Balance is difficult in hearthstone for several reasons:
1.) There's 9 individual classes, 8 of which have an "identity" and Shamans which really don't right now. Trying to stay within that identity and keep things competitive and interesting is a lot to manage.
2.) You could have 500 guys doing play testing and things would slip through the cracks because MILLIONS of people play this game. That's just the nature of games in general.
3.) People are always crying nerf this and nerf that and they jump on them for not nerfing things but the fact is a loose nerf hammer can have unintended consequences. For instance, Quest rogue got nerfed while it was in like Tier 3 but because of that Jade started climbing back up the ranks and the next expansion gave them more tools which wouldn't have been so bad if quest rogue was still viable to keep it in check. This game thrives on a checks and balances system and it is a fine balance that even the smallest number change can effect.
4.) The devs are apparently always working 1 expansion ahead. With that, we don't know what's coming and we don't know how changes to what we have now could effect that design that's already in the works.
Yes, it obviously is. Team 5 includes veteran heavyweights with years of experiences in the genre, but to say their task is ambitious is an understatement. Compare to a game like Eternal. The 'heroes' are just avatars with no bearing on deck content or gameplay mechanics. There are 5 'influences' that may be mixed by the players with the drawback that the more you combine the harder it becomes to ensure you can play the card you need when the time is right. There are also cards that mitigate this but basically lose tempo to do so. This winds up being self-regulating - 'red' has little removal where 'blue' can wipe the enemy board with ease but struggles to do any damage. In Hearthstone there are 9 classes with unique abilities and no cross-pollination whatsoever. The devs try to lean on neutral cards to balance it out, but making 9 viable classes is a daunting task.
4.) The devs are apparently always working 1 expansion ahead. With that, we don't know what's coming and we don't know how changes to what we have now could effect that design that's already in the works.
I think this is one of the major issues that create the metas we have now. Basically, when they balance a class, they dedicate several expansions to it. THAT part is normal and fine as it really does take several expansions to get a class going from the bottom.
However, they always seem to go one expansion too far. For example, Shaman was in a powerful place in Old Gods, then they received that one extra bit of insanity in Karazan. Now we see the same thing with priest which finally got themselves going in Knights, but then kept going up in Kobolds.
By how it feels, they see in, say, Un'Goro, their efforts to rebuild the class start to work, but not quite then plan out the next two expansions (Knights/K&C) to finish the job then put the fine touches. but then the first expansion becomes good enough for the class leading the following to go overboard.
I'm honestly putting this to growing pains with the rotation system. They need to either be more able to change their expansions so that when expansion 1 does the job towards a particular class that expansion 2 can be redesigned with the new situation in mind or, as Omnistone suggested, set up the decks that become OMG powerful to show up at the 3rd expansion in the year and make good use of the cards from the prior year (so, say, Raza priest would show up NOW so we'd have 3 months with it followed by rotation knocking it down).
But I still remember how things looked during GvG. barring the absolute mess that was Mean Streets they've gotten better with their designs. They just need to keep getting better from here.
But in any case, yes it's VERY hard to balance classes. Even using nerfs is messy compared to other games due to the lack of fine tuning (as in, you can drop a gun's reload by 10% to make it slightly slower, but raising a card by 1 mana can easily nuke it and the deck that uses it)
It would be easy if they just nerfed more, and...god forbid, actually buffed stuff. Crazy Idea i know right? Except back when they were planning hearthstone in the alpha and beta they said they were gonig to embrace the digital aspect of the game to give it advanatge over real world CCGs - then they sold out on the vision to maximise profits like assholes.
But they've created a ladder where you have to be over 50% to get to legend and it's not really possible for all 9 classes to have 50%+ win rate.
But to have Shaman and Warrior sitting near 40% win rate is a complete playtesting failure.
Yeah they nerfed warrior way to hard. Now with no early game, unless you have a deck full of golden legendaries and about 45mins to play each game, warrior sucks. Shaman is almost there, but as usual it requires a lot of RNG and and a full board. I think both classes were hurt so bad because they had strong aggro decks and everyone bitched about them.
Lets focus for reasons of practicality on the balance between damage-out-of-hand and interactive gameplay.
Damage -out-of-hand (DooH) is a referral to denote the ability to do damage from hand to the board or to face. Interactive gameplay is that you first play a minion, wait a turn, giving the opponent a chance to respond. Looking at the current meta we can distinguish which archetypes have a high DooH in their win condition:
Against that looking at viably tier 1, the only archetypes that does interactive gameplay is Cubelock, Control Warlock.
What's wrong with this picture? Why this imbalance?
Balance is a choice, not a difficulty.
I mostly agree, but "All hunters" and Mill rogue I would not really include as good examples. Sure Mill rogue wins a lot with Leeroy, but that is after giving the openent a whole lot of changes to win and usually around turn 15-20. Hunter is designed that way as a class arguably mage too for finishing moves. I think that there should be less classes on that list and things like a warlock doing 15 damage with cube and charging demon is super annoying, especially with the "discard two cards" now usually nullified.
Rotating 'the crown' is a good way to make money naturally. Although i would say everyone has something playable right now and the main problem of the game is almost a dozen mandatory neutrals killing off deckbuilding. As much as i love bonemare especially for my f2p accounts, it was a mistake.
There we go! Twiltez has it. FOLLOW THE MONEY. Now that HS has gotten so much more expensive, I'm ff2p now - forced free2play, even though I've spent well more than I should have on this game. I can't craft cards for all classes, I have to concentrate on one class. Blizzard's way of punishing this type of behavior is to cycle every class so that if you specialize in just one class rather than handing them a lot of money, you'll have to spend months or a year without a legend-capable deck that isn't aggro. (You can always make aggro decks as a f2p but they are boring to most of us.) This class cycle is becoming VERY predictable (look for more good Warlock cards next expansion, and for warrior or shaman to begin the climb back to respectability while paladin and priest slip back.) I'll even predict a quite useful 10 mana Warlock spell to allow Warlock to run the Spiteful package.
Thing is, the ladder is so boring (meaning lacking in variety) - even in wild now that it's getting more popular - that you shouldn't care a fig. Being able (being forced) to take a vacation from serious grindy laddering is a good thing, not a bad thing. So spend most of your dust crafting for just one class. You don't have to toss Blizzard any more money, if you don't want to. If you want to take on two classes, just make sure one is on-cycle and one is off-cycle. Meme and have fun, don't just compete; even getting rank 5 each month has a rather small reward when you do the math.
Please note - not balancing the meta isn't just one way Blizzard makes money. It is THE WAY Blizzard makes money. So don't expect that to change.
What makes me bloody sad is that they've tossed away billions of dollars of carefully developed, balanced, interesting card games - namely all the previous metas. What we need is a time machine mode that matches together players all of whose cards were available before date X. At least for one month a year, let us play the game that we paid for, way back when. Give us a little variety, for God's sake.
Its not that the Game Designers dont have any ideas how to balance; its more about what Activision will allow to be changed.
Activision is going to push the developers to not change Legendary cards and rather other basic/rare/epic cards so Activision doesnt lose out on profit. Allowing everyone 1600 dust back, to them, is not worth balance changes
FWIW - every aspect of the game is tracked by a number of different sites. HSReplays tracks well over a million games each day, and they post all their numbers on their "Meta" page. All nine classes currently field at least one deck with a win-rate above 50%. Shaman is the only class which doesn't field at least two.
Its not that the Game Designers dont have any ideas how to balance; its more about what Activision will allow to be changed.
Activision is going to push the developers to not change Legendary cards and rather other basic/rare/epic cards so Activision doesnt lose out on profit. Allowing everyone 1600 dust back, to them, is not worth balance changes
This is conspiracy nonsense, 99% of legendaries are completely fine with the fringe legendary being patches and even that isn't enough to support your sad argument. During the first HoF rotation I got something like like 4600 dust because they rotated Ragnaros, which they wouldn't have done by your logic because of dust values.
FWIW - every aspect of the game is tracked by a number of different sites. HSReplays tracks well over a million games each day, and they post all their numbers on their "Meta" page. All nine classes currently field at least one deck with a win-rate above 50%. Shaman is the only class which doesn't field at least two.
Aggro is balanced-ish. Now take away aggro, which is what f2p players are stuck with, and voila... warrior and shaman are underwater. I took some time to filter through HSreplay this morning myself. If you want to play the real game, you can't do that with every class, and as said above, that rotates for business-plan reasons.
Its not that the Game Designers dont have any ideas how to balance; its more about what Activision will allow to be changed.
Activision is going to push the developers to not change Legendary cards and rather other basic/rare/epic cards so Activision doesnt lose out on profit. Allowing everyone 1600 dust back, to them, is not worth balance changes
This is conspiracy nonsense, 99% of legendaries are completely fine with the fringe legendary being patches and even that isn't enough to support your sad argument. During the first HoF rotation I got something like like 4600 dust because they rotated Ragnaros, which they wouldn't have done by your logic because of dust values.
Its not a conspiracy theory, its based on a calculation.
-When they change a legendary and allow us to get a 1600 dust refund, thats approxametly $15 average they're giving back.
-You also dont get 4600 dust from Ragnaros. And IF you did get 4600 dust refund; thats over $50 worth you got back, mate. Of course that's something Activision is gonna consider and will compromise with Blizzard
Right now Hearthstone is the most profitable Blizzard game including longevity. Theres a reason why every Black friday, there is a deal for every Blizzard game except Hearthstone. Omnislash also discussed this extensively and I recommend you listen to what they say as well before you call anything you dont agree with a Conspiracy Theory.
So you say 4600 is nothing and not logic? You still say its a conspiracy theory?
Yea if you were the only customer, thats not a huge financial loss for them. But when you consider the whole Hearthstone base, that's a lot for any business to consider
Its not that the Game Designers dont have any ideas how to balance; its more about what Activision will allow to be changed.
Activision is going to push the developers to not change Legendary cards and rather other basic/rare/epic cards so Activision doesnt lose out on profit. Allowing everyone 1600 dust back, to them, is not worth balance changes
This is conspiracy nonsense, 99% of legendaries are completely fine with the fringe legendary being patches and even that isn't enough to support your sad argument. During the first HoF rotation I got something like like 4600 dust because they rotated Ragnaros, which they wouldn't have done by your logic because of dust values.
Its not a conspiracy theory, its based on a calculation.
-When they change a legendary and allow us to get a 1600 dust refund, thats approxametly $15 average they're giving back.
-You also dont get 4600 dust from Ragnaros. And IF you did get 4600 dust refund; thats over $50 worth you got back, mate. Of course that's something Activision is gonna consider and will compromise with Blizzard
Right now Hearthstone is the most profitable Blizzard game including longevity. Theres a reason why every Black friday, there is a deal for every Blizzard game except Hearthstone. Omnislash also discussed this extensively and I recommend you listen to what they say as well before you call anything you dont agree with a Conspiracy Theory.
So you say 4600 is nothing and not logic? You still say its a conspiracy theory?
Yea if you were the only customer, thats not a huge financial loss for them. But when you consider the whole Hearthstone base, that's a lot for any business to consider
He's not saying it's a conspiracy because it's not profitable. He's saying's it's a conspiracy because they haven't been doing it. Rag and Sylvanas were HoFed, which not only gave full dust but did so while letting us keep the card. The claim that they won't let you dust legendaries is countered by the fact that we've been dusting legendaries for full value for quite a while now. That's WITH hearthstone being extremely profitable.
It has nothing to do with any positive feelings towards blizzard. It's saying that the history doesn't match the theory.
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.
Its not that the Game Designers dont have any ideas how to balance; its more about what Activision will allow to be changed.
Activision is going to push the developers to not change Legendary cards and rather other basic/rare/epic cards so Activision doesnt lose out on profit. Allowing everyone 1600 dust back, to them, is not worth balance changes
This is conspiracy nonsense, 99% of legendaries are completely fine with the fringe legendary being patches and even that isn't enough to support your sad argument. During the first HoF rotation I got something like like 4600 dust because they rotated Ragnaros, which they wouldn't have done by your logic because of dust values.
Its not a conspiracy theory, its based on a calculation.
-When they change a legendary and allow us to get a 1600 dust refund, thats approxametly $15 average they're giving back.
-You also dont get 4600 dust from Ragnaros. And IF you did get 4600 dust refund; thats over $50 worth you got back, mate. Of course that's something Activision is gonna consider and will compromise with Blizzard
Right now Hearthstone is the most profitable Blizzard game including longevity. Theres a reason why every Black friday, there is a deal for every Blizzard game except Hearthstone. Omnislash also discussed this extensively and I recommend you listen to what they say as well before you call anything you dont agree with a Conspiracy Theory.
So you say 4600 is nothing and not logic? You still say its a conspiracy theory?
Yea if you were the only customer, thats not a huge financial loss for them. But when you consider the whole Hearthstone base, that's a lot for any business to consider
He's not saying it's a conspiracy because it's not profitable. He's saying's it's a conspiracy because they haven't been doing it. Rag and Sylvanas were HoFed, which not only gave full dust but did so while letting us keep the card. The claim that they won't let you dust legendaries is countered by the fact that we've been dusting legendaries for full value for quite a while now. That's WITH hearthstone being extremely profitable.
It has nothing to do with any positive feelings towards blizzard. It's saying that the history doesn't match the theory.
What do you mean that person is calling it a "conspiracy theory" because they haven't been "doing it"?
Sylvanas and Ragnaros were nerfed during a very, very specific time: The introduction to Normal, Wild, and Hall of Fame. Which is why let you keep it either way; because no other cards had ever been nerfed in that manner.
That was basically like Heroes of the STorm 2 (new system, new rewards; free items for the new event) :: the perfect time to do big changes.
The other legendary was Leeroy Jenkins and that was when they started to revalue all Charge minions like Arcane Golem
That's exactly my point; they aren't going to be changing legendaries unless its during a drastic shift or rehaul in the game.
So the only times we ever saw Legendary changes were during very drastic changes of the game.
And the only time they will ever consider change legendaries; which is in the upcoming new season
Quote from Argument. During the first HoF rotation I got something like like 4600 dust because they rotated Ragnaros, which they wouldn't have done by your logic because of dust values.
Its not a conspiracy theory, its based on a calculation.
-When they change a legendary and allow us to get a 1600 dust refund, thats approxametly $15 average they're giving back.
-You also dont get 4600 dust from Ragnaros. And IF you did get 4600 dust refund; thats over $50 worth you got back, mate. Of course that's something Activision is gonna consider and will compromise with Blizzard
Right now Hearthstone is the most profitable Blizzard game including longevity. Theres a reason why every Black friday, there is a deal for every Blizzard game except Hearthstone. Omnislash also discussed this extensively and I recommend you listen to what they say as well before you call anything you dont agree with a Conspiracy Theory.
So you say 4600 is nothing and not logic? You still say its a conspiracy theory?
Yea if you were the only customer, thats not a huge financial loss for them. But when you consider the whole Hearthstone base, that's a lot for any business to consider
Side note- Do you think Hearth has made more money than WOW? Honest question, because I assume that it would not be true, though it will probably eventually be true as the original large sub base fades into previous years.
Quote from Argument. During the first HoF rotation I got something like like 4600 dust because they rotated Ragnaros, which they wouldn't have done by your logic because of dust values.
Its not a conspiracy theory, its based on a calculation.
-When they change a legendary and allow us to get a 1600 dust refund, thats approxametly $15 average they're giving back.
-You also dont get 4600 dust from Ragnaros. And IF you did get 4600 dust refund; thats over $50 worth you got back, mate. Of course that's something Activision is gonna consider and will compromise with Blizzard
Right now Hearthstone is the most profitable Blizzard game including longevity. Theres a reason why every Black friday, there is a deal for every Blizzard game except Hearthstone. Omnislash also discussed this extensively and I recommend you listen to what they say as well before you call anything you dont agree with a Conspiracy Theory.
So you say 4600 is nothing and not logic? You still say its a conspiracy theory?
Yea if you were the only customer, thats not a huge financial loss for them. But when you consider the whole Hearthstone base, that's a lot for any business to consider
Side note- Do you think Hearth has made more money than WOW? Honest question, because I assume that it would not be true, though it will probably eventually be true as the original large sub base fades into previous years.
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.
Balance is difficult in hearthstone for several reasons:
1.) There's 9 individual classes, 8 of which have an "identity" and Shamans which really don't right now. Trying to stay within that identity and keep things competitive and interesting is a lot to manage.
2.) You could have 500 guys doing play testing and things would slip through the cracks because MILLIONS of people play this game. That's just the nature of games in general.
3.) People are always crying nerf this and nerf that and they jump on them for not nerfing things but the fact is a loose nerf hammer can have unintended consequences. For instance, Quest rogue got nerfed while it was in like Tier 3 but because of that Jade started climbing back up the ranks and the next expansion gave them more tools which wouldn't have been so bad if quest rogue was still viable to keep it in check. This game thrives on a checks and balances system and it is a fine balance that even the smallest number change can effect.
4.) The devs are apparently always working 1 expansion ahead. With that, we don't know what's coming and we don't know how changes to what we have now could effect that design that's already in the works.
Yes, it obviously is. Team 5 includes veteran heavyweights with years of experiences in the genre, but to say their task is ambitious is an understatement. Compare to a game like Eternal. The 'heroes' are just avatars with no bearing on deck content or gameplay mechanics. There are 5 'influences' that may be mixed by the players with the drawback that the more you combine the harder it becomes to ensure you can play the card you need when the time is right. There are also cards that mitigate this but basically lose tempo to do so. This winds up being self-regulating - 'red' has little removal where 'blue' can wipe the enemy board with ease but struggles to do any damage. In Hearthstone there are 9 classes with unique abilities and no cross-pollination whatsoever. The devs try to lean on neutral cards to balance it out, but making 9 viable classes is a daunting task.
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
The answer is no.
HS team is just SLOW - They are usually balancing cards 2 weeks before new expansion, LOL!
They can do far better.
But they've created a ladder where you have to be over 50% to get to legend and it's not really possible for all 9 classes to have 50%+ win rate.
But to have Shaman and Warrior sitting near 40% win rate is a complete playtesting failure.
HS is dead.
Full draw meta killin this game.30-40 min games are not funny anymore.
If blizzard sacked stupid devs. maybe everything balanced.
It would be easy if they just nerfed more, and...god forbid, actually buffed stuff. Crazy Idea i know right? Except back when they were planning hearthstone in the alpha and beta they said they were gonig to embrace the digital aspect of the game to give it advanatge over real world CCGs - then they sold out on the vision to maximise profits like assholes.
Thing is, the ladder is so boring (meaning lacking in variety) - even in wild now that it's getting more popular - that you shouldn't care a fig. Being able (being forced) to take a vacation from serious grindy laddering is a good thing, not a bad thing. So spend most of your dust crafting for just one class. You don't have to toss Blizzard any more money, if you don't want to. If you want to take on two classes, just make sure one is on-cycle and one is off-cycle. Meme and have fun, don't just compete; even getting rank 5 each month has a rather small reward when you do the math.
Please note - not balancing the meta isn't just one way Blizzard makes money. It is THE WAY Blizzard makes money. So don't expect that to change.
What makes me bloody sad is that they've tossed away billions of dollars of carefully developed, balanced, interesting card games - namely all the previous metas. What we need is a time machine mode that matches together players all of whose cards were available before date X. At least for one month a year, let us play the game that we paid for, way back when. Give us a little variety, for God's sake.
Its not that the Game Designers dont have any ideas how to balance; its more about what Activision will allow to be changed.
Activision is going to push the developers to not change Legendary cards and rather other basic/rare/epic cards so Activision doesnt lose out on profit. Allowing everyone 1600 dust back, to them, is not worth balance changes
FWIW - every aspect of the game is tracked by a number of different sites. HSReplays tracks well over a million games each day, and they post all their numbers on their "Meta" page. All nine classes currently field at least one deck with a win-rate above 50%. Shaman is the only class which doesn't field at least two.
They really want to balance class?
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
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.