Ben Brode on Evergreen Cards in Standard, Hall of Fame, Player Accessibility to the Meta
With the earlier announcement of incoming card nerfs, Ben Brode has been on reddit this afternoon responding to community questions. View the source below for the full comments or our quick recap.
- The goal with the nerfs was to reduce the ratio of Basic/Classic cards in Standard decks. It's too high.
- Ben thinks 10-ish cards is about right for what Standard decks should include when it comes to Basic/Classic cards.
- It was never the plan to not make changes to Basic and Classic cards.
- Hall of Fame is there to act kind of like a rotating core set that other games have.
- They are hoping to have something to announce early next year to talk about better player accessibility to meta decks.
Source Posts
Quote from Ben Brodewhen reading the justification for the change to Fiery War Axe (and, by extension, the Murloc Warleader change).
I just want to make it clear that those are meant to cover some of the thinking behind why we went with option A over option B - not why we decided to make a change to begin with.
In a world where we are looking at making a change, we felt like these changes are slightly less disruptive and that is upside, in a vacuum.
It's not a vacuum, obviously, but the goal here was to reduce power level because the ratio of basic/classic cards in Standard decks is still too high (they represent the biggest percentage of played cards, still).
Commonly, when we mention that we think about a wide variety of players, it can come off like we are focusing on new players at the expense of currently engaged players. That isn't the way we think about it. Usually we look for win-win solutions, where a change is good for the ongoing fun of playing Hearthstone and is also not disruptive to loosely engaged players. We've definitely made changes that are quite disruptive because it's very important to keep Hearthstone fun for engaged players. Just because we prefer non-disruptive changes doesn't mean we are trying to do that at the expense of other types of players.
Specifically, we made these changes for engaged players who are most affected by imbalance (deck diversity goes down the higher rank you are), and who are most likely to want to see the meta change when new sets come out or during the yearly set rotation. (Source)
isn't that the whole point why classic set is evergreen? not only that, basic cards solidify class identity. not a big fan of war axe, innervate, and warleader changes mr brode.
What do you think the right percentage of evergreen cards in decks should be?
I tend to think 10-ish cards might be right. We're way above that right now, and I think it would be better if it were closer to 10. (Source)
I mean remember when Kibler and a lot of people said that it's gonna be a mistake that you keep Basic and Classic in Standard forever?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUupMooIJYo&feature=youtu.be&t=4m17s
I really do want to believe that you want the best for this game yet so many times we have this "we said you so" moment. I love this game but honestly the evergreen sets policy is the biggest problem that holding back the whole design of the game. A rotating core set with reprints would make much more sense. But whatever, our opinion doesn't mean anything in the end.
Keeping Basic and Classic around with no changes was never the plan. We launched rotation with twelve nerfs, specifically because we knew we couldn't just have evergreen sets as-is. There is value in having evergreen sets, but there is a balance to it. Our Hall of Fame system is similar in some ways to a rotating core set. (Source)
bbrode how will you make the game accessible for new players if they cant build matadecks for even longer than now?
Hoping to have something to announce that will help with these problems early next year. We have a lot of work to do on the new player experience, but some of these problems can be mitigated by matchmaking, to some extent. (Source)
Literally why didn't they just add "Can't attack Heroes" to War Axe. There's too many 3 health minions that Warrior has no effective way of dealing with now.
They can still deal with them? Just play it on turn 3...
If midrange hunters can successfully use Eaglehorn Bow, even without running the secret package, I think a control class that has better survivability than hunters can use their 3 mana weapon for the exact same task.
the difference is that in the core cards and classic set there are beasts that can support hunter in 1,2 mana! Warrior don't have this option
Hex = polymorph
counter fit coin = innervate
.... so are we out of ideas for having class cards and we are getting fake multi class cards that lack originality? Strategy gets nerfed.....
The difference is that shaman needs to attack most of the time the minion to have access to other minions or face. Mage can do it with spells and 1-1 sheep don't cause any serious problem. Also, shaman must deal with overload that mage dont need to!
That's what is everything saying here! Each class has the advantages and disadvantages. You can't compare just cards. You need to think the whole package how ti works.
New Player and F2P experience really really needs to get addressed, and "early next year" isn't soon enough. In the KOFT meta, most of the playable cards in the expansion are Epic/Legendary, and even for the commons that see play, you still need Epics/Legendaries from KOFT to play those decks (e.g. Spreading Plague is playable as a common, but not without 2x UI and Malfurion DK). Heck, even the super-narrow tech cards that are sometimes playable are Epics now (Skulking Ghoul). F2Pers and new players need decks that can be relatively easily built out of rares and commons and maybe like 1 Legendary that don't completely suck.
You can change everything on UI from 5 to 4 and it'll still be used in every druid deck. At least it'll be less oppressive.
This comment is neither clever, or funny. It is does not add value to any argument nor does it prove any point.
It appears that the HS team is taking a similar approach to this game as the WoW devs took towards PVP.
Back when I played WoW I LOVED PvP. It was so much fun, and was always a dynamic experience. However, slowly but surely, the devs moved to homogenize all the classes and the diversity suffered. Healers didn't feel nearly as unique, DPS classes seemed interchangeable etc.
When Hearthstone first came out, the point of having different heroes and classic was to offer UNIQUE identities for each respective class. Each class had UNIQUE, POWERFUL, CLASS DEFINING cards. That was the whole point. So while Warriors got Fiery War Axe, Mages got Fireball etc.
With each successive nerf to powerful class defining cards the HS devs are ruining the identities and diversity they strove to create in the first place. What's the point of making Hex the same as Polymorph.
The Dev team also seems to confuse the issues. Fiery War Axe is a powerful card. Everyone agrees on that. But the card itself isn't itself intrinsically overpowered. The cards the devs decided to print that synergize perfectly with it are the problem. So rather than identifying the root cause, they nerf an integral card to the warrior class.
There is also a huge lack of consistency in the devs thought process. Who remembers 8 mana Mind Control? Do you remember how the devs justified its nerf? Let me remind you
Now lets have a look at why they didn't decide to nerf Ultimate Infestation.
So let me get this straight, since Mind Control is frustrating to play against, it was nerfed. But since Ultimate Infestation 'feels bad to lose to' it isn't worthy of a nerf? Am I the only one that sees the irony here?Again they really aren't addressing the root problem. If you want to introduce an incredibly powerful class defining card, you're going to have to do it for all classes. Is there any single 10 mana card in the game for any other class that's as powerful as Ultimate Infestation? No, there is not.
It's also quite ironic they brought up Ice Block. I get why the card is frustrating. If the devs have been debating what to do about it for some time, why release Open the Waygate at all? This deck would not work without Ice Block. Just another example of inconsistency from the devs.
The devs are not focused on class representation, identity, or diversity. How long as Rogue only had basically one dominant archetype in miracle rogue? Sure quest rogue was a thing, but it was promptly nerfed. Why haven't they focused on making more viable alternative rogue decks? How about hunter? Hunter has languished for several seasons now and no new powerful cards have been released for this class.
I always thought it was odd they decided to make the core set evergreen and then constantly nerf cards from it. Why make it evergreen at all if you want nerfs? Ben brode said he thought 10 cards from the core set in a deck was about right... Well then why have a core set at all? If you want new cards to be played the majority of the time get rid of the core set. The core set should be a way to allow players to have access to the powerful class defining cards explained above. Now they won't even have that if all these nerfs continue to happen.
The greatest strength of Hearthstone should be the fact that it is a digital card game which would allow for timely updates for issues that obviously need to be addressed. Instead we have the devs provide unnecessary head scratching nerfs to cards that weren't needed while ignoring core issues and class identities.
As a player base we are intelligent enough to realize this game will never be fairly balanced. Ever. Is that not the point? Some classes will get awesome cards while other classes have alternative equally as powerful cards. As long as each class has a couple different viable archetypes, isn't that the point?
This is a blatant sales tactic (Disrupt & Reframe). Ultimate Infestation will get nerfed, but only after sales and game activity drop. I promise they are still seeing high sales and game activity since they did NOT nerf it.
People are trying to craft very specific cards/decks (or new players spending money to craft 2x in the first place) to counter it, thereby boosting sales temporarily. This sales technique targets the subconscious, so look back over the last month and evaluate (even with all your rage towards Druid) how much money/time you have still invested into this xpac. Community activity is high because we are all on here raging about this is stuff. It creates buzz (free marketing) for the xpac and draws in players.
Of course this is a theory since blizzard would never admit to it, and they’ll never release detailed sales data. We’re fools to think Blizzard aren’t masters at game psychology by now.
TL;DR sales psychology dictates If we all stopped playing for a week I bet we would see it nerfed overnight.
totally aggree, these cards made it possible to play different kind of decks with your own class cards needed for it. If he dont stop nerfing these cards there will be much less decks to play with and also hearthstone loses a lot of self created decks..
I would argue that C'Thun was (during the WOTOG meta) a 10-mana card of similar power level to UI in decks based around it (in the same way as UI is powerful in decks based around it, specifically based on ramping it out on turn 6-7; turn 10 UI is not particularly exciting). The main difference between the 2 is that turn 6 C'Thun is not particularly exciting (even if it was possible, which it basically isn't) while turn 6 UI wins games. However, if your basis for comparison is "Have they ever made a 10 mana card as good as UI?", then I would point at C'Thun. I think the real question is "Have they ever made a card you can play on turn 6-7 that is as good as UI?", though.
suge knight!
It's definitely a reality that this is a business. Virtually no business effectively wants to "do whats best for the players, the game". Yes, businesses will show and say that they care about their customers, and it's obvious that showing you care, and keeping the player base happy, is generally good for business. The thing to keep in mind is that, a business will mostly do and say what's best for their players while that ultimately serves to further their business. They are not going to ever make changes that they believe will ultimately reduce their player base numbers, sales, etc. Businesses will do the "nice" or "right" thing as long as it lines up with their profit goals. Not a slam against blizzard in anyway whatsoever. This is to be expected and a natural way to conduct business. People and companies aren't genuinely interested in your happiness and well being; to think so seems incredibly naive and idealistic to myself.
Source: Human being with general grasp of basic capitalism and human nature
I agree with everything that you said(even though I have never played WOW, but you seem to know what you are talking about when comparing the two) apart from the Ultimate Infestation part and it is disappointing that I keep seeing "pro" players approving and suggesting that the card gets nerfed. The card has a downside, specifically the "draw 5 cards" part of it plus it costs 10 mana. It's the fact that Innervate(the way it is right now) and Jade Idol can't co-exist in the class along with Ultimate Infestation, at least not in a mode that is supposed to be balanced, simply because these two cards are hiding that downside.
Players will rightfully play(they wouldn't be wrong in doing so,especially if behind on health and on board) Ultimate Infestation on turn 10 or even at turn 8; chances are that if Innervate is used, one additional card to activate it, there will be less cards in hand thus all the more reason to play the card for a hand refill while also benefiting from the card's additional effects. If the second Innervate hasn't been drawn from the deck and there is the risk of milling for the minimum amount of 1 card(in the case 5 cards are already in hand) the player going for this play wouldn't mind "high-rolling" for a chance to draw it and not get punished for that rather, greedy play.
The way Jade Idol works reinforces this "high-rolling" as well. I bet the thought process of players using jade druid goes a bit along these lines when having a hand of 5 cards or more "I have shuffled a bunch of Jade Idol's in the deck. Do I care if I mill 1 or 2 when I play Ultimate Infestation ? Nope, I don't. Let it mil me for all I care, I can shuffle some more". It is this way of thinking that Blizzard felt like altering, even if they kind of failed with the announced nerfs.
Critical thinking sure is nice to see every once in a while. I doubt we will make any difference with what's to come with our bickering though...
I still remember whsen Blizzard said call of the wild was too OP giving 9 mana of value for 8 mana... and nerfed it to 9. but 10 mana for 17 mana worth of value is iight -_-
What's call of the wild?
(it's a joke)
Call of the wild was epic and should remain 8 mana. Although you didnt have random effect and it was even better than the 3 mana. That was another advantage.
But here the difference is huge
Is brode aware of the existence of blizzard websites and forums?