The current health of Arena

Multiplayer Discussion
21

Since they keep banning a lot of bots and the last patch reset the Arena format, I have been monitoring Arena to access the current impact of barcoders and super-drafts on the format.

The Arena leaderboards continue to reveal how prevalent barcoders and super-drafts are in Arena.

Currently, there are 271 players on the Arena leaderboard and only eight players are averaging three or more wins per run. An average player, who wins half their matches, should average about three wins per run.

So 262 players have played the 30 matches or more needed to put them on the boards, but they are averaging less than 3 wins per run. Basically, this reveals that the majority players on the Arena board are super-drafters.

https://imgur.com/a/8o1nwjM

During the two weeks prior to the format’s recent reset with the launch of the dual class event, I was estimating that about 60 percent of my opponents were barcoders, and even after the reset, I feel like the majority of my opponents are super-drafters.

Here are screenshots of 20 recent Arena opponents. Can you see any barcoders?

https://imgur.com/a/JN3yatl

https://imgur.com/a/RcjGSUj

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22

For me its more usual than normal to finish 0-0 in my arena runs, just because I didn’t like my deck…
That’s why I avoid them…

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23

The dual-class garbage makes it unplayable.

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24

I get it, these kind of dual-class Arena events are not going to be everyone’s cup of tea—especially when more than half of the players in Arena are barcoders—but I happen to like this dual-class event.

When I look at friends to see what most of them are playing, it’s usually BGs, then Standard, and then Arena, but sometimes it’s an even mix of those three formats. I am noticing more friends playing Arena right now than in the previous 6 months.

https://imgur.com/a/H4VueJ3

Sometimes the RNG just mocks you or it’s seems like the algorithm is picking who can win, thus fueling such conspiracy theories.

For instance, in the following pictures of a match, the mulligan denied me any significant early game plays, and since my first pick for my DK-M draft had been a Climatic Necrotic Explosion, I picked an early Under the Sea from among some bad choices with the hopes of getting a few high cost spells to synergize with it, which I did by picking a Sunset Portal and a Firelands Portal.

Unfortunately, by turn 3, I had all three high cost spells in hand, and when I drew and played a Dryscale Deputy, it resulted in me getting two copies of Under the Sea, just adding further insult the earlier bad RNG injuries:

https://imgur.com/a/8XvXkns

Despite that the bad luck in this ^ match, the deck is currently 4-1.

25

This week, I took a look at the profile and class progress for 9 of my oldest HS collections to see what was revealed.

On 8 of my F2P collections, I played about 1.5x to 2x more Arena matches than I did Ranked. Three of those collections have never got above 11 wins in Arena.

My main collection has 7403 ranked wins, but only 3772 Arena wins, because I became stingy with my gold on my main collection, and I was unwilling to risk a lot of my gold to play Arena.

In 2014, having been a strong “limited” player in Magic the Gathering, I thought that playing Arena might be one of the best ways for me to farm resources in HS, but I never did manage to become an unlimited player by averaging 7 wins or more per draft. I occasionally got close to averaging 6 wins per draft, depending on the meta and which of my collections was experiencing the best luck.

Early on, I concluded that a contributing obstacle to me becoming an unlimited Arena player was partly because of how common it was for players to retire bad drafts early. I even began to hypothesize that players using farmed gold from botted accounts were mostly playing super-drafts in Arena. It took a few years before I was absolutely sure that a significant percentage of players were indulging in super-drafts.

So super-drafts and barcodes have been around in Arena for far longer than most players have been aware. I have only been discussing this topic with others for a few years, because I was concerned that if I educated others about this problem, it might only make the problem worse.

Depending on the particular Arena meta, I find that I can occasionally still have a lot of fun playing Arena, despite the abundance of barcodes in Arena. Recently, I had a period were I faced 6 strong barcode decks in a row.

My Arena performance can vary a lot based on what collection, server, and times that I am playing Arena. I had one collection that way outperformed all my other collections in Arena to point where it had 8,000 more gold than any of my other collections did. I used that collection and its gold to test out Mercenaries when that mode was first released, and that collection (named DD USA with 3655 gold) has once again become one of my collections with the most gold.

My approach to Arena these days is to have some casual fun while clearing quests before moving on to the next collection to complete quests, which is not the optimal way to get the most wins in Arena, because it would be better to complete an entire Arena run while the deck-list an its win conditions are still fresh in my mind, especially since I play on a mobile device without any add-ons to help me keep track of what is in my deck.

I find it helpful to take notes for each collection to manage all my ongoing runs, so that I can be sure to get most value and fun out of my strongest drafts before they get forced retired whenever a new Arena season begins.

https://imgur.com/a/xgPUFki

I am enjoying the current dual-class Arena season , and according to the recent announcement the next Arena season will also be dual-class:

“Arena Updates

When Patch 30.2 launches on August 20, all ongoing Arena runs will end and a new Arena season will begin. Like the current season, this season will be a Dual-Class Arena season. We are also keeping the “one Legendary card per draft, as your first card” rule as a general Arena rule until we announce otherwise. The eligible sets will be updated to the following:

  • Core
  • Perils in Paradise
  • Whizbang’s Workshop
  • TITANS
  • March of the Lich King
  • Voyage to the Sunken City

Additionally, we’ll now be tying Arena seasons to all major Patches (30.2, 30.4, 30.6, 31.0, etc.) until our larger-scale Arena adjustments coming down the line (more on that closer to when they come). This will make Arena season refreshes happen a little more frequently and predictably, so you know when to make your leaderboards pushes!”

26

I look at Arena the same way I interpret the stock market: “white collar” gambling that I don’t have enough cash to properly manipulate.

So really I don’t spend any money on it, and when I get random tickets from the season pass, I go into it expecting nothing other than to go 0-3 and collect some pity prizes. In that sense, it’s kind of like opening that one gift from your crazy uncle; you never know if he’s going to give you socks, or whiskey. But regardless, I don’t count on it being a “good” gift and I don’t put much stock into it, so to speak.

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