Hearthpwn

I know this sounds a bit far fetched, but I believe this might make the game a lot more fun first and foremost.

The Idea:
Add an option to ban up to 3/5 cards so you won't face them in matchmaking, since Blizzard patches can't always hotfix the completely broken stuff right away, this way you'll be able to at least have a 'normal' experience on ladder.

If you hate facing the most streamlined, boring, decks on ladder all the time. You can ban important cards in certain archetypes so you won't have to deal with them. And it goes both ways, so if you think you're gonna pick a deck and ban all your bad matchup cards, your opponents might ban yours if they're not very good against it.

Also, you might be able to dodge bots completely by banning cards in decks that are highly botted.

I think this applies for Standard AND Wild. 
For example, ban the following cards if you can't stand them:

• Showdown!
• Blindeye Sharpshooter
• Sif
• Thaddius, Monstrosity
• Astalor Bloodsworn
• Open the Waygate (Wild)
• Shudderwock (Wild)
• Holy Wrath (Wild)
• Genn Greymane (Wild)

Let me know what you guys think on this. I'm sure there'll be a lot of different opinions.

Having a ban mode like you described would hype me a lot.

The only thing that bother me is the fact you could ban the tech cards that counters your deck. For example, a Jade druid or a Plague DK that ban Skulking Geist and Steamcleaner.

Otherwise, it could be great for HS community, especially old players that have a lot of unplayable wild cards

Definitely not - considering most decks right now revolve around 1-2 key cards you're basically cherry picking your matchups to get a higher winrate. Banning Sif would mean you wouldn't face a single mage. Banning Shudderwock would make it so you'd only ever face even shaman. Banning Astalor (in standard) would lead to crazy long queue times because he's in practically every deck, and it doesn't make sense either because you, yourself, can run it as it's a neutral card.

This just gives me the impression of "I want to win more and not play against things my deck is weak against". That is literally what a metagame is.

Hearthstone players: "Whenever I am getting stomped by X, I change to its counter deck Y and then I don't queue into them again, ever! Why is Blizzard manipulating who I play against?"

Also Hearthstone players: "I wish Blizzard would allow me to manipulate who I play against, so they are never able to have a counter deck to mine."

 Q times would be huge cause people would ban your favorite cards also, on top of you cherry picking.

OP you're thinking in one-way direction only and anything remotely close to what you described above will never be implemented for wider masses of players.

I hate the possibility of a random ass steam cleaner cleaning stuff from my deck with benedictus or similar effect that replace decks. I do not want that card anywhere near my decks in a current form. Idk why it has to effect my deck when opponent plays it. 

Not really a hot take or far fetched, more reheated "ban X class" and the like.

The result will be a splintered metagame where some other deck will dominate that you can't ban because you ran out of ban slots. If you do ban, then you lose to another deck that you can't ban.

So all it does is create X sub-meta games where you are back at your original problem of people playing meta decks.

Quote from Hearthsam >>

Definitely not - considering most decks right now revolve around 1-2 key cards you're basically cherry picking your matchups to get a higher winrate. Banning Sif would mean you wouldn't face a single mage. Banning Shudderwock would make it so you'd only ever face even shaman. Banning Astalor (in standard) would lead to crazy long queue times because he's in practically every deck, and it doesn't make sense either because you, yourself, can run it as it's a neutral card.

This just gives me the impression of "I want to win more and not play against things my deck is weak against". That is literally what a metagame is.

 Definitely not my intention. I play Hearthstone for fun, but I don't want to play in low elo either. I have the greatest times when I'm against value decks and those decks aren't even bad or non-meta either. I just get insanely tired of having to face Even Shamans, Pirate Rogues, Quest Warlocks, Quest Mage in Wild. I constantly have to build my deck around the possibility of facing them one way or another. I get it, that's the game. But for me personally, I wouldn't mind longer queue times if that means I get to face less boring streamlined decks all the time.

Quote from shad0wseek3r >>

 Q times would be huge cause people would ban your favorite cards also, on top of you cherry picking.

OP you're thinking in one-way direction only and anything remotely close to what you described above will never be implemented for wider masses of players.

 

 

 I don't mind this at all. I play a lot of off-meta Shudderwock decks and I know tons of people despise Shudderwock. Doesn't matter to me. If people who don't mind Shudderwock as much queue into me, that's even better for me. Because then we are more likely to both have fun.

Quote from Ledouaje >>

Having a ban mode like you described would hype me a lot.

The only thing that bother me is the fact you could ban the tech cards that counters your deck. For example, a Jade druid or a Plague DK that ban Skulking Geist and Steamcleaner.

Otherwise, it could be great for HS community, especially old players that have a lot of unplayable wild cards

That's fine isn't it? Because if you really really hate plagues, you can just ban Helya. So you won't have to face plague DKs. Or if you run a Skulking Geist or Steamcleaner, you won't face them since they banned a card in your deck.

Quote from Dargor >>

I don't mind this at all. I play a lot of off-meta Shudderwock decks and I know tons of people despise Shudderwock. Doesn't matter to me. If people who don't mind Shudderwock as much queue into me, that's even better for me. Because then we are more likely to both have fun.

But you don't know what the new meta would look like. Maybe Shudderwock is the next best deck after one card ban drops an archetype and so the next ban would be Shudderwock. Or it would be a different card in your deck. The only thing you would notice is extended queue times after a large portion of the player base can no longer queue into you.

Sure, there would be a way to find out which card is being targetted if you have a third party site for it, but without it you would be swapping each card in your deck.

What you don't seem to understand is that multiplayer games will always have the problem of people "powergaming". Right now the way that the community powergames Hearthstone is by copying the highest winrate deck. If you can ban stuff, people will come up with strategies that break the game even harder, and suddenly a tier 3 deck with 5 significant bans ends up being the most unstoppable force in the meta. So in the end, you just end up with a much longer queue time and the same problem.

So stop trying to tell people what to play.

Not for me, seems a bit drastic, a bit anti hearthstone to me, like...  Now if the OP was asking for a button that gave out electric shocks every time that a priest stole a card from my deck, I'd be onboard with that.  

Quote from Bullard >>

Not for me, seems a bit drastic, a bit anti hearthstone to me, like...  Now if the OP was asking for a button that gave out electric shocks every time that a priest stole a card from my deck, I'd be onboard with that.  

 LOL

Quote from Andrei2007 >>

What you don't seem to understand is that multiplayer games will always have the problem of people "powergaming". Right now the way that the community powergames Hearthstone is by copying the highest winrate deck. If you can ban stuff, people will come up with strategies that break the game even harder, and suddenly a tier 3 deck with 5 significant bans ends up being the most unstoppable force in the meta. So in the end, you just end up with a much longer queue time and the same problem.

So stop trying to tell people what to play.

I mean, I understand it completely. I don't know why people keep telling me as if I don't understand. When something gets banned, you pick the next contendor that's as strong or less strong. That's fine, but at least you won't have to watch a Mage play Solitaire for 5 turns straight, or have to force yourself to build tons of board clears just to survive until turn 3. There are not many other alternative decks that can do stuff like that.
It's really simple, there are many unfun decks to have to keep facing all the time, regardless of if they are good or not. I have a more than 85% winrate against Even Shamans because I build my decks so that I can counter them well, but I would still bann Genn Greymane because I find it so boring. 

People can play what they want, but if the deck they're playing is hated so much by the community, they're gonna have a hard time trying to find someone who didn't ban it, or face a mirror deck. And is that honestly that bad? 

Quote from Dargor >>

Quote from Andrei2007 >>

What you don't seem to understand is that multiplayer games will always have the problem of people "powergaming". Right now the way that the community powergames Hearthstone is by copying the highest winrate deck. If you can ban stuff, people will come up with strategies that break the game even harder, and suddenly a tier 3 deck with 5 significant bans ends up being the most unstoppable force in the meta. So in the end, you just end up with a much longer queue time and the same problem.

So stop trying to tell people what to play.

[...] but if the deck they're playing is hated so much by the community, they're gonna have a hard time trying to find someone who didn't ban it, or face a mirror deck. And is that honestly that bad? 

Again: you end up in the SAME situation with a different deck. Do you think people only hate a single deck? No, they hate the top deck.
With your suggestions you remove the top deck. Great, what do you think the second best deck becomes?

Let's take your example: you ban Genn because you (and for the example's sake everyone ) doesn't want to play against Even Shaman.
Now you no longer face them but you still queue into Pirate Rogues, Quest Warlocks and Quest Mages or whatever fills the void of Even Shaman.

How is this situation better or just different (besides the obvious) than having Even Shaman in the mix? Do you think Even Shaman players will keep playing the deck when they can't find games?
They don't play Even Shaman because they like the deck. They don't care! They play it because they are Charlie Sheen and like winning. Even Shaman provides that and if it doesn't then they play a different deck.

Quote from Banur >>

How is this situation better or just different (besides the obvious) than having Even Shaman in the mix? Do you think Even Shaman players will keep playing the deck when they can't find games?
They don't play Even Shaman because they like the deck. They don't care! They play it because they are Charlie Sheen and like winning. Even Shaman provides that and if it doesn't then they play a different deck.

How is the situation different? It's different because there are barely any decks in the game that are as unfun to play against as Even Shaman. I'll take OTK mine rogue and get destroyed on turn 5 over it any time of the day for example.
My personal ban pool would be:

• Open the Waygate
• Genn Greymane
• The Demon Seed
• Swordfish
• Archbischop Benedictus

And to repeat what I've been saying, I play this game for fun, not to win as much as possible. Against Shadow Priest, Even Shaman and Pirate Rogue, I barely lose any games at all. In fact, they usually concede at turn 6 or 7 unless they're persistent and wait to get defeated manually. But I'll still ban them anyway because I think they're so ridiculously uninteresting and it feels like a waste of time. Instead if I get insanely high rolled by a Thief Priest, Beast Hunter, Casino Mage or Tess Rogue or whatever and I lose 5 games in a row, I don't care at all. I'm having lots of fun.

And if people think that way of my decks, go ahead and ban them! No problem. I'd rather face people that are willing to play against (or at least care less about my core cards than the ones they banned) than people that are most likely gonna lose anyway.

This discussion is stupid and it is stupid since 2014.

A personal banlist would open the gates for an even more unbalanced and broken game.

It would make the gameplay experience worse for almost every casual.

I had a 4 year brake from HS and i used even shaman to rush to legend in wild since it was the only deck i could really build, that was at least somewhat new for me. i looked at the top decks and filled the missing spots with meme cards and crap to farm achievements which i had none so far. Personally i cant say that Totem Shaman takes a lot of skill with the best possible variant, but that is the same with most decks. The mirror matches (not that many at all) were pretty much the easiest games. I knew what the deck could look like, unlike every other deck.

Reaching legend i had something like an understanding of what decks and cards are there nowadays. Would i have chosen to go for Even Shaman if i wouldnt have had the most corecards for that deck? nope. is it horrible to play against, id go so far to say it is lame to play against the full deck if you dont meme yourself.

In Standard i played decks that contained of 30 cards that had only one reason they were in the deck: Achievements.

And to be honest: Until Diamond there wasnt to much of a problem to rank up with decks filled to the brim with crap like Soloists, Divers and Ragers. 

If you hate lame decks you dont ban them you beat them with idiotic shit. If you ban them you will just be hit by the lext lame deck that also hardcounters you. If you beat them with a bad "Arena" Deck you will smile. Most of your opponents will be horrible at the game. And you can beat a horrible player with pretty much everything.

I'd be fine with banning 1 card or 1 class. 3-5 is too much and you could exclude significant portion of playerbase.

I would ban quest mage because that deck is cancer to play against as a control deck (and I play weird control-ish decks like dragon paladin, dragon shaman or elemental mage). Sure, you can try to snipe their Rommath but most of the time it doesn't work. I'm fine with playing vs quest warlocks because you can still burst them down at least. They don't have as many defensive options as quest mages.

Banlist should be not personal but general.

When I played Urban Rivals (CCG too) in 2000's there was a ban stage at the end of every week where EVERYONE could vote on should be card banned or allowed in ranked mode for the next 2 weeks. The ban list was based on the most popular cards from all decks, and the more ELO mmr the player had, the more votes he was getting.

This autovote allowed people to balance game with their own hands and everyone that devs had to do is just to rotate extremely unbalanced cards, but they never nerfed any cards. And this was almost 20 years ago, why we are still depending on devs? People always know better.