old arena was better for those reasons:
1. a higher obligation to go forward with so-so decks, since you pay ore to get in
2. the randomness of deckbuilding allowing for more fun and satisfying matches.
the first issue can be fixed by slapping a price on entering draft mode.
the second issue can't be fixed that easily because:
1. busted card combos(bomb witchers, opponent has 2+ sets of summoning-from-deck cards, a lot of other OP card combos)
2. choosing a set of 3 is a lot more committing than picking just 1 card that doesn't fit in your deck. I've had those trash choices where you get 3 bad choices and have to pick one.
3. arena had an issue where one player would get too many golds and another would get too many bronzes, this can be fixed easily by aiming at a certain goal of max provisions for the deck, giving golds when you're below average and bronzes when you're above the average toward the provision goal, or cap the amount of gold cards you can get. but this is a problem in draft too.
draft is way too predictable due to the card sets, where most of the fun in arena in my opinion came from randomness.
What if you had arena alongside draft? ran them both for a month and held a vote for the winner? those are other ideas.
1. a higher obligation to go forward with so-so decks, since you pay ore to get in
2. the randomness of deckbuilding allowing for more fun and satisfying matches.
the first issue can be fixed by slapping a price on entering draft mode.
the second issue can't be fixed that easily because:
1. busted card combos(bomb witchers, opponent has 2+ sets of summoning-from-deck cards, a lot of other OP card combos)
2. choosing a set of 3 is a lot more committing than picking just 1 card that doesn't fit in your deck. I've had those trash choices where you get 3 bad choices and have to pick one.
3. arena had an issue where one player would get too many golds and another would get too many bronzes, this can be fixed easily by aiming at a certain goal of max provisions for the deck, giving golds when you're below average and bronzes when you're above the average toward the provision goal, or cap the amount of gold cards you can get. but this is a problem in draft too.
draft is way too predictable due to the card sets, where most of the fun in arena in my opinion came from randomness.
What if you had arena alongside draft? ran them both for a month and held a vote for the winner? those are other ideas.