Sitting down to a draft is a many hour commitment, and our data shows that this dissuades many players from joining. We want everyone to be able to enjoy one of the best play experiences in HEX, so in our next patch we are revamping our Draft Tournament experience.
Hey everyone, Corey Burkhart back to share with you a feature I’ve been working on for a long time now, Draft Gauntlets! Draft has been a fan favorite format ever since HEX was in alpha. One of the issues with draft, however, was the time commitment required to play.
A problem we observed with a traditional draft was that you were bound by the tournament structure. If you finished early or got a bye, you were forced to wait until everyone else finished their games. This resulted in a lot of downtime for players. You were also unable to play at your own pace. Unless you had three hours to complete an entire draft in one sitting, you were unable to enjoy this unique limited experience. Draft Gauntlet fixes these problems!
What’s a Draft Gauntlet?
Gauntlet is a mode where, once you have your cards for your deck, you can play at your own pace and finish your tournament experience when it’s most convenient for you. We wanted to preserve the convenience of a Gauntlet but also allow the exciting deckbuilding that comes from choosing the cards in your pool. That being said, we faced a large hurdle. Draft is inherently a multiplayer experience. It takes 8 players opening packs and choosing cards to form a draft.
Draft Gauntlet starts by selecting the tournament queue and joining the lobby. From here, you’ll wait until a full 8 players enter the queue. Once all 8 players enter the draft, the drafting portion will begin. Just like a current draft, you’ll select cards one at a time until you’ve drafted 51 cards. Then, once everyone has selected their last card, you’ll be taken to the Draft Gauntlet Tournament screen.
This tournament screen has many similarities to the other gauntlets in HEX, but it has one key difference. The record counter at the bottom has a few modifications. In a Draft Gauntlet, rather than playing up to seven matches like you would in a sealed (competing to earn five wins or three losses), you instead cap out at three matches, similar to an old draft tournament. You are removed from the Draft Gauntlet after either completing three matches or losing two.
Each match in a Draft Gauntlet is best two out of three games and, like a normal draft, you can use your reserves between games. In between matches, you can change your champion just like you can in any other gauntlet. However, you cannot change your champion in between games just like in previous drafts.
Draft gauntlet still incorporates the ladder system. Therefore, if you win your match, you’ll earn stars and rating towards your ladder ranking. Any bonus stars you can earn are also integrated into this game mode.
Costs and Prizing
Draft Gauntlet cost will not be changing. You can enter with 700 platinum or up to three packs, each pack reducing the cost to enter by 200 platinum each. You can still join a Draft Gauntlet with draft tickets as well. The prizes however are slightly different than that of a normal draft. Because we don’t only pair people within the same draft pod, there’s no longer a winner of the draft. It’s possible for everyone in a single pod to end up undefeated at the end of their three rounds. Therefore, having prizes based on what place you finish in the draft doesn’t really make sense. Instead, we need to do prizes based on final standings. We didn’t want to lower the packs that players earn, therefore we’re keeping a grand total of 12 packs in the prize pool.
Prizes will now be paid out as follows:
3 Wins = 6 Packs
2 Wins = 2 Packs
0-1 Wins = 0 Packs.
In the event that there are promo or alternate art cards to be earned by players, those will be layered on top of these prizes.
With the release of Draft Gauntlets with Chronicles of Entrath: Chapter II, we’ll be closing the remaining draft queues. These queues are fairly obsolete verses the technology of the gauntlets.
When testing this mode, we saw very minimal changes to the drafting portion when compared with a traditional draft. One thing we did notice is that there is less of an incentive to "hate draft." Hate drafting is when you take a card you don’t intend on playing to make sure no one else at the table can get the card. We believe that the benefits of our gauntlets outweigh this loss, as common draft strategy says that you should take the card that will make your deck the best it can possibly be because you’re so unlikely to battle the player with any one powerful card. And, even if you do, they must draw that card during the course of the game for it to make a difference. Our testing shows that Draft Gauntlets promote better play patterns because they emphasize making the best, most flexible deck possible rather than trying to take something away from other players.
Furthermore, the payoff for this minor change is huge. Draft Gauntlets gain a vast amount of time for everyone involved. Currently, drafts can take anywhere from two hours on the short end to four hours on the high end. With Draft Gauntlets, we expect this time to shrink drastically. There’s no more time waiting in between rounds like in a normal tournament. Once you’re ready to play another match with your draft deck, you are able to get in there and battle. When you’re ready to take a break, you can go do other things in HEX or the real world, and your deck will be waiting for you when you come back! The convenience is truly massive. I think everyone will really appreciate the time they’ve gained once they see the Draft Gauntlets in action.
Also, from the Chapter II patch until the release of our next major set, anyone who goes 3-0 in a Draft Gauntlet will receive The Kraken Alternate Art!
Draft Gauntlets are something I’ve spent a lot of energy on, and I’m really excited that you are going to get your hands on them soon. We’re hoping this brings draft to thousands more players who wouldn’t otherwise give this fantastic game-mode a chance because of the time constraints that traditional drafts have. When you’re not out there on the Alachian Sea, I’ll be seeing you in a Draft Gauntlet!
Corey Burkhart
Due to this being an important and large change to the game, we encourage our community to provide us their feedback on the official Hex forums. A discssion thread for this topic can be found here.