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?