Don't you think that Hearthstone lost its identity with all those powerful neutral cards? I mean every aggro/midrange deck has the pirate package, Cobalt Scalebane, Corridor Creeper and Bonemare and sometimes Tar Creeper. Back in the day only Zoo (warlock) was a mix of neutral minions and that's why it was called Zoo, from a MTG tournament deck that was famous exactly for running a lot of different high-power/low-mana creatures. Right now basically every aggro/midrange deck is a Zoo, even hunter is running Southsea Captain even tho it's the class with the best 3-mana package in the game with Eaglehorn Bow, Animal Companion, Kill Command and Unleash the Hounds. I know that a lot of people care more about having fun playing the game but I'm losing interest on playing ladder because its lack of diversity and basically if you wanna experiment a new aggro/midrange deck you basically have to play the neutral package, which in my opinion sucks. I mean, back in the day when Piloted Shredder was on standard almost every class was running it, right now we have a piloted package, what's the reason of having 9 classes?
What is your solution? They have proven throughout the course of the game's history that they don't know how to nerf things. When they nerf something they effectively remove it from the game, only to add something just as bad or even worse not long after.
People whine about things like the pirate package and now corridor creeper but people are still going to pay money to get the dust to craft it and they are still going to play it, so why would they change anything? The majority of this community is uncreative and only cares about winning, not fun, and is willing to pay for it so they are just catering to their biggest spending audience. I'm guilty of doing it but if you are remembering a time when the game was fun, you are just looking at it with rose-colored nostalgia glasses. It was never about fun or creativity.
Thing is, the neutral power creep did succeed in changing the meta - it just changed it into a meta that lacks variety. The futility of new cards is the primary struggle of CCG design.
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It's not just that neutral cards get stronger, it's that these powerful neutral cards are basically just lumps of stats, so they go easily into any tempo deck. Though that's not the only factor to blame, it's also the rising potency of AoE, which has forced tempo decks to become stronger overall to stand a chance. And of course, the easiest way to make tempo decks more powerful across the board is through neutral cards, especially when you want to dedicate most of the class cards of an expansion to forward a theme such as Spell Hunter.
Also, part of the reason the game feels homogeneous is not only because neutral cards are powerful, but because there is a clear best neutral card at X mana cost. No 5-drop is better than Scalebane, no 6-drop is better than Spiteful Summoner, no 7-drop is better than Bonemare, etc. If there were 4 other 7-drops that all were comparable to Bonemare in different circumstances, then the game wouldn't feel so same-y even though they're all neutrals. Of course it would be better if class cards were the go-to, but there are so many more neutrals than there are class cards that neutrals will always be more common.
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I can agree that some of the neutral cards are too strong in a broad sense (Bonemare being the absolute worst offender and Corridor Creeper being a close second), I think overall Blizzard has done a better job of making the neutral cards fit in a certain style of deck than they did in the early days of the game, especially the legendaries.
Cobalt Scalebane is good, but you can really only put it in decks where you are planning to have a consistent board presence, otherwise it's just a 5 mana 5/5 a lot of the time. Patches the Pirate was a mistake, but at this point we're going to have to live with it for another 3 months or so (and once he's gone I think we will see a big improvement). I also think Bonemare would be more balanced if it didn't grant taunt, since at that point you wouldn't be forced to attack into that minion, making Bonemare a worse play in situations where you're low on health.
So it's a balancing act, and while it was poorly balanced in the days of Dr. Boom, Piloted Shredder and Sludge Belcher, it did improve, but perhaps now the pendulum has swung back a little too far.
I complained about this in the last expansion, before the addition of corridor creeper even. That fact that the problem is not only still here after the expansion, but even worse, just goes to show how unbalanced these neutrals are. Hell, even most of the priest decks I face these days are running pirates, scalbane, bonemare and creeper as part of a tempo-dragon deck. When priest is playing zoo, you know there's a serious problem. Welcome to zoostone.
I just can't decide if this meta is worse than MSG or not. It's certainly close.
I'll be the first to call out a thinly veiled salt thread when I see it, but I think this topic has merit. Can we not be so quick to jump on the "lol salty get gud" train?
I think Reynad had a good video on this topic a couple weeks ago, and it appears to be playing out just as he predicted.
I kinda agree with you OP, but I wouldn't go as far as calling for HS identity loss.
The neutral powercreep are a concern, and they appear and contribute in t1 decks.
But if you look at them, it is mostly Tempo cards for Tempo decks. And Tempo decks are arguably the best meta shaper we can hope for, for they leave generous room for other archetypes to develop. It is possibly harder to refine other archetypes, but even as t1, Tempo decks are not overwhelming the meta, yet.
Ofc, you can't expect to easily beat them with another Minion-based Tempo deck that makes no use of the aforementioned package.
But yeah, back to my point, the loss of identity happens only for Tempo decks (and only minion-based ones), which is fair enough, since as meta-shaper archetype, it should be available to any class.
TL;DR: we now have Tempo neutral package for any class to build Zoo decks. But that is where identity loss stops.
Yeah the neutrals are pretty insane right now, but it kinda needs to be that way. As the last expansion of the year KnC has the most competition in standard from other sets. If they went too easy on these cards they wouldn't have any impact on the meta. We don't want another TGT do we?
I do wish though that the balance of power favored the class cards more. At least many of the powerful neutrals this time are deck build around cards (like Spiteful Summoner and Grand Archivist) rather then just generically good cards (like Bonemare and Scalebane).
Don't you think that Hearthstone lost its identity with all those powerful neutral cards? I mean every aggro/midrange deck has the pirate package, Cobalt Scalebane, Corridor Creeper and Bonemare and sometimes Tar Creeper. Back in the day only Zoo (warlock) was a mix of neutral minions and that's why it was called Zoo, from a MTG tournament deck that was famous exactly for running a lot of different high-power/low-mana creatures. Right now basically every aggro/midrange deck is a Zoo, even hunter is running Southsea Captain even tho it's the class with the best 3-mana package in the game with Eaglehorn Bow, Animal Companion, Kill Command and Unleash the Hounds. I know that a lot of people care more about having fun playing the game but I'm losing interest on playing ladder because its lack of diversity and basically if you wanna experiment a new aggro/midrange deck you basically have to play the neutral package, which in my opinion sucks. I mean, back in the day when Piloted Shredder was on standard almost every class was running it, right now we have a piloted package, what's the reason of having 9 classes?
...
You are absolutely right. It's the main reason why the game is not so much fun right now IMO.
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What is your solution? They have proven throughout the course of the game's history that they don't know how to nerf things. When they nerf something they effectively remove it from the game, only to add something just as bad or even worse not long after.
People whine about things like the pirate package and now corridor creeper but people are still going to pay money to get the dust to craft it and they are still going to play it, so why would they change anything? The majority of this community is uncreative and only cares about winning, not fun, and is willing to pay for it so they are just catering to their biggest spending audience. I'm guilty of doing it but if you are remembering a time when the game was fun, you are just looking at it with rose-colored nostalgia glasses. It was never about fun or creativity.
Thing is, the neutral power creep did succeed in changing the meta - it just changed it into a meta that lacks variety. The futility of new cards is the primary struggle of CCG design.
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It's not just that neutral cards get stronger, it's that these powerful neutral cards are basically just lumps of stats, so they go easily into any tempo deck. Though that's not the only factor to blame, it's also the rising potency of AoE, which has forced tempo decks to become stronger overall to stand a chance. And of course, the easiest way to make tempo decks more powerful across the board is through neutral cards, especially when you want to dedicate most of the class cards of an expansion to forward a theme such as Spell Hunter.
Also, part of the reason the game feels homogeneous is not only because neutral cards are powerful, but because there is a clear best neutral card at X mana cost. No 5-drop is better than Scalebane, no 6-drop is better than Spiteful Summoner, no 7-drop is better than Bonemare, etc. If there were 4 other 7-drops that all were comparable to Bonemare in different circumstances, then the game wouldn't feel so same-y even though they're all neutrals. Of course it would be better if class cards were the go-to, but there are so many more neutrals than there are class cards that neutrals will always be more common.
Not enough salt shake >.<
I can agree that some of the neutral cards are too strong in a broad sense (Bonemare being the absolute worst offender and Corridor Creeper being a close second), I think overall Blizzard has done a better job of making the neutral cards fit in a certain style of deck than they did in the early days of the game, especially the legendaries.
Cobalt Scalebane is good, but you can really only put it in decks where you are planning to have a consistent board presence, otherwise it's just a 5 mana 5/5 a lot of the time. Patches the Pirate was a mistake, but at this point we're going to have to live with it for another 3 months or so (and once he's gone I think we will see a big improvement). I also think Bonemare would be more balanced if it didn't grant taunt, since at that point you wouldn't be forced to attack into that minion, making Bonemare a worse play in situations where you're low on health.
So it's a balancing act, and while it was poorly balanced in the days of Dr. Boom, Piloted Shredder and Sludge Belcher, it did improve, but perhaps now the pendulum has swung back a little too far.
I complained about this in the last expansion, before the addition of corridor creeper even. That fact that the problem is not only still here after the expansion, but even worse, just goes to show how unbalanced these neutrals are. Hell, even most of the priest decks I face these days are running pirates, scalbane, bonemare and creeper as part of a tempo-dragon deck. When priest is playing zoo, you know there's a serious problem. Welcome to zoostone.
I just can't decide if this meta is worse than MSG or not. It's certainly close.
I'll be the first to call out a thinly veiled salt thread when I see it, but I think this topic has merit. Can we not be so quick to jump on the "lol salty get gud" train?
I think Reynad had a good video on this topic a couple weeks ago, and it appears to be playing out just as he predicted.
https://youtu.be/qWN-LB85qsA?t=204
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Nerfs. If they would just nerf, more regularly, and maybe buff too, this game would be so much better.
And if they only make good Epic / Legendary class card, everyone will jump on the train to call the game too expansive.
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I kinda agree with you OP, but I wouldn't go as far as calling for HS identity loss.
The neutral powercreep are a concern, and they appear and contribute in t1 decks.
But if you look at them, it is mostly Tempo cards for Tempo decks. And Tempo decks are arguably the best meta shaper we can hope for, for they leave generous room for other archetypes to develop. It is possibly harder to refine other archetypes, but even as t1, Tempo decks are not overwhelming the meta, yet.
Ofc, you can't expect to easily beat them with another Minion-based Tempo deck that makes no use of the aforementioned package.
But yeah, back to my point, the loss of identity happens only for Tempo decks (and only minion-based ones), which is fair enough, since as meta-shaper archetype, it should be available to any class.
TL;DR: we now have Tempo neutral package for any class to build Zoo decks. But that is where identity loss stops.
Yeah the neutrals are pretty insane right now, but it kinda needs to be that way. As the last expansion of the year KnC has the most competition in standard from other sets. If they went too easy on these cards they wouldn't have any impact on the meta. We don't want another TGT do we?
I do wish though that the balance of power favored the class cards more. At least many of the powerful neutrals this time are deck build around cards (like Spiteful Summoner and Grand Archivist) rather then just generically good cards (like Bonemare and Scalebane).
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OP seems to be behind the times. Sure we see lots of Corridor Creeper, but the other cards are seen in very few decks.