I don't know if this has been something other people have been thinking about too, but the game is becoming more and more boring as time goes on (at least I am finding myself bored quicker with every new set). I don't mean stuff like complaints about aggro/combo/control, but instead how the game doesn't seem to change too much. New content is introduced for both new and old archetypes, but most of the time the old archetypes are strengthened with cards from the new sets, while new archetypes only get flimsy support in the form of one or two new cards. Because new cards for new archetypes are so few and so far spread it becomes difficult to play new types of decks that feel fresh and at the same time can compete with the old decks. It is not enough for the dev team to decide they will reinforce an archetype over 3 years (especially because the rotation only allows two years of content to be in Standard). This isn't a thread to complain about Blizzard, but it is about my and your thoughts on how these problems could be fixed and what would be some good ideas to make the pauses between content less stale.
I will be breaking down my thoughts in points of steps I think could be taken to achieve a fresher game and I would also like to hear what you have to say about my points, but also what your own, different, ideas are to make sure that the game will feel fresher throughout the year.
Bigger Adventures
I really feel that the ammount of cards being provided with each adventure should be a bit bigger. If we think about the currently planned release schedules (Expansion -> Adventure -> Expansion), between the two expansions we will get only about 40 cards. That means 6 - 8 months where only 40 cards and some potential nerfs can realistically shift the metagame. I think it would be reasonable to increase the number of cards provided by each adventure to about the double of what it currently is.
Class Focused Expansions
Basically I feel like expansions should try to add even more class cards and decrease the amount of neutral cards introduced in each new addition. This would allow the dev team to release at least 2 - 3 cards per archetype (they come up with) thus making it more likely that new archetypes will be effectively supported throughout rotations. The thing is though that the number of neutrals has to decrease, otherwise, we run the risk of making all the differnt classes with similar strategies (aggro/combo/control) use the same cards thus reducing diversity. This also makes balancing easier since if something is truly broken it will be much easier to notice and fix because competitive players will naturally gravitate towards those classes.
Extra Note: The other thing they could also make more of is tri-class cards (even though they have stated they aren't planning on doing this again in the short-term).
More Archetypes
I have noticed how a lot of cards that Blizzard has introduced have manage to easily be plugged in into already existing decklists. This is going to be a natural tendency of course since players want to leverage their pre-existing experience with the old lists to get ahead of the competition. As anyone can see this also goes against a fresher metagame. The solution to this would be to make archetypes that encourage people not to run into the same play styles used before.
One of the main reasons for which I was excited before the release of MSG was because it finally seemed like they were focusing on providing new archetypes (such as Jade decks and Hand Buff decks) as well as reinforcing the already existing highlander decks. I liked this approach at first because I thought that they would lead to new ways of playing the game and it finally seemed like Blizzard was pushing enough cards for an archetype to be immediately playable (differently from how Beast Druid has been pushed throughout the years by drip-feeding single cards that usually ended up not being enough). This approach is inherently more risky, because if the archetype being pushed fails the class risks being left outside of the metagame (like we have seen with Paladin), but I still prefer this over getting cards that just can't work due to lack of support. However, after the expansion released new deck archetypes such as Jade Druid played almost the same as the old Malygos Druid with a different flavor attached to it (after all both decks aim to cycle as fast as possible to their win condition).
Of course making new deck archetypes that are competitively viable without blatant power creep is hard, but I think that this should be the direction the dev team takes in the future to provide new ways to play and reasons to innovate.
Monthly Card Releases
This isn't one of my own ideas, but some people have suggested that new cards (2 - 4 cards) be introduced at the end of each month. I think this would be a very good idea since it would allow devs to regulate the meta by aiding archetypes that weren't pushed reliably enough to the point were they aren't competitively viable. Of course I would expect the dev team to not want to do this due to things like thematic consistency and potentially due to the "confusion" that it would cause ;), but I had some suggestions on that part too. For one the cards could make thematic part of the latest set and to not 'confuse' people they could all be made part of a different set by the end of the year that can all be purchased as a bundle at the end of a Standard cycle (so cards introduced in the year of the Kraken would make part of the year of the Kraken set). These cards would also become craftable at the start of the season that introduces them.
I am also aware that they might be hesitant to take this approach, because that would mean a patch every month (something they claim isn't that easy), but they have been talking of coming up with a system that allows balance changes without patching the game (i.e. it would happen on the server-side, which would then inform the client of the change). If they could allow for balance changes then why not also allow for a way to add new cards without patching the game, which would in turn make it easier for them to apply this idea. I am not 100% on how hard this is, but if they could work on this I think the long-term benefits are worth it.
This is more or less all I had to talk about. I hope you find this discussion interesting and please feel free to contribute with your own ideas or even comment on my own thoughts. This thread is about new ways to keep the game fresh so please try to keep your thoughts focused on that.
Problem is imo the lack of card design. The only intrresting card the last few monthsbwss kazakus.jade was fun a few days but itsmjust such a boring designed concept...of course everyone gets bored. If they release 20 new cards every month and the quality keeps the same nothing chages. They could print 200 cards every month, wouldnt matter. They need complerely new and more exciting card ideas then they had the last few months. Otherwise nothing changes
I don't think anyone would complain about more content and more content of higher quality. (Pompous Thespian, I'm looking at you.) But content and content quality should not be difficult fixes.
Where I think a lot of Blizz's time should be spent is on fixing the ladder problem. The ladder, which is how probably 90% of the community experiences Hearthstone, is not fun.
It's grindy, it's oppressive, it's unrewarding, it's <insert criticism here>. Some of this can be fixed with balancing and better content. But this problem is going to keep reappearing as long as the ladder remains in it's current state.
Conversely, I actually think the tournament health of HS is in a solid place right now. Could be better, but isn't as completely unfun as ladder.
Game is old and has been dying for months. I thing that last expansion was nail in the coffin. Simply because idiots now are in CHAAARGE of HS design team. I spit my coffee when I read that Ben Rode thought that spirit claws will be a weak card and worse than what other classes will get in Karazhan. Those guys has no clue whatsoever what are they doing.
Please keep replies tied to the discussion. Sure the dev team have made some mistakes (at least from our point of view), but this isn't a thread about complaints leveled against Blizzard. Also Ben Brode said they thought that Spirit Claws would fit a different archetype (rather than the existing Aggro and Midrange versions). This is something I was talking about in my 'More Archetypes' point and part of the reason are these powerful cards that easily fit into already existing decks. While the kind of thinking that got Spirit Claws and Maelstrom Portal was naive, I don't think it was done on purpose and we should remember that this is still a learning process for the dev team. I hope they learned from the last two sets that cards need to be tested a lot with the already popular archetypes (to see if they make an easy fit), otherwise we will have a repeat of this continuously. I still maintain though that we should focus our efforts in coming up with solutions and not condemning the dev team so much. Sure pointing out mistakes is much easier than providing solutions, but this threads is focused on ideas for solutions from the community. I felt I should address this now and that everyone refrain from making more of these comments.
I don't know if this has been something other people have been thinking about too, but the game is becoming more and more boring as time goes on...
Well, anything become boring as time goes one...
You are right, but a game like Hearthstone that plans to be played for many years to come shouldn't have these problems so soon. As such I think certain things need to be done about it. Of course there are other problems as some have mentioned such as the ladder experience as well as the new player experience, but this thread is focused on how fresh the game manages to feel with every new set that is introduced to the game.
The game is dying/dead. The current meta where 80% of the decks you are facing are either aggro or Reno is incredibly boring. And the fact that this meta follows one of the worst metas ever where something like 30% of all decks on ladder were the same mid shaman deck....the game is in a sorry state. I used to play for several hours every day. Now, I complete my quests and that is basically it. Have started playing Shadowverse and that meta is just SO much better than the current HS experience. If the next expansion doesn't change things significantly, I'm pretty sure I'll be finished entirely. And there are a lot like me, as I see more and more people posting these kinds of things on this forum. Also seeing more and more people on my in game friend list pretty much stopping...
I'm not sure if the HS devs have given up entirely on the game and are just grabbing cash as the game dies....but it sure seems like it.
On larger adventures: Adventures are smaller than full expansions, but if you consider the number of playable cards in them, it's actually not that small. For example, 5 of the 40 cards in One Night in Karazhan have not seen major widespread play. Compare to the number of unplayables in MSG, there's a lot more unplayables in MSG. I haven't run the numbers exactly, but I would expect that the number of "playable" (i.e. sees play in a top tier Standard deck) cards in an Adventure is not a lot less than in a set.
On More Archetypes: Actually, set releases seem to do pretty well at starting new archetypes, to the point that I think the game might be power creeping too much. For example, MSG started a whole bunch of Reno decks; previously Reno Mage and Reno Priest didn't exist, and also Jade Druid and Jade Shaman, and let's of course not forget the elephant in the room, the various Pirate decks, most importantly Pirate Warrior. These decks just didn't exist before MSG. Before ONK there was no Resurrect Priest, and Dragon Priest was a lot worse without Netherspite Historian and Book Wyrm. Before that, WOTOG gave us Cthun Drui and NZoth Rogue. New sets really do have an impact, and I wonder what's going to happen after rotation.
On larger adventures: Adventures are smaller than full expansions, but if you consider the number of playable cards in them, it's actually not that small. For example, 5 of the 40 cards in One Night in Karazhan have not seen major widespread play. Compare to the number of unplayables in MSG, there's a lot more unplayables in MSG. I haven't run the numbers exactly, but I would expect that the number of "playable" (i.e. sees play in a top tier Standard deck) cards in an Adventure is not a lot less than in a set.
I wasn't saying that adventures need to be larger, just that the team should make more class cards and less neutral cards (maybe to do this they would have to release a few more cards than usual, but not necessarily that many). This also ties in to the other point you highlighted from my post. By having more cards per class you can push/support more archetypes per class (from which some may fail, but some will work) that actually feel different. Even though a lot of adventure cards do see play, getting just 40 cards over a 6 month period just isn't good enough to maintain interest.
On More Archetypes: Actually, set releases seem to do pretty well at starting new archetypes, to the point that I think the game might be power creeping too much. For example, MSG started a whole bunch of Reno decks; previously Reno Mage and Reno Priest didn't exist, and also Jade Druid and Jade Shaman, and let's of course not forget the elephant in the room, the various Pirate decks, most importantly Pirate Warrior. These decks just didn't exist before MSG. Before ONK there was no Resurrect Priest, and Dragon Priest was a lot worse without Netherspite Historian and Book Wyrm. Before that, WOTOG gave us Cthun Drui and NZoth Rogue. New sets really do have an impact, and I wonder what's going to happen after rotation.
You have a point on Reno Mage and Reno Priest, but the other examples highlight problems in the way these archetypes were designed to play. Sure Jade Druid is something new, but it plays very similarly to the old Malygos Druid. If with every new set we just change the flavor of the deck, but keep things the same (at least in how the deck plays) you will naturally get people bored quicker. A good solution would be to push Beast Druid a lot in one expansion (in this way cards like Lunar Visions would see play), which plays very differently when compared to the spell-heavy archetypes that are more popular today. I will just skip Shaman, because that class is just a mess right now (it has so many powerful cards that just fit everywhere that there isn't much point in talking without knowing where it will be after the rotation).
The Pirate decks are exactly what I am trying to talk against in my 'More Archetypes' and 'Class Focused Expansions'. Just three cards are run in 3 classes and fuel a similar strategy from all three (in my eyes they are essentially the same archetype). If instead Small-Time Buccaneer was a Rogue card then we wouldn't have so many 'archetypes' that only differ in flavor (you would just play Pirate Rogue in this hypothetical scenario). Less neutral cards would make it more likely that fewer things are broken in the neutral card pool and it would also make it easier to spot classes that have broken cards (since those will naturally be played more, which could also provide incentive to the devs to intervene more swiftly when such things are spotted).
I think the majority of Hearthstones problems lies in the fact that there are essentially 3 sets of cards. Set A are cards that are just outright broken (ie Flamewreath Faceless, Ice block, Patches, Small time Buccaneer etc.) Set B are all the cards that have extremely interesting effects but never see play because the cards in Set A are 5x better than them (Auctionmaster Beardo, Malchezar, Sergeant Sally etc.) Set C are all of the "good" (for lack of a better term) cards in HS like Tirion, Sylvanas, both Rags, Tony. Blizzard is creating 3 cards in Set A for every 1 card in Sets B and C, and this leads to games becoming extremely boring because you've played against 4 mana 7/7s before and not Auctionmaster Beardo. So honestly, I believe Blizzard should start make a TON of what we would consider "mediocre, but creative" cards instead of these absolutely insane 1 and 2 drops. Not only does this allow for more creative decks/archetypes, but it essentially forces people to get off midrange shaman and pirate warrior and start playing HS as it was designed to be played: to innovate and create.
Did you stop to consider development time for adventures? They are given the same amount of time to do all the boss fights and test new cards, which is why there are less cards. You can't just say it's reasonable to expect to double the amount of cards from adventures without Team 5 getting more people working on it, or having a longer release schedule. What you really want is just an expansion instead.
Generally they try to make the adventure cards have higher impact, which they do. League of explorers added 4 hugely viable legendaries, and they all had massive implications on the meta (even if not on release).
They need to completely overhaul the basic set and properly balance it. Get rid of the utter trash, put important cards in it.
they need to rotate on a rolling basis so that there will always be evergreen +4 expansions +2 adventures in standard.
they are too caught up attempting to come up with new pack selling scams to actually care the underlying problems with the game. they have enough dedicated base of stickers to milk for years, so I don't expect any decisions that aren't focused on selling more packs rather than fixing the game.
You can come back later when the meta has shifted or new cards have been released according to Blizzard's schedule.
If you are no longer interested in the game after your break, so be it. You're better off for having cut out a game that didn't suit you. It doesn't matter that it could have been better. It is what it is, and complaints and speculation on a third-party website aren't going to change that.
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Did you stop to consider development time for adventures? They are given the same amount of time to do all the boss fights and test new cards, which is why there are less cards. You can't just say it's reasonable to expect to double the amount of cards from adventures without Team 5 getting more people working on it, or having a longer release schedule. What you really want is just an expansion instead.
Generally they try to make the adventure cards have higher impact, which they do. League of explorers added 4 hugely viable legendaries, and they all had massive implications on the meta (even if not on release).
Of course there will be difficulty involved on the dev team's end, but in the end keeping Hearthstone fresh is also a goal for them and to do that they will have to make a bigger effort or expand the team. On top of that boss fights and card creation are two separate parts of the creation process that share the same theme. It is reasonable to expect more cards if the dev team expects people to remain invested and interested in the game. It is true that they try to make cards have a higher impact in adventures, but what about when that fails? I mean in Karazhan only Barnes has really seen a lot of play with the other 4 legendaries only seeing marginal play. On top of that some of the cards have negative impact (like Spirit Claws and Maelstrom Portal). In both cases I highlighted more cards would allow for more chance to give sufficient good tools to all classes and more things to play with. If you think that just 40 cards are enough for a period of 6 - 8 months then I assure you that that just won't cut it. I understand that this will be hard on the dev team, but if they want things to change they will have to make the extra effort.
Did you stop to consider development time for adventures? They are given the same amount of time to do all the boss fights and test new cards, which is why there are less cards. You can't just say it's reasonable to expect to double the amount of cards from adventures without Team 5 getting more people working on it, or having a longer release schedule. What you really want is just an expansion instead.
Generally they try to make the adventure cards have higher impact, which they do. League of explorers added 4 hugely viable legendaries, and they all had massive implications on the meta (even if not on release).
Of course there will be difficulty involved on the dev team's end, but in the end keeping Hearthstone fresh is also a goal for them and to do that they will have to make a bigger effort or expand the team. On top of that boss fights and card creation are two separate parts of the creation process that share the same theme. It is reasonable to expect more cards if the dev team expects people to remain invested and interested in the game. It is true that they try to make cards have a higher impact in adventures, but what about when that fails? I mean in Karazhan only Barnes has really seen a lot of play with the other 4 legendaries only seeing marginal play. On top of that some of the cards have negative impact (like Spirit Claws and Maelstrom Portal). In both cases I highlighted more cards would allow for more chance to give sufficient good tools to all classes and more things to play with. If you think that just 40 cards are enough for a period of 6 - 8 months then I assure you that that just won't cut it. I understand that this will be hard on the dev team, but if they want things to change they will have to make the extra effort.
I'm not sure where you're getting 6-8 months from. Releases are usually about 4 months apart.
Saying negative impact is really stupid since we should just be talking about cards that have an impact in general. But if you want we can talk about Karazhan specifically
Some of the cards had major impacts and some had impacts that we're feeling now because of meta shifts. I don't think every card should be self contained in its impact, otherwise you have stuff like Kazakhus and jades that might not even be viable in the next expansion.
You seem to have a very bad memory about Karazhan. It had Arcane Giant, Netherspite Historian, the Discolock cards, the secret hunter cards. It had moonglade portal and made beast druid somewhat viable. It had babbling book and firelands portal. Medivh was a great card designed for control vs control, on top of barnes and the shaman cards.
When you look at the very top tier yes midrange shaman was very strong, but hunter and druid were insanely strong. Karazhan had an impact, even if it didn't stop midrange shaman from being the best deck.
It's worth noting that adventures do have more cards than they use to. Not a huge amount more but it's there, and I am hopeful that the amounts will increase. However, just expecting them to double seems a bit much to expect. They are focusing on expansions more so they can set a large tone for the meta going forward. They actually made a huge impact on the meta with gadgetzan, it radically shifted everything, it just ended up being that shaman has so many tools that it can deal with anything.
I think it's a good point to include fewer neutral cards in adventures. Looking back,BRM and Naxx had a high number of quality neutral minions. But it led to problems when things like belcher and creeper were playable in every class.
Lately, most of the non-legendary neutral cards are either (A) Filler or (B) fun but not good.
Filler should NEVER EVER be in an adventure. Fun but not good cards are important, but they shouldn't be making up the majority of neutral minions in the set.
If reduce the number of neutrals and increase the number of class cards, you can avoid a lot of balance issues and reduce the amount of crap you print.
There are 6 - 8 months between two expansions though, which means you only get 40 cards in that period of time that change the state of the game. I am not saying that cards that were playable (and even very good) weren't introduced, but stuff like Arcane Giant aren't exactly the examples to take into account. After all that card just fit into Malygos Druid that was already strong at the time and the aforementioned Shaman cards bridged up Shaman's biggest weakness at the time, which was Zoolock (cheap weapon that can trade with about 2 - 3 minions and AOE that destroys the Warlock's board with the help of spell damage, which you were anyway incentivized to run). The cards that they introduced didn't change the metagame they just reinforced the position of the powerful decks. Sure some of the cards you mention are great, but if they end up not getting played or belonging to some very specific decks (e.g. Secret Hunter isn't even being played today, at a time in which no other Hunter deck is successful) that isn't exactly the impact you expect from these cards. The point of the adventure is to change the metagame, not reinforce it and if 40 cards aren't enough to do it then the natural request is to increase that number.
On larger adventures: Adventures are smaller than full expansions, but if you consider the number of playable cards in them, it's actually not that small. For example, 5 of the 40 cards in One Night in Karazhan have not seen major widespread play. Compare to the number of unplayables in MSG, there's a lot more unplayables in MSG. I haven't run the numbers exactly, but I would expect that the number of "playable" (i.e. sees play in a top tier Standard deck) cards in an Adventure is not a lot less than in a set.
I wasn't saying that adventures need to be larger, just that the team should make more class cards and less neutral cards (maybe to do this they would have to release a few more cards than usual, but not necessarily that many). This also ties in to the other point you highlighted from my post. By having more cards per class you can push/support more archetypes per class (from which some may fail, but some will work) that actually feel different. Even though a lot of adventure cards do see play, getting just 40 cards over a 6 month period just isn't good enough to maintain interest.
On More Archetypes: Actually, set releases seem to do pretty well at starting new archetypes, to the point that I think the game might be power creeping too much. For example, MSG started a whole bunch of Reno decks; previously Reno Mage and Reno Priest didn't exist, and also Jade Druid and Jade Shaman, and let's of course not forget the elephant in the room, the various Pirate decks, most importantly Pirate Warrior. These decks just didn't exist before MSG. Before ONK there was no Resurrect Priest, and Dragon Priest was a lot worse without Netherspite Historian and Book Wyrm. Before that, WOTOG gave us Cthun Drui and NZoth Rogue. New sets really do have an impact, and I wonder what's going to happen after rotation.
You have a point on Reno Mage and Reno Priest, but the other examples highlight problems in the way these archetypes were designed to play. Sure Jade Druid is something new, but it plays very similarly to the old Malygos Druid. If with every new set we just change the flavor of the deck, but keep things the same (at least in how the deck plays) you will naturally get people bored quicker. A good solution would be to push Beast Druid a lot in one expansion (in this way cards like Lunar Visions would see play), which plays very differently when compared to the spell-heavy archetypes that are more popular today. I will just skip Shaman, because that class is just a mess right now (it has so many powerful cards that just fit everywhere that there isn't much point in talking without knowing where it will be after the rotation).
The Pirate decks are exactly what I am trying to talk against in my 'More Archetypes' and 'Class Focused Expansions'. Just three cards are run in 3 classes and fuel a similar strategy from all three (in my eyes they are essentially the same archetype). If instead Small-Time Buccaneer was a Rogue card then we wouldn't have so many 'archetypes' that only differ in flavor (you would just play Pirate Rogue in this hypothetical scenario). Less neutral cards would make it more likely that fewer things are broken in the neutral card pool and it would also make it easier to spot classes that have broken cards (since those will naturally be played more, which could also provide incentive to the devs to intervene more swiftly when such things are spotted).
It sounds to me like what you want is for every class to be good at everything, and for the classes to just rotate around the archetypes every set. Like, for example, in one set we have aggro warrior, and the next set "oh, aggro warrior is bad now, here's control warrior", and then the next set "control warrior is bad now, here's OTK warrior", and so on. But I'm pretty sure that would a) reduce the overall feeling of the classes, where each class is supposed to have a different feeling from the others, and b) is not what Team 5 wants (and I'm pretty sure Ben Brode has said as much). Specifically, each class should have a specific feel. The fact that Druid used to be a big spell class before MSG and is still a big spell class, is intentional. The fact that Rogue was combo heavy and still is combo heavy ("c"ombo, not "C"ombo) is intentional. The fact that Shaman has always slanted aggressive is intentional.
In fact, the problem you see right now with Shaman is a direct result of them slanting Shaman more in the direction you want them to go. Shaman has cards which fit equally well whether you're Control Shaman or Aggro Shaman or Midrange Shaman or whatever, so you can play literally any Shaman deck you want. And because they did that, what you have now is a class which can do literally everything and is broken at the top tier of play.
As for more or less Neutrals or whatever, I couldn't really care less. My main problem with fewer neutrals would be that I'm a F2Per (yes, we still exist) and because a lot of the good Legendaries are Neutral, I only have to pick up 3-4 Legendaries per set to build whatever I want, and I've been playing long enough that I have enough gold/dust to get them. If I suddenly had to pick up 11-12 Legendaries per set because I needed 2 Legendaries per class because all the ones which used to be Neutral aren't anymore, the game would become prohibitively expensive for me.
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I don't know if this has been something other people have been thinking about too, but the game is becoming more and more boring as time goes on (at least I am finding myself bored quicker with every new set). I don't mean stuff like complaints about aggro/combo/control, but instead how the game doesn't seem to change too much. New content is introduced for both new and old archetypes, but most of the time the old archetypes are strengthened with cards from the new sets, while new archetypes only get flimsy support in the form of one or two new cards. Because new cards for new archetypes are so few and so far spread it becomes difficult to play new types of decks that feel fresh and at the same time can compete with the old decks. It is not enough for the dev team to decide they will reinforce an archetype over 3 years (especially because the rotation only allows two years of content to be in Standard). This isn't a thread to complain about Blizzard, but it is about my and your thoughts on how these problems could be fixed and what would be some good ideas to make the pauses between content less stale.
I will be breaking down my thoughts in points of steps I think could be taken to achieve a fresher game and I would also like to hear what you have to say about my points, but also what your own, different, ideas are to make sure that the game will feel fresher throughout the year.
Bigger Adventures
I really feel that the ammount of cards being provided with each adventure should be a bit bigger. If we think about the currently planned release schedules (Expansion -> Adventure -> Expansion), between the two expansions we will get only about 40 cards. That means 6 - 8 months where only 40 cards and some potential nerfs can realistically shift the metagame. I think it would be reasonable to increase the number of cards provided by each adventure to about the double of what it currently is.
Class Focused Expansions
Basically I feel like expansions should try to add even more class cards and decrease the amount of neutral cards introduced in each new addition. This would allow the dev team to release at least 2 - 3 cards per archetype (they come up with) thus making it more likely that new archetypes will be effectively supported throughout rotations. The thing is though that the number of neutrals has to decrease, otherwise, we run the risk of making all the differnt classes with similar strategies (aggro/combo/control) use the same cards thus reducing diversity. This also makes balancing easier since if something is truly broken it will be much easier to notice and fix because competitive players will naturally gravitate towards those classes.
Extra Note: The other thing they could also make more of is tri-class cards (even though they have stated they aren't planning on doing this again in the short-term).
More Archetypes
I have noticed how a lot of cards that Blizzard has introduced have manage to easily be plugged in into already existing decklists. This is going to be a natural tendency of course since players want to leverage their pre-existing experience with the old lists to get ahead of the competition. As anyone can see this also goes against a fresher metagame. The solution to this would be to make archetypes that encourage people not to run into the same play styles used before.
One of the main reasons for which I was excited before the release of MSG was because it finally seemed like they were focusing on providing new archetypes (such as Jade decks and Hand Buff decks) as well as reinforcing the already existing highlander decks. I liked this approach at first because I thought that they would lead to new ways of playing the game and it finally seemed like Blizzard was pushing enough cards for an archetype to be immediately playable (differently from how Beast Druid has been pushed throughout the years by drip-feeding single cards that usually ended up not being enough). This approach is inherently more risky, because if the archetype being pushed fails the class risks being left outside of the metagame (like we have seen with Paladin), but I still prefer this over getting cards that just can't work due to lack of support. However, after the expansion released new deck archetypes such as Jade Druid played almost the same as the old Malygos Druid with a different flavor attached to it (after all both decks aim to cycle as fast as possible to their win condition).
Of course making new deck archetypes that are competitively viable without blatant power creep is hard, but I think that this should be the direction the dev team takes in the future to provide new ways to play and reasons to innovate.
Monthly Card Releases
This isn't one of my own ideas, but some people have suggested that new cards (2 - 4 cards) be introduced at the end of each month. I think this would be a very good idea since it would allow devs to regulate the meta by aiding archetypes that weren't pushed reliably enough to the point were they aren't competitively viable. Of course I would expect the dev team to not want to do this due to things like thematic consistency and potentially due to the "confusion" that it would cause ;), but I had some suggestions on that part too. For one the cards could make thematic part of the latest set and to not 'confuse' people they could all be made part of a different set by the end of the year that can all be purchased as a bundle at the end of a Standard cycle (so cards introduced in the year of the Kraken would make part of the year of the Kraken set). These cards would also become craftable at the start of the season that introduces them.
I am also aware that they might be hesitant to take this approach, because that would mean a patch every month (something they claim isn't that easy), but they have been talking of coming up with a system that allows balance changes without patching the game (i.e. it would happen on the server-side, which would then inform the client of the change). If they could allow for balance changes then why not also allow for a way to add new cards without patching the game, which would in turn make it easier for them to apply this idea. I am not 100% on how hard this is, but if they could work on this I think the long-term benefits are worth it.
This is more or less all I had to talk about. I hope you find this discussion interesting and please feel free to contribute with your own ideas or even comment on my own thoughts. This thread is about new ways to keep the game fresh so please try to keep your thoughts focused on that.
They should really refurbish the gameplay cause I don't see any future like this in Hearthstone. It gets very boring.
Problem is imo the lack of card design. The only intrresting card the last few monthsbwss kazakus.jade was fun a few days but itsmjust such a boring designed concept...of course everyone gets bored. If they release 20 new cards every month and the quality keeps the same nothing chages. They could print 200 cards every month, wouldnt matter. They need complerely new and more exciting card ideas then they had the last few months. Otherwise nothing changes
I don't think anyone would complain about more content and more content of higher quality. (Pompous Thespian, I'm looking at you.)
But content and content quality should not be difficult fixes.
Where I think a lot of Blizz's time should be spent is on fixing the ladder problem. The ladder, which is how probably 90% of the community experiences Hearthstone, is not fun.
It's grindy, it's oppressive, it's unrewarding, it's <insert criticism here>. Some of this can be fixed with balancing and better content. But this problem is going to keep reappearing as long as the ladder remains in it's current state.
Conversely, I actually think the tournament health of HS is in a solid place right now. Could be better, but isn't as completely unfun as ladder.
The game is dying/dead. The current meta where 80% of the decks you are facing are either aggro or Reno is incredibly boring. And the fact that this meta follows one of the worst metas ever where something like 30% of all decks on ladder were the same mid shaman deck....the game is in a sorry state. I used to play for several hours every day. Now, I complete my quests and that is basically it. Have started playing Shadowverse and that meta is just SO much better than the current HS experience. If the next expansion doesn't change things significantly, I'm pretty sure I'll be finished entirely. And there are a lot like me, as I see more and more people posting these kinds of things on this forum. Also seeing more and more people on my in game friend list pretty much stopping...
I'm not sure if the HS devs have given up entirely on the game and are just grabbing cash as the game dies....but it sure seems like it.
A lot of what you said seems to be interesting:
On larger adventures: Adventures are smaller than full expansions, but if you consider the number of playable cards in them, it's actually not that small. For example, 5 of the 40 cards in One Night in Karazhan have not seen major widespread play. Compare to the number of unplayables in MSG, there's a lot more unplayables in MSG. I haven't run the numbers exactly, but I would expect that the number of "playable" (i.e. sees play in a top tier Standard deck) cards in an Adventure is not a lot less than in a set.
On More Archetypes: Actually, set releases seem to do pretty well at starting new archetypes, to the point that I think the game might be power creeping too much. For example, MSG started a whole bunch of Reno decks; previously Reno Mage and Reno Priest didn't exist, and also Jade Druid and Jade Shaman, and let's of course not forget the elephant in the room, the various Pirate decks, most importantly Pirate Warrior. These decks just didn't exist before MSG. Before ONK there was no Resurrect Priest, and Dragon Priest was a lot worse without Netherspite Historian and Book Wyrm. Before that, WOTOG gave us Cthun Drui and NZoth Rogue. New sets really do have an impact, and I wonder what's going to happen after rotation.
I wasn't saying that adventures need to be larger, just that the team should make more class cards and less neutral cards (maybe to do this they would have to release a few more cards than usual, but not necessarily that many). This also ties in to the other point you highlighted from my post. By having more cards per class you can push/support more archetypes per class (from which some may fail, but some will work) that actually feel different. Even though a lot of adventure cards do see play, getting just 40 cards over a 6 month period just isn't good enough to maintain interest.
You have a point on Reno Mage and Reno Priest, but the other examples highlight problems in the way these archetypes were designed to play. Sure Jade Druid is something new, but it plays very similarly to the old Malygos Druid. If with every new set we just change the flavor of the deck, but keep things the same (at least in how the deck plays) you will naturally get people bored quicker. A good solution would be to push Beast Druid a lot in one expansion (in this way cards like Lunar Visions would see play), which plays very differently when compared to the spell-heavy archetypes that are more popular today. I will just skip Shaman, because that class is just a mess right now (it has so many powerful cards that just fit everywhere that there isn't much point in talking without knowing where it will be after the rotation).
The Pirate decks are exactly what I am trying to talk against in my 'More Archetypes' and 'Class Focused Expansions'. Just three cards are run in 3 classes and fuel a similar strategy from all three (in my eyes they are essentially the same archetype). If instead Small-Time Buccaneer was a Rogue card then we wouldn't have so many 'archetypes' that only differ in flavor (you would just play Pirate Rogue in this hypothetical scenario). Less neutral cards would make it more likely that fewer things are broken in the neutral card pool and it would also make it easier to spot classes that have broken cards (since those will naturally be played more, which could also provide incentive to the devs to intervene more swiftly when such things are spotted).
I think the majority of Hearthstones problems lies in the fact that there are essentially 3 sets of cards. Set A are cards that are just outright broken (ie Flamewreath Faceless, Ice block, Patches, Small time Buccaneer etc.) Set B are all the cards that have extremely interesting effects but never see play because the cards in Set A are 5x better than them (Auctionmaster Beardo, Malchezar, Sergeant Sally etc.) Set C are all of the "good" (for lack of a better term) cards in HS like Tirion, Sylvanas, both Rags, Tony. Blizzard is creating 3 cards in Set A for every 1 card in Sets B and C, and this leads to games becoming extremely boring because you've played against 4 mana 7/7s before and not Auctionmaster Beardo. So honestly, I believe Blizzard should start make a TON of what we would consider "mediocre, but creative" cards instead of these absolutely insane 1 and 2 drops. Not only does this allow for more creative decks/archetypes, but it essentially forces people to get off midrange shaman and pirate warrior and start playing HS as it was designed to be played: to innovate and create.
"I wield the power of Blackwing."
Did you stop to consider development time for adventures? They are given the same amount of time to do all the boss fights and test new cards, which is why there are less cards. You can't just say it's reasonable to expect to double the amount of cards from adventures without Team 5 getting more people working on it, or having a longer release schedule. What you really want is just an expansion instead.
Generally they try to make the adventure cards have higher impact, which they do. League of explorers added 4 hugely viable legendaries, and they all had massive implications on the meta (even if not on release).
They need to completely overhaul the basic set and properly balance it. Get rid of the utter trash, put important cards in it.
they need to rotate on a rolling basis so that there will always be evergreen +4 expansions +2 adventures in standard.
they are too caught up attempting to come up with new pack selling scams to actually care the underlying problems with the game. they have enough dedicated base of stickers to milk for years, so I don't expect any decisions that aren't focused on selling more packs rather than fixing the game.
If the game bores you, take a break.
You can come back later when the meta has shifted or new cards have been released according to Blizzard's schedule.
If you are no longer interested in the game after your break, so be it. You're better off for having cut out a game that didn't suit you. It doesn't matter that it could have been better. It is what it is, and complaints and speculation on a third-party website aren't going to change that.
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
They could even have separate teams working on adventures at the same time.
Their main two problems are:
1- Incompetence
2-Stuck with mobile's extremely slow updating process
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I think it's a good point to include fewer neutral cards in adventures. Looking back,BRM and Naxx had a high number of quality neutral minions. But it led to problems when things like belcher and creeper were playable in every class.
Lately, most of the non-legendary neutral cards are either (A) Filler or (B) fun but not good.
Filler should NEVER EVER be in an adventure.
Fun but not good cards are important, but they shouldn't be making up the majority of neutral minions in the set.
If reduce the number of neutrals and increase the number of class cards, you can avoid a lot of balance issues and reduce the amount of crap you print.
There are 6 - 8 months between two expansions though, which means you only get 40 cards in that period of time that change the state of the game. I am not saying that cards that were playable (and even very good) weren't introduced, but stuff like Arcane Giant aren't exactly the examples to take into account. After all that card just fit into Malygos Druid that was already strong at the time and the aforementioned Shaman cards bridged up Shaman's biggest weakness at the time, which was Zoolock (cheap weapon that can trade with about 2 - 3 minions and AOE that destroys the Warlock's board with the help of spell damage, which you were anyway incentivized to run). The cards that they introduced didn't change the metagame they just reinforced the position of the powerful decks. Sure some of the cards you mention are great, but if they end up not getting played or belonging to some very specific decks (e.g. Secret Hunter isn't even being played today, at a time in which no other Hunter deck is successful) that isn't exactly the impact you expect from these cards. The point of the adventure is to change the metagame, not reinforce it and if 40 cards aren't enough to do it then the natural request is to increase that number.