Hearthstone Tavern Talk: Bringing Back Heroes, Balance Frequency, Community Card Art
The Tavern Talk series continues!
- They still hope to bring back some old heroes you can't get anymore. Very fluffy answer here.
- There are disadvantages to changing cards too often.
- They want you to play decks you enjoy and make you feel that your cards are still going to be there tomorrow.
- The art team accepts portfolios if you think your art matches the Hearthstone theme.
Quote from Jesse HillEver wondered what’s goes on behind the closed doors of the tavern? Ava and the crew’s antics aside, the Hearthstone development team works hard on a myriad of tasks to bring you the game you know and love so well. More than that, we also make the time to read about the different issues and questions the community brings to light each day.
Welcome to Hearthstone Tavern Talk, where we’ll share with you answers to some of the questions we see in our community!
What is the Hearthstone’s team stance on adding more or bringing back past Heroes?
We want to keep adding more cosmetic Heroes to the game. Along with card backs, they give players more visual options on how they want to play. We’re also hoping to bring back some of the ones we’ve featured in the past to give a wider audience a chance to get them. We’ve always got something in the works, but for various reasons it does take time to get them out into the game. Meanwhile we’re hard at work ensuring more valiant (and diverse) Heroes can join you on your Hearthstone adventures!
Why doesn’t Team 5 do more frequent balance changes?
Balance changes do some great things for Hearthstone. They reinvigorate the whole meta: people start experimenting with all kinds of decks and trying to find out which ones are strong or fun for them. In addition, there usually are a lot more decks and classes that people can play after balance changes, and this provides a lot more freedom to players to do what they like best.
However there are some disadvantages to frequently changing cards.
- Some people enjoy a meta that has settled down so that they can build a deck to counter the meta. When people are all experimenting with different classes, it is a lot harder to build a deck to counter the meta.
- Frequent changes make your collection feel less solid. This makes it harder to get excited about a specific card or deck you have.
- If things changed every week, players will not have enough time to explore all the nuances of a certain card.
- People grow accustomed to a favorite deck and when that deck is frequently changed up due to balance changes, the player often feels less inclined to trust the game as a whole.
Would you ever be open to receiving card art submissions from players or the community?
We love admiring community artwork for Hearthstone or the Warcraft universe in general. Many of the images you see in the game have been created by artists directly employed by Blizzard, but many more are created by our external art partners. We have reached out to artists like Monica Langlois and received permission from her to publish her Fen Creeper art in the game. We also discovered artists like Wei Wang and Tooth via fanart submissions.
If you feel your art style matches Hearthstone’s, we encourage you to submit your portfolio to the Hearthstone team at artsubmissions@blizzard.com. Remember to have “Hearthstone Art Submission” in the email title!
See you at the next edition of Hearthstone Tavern Talk!
Cheers!
I agree on rotating Classic as well. Card design is very limited with cards like Preparation.
i agree with classic , as mage is still lacking a few cards. until hall of fame.
That's what the hall of fame is for.
Disadvantages of changing cards too often.
Advantages of frequent card changes.
Yep, changing cards frequently is clearly the only and best answer, kappa.
right, blizzard is just lazy
So, you mean that there would be fewer copy-pasted deck 1 week after expansion release because not everyone goes ahead and crafts a flavor of the month right away? Sounds like a plus.
So, the arena becomes less stale overall and you are not forced to pick a particular class because its card pool is that much better? That also sounds like a plus.
So, the Wild would be more balanced overall? Why wouldn't anybody want that?
Hm.... even if you consider only the points you mentioned yourself, it more like 6-6 than 9-3, really. There are at least as many reasons why more frequent balance changes would be good.
You can measure people's perception about them trusting the game, or being less excited. Many Companies use mainly surveys, or interviews to measure questions similiar to these. The Net Promotor Score (NPS) is regularly used for these surveys, as an example.
Every expension people are excited about the cards.(probs to Blizzard for achieving this every time) But I think that excitement comes from playing with cards, instead of just having them. Therefore change does help people feeling excited about the cards again. Trust for me personally is no issue. I rather have change than consistancy. Feeling confident that cards stay the same is subjective. I do not care, someone else might.
Arguments like:
'' Some people enjoy a meta that has settled down so that they can build a deck to counter the meta.''
''People grow accustomed to a favorite deck and when that deck is frequently changed up due to balance changes, the player often feels less inclined to trust the game as a whole.''
Could be true, we do not know. So far as I know Blizzard never released any evidence to verify these arguments. Hiding behind authority and statements is not enough anymore. Evidence is very important if a community wants to be more than just a factory for opinions. My point is that people's perception is measurable, but Blizzard does not deliver any evidence on this subject.
You're suggesting to survey hundreds of thousands of people accurately and then use that to drastically change the play experience for everyone? That may seem nice on paper, but in actual execution you are not going to get the true opinions of most of the players. Most people honestly don't care about filling out surveys for most things, and for those surveys that do get filled out sizeable portions have to either force or highly motivate people to participate.
Blizzard doesn't need to produce a legal document or extensive evidence and research-based study to make changes or hold stances about something. This is what I don't like about modern gamers. They think that they can and have a right to attempt to strong-arm game designers into letting go of the reins and hand them over to the gamers completely if they yell loud enough. While a good company does listen and collaborate to their customers and the community they in no wise need to provide public evidence or get the players' permission for every decision they take for what they feel is for the best of their game.
However, say that we did go with your statement that Blizzard hasn't released evidence to verify the aforementioned claims. I could just as easily pose a counter-argument that at the moment there is also no evidence to establish that their claims are not true, or that the opposite of the claims are true.
there are disadvantages NOT changing cards often enough
is the real answer
(you have a massive advantage being a digital card game where you can change literally everything at any time..
yet not using that fact is just (insert insult here))
T Y R A N D E
I disagree with the frequent balance changes. Of course weekly balance changes are absurd but monthly... I think monthly balance changes are would be amazing for the game. The meta gets stale after a few weeks, let alone a month, and if you added nerfs (AND BUFFS) every month not only would the player experience be fresh every month but people would have more incentive to keep worse cards in the hopes they could get buffed, or become useful in the future. 1 month is more then enough time to adapt to the meta and counter it and If you don't like a meta you can simply wait a month. I feel everyone would benefit from this system. Casual/fun players will be able to try new decks, new interactions, and new classses, every month. Ladder players will get a fresher experience (not playing against the same cycle of decks for 4 months). And Blizzard will profit more off of people buying packs to try and get the new "in" cards for the month. To summarize my points, I believe monthly balance changes would be optimal for both the player base and Blizzard itself.
Summary comment anyone?
I think that each month being a "season" is putting over the top expectations on what the game should feel like each month. I personally think the monthly rewards system should be the same (ie resetting each month), but that the period between one expansion and the next should be considered that one single season. People seem to think that since a month is called a season that every month should be like playing a different game and that hurts the game imo because you get these players that demand nerfs each month, or even sooner.
One change every 4 months isn't ridiculous. Have you ever played an actual physical card game before? Erratas and balance checks don't even happen every 4 months. Yu-Gi-Oh? Try playing some variation of Chaos Control for over a year straight. The digital card game community has this bizarre expectation of frequent demand and return when it comes to balance checks.
You still need time for players to play the game for awhile to see if there is anything that is overtuned and in need of a balance check. During that time and before any nerf announcements you are going to have players crafting those cards. You will still get players, especially from the f2p community and even the low paying customers, who will have spent most of their dust and/or gold putting together a deck or two and then after a month it could get entirely dismantled because of the vocal minority reddit and youtube community. You would still have a degree of craft today and gone tomorrow. Non-whale customers would get punished by this because then instead of having to craft a new deck every 3-5ish months you potentially end up having to create one every single month. Do you have the dust to keep up with that demand?
The counter argument is that it takes like a month or more for a meta to finally settle. Some decks strong in the first month go away when a counter to it is found. No one remembers those, you only remember the decks that couldn't be countered. But if Blizzard nerfed too early, you lose decks that actually were "fair". I personally rather wait 2 extra weeks if it ensured the nerfs were correct, than have a quicker nerf but have them screw it up.
Think of the schedule... first month you can't really do too much because the meta settles. By the end of the month, you might have an idea of a deck or two that is problematic. Then you need to spend a couple of weeks playtesting if/how that deck should be nerfed. I'm sure nerfing Call to Arms was obvious, but how to nerf cubelock was very tricky. Once decided, you have to code it and then announce it in advance to give the players a warning. That whole process takes about 2 months, which is about when Blizzard does a nerf.
So, honestly, as much as it may hate the playerbase, Blizzard is probably doing it right. Let's just say they nailed the last rounds of nerfs perfectly, and so if it takes them 2 weeks extra to get it right, so be it. I'm fine with it.
Honestly that's kind of bullshit. The meta settles down within 3 weeks sometimes 1-2. If you release nerfs + buffs every month it's okay if you accidently nerf a card/archetype to hard as you can bring it back the following month.
The points about players not trusting the game or being less excited about their collection isn't something you can measure with cold hard facts and numbers. It is a perception about something in the game, or the game as a whole. Both of those points is something I have felt about why it wouldn't be good to nerf constantly.
Why feel excited about the cards you have when the chances are that many of them will be nerfed soon anyway? How do you trust that the deck(s) or card(s) you have one week will still be playable next week in a world of HS with frequent nerfs. The point would be that you wouldn't be able to completely feel confident that your cards would remain fairly static.
Why do these at all? So pointless.
thats bullshit to say the least. The Reason they dont change that often is because they dont care if the meta gets Solved?!?! considering the Amount of netdecking that happens...most people arent going to play decks that counter other netdecks...thats not a good argument. Plus the best times to play is when the meta isnt settled. I do find it ironic that this is the same team that Basically CHANGED NOTHING when the standard rotation happened and basically nothing changed; Warlock was still the way it was and Paladin didnt change either. The last thing to mention is that the team that handles overwatch does patch changes and hero nerfs/buff basically every month....its as if the two teams at blizzard are different companies all together.
A question for you. Which helps a player understand the game better and perform better at countering strong decks, putting together a combination of cards in a deck to take advantage of the weaknesses of an existing tier deck or asking for nerfs for every single deck as soon as it sticks around in the meta for a month or more?
Nerfs serve a purpose, but they should never take the place of players actually taking the cards available to them and trying to think of new strategies. I mean this is a strategy card game no? What is the point of trying to encourage players to think critically and think of their own counters if T5 is going to solve the problem for the players and nerf everything that is complained about anyway?
even most players nowadays dont because netdecking is at an all time high. basically 90% of my games are decks that are all the same. For example, the HCT America championship had 75% of its decks be the same 3 to 4 decks are already see most of the time (taunt druid/even or Cubelock/Rogue). like mentioned also, the fact that Blizzard didnt change ANYTHING when rotation happened and it was nothing but Warlock and paladin.....is bad RND