Hearthpwn

 Another good point that I didn’t consider. Part of the point of experimental in OW is community feedback. HS is a 1v1 experience, so speaking about fair vs unfair turns into he said she said essentially. It would be extremely anecdotal.

If there was a fair way to incentive it, the information received from this mode would have to be purely statistical and devs would have to explicitly state they won’t take “advice.” This is probably close to the truth with game balance right now, but it would seem almost cruel if devs said that right now.

I appreciate  your comment. I think I just hope for a HS where things don’t matter so much to everyone. Where if they want to add a diablo/overwatch/starcraft card/hero they could. Or make a huge change that was bad, that they wouldn’t be crucified for it. To be more flexible in general.

but I think the playerbase is weary of everything that gets done, and whilst I understand why, it also slows progress and exciting change. 

KQuote from xskarma >>

The problem I see that with an experimental mode, people would treat it as a joke, and therefor not do their best to win.

With internal testing the devs do, they at least try to win with the decks they are testing, but in experimental mode players would just go "Oh I got Shaman, meh, I'll just fuck around and if it's not fun concede". And if people can choose their class, they would never pick certain classes perceived as weak. Or rumour would go out that a certain class is really strong in testing right now and people would flock to only play that class.

What an experimental mode would need is incentives to play, and play seriously. And I just don't see that being possible.

Yeah I agree with all this unfortunately. I think it would take special kinds of players to use a mode like this and yet limiting availability goes against the entire premise. It’s rare that people play seriously and yet uncompetitively. A major shortsight on my part, thank you for pointing that out. 

Would this ever be viable in hearthstone in similar ways to the way Overwatch does?

If yes: what kind of things would you want to see done?

For me, the answer seems like it would obviously help devs and players alike understand the game, but the biggest issue I see dividing up the player base again. In an ideal world it would bring new/old players back into the game whilst making some extremely radical changes that could go live if they were useful. I also believe that players would need free access to cards or at least decks to play test the changes without an investment. There would be no ladder, and XP rewards would be akin to BG, duels, or casual.

Why do this? Well, lets see if shaman with different iterations of hero powers would help it at all (pick a totem, you cannot pick the same one for two turns) or to try buffing irrelevant cards (wild & standard) without ruining the live game.

In a game like Overwatch, balance changes don’t affect earnings the same way it does for HS (an assumption). You buy the game and have access to everything.

In hearthstone, nerfing cards might be considered equivalent to losing money. Therefore I am sure they are hesitant to buff cards, especially after the whole Pocket Galaxy  reworks.

Realistically, I can only see this happening if wild gets a huge spike in player base. Power creep has rendered many cards that were once powerful useless and reworking old cards would incentivize old packs being purchased.

Final thing: there is no place for devs to goof around in hearthstone. This mode would have to be low maintenance in order to let us try new things. Hearthstone is a great game and yet, we get no seasonal sales or april fools jokes. They must be extremely busy with all the new avenues they are exploring. But in the next 2 years I would love a testing mode that makes attempts to buff underplayed cards and nerf OP ones so the game is more complete in terms of legacy.

 Thanks for reading :)