From Reddit . He offered blizzard to let him help creating a new expansion and fixing metagame for competitive play. Blizzard accepted - they invited him to Blizz Headquarter for 1 week. Lifecoach will probably not play competitive in the beginning when this expansion/new meta hits live, because of that. He said he is hoping that blizz will listen to him and try to fix competitive instead of focusing on "fun game mechanic" aka. RNG and etc.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Follow on Twitter for news, meta analysis and funny Hearthstone related stuff!
This is the definition of Blizzard trying to make hearthstone viable again. I mean they should actually hire people to define the meta and search for stuff to balance the classes. Like in WoW, they don't just implement spells and the damage to do out of nowhere, they are trying to make everything at least kinda balanced. Blizz instead thinks "oh yes let's just bring out random beast viable cards for druid" or like "purify will be great in priest". No really do not make this cardgame beginners friendly, make it viable for competetive players as well! Like make it 2 ladder places, one only! With classic cards and the other with all the expansions from a year (third one still just wild). This is something you can easily implement
I know there's a lot of bitching on this site about RNG and "fun" as opposed to competitive, and how Blizzard need to move away from the former and toward the latter, but is that really what most players want? Of course the people tryouts by to make money off of the game want it, but what about the other 50+ million who play for fun only? Taking away the fun and turning it into chess makes things much less fun. They just have to be careful when they change things away from random so that every game doesn't just play out the same every time.
There will always be dominant, meta defining decks. With the way hearthstone is set up, it's unavoidable. The real question is, what deck, or type of deck, do you want as the dominant one? That's the question no one asks, and we never get an answer for. So, I a perfect world, what would be the healthiest metal defining deck?
I'm sure that an input of even one experienced person can be valuable, but then again the impacts might end up not being as significant because design and testing is a very rigorous process. I see Lifecoach as a balance advocate, not a card designer (I'm not sure about how well developed his creative side is).
That being said, I like that Blizzard are exploring new ideas, I'm glad that they are showing signs of changing the way they work and becoming a more robust and innovative studio. I hope that they don't stop exploring the ideas there, seek out more advice, seek out new talent, keep monitoring the game and balancing it as often as it needs. I really hope that with time this game will start reaching more and more of its potential.
I've been playing Blizzard games for a long time, and it pains me to say that they are the ones who turned me from a fan into a sceptical pessimist. I hope that with time they can reverse that. Looking forward to the announcement.
EDIT: Also, thank you OP for bringing this to our attention. I personally don't follow reddit and I'd have no clue about this happening.
I like this but thing is that 1 week is not enough time to help balance an expansion. I am still hoping for the best! Otherwise Lifecoach will be hated my most of the community and I don't like to see that happening.
Thank. God. I hope he will live up to his name ( That is/was also his "real life" job, IIRC ) and also make Blizzard do a turnaround in term of design philosophy, not just prevent them from f*cking up the game this one time.
I'm sure that an input of even one experienced person can be valuable, but then again the impacts might end up not being as significant because design and testing is a very rigorous process. I see Lifecoach as a balance advocate, not a card designer (I'm not sure about how well developed his creative side is).
That being said, I like that Blizzard are exploring new ideas, I'm glad that they are showing signs of changing the way they work and becoming a more robust and innovative studio. I hope that they don't stop exploring the ideas there, seek out more advice, seek out new talent, keep monitoring the game and balancing it as often as it needs. I really hope that with time this game will start reaching more and more of its potential.
I've been playing Blizzard games for a long time, and it pains me to say that they are the ones who turned me from a fan into a sceptical pessimist. I hope that with time they can reverse that. Looking forward to the announcement.
EDIT: Also, thank you OP for bringing this to our attention. I personally don't follow reddit and I'd have no clue about this happening.
Well said. Err, typed.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Howdy! [cardimg=gold ]Card Name[ /cardimg] (no space)
i hope he does know there's more than one kind of player and still focuses on interesting effects for all of them.
Too much focus on pure Spikes (competitive players) and we would end up filled to the brim with cancer cards like Jackal Pup or Kitchen finks and nothing fixed at all.
So, half the complaints are about RNG, and the other half about how shite control actually is right now.
First, and probably most importantly, no matter how seriously you take yourselves, no matter how predictable the cards you put in your deck are, there will never be a time in a card game where randomness doesn't play a role in it. If you want wins to "count", then cards just aren't for you.
Second, people keep overvaluing the "competitive" Hearthstone, which wasn't even something planned in the beginning (Who would design a set like GvG for an E-Sport?) and the game is meant to be "Simple, fun, and new-player friendly". This is also the reason why aggro dominates, but that's another story. The professional scene should NOT be valued more than the majority of the community. Last time I saw it happen was back in LoL with the assassin meta, where they dodged nerfs because of "flashiness" and the LC$, and it didn't bring too many smiles there either.
And, lastly, Hearthstone is DIGITAL. This means there are several features that it can create that real life card games cannot, and one of those is whacky RNG that creates unique stories, and for which HS is already fairly notorious.
Of course, I say this, but bad RNG pisses me off as much as anyone else. Turn 4 Dr. Booms, crappy starting hands, enemy zoolock only not discarding PO, or even Bombs clearing my entire board, but heck, it makes up for it by giving me chuckles as well from time to time, and it is also what keeps this from becoming a Spike-infested game like (again) LoL. (Yes, IK Spike isn't a term for Mobas but screw it, you get the picture)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health. - Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
quite sure the competitive balance is what the majority wants, you know why? Cause it's "fun" to win and not fun to lose. The problem with Blizzard right now, is that what they see as "fun" decks are never competitive, they might be fun, but then again not really cause you always lose with them.
You, as well as many people on this site, have confused "majority" and "majority of these forums".
I think the biggest gain for Blizzard with this is that they have someone really experienced trying to break the game. So that "fun RNG cards" that weren't meant to be competitive (like Yogg-Saron) won't end up being competitive. I can assure you there won't be any less RNG cards in the next expansion, though hopefully there will be less RNG Tier 1 cards.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
For an objectiive point of view this is not a good PR move. The game is for all the people and this can easily move the opinion of the community toward a feeling of unfairness.
Personally then I like this fact for many reasons. This tell that Blizzard is considering that Hearthstone will survive in a long term thanks also , not only , to the esport, and this make sense because is supported by viewer datas; Hearthstone in the last months has the second best viewer/number of events ratio and growing: data . And let's add that the visibility and incomes of esport scene is growing , excuse me , as fuck. Then Lifecoach is a deep analitical person and more his company develope analtycs softwares for poker environment (you get the fox here? creating connection to open personal chances? ) ; this means that if Blizzard ,as experiment, develope the set mostly with that analytic aspect then will have the time to see what is the results, and this seems the only way to really understand how the game will change.
What I don't like is some sort of unfairness. I try to be clear: Lifecoach could have the chance to understand , even little nuances of how the Hearthstone engine works and find some answers that many of the players can't get in their HS experience.This little nuances could be a great advantage anywhere but in the competitive environment much more; is a "I know something that you can't" situation and in this there is the unfairness. This last point is just a reflection, it could happen or not but it's worth to spoke it out.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Follow on Twitter for news, meta analysis and funny Hearthstone related stuff!
For an objectiive point of view this is not a good PR move. The game is for all the people and this can easily move the opinion of the community toward a feeling of unfairness.
Chances are, he signed some non-competitive clause that disallows him to compete in tournaments for several months. At least, that's what Blizzard would do if their lawyers are half competent.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Good news, so long as they act on the counsel he gives. The game just not as skill-intensive as it used to be, and goes along the lines of his teammate Thijs' comment that it was about "playing your cards, not just play your cards". Lifecoach has expressed a lot of frustration about that, and hopefully some ideas for improvement were able to translate. Just hope it happens; there was unanimous advice from pro players they brought in for feedback on a core set versus keeping Classic evergreen, and here they are nerfing more Basic/Classic cards six months later and in a state where all top tier decks are still using 60% Basic/Classic.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CCGing since '98.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
From Reddit . He offered blizzard to let him help creating a new expansion and fixing metagame for competitive play. Blizzard accepted - they invited him to Blizz Headquarter for 1 week. Lifecoach will probably not play competitive in the beginning when this expansion/new meta hits live, because of that. He said he is hoping that blizz will listen to him and try to fix competitive instead of focusing on "fun game mechanic" aka. RNG and etc.
Follow on Twitter for news, meta analysis and funny Hearthstone related stuff!
the hero we need.
They'll probably throw him out after one day since he will take up to 75 seconds to finish a sentence
I tried having fun once. It was awful.
This is the definition of Blizzard trying to make hearthstone viable again. I mean they should actually hire people to define the meta and search for stuff to balance the classes. Like in WoW, they don't just implement spells and the damage to do out of nowhere, they are trying to make everything at least kinda balanced. Blizz instead thinks "oh yes let's just bring out random beast viable cards for druid" or like "purify will be great in priest". No really do not make this cardgame beginners friendly, make it viable for competetive players as well! Like make it 2 ladder places, one only! With classic cards and the other with all the expansions from a year (third one still just wild). This is something you can easily implement
Just remember the good times!
I know there's a lot of bitching on this site about RNG and "fun" as opposed to competitive, and how Blizzard need to move away from the former and toward the latter, but is that really what most players want? Of course the people tryouts by to make money off of the game want it, but what about the other 50+ million who play for fun only? Taking away the fun and turning it into chess makes things much less fun. They just have to be careful when they change things away from random so that every game doesn't just play out the same every time.
There will always be dominant, meta defining decks. With the way hearthstone is set up, it's unavoidable. The real question is, what deck, or type of deck, do you want as the dominant one? That's the question no one asks, and we never get an answer for. So, I a perfect world, what would be the healthiest metal defining deck?
I'm sure that an input of even one experienced person can be valuable, but then again the impacts might end up not being as significant because design and testing is a very rigorous process. I see Lifecoach as a balance advocate, not a card designer (I'm not sure about how well developed his creative side is).
That being said, I like that Blizzard are exploring new ideas, I'm glad that they are showing signs of changing the way they work and becoming a more robust and innovative studio. I hope that they don't stop exploring the ideas there, seek out more advice, seek out new talent, keep monitoring the game and balancing it as often as it needs. I really hope that with time this game will start reaching more and more of its potential.
I've been playing Blizzard games for a long time, and it pains me to say that they are the ones who turned me from a fan into a sceptical pessimist. I hope that with time they can reverse that. Looking forward to the announcement.
EDIT: Also, thank you OP for bringing this to our attention. I personally don't follow reddit and I'd have no clue about this happening.
I like this but thing is that 1 week is not enough time to help balance an expansion. I am still hoping for the best! Otherwise Lifecoach will be hated my most of the community and I don't like to see that happening.
Thank. God. I hope he will live up to his name ( That is/was also his "real life" job, IIRC ) and also make Blizzard do a turnaround in term of design philosophy, not just prevent them from f*cking up the game this one time.
Howdy! [cardimg=gold ]Card Name[ /cardimg] (no space)
Hey, how's it going?
What's poppin,' player?
Lifecoach should work at Blizzard, he understands the game better than they do.
i hope he does know there's more than one kind of player and still focuses on interesting effects for all of them.
Too much focus on pure Spikes (competitive players) and we would end up filled to the brim with cancer cards like Jackal Pup or Kitchen finks and nothing fixed at all.
Lol, so everything wrong with the new expansion will be blamed on Lifecoach instead. Clever weasel, that Brode. Huar Huarr Huaarr!
If there is a man who can bring Handlock back to the power it once had, he is the one. I really hope Blizzard listened to him.
this is amazing news
guys who follow his explanations about card values when an expension is released will know how accurate Lifecoach is
So, half the complaints are about RNG, and the other half about how shite control actually is right now.
First, and probably most importantly, no matter how seriously you take yourselves, no matter how predictable the cards you put in your deck are, there will never be a time in a card game where randomness doesn't play a role in it. If you want wins to "count", then cards just aren't for you.
Second, people keep overvaluing the "competitive" Hearthstone, which wasn't even something planned in the beginning (Who would design a set like GvG for an E-Sport?) and the game is meant to be "Simple, fun, and new-player friendly". This is also the reason why aggro dominates, but that's another story.
The professional scene should NOT be valued more than the majority of the community. Last time I saw it happen was back in LoL with the assassin meta, where they dodged nerfs because of "flashiness" and the LC$, and it didn't bring too many smiles there either.
And, lastly, Hearthstone is DIGITAL. This means there are several features that it can create that real life card games cannot, and one of those is whacky RNG that creates unique stories, and for which HS is already fairly notorious.
Of course, I say this, but bad RNG pisses me off as much as anyone else. Turn 4 Dr. Booms, crappy starting hands, enemy zoolock only not discarding PO, or even Bombs clearing my entire board, but heck, it makes up for it by giving me chuckles as well from time to time, and it is also what keeps this from becoming a Spike-infested game like (again) LoL. (Yes, IK Spike isn't a term for Mobas but screw it, you get the picture)
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health.
- Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
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.
For an objectiive point of view this is not a good PR move. The game is for all the people and this can easily move the opinion of the community toward a feeling of unfairness.
Personally then I like this fact for many reasons. This tell that Blizzard is considering that Hearthstone will survive in a long term thanks also , not only , to the esport, and this make sense because is supported by viewer datas; Hearthstone in the last months has the second best viewer/number of events ratio and growing: data . And let's add that the visibility and incomes of esport scene is growing , excuse me , as fuck. Then Lifecoach is a deep analitical person and more his company develope analtycs softwares for poker environment (you get the fox here? creating connection to open personal chances? ) ; this means that if Blizzard ,as experiment, develope the set mostly with that analytic aspect then will have the time to see what is the results, and this seems the only way to really understand how the game will change.
What I don't like is some sort of unfairness. I try to be clear: Lifecoach could have the chance to understand , even little nuances of how the Hearthstone engine works and find some answers that many of the players can't get in their HS experience.This little nuances could be a great advantage anywhere but in the competitive environment much more; is a "I know something that you can't" situation and in this there is the unfairness. This last point is just a reflection, it could happen or not but it's worth to spoke it out.
Follow on Twitter for news, meta analysis and funny Hearthstone related stuff!
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.
So we will get a new Nozdormu-like card which will double the avaible time per turn?
Who can take your trash out?
Stomp it down for you?
Shake the plastic bag
and do the twisty thingy, too?
Good news, so long as they act on the counsel he gives. The game just not as skill-intensive as it used to be, and goes along the lines of his teammate Thijs' comment that it was about "playing your cards, not just play your cards". Lifecoach has expressed a lot of frustration about that, and hopefully some ideas for improvement were able to translate. Just hope it happens; there was unanimous advice from pro players they brought in for feedback on a core set versus keeping Classic evergreen, and here they are nerfing more Basic/Classic cards six months later and in a state where all top tier decks are still using 60% Basic/Classic.
CCGing since '98.