Hearthpwn

I was sad after they nerfed Patron. It was a Deck with almost no RNG effects in it.

You can't blame Ben Brode ( If he is indeed to be blamed, knowing how often his team - yeah, he isn't the only one working on HS, crazy right - has to pump out cards ; Roughly 100 cards on average every 4 months, including art finding if not commissionning, internal - which isn't even 100 people which aren't pro gamers in any way - testing, actual programming... ) both for creating OP cards and crappy ones.

Truth is Mysterious Challenger would have been a rather fun card had it not been THAT crazy ; It would have pushed utterly unused cards forward and created a new deck archetype, which is what most people want. If Dreadsteed had been stronger, maybe it would have spawned a new ( kinda competitive, since PLAYERS only play those... ) deck, again, what people asked.

It's most probably not easy balancing Hearthstone, even less with Blizzard ( Because yeah, Ben Brode totally is gonna say "Yeah the big boss wants us to do that ; We're against it, it sucks, but hey, gotta do what I'm told, right ?" ) refusing to change cards. Compare this to a MOBA where it's easy changing a hero's winrate ( ~= to their powerlevel ) by say 1% ; You can't in HS. Adding/Takin away 1 Health/Attack means the whole world to most cards ( As lots of Alpha nerfs have proved ; 1 less stat can send an omnipresent card into the oblivion of unplayable-ness  ), and effects aren't easily tweaked either ; At most you can change if a card can target minion or characters, if their effect is an end or start of turn, deathrattle or battlecry effect, and yet these changes have also have cards go from auto-includes to dust-fodder.

Maybe if a significant portion of the playerbase wasn't so keen on jumping on fun-killing decks that will utterly crush anything that isn't T1, others could flourish more easily and decks wouldn't be so polarised between retardedly-OP and unplayable instead of forcing HS devs to have all decks try to be at the exact same power level, which, as stated, requires a level of balance that is simply unachieveable in a world of integrers and very limited number of mostly binary variables.

Ben Brode is probably just as sad as you to see what was originally a very casual ( There wasn't even a turn limit to begin with ; You were just supposed to wait for your friend to end their turn ) game turn into a "Play a T1 deck or GTFO" f*ckfest.

Quote from Komorebi3 >>

You can't blame Ben Brode ( If he is indeed to be blamed, knowing how often his team - yeah, he isn't the only one working on HS, crazy right - has to pump out cards ; Roughly 100 cards on average every 4 months, including art finding if not commissionning, internal - which isn't even 100 people which aren't pro gamers in any way - testing, actual programming... ) both for creating OP cards and crappy ones.

Truth is Mysterious Challenger would have been a rather fun card had it not been THAT crazy ; It would have pushed utterly unused cards forward and created a new deck archetype, which is what most people want. If Dreadsteed had been stronger, maybe it would have spawned a new ( kinda competitive, since PLAYERS only play those... ) deck, again, what people asked.

It's most probably not easy balancing Hearthstone, even less with Blizzard ( Because yeah, Ben Brode totally is gonna say "Yeah the big boss wants us to do that ; We're against it, it sucks, but hey, gotta do what I'm told, right ?" ) refusing to change cards. Compare this to a MOBA where it's easy changing a hero's winrate ( ~= to their powerlevel ) by say 1% ; You can't in HS. Adding/Takin away 1 Health/Attack means the whole world to most cards ( As lots of Alpha nerfs have proved ; 1 less stat can send an omnipresent card into the oblivion of unplayable-ness  ), and effects aren't easily tweaked either ; At most you can change if a card can target minion or characters, if their effect is an end or start of turn, deathrattle or battlecry effect, and yet these changes have also have cards go from auto-includes to dust-fodder.

Maybe if a significant portion of the playerbase wasn't so keen on jumping on fun-killing decks that will utterly crush anything that isn't T1, others could flourish more easily and decks wouldn't be so polarised between retardedly-OP and unplayable instead of forcing HS devs to have all decks try to be at the exact same power level, which, as stated, requires a level of balance that is simply unachieveable in a world of integrers and very limited number of mostly binary variables.

Ben Brode is probably just as sad as you to see what was originally a very casual ( There wasn't even a turn limit to begin with ; You were just supposed to wait for your friend to end their turn ) game turn into a "Play a T1 deck or GTFO" f*ckfest.

Quote from danman42 >>

Balancing this game isn't hard, but it is a lot of work.

Yes he is doing a fine job. The problem you're experiencing is the design philosophy that the hearthstone TEAM has decided on, which is that they don't want to alter cards. Personally I think this philosophy is a bad idea when it comes down to a card game that's strictly ONLINE, but in the same breath I also get it.

There's always going to be a card that stands out and appears/is OP.  It's the nature of the game.  

The Hearthstone team are doing an amazing job!!!!

Quote from Xtortion >>

There's always going to be a card that stands out and appears/is OP.  It's the nature of the game.  

The Hearthstone team are doing an amazing job!!!!

They're doing a pretty good job. The fact that Brode has been doing design talks on YT and been on so many podcasts is a proof of it. Tho there's a lot of room for improvement.

1) They need to get over their "We don't like nerfing cards" philosophy. It's a digital card game, admit your mistakes and patch them up ASAP! We knew patron warrior was OP and had to be changed.. the only question was when it was gonna happen. But we suffered for months, for months before they finally decided to do something, they could have done it sooner and everybody would have been happier.

2) Be more "open" to the community. Instead of hiding all your plans like every other AAA developer on the planet, and saying cryptic "We're not ready to announce anything!" maybe just ask the community "Hey what do you think if we did that?", I know that it's an insane thing to do but I would love someone to take AAA game design/dev to the next level and simply ask community for ideas. I am pretty sure if Team5 would just take communities help for a problem like "How to solve new player experience" they would get so many good and bright ideas that they didn't come up with.

3) Be more giving. It's Christmas after all and all we get is one card back in tavern brawl.. Why not a card back and a card pack? Now I am not the kind of person that wants something for free but if you would just give like 3 card packs to everybody who logs in on the 24th.. well everybody would be so happy and thankful, and would really appreciate it. It's not like you loose money doing that. If anything people will want to buy more packs for gratitude.

Overall Brode and Team5 are doing a good job but like I said there's room for improvement.

Quote from uWillOnTilt >>

2SanderNightsite

1) Also we all "knew", that Mech Mage, Oil Rogue, Secret Paladin and lots of other decks were OP. Were they really? As you can see now, no. So, that's reason to wait that long for nerfs.

2) That would be good, at least sometimes.

3) Yeeeees, exactly what I think about current Brawl. It was just strange decision to not give card pack on Christmas.

He could have made Warsong Commander a 3mana 2/3 Battlecry: The next Charge minion you summoned gain +2/+2. This would make Southsea Deckhand a 4/3 ,Kor'kron Elite a 6/5.

This could open up some archetypes instead of the current Warsong Commander which is so bad that I would not play her even if she costs 2mana , the only synergy  she has is Unleash the Hounds from a Spellslinger.

Decent job, but sometimes it's clearly hard to understand. Other blizzard games are better handled. I expected something better from TGT, they came too late for leeroy and warsong nerf (this last one was an overkill). But on the other hand LoE is an awesome work, so it's quite an unstable job the one he is doing.

No, he does not. Hes a dumb fuck.

Where are the arena changes that were proposed months ago? What a joke. Ben Brode should be fired at best.