Before I begin I'd like to state that I realise this is probably not a unique idea, I imagine something similar has been suggested before and I would assume something similar has been done in other card games. Also, to keep this post relatively short, I'm not going to delve into every aspect of the game which would need to be changed alongside this (such as changes to monetisation) for it to work.
The New Mode
Currently we have 2 constructed game modes in Hearthstone and neither of them, imo, allow for the best overall ranked experience. So I propose a revamp (yes another one, let’s do it right this time Blizzard), this would involve removing both Wild and Standard from ranked play and replacing them with 1 game mode, going forward in this post I will just refer to this as Ranked.
Rankedwould allow decks to be created using cards from the Core Set, the current Hearthstone Year, and 1 other Hearthstone Year from the past. So this year a player could construct a deck using cards from Gryphon and Mammoth if they enjoyed the Death Knight cards, or they could use cards from Gryphon and Kraken if they wanted to play with the OG Old Gods.
The Core Set would serve a very important purpose with this game mode as a tool for manipulating the direction of the meta, and for promoting the most recent card sets. For example, to promote the Forged in the Barrens several powerful Frenzy support cards could be added to the core set, pushing that keyword and any archetype it works with, however when the core set rotates, and a new Hearthstone Year starts, those support cards will be removed from the Core Set, and the power of the Frenzy archetype will fall.
This satisfies Blizzards’ need to sell packs for their new expansions and can ensure the most recent expansions are prominent in the meta, while allowing us to enjoy playing with our favourite cards from the past. It also ensures we will never be bored of those cards, as the decks in which we can play them in will have to change from year to year (a Mecha'thun deck from this year would have to be vastly different from a Mecha'thun deck next year).
Issues with Standard & Wild
So far I've stated what I would like to see, here I would like to show why by highlighting my issues with the current ranked game modes:
Standard: The main issue with Standard is the lack of options. This is highlighted by the recent card reveal where Priest players look severely limited in what decks they can play. Previously they had access to Death Knight support, Aggro Shadow Priest shenanigans, strong Midrange Dragon tools, Velen OTKs, the original C’Thun etc. Being able to play a class a certain way only for Blizzard to completely remove all support for it is frustrating. And when they add support back for something (as they will for Shadow Priest later in the year) it feels forced. Due to the small selection of cards it’s obvious which direction Blizzard wants us to go when deck building for each class, for anyone who enjoys the creative side of the game this is very disappointing.
Our new Ranked mode would ensure that each class is always supported by a variety of archetypes and ways to play the game, although certain ways of playing the class will be encouraged through the direction of the newest expansions and Core Set.
Wild: Wild is ‘broken’ and will only continue to get worse, it’s existence also limits card design (as we saw with Hysteria). Being able to play around with every card and every combination of those cards is a deck builders dream on the surface, however in practice the viability of any theory crafting is limited by the obscene power level of the best decks.
Our new Ranked mode adds great deck building restrictions that will both make designing future cards easier as well as harshly reducing the power level from what we see in Wild - ensuring more play styles are viable. Each class will have different strengths and weaknesses based on which year is chosen for each deck which adds a greater level of strategy to the game.
In any case this is my 'dream' vision of what Hearthstone should be, I assume there are downsides to a mode like this that more experienced card players than me are aware of, so please comment and let me know. Or if you can be bothered, tell me how you would like the games direction to be. Do you think I'm being too harsh on Standard? Would you be annoyed to see Wild removed from ranked play? Is the game perfect as it is?
Well I like the idea, as an old player I have a substantial number of good old cards. The ones who won't like it are new players who will be even more out of their depth and Blizzard who will not like us being able to draw on our deep pools of past cards again and again despite being able to influence the meta using Core. Indeed they would likely resort to powercreeping even more to make sure that the newest cards are absolutely mandatory. Balancing will also be harder since you need to consider not just the two sets, Standard and Wild with their respective pools but any combination of current year and core + any past year.
Yeah, there would have to be a few changes to other aspects of the game if something like this is to be implemented. Blizzard really fucked up by encouraging people to disenchant their old collection with the introduction of Standard.
One solution for players with limited card pools would be to just offer all players X-amount of packs for each 'Wild' set, as well as offering the old adventures for free. Say 80 packs, so essentially a pre-order bundle for each set.
Regarding powercreep, the solution would be to use the core set as a tool to push the newest set instead of just printing progressively more powerful cards to sell packs. I didn't really explain it too well in the original post but basically think of it like this:
Let's say Blizzard wants to promote a powerful Shadow Priest OTK archetype, and so their new expansion has support for this with burst cards for Priest. These burst cards alone however would purposefully not be enough to push the archetype, key support pieces would be added through the Core Set. In this case Prophet Velen could be included in the Core Set along with a synergistic card draw spell. When the next Hearthstone Year comes round and the Core Set changes, Velen and the synergistic draw spell will be removed and the powerful OTK deck will die.
The same would be done for more broad archetypes like 'aggro', where say Blizzard wanted to return to the Stealth style aggro decks for a year, cards with powerful stealth synergies like Greyheart Sage could be added to the Core Set, with the rest of the 'Stealth Package' sold through the latest expansion.
In short, Blizzard would only include part of any archetype they are trying to push in the actual expansion, with the Core Set being used to include the rest.
I understand you are against powercreep, I think very few people are pro-powercreep :P But I doubt Blizz would be able to resist the allure. I did understand what you meant by Core guiding the players towards the newest expansions. But still in this system I can see people bulking up their best years so they always have a good pool on hand. It is permanent value. In this way the Years become the new Classic set. And we saw what happened to Classic it was powercreeped into irrelevancy and the few good cards were sent to Hall of Fame. The incentive for Blizz to act the same is not only there but stronger. Hence I think they would powercreep and nerf good old cards even more. Also the difficulty for new players is not just in getting enough cards to compete but also understanding all the cards. It has been a bit rough relearning the meta and all the cards as a returning pro, imagine being a brand new player faced with every single card ever printed, because that is what your (only remaining) mode would be.
Anyway as I said I like the idea but I fear Blizz would mess it up, because it is in their financial interest to do so even disregarding plain incompetence.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Before I begin I'd like to state that I realise this is probably not a unique idea, I imagine something similar has been suggested before and I would assume something similar has been done in other card games. Also, to keep this post relatively short, I'm not going to delve into every aspect of the game which would need to be changed alongside this (such as changes to monetisation) for it to work.
The New Mode
Currently we have 2 constructed game modes in Hearthstone and neither of them, imo, allow for the best overall ranked experience. So I propose a revamp (yes another one, let’s do it right this time Blizzard), this would involve removing both Wild and Standard from ranked play and replacing them with 1 game mode, going forward in this post I will just refer to this as Ranked.
Ranked would allow decks to be created using cards from the Core Set, the current Hearthstone Year, and 1 other Hearthstone Year from the past. So this year a player could construct a deck using cards from Gryphon and Mammoth if they enjoyed the Death Knight cards, or they could use cards from Gryphon and Kraken if they wanted to play with the OG Old Gods.
The Core Set would serve a very important purpose with this game mode as a tool for manipulating the direction of the meta, and for promoting the most recent card sets. For example, to promote the Forged in the Barrens several powerful Frenzy support cards could be added to the core set, pushing that keyword and any archetype it works with, however when the core set rotates, and a new Hearthstone Year starts, those support cards will be removed from the Core Set, and the power of the Frenzy archetype will fall.
This satisfies Blizzards’ need to sell packs for their new expansions and can ensure the most recent expansions are prominent in the meta, while allowing us to enjoy playing with our favourite cards from the past. It also ensures we will never be bored of those cards, as the decks in which we can play them in will have to change from year to year (a Mecha'thun deck from this year would have to be vastly different from a Mecha'thun deck next year).
Issues with Standard & Wild
So far I've stated what I would like to see, here I would like to show why by highlighting my issues with the current ranked game modes:
Standard: The main issue with Standard is the lack of options. This is highlighted by the recent card reveal where Priest players look severely limited in what decks they can play. Previously they had access to Death Knight support, Aggro Shadow Priest shenanigans, strong Midrange Dragon tools, Velen OTKs, the original C’Thun etc. Being able to play a class a certain way only for Blizzard to completely remove all support for it is frustrating. And when they add support back for something (as they will for Shadow Priest later in the year) it feels forced. Due to the small selection of cards it’s obvious which direction Blizzard wants us to go when deck building for each class, for anyone who enjoys the creative side of the game this is very disappointing.
Our new Ranked mode would ensure that each class is always supported by a variety of archetypes and ways to play the game, although certain ways of playing the class will be encouraged through the direction of the newest expansions and Core Set.
Wild: Wild is ‘broken’ and will only continue to get worse, it’s existence also limits card design (as we saw with Hysteria). Being able to play around with every card and every combination of those cards is a deck builders dream on the surface, however in practice the viability of any theory crafting is limited by the obscene power level of the best decks.
Our new Ranked mode adds great deck building restrictions that will both make designing future cards easier as well as harshly reducing the power level from what we see in Wild - ensuring more play styles are viable. Each class will have different strengths and weaknesses based on which year is chosen for each deck which adds a greater level of strategy to the game.
In any case this is my 'dream' vision of what Hearthstone should be, I assume there are downsides to a mode like this that more experienced card players than me are aware of, so please comment and let me know. Or if you can be bothered, tell me how you would like the games direction to be. Do you think I'm being too harsh on Standard? Would you be annoyed to see Wild removed from ranked play? Is the game perfect as it is?
Cheers.
Well I like the idea, as an old player I have a substantial number of good old cards. The ones who won't like it are new players who will be even more out of their depth and Blizzard who will not like us being able to draw on our deep pools of past cards again and again despite being able to influence the meta using Core. Indeed they would likely resort to powercreeping even more to make sure that the newest cards are absolutely mandatory. Balancing will also be harder since you need to consider not just the two sets, Standard and Wild with their respective pools but any combination of current year and core + any past year.
Yeah, there would have to be a few changes to other aspects of the game if something like this is to be implemented. Blizzard really fucked up by encouraging people to disenchant their old collection with the introduction of Standard.
One solution for players with limited card pools would be to just offer all players X-amount of packs for each 'Wild' set, as well as offering the old adventures for free. Say 80 packs, so essentially a pre-order bundle for each set.
Regarding powercreep, the solution would be to use the core set as a tool to push the newest set instead of just printing progressively more powerful cards to sell packs. I didn't really explain it too well in the original post but basically think of it like this:
Let's say Blizzard wants to promote a powerful Shadow Priest OTK archetype, and so their new expansion has support for this with burst cards for Priest. These burst cards alone however would purposefully not be enough to push the archetype, key support pieces would be added through the Core Set. In this case Prophet Velen could be included in the Core Set along with a synergistic card draw spell. When the next Hearthstone Year comes round and the Core Set changes, Velen and the synergistic draw spell will be removed and the powerful OTK deck will die.
The same would be done for more broad archetypes like 'aggro', where say Blizzard wanted to return to the Stealth style aggro decks for a year, cards with powerful stealth synergies like Greyheart Sage could be added to the Core Set, with the rest of the 'Stealth Package' sold through the latest expansion.
In short, Blizzard would only include part of any archetype they are trying to push in the actual expansion, with the Core Set being used to include the rest.
I understand you are against powercreep, I think very few people are pro-powercreep :P But I doubt Blizz would be able to resist the allure. I did understand what you meant by Core guiding the players towards the newest expansions. But still in this system I can see people bulking up their best years so they always have a good pool on hand. It is permanent value. In this way the Years become the new Classic set. And we saw what happened to Classic it was powercreeped into irrelevancy and the few good cards were sent to Hall of Fame. The incentive for Blizz to act the same is not only there but stronger. Hence I think they would powercreep and nerf good old cards even more. Also the difficulty for new players is not just in getting enough cards to compete but also understanding all the cards. It has been a bit rough relearning the meta and all the cards as a returning pro, imagine being a brand new player faced with every single card ever printed, because that is what your (only remaining) mode would be.
Anyway as I said I like the idea but I fear Blizz would mess it up, because it is in their financial interest to do so even disregarding plain incompetence.