So as a reminder, back in April, they announced a matchmaking step, which is designed to segregate barcoders from normal Arena players:
I have been avoiding retiring bad drafts without playing them to see if that helped normal players to avoid having to play against barcoders, and since most of my opponents in Arena during the last two weeks have been barcoders, I would say that the matchmaking changes have not been very impactful so far.
With patch 30.0, the Arena format will change, triggering all previous drafts to end, so if old super-drafts were grandfathered from detection by the new matchmaking system, then new barcode drafts might be easier to detect and to segregate into a player pool of super-drafters. I am interested in seeing how this plays out after the new patch goes live for mobile devices.
“ Arena Updates
On July 16, with Patch 30.0, all ongoing Arena runs will end and a new Arena season will begin. To celebrate island-hopping tourism, dual-class Arena returns! During this season, curated draft pool buckets are out, and full expansions are back in. You will still only be offered one Legendary card, as the first card of your draft, and for this season class cards will appear about twice as often as before!
The eligible sets that will make up this Arena card pool are:
- Core Set
- Festival of Legends
- TITANS
- Showdown in the Badlands
- Whizbang’s Workshop
- Perils in Paradise”