The Queue: PROBLEM?!

Have you ever had such a big problem that you answered your landline phone (in 2025) and thought that if you were in a comic book, the word PROBLEM?! would appear on the current panel? Cause my man Billy Kane over here sure has!

This is The Queue, and if you’ve got a big PROBLEM?! just shoot it at us, and we’ll do our best to solve it!

Oh boy, did I write an article called Why Hearthstone’s Arena is a bad drafting mode, and how Legends of Runeterra does it much better five years ago!

The article compares Hearthstone’s Arena to Legends of Runeterra’s now defunct Expedition mode, its own drafting mode. But the TL;DR is that Expedition in Runeterra was much closer to Dungeon Runs, or Duels, in Hearthstone. And to be honest, the paradigm has kinda shifted since I wrote the article: a mode like Expedition — or Dungeon Run, or Duels — would be more akin to a brand-new game mode for Hearthstone than a “fix” for Arena. If we were to improve Arena mode, the changes couldn’t be that drastic.

The key problems I identified with Arena are:

1. There’s very little synergy, so players are trying to draft cards that are strong by themselves, rather than building a deck.
2. Too much of your success hinges on the initial drafting process; if you’re lucky and get good cards, the deck will almost pilot itself to your wins; whereas if you don’t get lucky with the cards that are offered to you, you almost feel like it’s better to just retire the deck and try again, wasting a token.
3. The mode is not player-friendly enough; the barrier to entry feels too steep, and players are sometimes penalized too harshly for their losses.

If I were to fix those three problems without revamping the game mode as severely as what the article suggests, I’d go with these gentler changes:

1. I’d allow players to trade some cards during the drafting process. Perhaps after every five cards you draft, you get the chance to re-pick one of them. And the game wouldn’t offer you cards completely randomly: it would try to offer replacements that were somewhat similar (in role and/or power) to the ones you’d already picked, allowing you to find synergies.
2. I’d also allow players to re-draft a few cards every other game, further fine-tuning their decks. This would not only require the player to be more skilled in deck-building than just lucky with their initial offering, it would also, again, give an opportunity for synergy picks. (It’s worth noting that Blizzard is doing something similar to this with their new “Underground Arena” mode, though we don’t have all the details yet.)
3. To make it more player friendly, I’d use some of the same ideas Runeterra used: a token would be worth two runs, and your rewards would come from the better run of the two, and I’d also implement something similar to that double-elimination system, so your run would only end after two losses in a row (or twelve wins — though in this case, that number could also be lowered, perhaps back to the original seven).

As for your final question, whether the upcoming changes will make the game mode more enjoyable? I think so, but the changes don’t seem big enough to really entice a lot of players, if I’m being honest.

When it feels like a grind, it’s too much. That is: when you’re no longer having any fun with the activity, and you’re only doing it for the reward. That’s the point where I usually stop.

However, some amount of tolerance is good. I’ll tolerate doing small grinds for a reward, if I know that it won’t be terribly boring or time-consuming. Because that “tension and release” is part of the fun as well: our brains do appreciate the reward more (sometimes considerably more) when it took some effort to get it. So there’s definitely a balance to strike.

Same things I played last week, Pinky: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is my main game at the moment, with some Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves on the side.

I actually fired up Persona 3 Reload: Operation Aigis last night. I hadn’t been playing it much these past couple weeks or so, because the two games I mentioned came out, and I became invested in them. The problem with Operation Aigis is that the gameplay is kind of repetitive, so I don’t feel super compelled to sit down and play it for too long; I’ve been playing it in small chunks. But I will finish it, eventually — and I started making progress again now, at least!

(Also, WoW, Hearthstone, and Balatro. And Fire Emblem Heroes on my phone. But those are my “default” games that I’m pretty much always playing, so they don’t really count.)

Game balance is extremely overrated. There are several other factors that should be taken into consideration alongside it, but the vast majority of players aren’t actively thinking about them. Game design is considerably more complex than people who like to angrily yell at devs on social media would like to think, and a lot of the time, game balance isn’t nearly as “broken” as players perceive it to be.

I have a feeling that Kirby is capable of drinking the universe’s entire stash of booze if he puts his mind to it. But I also don’t think Kirby enjoys drinking too much. He looks like a wholesome, pink and round creature. I don’t see him causing people any undue problems. So I think he would be polite and stick to a maximum of three cans. Maybe four on Saturdays.

Two bosses enter: Lady Seiros from Fire Emblem: Three Houses vs. Temenos Mistral from Octopath Traveler 2.

…Seiros would beat Temenos into a pulp 😭

This is a difficult question. On the one hand, I’ve got the age advantage. On the other hand, I’m absolutely terrible at sports — while the Pope is actually an amateur tennis player. So any advantage I might presumably have in stamina, he possibly makes up for with muscle memory and skill.

I think the Pope wins. I will now watch White Men Can’t Jump (1992) followed by White Men Can’t Jump (2023) as atonement.

Anyway, Queue’s over for now. Take care of your problems, friends, and have a good weekend!