Max McCall Talks About Combo Decks and Why They Can Be Problematic
Our friendly neighborhood Hearthstone developer Max McCall jumped on the forums again yesterday, sharing his thoughts about combo decks in the game. In short, they feel that while a combo deck might be a lot of fun for the person playing that deck, it isn't for the opponent, especially if those type of decks are very common on the ladder. Decks with the goal of minimizing interaction with your opponent and/or killing them instantly are not the type of decks they want to be on top of the meta, so they're careful with printing cards that make these type of decks too strong.
A lot of players disagree with him and think combo decks are some of the most fun and skill-intensive decks in the game. What do you think?
You can read his full thoughts below:
Quote from Max McCallHearthstone is fun because each game is a little different from the last. Combo decks make for very different types of games, where players can’t rely on their normal decision-making heuristics and have to reconsider their strategic approach to the game. So, in general, combo decks are good for Hearthstone because they add some texture to the ladder experience. But like any other deck, combo decks that become too popular cause issues.
When we make cards like Emperor Thaurissan and Counterfeit Coin, we’re aware that they tend to enable combo decks. We don’t usually set out to make a particular combo deck be a particular power level; we are always worried about missing and making a deck more powerful than we’d like – and that goes for any type of deck, not just combo decks - but that doesn’t mean that we don’t want any combo decks at all. We do want combo decks. We just want them at the same level that we want other decks.
Specific combo decks can be problems for the same reason that any other deck can be a problem: when a deck in Hearthstone gets too popular, you play against it so frequently that it stops being fun. Further, usually popular decks are powerful, so you are also likely to be losing more games than you win while also playing against the popular deck more often than you would like.
Powerful combo decks tend to exacerbate this problem because most combo decks aren’t trying to interact with their opponents on any axis that involves minions. It is cool when, once in a while, you play a game against a deck that is all card drawing and removal and you have to consider how you want to ration your threats instead of finding little victories in profitable trades. It is less cool when you start playing a substantial fraction of your games against “Frost Nova, Doomsayer, go” before getting Ice Lanced out of the game. Figuring out a good trade is more fun than making educated guesses about how your opponent will kill your minions over the next few turns.
I am not saying that some or all combo decks are inherently bad for Hearthstone. I am saying that when a deck is popular, it becomes less fun to play against. Popular combo decks have the further problem that they try to ignore opposing minions as much as possible, which is frustrating for most non-combo players.
This is true whether or not a deck is easy or hard to play, although the decks that are hard to play tend to be less popular because less skilled players don’t play them as often.
Also, saying that a combo deck is interactive because it has a bunch of removal is true only in the loosest sense of the word. Combo decks use their removal to try to reduce their interaction with their opponents as much as possible.
Cards are interactive when they generate strategic options for both players. Minions are interactive because their controller has options on how to leverage their threat and their opponent has options on how to remove it. Removal itself reduces the strategic options for both players: it reduces the amount of stuff in play that can be interacted with.
This isn’t to say that all removal is problematic – removal spells are very important for Hearthstone – but I see the idea of ‘this deck is interactive because it is really good at killing minions’ frequently and I wanted to challenge that assertion.
Most combo decks, in addition to trying to avoid interacting with minions, also try to avoid letting their opponent interact with them. The problem with OTKs isn’t so much ‘I was at 30, then I lost’ as much as it is ‘I was at 30, then I lost, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.’ You can play a taunt minion against a Leeroy combo, but again, most combo decks are very good at killing minions, so the idea that a taunt minion will save you against a Miracle Rogue that’s drawn their whole deck is a stretch.
So, most combo decks try to avoid interacting with their opponents as much as possible, and then win in a way that is extremely difficult for their opponent to interact with in a meaningful way. It’s good when those types of decks pop up on ladder occasionally. But when those types of strategies are too popular and powerful, they are frustrating, and we nerf them.
When they are not popular, we tend to let them be. Usually they are less popular because they are less powerful; often they are less powerful because they have to interact with their opponent. For example, the Aviana-C’Thun combo has to play a lot of C’Thun minions, which facilitates interaction for both players. Combo decks that aren’t super popular or super powerful are great to have around; as I noted earlier, they do a lot to add variety to the ladder.
This may be a bit off-topic, but actually, the popularity of a deck is not solely based on the power level of the deck itself, but how well the match-ups a deck could face. For example, the most popular decks are Pirate decks, Jade decks and Reno decks. It is because the Pirate decks are so good and almost have no bad match up. If you are laddering, surely you would play a deck with the least bad match up as possible. Jade decks and Reno decks are just the counter and the counter to counter thing. Combo decks would just be gone if Aggro decks are the dominant force, even if you tech in so many anti-aggro cards.
tldr - combo decks are fine but popular combo decks will be nerfed to the ground
Seriously, try this:
Step 1: Copy the entire page into a blank word document.
Step 2: Find and replace all words "combo" with "aggro"
Step 3: Read it.
IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE!
I did but change " combo" with " control warrior" and work the same
Control Warrior (CW) kills every opposing minion through weapons, their own minions, or spells.
Really because CW loves interaction with minions, and will sit there armoring up while they face tank damage.
Rest of the article is the same, but you are going to have a hard time telling me a deck full of taunts, minions, and weapons that tries to get to turn 40 by killing all of your opponent's minions is not interactive.
"He kills your minions and you can't do anything about it, thus it's not interactive"
In other words, hearthstone itself isn't interactive so this argument is absolutely bullshit
I agree, Pixywing. At least control warrior has to make more than 4-6 decisions to win a game, and is nowhere near as reliant on opening hand draw. Plus, it makes use of some very cool effects in Hearthstone that are otherwise almost impossible to achieve in the current meta--such as Elise Starseeker.
Otherwise, control warrior isn't OP, it's a tier three deck, and it's more interactive than either combo or aggro decks because you can usually count on 12-15 turns of board play before a winner is decided.
The issue with combo decks (and I think a number of other issues as well) stem from the fact that Hearthstone allows no reaction from a player on their opponent's turn. If there were the option to play even a small subset of spells, or if secrets would allow you to choose when you want to trigger them instead of triggering automatically, then the strength of combo decks would decrease significantly. That's never gonna happen, though, because it violates the "simple" policy of Hearthstone.
PO by itself is pretty mediocre card. Babycrying about it being OP is overused. It's good because of combo with charge minion (notably Leeroy) and Faceless Manipulator, combo with Shadowflame, to some extent combos with Sylvanas and with Faceless Shambler. Also any cheap card becomes better because of warlock hero power. But, despite its OMG 4 FACE DAMAGE POTENTIAL, it wasn't even used in zoo before warlock got crapload of token generators. Even in Naxxramas with its eggs and spiders two copies of PO were debatable. Only after it, when Soul Fire was nerfed and warlock got Implosion (and then Imp Gang Boss, then Dark Peddler, then Possessed Villager and tentacles) PO became auto-include.
Cold Blood in most situation is better than PO but it's used only in aggro and miracle. Not relying on face damage variants like N'Zoth and Jade don't run it despite IT'S EVEN BETTER THAN SO OP CARD.
Blessing of Might is not so much worse (3 damage for 1 mana is pretty cool, isn't it?) but it saw zero play in anything besides eboladin.
For the past 3 years they printed plenty of cool mage cards, I don't know what you are talking about (or at least powerful, if by "cool" you mean something hipster).
Printing cool cards for rogue is a kind of religious tabu for Team 5. It can't be helped. On the other hand, each time they deside to nerf something in HS, they mandatorily nerf something for rogue too.
Don't delete an Archetype, just print more Loathebs, more Dirty Rats, and Counterspells.
Deleting an Archetype is just going to drive away players of that archetype. Why should I play a game where the developer hates my playstyle?
However, after thinking about it, I think that the question becomes less "Is this what they want for Hearthstone" and more "Is this what they want for Standard".
If Malygos OTK/VelenPriest is fine in Wild, then there's really nothing to worry about.
And there we have it. A rank 20 player saying how ice lance is op and toxic and conceal is op and toxic while cards like babbling book stay out of your radar. Just don't discuss something you have 0 clue about.
How many times have you heard them say something limits their design space and then use it? I'm sorry. But so far there was nearly not a single good and fulfilled promise coming from blizzard in regards to game design. I'm sorry, but if you're higher ranked – you're most likely in the minority of the players who think cards like ice lance are "toxic".
Yes, combo decks are meant for the more skilled players. However, if you are worried about "non interaction", why not look at the "aggro wins" meta? SMORC to win.
I interpret that you are trying to make things "fair" as in everyone has an equal chance and no one can be better. What's really the point of playing then? All is left is luck on who draws the better card first. Well that in itself is not fair. If someone has a superior deck and skill level, they should be able to play to their best ability and opportunity. While it might sound mean or rough, there shouldn't be new players in top tiers. By making everything the same and equal, it's now mostly chance on who wins.
Now, back to combo decks. While yes, we can't have easy turn 2 or 3 combo wins, combos aren't bad. And if you are worried about combos, why not make cards that can slow or counter them? We obviously don't have instant speed spells like MTG, but what if you had something similar? We have card abilities. If you were to print something like Thaurissan again, what if you had a card that did the opposite to an opponent? Each turn makes their cards cost one more. Or a creature that had an ability, "Every time a card is played, increase all other cards in that player's had by one until end of turn." And calling removal or stall cards non-interactive is not true. That is the whole point of playing control; stopping the opponent from doing anything. Just like aggro want to push hard and fast. Combo decks are trying to do their thing.
While yes, the strive for new player experience is important, you still need to think of all the current players. I don't want thoughtless decks that anyone, even bots, can play and win with. SKILL and EXPERIENCE is why I want to be playing this game. I wouldn't still be playing Magic the Gathering after 7 years if it wasn't. So just sayin.
F*ck yea man, I agree with everything you said, top tier decks (or most of them) were the hardest and most rewarding to play once upon a time, nowadays it's the exact opposite and this is what's killing this game! I really can't believe they made this statement about combo decks, this must make everyone playing this game for a while sad, at least I interpret this as a statement that they are going to dumb the game down even more, let's hope that's not the case because they're going to lose a lot of their hardcore gamers.
I wish he had the same philosophy when it comes to pure aggro face decks. If he did maybe the meta wouldn't have turned out the way it currently is.
Interesting read, though the odd thing is i don't seem to find anything about interactive combo pieces, even though Hearthstone already has a few of those.
Mirrored effects for instance are a great way to make your opponents interact with your combo. I'm thinking along the lines of mill-rogue and its Coldlight Oracle. There's lots more that could be done here, like the +2 spell damage beast druid had a while ago. Something like a mirrored-Thaurissan would be a great risk-reward combo piece while also giving the opponent something interesting to bend their minds with.
...and being killed by mindnumbing aggro decks by turn 4 is just fine and dandy huh. Yeah right.
Combo decks and aggro decks are similar in a sense that they are frustrating to play against. But the former actually require this little thing called "thought" while the latter hardly ever do. It's a STRATEGY card game ffs, not a clicker visual novel or a movie. Aggro decks are supposed to be one of the more difficult archetypes to play because of limited resources, lack of backup plan, etc. but aggro in HS nowadays is as dumb as it could get.
If combo is that big of a problem as you make it out to be, and the frustration is that important of an issue, try designing something that has combo potential while also being somewhat interactive. How about making cards that are a little bit more complex? You could certainly design card effects that require something more than a 5 year old's intelligence to understand. Nerfing the shit out of whatever the hell the losers feel salty about is the worst possible approach to any game.
HS has a great advantage in being a digital card game. It is so much easier to change things, try new stuff, fix problems. It's so much more flexible. Make use of that advantage.
...and that is not always good. "Straightforward" and "simple" can be two different things in my opinion. Card texts can have a bit more complexity/depth and still avoid being counter-intuitive.
Card games by nature are targetted toward the older/complex-thinking demographic. I'm sure HS can afford to have a tad bit more depth without hurting its general picture too much. Whatever they do, it would be 10 times better than this numbed-down pseudo-game state we have right now.
PS. I like your name btw BrokeBack