Blizzard lacks variety and creativity in the last several expansions. This game has become a mirror match fest MONTH after MONTH, with hundreds of cards printed, yet a tiny % of actually get played competitively. Even the Innkeeper wouldn't use 97% of the cards if he had a choice.
With 4 months of new content, just to have the game go stale again within weeks, is pretty poor game design and lacks development in general. For a company as big as Blizzard you would expect more, but even to this day MTG shows more variety and consistency among cards and decks.
Blizzard wont care either will the bored players who constantly que up for another mirror match. But the fact remains, in the year of 2018, in an era of creativity and gaming, hearthstone has become a very stale and boring game to play. When rank 20s are playing legend rank 1 decks, and the same pattern shows for ranks 19 to legend 2.. its pretty clear the game needs a big change in creativity, variety and balance.
I will wait for April+ to see new expansion, but I wont hold my breath that much changes in terms of 1-2 decks being played constantly throughout every bracket of the ladder. Stale games suck, step up it up Blizzard. MTG hasn't slowed down in decades. I know you hate that comparison, but it's the living truth.
I was trying Battlerite for the last days, just wanted to get some good PvP arena experience, was looking for something like WoW arena. And nope, all this game 30 heroes are absolutely the same, LMB - attack with some stacking bonus, RMB - ranged attack with bonus release, Q - defensive skill, Space - movement skill, E - control or ranged tricky attack skill... Really boring, HS is much more diversive )
Well there is a pattern of it being at it's worst, most imbalanced during the last expansion of the year. When it gets to 800 cards, the computers, or nerds figure out the strongest OP 30 card decks. Next year (3 expansions, instead of 2 expansions, and 1 adventure) you can add another 90 useless cards to the list.
For the most part the community is mostly at fault for this. Plenty of tier 2 & tier 3 decks exist that can hold their own in ladder (if everyone wasn't copypasta happy over tier 1 decks), but players chase win rate consistency at the expense of differentiating what they play.
The deck doesn't matter. If something is 1000% times better or just 0.01% better than the deck under it you can sure bet that most of the community will choose the slightly better deck even if it means their ladder grinding is exceptionally more boring than if they played a variety of decks.
Don't waste your time if you're counting on more cards in April to solve the problem. New cards will never solve the problem.
It's even more wrong-headed to blame players.
Humans have acted according to their incentives since the beginning of time. Right now the only way to play constructed and feel like you're making progress is ladder. Ladder incentivizes winning -- and not only winning, but the lack of losing (stars) -- and that requires the very best decks your collection and research skills can create being played at all times.
Current incentives create stale constructed play by definition. Creativity in the design of game modes and their incentives is the only way to solve it.
That's so true, blizzard is failing hard to keep the game "fun and interactive" as it supposed and advertised to be. You see 5 decks ruling the ladder and then better RNG wins, that's hearthstone now.
Don't waste your time if you're counting on more cards in April to solve the problem. New cards will never solve the problem.
It's even more wrong-headed to blame players.
Humans have acted according to their incentives since the beginning of time. Right now the only way to play constructed and feel like you're making progress is ladder. Ladder incentivizes winning -- and not only winning, but the lack of losing (stars) -- and that requires the very best decks your collection and research skills can create being played at all times.
Current incentives create stale constructed play by definition. Creativity in the design of game modes and their incentives is the only way to solve it.
I bolded the part where you are making an assumption. Not every player defines the fun that they derive from the game, as well as the progress they feel they are making in the game, as winning on ladder with a winrate of 50-65%.
I know of plenty of players who feel that they are progressing at the game by making different more unique decks and pulling off wins with them (note, not 50-65% try hard win rates) with those different decks. It is sometimes players like me that can't help but SMH at players who can't derive enjoyment from the game unless they are always winning, and that is because seeking such a path in the game pigeonholes you into playing a very restrictive playstyle in terms of what you 'can' and 'can't' play.
I'm trying to think of a solution to this problem. Do you guys think it would help if Hearthstone incentivized creativity by giving unique decks a slight advantage when progressing (without rigging the game)? For example, what if for decks identified as outside "Tier 1", the game gave you an extra star for every 5 wins or so (not necessarily consecutive) to encourage you to keep using the deck rather than crafting a clone? Also, to be identified as "outside Tier 1", the deck needs to have at least 10 cards differ from what has been identified as the best variant of the deck. Identifying Tier 1 decks should be relatively easy for Blizzard since they can track all of the wins/losses with even more ease than HDT.
Don't waste your time if you're counting on more cards in April to solve the problem. New cards will never solve the problem.
It's even more wrong-headed to blame players.
Humans have acted according to their incentives since the beginning of time. Right now the only way to play constructed and feel like you're making progress is ladder. Ladder incentivizes winning -- and not only winning, but the lack of losing (stars) -- and that requires the very best decks your collection and research skills can create being played at all times.
Current incentives create stale constructed play by definition. Creativity in the design of game modes and their incentives is the only way to solve it.
I bolded the part where you are making an assumption. Not every player defines the fun that they derive from the game, as well as the progress they feel they are making in the game, as winning on ladder with a winrate of 50-65%.
I know of plenty of players who feel that they are progressing at the game by making different more unique decks and pulling off wins with them (note, not 50-65% try hard win rates) with those different decks. It is sometimes players like me that can't help but SMH at players who can't derive enjoyment from the game unless they are always winning, and that is because seeking such a path in the game pigeonholes you into playing a very restrictive playstyle in terms of what you 'can' and 'can't' play.
Yeah that's true and encouraging. Hell, I don't play ladder at all. I stay casual and have fun with Arena and Brawl mostly. But, I think we both have to admit that a heck of a lot of players agree with what you bolded.
So there's always exceptions, I just feel like blaming players for netdecking is like shouting at the rain.
I have found out tier 1 is just the best decks for the average player. 60% ave win tier 1 deck means crap players win 50% of the time, best players 70% of the time. Good players can take a tier 3 deck and win 60% of the time. I have seen streamers climb to legend with crappy Warrior.
guys, the meta might be very stale at times but that is natural. Some decks will be the best and others not, no way around it. also I do not see why rank 20 players cannot play tier 1 decks, if you can think of a GOOD reason go ahead and give it. the reason only the smallest percentage of cards get played is because you do not need 1 good card to make a deck, you need a variety of good cards which synergise.
The only way to move to a less stale meta game is to have more expansions and blizzard is already working their hardest to produce 3 expansions a year.
If any of you think that you can create a non-stale meta, then go ahead and apply to blizzard.
Ban an hero before start a rank game.. can be a solution? Could limit people play tier1 deck and be more creative (tier 2 probably) but people will complain less about to fight the same deck all the time?
I think warrior and shaman are one step behind but then every hero has good decks to play. There is more variety than before. The only frustrating thing is try to play more creative decks, ranked or normal is full of tier1 decks that make impossible even try something new.
By the way.. priest steal more cards than rogue, warlock heal more than priest, druid make more armour than warrior (almost), paladin use murlocs but shaman with the quest cannot do the same ( too weak).. and go on.. there is also a luck of identity in the heroes :)
I actually feel the game is filled with original and interesting cards. No doubt about it! The cardbase has a ton of variety from invulnerability (Ice Block) to forever resurrecting flower-dudes (Sherazin). And Giants getting cost reductions from different things, a weapon that is hitting you for 15dmg lifesteal each turn! Add in a dozen exploding minions that damage the whole board. Secrets that keep you quessing, spells that hit for 10dmg!
My point is that the card base is extremely varied and triggers a million brain cells for me in deck building to make weird combos and stuff. The main problem which I've mentioned in my previous posts too is the monotonous game engine itself, which is the biggest hinderance for creating meaningful gaming experiences. "Get 1 mana a turn, start with a ridicilously small starting hand, inflict 30dmg to your opponent, win." It forces the game to be a sort of a tempo race with a huge rng factor to it.
My favorite card game company by far is Fantasy Flight Games and they are doing some stupidly awesome shit in their games delving into the base mechanisms that the average Joe doesn't even realize to ask for. I mean in their games they usually don't just give you a card and mana a turn, but they make that a decision point to the player. How much effort are you putting to gain resources this turn, or will you be the aggressor instead etc etc. I'm not sure if that sounds as cool as it is, but not going the lazy rout of linear economy creates a meaningflu and decision requiring gaming experience by itself. Decks could then be tweaked to not only excel in hitting face, but be economically more viable and crushing your opponent in the long run via superior income and a superior army at that point.
To conclude I feel Blizzard is designing some fantastic and varied cards, but the gaming community (especially the more competetive playerbase) is starting to demand a much more meaningful gaming experience. Unfortunately there are not that many viable options out there in the market at this time, and I'm hoping Valve's Artifact will be "the god game" we have been looking for. For Hearthstone it would basically mean a total revamp of the system and sort of "Hearthstone 2" to change the game enough. With it's current system I feel adding different stuff onto the game might feel like putting bandages over serious wounds.
Ps. As I spoke about the varied card base I didn't addres the fact that I too feel like they're making a bit too many polarized cards and the power creep has been growing so much that it is a shame the cool cards can't get a good winrate as it stands because of the much more consistent and crushingly effective cards. A super bold move by Blizzard would be to start the Year of the Raven by introducing Much more "nerfed" cards and gradually start downgrading the power level of the cards to fight the power creep. Of course business wise I don't see that as a good solution cause the players would be infuriated to not get "any good cards" in the set -> meta would still be dominated by the Mammoth cards.
For the majority of people it's also not easy to craft more than one or two competitive decks unless you're willing to spend a lot of money.
Gold takes forever to farm and dust even more. So when making use of what little resources they have, people will tend to go for the top win deck with supposedly most consistency.
Maybe you're interested in archetypes like Freeze Shaman or want to make decks centered around Bolvar Fireblood, Blood Queen Lana'thel or some other unheard of archetype or card combo. But resources are limited, but let's say you still proceed with it. Then you still will need more than the 30 cards because some may not work as thought, you decide to test a combo or something with another card to see how it goes, etc. So you need to craft more cards, and the cost keeps going up and up for extremely uncertain results.
For some people this experimentation is worth more than win streaks, an that's fine, but it's really not something the majority of players either want to do or can afford to do.
Perhaps if the game had a sandbox mode will all cards unlocked than people would be more prone in experimenting since they wouldn't have to commit gold, dust and money beforehand.
And with the new changes for rotations, by the end of 2018 when all 3 sets of the new year are released, there will be more legendaries and epics than ever in Standard.
In theory this sounds great for diversity and such, but in practice costs will go up more than any other period of the game and that may mean that the stale meta could be even worse because people will try to go for the top deck that seems the most consistent and without too many glaring weaknesses.
That's odd. In my opinion, after the recent nerfs, this is the best that Hearthstone has felt in a long time. I can't speak to actual numbers/balance, but even the most aggressive decks don't feel THAT oppressive, and there are many different viable archetypes and decks. In previous metas, it's felt more and more like Tier 1 and 2 decks are so much stronger than anything else that there really wasn't any reason to experiment. Currently though, anything that isn't Tier 1 and 2 feels.....not really that far behind, and at worst is going to give a Tier 1 or 2 deck a run for its money.
I've been playing since gvg and this is the best that Hearthstone has felt in a long time.
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Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.
Blizzard lacks variety and creativity in the last several expansions. This game has become a mirror match fest MONTH after MONTH, with hundreds of cards printed, yet a tiny % of actually get played competitively. Even the Innkeeper wouldn't use 97% of the cards if he had a choice.
With 4 months of new content, just to have the game go stale again within weeks, is pretty poor game design and lacks development in general. For a company as big as Blizzard you would expect more, but even to this day MTG shows more variety and consistency among cards and decks.
Blizzard wont care either will the bored players who constantly que up for another mirror match. But the fact remains, in the year of 2018, in an era of creativity and gaming, hearthstone has become a very stale and boring game to play. When rank 20s are playing legend rank 1 decks, and the same pattern shows for ranks 19 to legend 2.. its pretty clear the game needs a big change in creativity, variety and balance.
I will wait for April+ to see new expansion, but I wont hold my breath that much changes in terms of 1-2 decks being played constantly throughout every bracket of the ladder. Stale games suck, step up it up Blizzard. MTG hasn't slowed down in decades. I know you hate that comparison, but it's the living truth.
"Do you smell something...burning?
There's a solution to your problem. It's called Wild.
I was trying Battlerite for the last days, just wanted to get some good PvP arena experience, was looking for something like WoW arena. And nope, all this game 30 heroes are absolutely the same, LMB - attack with some stacking bonus, RMB - ranged attack with bonus release, Q - defensive skill, Space - movement skill, E - control or ranged tricky attack skill... Really boring, HS is much more diversive )
Small Indie Company
Well there is a pattern of it being at it's worst, most imbalanced during the last expansion of the year. When it gets to 800 cards, the computers, or nerds figure out the strongest OP 30 card decks. Next year (3 expansions, instead of 2 expansions, and 1 adventure) you can add another 90 useless cards to the list.
For the most part the community is mostly at fault for this. Plenty of tier 2 & tier 3 decks exist that can hold their own in ladder (if everyone wasn't copypasta happy over tier 1 decks), but players chase win rate consistency at the expense of differentiating what they play.
The deck doesn't matter. If something is 1000% times better or just 0.01% better than the deck under it you can sure bet that most of the community will choose the slightly better deck even if it means their ladder grinding is exceptionally more boring than if they played a variety of decks.
Don't waste your time if you're counting on more cards in April to solve the problem. New cards will never solve the problem.
It's even more wrong-headed to blame players.
Humans have acted according to their incentives since the beginning of time. Right now the only way to play constructed and feel like you're making progress is ladder. Ladder incentivizes winning -- and not only winning, but the lack of losing (stars) -- and that requires the very best decks your collection and research skills can create being played at all times.
Current incentives create stale constructed play by definition. Creativity in the design of game modes and their incentives is the only way to solve it.
That's so true, blizzard is failing hard to keep the game "fun and interactive" as it supposed and advertised to be. You see 5 decks ruling the ladder and then better RNG wins, that's hearthstone now.
I'm trying to think of a solution to this problem. Do you guys think it would help if Hearthstone incentivized creativity by giving unique decks a slight advantage when progressing (without rigging the game)? For example, what if for decks identified as outside "Tier 1", the game gave you an extra star for every 5 wins or so (not necessarily consecutive) to encourage you to keep using the deck rather than crafting a clone? Also, to be identified as "outside Tier 1", the deck needs to have at least 10 cards differ from what has been identified as the best variant of the deck. Identifying Tier 1 decks should be relatively easy for Blizzard since they can track all of the wins/losses with even more ease than HDT.
I have found out tier 1 is just the best decks for the average player. 60% ave win tier 1 deck means crap players win 50% of the time, best players 70% of the time. Good players can take a tier 3 deck and win 60% of the time. I have seen streamers climb to legend with crappy Warrior.
guys, the meta might be very stale at times but that is natural. Some decks will be the best and others not, no way around it. also I do not see why rank 20 players cannot play tier 1 decks, if you can think of a GOOD reason go ahead and give it. the reason only the smallest percentage of cards get played is because you do not need 1 good card to make a deck, you need a variety of good cards which synergise.
The only way to move to a less stale meta game is to have more expansions and blizzard is already working their hardest to produce 3 expansions a year.
If any of you think that you can create a non-stale meta, then go ahead and apply to blizzard.
Ban an hero before start a rank game.. can be a solution? Could limit people play tier1 deck and be more creative (tier 2 probably) but people will complain less about to fight the same deck all the time?
I think warrior and shaman are one step behind but then every hero has good decks to play. There is more variety than before. The only frustrating thing is try to play more creative decks, ranked or normal is full of tier1 decks that make impossible even try something new.
By the way.. priest steal more cards than rogue, warlock heal more than priest, druid make more armour than warrior (almost), paladin use murlocs but shaman with the quest cannot do the same ( too weak).. and go on.. there is also a luck of identity in the heroes :)
I actually feel the game is filled with original and interesting cards. No doubt about it! The cardbase has a ton of variety from invulnerability (Ice Block) to forever resurrecting flower-dudes (Sherazin). And Giants getting cost reductions from different things, a weapon that is hitting you for 15dmg lifesteal each turn! Add in a dozen exploding minions that damage the whole board. Secrets that keep you quessing, spells that hit for 10dmg!
My point is that the card base is extremely varied and triggers a million brain cells for me in deck building to make weird combos and stuff. The main problem which I've mentioned in my previous posts too is the monotonous game engine itself, which is the biggest hinderance for creating meaningful gaming experiences. "Get 1 mana a turn, start with a ridicilously small starting hand, inflict 30dmg to your opponent, win." It forces the game to be a sort of a tempo race with a huge rng factor to it.
My favorite card game company by far is Fantasy Flight Games and they are doing some stupidly awesome shit in their games delving into the base mechanisms that the average Joe doesn't even realize to ask for. I mean in their games they usually don't just give you a card and mana a turn, but they make that a decision point to the player. How much effort are you putting to gain resources this turn, or will you be the aggressor instead etc etc. I'm not sure if that sounds as cool as it is, but not going the lazy rout of linear economy creates a meaningflu and decision requiring gaming experience by itself. Decks could then be tweaked to not only excel in hitting face, but be economically more viable and crushing your opponent in the long run via superior income and a superior army at that point.
To conclude I feel Blizzard is designing some fantastic and varied cards, but the gaming community (especially the more competetive playerbase) is starting to demand a much more meaningful gaming experience. Unfortunately there are not that many viable options out there in the market at this time, and I'm hoping Valve's Artifact will be "the god game" we have been looking for. For Hearthstone it would basically mean a total revamp of the system and sort of "Hearthstone 2" to change the game enough. With it's current system I feel adding different stuff onto the game might feel like putting bandages over serious wounds.
Ps. As I spoke about the varied card base I didn't addres the fact that I too feel like they're making a bit too many polarized cards and the power creep has been growing so much that it is a shame the cool cards can't get a good winrate as it stands because of the much more consistent and crushingly effective cards. A super bold move by Blizzard would be to start the Year of the Raven by introducing Much more "nerfed" cards and gradually start downgrading the power level of the cards to fight the power creep. Of course business wise I don't see that as a good solution cause the players would be infuriated to not get "any good cards" in the set -> meta would still be dominated by the Mammoth cards.
Wild is recently very stale as well. You basically only meet cubelocks, big priests, spiteful priests and tempo mages.
Let's just hope that Artifact will be better or at least force Blizzard to move their asses.
For the majority of people it's also not easy to craft more than one or two competitive decks unless you're willing to spend a lot of money.
Gold takes forever to farm and dust even more. So when making use of what little resources they have, people will tend to go for the top win deck with supposedly most consistency.
Maybe you're interested in archetypes like Freeze Shaman or want to make decks centered around Bolvar Fireblood, Blood Queen Lana'thel or some other unheard of archetype or card combo. But resources are limited, but let's say you still proceed with it. Then you still will need more than the 30 cards because some may not work as thought, you decide to test a combo or something with another card to see how it goes, etc. So you need to craft more cards, and the cost keeps going up and up for extremely uncertain results.
For some people this experimentation is worth more than win streaks, an that's fine, but it's really not something the majority of players either want to do or can afford to do.
Perhaps if the game had a sandbox mode will all cards unlocked than people would be more prone in experimenting since they wouldn't have to commit gold, dust and money beforehand.
And with the new changes for rotations, by the end of 2018 when all 3 sets of the new year are released, there will be more legendaries and epics than ever in Standard.
In theory this sounds great for diversity and such, but in practice costs will go up more than any other period of the game and that may mean that the stale meta could be even worse because people will try to go for the top deck that seems the most consistent and without too many glaring weaknesses.
That's odd. In my opinion, after the recent nerfs, this is the best that Hearthstone has felt in a long time. I can't speak to actual numbers/balance, but even the most aggressive decks don't feel THAT oppressive, and there are many different viable archetypes and decks. In previous metas, it's felt more and more like Tier 1 and 2 decks are so much stronger than anything else that there really wasn't any reason to experiment. Currently though, anything that isn't Tier 1 and 2 feels.....not really that far behind, and at worst is going to give a Tier 1 or 2 deck a run for its money.
I've been playing since gvg and this is the best that Hearthstone has felt in a long time.
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