Hearthstone is currently making much more profit than WoW Subscriptions as of now. If you compare them to their respective birth? Obviously Not.
You're comparing a 12 year old Game with a required subscription fee to a Collectable Trading Card game that's barely 5 years old
Theres a reason why WoW stopped releasing subscription numbers. There's a reason why there's always Blizzard Game sales every Black Friday except Hearthstone.
And that's why they can afford to make changes for the sake of game balance.
A balanced, enjoyable environment is far more important to the game's profit margin than withholding necessary changes due to a possible perceived revenue dip.
The assertion that Activision doesn't want them to do anything that would result in dust refunds is analogous to a movie theater not fixing its air conditioning because it costs money to do so. A popular theater with many customers is MORE likely to fix problems that could drive off business, not less.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
Hearthstone is currently making much more profit than WoW Subscriptions as of now. If you compare them to their respective birth? Obviously Not.
You're comparing a 12 year old Game with a required subscription fee to a Collectable Trading Card game that's barely 5 years old
Theres a reason why WoW stopped releasing subscription numbers. There's a reason why there's always Blizzard Game sales every Black Friday except Hearthstone.
And that's why they can afford to make changes for the sake of game balance.
A balanced, enjoyable environment is far more important to the game's profit margin than withholding necessary changes due to a possible perceived revenue dip.
The assertion that Activision doesn't want them to do anything that would result in dust refunds is analogous to a movie theater not fixing its air conditioning because it costs money to do so. A popular theater with many customers is MORE likely to fix problems that could drive off business, not less.
Just because a company can afford to do something; doesn't mean they will. They can add buffs to obselete cards, but they dont. It would help with profit down the line; but its not necessary, no one is going anywhere, they are still the leading card game in the industry.
So rather, they can just fix it in the next expansion and kill two bird with one stone. So of this were the case, a lot of infamous legendaries would've been adjusted by now; after couple expansions has passed.
Your analogy doesn't fit this situation. A broken Air Conditioner is something that's not working at all. In this case,, the Air Conditioner isn't broken. It's either too cold or not cold enough.
The theatre management could adjust it; but it would receive mixed responses, so instead, the manager rather not adjust because no one would leave but just deal with it.
This is more about a priority. When you consider how they find the threshold between profit and card rarity; it clearly is not seen identically from a common, rare, or even epic card. Just look back at every legendary that actually had been nerfed and it had been during a rehaul of the game (ie rehaul of Charge and introduction to Wild and Hall of Fame)
Forum full of children. This is card games. Across the board, there are fluctuations in what is tier 1 ask any magic player of 2 decades nearly...this is the ebb and flow of expansions...
If you think the teams aren't aware of this and better at understanding balancing the game as best as possible then you're egotistical to the highest degree and really out of touch with reality.
They're paid to work on the game. You're not. They know what they're doing and things are not as simple as you're making out. If they are, then apply to work for them and fix it. The fact you're making childish comments on a forum show exactly why youre not working for them.
Exactly this. Unfortunately people think product development and IT is simple, just look how many times different individuals have said balance is easy.
I really struggle to understand it as on one hand it's staggeringly arrogant to essentially claim they could do a better job than the designers and developers. But on the other they impart an almost omniscient level of intelligence to Team 5 as the 35 (est) people who have four months to design an expansion are still able to dictate the meta and figure out what decks they want people to play even though it will take the 10s of millions of players months to collectively find those same decks.
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Arguing on the internet is like playing chess with a pigeon. You may be good at chess, but the pigeon is just going to knock all the pieces down, take a shit on the table, and strut around like its victorious.
In the end the community filters out lower performing decks (even if only marginally less performing) to copy and paste the 1-2 that are on the top, and this in turn will affect the perception of which classes are viewed as competitive or not competitive (even if you somehow managed to make it so every class was 'equally balanced').
One thing some people here also seem to forget is that Blizzard has some pretty strict design philosophies. They've talked about these in general at GDC, but they obviously also have game-specific ones and I don't know them for Hearthstone in particular. But if they believe that fun or readability or whatever is more important than balance, then that will take precedence. You might disagree with a particular philosophy in theory, and in fact many people on the forum can make it seem like it's a general trend, but their success-criteria are broader than "What's the zeitgeist like right now" and that can be important. Sometimes consumers have a very short-term lense where we might say "holy hell nerf psychic scream", but for Blizzard they're prioritizing the long-term, while sticking to their design philosophy, which means they don't go in and change things all the time, and instead just wait for the card to rotate out, and come away from it saying "well, hopefully we learned something". I don't play much Hearthstone these days because I don't like the meta, but I can easily appreciate that if I run a game-company, my time-schedule isn't "I wanna play this week but the meta sucks", they're looking at the next 3, 6 even 12 months, and when that's your frame of reference, the bit of time where Anduin and Raza are in standard at the same time is a short timeframe where you can gather some data and then it changes all by itself, without violating those overarching philosophies.
I'm not necessarily going to defend all of those because I wouldn't have the same set of design philosophies as Blizzard. It's not even necessarily a defense thereof, I was just trying to highlight some of the differences in perspective between being a consumer and a producer. If you look at product rating websites, like Tripadvisor or whatever, their business strategy is to call businesses associated with the website and ask them to pay them to make people rate something more frequently; the reason this works is because people generally tend to only want to be vocal on the internet about something if they dislike it, and so that's really important to keep in mind when Blizzard has data across all of Hearthstone, where we rely on statistics supplied by people actively playing, not detailed account information. We don't even know if the last expansion was great for Hearthstone as a whole or not, the closest we have is stuff like VS, which doesn't seem to suggest a narrow meta, which is something we see mentioned on the forums a lot (which I think is a misinterpretation of the data showing that the meta is more polarized, with more matches having a predictable outcome from the start).
Anyway, I don't wanna write too much on it because I don't agree with either the more vocal parts of the community nor Blizzard but I'll make a few short comments on the issues you brought up since you addressed them to me.
Unbalanced dominance of aggressive decks, classes falling from ladder, burn, skill floor: I think these are more a function of the ladder system itself (aggro is good for progressing because the games are shorter) than it is the deck balance. Since right now we see Raza and Cubelock as the highest represented in tournaments because of their strength, neither of which is aggro. Similarly, many pros have mentioned that both of these decks have a fairly high skill ceiling, so I really think it comes down to 'if you wanna rank up, play a straight forward deck with a very simple goal which can do it in as few turns as possible'. Blizzard said themselves that they wanna redo the ranking system, I'm doubtful they can do it in a super satisfactory way, because what is the solution to the efficacy of aggro in ranking up? Right now they already have an incentive structure for chaining wins and it's still slower to play a control deck with 65% winrate than aggro with 55%. But at the very least, making 'seasons' longer should make less need for quick wins to reach legend.
Imbalance between questions and answers: I assume this refers to their communication with the community. I think a big part of the problem is that they themselves don't know. When they say "if any nerfs are coming, it's going to be next month" and we wanna know right now, I assume they are still debating and testing internally. Like a guy further up said, they don't have the testing capacity of millions of people, so finding a good place for card changes can take them longer than the community can make conclusions once they come out. In this sense, if a company tries to keep up with communities tout court, they will eternally be stuck wanting to change things that take longer to develop and test than the time it takes to make new demands.
They've chosen to focus on developing new expansions to give people more radical changes and make more money for themselves. The thing I really don't understand, in this regard, is why standard cycles aren't done tri-annually as well, and in between expansions. This way the meta would change 6 times a year, all expansions would be in standard for the same amount of time, and they could do nerfs/hall of fames with the mid-expansion rotation. If they chose macro meta-changes over balance, I feel they should shake it up more often.
And with the lack of varied win conditions I think I agree with an implicit criticism here, but quite literally taken, I'm not sure what other win conditions could be. You can flood the board, you can play big stuff, you can go fast, you can go slow, you can combo with spells, you can fatigue, you even have hard win conditions with paladin's DK. I don't play much Magic or other card games, but what other types of win conditions are missing? However, if we're talking about when they do something to 'keep it simple' like they did with Innervate nerf, then I completely agree that there's no reason to make innervate into another coin, when it could have been 'refresh 2 mana crystals' for example, and it honestly would have confused any select person maximum one time before they learn. The level of simplicity Blizzard appeal to, and hence the overall complexity of the game, is where I feel most is left desired. Especially because they sometimes go there; Naga reducing cost of giants; Potion of Madness giving Djinni of Zephyrs haste; Primalfin Champion interactions; Valeera possibilities. If they really feel comfortable not nerfing because Raza soon rotates out of standard anyway, and are playing the long term game, I don't understand why we don't also have more complex interactions that gives players something to learn over time.
Gah this ended up being kinda lengthy anyway, but that's my initial thoughts on those subjects.
"Blizzard/Team5 don't really care about their costumers. " - Hooghout
Just soak that in for a moment. Following his/her unlettered response including entirely inaccurate analogies in an effort to bolster a position which is based on conjecture.
How can you speak for Blizzard and team 5 firstly? Do you speak for the spectrum of their intentions..? Do you know who makes up team 5, their backgrounds in card games and design?
Secondly, if you understood business you'd realise it's imperative that they do exactly that, care about what the consumer thinks and feels of them and their product. Your notion that the many uphold their model isn't the corporate reality for Blizzard or Team 5. You simply have no understanding of how their model operates. The fact it is a business and has monetary goals is not mutually exclusive from wanting and needing to deliver great product for all demographics involved in Hearthstone.
Adult/sensible/realistic members of the forum will of course be ready to defend Brode and the team because they understand that implementing fixes for what some or even many regard as "broken" cards (this concept in itself is a vague representation of how CCG development and design works) isn't as simple as delivering quick fixes. The idea of balance itself is not as simple as most make out..there are nuances to balance as time passes..classes grow stronger and weaker, the community naturally explores possibilities for decks and employs stronger solutions to win games. This is how card games operate..
A bigger issue is a childish community who sees themselves as righteous and justified or ahead of the curve compared to Team 5....do you think you're in a position to qualify yourself above the likes of Mike Donais or claim guys/girls such as him don't care........ How facile....the team is made up of people who have lived CCGs in many cases since before certain HS players had even left primary school.
Also, you know what.. sometimes in testing..some cards average out ok statistically - then the player base builds up numbers through games and it turns out a card may be more powerful or weaker than it seemed at first. Again, anyone with a realistic outlook in regard to design and development, knows that this is a natural occurrence and one which largely cannot be avoided.
Salty/many posts come across as childish and narrow. There's nothing else to it...I've yet to see a defense of such attitude which doesn't just lead back to "ego issues" or an inability to accept the game in its current state and adjust your own play and outlook to either get where you want competitively or enjoy the game how you want to. That's your responsibility.
They've chosen to focus on developing new expansions to give people more radical changes and make more money for themselves. The thing I really don't understand, in this regard, is why standard cycles aren't done tri-annually as well, and in between expansions. This way the meta would change 6 times a year, all expansions would be in standard for the same amount of time, and they could do nerfs/hall of fames with the mid-expansion rotation. If they chose macro meta-changes over balance, I feel they should shake it up more often.
Brutal secret honestly... why they don't cycle along with expansions.. I don't think they really thought of it.
The concept of rotations wasn't built into the original hearthstone plan. They originally planned to just have one format and work the cards appropriately. They then learned the same lesson MTG did: that it's a bad idea to do so. So, they took a que from MTG and the playerbase and evoked rotations. They flat out told us that they would probably screw it up and were ready to correct it however they can. Year of the Kraken was more of an experiment than a proven solution.
What many of us, and them, mistakenly thought was that Moar cards always = moar better game. So the idea is to limit rotations so that you can have more card adding and less card removing. What we are learning is that removing cards while adding more seems to be hearthstone's best points while lowest points are when we have the most cards.
The thing is that switching to cycling rotations along with expansions is a major risk and not something you can easily correct, so if it's even on their mind then it's probably one they are deliberating seriously and don't want to take recklessly. Though I do hope they consider it as I think overall it'll work better for our system if we swap out an expansion as we swap in one.
Though not this year because we REALLY need Mean Streets out of the meta :P.
Hearthstone is currently making much more profit than WoW Subscriptions as of now. If you compare them to their respective birth? Obviously Not.
You're comparing a 12 year old Game with a required subscription fee to a Collectable Trading Card game that's barely 5 years old
Theres a reason why WoW stopped releasing subscription numbers. There's a reason why there's always Blizzard Game sales every Black Friday except Hearthstone.
And that's why they can afford to make changes for the sake of game balance.
A balanced, enjoyable environment is far more important to the game's profit margin than withholding necessary changes due to a possible perceived revenue dip.
The assertion that Activision doesn't want them to do anything that would result in dust refunds is analogous to a movie theater not fixing its air conditioning because it costs money to do so. A popular theater with many customers is MORE likely to fix problems that could drive off business, not less.
Just because a company can afford to do something; doesn't mean they will. They can add buffs to obselete cards, but they dont. It would help with profit down the line; but its not necessary, no one is going anywhere, they are still the leading card game in the industry.
So rather, they can just fix it in the next expansion and kill two bird with one stone. So of this were the case, a lot of infamous legendaries would've been adjusted by now; after couple expansions has passed.
Your analogy doesn't fit this situation. A broken Air Conditioner is something that's not working at all. In this case,, the Air Conditioner isn't broken. It's either too cold or not cold enough.
The theatre management could adjust it; but it would receive mixed responses, so instead, the manager rather not adjust because no one would leave but just deal with it.
This is more about a priority. When you consider how they find the threshold between profit and card rarity; it clearly is not seen identically from a common, rare, or even epic card. Just look back at every legendary that actually had been nerfed and it had been during a rehaul of the game (ie rehaul of Charge and introduction to Wild and Hall of Fame)
One simple comparison though will make you think hopefully, if you agree that Blizzard in relative sense, in terms of importance to the respective communities and quality of products, compete in the same league as companies like Apple and Microsoft (AM):
If a virus pop-up AM immediately respond. Most of the time within a few days things are fixed. Regular updates.
The communities of AM are far more respected and expect high quality products: costumers with high demands which are being met.
Blizzard/Team5 don't really care about their costumers. Fanboys, the uncritical mass, will keep playing the game, even defend sloppy, unbalanced card design as long as an easy winfix provided. A lack of respect for the community, the fact e.g that it takes months to update and do 'balance changes' : one of the many but main difference with AM.
Defending Brode and consort is a debilitating thing to watch. It is an art on this forum. People convinced there's no bad fate, but apparently "no one is going anywhere, they are still the leading card game in the industry." This very fact, no competition, is not a good thing. It is how dictators few the masses: with contempt. Morally incompetent if things left unfixed, because there's no competition. So when are you going to step up the challenge. When people start walking? Then you have failed a long time ago.
And this one:
The theatre management could adjust it; but it would receive mixed responses, so instead, the manager rather not adjust because no one would leave but just deal with it.
As long as the divide and rule principle works nothing will be done to fix a broken Air Conditioner. It is so easy to hide behind difference of opinion not to fix things. There is an well known exact climate in theaters were everyone is comfortable. So if people feel uncomfortable the manager best fix the problem. And that is exact the problem with Brode and consort: they make broken things, don't repair them sufficiently in due time because they know the community can't make a fist. If AM would do this, they would have a major riot on their hands. Look at Apple: slowing down older phones caused a riot and lawsuits. The biggest problem enhanced quality in HS face is an uncritical mass and unthoughtful defends of Brode and consort.
Not fixing/ delay fixing problems because you count on the fact that the community will deal with it is only possible if you think of the audience as just mindless kids.
"Blizzard doesn't care about costumers"
What the hell are you on?
Do you even realize Blizzard and Ben Brode are in charge of Game Design and Activision is in charge of marketing and profit?
If Blizzard had some balance changes in mind; theyd still have to greenlight through Activision because it would intertwine.
Activision is a business about making profit. If a card is considered 'unhealthy' but its not affecting the rate of the playerbase leaving the game; then they wouldn't consider it a necessary urgent fix. And rather changing a card and losing profit; theyd rather make news cards to counter it while making money.
If their statistics show one card is indirectly ruining the rest of the game and they're seeing a large of the playerbase leave and not come back; thats when Activision will have to incentive to allow Team5 to greenlight the balance change.
Now I cant say that's for certain; its definitely not out of touch compared to "Blizzard and Ben doesnt care about their customers" - especially when you dont know the difference between Blizzard and Activision
Fanboyism: Devending Brode and consort no matter what. Everything Brode does is ok, because of lived experience must know what they are doing. No bad fate. No politics, No economic reasons for card design. Developers might make mistakes, but hey card design is really difficult and made the game a succes, so no one can challenge their authority.
There ar 2 types of fanboys:
The regular one. This one reads a lot on fora like these. write something now and then, but is happy with everything Brode and consort does, as long he can have his easy winfix. For this larger group in the community card design philosophy print the likes of living manna, scalebane, bonemare, kingsbane, and other mindless face is the place cards, catering into aggressive decks.
The know-it-all-type. A little more complex phenomenon.. There are two subversions of this know it all version of fanboys. First the one's who like to come out and show off their experience with CGC's ( 20 + years seems to be a kind of master degree) and knowledge of the game. They like to talk about cards, classes, expansions and are teaching orientated. Their likes come from the regular fanboy. They write lengthy comments and careful their reputation doesn't get tarnished. In all everything about them is experience and been there, done that... So you better listen to me - attitude. The second one is the aggressive, unfriendly version of the know-it-all-type. These aggressively don't except criticism of Brode and consort. They act as if they sit and eat with developers on a daily basis. They 'know' how difficult card design is, and will declare war if necessary to anyone dare criticize their beloved developers. Brode is right, critics know nothing. Becoming sarcastic, trying to redicule critics is well... their favorite approach. It is very hard to reason with this subtype, as they are not here to have a refective discussion, but simply to take you down.
In the end fanboys don't think, they just adore.
Interestingly your description of the "know-it-all-type" is an almost perfect example of how you engage with the forum.
Also, don't be mistaken for thinking people disagree with you because their fanboys, they disagree with you for the same reason many disagree with Trump. You make many bold unsubstantiated statements and claim them as fact - just like Trump, people who disagree with you are insulted, called names and you take great effort to reduce them in the eyes of other people - just like Trump, anything which doesn't fit your narrative or anyone who disagrees with you is branded Fake News - just like Trump, you use outlandish comparisons in an effort to make your point seem more serious than it is - just like Trump.
Ben Brode and Team 5 have delivered a great product enjoyed by millions that does exactly what it was designed to. It is far from perfect but no game is. However to read your posts you make it sound like they're part of a major conspiracy and actively working against their player base. Challenging that type of comment makes people no more a Fanboy than challenging Trump would make them a Snowflake.
Honestly though do you even enjoy the game? Reading your posts I'm not sure, you seem to want a more interactive game and Hearthstone just isn't that. Have you tried Eternal or Magic Arena as they may offer more of what you're looking for.
It is very easy to attack those who disagree with you and call them names, but don't continue to be like Trump. Try to consider the points of your peers, look at your own arguments in light of the comments of others and engage in actual debate.
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Arguing on the internet is like playing chess with a pigeon. You may be good at chess, but the pigeon is just going to knock all the pieces down, take a shit on the table, and strut around like its victorious.
I think that all the people that don't enjoy the game should delete it for their health and stfu on the forums :)
Everyday a goddamn topic about the things that go wrong with the game "the meta this, the meta that... Bla bla bla". If you don't like the game leave. STOP WHINING!
Okay dude, thats one huge wall of text you hit me with.
First of all i think youre expecting too much when you want every class to have a tier 1 deck. That won't happen.
Second, the vast majority of player have and will never hit legend and most don't even aspire to.
Third, well, no, nah, nope, i have better things to do, you know what ? If you don't like the game, leave.
So it really comes down to how you define competitive. Hooghout has set his stall a long time ago that to be competitive it must be Tier 1 and capable of competing at the top levels 5-1 and legend. He doesn't consider that for say 90-95% of the playerbase we are either incapable of, lack the time or lack the desire to reach that level. For me, my time let's me get to about 15-10 each month and there aren't many decks where I don't feel I can compete - this month it's control hunter. Unfortunately that doesn't fit his narrow minded view of the game and like Trump he considers that unless you're part of the elite you're opinion doesn't matter and he'll denigrate you by calling you vulgar or fanboy or brotard to try to belittle your viewpoint and strengthen his.
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Arguing on the internet is like playing chess with a pigeon. You may be good at chess, but the pigeon is just going to knock all the pieces down, take a shit on the table, and strut around like its victorious.
Want to enlighten me ? Because as far as i know it's to make sure every class/faction/whatever is competitive.
Well Warrior and Shaman for sure don't hit the mark for being competive as Tier 1. Classes falling from ladder is the right word for it. The first indication that there is more to balance than win rate balance. Looking at the Tier 1 list 80% is aggro-aggressive another sign of imbalance.
There is a reason for that though. Hearthstone was made for a target audience: the vulgar crowd. The largest part of the community. Hearthstone is a bloodsport of sort and reminds me of ancient times where the crowd would shout kill, kill, kill; in Hearthstone: smorc, smorc, smorc. The vulgar crowd made the emperor and through the games gave him leverage against the Senate. The metaphor is an interesting one as the Senate here are those who don't want Hearthstone to be a vulgar bloodsport, but a game where skill, balance, diversity roam the land. As Commodus gave them bloodsport, Brode provides mindless entertainment with aggro-aggressive dominance in the meta.The vulgar crowd made the game a succes. They don't want a complicated game, with a high skill floor and long battles. They want an easy, mindless winfix, fast and clean. Can you here it? kill, kill, kill. And Blizzard delivers.
And here's the thing. Focus on balance would make an easy winfix impossible, because then that would filter out broken decks, that make easy legend. People would get discouraged because reaching legend would become harder. Stop playing. That is the reason Brode and consort came up with a thin, stretch out, watered down conception of balance: winrate balance. Looking at archetype balance though, not class balance you will see the imbalance, because what is e.g. the % of Highlander priest (example of a mindless broken deck) in the total amount of viable priest decks? If you figure that out for every class, you'll notice the imbalance, betwee aggro-midrange and control in the tier list.
There is much to be said about other aspect of balance including balance between BBC and interactive play; questions and answers, RPS-imbalance and so forth. Dealing with those would immediately slow down the game, raise the skill floor and toughen win conditions But that, as we have seen, is not what the vulgar crowd wants. And they are by large the pack buyers....
In the end the succes of HS is the succesful management of the mindless in the form of card design catering into aggressive, low skill floor, easy win condition, broken card printing. What this game needs is a Marcus Aurelius taking control.
Here you go again, another pseudo-intellectual lengthy comment talking around, but irrelevant to the subject. Showing-off knowledge by not talking about the subject, but around it... This is a problem in itself and will not bring us any closer to clarity.
Maybe if you stopped acting like Trump by making wild accusations and statements that have no grounding in reality you may be taken seriously and then some proper discussion could take place.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Arguing on the internet is like playing chess with a pigeon. You may be good at chess, but the pigeon is just going to knock all the pieces down, take a shit on the table, and strut around like its victorious.
Want to enlighten me ? Because as far as i know it's to make sure every class/faction/whatever is competitive.
Well Warrior and Shaman for sure don't hit the mark for being competive as Tier 1. Classes falling from ladder is the right word for it. The first indication that there is more to balance than win rate balance. Looking at the Tier 1 list 80% is aggro-aggressive another sign of imbalance.
There is a reason for that though. Hearthstone was made for a target audience: the vulgar crowd. The largest part of the community. Hearthstone is a bloodsport of sort and reminds me of ancient times where the crowd would shout kill, kill, kill; in Hearthstone: smorc, smorc, smorc. The vulgar crowd made the emperor and through the games gave him leverage against the Senate. The metaphor is an interesting one as the Senate here are those who don't want Hearthstone to be a vulgar bloodsport, but a game where skill, balance, diversity roam the land. As Commodus gave them bloodsport, Brode provides mindless entertainment with aggro-aggressive dominance in the meta.The vulgar crowd made the game a succes. They don't want a complicated game, with a high skill floor and long battles. They want an easy, mindless winfix, fast and clean. Can you here it? kill, kill, kill. And Blizzard delivers.
And here's the thing. Focus on balance would make an easy winfix impossible, because then that would filter out broken decks, that make easy legend. People would get discouraged because reaching legend would become harder. Stop playing. That is the reason Brode and consort came up with a thin, stretch out, watered down conception of balance: winrate balance. Looking at archetype balance though, not class balance you will see the imbalance, because what is e.g. the % of Highlander priest (example of a mindless broken deck) in the total amount of viable priest decks? If you figure that out for every class, you'll notice the imbalance, betwee aggro-midrange and control in the tier list.
There is much to be said about other aspect of balance including balance between BBC and interactive play; questions and answers, RPS-imbalance and so forth. Dealing with those would immediately slow down the game, raise the skill floor and toughen win conditions But that, as we have seen, is not what the vulgar crowd wants. And they are by large the pack buyers....
In the end the succes of HS is the succesful management of the mindless in the form of card design catering into aggressive, low skill floor, easy win condition, broken card printing. What this game needs is a Marcus Aurelius taking control.
Holy shit you moved the goalpost so far it's in another city. I'm all worn out from having to Gish Gallop all the way there. You know brevity is a very good thing when making clear and well defined points and counterpoints. But then again that's not what you're doing at all.
The thing is, that i made my point by showing that every class can be competitive, can build a deck with a winrate high enough to reach legend.
And you didn't refute it. You wrote a huge-ass comment with obscure metaphors in it, talking about how people are dumb, bloodthirsty aggro-lovers and evil and stupid blizzard is catering them, while you sit above them and despice their way of playing.
I asked you a question, which you didn't answer.
There's simply no point of talking to you.
If youre not interested in reaching legend there are dozens of goddamn decks you can play , have fun and be competitive with.
I hit rank 5, like i do every season, with a quest warlock, which, by a lot of people is regarded to be unplayable.
Hooghout has 509 posts in those forums, the word "Brode" was mentioned 481 times in his posts.
The sole purpose of his account is bashing and trashing Ben Brode, so the subject of the thread is irrelevant, it will always be Brode fault no matter what, reasoning and arguing with him only result in more non sense arguments and his favorite insult "fanboy".
Hooghout just makes claims about things and that's it.. sounds like a pathetic salty teenager. Literally no point conversing with someone who finds perfect balance in their self-assurance and naivety surrounding CCGs. He clearly knows nothing about the development of such products and the business surrounding them. Nor of the hearthstone community who he's openly calling out to be "the vulgar crowd".... What a bell.
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"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
Arguing on the internet is like playing chess with a pigeon. You may be good at chess, but the pigeon is just going to knock all the pieces down, take a shit on the table, and strut around like its victorious.
In the end the community filters out lower performing decks (even if only marginally less performing) to copy and paste the 1-2 that are on the top, and this in turn will affect the perception of which classes are viewed as competitive or not competitive (even if you somehow managed to make it so every class was 'equally balanced').
One thing some people here also seem to forget is that Blizzard has some pretty strict design philosophies. They've talked about these in general at GDC, but they obviously also have game-specific ones and I don't know them for Hearthstone in particular. But if they believe that fun or readability or whatever is more important than balance, then that will take precedence. You might disagree with a particular philosophy in theory, and in fact many people on the forum can make it seem like it's a general trend, but their success-criteria are broader than "What's the zeitgeist like right now" and that can be important. Sometimes consumers have a very short-term lense where we might say "holy hell nerf psychic scream", but for Blizzard they're prioritizing the long-term, while sticking to their design philosophy, which means they don't go in and change things all the time, and instead just wait for the card to rotate out, and come away from it saying "well, hopefully we learned something". I don't play much Hearthstone these days because I don't like the meta, but I can easily appreciate that if I run a game-company, my time-schedule isn't "I wanna play this week but the meta sucks", they're looking at the next 3, 6 even 12 months, and when that's your frame of reference, the bit of time where Anduin and Raza are in standard at the same time is a short timeframe where you can gather some data and then it changes all by itself, without violating those overarching philosophies.
I'm not necessarily going to defend all of those because I wouldn't have the same set of design philosophies as Blizzard. It's not even necessarily a defense thereof, I was just trying to highlight some of the differences in perspective between being a consumer and a producer. If you look at product rating websites, like Tripadvisor or whatever, their business strategy is to call businesses associated with the website and ask them to pay them to make people rate something more frequently; the reason this works is because people generally tend to only want to be vocal on the internet about something if they dislike it, and so that's really important to keep in mind when Blizzard has data across all of Hearthstone, where we rely on statistics supplied by people actively playing, not detailed account information. We don't even know if the last expansion was great for Hearthstone as a whole or not, the closest we have is stuff like VS, which doesn't seem to suggest a narrow meta, which is something we see mentioned on the forums a lot (which I think is a misinterpretation of the data showing that the meta is more polarized, with more matches having a predictable outcome from the start).
Anyway, I don't wanna write too much on it because I don't agree with either the more vocal parts of the community nor Blizzard but I'll make a few short comments on the issues you brought up since you addressed them to me.
Unbalanced dominance of aggressive decks, classes falling from ladder, burn, skill floor: I think these are more a function of the ladder system itself (aggro is good for progressing because the games are shorter) than it is the deck balance. Since right now we see Raza and Cubelock as the highest represented in tournaments because of their strength, neither of which is aggro. Similarly, many pros have mentioned that both of these decks have a fairly high skill ceiling, so I really think it comes down to 'if you wanna rank up, play a straight forward deck with a very simple goal which can do it in as few turns as possible'. Blizzard said themselves that they wanna redo the ranking system, I'm doubtful they can do it in a super satisfactory way, because what is the solution to the efficacy of aggro in ranking up? Right now they already have an incentive structure for chaining wins and it's still slower to play a control deck with 65% winrate than aggro with 55%. But at the very least, making 'seasons' longer should make less need for quick wins to reach legend.
Imbalance between questions and answers: I assume this refers to their communication with the community. I think a big part of the problem is that they themselves don't know. When they say "if any nerfs are coming, it's going to be next month" and we wanna know right now, I assume they are still debating and testing internally. Like a guy further up said, they don't have the testing capacity of millions of people, so finding a good place for card changes can take them longer than the community can make conclusions once they come out. In this sense, if a company tries to keep up with communities tout court, they will eternally be stuck wanting to change things that take longer to develop and test than the time it takes to make new demands.
They've chosen to focus on developing new expansions to give people more radical changes and make more money for themselves. The thing I really don't understand, in this regard, is why standard cycles aren't done tri-annually as well, and in between expansions. This way the meta would change 6 times a year, all expansions would be in standard for the same amount of time, and they could do nerfs/hall of fames with the mid-expansion rotation. If they chose macro meta-changes over balance, I feel they should shake it up more often.
And with the lack of varied win conditions I think I agree with an implicit criticism here, but quite literally taken, I'm not sure what other win conditions could be. You can flood the board, you can play big stuff, you can go fast, you can go slow, you can combo with spells, you can fatigue, you even have hard win conditions with paladin's DK. I don't play much Magic or other card games, but what other types of win conditions are missing? However, if we're talking about when they do something to 'keep it simple' like they did with Innervate nerf, then I completely agree that there's no reason to make innervate into another coin, when it could have been 'refresh 2 mana crystals' for example, and it honestly would have confused any select person maximum one time before they learn. The level of simplicity Blizzard appeal to, and hence the overall complexity of the game, is where I feel most is left desired. Especially because they sometimes go there; Naga reducing cost of giants; Potion of Madness giving Djinni of Zephyrs haste; Primalfin Champion interactions; Valeera possibilities. If they really feel comfortable not nerfing because Raza soon rotates out of standard anyway, and are playing the long term game, I don't understand why we don't also have more complex interactions that gives players something to learn over time.
Gah this ended up being kinda lengthy anyway, but that's my initial thoughts on those subjects.
"Blizzard/Team5 don't really care about their costumers. " - Hooghout
Just soak that in for a moment. Following his/her unlettered response including entirely inaccurate analogies in an effort to bolster a position which is based on conjecture.
How can you speak for Blizzard and team 5 firstly? Do you speak for the spectrum of their intentions..? Do you know who makes up team 5, their backgrounds in card games and design?
Secondly, if you understood business you'd realise it's imperative that they do exactly that, care about what the consumer thinks and feels of them and their product. Your notion that the many uphold their model isn't the corporate reality for Blizzard or Team 5. You simply have no understanding of how their model operates. The fact it is a business and has monetary goals is not mutually exclusive from wanting and needing to deliver great product for all demographics involved in Hearthstone.
Adult/sensible/realistic members of the forum will of course be ready to defend Brode and the team because they understand that implementing fixes for what some or even many regard as "broken" cards (this concept in itself is a vague representation of how CCG development and design works) isn't as simple as delivering quick fixes. The idea of balance itself is not as simple as most make out..there are nuances to balance as time passes..classes grow stronger and weaker, the community naturally explores possibilities for decks and employs stronger solutions to win games. This is how card games operate..
A bigger issue is a childish community who sees themselves as righteous and justified or ahead of the curve compared to Team 5....do you think you're in a position to qualify yourself above the likes of Mike Donais or claim guys/girls such as him don't care........ How facile....the team is made up of people who have lived CCGs in many cases since before certain HS players had even left primary school.
Also, you know what.. sometimes in testing..some cards average out ok statistically - then the player base builds up numbers through games and it turns out a card may be more powerful or weaker than it seemed at first. Again, anyone with a realistic outlook in regard to design and development, knows that this is a natural occurrence and one which largely cannot be avoided.
Salty/many posts come across as childish and narrow. There's nothing else to it...I've yet to see a defense of such attitude which doesn't just lead back to "ego issues" or an inability to accept the game in its current state and adjust your own play and outlook to either get where you want competitively or enjoy the game how you want to. That's your responsibility.
Some pathetic people on here. Grow up.
Brutal secret honestly... why they don't cycle along with expansions.. I don't think they really thought of it.
The concept of rotations wasn't built into the original hearthstone plan. They originally planned to just have one format and work the cards appropriately. They then learned the same lesson MTG did: that it's a bad idea to do so. So, they took a que from MTG and the playerbase and evoked rotations. They flat out told us that they would probably screw it up and were ready to correct it however they can. Year of the Kraken was more of an experiment than a proven solution.
What many of us, and them, mistakenly thought was that Moar cards always = moar better game. So the idea is to limit rotations so that you can have more card adding and less card removing. What we are learning is that removing cards while adding more seems to be hearthstone's best points while lowest points are when we have the most cards.
The thing is that switching to cycling rotations along with expansions is a major risk and not something you can easily correct, so if it's even on their mind then it's probably one they are deliberating seriously and don't want to take recklessly. Though I do hope they consider it as I think overall it'll work better for our system if we swap out an expansion as we swap in one.
Though not this year because we REALLY need Mean Streets out of the meta :P.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
This whole thread is completely obsolet:
HSReplay stats on every class: Winrates of every classes most succesful build:
Druid: 59.3%
Hunter: 58.4%
Mage: 58.8%
Paladin: 61.5%
Priest: 59.2%
Rogue: 60.3%
Shaman: 57.1%
Warlock: 60.1 %
Warrior: 57.9%
Every single class can build a deck with a winrate of close to 60%, it's 4 % difference in average winrate for the 'best' and the 'worst' class.
BALANCED.
Arguing on the internet is like playing chess with a pigeon. You may be good at chess, but the pigeon is just going to knock all the pieces down, take a shit on the table, and strut around like its victorious.
I think that all the people that don't enjoy the game should delete it for their health and stfu on the forums :)
Everyday a goddamn topic about the things that go wrong with the game "the meta this, the meta that... Bla bla bla". If you don't like the game leave. STOP WHINING!
Top deck is cheat
Want to enlighten me ? Because as far as i know it's to make sure every class/faction/whatever is competitive.
Okay dude, thats one huge wall of text you hit me with.
First of all i think youre expecting too much when you want every class to have a tier 1 deck. That won't happen.
Second, the vast majority of player have and will never hit legend and most don't even aspire to.
Third, well, no, nah, nope, i have better things to do, you know what ? If you don't like the game, leave.
Arguing on the internet is like playing chess with a pigeon. You may be good at chess, but the pigeon is just going to knock all the pieces down, take a shit on the table, and strut around like its victorious.
Arguing on the internet is like playing chess with a pigeon. You may be good at chess, but the pigeon is just going to knock all the pieces down, take a shit on the table, and strut around like its victorious.
The thing is, that i made my point by showing that every class can be competitive, can build a deck with a winrate high enough to reach legend.
And you didn't refute it. You wrote a huge-ass comment with obscure metaphors in it, talking about how people are dumb, bloodthirsty aggro-lovers and evil and stupid blizzard is catering them, while you sit above them and despice their way of playing.
I asked you a question, which you didn't answer.
There's simply no point of talking to you.
If youre not interested in reaching legend there are dozens of goddamn decks you can play , have fun and be competitive with.
I hit rank 5, like i do every season, with a quest warlock, which, by a lot of people is regarded to be unplayable.
Fun fact:
Hooghout has 509 posts in those forums, the word "Brode" was mentioned 481 times in his posts.
The sole purpose of his account is bashing and trashing Ben Brode, so the subject of the thread is irrelevant, it will always be Brode fault no matter what, reasoning and arguing with him only result in more non sense arguments and his favorite insult "fanboy".
Hooghout just makes claims about things and that's it.. sounds like a pathetic salty teenager. Literally no point conversing with someone who finds perfect balance in their self-assurance and naivety surrounding CCGs. He clearly knows nothing about the development of such products and the business surrounding them. Nor of the hearthstone community who he's openly calling out to be "the vulgar crowd".... What a bell.