All the fan creation competitions have got me thinking how I might redesign HS itself, if I were in control. I know a ton of testing and iterating went into the game, and obviously it's quite well designed, but I'm sure there are things the devs would change if they could, and I know there are things I would change. How about you?
I'm not really talking about major game mechanics - HS with land mechanics from Faeria or MTG would be an entirely different game - but if they'd improve the gameplay, go for it. Mostly, I'm thinking minor-moderate adjustments while retaining the core game.
Some initial thoughts, may or may not have any merit:
Improved draw - there's nothing worse than drawing Flame Imp with an empty hand turn 10. A replace mechanic like Duelyst or else some sort of minimum hand size (empty hand always draws 1 -> play imp and get another card) are an improvement.
Permanent board spots - this is a more significant mechanic change, but the ability to choose positions and spread out minions (vs automatically playing adjacent to existing minions, or the "middle" of an empty board) opens up some interesting choices and strategies. It also complicates summon minions like Haunted Creeper and adjacent cards like Flametongue Totem, but worth considering.
I know there's a lot of other common ideas like less emphasis on randomness and more relevant arena hero powers (warrior/hunter)...what other ideas do you have?
Yes always draw a card when your hand is empty . This way we can all play retarded aggro decks with 30 1-2 drops . That seems like a very good design that would make the game better .
Auto-draw at a cost of 2-mana, if >= 2 mana remaining? Some sort of warlock hero power for all classes? You're right about agro, but I don't think we need to sacrifice draw because of it, necessarily. No free draw though, you're right.
not letting charge minions attack face the turn they're summoned, if and only if there weren't instants/trap cards,
cards gotten from discover revealed ,i do like the rng in the game as it allows for crazy stories i can tell people and get a couple of laughs out of them, but usually in card games most mechanics that add cards to your hand, make you reveal those cards which is a completely fair price to pay for the hand advantage you're getting.
I like this game for the most part, but I would change all the dragon effects that go, 'if you have a dragon in your hand', to, 'if you control a dragon.'
Obviously there would need to be some major balancing done to get this change to work (for instance, I would give dragon egg a dragon tag, and possibly buff some of the more expensive dragons elsewhere), but playing against dragon priest before the transition was annoying (especially as a f2p player), because I felt like I would have a 2/2 1 cost minion, and my opponent would have a 2/3 1 cost minion, and I was just playing from behind the entire game. There was also nothing I could do about whether dragon priest had a dragon in their hand, 99% of the time they did, 1% of the time they didn't, so the bonus didn't feel like a bonus, it just felt like part of the card. And then, that requirement also made it so that if priest wanted to get the requirement, they could just make their deck 90% dragons, which was kinda boring deck construction, that's about as blatant as blizzard can get in saying, "Here is the deck we want you to play. Go play this." I've been frustrated by other decks before, like jades, pirates, and rogue quest, but I think blackrock dragon priest is the least creative and worst designed of the bunch that I've been frustrated by.
I've felt like blizzard has learned from this experience though, and has designed better cards since then. Elementals in Un-goro were fantastically designed, with a lot of decision making involved in when you play an elemental and when you don't, and gave the opponent some time to predict what was going to happen next turn, because I knew if my opponent had played an elemental the previous turn. Adapt and discover are really cool mechanics that add skillful choice in to the game (though primordial glyph may have been a bit of a mistake). The dragons since blackrock have mostly been pretty good, powerful cards that can go in a dragon deck but also can go in regular control decks (think primordial drake or bone drake).
Ok but being serious, I think they messed up every Jade card. Handbuff faction is terrible by comparison, and highlander/Kazakus (Kabal) is mostly inconsistent. Jade on average is much stronger.
Further, Jade in Druid is simply nuts by comparison to Rogue and Shaman. Jade Rogue never really became a thing, and Jade Shaman had to be supplemented by other Shaman styles that were already strong - it too never became its own thing.
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I have to say this: Instants are a terrible idea in an online card game. There's a reason why MTG:O never became popular, and it isn't only because of Wizard's incompetence in UX design.
I will say ladder revamp. I also like the idea of targeted discard, at least on your own cards.
Ok but being serious, I think they messed up every Jade card. Handbuff faction is terrible by comparison, and highlander/Kazakus (Kabal) is mostly inconsistent. Jade on average is much stronger.
Further, Jade in Druid is simply nuts by comparison to Rogue and Shaman. Jade Rogue never really became a thing, and Jade Shaman had to be supplemented by other Shaman styles that were already strong - it too never became its own thing.
I think jades in shaman is what you should be aiming for when you create an architype in a game like hearthstone, where when I play against shaman, I'm not worried that there are going to be infinite jades, but that shaman's jade cards are just good cards, and they're good cards that get better over the course of the game. Jade lightning and jade claws are both run because of their initial effect, with the jade as an added bonus, then the other jade cards are run because, if you have a few jades in your deck already, you can get a few more. Still, I feel like I am playing against a shaman using jades, as opposed to when I play druid, I feel like I'm playing against the jade armada with a few support cards designed to call the rest of the jade army to the field.
I would have more carefully scrutinized cards that allow players to flat-out ignore what their opponents are doing on the other side of the board. Ignoring instants and such, MTG has an advantage in allowing defending players the chance to assign blockers. When a player can built a deck that eliminates the need to struggle for board presence, there is no interactivity between players. The game is at its best when there is a back and forth and the recent expansions have shown that Team 5 doesn't give enough consideration to just how important give and take is.
Yeah Jades in Shaman is finde, Jades in Rogue is to weak. I think they were afraid of bounce effects and Thistle Tees and Copystuff. All things Rogue can do. But why then release Jade Idol? It is just broken. And even if the winrate is low it feels so unfair to play against this. I think the winrate of Jade Druid in the Un'Goro meta wasnt that skyrocket. But with the new strong druid support cards they just went nuts.
I don't think anything like instants would work very well. Hate your opponent roping? Just wait for a world in which all your actions need to wait for a potential opponent interaction.
Maybe an option (that also helps deal with non-interactive face decks) is that hero attacks are "registered" on your turn, and then the start of your opponents turn is a phase giving them the option to block with minions or spells? Sounds kind of fun, but problamatic with (a) game-winning attacks that your opponent stalls/ropes (b) windfury minions.
The 1-2 cost RNG cards are a joke. Swashburglar, Undercity Huskar, Crystalline Oracle, Babbling Book, Shimmering Tempest, etc. These are low mana cards with unlimited potential. How does it make any sense for such a low costing card to have so much potential power? Literally autistic card design. As MANY have suggested, change the cards to "steal a card that costs 3 or less"...the exact same as Servant of Yogg-Saron whereby the card summons a RANDOM spell that costs FIVE OR LESS. That is appropriate design.
These other cards are honestly a joke.
Other change is to reveal cards gained by Discover. Otherwise there's no "strategy" involved as the opponent is in the dark and can't possibly "play around" anything. Clueless card designers and I am officially rejoining F2P due to consistent imbalances and poor design by Ben Brode and his cock-gobbling peers
I would like to see a change to the ladder system. To make it less grindy with 55% WR aggro decks. And make it a little bit more rewarding to play slower/higher win rate decks. Dont get me wrong i think it's important to have a balance in having both aggro and control/combo. But right now it's best to play a fastest possible deck...
All the fan creation competitions have got me thinking how I might redesign HS itself, if I were in control. I know a ton of testing and iterating went into the game, and obviously it's quite well designed, but I'm sure there are things the devs would change if they could, and I know there are things I would change. How about you?
I'm not really talking about major game mechanics - HS with land mechanics from Faeria or MTG would be an entirely different game - but if they'd improve the gameplay, go for it. Mostly, I'm thinking minor-moderate adjustments while retaining the core game.
Some initial thoughts, may or may not have any merit:
I know there's a lot of other common ideas like less emphasis on randomness and more relevant arena hero powers (warrior/hunter)...what other ideas do you have?
More interaction with the opponent.
Yes always draw a card when your hand is empty . This way we can all play retarded aggro decks with 30 1-2 drops . That seems like a very good design that would make the game better .
More Secret, that's for sure. They are the most interesting mechanic in the game but is only limited to 3 classes.
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Auto-draw at a cost of 2-mana, if >= 2 mana remaining? Some sort of warlock hero power for all classes? You're right about agro, but I don't think we need to sacrifice draw because of it, necessarily. No free draw though, you're right.
instants/trap cards.
not letting charge minions attack face the turn they're summoned, if and only if there weren't instants/trap cards,
cards gotten from discover revealed ,i do like the rng in the game as it allows for crazy stories i can tell people and get a couple of laughs out of them, but usually in card games most mechanics that add cards to your hand, make you reveal those cards which is a completely fair price to pay for the hand advantage you're getting.
I like this game for the most part, but I would change all the dragon effects that go, 'if you have a dragon in your hand', to, 'if you control a dragon.'
Obviously there would need to be some major balancing done to get this change to work (for instance, I would give dragon egg a dragon tag, and possibly buff some of the more expensive dragons elsewhere), but playing against dragon priest before the transition was annoying (especially as a f2p player), because I felt like I would have a 2/2 1 cost minion, and my opponent would have a 2/3 1 cost minion, and I was just playing from behind the entire game. There was also nothing I could do about whether dragon priest had a dragon in their hand, 99% of the time they did, 1% of the time they didn't, so the bonus didn't feel like a bonus, it just felt like part of the card. And then, that requirement also made it so that if priest wanted to get the requirement, they could just make their deck 90% dragons, which was kinda boring deck construction, that's about as blatant as blizzard can get in saying, "Here is the deck we want you to play. Go play this." I've been frustrated by other decks before, like jades, pirates, and rogue quest, but I think blackrock dragon priest is the least creative and worst designed of the bunch that I've been frustrated by.
I've felt like blizzard has learned from this experience though, and has designed better cards since then. Elementals in Un-goro were fantastically designed, with a lot of decision making involved in when you play an elemental and when you don't, and gave the opponent some time to predict what was going to happen next turn, because I knew if my opponent had played an elemental the previous turn. Adapt and discover are really cool mechanics that add skillful choice in to the game (though primordial glyph may have been a bit of a mistake). The dragons since blackrock have mostly been pretty good, powerful cards that can go in a dragon deck but also can go in regular control decks (think primordial drake or bone drake).
Delete Druid.
Ok but being serious, I think they messed up every Jade card. Handbuff faction is terrible by comparison, and highlander/Kazakus (Kabal) is mostly inconsistent. Jade on average is much stronger.
Further, Jade in Druid is simply nuts by comparison to Rogue and Shaman. Jade Rogue never really became a thing, and Jade Shaman had to be supplemented by other Shaman styles that were already strong - it too never became its own thing.
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I have to say this: Instants are a terrible idea in an online card game. There's a reason why MTG:O never became popular, and it isn't only because of Wizard's incompetence in UX design.
I will say ladder revamp. I also like the idea of targeted discard, at least on your own cards.
People who refuses to play aggro out of principle are even worse than people who play exclusively aggro.
One should seek to become a complete player and play all archetypes, including ones that he despises for whatever irrational reasons.
I would have more carefully scrutinized cards that allow players to flat-out ignore what their opponents are doing on the other side of the board. Ignoring instants and such, MTG has an advantage in allowing defending players the chance to assign blockers. When a player can built a deck that eliminates the need to struggle for board presence, there is no interactivity between players. The game is at its best when there is a back and forth and the recent expansions have shown that Team 5 doesn't give enough consideration to just how important give and take is.
Yeah Jades in Shaman is finde, Jades in Rogue is to weak. I think they were afraid of bounce effects and Thistle Tees and Copystuff. All things Rogue can do. But why then release Jade Idol? It is just broken. And even if the winrate is low it feels so unfair to play against this. I think the winrate of Jade Druid in the Un'Goro meta wasnt that skyrocket. But with the new strong druid support cards they just went nuts.
Golden Heroes:
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I don't think anything like instants would work very well. Hate your opponent roping? Just wait for a world in which all your actions need to wait for a potential opponent interaction.
Maybe an option (that also helps deal with non-interactive face decks) is that hero attacks are "registered" on your turn, and then the start of your opponents turn is a phase giving them the option to block with minions or spells? Sounds kind of fun, but problamatic with (a) game-winning attacks that your opponent stalls/ropes (b) windfury minions.
The 1-2 cost RNG cards are a joke. Swashburglar, Undercity Huskar, Crystalline Oracle, Babbling Book, Shimmering Tempest, etc. These are low mana cards with unlimited potential. How does it make any sense for such a low costing card to have so much potential power? Literally autistic card design. As MANY have suggested, change the cards to "steal a card that costs 3 or less"...the exact same as Servant of Yogg-Saron whereby the card summons a RANDOM spell that costs FIVE OR LESS. That is appropriate design.
These other cards are honestly a joke.
Other change is to reveal cards gained by Discover. Otherwise there's no "strategy" involved as the opponent is in the dark and can't possibly "play around" anything. Clueless card designers and I am officially rejoining F2P due to consistent imbalances and poor design by Ben Brode and his cock-gobbling peers
I would like to see a change to the ladder system. To make it less grindy with 55% WR aggro decks. And make it a little bit more rewarding to play slower/higher win rate decks. Dont get me wrong i think it's important to have a balance in having both aggro and control/combo. But right now it's best to play a fastest possible deck...