Im sure that this isn't the first time someone's suggest ways to improve the game and it certainly won't be the last. But after a but of pondering here are a few things that I would say would make the game a bit better and more fleshed out.
#1: Different animations: Yes I'm not going to just be going over the normal OP cards needing balancing (although I will do that later), I'm going to start off with a pet peeve I have with games which is when developers become lazy and reuse animations, designs, etc. I've found that as this game goes longer that developers no longer make legendary animations as epic anymore and class spells simply reuse the same animation over and over again.
For legendaries this should be a no-brainer, legendaries should seem epic whenever they enter the field. With the advent of TGT there were very few legendaries that I got the epic vibe a legendary should have when being slammed onto the battlefield. Cards like Anub'arak who were pretty big characters in the WOW universe were given no animation at all and the ones that did seemed very basic. This isn't TGT exclusive either, cards like Deathwing, freaking death wing, seemed lack luster compared to the fact that he almost brought the end of the world! Trolden a long time ago posted 2 video on animation ideas for Deathwing and Old Murk-Eye in regards to their entering animation (here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ispQzJzcNKw&list=PLuChyl5Zve-FnjJUyFHi7ELri3cnM59d3) but I think I can one-up him in regards to the black dragon. My idea is that Deathwing should completely obliterate the back round when he comes into play, turning all the background into rubble, leaving a lasting impression about sending in the biggest creature from the game into the battlefield. Now that would be an animation worthy of such a mighty beast. But he's not the only one who could use a bump up in animation, comment on what you'd want your favorite legendary to do when coming into play!
However, legendaries weren't the only thing that could use some new animations. Class cards, specifically class spells could use a little uniqueness between each other. I'm going to cite the 2 classes where its plain as day to see but you could see the patterns in a lot of other classes. Im talking about druid and warrior. Druid spells have the problem where too many of them have the exact same animation; vines rap around Malfurion and a beam of green light hits the target either damaging, healing or destroying them. This animation is used for Living Roots, Naturalize, Wrath, Mulch, Healing Touch, Nourish, Recycle and probably more that I'm forgetting. That is insane for only 1 animation! I know for a fact that there are different nature-themed designs for cards like those so this likely just lazy designing.
And warrior is even worse! Druids at least have a cliche animation that makes sense, warriors just get a white mass hitting a target. This goes for shield slam, execute, cleave, slam. bash, mortal strike, and in a way, crush! That is pure laziness! How hard would it be to make a sword come down onto a minion to symbolize execute, or a shield hitting a minion for shield slam? My guess is not months. In fact, I'd be perfectly fine if we had to wait a few extra months for better animations to come out for cards, that extra depth would be just fine in my book instead of new cards. After all, it would stall out the new player dilemma Blizzard is having.
#2: Ill try and make this shorter than #1 because at this rate I'm going to write a novel. This is quite simple. Give us more special interactions between heroes and legendaries. I love how cards like Varian Wrynn, Cairne Bloodhoof, Illidan Stormrage and Vol'jin all have special interactions between certain heroes but why not have more? Why not haveSylvanas Windrunner acknowledge her sister when she faces her? Or how about Archmage Antonidas harken back to his talk with Medivh? Its little things like this that give you a nice deep feeling about the game I would just love to have more of these.
#3: And finally, it's time to change some cards. I'm only doing 3 cards that I find could be changed because they unhealthily affect the meta, and no I'm going over Grim Patron warrior, there are enough videos and threads on that.
#1: Dr. Boom (Dr. Balanced). We all should've seen this coming. The most OP card ever to still exist in the game that isn't class specific is something I'd obviously have to address because let's be honest, it could be changed. But I think that my change doesn't break the card, it simply makes it less versatile. Remember the time when Hogger was played in control warrior? I wanted to give Dr. Boom that kind of effect so that he would no longer become played in every non aggro deck on the ladder but now a control card for the slow decks. Here he is! I had to make him balanced in compared to Hoggerso it wasn't simply power creep so he may seem a lot worse then he could.
#2+3: With Dr. Boom out of the way here are the 2 cards that could see some change. 1 to take it out of the meta, and 1 to bring it into the meta. Im talking about Hemet Nesingwary and Big Game Hunter, the most versatile tech card and the worst legendary of GvG. The problem with Big Game Hunter is that it doesn't fall in line with the tech cards beside it. The idea is that a tech card should sacrifice stats for it's big effect. Cards like The Black Knight and Kezan Mystic are all severely under budgeted for their mana cost but not Big Game Hunter. He has been set to something that you wouldn't hate playing for just the body and when he does go off he drops down a decent body and destroys a massive minion. That doesn't make sense. And here comes in Hemet Nesingwary, a card with a practically useless effect and a horrid body to go with it. Its no wonder he doesn't see play. But here's an opportunity. Say we switch around the effects of these cards, would that not make things balanced? Such a huge tempo swing now has a cost to it and can only be a 1 of in a deck while a fringe case tech card can be content to have a decent body because of the lack of use it's text'll get. So here we are!
So how were my applied changes? Is there something that I missed? Feel free to give feedback in the comments!
You're completely correct on pretty much everything you stated, the sad thing is Blizzard are too proud of the fact they said they're not going to alter existing cards to fall back now. To be honest a lot of what they're doing just seems like an attempt to get money, the GvG expansion was such a shift in power that you essentially needed to buy the card packs to be competitive.
You're completely correct on pretty much everything you stated, the sad thing is Blizzard are too proud of the fact they said they're not going to alter existing cards to fall back now. To be honest a lot of what they're doing just seems like an attempt to get money, the GvG expansion was such a shift in power that you essentially needed to buy the card packs to be competitive.
Let's hope they change their mind as more and more people quit Hearthstone. Others won't be buying anymore packs till the most OP cards get nerfed.
About Dr. Boom - that's an overnerf in my opinion, it would completely destroy the card.
I wouldn't necessarily say that it would completely destroy the card, but I thought thought that In order to change the effect text to something in the line of Hogger I'd have to seriously bump down his stats because a boom bot is about the same value as a 2_2 with Taunt. The idea was to take it out of every non-aggressive deck minus patron and make it a card only useful in a meta game where you could get value off of an overtime effect.
also glad to see that I'm not the only one who's found animations stale. I know what it feels like to grind 500 wins with a class. As for the Deathwing animation idea, who knows, maybe if by some fluke more people see this Blizzard may see this.
I'm liking a lot of points you made. Thinking back on it, I'd be willing to see the reason for there being people pissed off at the hemet boost and the BGH nerf is that everyone's disenchanted him which is Blizzard's "reason" for not nerfing cards, it would be more work for people who want to get into the meta, but I'm glad to see that the idea was a positively received.
As for the overnerfing Dr. Boom in regards to when the boom bot is summoned might have been the problem with my nerf. I tried to think of Dr. Boom in the same regards to hogger and when I thought about it, having a far better stat line then hogger and making a justifiably better minion every turn for only costing one more mana seemed like it would make Hogger unusable. But that's just my opinion
Thanks for the feedback, it will always be appreciated!
Im sure that this isn't the first time someone's suggest ways to improve the game and it certainly won't be the last. But after a but of pondering here are a few things that I would say would make the game a bit better and more fleshed out.
#1: Different animations: Yes I'm not going to just be going over the normal OP cards needing balancing (although I will do that later), I'm going to start off with a pet peeve I have with games which is when developers become lazy and reuse animations, designs, etc. I've found that as this game goes longer that developers no longer make legendary animations as epic anymore and class spells simply reuse the same animation over and over again.
For legendaries this should be a no-brainer, legendaries should seem epic whenever they enter the field. With the advent of TGT there were very few legendaries that I got the epic vibe a legendary should have when being slammed onto the battlefield. Cards like Anub'arak who were pretty big characters in the WOW universe were given no animation at all and the ones that did seemed very basic. This isn't TGT exclusive either, cards like Deathwing, freaking death wing, seemed lack luster compared to the fact that he almost brought the end of the world! Trolden a long time ago posted 2 video on animation ideas for Deathwing and Old Murk-Eye in regards to their entering animation (here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ispQzJzcNKw&list=PLuChyl5Zve-FnjJUyFHi7ELri3cnM59d3) but I think I can one-up him in regards to the black dragon. My idea is that Deathwing should completely obliterate the back round when he comes into play, turning all the background into rubble, leaving a lasting impression about sending in the biggest creature from the game into the battlefield. Now that would be an animation worthy of such a mighty beast. But he's not the only one who could use a bump up in animation, comment on what you'd want your favorite legendary to do when coming into play!
However, legendaries weren't the only thing that could use some new animations. Class cards, specifically class spells could use a little uniqueness between each other. I'm going to cite the 2 classes where its plain as day to see but you could see the patterns in a lot of other classes. Im talking about druid and warrior. Druid spells have the problem where too many of them have the exact same animation; vines rap around Malfurion and a beam of green light hits the target either damaging, healing or destroying them. This animation is used for Living Roots, Naturalize, Wrath, Mulch, Healing Touch, Nourish, Recycle and probably more that I'm forgetting. That is insane for only 1 animation! I know for a fact that there are different nature-themed designs for cards like those so this likely just lazy designing.
And warrior is even worse! Druids at least have a cliche animation that makes sense, warriors just get a white mass hitting a target. This goes for shield slam, execute, cleave, slam. bash, mortal strike, and in a way, crush! That is pure laziness! How hard would it be to make a sword come down onto a minion to symbolize execute, or a shield hitting a minion for shield slam? My guess is not months. In fact, I'd be perfectly fine if we had to wait a few extra months for better animations to come out for cards, that extra depth would be just fine in my book instead of new cards. After all, it would stall out the new player dilemma Blizzard is having.
#2: Ill try and make this shorter than #1 because at this rate I'm going to write a novel. This is quite simple. Give us more special interactions between heroes and legendaries. I love how cards like Varian Wrynn, Cairne Bloodhoof, Illidan Stormrage and Vol'jin all have special interactions between certain heroes but why not have more? Why not haveSylvanas Windrunner acknowledge her sister when she faces her? Or how about Archmage Antonidas harken back to his talk with Medivh? Its little things like this that give you a nice deep feeling about the game I would just love to have more of these.
#3: And finally, it's time to change some cards. I'm only doing 3 cards that I find could be changed because they unhealthily affect the meta, and no I'm going over Grim Patron warrior, there are enough videos and threads on that.
#1: Dr. Boom (Dr. Balanced). We all should've seen this coming. The most OP card ever to still exist in the game that isn't class specific is something I'd obviously have to address because let's be honest, it could be changed. But I think that my change doesn't break the card, it simply makes it less versatile. Remember the time when Hogger was played in control warrior? I wanted to give Dr. Boom that kind of effect so that he would no longer become played in every non aggro deck on the ladder but now a control card for the slow decks. Here he is! I had to make him balanced in compared to Hoggerso it wasn't simply power creep so he may seem a lot worse then he could.
#2+3: With Dr. Boom out of the way here are the 2 cards that could see some change. 1 to take it out of the meta, and 1 to bring it into the meta. Im talking about Hemet Nesingwary and Big Game Hunter, the most versatile tech card and the worst legendary of GvG. The problem with Big Game Hunter is that it doesn't fall in line with the tech cards beside it. The idea is that a tech card should sacrifice stats for it's big effect. Cards like The Black Knight and Kezan Mystic are all severely under budgeted for their mana cost but not Big Game Hunter. He has been set to something that you wouldn't hate playing for just the body and when he does go off he drops down a decent body and destroys a massive minion. That doesn't make sense. And here comes in Hemet Nesingwary, a card with a practically useless effect and a horrid body to go with it. Its no wonder he doesn't see play. But here's an opportunity. Say we switch around the effects of these cards, would that not make things balanced? Such a huge tempo swing now has a cost to it and can only be a 1 of in a deck while a fringe case tech card can be content to have a decent body because of the lack of use it's text'll get. So here we are!
So how were my applied changes? Is there something that I missed? Feel free to give feedback in the comments!
Remember when everyone though The Caverns Below and Sherazin, Corpse Flower were trash?
Bet your salty tears wish that were true EleGiggle
Lots of thought put into this. Disheartening you've not gotten any feedback too far. I'd recommend a TL:DR version for the ADD generation.
BGH is the counter to Boom... with both of those in the game, there is no need to nerf either.
You're completely correct on pretty much everything you stated, the sad thing is Blizzard are too proud of the fact they said they're not going to alter existing cards to fall back now. To be honest a lot of what they're doing just seems like an attempt to get money, the GvG expansion was such a shift in power that you essentially needed to buy the card packs to be competitive.
BGH is cancer to this game, a cheap card with decent stats that counters massive minions, it literally devalues nearly any late game card.
Both cards are OP, especially Boom. Because of them, nearly all 8 and 9 drops aren't worth playing.
Let's hope they change their mind as more and more people quit Hearthstone. Others won't be buying anymore packs till the most OP cards get nerfed.
I proposed BGH be nerfed to 4 mana.
I wouldn't necessarily say that it would completely destroy the card, but I thought thought that In order to change the effect text to something in the line of Hogger I'd have to seriously bump down his stats because a boom bot is about the same value as a 2_2 with Taunt. The idea was to take it out of every non-aggressive deck minus patron and make it a card only useful in a meta game where you could get value off of an overtime effect.
Remember when everyone though The Caverns Below and Sherazin, Corpse Flower were trash?
Bet your salty tears wish that were true EleGiggle
Glad to see that you liked the post and that my effort wasn't wasted in someone's eyes!
I must ask though (even though I may look like an idiot for asking), what do you mean in the second part of your comment?
Remember when everyone though The Caverns Below and Sherazin, Corpse Flower were trash?
Bet your salty tears wish that were true EleGiggle
also glad to see that I'm not the only one who's found animations stale. I know what it feels like to grind 500 wins with a class. As for the Deathwing animation idea, who knows, maybe if by some fluke more people see this Blizzard may see this.
Remember when everyone though The Caverns Below and Sherazin, Corpse Flower were trash?
Bet your salty tears wish that were true EleGiggle
I'm liking a lot of points you made. Thinking back on it, I'd be willing to see the reason for there being people pissed off at the hemet boost and the BGH nerf is that everyone's disenchanted him which is Blizzard's "reason" for not nerfing cards, it would be more work for people who want to get into the meta, but I'm glad to see that the idea was a positively received.
As for the overnerfing Dr. Boom in regards to when the boom bot is summoned might have been the problem with my nerf. I tried to think of Dr. Boom in the same regards to hogger and when I thought about it, having a far better stat line then hogger and making a justifiably better minion every turn for only costing one more mana seemed like it would make Hogger unusable. But that's just my opinion
Thanks for the feedback, it will always be appreciated!
Remember when everyone though The Caverns Below and Sherazin, Corpse Flower were trash?
Bet your salty tears wish that were true EleGiggle