Sure, and Hero Cards are just fancy spells and spells are just 0 health minions. What's your point?
If you must know, smart-arse, hero cards, spells and weapons all have unique properties, interactions and places on the board. "Locations" are functionally the same as a hero power, with all the convenience of a dormant minion that never wakes up.
For one thing, this means that right off the bat any location card intended to benefit board-flooding strategies is going to limit you to six board spaces for about 5 turns. Do I need to explain how that would be counter intuitive too?
Let's see:
Unique properties of locations: manually activatable and targeted abilities, can only be used every other turn
Manually activatable and targetable abilities... kind of like what every single other card type can do..?
And only every other turn you say? Damn, so for half the time, it just sits dormant amongst your minions, not doing anything. Sounds familiar... nope, definitely unique, and very intuitive.
unique interaction of locations: confirmed to exist in the expansion announcement video. Besides that there aren't any unique interactions with hero cards, other than that they can't be counterspelled, but the same could be said about Locations and Okani.
Hero cards change your class, they unfreeze your hero, they change your power, they offer lasting aura effects in a more simplified manner than other card types do... need I go on? Not sure where Okani comes into that example. He is a minion, so of course he can't be countered, and he doesn't offer to counter hero cards.
unique place on board: Why would that even be a requirement? Hero cards are a bunch of one off effects (Battlecry, armor, new hero power, new skin) that vanish after playing them, just like spells.
Hero cards have it in the name, their space on the board is your hero portrait...
Meanwhile, location cards... take one space on the board normally reserved for a minion? They've done this before in adventures and it was never intuitive, it sucked.
Funny you mention spells though, which are not all simply one-off effects (neither are hero cards btw). Secrets, Quests, Sigils and "Objectives" all stick around like a Location does and get their own spot where you can see them. Because it's more sensible than having them appear as a dormant brick on the battlefield.
Also the last part of your comment is extremely specific and really a non-issue. If they are ever going to print a board buff location, then they can just balance around the fact that they take up a boardpsace.
It's a perfectly fair argument. No amount of balancing will change the fact that you have one less board space to work with, which would invariably hamstring certain decks and alter your strategy to something sub-optimal.
I could justify any other change to the game in the exact same way. "Oh, they should just make it so that players start with 50 Health. It's okay, they can just rebalance the cards around that fact." Just a silly and lazy way of dismissing that concern.
Yeah man, like it was so difficult for every other card game that has done it, like Elder Scrolls Legends and Gwent. The only real reason is because of the mobile game, which has a far more restricted UI. But this is still a poor excuse. Also, how many expansions in advance do they work again? Like a whole year.
Also no, it isn't mechanically different whatsoever. It's literally a dormant minion with a little hero power button.
Without getting into whether I think the design is a missed opportunity or not, don't you think that the fact the mobile version has a more restricted UI is a reasonable reason for not implementing in this way if this is what they found in testing (i don't know this to be the case - mere speculating based on your post)? I've played on mobile and it's already much harder to do the stuff you want in a given turn (and it's very easy to do something you don't want to do). A new button could potentially make locations something you actively want to avoid on mobile which is hardly fair and not in Blizzards interest when it comes to marketing the new expansion.
What I will say is that I don't think "restricted design space" or "too hard to implement" are good reasons for doing it the way they've chosen, but you always have to be conscious that you don't always know the full picture and the rationale for the decisions that are made (this can be applied to everything in life!).
Manually activatable and targetable abilities... kind of like what every single other card type can do..?
And only every other turn you say? Damn, so for half the time, it just sits dormant amongst your minions, not doing anything. Sounds familiar... nope, definitely unique, and very intuitive.
Hero cards change your class, they unfreeze your hero, they change your power, they offer lasting aura effects in a more simplified manner than other card types do... need I go on? Not sure where Okani comes into that example. He is a minion, so of course he can't be countered, and he doesn't offer to counter hero cards.
Hero cards have it in the name, their space on the board is your hero portrait...
Meanwhile, location cards... take one space on the board normally reserved for a minion? They've done this before in adventures and it was never intuitive, it sucked.
Funny you mention spells though, which are not all simply one-off effects (neither are hero cards btw). Secrets, Quests, Sigils and "Objectives" all stick around like a Location does and get their own spot where you can see them. Because it's more sensible than having them appear as a dormant brick on the battlefield.
It's a perfectly fair argument. No amount of balancing will change the fact that you have one less board space to work with, which would invariably hamstring certain decks and alter your strategy to something sub-optimal.
I could justify any other change to the game in the exact same way. "Oh, they should just make it so that players start with 50 Health. It's okay, they can just rebalance the cards around that fact." Just a silly and lazy way of dismissing that concern.
i woudl have preferred if locations had aura effects that benefit/hinder both players. similar to yugioh field cards
Well the game is also on phones...
The truth isn't an excuse. The game engine is like 7 years old
Without getting into whether I think the design is a missed opportunity or not, don't you think that the fact the mobile version has a more restricted UI is a reasonable reason for not implementing in this way if this is what they found in testing (i don't know this to be the case - mere speculating based on your post)? I've played on mobile and it's already much harder to do the stuff you want in a given turn (and it's very easy to do something you don't want to do). A new button could potentially make locations something you actively want to avoid on mobile which is hardly fair and not in Blizzards interest when it comes to marketing the new expansion.
What I will say is that I don't think "restricted design space" or "too hard to implement" are good reasons for doing it the way they've chosen, but you always have to be conscious that you don't always know the full picture and the rationale for the decisions that are made (this can be applied to everything in life!).
Never be too quick to judge something/someone...
My personal opinion on the mobile platform restricting game design is a tad more extreme than that tbh