I operated free-to-play on-line games for twenty years, beginning with text MUDs in the early 90s up to graphic RPGs in the mid-2000s. I quit when WoW came out and ate all of my time.
It's hard to balance things. It's hard to make decisions. It's hard to test the interaction of complex systems and get it right. It's not as simple as, "Just nerf this card," or "just add this feature."
Changing a card statistic doesn't take much time development-wise, but you aren't thinking about the Type II errors. So we nerf Card X, which is currently an effective counter to Cards A, B, and C. Well, do Cards A, B, and C become a problem? And then the same people are back in 2 weeks bitching that those cards are too good and need a nerf? Card X may be the only thing keeping 3 other otherwise overpowered cards in check. You can't just go around every week and rearrange the game by nerfing whichever card people are bitching about that week, or that's all you'll ever do.
And, if you're constantly tweaking cards based on a "Squeaky Wheel gets the Grease" philosophy of player management, you empower the loudest complainers, who are also usually the least rational and thoughtful. Also, they're usually a small minority. They just hate X and want it changed. They see their little myopic corner of the game and are frustrated, so they complain on Reddit. When you're a developer, you can't assume those people all know what they're talking about, especially when you have an equally large (or even much larger volume) of level-headed players whose qualifications you know, and whose opinions you trust, and whose conclusions match what you see in your own data.
That's not to say EVERYBODY complaining is an immature whiner and is wrong. Far from it. It's just that, "Blizzard Y U TAKE SO LONG WHEN WE ALL YELL SO LOUD" is a stupid criticism. I do think they're TOO deliberate with nerfs, but I'd rather have them be too deliberate than not deliberate enough. And, they also have other timings to consider. It's not just you at your desk they have to think about - there other plans, other events, other tournaments, other priorities all completing for the developers' and designers' time. They have 100,000x more to deal with than what you see on your screen.
And finally, adding a new feature is not trivial. Software development is a classic case of the 80/20 problem. The first 80% of it takes 20% of your time to make. The last 20% takes the other 80%. Ask anybody who's ever written a game. I sat down last fall and wrote an MORPG server from scratch in C++ in my spare time. It took me about a month of dinking here around here and there to build an account/login system, chat system, basic world navigation service, on-line creation system, skill tree system, combat and magic/effect system, quest system, trade skill system, guild/clan system, and advancement/badge system.
That's 80% of what the game does. It would require a team of 20 people working a full year to actually make a playable game out of that.
I'm not saying those of you with complaints or concerns don't have valid complaints or concerns. But I do think a substantial volume of complaining originates from a place of blissful ignorance about the realities of running even a small game development team. I had lunch a while back with one of the chief engineers for League of Legends, he's an old school 90s era coder like me, and we were talking about how hard it is to change anything when you have a huge subscriber base. He was telling me about how they wanted to add a few additional data points to track during matches for analytics purposes, and they spent weeks discussing it, because at the volume of records they store, even adding 100 bytes of data to match records will cost many millions of dollars in increased storage requirements.
So ya'll want a dedicated software team with a burn of at least $15-$25M to churn out content constantly, put on tournaments, be on all social media, respond instantly to all problems, perfectly balance the game, manage a community of 50 million people, implement new features, fix old bugs sooner, and you don't want to pay for any of it.
Sheesh. I'm remembering why I quit running games like this.
5
They're the runes you had to put out before you could summon Ragnaros in Molten Core.
7
When I read this, I was really hoping that the game would just give you those cards and let you play a deck.
That way, new players have at least ONE deck for every class that they can play with in Standard. No need to grind out gold, everyone has a viable deck that works. Sadly it seems that if you don't have the cards, you're given terrible choices as to what to replace them with. I'm going to guess that Bloodmage is an example from the Malygos Rogue deck - if it is, neither of those cards are good subs.
Pity that it wasn't a deck rental service, could have been a really good catch-up mechainic for newer players.
Here's hoping that you can edit those Recipies though, so you can actually save decks yourself
1
Fuck me. Freeze Mage can seriously go fucking do one. So can Priests.
It seems the only games I win, are when my opponent is playing on the iPhone and is a drooling retard. I managed to just about eek my way up to rank 5 after playing about 4 hours a night, now i'm back at rank 6 since Zoo is just a big NOPE up that high. The only games I've managed to win lately have been against a Hunter that played an Exsplosive Trap turn 2 and then alt+F4'd, as well as a Druid who got confused after he played a Kezan Mystic and I followed it up with my own (playing Flamewaker Mage at the time), then just roped me every turn.
Zoo just...dosn't seem to work any more. It gets shit on by Warrior, by Mages, by Hunters. Right now i'm playing againt a DRAGON Warrior. Like wtf? Who plays this shit? And of course, in his top 12 cards - Brawl. Every fucking time. Not only did he open with a firey war axe AND drop a slyvannas, he also had Brawl.
It takes the fucking piss. I started playing Face Huntard since I keep getting shat on them...EVERY fucking deck plays taunt, or all I face is Handlock or Freeze Mage. Go back to playing a deck I like? Countered. Tryed Druid and got raped by fucking Face Huntard.
Can someone suggest a deck that, while being fun to play, actually has a decent win rate?
1
Zaxlor#2593 reporting for duty!
I'm by no means "pro" when it comes to Heros, but I think my MMR hovers around 1900, which is meant to be pretty good. I don't play on ranked though, just quick match and mostly just to finish the dailys, but lately I've been trying to grind out a few Heros to level 9 for the bonus gold.
4
1
I'm playing Mech Mage (never hit Legend, probably never will, max rank of about 4?). My opponent is a Golden Priest, using the Legendary card back.
Turn 1 He plays Zombie Chow. I pass
Turn 2 He plays nothing, except attacking with his Chow. I play Mech-Warper into Clockwork Gnome.
Turn 3 He uses his Hero Power on himself, then casts Circle of Healing and then attacks with his Zombie Chow.
The second after that, he conceded, realising how stupid his play was >_<
I'll admit that i've played Goblin Blastmage quite a few times thinking i've got a Mech on the board, as well as daggering up and then attacking into something while playing Rogue, despite having a 1/1 Knife.
3
Before anyone starts to scream "But this is OP!", think about what this card is doing. It's basically a worse Earthen Ring Farseer without a combo and with the Combo it's an even worse Antique Healbot. It dosn't give you board presence but can help with gaining some Tempo.
Since it's 0 mana it will activate plays like Defias Ringleader and SI:7 Agent, but do you want to play this card first? You've just lost out on 3 health doing that, so maybe it's better combo'd with Gagetzan Auctioneer, but is gaining 6 Health AND losing a weapon charge worth it on turn 6?
53
I was tempted to make this a neautral minion, but I think making it Shaman made a little more sense as the Totem is blocking the effects of the Hero Power. It shuts down Paladin, Rogue and Shamans really well as unless they have a board of a weapon in hand it'll be hard for them to deal with it.
30
Very usefull in Tempo decks, possibly also in Zoo and Hunter too. I was considering having her just re-apply your Hero Power if you'd already used it that turn (like going back in time), but that tottally scews up Rogue and to a less extent Shaman.
13
Fairly simple. Probably not very usefull till turn 7, but still fun to play early game, tottally screwing up Handlock or Warrior's Shield Slams.