Kanai's Cube Tool, Boss Mode Conquest Tips
Rexxar Hero Trailer, Weekly Hero Rotation, Upcoming Shop Sales
September 8 Hotfixes, Mobile Authenticator Updated, Tweets, Heroes - Rexxar Trailer
Design Insights with Ben Brode - The Dark Side of Releasing New Content
The PlayHearthstone Youtube channel uploaded a video of Ben Brode which addresses community feedback on recent content releases and how they affect new and current players. You can check out the video, and a recap of it, below.
Ben has also stated that he wishes to do more of these types of videos in the future, so stay tuned.
Quote from Ben Brode
- They're aware that you need to collect a lot more cards nowadays and that it can be daunting to new players.
- A commitment to players to keep things fresh and exciting which means making more powerful cards to change up the meta.
- More powerful cards doesn't mean every expansion is going to have inflated numbers for reduced mana costs.
- New cards that creep upon old ones can be created when the old ones never saw play, and that's ok.
- Long term game health is very important, they want to see Hearthstone going on forever.
- They're still looking for ways to fix these problems, and community feedback is important.
Card Design Competition - Finalist Voting
This week, on a Special Edition of our Weekly Card Design Competition, the winners of our Class Creation Competition return to enter the Grand Tournament! Will you, like the Twilight's Hammer, call tentacled knights to joust in your honor? Or, like the Merchant, are you only inspired by the tournament's profit potential?
Well, we'll be crowning two champions this week, one from each class, so check out the finalists and vote for your favorites! You can learn more about the two classes, Merchant and Twilight's Hammer by clicking on their portraits below.
Tavern Brawl #13 Decks - Double Deathrattler Battler
This week's Tavern Brawl theme is Double Deathrattler Battle.
Death is not quite the end... because minions with Deathrattle now rattle twice.
If you're looking for some fun community created decks to get that free card pack, or to play throughout the brawl, we've got you covered. Check out a couple of our favourites below and be sure to head on over to the full brawl deck listing to find others. Don't forget you can share your own creations by building your deck in our deckbuilder and setting the deck type to Tavern Brawl.
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Also, I forgot to add that I don't mind powercreeping neutrals with class cards to a certain limit. Cards like Savage Combatant compared to Tallstrider and Druid of the Claw vs Fen Creeper are fine, it gives a class a niche, unlike stupid neutral powercreep like Dr Boom(while we are at it, where is the nerf on him?).
They didn't even need to be interesting commons. It could have just been stat distribution filler, like a neutral common 3 mana 4/3 and a 6 mana 7/6. Boring, but at least it adds to options rather than removing 2 old cards from existence.
Somebody said on other interview that they don't want to change existing cards to not ruin physical feel of the cards, once you print it you can't change it, instead fix them with new cards. Keep in mind all games have cards that sux which add favor in to the game and can have future potential, not to mention unused cards adds to the pool of card s coming out of RNG
Problem isn't that they suck, problem is that they don't add anything to the game that it already didn't have, unlike Pit fighter and Jormungar that are excellent design even as vanila. If ice rager is intended as a joke towards magma, why not at least make it have same stats, make it sort of a new skin for magma rager, but even then, there are so many creative designs/stats and you chose to print this.
I agree with this more then I should. You also have a hidden points: You said about making packs cheaper, and actually, the aggro decks so happen to be the cheaper ones, and many pepole actually play aggro because they don't have the gold/dust/credit cards to get more cards.
I don't like the way hearthstone is going... Game is becoming boring and TgT was a bad expansion with so few playable cards.. Really hope they will do something better in the future and don't overlook these problems cause of the good marketing that is getting them money
Yeah, in my eyes a very bad expansion too. Lots of unplayable cards cause inspire and and luck based cards don't work since blizz failed to slow down the meta. At the same time you got a few very expensive cards that you need to craft(cause you will likely not get lucky to draw them from a pack among all the crap)...which will definitely discourage new players even more. Last but not least the decks get more and more specialized and more and more expensive. You can not just try some deck on your own anymore cause to face those decks you need a perfect deck(there are several crucial cards you need. usually legendaries or epics), which is very expensive. To build such a deck on your own just to notice that it is 1 round too slow for current meta is way to risky and penalizing...so people don't take that risk and just copy stuff from the net. Trying out new decks is basicly gone on rank 19 and above(I see the same dozen decks all over the place).
In other words: If Blizz stays on this track then they gonna dig their own grave. Expensive(be it due to pack-epics/legendaries or due to having to buy the campaigns) net decks all over constructed even at low ranks, arena being gated behind gold and getting more and more luck based with every expansion(cause the gap between a lucky draw during deck construction and a bad draw is ever increasing), the wall for new players ever increasing and the fact that building and trying new decks is being more and more discouraged(cause hardly anyone has all the needed cards)...that can drag a multi million player game down to an elitist game very quickly.
Bad expansion but still better than GvG imo, mech that only mage could use a fit, this expansion got more dragons that made many dragon class decks viable. However the expansion was clearly towards inspire mechanic and it just didn't work at all. It feels like they need to get an expansion with either a new class ( most likely death knight ) or the option to choose a different hero skill when creating a deck to shake the game meta.
TGT was more disappointing than bad IMO, it's very hard to tell a company they are doing something wrong when it makes them a lot of money, players pre-ordered in droves and from the decks on the ladder (circa rank 15) it seems they bought enough decks to start neddeckking from day one...
I've seen this talk of 'power creep' and 'barriers to entry' and 'no easy solution' lots of times now. The thing is there is an easy solution to both problems (and several more), which Wizards of the Coast realised years ago - set rotation.
It's one of those controversial, almost toxic phrases among Hearthstone players, but I can't help but think it's inevitable at some point in the future. And I think the game will end up being better for it, just like Magic has.
what is the problem you are trying to solve with 'set rotation'? it would not solve 'barriers to entry' on the contrary it would make it worse.
Great vid! Hope this keeps going, as it helps the community a lot with getting insight from designers
(maybe some whining will diminish over time at least :P)
Of course new players feel daunting when you keep releasing OP cards over time.
ConsiderPiloted Shredder. This card blew out the 4 drop competition and cards such as Chillwind Yeti, Dragonling Mechanic, Gnomish Inventor or Sen'jin Shieldmasta see almost no play. One over the top card effectively "nerfed" all other cards in this case. After Leeroy Jenkins got nerfed Arcane Golem saw more use. As far as card balancing goes, it was a very good one since some decks do run Leeroy Jenkins even in TGT.
You have to make more powerful cards in new expansions? Wrong again. Consider how an uninteresting, stricktly worse than Frostbolt card such as Darkbomb became a staple in many Warlock decks (granted that it came around as Soulfire was nerfed). Then we got Quick Shot because Hunters surely didn't have enough face damage. It's not like their hero power does face damage through taunts. God forbid making it deal 2 dmg like Lava Shock or hit only minions like Flamecannon.
I admit that hindsight is 20/20 but Blizzard is just making it so easy for me. For any new cards, if you are on the fence whether to make it slightly better than old cards are slightly worse, always go for slightly worse, especially if you are going to resist changing/banning cards in the future. Any new cards added to the game will potentially have synergy with old cards making stronger new decks.
This isn't rocket science. And I refuse to believe that developers at Blizzard are unaware of this simple fact. What I believe is happening is that just as it happened at other companies, the quality of games at Blizzard are compromised by business interest. "What do you mean nerf the new card, isn't that a good thing since people will buy more packs?" Nevermind that in the long term it will actually hurt the business. This isn't WOW or Diablo where you could just make old content obsolete, yet Blizzard is heading in that direction while giving us BS excuses. "chat channels are no necessary in battlenet" "lol doesn't need sandbox mode; and technology isn't there yet for replay" "you don't need more than 9 deck slots" "simcity doesn't work in offline mode" "we want cards to feel real" There's a limit on how much white lie players will tolerate and Blizzard is really pushing it these days.
Ben Brode is my favourite comedian Kappa
Give new players more quests to let them grind to catch up, problem solved.
1 Mana deal 10 damage? That's crazy...
What the hell?
It only does dmgto minions.
Besides, its like i will say mindblast is sooo op dealing 20 dmg to face for 2 mana? Allyou need is malygos and velen, but never mind that.
ben brode just told us that he has no solution for these 2 problems. smh.
don't use the word feedback anymore blizzard. you got thousands of posts on the horrific random arena pack and you do nothing about it. you got an uncountable amount of posts about overpowered cards like dr. boom that are now standard across all decks and you do nothing about this.
New content = More cards = Harder for beginners.
He's got a point by saying they need to bring bigger card to make it exciting but it doesn't mean it's the only approach. If they were actually giving types to old cards ( human/goblin/knight/orc ) and adding cards that gives synergy to those type, you wouldn't need stronger card. Just having this would give potential to every cards since most of them that have no ability. Who wouldn't want an elemental deck with Magma Rager ? :D
But I guess it's only a matter of time, they just want to slowly do it with each expansion.