequently now, which force-retires incomplete runs.

Many expert Arena streamers had to know barcodes were a thing, but they also did not talk about them, probably because it would be bad for business—driving players away from Arena and ergo lowing their viewer numbers.

The biggest acknowledgment of barcodes from Arena streamers that I saw was them saying things like “there are two kind of players in Arena these days: those who play all their drafts till they get three losses and those who retire all their poopy drafts.”

4

There’s a solution to this. Don’t allow arena runs to be retired, and if people just insta-concede give them a 24 hour cooldown before they can start a new run.

Would significantly increase the amount of time/effort to reroll runs with bot accounts.

The change would minimally impact legit players since very few people would spend thousands of gold/runestones to retire 10 runs to play 1.

5

I am not sure what to recommend to solve the barcode problem. The best solution would involve banning bot accounts before they can get much value from them, since bot accounts compete financially with the company.

I like being able to retire bad drafts like when I risk high rolling into some synergy but I fail to get what the deck needs, and end up with a very subpar deck.

I am not sure if taking away the retire button solves anything. A player always has the option of going afk for about 5 turns before conceding to avoid using the retire button.

EDIT: edited to move colossal stuff to another thread:

My last 10 Arena opponents:

https://imgur.com/a/XOZOwo9

6

Too much text with no proof. You have a subjective indication of “their name is kinda weird”.

Account selling exists but even more of you appear to be seeing false positives.

7

There is nothing subjective about the naming convention trends of barcode accounts. One only has to look at the Arena leaderboards shortly after a new season starts, because only players who are ending a lot of runs quickly and early are able to get the 30 runs required to put them on the boards in such a short amount of time, with having average win rate of .02 to 1.9 per draft. That’s data. Are you even data driven? Do you employ critical thinking when forming your opinions? Do you even have very much play experience in Arena? Do you ever use data to support your opinions on the topic of barcodes?

Yes it does, as does barcode decks, because:

1). The early leaderboards reveal barcode trends.

2). A search of the internet reveals HS accounts for sale—including ones with a legendary card back.

3). Since I started talking about super-drafting, articles and threads have been written by others, which confirm and discuss the phenomenon of barcodes in Arena. The devs have also acknowledged super-drafting as a thing.

4). The devs have attempted to make a barcode or super-draft jail:

https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/10841-unauthorized-bot-ban-update-april-2024-arena-queue

Kolst and Zeddy did early coverage of the barcode jail, bit it’s naivety to think that the jail attempt will simply remove barcode from the general player, since to are workarounds to avoid being put in the jail.

https://youtu.be/0XW4Y5K02C0?si=PoWqdT-BxKuAgM6T

https://youtu.be/R4kSKhZrhBo?si=Cvtd6va0woKCUUtJ

So barecodes are a proven thing. What you cannot prove is that there are no barcodes in Arena. So then it’s really about trying to determine what the ratio of barcode accounts to normal accounts in Arena is, and I do not see you as qualified to answer that question.

Many Arena streamers and the company would like to gaslight players into thinking that only a few people are barcoding because public awareness of barcodes is bad for business for both parties.

But while it’s new news to me, there are Arena streamers that have began acknowledging barcodes in the last year with video titles and descriptions like:

“Barcode Destroyer Mage Run!

Our first Mage run after expansion launch was a banggggerrrrr. We played a lot of barcode accounts“

At about 50 minutes into the following video, Dreads starts complaining about barcodes:

“Tempo Plague DK vs. ENDLESS Barcode Accounts! - Hearthstone Arena”

https://youtu.be/xMS5v1BNq18?si=vigyncwkSyR9H7OF

I just watched a video from kolst from 9 months ago that is well rounded in its early description of the barcode problem, and he does go over how a lack of non-stock heroes and card backs in not enough information to distinguish between a new account and a barcode account, which is playing a super-draft, and this highlights why it’s important to add a lot of additional criteria to an opinion that an opponent is playing a super-draft in order to avoid labeling a false-positive as a barcode deck.

To use an analogy, Just because one finds a body does not automatically confirm that a crime has be committed—it takes clues and evidence to suggest that a death was caused by homicide.

Kolst also suggests that the better balancing of cards available in Arena might be the best way to solve the barcode problem, since it would decrease how unfair the power of decks tend be when it comes to how lopsided the card quality can be between Arena decks. Barcodes just exacerbate something that is already a big problem in Arena.

https://youtu.be/HauGyODtH7Q?si=xVZp0Uj5DMy5lzgP

Consider all those bot accounts that get banned every month, what do think they are getting used for? With the company stepping up its efforts to ban bot accounts, how do you think the users of bot accounts are most commonly going to get value out of their illgotten gold before the bot account gets detected and banned?

https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/barcode-accounts-explained-how-cheaters-and-botters-ruin-classic-and-arena/

https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/134be9c/have_you_been_bullied_by_overly_powerful_decks_in/

https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/bot-ban-update-april-2024-and-arena-matchmaking-changes/

I played over 20 Arena matches yesterday, and my opinion on barcodes in Arena is based on experience, data, and the company’s own official acknowledgment of the problem, can you say the same?

9

Correlation does not prove causation.

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if you get very low rating in wild, i do sometimes to make quests easier to get done… you’ll face nothing but bots who all play same cards. don’t know why that exists, money in it somewhere. i really don’t care, it’s bottom of the barrel.

11

Ya? Those bot accounts, what kind of names do they tend to use?

12

Think about how long it takes a bot to queue up in Arena and immediately concede, three times. Heck, even if they do it manually.

No, it emphatically would not significantly increase the amount of time to reroll runs with bot accounts.

And the idea of prohibiting new runs if players concede is an immediate fail. No one wants that. It’s intolerable.

1 Like
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it’s all over the place.

14

With the recent patch, the devs continue to make improvements to Arena with removing cards that are way too impactful in the format, like removing Toysnatching Geist and Murloc Growfin:

Having played over 40 more Arena matches during the last two weeks, I would still say that over half of my Arena opponents are still barcodes or super-drafters— percentages do vary depending on the time and server that one plays on.

Since the new Arena season started, I had not been able to get better than 6 wins during a run until today:

https://imgur.com/a/tI0PT65

EDIT: This ^ run finished with 7 wins. It’s final loss was to a guy who was able to copy Horizon’s Edge—effectively giving him access to four copies of this location.

I took a risk with my next draft by picking Helya as my first pick, which is probably usually not a great choice, because one has to draw and play Helya, before one can get any value or possible synergy from other plague cards. I did manage to draft 3x Down with the Ship and 3x Staff of the Primus.

First match, I had Helya and 2x Down with the Ship in hand by turn 2, and the plagues destroyed this guy by turn 7:

https://imgur.com/a/1bmLF3M