Mike Donais: Ladder Will Not Change With the Next Expansion
Mike Donais sat down with Cam Shea of IGN to discuss . We've recapped the interview below.
Quote from Mike Donais
- There's a huge variety of classes and decks as similar win-rates right now.
- ".. which is probably the flattest meta we've seen for Hearthstone since launch."
- Shamans are less of an issue now than pre-Gadgetzan.
- "Right now, it is definitely closer to even, closer to the 10% mark than it has been in the past. I think it's been improved."
- Pirate and Reno decks are among the more popular decks.
- "The different Pirate decks. If you add them all together and stack them on top of each other, it's still a very tall stack. The same thing is true of Reno decks."
- No Ladder Changes in the Next Set
- "There's lots of discussion going on , but I don't see us being that close. I think there's still not an obvious solution, but maybe some small steps in that direction going forward, and then as we discover more good ideas, more small steps in that direction?"
- "Not that I'm aware of, but it's not something that I work on. I work mostly on designing the cards."
- Pirates changing up how other decks are being played is okay, at least for a while.
- Charge minions are problematic due to buff combos, but they wanted to make the pirate fantasy succeed.
- Small-Time Buccaneer has gone through some changes over its development cycle.
- He changed five or six times throughout design process.
- 1 mana 1/2 - Whenever you equip a weapon, he gained +2 attack for the rest of the game.
- 1 mana 1/1 - Battlecry: Gain +1/+1 for each Attack of your weapon.
- His current iteration, or the final nerf, was made days before they had to lock the set in.
- Small-Time Buccaneer is on Mike's watch list as the decks it is used in won't change much with the upcoming Standard set rotation.
- Just because you make a card worse than the original design doesn't always mean it's still good to ship out.
Bonus: Mike Asks
In response to a question about a way to get specific cards / tier-one decks up and running faster for ladder play, Mike asked if a button that would let you buy a deck would be something that should be added to the game, so we ask the same question.
Should Blizzard add a way for players to buy a deck?
No Idea why they are not even trying something new on ladder. The feedback that we need something fresh for that format is nothing new and on the longterm they will probably start loosing people who are just not interested anymore in the simple grind.
"His current iteration, or the final nerf, was made days before they had to lock the set in."
I'm typically not one to throw shade at team 5, but this some bush league shit right here! Card's should be tested for MONTHS not days. Absolutely shameful. To those that never played magic, look up a little card called skullclamp. A last minute design change right before the set shipped seemed innocuous enough, but ended up warping the whole metagame around it.
"Let's talk about Standard first. Skullclamp was banned in Standard, frankly, because it was everywhere. Every competitive deck either had four in the main deck, had four in the sideboard, or was built to try and defend against it. And there were a lot more successful decks in the first two categories than in the third. Such representation is completely unhealthy for the format. Your deck has to either have Skullclamps, or have Skullclamp in its crosshairs—a definitive case of a card “warping the metagame.” -Aaron Forsythe, lead magic designer
Replace the skullclamp in the quote with small time buccaneer, and we have our current meta. Blizzard is clearly not spending enough time testing these cards. The sets should be designed at least a year out from launch so they have plenty of time to playtest. I'm not really sure the cause of the problem, but it seems like blizzard could add considerably more people to the team considering how much money this game prints.
While I agree mostly with what you're saying, part of me appreciates they didn't delay the release 2 weeks.
Actually now that I think about it more I'm going to have to disagree with you, they already tested it for a long time as a permanent 3/2(if equiping a weapon), if they saw that as mostly fine, I don't think it's that much of a leap to say the down grade of having to have a weapon would not need that much extra testing.
I agree that last minute changes on 1-drops are bad, but frankly if they tested every card for months new sets would take so damn long to come out; their team of play-testers simply isn't big enough to test cards on that scale. Oversights will happen with cards, since their team of <100 people can't predict what the MILLIONS of players can come up with in the time they have to test, even if the time they spend developing sets was increased to a year. (It's currently 8 months for a set. Source: http://www.hearthpwn.com/news/2103-hearthstone-sets-take-8-months-to-design-also)
But... things like this though I do agree it is definitely worrying how last-minute changes were made to a card that they should easily realize from looking at it how defining it would be - giving every weapon class a Flame Imp without the downside is a fucking HUGE deal, and the fact that it was almost even stronger has people like us rightfully concerned about how much thought is being put into these cards. 1-drops especially since by the nature of the game they have the possibility to have the most impact since it can be played right away.
you can disagree with me all you want, but at the end of the day to deny that standard and wild have completely warped around STB and patches is dishonest at best. More than 1/3 of the decks seen on ladder intend to abuse the pirate package , and the other 2/3 have to build their decks to beat it, which isn't healthy for the game. Further illustrating the problem is that patches decks have the highest winrate against the rest of the meta. To claim you'd rather have a game be released 2 weeks early rather than have a balanced, thoroughly tested meta speaks volumes of your opinions in regards to balance and design.
They tested previous designs for months on end. The fact that they put such a clearly powerful, undertested card into the game at the last minute is highly disturbing. So because they overlooked the powerlevel of the card, we should just accept it as is? Re-read the quote in my original post, this was coming from a company that had over a decade in card design experience up to that point. They made a last minute change to a card, which seemed to lower its overall power, but ended up being completely busted, and warped an entire standard meta around it. Regardless of how much they tested the card in previous iterations, they didn't test this one enough, and in most use cases is just as powerful as the permanent buff.
to paraphrase
Your deck has to either have STB or have STB in its crosshairs—a definitive case of a card “warping the metagame."
of course oversights will happen, but to not thoroughly test a card so clearly over the typical power level seems downright incompetent. There is literally no argument against more rigorous playtesting of cards. Blizzard could hire 500 playtesters, and it would be a drop in the bucket compared to what they make off this game. You can't test a card for a week or so and draw any conclusive evidence from your testing. These things need to be tested for a year or more. MTG designs their cards 2 years out from release, this not only gives them time to test the cards, but have a clearer understanding of how they will impact the standard meta which can last close to 2 years at a time.
There's a very easy argument for why they don't, and really can't test cards more vigorously. It's largely shaped around capitalism. Marketing companies of ANY caliber are forced to make decisions that will get the product out quickly and get it to sell. Blizzard is at the end of the day a company that wants to make money, and if they don't have to hire 500 new play testers (Which is still a LOT of extra money to spend) Then they wont. It's simply inefficient for them since this past method of set creation has been extremely successful (in terms of sales). Shitty design or not, people seem to eat it up anyways.
Products are rushed out because of the never-ending struggle to stay competitive. Think of how long it used to take for new segments of popular games to come out. In the words of Michael Crichton, "The cycles were originally three years to a new product, a new version. Then it was two years. Then eighteen months. Now it was twelve months - a new version every year. If you figure beta debugging to a golden master takes four months, then you only have eight months to do the actual work. Eight months to revise ten million lines of code, and make sure it all works right." Now take that and apply it to Hearthstone.
That being said, the means do not justify the ends. Cards like this should definitely be tested more than they are, ESPECIALLY considering how conservative blizzard is with changes. Since they are so reluctant to make said changes you'd think they would take more care with cards initial releases, but I guess not. Blizzard seems to consistently release products that still have minor and major flaws in the very core of their design. Hence we consistently have issues with out of control aggressive decks as a result of power creep'd low cost cards, e.g. our friend STB, as well as cards like Jade idol which prevent a meta from ever leaning towards control since druid will always win the value game now. Always.
So does blizzard have a good reason as to why they aren't hiring more play testers? Well, yeah. Company efficiency with a profit motive dictates they don't. People buy the cards anyways and blizzard profits more since they don't spend as much. Does that justify releasing products that aren't thoroughly tested? Not in the slightest. In fact it's a legitimate issue when it comes to more serious products being rushed out than our virtual children's card game. Blizzard should test these cards more, but as we all know they're honestly very stingy when it comes to their products, rarely giving out free packs, even to new players. (Every other virtual TCG out there currently gives SO much more than Blizzard does) So unfortunately, unless there's a profit motive its unlikely they will change their ways.
Great well thought out response. Agree with everything you said. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, very insightful.
The only way I would say that "buying a deck" would be a viable option is if it also crafted the cards you were missing.
Shaman is 25% or more of the ladder distribution. Data doesn't lie.
http://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-33/
Definitely lower if you account for Wild, Casual, Arena and Tavern Brawls (although I wouldn't count the later two). Don't focus so much on Ranked Standard, there is more to hearthstone than that.
Ranked standard and Arena are the only modes that aren't a snooze fest,unless you're a low rank player I gues.
Do you really think that Blizzard devs are so honest with us ?
Not everyone is a deckbuilder, some people just like to play the cards, and think of strategies with something that has already been built. Buying decks is fine,just not necessary.
I don't think buying decks is the way to go, it will make too much salt. I think a cool way to give new players access to more cards is to make some of the deck recipes available to play for free and then rotating which decks every week.