Blizzard doesn’t just hire anybody. They are very selective. The product owners drive the card design not the teams. Cards also evolve and change. What the customer sees as a final product generally doesn’t reflect what that card started out as.
The product owners 100% play every digital card game out there. Coming up with fresh ideas across multiple classes, in a pool of close to 2500 cards is very difficult. Without reference the job would be impossible. Plus competitor analysis is important part of product development.
Also consider Blizzard is likely 4-5 expansions out. When I spoke to one the HS producers years ago he said at that point they were 3 expansions ahead of what was out. Single player content + expansions + game balance + new game modes = very busy and very dedicated folks. Lastly, they have an in-house team of 15-20 pros that test the expansions and provide feedback. I work in video games as a producer. I swear to you it’s not easy to get hired at Blizzard.
Give the HS team some credit y’all! They are doing what they can to keep it interesting. Personally, I feel The card designs have improved. Blizzard isn’t churning out OP cards to make money. I feel it’s more “hey we know this is really strong, we’ve tuned it a bunch, it’ll likely be problematic but let’s see.” When Goblins vs Gnomes came out everyone thought Sneed’s Old Shredder and Trogzoor were going to be so OP. They weren’t even used. Both were slow, susceptible to silence, or easily played around. Dr Boom was the turn 7 go to that wasn’t predicted. Enjoy the game and have fun. Obv everyone has their opinions.
The thing is Blizzard doesn't even have a concrete desing philosophy.They have backtracked so many times in the things they said it's even hard to keep track of it. If you knew that they will continue their current desing path, then you could do an informed choice as a costumer to buy their products or not. However, this has been impossible for years. The game state itself at this point it is rng lol.
I agree with you ,the way blizz is taking the balance is the only thing that im extremelly unsatisfied in this game ,as i tend to craft decks and not cards,when something get nerfed i get refund for 2 cards and end up with a useless deck ,it really looks like extremely poor job or a strategy to trick the player with a false perspective of the set to make us buy it and then nerfing everythinh mindlessly .... Thr set should be balanced before release ,I think middle exp nerfs are extremely frustrating and is dishonest with the player.
The "design philosophy" is - 'how can we make as much money as possible'.
They deliberately design overpowered cards in order to build hype around a new expansion and flood the internet (I.e. pay steamers etc) to generate a level of 'excitement'. This is no different to Apple trying to sell their new iPhone with their latest and greatest incremental upgrade which you have to pay through the nose in order to obtain.
Hype or whatever you want to call it in turn generates sales. I.e. 'wow that new deck streamer x was playing is amazing. But I need to spend money to either get dust or hope to obtain the cards by opening packs'. Unless you have been playing free to play since the game was released I cant imagine many people have been able to keep up with the releases.
Anyway this process happens every single expansion and they obtain data and information post release so they can better refine the process to sell more stuff for the next expansion.
Unfortunately I dont think we will see any major or minor buffs to classic cards anytime soon. I guess this will happen at some point due to the inevitable power creep (similar to the stat squash in world of warcraft). But that wont make them any money. Selling new cards which have new mechanics are want people want and this is what drives the design philosophy. It's a simple as that.
IMO, this is the direction a virtual TCG should go. One of the benefits of being virtual is the ability to make changes to the card pool on the fly. Take advantage of it. Push the envelope. You'll learn more about your own design, and be able to maintain balance, while keeping the game fresh.
People act like blizzard accidentally and innocently made Demon Hunter strong, and makes OP cards by accident. That's the strategy, that's how they keep people drawn in expansion after expansion. It's a business strategy, not an oopsie by the testers. If you don't like it, vote with your wallet; if you buy 250+ packs each expansion, you're just fueling the practices you don't agree with.
Release broken sets, make people horny and aroused for pre-orders, proceed to nerf the strongest cards to keep the meta fresh and the playerbase from bitching too much, hence and repeat..
This is the one and only card game business model that WORKS, MtG has done it for decades, Blizz was arrogant and thought they could reinvent the wheel, they didnt. Clearly someone new at HQ realized this and has set things straight, this is how HS should have been FROM THE START.
When they try to make balanced sets, shit like TgT, Rastakhans Crap happens! Which do you prefer?
When they try to make balanced sets, shit like TgT, Rastakhans Crap happens! Which do you prefer?
That's because the previous sets weren't balanced. TgT was alright, I really liked Nexus-Champion Saraad. The problem was we didn't have many resource generation cards, discovery wasn't invented back then and becuase of that, control vs control matchups were about who gets to fatigue first loses. But let's not forget TgT introduced Secret pally, a deck which even bots could reach legend with.
And Rastakhan would have been nice too if it weren't for Baku/Genn and DKs. Not to mention druid's iron shell.
The very fact we're anticipating nerfs is what disheartens me. Why did it have to become the norm? Nerfs were few and far between once, I don't care about what other CCGs do.
Just because you see someone do something means you are justified(and infallible) to do it too? That kind of logic falls through many holes...
I used to love this game once and even recommend to friends, but I'd be a bad friend to recommend it now, in the game's current state; the power creep, the balance(or lack thereof), the cost of crafting, cost of packs, the slow daily gold gain(and limit). You could spend nearly 2 hours in the game and gain MAYBE 2/10 of a pack...
The fact I'd rather fight a Demon Hunter than a priest really opened my eyes the other day at how they either don't know what they're doing anymore or don't care enough to change.
Re: Balancing. I've heard things like "XYZ class isn't OP because XYZ-2 class crushes it", meanwhile XYZ-3 class struggles to fight both. There is a difference between balancing 1 class vs 1 class and balancing 1 class vs all classes. Why should I have to switch to playing a whole different class and deck type just to win games? Why can't I stick to my favourite class, (WHICH I'VE SPENT 1000s of DUST ON) to win? Before you finish that thought, a lot of the appeal of the game IS for the various classes that encourage various player play-styles. It's literally what they're trying to sell you.
I don't get it anymore, this game has become more exhausting and a chore than before. I kinda want it to die and stay dead for a while so that Hearthstone 2 can finally come about. Maybe by then they'll learn about their player-base.
maybe one day we can play chillwind yeti again Kappa
I know it's a joke but vanilla cards are never gonna be viable. The point of all card games is to create archetypes filled with cards that are powerful when played together but rather pointless by themselves, like jade golems or soul fragments for example.
4. Secret Passage - just another overhyped card. It will be strong in aggressive deck types, pointless in others.
is kinda lame. Stating that if a card only works well in certain deck types and isn't generic enough then it's probably nothing to worry is not exactly a good argument. You shouldn't judge a card by how strong it is in most decks but by how strong it can potentially be in an ideal deck or ideal situation. A lot of cards aren't nerfed because they're just that strong, but because they had some pretty broken interactions with other cards that were also fine by themselves.
When they try to make balanced sets, shit like TgT, Rastakhans Crap happens! Which do you prefer?
That's because the previous sets weren't balanced. TgT was alright, I really liked Nexus-Champion Saraad. The problem was we didn't have many resource generation cards, discovery wasn't invented back then and becuase of that, control vs control matchups were about who gets to fatigue first loses. But let's not forget TgT introduced Secret pally, a deck which even bots could reach legend with.
And Rastakhan would have been nice too if it weren't for Baku/Genn and DKs. Not to mention druid's iron shell.
You just proved my point.. those expansions failed cuz their power level were not nearly as high as the other ones, so their impact on the meta was lower and the game felt more stale.
Broken sets are good for the game. They make people buy more pre-orders, they shake up the meta harder, the following nerfs make the game feel fresh for longer periods of time. It was only bad before cuz Team 5 took too long to nerf what had to be nerfed, glad that is not the case anymore.
When they try to make balanced sets, shit like TgT, Rastakhans Crap happens! Which do you prefer?
That's because the previous sets weren't balanced. TgT was alright, I really liked Nexus-Champion Saraad. The problem was we didn't have many resource generation cards, discovery wasn't invented back then and becuase of that, control vs control matchups were about who gets to fatigue first loses. But let's not forget TgT introduced Secret pally, a deck which even bots could reach legend with.
And Rastakhan would have been nice too if it weren't for Baku/Genn and DKs. Not to mention druid's iron shell.
You just proved my point.. those expansions failed cuz their power level were not nearly as high as the other ones, so their impact on the meta was lower and the game felt more stale.
Broken sets are good for the game. They make people buy more pre-orders, they shake up the meta harder, the following nerfs make the game feel fresh for longer periods of time. It was only bad before cuz Team 5 took too long to nerf what had to be nerfed, glad that is not the case anymore.
Read what he wrote more carefully. Both sets literally broke the meta - TGT by introducing one of the most dominant decks of all time, Rastakhan, by introducing Even/Odd mechanic, which is still a huge part of Wild meta. The sets were powerful and flipped meta upside down, in their own fashion. The problem is previously they were introducing a few strong cards to create new decks and shake the meta and the rest was crap. Yes, maybe it was a flaw, but worked - metas weren't stale. Now instead of creating new archetypes they just boosted overall power level to ridiculous levels, at which point the relevant archetypes more or less are still on the ladder, just with more broken tools to play with.
Tempo DH is still a Tempo DH, HL Hunter is still HL Hunter, Gala Rogue, Priest and Lock are still Gala Rogue, Priest and Lock, Spell Druid still remains, Warrior is also more or less the same playstyle, just got new broken tools.
Yeah, feels so fresh.
Also previously they had an obvious candidates for nerfs and nerfing them usually accomplished the goal. Now let's see what happened, when they introduced 10+ busted cards in one set (DH) - multiple rounds of nerfs of multiple cards. Legit.
When they try to make balanced sets, shit like TgT, Rastakhans Crap happens! Which do you prefer?
That's because the previous sets weren't balanced. TgT was alright, I really liked Nexus-Champion Saraad. The problem was we didn't have many resource generation cards, discovery wasn't invented back then and becuase of that, control vs control matchups were about who gets to fatigue first loses. But let's not forget TgT introduced Secret pally, a deck which even bots could reach legend with.
And Rastakhan would have been nice too if it weren't for Baku/Genn and DKs. Not to mention druid's iron shell.
You just proved my point.. those expansions failed cuz their power level were not nearly as high as the other ones, so their impact on the meta was lower and the game felt more stale.
Broken sets are good for the game. They make people buy more pre-orders, they shake up the meta harder, the following nerfs make the game feel fresh for longer periods of time. It was only bad before cuz Team 5 took too long to nerf what had to be nerfed, glad that is not the case anymore.
Read what he wrote more carefully. Both sets literally broke the meta - TGT by introducing one of the most dominant decks of all time, Rastakhan, by introducing Even/Odd mechanic, which is still a huge part of Wild meta. The sets were powerful and flipped meta upside down, in their own fashion. The problem is previously they were introducing a few strong cards to create new decks and shake the meta and the rest was crap. Yes, maybe it was a flaw, but worked - metas weren't stale. Now instead of creating new archetypes they just boosted overall power level to ridiculous levels, at which point the relevant archetypes more or less are still on the ladder, just with more broken tools to play with.
Tempo DH is still a Tempo DH, HL Hunter is still HL Hunter, Gala Rogue, Priest and Lock are still Gala Rogue, Priest and Lock, Spell Druid still remains, Warrior is also more or less the same playstyle, just got new broken tools.
Yeah, feels so fresh.
Also previously they had an obvious candidates for nerfs and nerfing them usually accomplished the goal. Now let's see what happened, when they introduced 10+ busted cards in one set (DH) - multiple rounds of nerfs of multiple cards. Legit.
TgT barely had 10 cards out of the entire set actually making it into competitive decks, very underwhelming overall power level in comparison with most expansions. TgT was the time when Blizz realized they needed to divide HS into formats, otherwise stronger sets would continue to overshadow weaker ones like TgT.
Even/odd were introduced with Witchwood, not sure of what you were trying to say here.. Rastakhan was when they HoFed Genn/Baku, and even then people were not inclined to use more cards from RR, truly bad expac that one.
They need to release broken sets rn cuz the power level of all classes core sets are vastly different, with some much stronger than others. Thats changing though, the priest rework gives hope that Paladin and Shaman will get a boost too, it will feel like a very different game once all classes have equally powerful core sets, but until then, broken is the way to go.
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Blizzard doesn’t just hire anybody. They are very selective. The product owners drive the card design not the teams. Cards also evolve and change. What the customer sees as a final product generally doesn’t reflect what that card started out as.
The product owners 100% play every digital card game out there. Coming up with fresh ideas across multiple classes, in a pool of close to 2500 cards is very difficult. Without reference the job would be impossible. Plus competitor analysis is important part of product development.
Also consider Blizzard is likely 4-5 expansions out. When I spoke to one the HS producers years ago he said at that point they were 3 expansions ahead of what was out. Single player content + expansions + game balance + new game modes = very busy and very dedicated folks. Lastly, they have an in-house team of 15-20 pros that test the expansions and provide feedback. I work in video games as a producer. I swear to you it’s not easy to get hired at Blizzard.
Give the HS team some credit y’all! They are doing what they can to keep it interesting. Personally, I feel The card designs have improved. Blizzard isn’t churning out OP cards to make money. I feel it’s more “hey we know this is really strong, we’ve tuned it a bunch, it’ll likely be problematic but let’s see.” When Goblins vs Gnomes came out everyone thought Sneed’s Old Shredder and Trogzoor were going to be so OP. They weren’t even used. Both were slow, susceptible to silence, or easily played around. Dr Boom was the turn 7 go to that wasn’t predicted. Enjoy the game and have fun. Obv everyone has their opinions.
No way. I doubt it's overtuned, it's just a temporary resource generator, but it'll be a very strong card. Especially when you're hunting for lethal.
It's like a better Evocation.
The thing is Blizzard doesn't even have a concrete desing philosophy.They have backtracked so many times in the things they said it's even hard to keep track of it. If you knew that they will continue their current desing path, then you could do an informed choice as a costumer to buy their products or not. However, this has been impossible for years. The game state itself at this point it is rng lol.
I agree with you ,the way blizz is taking the balance is the only thing that im extremelly unsatisfied in this game ,as i tend to craft decks and not cards,when something get nerfed i get refund for 2 cards and end up with a useless deck ,it really looks like extremely poor job or a strategy to trick the player with a false perspective of the set to make us buy it and then nerfing everythinh mindlessly .... Thr set should be balanced before release ,I think middle exp nerfs are extremely frustrating and is dishonest with the player.
The "design philosophy" is - 'how can we make as much money as possible'.
They deliberately design overpowered cards in order to build hype around a new expansion and flood the internet (I.e. pay steamers etc) to generate a level of 'excitement'. This is no different to Apple trying to sell their new iPhone with their latest and greatest incremental upgrade which you have to pay through the nose in order to obtain.
Hype or whatever you want to call it in turn generates sales. I.e. 'wow that new deck streamer x was playing is amazing. But I need to spend money to either get dust or hope to obtain the cards by opening packs'. Unless you have been playing free to play since the game was released I cant imagine many people have been able to keep up with the releases.
Anyway this process happens every single expansion and they obtain data and information post release so they can better refine the process to sell more stuff for the next expansion.
Unfortunately I dont think we will see any major or minor buffs to classic cards anytime soon. I guess this will happen at some point due to the inevitable power creep (similar to the stat squash in world of warcraft). But that wont make them any money. Selling new cards which have new mechanics are want people want and this is what drives the design philosophy. It's a simple as that.
IMO, this is the direction a virtual TCG should go. One of the benefits of being virtual is the ability to make changes to the card pool on the fly. Take advantage of it. Push the envelope. You'll learn more about your own design, and be able to maintain balance, while keeping the game fresh.
If you nerf Power Word: feast then priest player are obliged to play Galakrond or Ress Priest: 2 of the most hated deck in Standard.
Sorry for my broken english.
Current design phylosophy is a packselling choice not a skill based directive.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
Power creep is too disgusting, I hope Blizzard will rethink its course of actions or just go bankrupt
The goal of all life is death.
lol
People act like blizzard accidentally and innocently made Demon Hunter strong, and makes OP cards by accident. That's the strategy, that's how they keep people drawn in expansion after expansion. It's a business strategy, not an oopsie by the testers. If you don't like it, vote with your wallet; if you buy 250+ packs each expansion, you're just fueling the practices you don't agree with.
Pumping Out Wins Like Titty Milk
-Mother Theresa
Release broken sets, make people horny and aroused for pre-orders, proceed to nerf the strongest cards to keep the meta fresh and the playerbase from bitching too much, hence and repeat..
This is the one and only card game business model that WORKS, MtG has done it for decades, Blizz was arrogant and thought they could reinvent the wheel, they didnt. Clearly someone new at HQ realized this and has set things straight, this is how HS should have been FROM THE START.
When they try to make balanced sets, shit like TgT, Rastakhans Crap happens! Which do you prefer?
That's because the previous sets weren't balanced. TgT was alright, I really liked Nexus-Champion Saraad. The problem was we didn't have many resource generation cards, discovery wasn't invented back then and becuase of that, control vs control matchups were about who gets to fatigue first loses. But let's not forget TgT introduced Secret pally, a deck which even bots could reach legend with.
And Rastakhan would have been nice too if it weren't for Baku/Genn and DKs. Not to mention druid's iron shell.
Raw thoughts:
The very fact we're anticipating nerfs is what disheartens me. Why did it have to become the norm? Nerfs were few and far between once, I don't care about what other CCGs do.
Just because you see someone do something means you are justified(and infallible) to do it too? That kind of logic falls through many holes...
I used to love this game once and even recommend to friends, but I'd be a bad friend to recommend it now, in the game's current state; the power creep, the balance(or lack thereof), the cost of crafting, cost of packs, the slow daily gold gain(and limit). You could spend nearly 2 hours in the game and gain MAYBE 2/10 of a pack...
The fact I'd rather fight a Demon Hunter than a priest really opened my eyes the other day at how they either don't know what they're doing anymore or don't care enough to change.
Re: Balancing. I've heard things like "XYZ class isn't OP because XYZ-2 class crushes it", meanwhile XYZ-3 class struggles to fight both. There is a difference between balancing 1 class vs 1 class and balancing 1 class vs all classes. Why should I have to switch to playing a whole different class and deck type just to win games? Why can't I stick to my favourite class, (WHICH I'VE SPENT 1000s of DUST ON) to win? Before you finish that thought, a lot of the appeal of the game IS for the various classes that encourage various player play-styles. It's literally what they're trying to sell you.
I don't get it anymore, this game has become more exhausting and a chore than before. I kinda want it to die and stay dead for a while so that Hearthstone 2 can finally come about. Maybe by then they'll learn about their player-base.
I know it's a joke but vanilla cards are never gonna be viable. The point of all card games is to create archetypes filled with cards that are powerful when played together but rather pointless by themselves, like jade golems or soul fragments for example.
Which is also why saying stuff like
is kinda lame. Stating that if a card only works well in certain deck types and isn't generic enough then it's probably nothing to worry is not exactly a good argument. You shouldn't judge a card by how strong it is in most decks but by how strong it can potentially be in an ideal deck or ideal situation. A lot of cards aren't nerfed because they're just that strong, but because they had some pretty broken interactions with other cards that were also fine by themselves.
You just proved my point.. those expansions failed cuz their power level were not nearly as high as the other ones, so their impact on the meta was lower and the game felt more stale.
Broken sets are good for the game. They make people buy more pre-orders, they shake up the meta harder, the following nerfs make the game feel fresh for longer periods of time. It was only bad before cuz Team 5 took too long to nerf what had to be nerfed, glad that is not the case anymore.
Read what he wrote more carefully. Both sets literally broke the meta - TGT by introducing one of the most dominant decks of all time, Rastakhan, by introducing Even/Odd mechanic, which is still a huge part of Wild meta. The sets were powerful and flipped meta upside down, in their own fashion. The problem is previously they were introducing a few strong cards to create new decks and shake the meta and the rest was crap. Yes, maybe it was a flaw, but worked - metas weren't stale. Now instead of creating new archetypes they just boosted overall power level to ridiculous levels, at which point the relevant archetypes more or less are still on the ladder, just with more broken tools to play with.
Tempo DH is still a Tempo DH, HL Hunter is still HL Hunter, Gala Rogue, Priest and Lock are still Gala Rogue, Priest and Lock, Spell Druid still remains, Warrior is also more or less the same playstyle, just got new broken tools.
Yeah, feels so fresh.
Also previously they had an obvious candidates for nerfs and nerfing them usually accomplished the goal. Now let's see what happened, when they introduced 10+ busted cards in one set (DH) - multiple rounds of nerfs of multiple cards. Legit.
TgT barely had 10 cards out of the entire set actually making it into competitive decks, very underwhelming overall power level in comparison with most expansions. TgT was the time when Blizz realized they needed to divide HS into formats, otherwise stronger sets would continue to overshadow weaker ones like TgT.
Even/odd were introduced with Witchwood, not sure of what you were trying to say here.. Rastakhan was when they HoFed Genn/Baku, and even then people were not inclined to use more cards from RR, truly bad expac that one.
They need to release broken sets rn cuz the power level of all classes core sets are vastly different, with some much stronger than others. Thats changing though, the priest rework gives hope that Paladin and Shaman will get a boost too, it will feel like a very different game once all classes have equally powerful core sets, but until then, broken is the way to go.