Hearthpwn

Quote from Hooghout >>

Quote from Skaduush1 >>

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.

 Went down as expected. First you make a comment that meta is balanced. Then got refuted. Answer you: if you don't like leave the game. Not much of a counterargument, is it? Understandable. By all means this is pwn.

Quote from GMAlon >>

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".  

Quote from Hooghout >>

Was warned. Debating Brodean aggro-aggressive vulgarized always leads to mindless responses. That's here the end of it.

Unless you're very well versed in game design and have made a multiplayer game that involves balance between many different gameplay options, it's unfair to say it's easy to balance the game by not giving classes op cards. That being said, I think there's a lot of problems with how balance is handled in hearthstone. Cards and sets are designed in advanced and from what it seems like team 5 does not take this into consideration when looking at the meta before the new set will be released. This is apparent from interviews and cards that are weak in power level given to weak classes and powerful cards given to powerful classes (freeze shaman, Purify, Psychic Scream, Spirit Claws, Elven Minstrel, Kazakus, etc.). This creates a lot of problems for the game when it comes to a balanced meta because they design sets so far in advance that predicting a meta, or maybe neglecting the meta entirely, means it's impossible to have all aspects of the game be balanced. 

There are also blatantly overpowered cards that are released that makes so many people not only question how they design cards, but how well they test them too. Cards like Patches the Pirate, Bonemare, Undertaker, Spirit Claws, Small-Time Buccaneer, the list goes on. These cards seem dramatically above the power curve and many of them end up being nerfed as a result. However, team 5's other biggest blunder is how often they do nerf cards. Many people in the community wished they nerfed cards more often and there are pros and cons to nerfing frequently. Without getting into the pros and cons of nerfing, it's fair to say Blizzard reacts too slowly when cards that should be nerfed, go un-nerfed for so long. It took them over a month to nerf Jade Druid at the start of KoFT's release, a deck that was obviously unfun to play against and was very strong, over two months to nerf Small-Time Buccaneer, over 5 months to nerf Call of the Wild, and a whopping 7 months to nerf Undertaker. Right now according to hsreplay, Corridor Creeper is included in over 40% of decks. If those numbers don't scream over powered card then I don't know what does. I think you would have to be very oblivious to say team 5 doesn't take too long to nerf cards considered op. 

So what's the best solution, or a decent one to prevent these over powered cards from rising up, or a way for all classes to be equal? Well before I get into that it's important to note from interviews from team 5 they believe not all classes deserve to be equal, and that their beliefs of how to balance a meta is by having some classes receive much stronger cards while others do not. Whether or not you agree with this, that is how Team 5 stands on the topic of balance. The first solution is to more nerfs/buffs more often. Again, many pros and cons to this, especially concerning f2p players and limited dust, not being able to participate in a new expansion at release for fear of nerfs. The second solution, a very popular community response to balance, would be a public PTR. Team 5 has responded to this idea and you can find their opinions here: https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Public_Test_Realm . They make some valid points, but overall, I disagree with them and I think a PTR would not only prevent these overpowered cards/combos making it through into the full release, but would make the community feel better that team 5 was interacting with them, instead of forums getting extremely frustrated with the Devs' visions and stances on their game with little to no input from the community. just my 2 cents.

Im not really sure which deck it was when i posted this, but right now the top paladin decks are a murloc and a aggro paladin, both sitting on a winrate of 60.1% ;)
And yep, shaman and warrior, while doing pretty bad in comparison, are not 'dead' like a lot of people keep saying :)

Quote from FrostedBricks >>

Unless you're very well versed in game design and have made a multiplayer game that involves balance between many different gameplay options, it's unfair to say it's easy to balance the game by not giving classes op cards. That being said, I think there's a lot of problems with how balance is handled in hearthstone. Cards and sets are designed in advanced and from what it seems like team 5 does not take this into consideration when looking at the meta before the new set will be released. This is apparent from interviews and cards that are weak in power level given to weak classes and powerful cards given to powerful classes (freeze shaman, Purify, Psychic Scream, Spirit Claws, Elven Minstrel, Kazakus, etc.). This creates a lot of problems for the game when it comes to a balanced meta because they design sets so far in advance that predicting a meta, or maybe neglecting the meta entirely, means it's impossible to have all aspects of the game be balanced. 

There are also blatantly overpowered cards that are released that makes so many people not only question how they design cards, but how well they test them too. Cards like Patches the Pirate, Bonemare, Undertaker, Spirit Claws, Small-Time Buccaneer, the list goes on. These cards seem dramatically above the power curve and many of them end up being nerfed as a result. However, team 5's other biggest blunder is how often they do nerf cards. Many people in the community wished they nerfed cards more often and there are pros and cons to nerfing frequently. Without getting into the pros and cons of nerfing, it's fair to say Blizzard reacts too slowly when cards that should be nerfed, go un-nerfed for so long. It took them over a month to nerf Jade Druid at the start of KoFT's release, a deck that was obviously unfun to play against and was very strong, over two months to nerf Small-Time Buccaneer, over 5 months to nerf Call of the Wild, and a whopping 7 months to nerf Undertaker. Right now according to hsreplay, Corridor Creeper is included in over 40% of decks. If those numbers don't scream over powered card then I don't know what does. I think you would have to be very oblivious to say team 5 takes too long to nerf cards considered op. 

So what's the best solution, or a decent one to prevent these over powered cards from rising up, or a way for all classes to be equal? Well before I get into that it's important to note from interviews from team 5 they believe not all classes deserve to be equal, and that their beliefs of how to balance a meta is by having some classes receive much stronger cards while others do not. Whether or not you agree with this, that is how Team 5 stands on the topic of balance. The first solution is to more nerfs/buffs more often. Again, many pros and cons to this, especially concerning f2p players and limited dust, not being able to participate in a new expansion at release for fear of nerfs. The second solution, a very popular community response to balance, would be a public PTR. Team 5 has responded to this idea and you can find their opinions here: https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Public_Test_Realm . They make some valid points, but overall, I disagree with them and I think a PTR would not only prevent these overpowered cards/combos making it through into the full release, but would make the community feel better that team 5 was interacting with them, instead of forums getting extremely frustrated with the Devs' visions and stances on their game with little to no input from the community. just my 2 cents.

 I think the speed of nerfs is a tricky one as well, and to the players it's always going to seem too long.  Realistically though I feel they have to wait until we create the broken combinations which can take some time (look how long it took for Kelseth to rise), then they have to monitor this to see whether it's a genuine issue or not, then decide the best way to resolve it, before figuring a develop/test/release schedule (which depending on their development methods could be a month itself).  This time soon adds up so three to four months is not unreasonable for this type of change.  Also, as much as we don't like it they will be pushed by their accounts team to minimise the cost (dust) of any change they make so I imagine this will factor as well.

Undertaker was nerfed just before I started playing but based on its reputation alone 7 months does seem like a long time.

Well, i actually think the game is pretty balanced, and while i do think blizzard could nerf/change cards more often to ensure the meta doesn't get too stale, i understand why there is no ptr. For me, the reveal of the new cards, piece by piece, is actually a great experience, last reveal i was hyped for every card. ;)

When you have a ptr, there WILL be leaks, the more people you invite, the more leaks will happen. And that would ruin a lot of fun for me, personally :)

What i do think should happen to hearthstone, is a revamp of the reward system, like they did to heroes of the storm.

A system, in which leveling up your heroes actually does matter, with dust, gold and 'cosmetic' rewards.

Cosmetic (maybe gained through a new ressource you could get) rewards could be hero portraits , emotes, announcers etc.

And maybe you could 'promote' the cards you like the most to golden, making them unenchantable in the process :>

But, well thats actually not the right thread to talk about that. :)

Im content with the balance of hearthstone, i do like the game in it's current state, it is fun for me,  that's why i play it.

There's always room for improvement, but for me personally it still is the best tgc (and i did play a lot of others, to try them) out there, thats why i play it and not something else.

And i do think everyone complaining about the game in the manner this hooghout dude does, should just go play something else.