Barcoding has been an issue for the majority of the year yet the problem is as bad now as it ever has been.
Banning these accounts simply does not work as new ones just get bought to replace them.
Do you expect new/casual players who might not be that good at Arena to keep playing it when they’re going up against broken decks belonging to people who have retired 10 decks/cycled 1500 gold to draft it? To most people 150 gold is a lot - and if they’ve drafted a mediocre deck, there is absolutely no chance that they’re going to get far with it because the player pool is stacked with barcodes. So by doing this, you’re actively encouraging people to purchase stacked accounts to level the playing field so that they can compete. Which makes the problem even worse for legitimate players who playing with earned gold which is supposed to be a finite/valuable resource.
By not resolving the issue, the game mode has been totally ruined.
It’s obviously not an easy fix but something needs to be done. Accounts that farm gold need to be detected earlier and banned, with permanent IP/hardware bans distributed to people who do buy or sell them. I
In the interim, either put a cooldown of 15 minutes after drafting to act as a deterrent for people who are spamming drafts. Or give a player the ability to retire one deck, but remove their ability to retire (at any point, either after the draft or during games) during their following run. Will it solve the issue fully? No. Nothing to stop these people from logging in and out of other accounts. But it’s a start to improve the quality of a gamemode that is in desperate need of attention. It’s a shame that this will effect legitimate players too but unfortunately, there has to be a solution found.