I don't understand people's issues. Power creep as compared to what? Silverback patriarch? Is that the world we want to live in? Standard is a constantly rotating platform, power creep has such little meaning in that kind of format
So if HS crept to the point where people play 30/30s on turn 1 and games ended on turn 2, that wouldn't be meaningful? I'm exaggerating to illustrate a point, but this is essentially what is happening. Sure, some people might like shorter games and absolutely batshit insane effects on almost every card, but that was not the Hearthstone that once hooked me.
Remember a few years ago when Hearthstone actively pushed classic packs and ensured they were the most powerful set and talked this up all the time. Different era. Now some minions do far too much. Silence used to be useful, but everything is a battlecry now.
And the game has far too much removal (or freeze) now. And too many cheap removal spells, and some like Dragonbane shot are semi-permanent.
Streamers have been quitting in droves -- Dekkster, for example. Trumpsc doesn't seem to play Hearthstone for months. It is just Kibler and Regis now.
Hearthstone isn't dead or even close, but has moved from a game where ppl "loved it / passionate about it" to the "timekiller genre".
This thread is as ridiculous as this kind of threads usually are.
Where fo you see the power creep? Give me some examples!
Just comparing the class specific 7drops in this set to an old card like Dr. Boom makes them seem fair, if not lackluster. Then if we move down to lower cost cards it becomes apparent that this set is very obviously not more powerful than anything that is rotating out.
This thread is as ridiculous as this kind of threads usually are.
Where fo you see the power creep? Give me some examples!
Just comparing the class specific 7drops in this set to an old card like Dr. Boom makes them seem fair, if not lackluster. Then if we move down to lower cost cards it becomes apparent that this set is very obviously not more powerful than anything that is rotating out.
Give me specific examples, please.
Ragnaros and Ysera were the best lategame minions and were in almost every control deck. They continued to be in Control Warrior for a few years.
OTKs did not exist, at all. The best was Freeze Mage which could do it in two turns, or some combos for 15-ish damage with charge minions. It was only in 2015 that some classes got access to OTKs, primarily through Emperor Thaurissan, and it required holding onto 4+ cards in hand to make it happen.
Most classes couldn't gain armor, or very limited amounts of it. Gaining a lot was a Warrior specialty. Yesterday I got 70+ armor in Priest.
Most classes had weak healing. Earthen Ring Farseer and Healbot saw play for a long time
The best card draw spells used to be Arcane Intellect and Nourish. Many classes drew maybe 4-6 cards in total throughout the whole game, often less because hitting fatigue last mattered in control vs control.
The only card that gave a permanent powerup was Lord Jaraxxus, which cost 9 mana and set your health to 15.
Do you want me to continue? Also, it's funny how you say there haven't been power creep and give Dr.Boom as an example, which was an enormous power creep over previous lategame minions and was in almost every single deck at the time.
This thread is as ridiculous as this kind of threads usually are.
Where fo you see the power creep? Give me some examples!
Just comparing the class specific 7drops in this set to an old card like Dr. Boom makes them seem fair, if not lackluster. Then if we move down to lower cost cards it becomes apparent that this set is very obviously not more powerful than anything that is rotating out.
Give me specific examples, please.
Ragnaros and Ysera were the best lategame minions and were in almost every control deck.
OTKs did not exist, at all. The best was Freeze Mage which could do it in two turns, or some combos for 15-ish damage with charge minions.
Most classes couldn't gain armor, that was a Warrior specialty.
Most classes has weak healing and the best they could do was Earthen Ring Farseer.
The best card draw spells used to be Arcane Intellect and Nourish. Some classes like Paladin simply never drew cards.
The only card that gave a permanent powerup was Lord Jaraxxus, which cost 9 mana and set your health to 15.
Do you want me to continue?
Those are super old examples, though. Nourish was nerfed. If Nourish still cost 5 mana, it'd be great. Arcane Intellect is still a great card. Though I will agree, as I previously mentioned, that card draw and card generation is probably where most of the issues come from.
Healing is... really good right now, but that's because of specific additions to the set. Healing is also hard to evaluate and is getting worse after rotation largely. Ragnaros would still be a good card.
I don't think them purposefully adding quests or hero cards are necessarily examples of power creep. Especially the latest batch of heroes were hardly game breaking.
Yes they are old examples. I played from release to about 2017, then quit until a few months back because I thought power creep had gotten too bad. Of course it doesn't seem as bad if you look at more recent years, power creep is a slow process, the power difference will be greater the further back you look.
And it's important to look at decks as a whole, not single standout powerful cards. Dirty Rat would be absolutely insane today, but at the time it wasn't problematic.
Lol, this is literally a discussion at the beginning of every expansion for years.
that is because team 5 has been powercreeping like crazy. Ever since the release of DH, the balancing of each expansion has been a joke.
The balancing has been seen as a joke from the very start, but by different people. Either it was Dr Boom being broken OP, or it was TGT being utter garbage and a scam because almost none of the cards were worth the money of opening packs, outside of like... 8-10. Basically, different crowds are calling their balance a joke no matter which way they lean.
Reality is that there is no sweet spot for this, and someone is going to be unhappy no matter how you go about it.
This thread is as ridiculous as this kind of threads usually are.
Where fo you see the power creep? Give me some examples!
Just comparing the class specific 7drops in this set to an old card like Dr. Boom makes them seem fair, if not lackluster. Then if we move down to lower cost cards it becomes apparent that this set is very obviously not more powerful than anything that is rotating out.
Give me specific examples, please.
Ragnaros and Ysera were the best lategame minions and were in almost every control deck. They continued to be in Control Warrior for a few years.
OTKs did not exist, at all. The best was Freeze Mage which could do it in two turns, or some combos for 15-ish damage with charge minions. It was only in 2015 that some classes got access to OTKs, primarily through Emperor Thaurissan, and it required holding onto 4+ cards in hand to make it happen.
Most classes couldn't gain armor, or very limited amounts of it. Gaining a lot was a Warrior specialty. Yesterday I got 70+ armor in Priest.
Most classes had weak healing. Earthen Ring Farseer and Healbot saw play for a long time
The best card draw spells used to be Arcane Intellect and Nourish. Many classes drew maybe 4-6 cards in total throughout the whole game, often less because hitting fatigue last mattered in control vs control.
The only card that gave a permanent powerup was Lord Jaraxxus, which cost 9 mana and set your health to 15.
Do you want me to continue? Also, it's funny how you say there haven't been power creep and give Dr.Boom as an example, which was an enormous power creep over previous lategame minions and was in almost every single deck at the time.
OTKs did exist though, from the very genesis of the game, even before any expansions came out. They had to nerf Warsong Commander so hard that it has literally never seen play after the nerf, because there was a Molten Giant OTK warrior that dominated in the very start of Hearthstone.
Ragnaros and Ysera were the best lategame minions and were in almost every control deck. They continued to be in Control Warrior for a few years.
OTKs did not exist, at all. The best was Freeze Mage which could do it in two turns, or some combos for 15-ish damage with charge minions. It was only in 2015 that some classes got access to OTKs, primarily through Emperor Thaurissan, and it required holding onto 4+ cards in hand to make it happen.
Most classes couldn't gain armor, or very limited amounts of it. Gaining a lot was a Warrior specialty. Yesterday I got 70+ armor in Priest.
Most classes had weak healing. Earthen Ring Farseer and Healbot saw play for a long time
The best card draw spells used to be Arcane Intellect and Nourish. Many classes drew maybe 4-6 cards in total throughout the whole game, often less because hitting fatigue last mattered in control vs control.
The only card that gave a permanent powerup was Lord Jaraxxus, which cost 9 mana and set your health to 15.
Do you want me to continue? Also, it's funny how you say there haven't been power creep and give Dr.Boom as an example, which was an enormous power creep over previous lategame minions and was in almost every single deck at the time.
The thread (and the concept of power creep) is comparing the next set with the ones one year before. Not the 2022 cards with 2016 cards.
But if you do want to compare those, let's take a moment to remember Auctioneer + CoS, or Leeroy + Shadowstep, or Leeroy+PO+Faceless, or Force+Roar, or UTH etc.
There is no power creep. There is simply a change in design philosophy, which some people will like and some people won't, but games where neither player's deck is designed to fatigue the opponent always ended around turn 8 and they still do.
Ragnaros and Ysera were the best lategame minions and were in almost every control deck. They continued to be in Control Warrior for a few years.
OTKs did not exist, at all. The best was Freeze Mage which could do it in two turns, or some combos for 15-ish damage with charge minions. It was only in 2015 that some classes got access to OTKs, primarily through Emperor Thaurissan, and it required holding onto 4+ cards in hand to make it happen.
Most classes couldn't gain armor, or very limited amounts of it. Gaining a lot was a Warrior specialty. Yesterday I got 70+ armor in Priest.
Most classes had weak healing. Earthen Ring Farseer and Healbot saw play for a long time
The best card draw spells used to be Arcane Intellect and Nourish. Many classes drew maybe 4-6 cards in total throughout the whole game, often less because hitting fatigue last mattered in control vs control.
The only card that gave a permanent powerup was Lord Jaraxxus, which cost 9 mana and set your health to 15.
Do you want me to continue? Also, it's funny how you say there haven't been power creep and give Dr.Boom as an example, which was an enormous power creep over previous lategame minions and was in almost every single deck at the time.
The thread (and the concept of power creep) is comparing the next set with the ones one year before. Not the 2022 cards with 2016 cards.
But if you do want to compare those, let's take a moment to remember Auctioneer + CoS, or Leeroy + Shadowstep, or Leeroy+PO+Faceless, or Force+Roar, or UTH etc.
There is no power creep. There is simply a change in design philosophy, which some people will like and some people won't, but games where neither player's deck is designed to fatigue the opponent always ended around turn 8 and they still do.
Yeah, people seem to forget the absolute nonsense you could do in classic hearthstone. All druids could do 14 damage from hand, leeroy combos were extraordinarily common, hell, even malygos had some nonsense attached to him. And that's in a post-nerf world. At the start, OTKs using Warsong Commander and giants were just a thing you died to randomly against Warriors.
Let's not forget either the time when Hunter, the most aggressive class in the game, had a two card combo for 5 mana that could draw up to six cards.
This thread is as ridiculous as this kind of threads usually are.
Where fo you see the power creep? Give me some examples!
Just comparing the class specific 7drops in this set to an old card like Dr. Boom makes them seem fair, if not lackluster. Then if we move down to lower cost cards it becomes apparent that this set is very obviously not more powerful than anything that is rotating out.
Give me specific examples, please.
you did not notice that the quests were ridiculously powered?
Just look at stats per mana cost. It used to be pretty predictable. you'd get 2x +1 stat points with x being the mana cost. More with a drawback, less with some extra abilities.
Drawing a card was worth 1.5 mana.
Now look at something like Nellie the great thresher. You get a 5/5 and a 2/6 for 7. You'd expect 15 stat points for 7 mana. Here you get 18.
Legendary is a drawback, so maybe you could expect 17 stat points. But, this is still above that.
But, wait, not only is this above curve for a vanilla minion it has.
Beast tag.
Deathrattle.
Taunt.
Discover 3 cards.
Cost reduction for 3 cards.
It's freaking BONKERS compared to a Ragnaros or a Dr. Boom. If you were designing this card on the fan creation board a few years back folks would have laughed at you, saying even 10mana wasn't enough. This would need to cost 13-14 to be balanced. Yet here we get it for 7.
It's a difficult situation. Blizz has three options, and none of them are that great.
1) Release very bad expansions where very few of the cards are even remotely worth looking at (for example, Rastakhan and TGT)
2) Continue power-creeping to avoid problem #1
3) Revamp the entirety of Hearthstone's sets to lower the power.
Because you can't really just use the rotation to lower power levels THAT much, since there are more formats in the game right now that uses non-standard sets than there are that just use standard sets. Yes, they primarily care about Standard, but they can't start making sets that will never be worth purchasing for non-standard players. Arena, Duels, and Wild might all be individually much smaller than standard, but when you factor them in together, they are a very large playerbase.
Yes and I mostly agree with you but there is also the fourth solution for me. And it is the solution for which I am hoping.
4) Total rework of HS with new ideas.
This can be done with cards that interact with the graveyard, cards that interact in the opponent's turn, cards that interact with the map, equipment for the heroes and so on so forth, imagination is the only limit. We have only seen the rules broken with tradable cards and I think that this was one of the best things added in the game since the start. The best card of this expansion, in terms of card design, like now, for me, is Blademaster Okani. This card is new in design. I would like to see, at least, things like this.
In conclusion, this game is becoming pretty boring, I would like to see aggressive changes.
And another option from me:
5. Stop printing so many f.king sets already! At least not with so many cards. Differentiate them if you must - arena, standard, wild - and only print some that make sense instead of the stupid clutter that we have now with 80% useless ones (or i.e. "arena cards").
But yea, the whole sets need to be revamped with a predictable cost formula for each card and its mechanics. Not all deathrattles should cost 1 for example, but it should depend on the effect, etc.
I've said it some time ago and i'll say it again. HS needs 20 mana as standard, with gaining 2 mana every turn, coin giving you 2 mana too, etc (all similar effects adding 1 mana). Combine this with proper costs for cards, you get balance. No more 3 cost cards that should be 4, but it was rounded down from a 3.5. With this, it'll cost 7 and be done with it. Would also allow playing higher cost minions etc.
Just look at stats per mana cost. It used to be pretty predictable. you'd get 2x +1 stat points with x being the mana cost. More with a drawback, less with some extra abilities.
Drawing a card was worth 1.5 mana.
Now look at something like Nellie the great thresher. You get a 5/5 and a 2/6 for 7. You'd expect 15 stat points for 7 mana. Here you get 18.
Legendary is a drawback, so maybe you could expect 17 stat points. But, this is still above that.
But, wait, not only is this above curve for a vanilla minion it has.
Beast tag.
Deathrattle.
Taunt.
Discover 3 cards.
Cost reduction for 3 cards.
It's freaking BONKERS compared to a Ragnaros or a Dr. Boom. If you were designing this card on the fan creation board a few years back folks would have laughed at you, saying even 10mana wasn't enough. This would need to cost 13-14 to be balanced. Yet here we get it for 7.
Thing with the Colossals is they're more efficient and powerful than 8 drops were in the past because generally speaking they want late game cards to see play and feel impactful (which historically short of like... the Lich King or some hero cards, they have not.)
The other thing with Colossals is their bodies are split up, and their effects are too. If you kill the colossal's appendages, then the main body is fairly weak. Which makes them vulnerable to piece meal destruction.
And in general I don't actually think they're that nuts compared to Ragnaros or Dr. Boom, who I think are actually a lot more impactful than any of the Colossals we've seen in a vacuum.
Those cards are strong, I don't think any of them are especially broken just from looking at them.
Raj is potentially overtuned and might need to be 3 mana, but isn't as broken as he looks (he's basically a spell damage +3 minion for 2 mana). S'theno is just like... a slightly better Flamewaker. Valishj is a... slightly better (but also worse) pre-nerf Innervate.
Bioluminescence will probably be annoying, but as of right now I don't see it creating like a degenerate OTK deck or anything. It's more just like a sort of pseudo-bloodlust.
Seafloor Savior and Radar Detector don't seem more broken than any other handbuff cards to me? I get the others, but what am I missing here?
Bioluminescence is an OTK, sure it is a card that needs support, tokens, anyway it is very strong. Seafloor Savior doesn't win the game. But 2 mana 2/2 that choose your next draw and gives to the minion +2/+2 in the worst case, since we are talking about power creep, she seems aligned.
So if HS crept to the point where people play 30/30s on turn 1 and games ended on turn 2, that wouldn't be meaningful? I'm exaggerating to illustrate a point, but this is essentially what is happening. Sure, some people might like shorter games and absolutely batshit insane effects on almost every card, but that was not the Hearthstone that once hooked me.
Remember a few years ago when Hearthstone actively pushed classic packs and ensured they were the most powerful set and talked this up all the time. Different era. Now some minions do far too much. Silence used to be useful, but everything is a battlecry now.
And the game has far too much removal (or freeze) now. And too many cheap removal spells, and some like Dragonbane shot are semi-permanent.
Streamers have been quitting in droves -- Dekkster, for example. Trumpsc doesn't seem to play Hearthstone for months. It is just Kibler and Regis now.
Hearthstone isn't dead or even close, but has moved from a game where ppl "loved it / passionate about it" to the "timekiller genre".
Yes. Exactly. This is very clear in the data. (https://twitchtracker.com/games/138585)
HS did 148K average viewers on the 7 April 2017, which is crazy. Now HS can only dream these numbers because it seems not able to renew itself.
This thread is as ridiculous as this kind of threads usually are.
Where fo you see the power creep? Give me some examples!
Just comparing the class specific 7drops in this set to an old card like Dr. Boom makes them seem fair, if not lackluster. Then if we move down to lower cost cards it becomes apparent that this set is very obviously not more powerful than anything that is rotating out.
Give me specific examples, please.
Ragnaros and Ysera were the best lategame minions and were in almost every control deck. They continued to be in Control Warrior for a few years.
OTKs did not exist, at all. The best was Freeze Mage which could do it in two turns, or some combos for 15-ish damage with charge minions. It was only in 2015 that some classes got access to OTKs, primarily through Emperor Thaurissan, and it required holding onto 4+ cards in hand to make it happen.
Most classes couldn't gain armor, or very limited amounts of it. Gaining a lot was a Warrior specialty. Yesterday I got 70+ armor in Priest.
Most classes had weak healing. Earthen Ring Farseer and Healbot saw play for a long time
The best card draw spells used to be Arcane Intellect and Nourish. Many classes drew maybe 4-6 cards in total throughout the whole game, often less because hitting fatigue last mattered in control vs control.
The only card that gave a permanent powerup was Lord Jaraxxus, which cost 9 mana and set your health to 15.
Do you want me to continue? Also, it's funny how you say there haven't been power creep and give Dr.Boom as an example, which was an enormous power creep over previous lategame minions and was in almost every single deck at the time.
Those are super old examples, though. Nourish was nerfed. If Nourish still cost 5 mana, it'd be great. Arcane Intellect is still a great card. Though I will agree, as I previously mentioned, that card draw and card generation is probably where most of the issues come from.
Healing is... really good right now, but that's because of specific additions to the set. Healing is also hard to evaluate and is getting worse after rotation largely. Ragnaros would still be a good card.
I don't think them purposefully adding quests or hero cards are necessarily examples of power creep. Especially the latest batch of heroes were hardly game breaking.
Yes they are old examples. I played from release to about 2017, then quit until a few months back because I thought power creep had gotten too bad. Of course it doesn't seem as bad if you look at more recent years, power creep is a slow process, the power difference will be greater the further back you look.
And it's important to look at decks as a whole, not single standout powerful cards. Dirty Rat would be absolutely insane today, but at the time it wasn't problematic.
The balancing has been seen as a joke from the very start, but by different people. Either it was Dr Boom being broken OP, or it was TGT being utter garbage and a scam because almost none of the cards were worth the money of opening packs, outside of like... 8-10. Basically, different crowds are calling their balance a joke no matter which way they lean.
Reality is that there is no sweet spot for this, and someone is going to be unhappy no matter how you go about it.
OTKs did exist though, from the very genesis of the game, even before any expansions came out. They had to nerf Warsong Commander so hard that it has literally never seen play after the nerf, because there was a Molten Giant OTK warrior that dominated in the very start of Hearthstone.
The thread (and the concept of power creep) is comparing the next set with the ones one year before. Not the 2022 cards with 2016 cards.
But if you do want to compare those, let's take a moment to remember Auctioneer + CoS, or Leeroy + Shadowstep, or Leeroy+PO+Faceless, or Force+Roar, or UTH etc.
There is no power creep. There is simply a change in design philosophy, which some people will like and some people won't, but games where neither player's deck is designed to fatigue the opponent always ended around turn 8 and they still do.
Yeah, people seem to forget the absolute nonsense you could do in classic hearthstone. All druids could do 14 damage from hand, leeroy combos were extraordinarily common, hell, even malygos had some nonsense attached to him. And that's in a post-nerf world. At the start, OTKs using Warsong Commander and giants were just a thing you died to randomly against Warriors.
Let's not forget either the time when Hunter, the most aggressive class in the game, had a two card combo for 5 mana that could draw up to six cards.
you did not notice that the quests were ridiculously powered?
Just look at stats per mana cost. It used to be pretty predictable. you'd get 2x +1 stat points with x being the mana cost. More with a drawback, less with some extra abilities.
Drawing a card was worth 1.5 mana.
Now look at something like Nellie the great thresher. You get a 5/5 and a 2/6 for 7. You'd expect 15 stat points for 7 mana. Here you get 18.
Legendary is a drawback, so maybe you could expect 17 stat points. But, this is still above that.
But, wait, not only is this above curve for a vanilla minion it has.
Beast tag.
Deathrattle.
Taunt.
Discover 3 cards.
Cost reduction for 3 cards.
It's freaking BONKERS compared to a Ragnaros or a Dr. Boom. If you were designing this card on the fan creation board a few years back folks would have laughed at you, saying even 10mana wasn't enough. This would need to cost 13-14 to be balanced. Yet here we get it for 7.
Galavant Animation
I dont mind powercreep, as long as there is balance and the power creep gets reset every now and then.
At least they're more proactive when it comes to nerfs now than they were in the past..
And another option from me:
5. Stop printing so many f.king sets already! At least not with so many cards. Differentiate them if you must - arena, standard, wild - and only print some that make sense instead of the stupid clutter that we have now with 80% useless ones (or i.e. "arena cards").
But yea, the whole sets need to be revamped with a predictable cost formula for each card and its mechanics. Not all deathrattles should cost 1 for example, but it should depend on the effect, etc.
I've said it some time ago and i'll say it again. HS needs 20 mana as standard, with gaining 2 mana every turn, coin giving you 2 mana too, etc (all similar effects adding 1 mana). Combine this with proper costs for cards, you get balance. No more 3 cost cards that should be 4, but it was rounded down from a 3.5. With this, it'll cost 7 and be done with it. Would also allow playing higher cost minions etc.
And the tech for this is there - Guff the Druid.
Thing with the Colossals is they're more efficient and powerful than 8 drops were in the past because generally speaking they want late game cards to see play and feel impactful (which historically short of like... the Lich King or some hero cards, they have not.)
The other thing with Colossals is their bodies are split up, and their effects are too. If you kill the colossal's appendages, then the main body is fairly weak. Which makes them vulnerable to piece meal destruction.
And in general I don't actually think they're that nuts compared to Ragnaros or Dr. Boom, who I think are actually a lot more impactful than any of the Colossals we've seen in a vacuum.
A lot of minions are with overstats. Anyway, I can mention you these cards that are for sure broken: Raj Naz'jan, Radar Detector, Bioluminescence, Seafloor Savior, Priestess Valishj, Lady S'theno
Those cards are strong, I don't think any of them are especially broken just from looking at them.
Raj is potentially overtuned and might need to be 3 mana, but isn't as broken as he looks (he's basically a spell damage +3 minion for 2 mana). S'theno is just like... a slightly better Flamewaker. Valishj is a... slightly better (but also worse) pre-nerf Innervate.
Bioluminescence will probably be annoying, but as of right now I don't see it creating like a degenerate OTK deck or anything. It's more just like a sort of pseudo-bloodlust.
Seafloor Savior and Radar Detector don't seem more broken than any other handbuff cards to me? I get the others, but what am I missing here?
Bioluminescence is garbage, Seafloor Savior is just ok and the rest are conditional cards. I don't think you understand the concept of power.
Bioluminescence is an OTK, sure it is a card that needs support, tokens, anyway it is very strong. Seafloor Savior doesn't win the game. But 2 mana 2/2 that choose your next draw and gives to the minion +2/+2 in the worst case, since we are talking about power creep, she seems aligned.