Greetings fellow Hearthpwn users. As a long time player and user on this forum there have been many occasions in which I've disagreed with the choices that blizzard has made over the years. Now I'm by no means a professional game designer and being a single person as opposed to a full team means that I might lose some insight but these are the things that I would have done differently or that I wouldn't have done at all.
1. CHANGES TO STANDARD
Let's start by the core of the game, the standard format. Introducing the standard rotation was a great move that was absolutely needed when the card pool got bigger and bigger but it's clear that its current implementation still has some problems and Their names are "Basic" and "Classic".
Before we discuss that though we need to realize that hearthstone offers different formats to cater to different kinds of players. Standard caters to competitive players that want to see radical changes to the meta every few months and to new players that can't collect thousands of cards from previous expansions while wild caters to old players that have collected most cards and that want to play their decks from previous metas as well as people that want to experience the greater power levels of the game.
This all seems fine until you inspect the basic and classic sets. They never rotate but they stay in the mode in which people want to see drastic changes in the meta. This means that any powerful card from those sets is going to see play indefinitely and thus limit design space for future cards that have to compete with it. The solution that blizzard has applied to this problem so far is to nerf those powerful cards to improve the standard experience. What they're missing though is the fact that these nerfs greatly affect the players that want to play decks from the past since their power levels or even their existence can be affected.
Now since you might not personally care about that you might say that I'm talking nonsense but when you design a game with millions of players you can't make choices based on what you personally would like. Instead you should try to improve the experience for everyone and that's what I'm trying to do. I'm not saying that the current standard system is bad, I'm saying that I think that I have a better one and I'm going to share it with you now.
1.1 THE INVERSE HALL OF FAME
When a card goes to the hall of fame people are usually happy. Standard players see a change in the meta because oppresive cards leave from it and wild players can still play with the card (and even get it golden for free if they want to). What I suggest should happen at the start of each rotation is the "inverse" of the Hall of Fame, that is, saying which basic and classic cards CAN be played in standard. This would mean that all cards that aren't in this inverse hall of fame CAN'T be played in standard for that current year, although they might return in the future.
Why say which cards stay instead of which cards leave? Well, because most cards will be leaving each year and so it's shorter to communicate that way. What I mean is that most cards from basic and classic won't be playable in standard and only a few of them will make guest appearances on each year, effectively rotating most of the set. So instead of nerfing wild growth and nourish forever blizzard could have simply said "Hey, since this year we want to print crazy cards for druid that would benefit too much from our current ramp cards, we're just going to remove them from standard until they rotate. Then, when we feel that we want to change druid's ramp dynamic we can simply put them back in standard until players get tired of them again."
You might have many questions as to how this works when you take new players into account. Shouldn't they be introduced to the game playing with basic and classic cards? But how if they can't play with those cards in standard? Well, it's obvious that just as we have standard and wild to cater to different types of players we need a new format catered to new players. And also one that many old players would enjoy as well.
1.2 THE CLASSIC FORMAT
Ah, don't you guys love remembering how hearthstone used to be when the game launched. Only classic packs, viable strategies for every class, so many iconic cards and decks... Well, how about we make a format that lets you play that way whenever you want. This idea will be attractive to many old players but its main purpose would be to allow new players to experience the same thing that we all experienced at launch. A smaller card pool and simpler effects would make it a great learning experience (because that's what it was designed to be in the first place).
At first glance, there seem to be 2 problems with this format:
1. What about nerfed cards?
Well, if you go to the balance section you'll see what balance changes I'd make to the game but in general most recent nerfs would be reverted since there's no problem with classic cards being powerful anymore because blizzard can put them in standard whenever they choose.
2. How do new players get into standard?
This is a digital card game. Blizzard could offer more free standard rewards (in short more free packs and promotions) to eventually push new players into the standard format. If they get tired of it or if they're being destroyed by meta decks they can always fall back to classic and still enjoy the game, thus decreasing their chances of leaving altogether.
There's still a problem I haven't touched regarding these changes and it's the fact that we have reduced the standard card pool. I'm assuming that blizzard has carefully chosen how many cards are in standard each year and so I'll try to keep the number as close as possible. How, you might ask? Well, that's what the next section is all about.
1.3 BRINGING BACK ADVENTURES
Very few people will tell you that they didn't enjoy hearthstone adventures. You could get all the cards for a very low price and although the fights were usually pretty easy the heroic mode was a great challenge. However, it's true that adventures usually didn't impact the meta as much and in trying to do so they could print dangerously overpowered cards. Since we don't want 8 months passing without getting a new full 100+ cards expansion we'll need to squeeze adventures in between the 4 month period expansions have right now.
My suggestion would be releasing them 2 months after any expansion. They would have the same theme as the expansion that came before and the new cards would be an opportunity to tweak the meta (that will probably be getting stale by then). Basically this gives blizzard a reaction tool against oppresive decks that doesn't require nerfs.
So then would we still get the singleplayer content that we're getting right now (such as dungeon run)? I don't know, that depends on how much the team can work and if they're willing to do it. Obviously more content is always great but everything has its limitations. One more thing I'd like to note though is that these new adventures don't need to keep the same adventure format of beating bosses one by one. They can use the new "run" formats, the "puzzle" format or even new ones entirely but they'd be rewarding cards instead of nothing and so players would feel more of an urge to play them. I'm sure this is something that needs to be looked at for each adventure to balance difficulty while allowing everyone to get all the cards but it certainly can be done.
Well, that should cover all the big changes to hearthstone's more popular format but if you thought I was over you'd be wrong. There's much more to come in the next sections so buckle up and let's go.
2. NEW MODES AND FEATURES
There are many ways to play hearthstone apart from constructed. We've got the arena, tavern brawl, the single player content... Still, the game has a lot of potential and these are some of the new ways to play that I'd like to see in the future.
2.1 THE PUZZLE EDITOR
I really enjoyed solving hearthstone puzzles in "The Boomsday Project"'s solo content. It felt very fresh and I had a ton of fun. However, after you beat them there's not much you can do and I feel like there's a lot more interactions and puzzles to explore. Therefore I think it'd be a great idea to let players create their own puzzles and then share them with the community. If you think about it, there's a very simple and intuitive way to put this into the game.
So first things first, how do you create a puzzle from the game client. Well, it's all done from your collection. When trying to create a deck you'll also have the option to create a puzzle instead. Then you'd choose between the four different types of puzzles (or more could be introduced) instead of choosing a class. Once you're selecting cards for your puzzle you make 6 different "decks": The cards that are on your side of the board (limited to 7), the cards that are on your hand (limited to 10) and the cards that are on your deck (limited to 60). Then you'd do this for your opponent as well. The system would have to take account for the order in which you put the cards but I'm sure that's not a hard thing to do.
So now that you have your puzzle, what do you do with it? Well, first you need to verify it by completing it yourself, then you can share it with a friend and people would be able to play it in a new mode in which you'd be presented with random puzzles that increase in difficulty. How exactly you would implement that and what the rewards would be if any is something that I'll leave for your imagination but I think that you get the main idea.
2.2 A REPLAY SYSTEM (OR AT LEAST A MATCH HISTORY)
Honestly, it's about time these kinds of systems are implemented into the game. This is something that has been done countless times before for many different games and not doing it for hearthstone is just lowering the standard. I won't explain how these systems work in detail because there are so many previous implementations that it's just not needed. Some basic things though would be seeing your opponent's hand on replays so you can analyze his plays as well and letting you share replays with a code or even view them with friends.
I'd also like to see more stats in-client such as winrates with different decks and classes, time played, times I've been fireballed to the face, I don't know just something. The lack of stats for this game is something I still can't wrap my head around.
2.3 TOURNAMENT MODE!
Why did they cancel this? Small indie studio am I right? The game could benefit so much from this feature it's insane that a company as big as blizzard has decided not to include it. Maybe I just don't have as much information as them but I still don't know why they can't make a simple menu with some basic restrictions that allows you to organize a tournament yourself or weekly tournaments for all formats that have small entry fees and offer more rewards the higher you get. It'd be so good for the game as a whole that I don't know what could have possibly made them cancel it but hey, maybe we'll see it at some point in the future.
3. BALANCE CHANGES (WORK IN PROGRESS)
Now would be the time for me to talk about balance changes. However this is a very extensive topic and I'll need some time to write it all down. Since there's already a lot to discuss I'm going to post this incomplete for now and I'll edit the post later to include all the changes with detail. For now just know that my general intentions are to revert most nerfs to classic and basic cards since they're not oppresive in standard anymore and to nerf some cards that deserved to be nerfed instead, mostly to keep wild balanced without destroying iconic decks from the past. Then I might buff some cards whose power level is just incredibly low so they can be they somewhat viable if you really try to make a deck around them.
So, what do you think about all of these changes? Do you agree, do you disagree, am I out of my mind or is this a direction you would like the game to take? I'd love to know what you think so please share your opinion, just try and keep things civil if you can.
Complex stuff, but at first sight, it all looks pretty reasonable to me.
Classic Format could actually be the PvP extension of Innkeeper mode + the retrò flavour (but with diminished rewards).
Just add a nerf policy for Standard cards that are about to Rotate into full-Wild, and it's all pretty good.
The only problem I see is how to make the transition, from the Wild perspective: un-nerfing Classic/Basic while targeting others for nerfs would require a very large set of card tweaks, with potentially dire implication for whole decks and a high chance of failure overall. Like, how do you even dust-refund such a large scale operation?
I didn't read all of your post but the inverse hall of fame is suggested by brian kibler in a youtube video about a year ago and there is some benefit to it. BUT if lets say nourish and wildgrowth would be hall of famed and then you get crazy cards in standart because you can print them then the powerlevel in wild would go insane for druid. And no don't say wild is wild because all of it is OP and that is ok. Imo wild. Is in a worse state than standart. There is a 10% cap of powerlevel between the best and the worst class witch means that if you give to many powerful cards or just one insane one the class get's too strong in wild. Right now i see bigpriest and evenshaman all the time. Of corse the nerfs were the reason why rogue and druid are very weak in standart but for a long time now mage and warrior been in the depth in wild witch is a real problem. When a class isn't viable for a few month - that's ok but when a class isn't viable for more then 6month or year then we have a problem because some classes need really good cards in the next expansion. Mage and warrior are very bad in wild so if the cap is to big the classes rely on good cards in expansions. Blizzard still pushing arcetypes like enragewarrior and discardlock. So in wild those cards don't help because that's not what those classes do in wild. Right now althogh standart is a problem with all the hunters lingering around - wild is in an even worse state.
Tournament mode was scrapped cause it didn’t work out like they wanted. Sadly
But I do think brining adventures back between exp. would be a good thing again. As the influx of so many cards every 6 months I don’t think has been to healthy. As they are continually having to think up new cards quick instead of taking time to put in ones that are actually good and have plenty of time to test.
Adventures do only add a few cards but usually most of them are used by every class and gives the team the proper amount of time to test and get the next big exp. plenty of time to be ready.
Atleast this is how I felt before they switched to the new format of a new exp. every 6 months. Seems like it has been more of a nightmare since this change took place.
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Greetings fellow Hearthpwn users. As a long time player and user on this forum there have been many occasions in which I've disagreed with the choices that blizzard has made over the years. Now I'm by no means a professional game designer and being a single person as opposed to a full team means that I might lose some insight but these are the things that I would have done differently or that I wouldn't have done at all.
1. CHANGES TO STANDARD
Let's start by the core of the game, the standard format. Introducing the standard rotation was a great move that was absolutely needed when the card pool got bigger and bigger but it's clear that its current implementation still has some problems and Their names are "Basic" and "Classic".
Before we discuss that though we need to realize that hearthstone offers different formats to cater to different kinds of players. Standard caters to competitive players that want to see radical changes to the meta every few months and to new players that can't collect thousands of cards from previous expansions while wild caters to old players that have collected most cards and that want to play their decks from previous metas as well as people that want to experience the greater power levels of the game.
This all seems fine until you inspect the basic and classic sets. They never rotate but they stay in the mode in which people want to see drastic changes in the meta. This means that any powerful card from those sets is going to see play indefinitely and thus limit design space for future cards that have to compete with it. The solution that blizzard has applied to this problem so far is to nerf those powerful cards to improve the standard experience. What they're missing though is the fact that these nerfs greatly affect the players that want to play decks from the past since their power levels or even their existence can be affected.
Now since you might not personally care about that you might say that I'm talking nonsense but when you design a game with millions of players you can't make choices based on what you personally would like. Instead you should try to improve the experience for everyone and that's what I'm trying to do. I'm not saying that the current standard system is bad, I'm saying that I think that I have a better one and I'm going to share it with you now.
1.1 THE INVERSE HALL OF FAME
When a card goes to the hall of fame people are usually happy. Standard players see a change in the meta because oppresive cards leave from it and wild players can still play with the card (and even get it golden for free if they want to). What I suggest should happen at the start of each rotation is the "inverse" of the Hall of Fame, that is, saying which basic and classic cards CAN be played in standard. This would mean that all cards that aren't in this inverse hall of fame CAN'T be played in standard for that current year, although they might return in the future.
Why say which cards stay instead of which cards leave? Well, because most cards will be leaving each year and so it's shorter to communicate that way. What I mean is that most cards from basic and classic won't be playable in standard and only a few of them will make guest appearances on each year, effectively rotating most of the set. So instead of nerfing wild growth and nourish forever blizzard could have simply said "Hey, since this year we want to print crazy cards for druid that would benefit too much from our current ramp cards, we're just going to remove them from standard until they rotate. Then, when we feel that we want to change druid's ramp dynamic we can simply put them back in standard until players get tired of them again."
You might have many questions as to how this works when you take new players into account. Shouldn't they be introduced to the game playing with basic and classic cards? But how if they can't play with those cards in standard? Well, it's obvious that just as we have standard and wild to cater to different types of players we need a new format catered to new players. And also one that many old players would enjoy as well.
1.2 THE CLASSIC FORMAT
Ah, don't you guys love remembering how hearthstone used to be when the game launched. Only classic packs, viable strategies for every class, so many iconic cards and decks... Well, how about we make a format that lets you play that way whenever you want. This idea will be attractive to many old players but its main purpose would be to allow new players to experience the same thing that we all experienced at launch. A smaller card pool and simpler effects would make it a great learning experience (because that's what it was designed to be in the first place).
At first glance, there seem to be 2 problems with this format:
1. What about nerfed cards?
Well, if you go to the balance section you'll see what balance changes I'd make to the game but in general most recent nerfs would be reverted since there's no problem with classic cards being powerful anymore because blizzard can put them in standard whenever they choose.
2. How do new players get into standard?
This is a digital card game. Blizzard could offer more free standard rewards (in short more free packs and promotions) to eventually push new players into the standard format. If they get tired of it or if they're being destroyed by meta decks they can always fall back to classic and still enjoy the game, thus decreasing their chances of leaving altogether.
There's still a problem I haven't touched regarding these changes and it's the fact that we have reduced the standard card pool. I'm assuming that blizzard has carefully chosen how many cards are in standard each year and so I'll try to keep the number as close as possible. How, you might ask? Well, that's what the next section is all about.
1.3 BRINGING BACK ADVENTURES
Very few people will tell you that they didn't enjoy hearthstone adventures. You could get all the cards for a very low price and although the fights were usually pretty easy the heroic mode was a great challenge. However, it's true that adventures usually didn't impact the meta as much and in trying to do so they could print dangerously overpowered cards. Since we don't want 8 months passing without getting a new full 100+ cards expansion we'll need to squeeze adventures in between the 4 month period expansions have right now.
My suggestion would be releasing them 2 months after any expansion. They would have the same theme as the expansion that came before and the new cards would be an opportunity to tweak the meta (that will probably be getting stale by then). Basically this gives blizzard a reaction tool against oppresive decks that doesn't require nerfs.
So then would we still get the singleplayer content that we're getting right now (such as dungeon run)? I don't know, that depends on how much the team can work and if they're willing to do it. Obviously more content is always great but everything has its limitations. One more thing I'd like to note though is that these new adventures don't need to keep the same adventure format of beating bosses one by one. They can use the new "run" formats, the "puzzle" format or even new ones entirely but they'd be rewarding cards instead of nothing and so players would feel more of an urge to play them. I'm sure this is something that needs to be looked at for each adventure to balance difficulty while allowing everyone to get all the cards but it certainly can be done.
Well, that should cover all the big changes to hearthstone's more popular format but if you thought I was over you'd be wrong. There's much more to come in the next sections so buckle up and let's go.
2. NEW MODES AND FEATURES
There are many ways to play hearthstone apart from constructed. We've got the arena, tavern brawl, the single player content... Still, the game has a lot of potential and these are some of the new ways to play that I'd like to see in the future.
2.1 THE PUZZLE EDITOR
I really enjoyed solving hearthstone puzzles in "The Boomsday Project"'s solo content. It felt very fresh and I had a ton of fun. However, after you beat them there's not much you can do and I feel like there's a lot more interactions and puzzles to explore. Therefore I think it'd be a great idea to let players create their own puzzles and then share them with the community. If you think about it, there's a very simple and intuitive way to put this into the game.
So first things first, how do you create a puzzle from the game client. Well, it's all done from your collection. When trying to create a deck you'll also have the option to create a puzzle instead. Then you'd choose between the four different types of puzzles (or more could be introduced) instead of choosing a class. Once you're selecting cards for your puzzle you make 6 different "decks": The cards that are on your side of the board (limited to 7), the cards that are on your hand (limited to 10) and the cards that are on your deck (limited to 60). Then you'd do this for your opponent as well. The system would have to take account for the order in which you put the cards but I'm sure that's not a hard thing to do.
So now that you have your puzzle, what do you do with it? Well, first you need to verify it by completing it yourself, then you can share it with a friend and people would be able to play it in a new mode in which you'd be presented with random puzzles that increase in difficulty. How exactly you would implement that and what the rewards would be if any is something that I'll leave for your imagination but I think that you get the main idea.
2.2 A REPLAY SYSTEM (OR AT LEAST A MATCH HISTORY)
Honestly, it's about time these kinds of systems are implemented into the game. This is something that has been done countless times before for many different games and not doing it for hearthstone is just lowering the standard. I won't explain how these systems work in detail because there are so many previous implementations that it's just not needed. Some basic things though would be seeing your opponent's hand on replays so you can analyze his plays as well and letting you share replays with a code or even view them with friends.
I'd also like to see more stats in-client such as winrates with different decks and classes, time played, times I've been fireballed to the face, I don't know just something. The lack of stats for this game is something I still can't wrap my head around.
2.3 TOURNAMENT MODE!
Why did they cancel this? Small indie studio am I right? The game could benefit so much from this feature it's insane that a company as big as blizzard has decided not to include it. Maybe I just don't have as much information as them but I still don't know why they can't make a simple menu with some basic restrictions that allows you to organize a tournament yourself or weekly tournaments for all formats that have small entry fees and offer more rewards the higher you get. It'd be so good for the game as a whole that I don't know what could have possibly made them cancel it but hey, maybe we'll see it at some point in the future.
3. BALANCE CHANGES (WORK IN PROGRESS)
Now would be the time for me to talk about balance changes. However this is a very extensive topic and I'll need some time to write it all down. Since there's already a lot to discuss I'm going to post this incomplete for now and I'll edit the post later to include all the changes with detail. For now just know that my general intentions are to revert most nerfs to classic and basic cards since they're not oppresive in standard anymore and to nerf some cards that deserved to be nerfed instead, mostly to keep wild balanced without destroying iconic decks from the past. Then I might buff some cards whose power level is just incredibly low so they can be they somewhat viable if you really try to make a deck around them.
So, what do you think about all of these changes? Do you agree, do you disagree, am I out of my mind or is this a direction you would like the game to take? I'd love to know what you think so please share your opinion, just try and keep things civil if you can.
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
Complex stuff, but at first sight, it all looks pretty reasonable to me.
Classic Format could actually be the PvP extension of Innkeeper mode + the retrò flavour (but with diminished rewards).
Just add a nerf policy for Standard cards that are about to Rotate into full-Wild, and it's all pretty good.
The only problem I see is how to make the transition, from the Wild perspective: un-nerfing Classic/Basic while targeting others for nerfs would require a very large set of card tweaks, with potentially dire implication for whole decks and a high chance of failure overall. Like, how do you even dust-refund such a large scale operation?
Tournament mode has been planned and is under construction as far as I remember...
I didn't read all of your post but the inverse hall of fame is suggested by brian kibler in a youtube video about a year ago and there is some benefit to it. BUT if lets say nourish and wildgrowth would be hall of famed and then you get crazy cards in standart because you can print them then the powerlevel in wild would go insane for druid. And no don't say wild is wild because all of it is OP and that is ok. Imo wild. Is in a worse state than standart. There is a 10% cap of powerlevel between the best and the worst class witch means that if you give to many powerful cards or just one insane one the class get's too strong in wild. Right now i see bigpriest and evenshaman all the time. Of corse the nerfs were the reason why rogue and druid are very weak in standart but for a long time now mage and warrior been in the depth in wild witch is a real problem. When a class isn't viable for a few month - that's ok but when a class isn't viable for more then 6month or year then we have a problem because some classes need really good cards in the next expansion. Mage and warrior are very bad in wild so if the cap is to big the classes rely on good cards in expansions. Blizzard still pushing arcetypes like enragewarrior and discardlock. So in wild those cards don't help because that's not what those classes do in wild. Right now althogh standart is a problem with all the hunters lingering around - wild is in an even worse state.
they could use tavern brawls to test nerfs
Love these ideas, though im pretty sure wild could use some more work
Tournament mode was scrapped cause it didn’t work out like they wanted. Sadly
But I do think brining adventures back between exp. would be a good thing again. As the influx of so many cards every 6 months I don’t think has been to healthy. As they are continually having to think up new cards quick instead of taking time to put in ones that are actually good and have plenty of time to test.
Adventures do only add a few cards but usually most of them are used by every class and gives the team the proper amount of time to test and get the next big exp. plenty of time to be ready.
Atleast this is how I felt before they switched to the new format of a new exp. every 6 months. Seems like it has been more of a nightmare since this change took place.