Hearthpwn

Druid card artwork looks sweet!

Quote from morkraw »

On the other hand, making restore too cheap (tagging it onto otherwise reasonably efficient creatures like existing cards with healing effects) would overly devalue silence as a mechanic. There is a very fine balance to be struck with the concept between making it attractive enough to be played, but keeping is situational enough that only the people who really need to protect their bomb(s) from silence effects.

I should have caveated that if Restore or Immune are implemented as battlecry effects of minions that it should be limited to only a single minion having the ability so that, at max, a player can only use the effect twice in a single game.  I agree that if as player could use either effect numerous times in a game that it could degrade gameplay.

Silence is fun and prevents too many "I Win" button situations.  However, it'd be nice if even the Silence players had some doubt in their mind when they played their Silence effects.  A Restore card or a card with a Restore effect would create that dynamic.  

Restore would operate to reverse the effect of a Silence.  It could be a spell (though might then be limited in the classes that could utilize it) or the battlecry of a particular minion (making the effect more widely available).  Some consideration would have to be made as to how Restore worked.  I'd favor something akin to the Shaman Reincarnate but without triggering the Deathrattle, if any, of the card.  Thus, any effects present prior to the Silence would not be restored similar to the Reincarnate effect.  For example, if you play a Shade of Naxxramas and it builds to a 7/7 and is then silenced the Restore effect would only return it to a 2/2 with its +1/+1 gain ability intact.  A further question would be should it be given Stealth when Restore is cast upon it? I would say it should if it was silenced as a result of Mass Silence and had been stealthed at the time that spell was cast.  However, I'm not certain the HS engine can track such situations to determine how Restore should operate.  I could probably go either way on the point.  While Reincarnate is more powerful than the Restore I am proposing I'd still favor Restore as a 2 mana cost ability when budgeting for card costs as a battlecry of a minion.

Immune would be a pre-emptive ability that operates similar to a Divine Shield but for Silence.  A minion with Immune cast upon it would be immune to the first Silence effect but thereafter the Immune effect would be exhausted and the minion would be vulnerable to further Silence effects.  Hand of Protection implies a 1 mana cost for granting Divine Shield.  I'd favor a 1-2 mana cost for Immune and again have it as a minion battlecry to make it available across all classes.

Quote from NoxHearthstone »

Quote from Alchius »

If an enemy is fatigued and has less than 3 cards in their hand, do they just instantly lose at the end of their turn to fatigue?

"Nah, it draws you 3 Fatigue cards. (Works the same as Divine Favor.)"
 - Ben Brode, on Reddit.

Hearthstone on FB stated:

Jeeves will always try and draw until your hand has three cards. This still applies when there are no more cards to draw!

Ben seems to be implying you "have" a card when you draw it and that, apparently, the fatigue "card" counts towards that tally.  The text seems very imprecise.  Seems like the text should read:

At the end of each player's turn, draw until the player has three cards in their hand or has drawn three times, whichever requires the least number of draws.

This is one of the less obvious critical design aspects of Hearthstone that the developers must preserve... the balance between RNG and skill.  Consider a purely skill-based game (e.g., chess) and on other spectrum a purely RNG-based game (e.g., coin toss).  

The peril purely skill-based games face is the prospect of being "solved", i.e., victory can be predicted from either the initial state, player outcome can be assured by a specific set of moves regardless of opponent moves, etc.  Games like chess ward off this peril through the sheer immensity of possible board configurations and games (e.g., there are reportedly 10^40 chess board configurations and 10^120 possible chess games).  For Hearthstone to achieve this state players would need to have access to their entire decks at the start of a game and all cards with a randomness component would need to be eliminated (or the randomness effect would need to be eliminated).  It's quite possible that Hearthstone would resist solving but gameplay would be quite different, distilled to a few optimized decks (an even purer meta than exists today) and predetermined algorithms of how to play (and players that did not adopt this approach would suffer mostly losses.)

On the other hand, a game such as Hearthstone doesn't want too much randomness because it degrades the satisfaction of winning games.  Certainly, some players might enjoy games with a high degree of randomness but most players won't likely want to play that style for prolonged periods of time.

What's interesting when looking at the GvG cards that we know about so far is the Goblin cards introduce a significant amount of randomness.  Blizzard is allowing players to play decks with a high degree of randomness.  Cards like Sneed's Old Shredder are so compelling that Control decks (players who most likely won't like much randomness given their play style) will likely be hard-pressed not to include some RNG-cards in their decks.  

Anyway, the presence of RNG is a very tricky component of the game that the development team has to manage.  But they seem to have done a great job thus far in doing so.  Let's see what all these Goblin cards do to the game!

Saw this on Reddit and thought it worth posting here also.  He's spot on.

http://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/2lwpqd/smile_the_next_time_you_get_topdecked/

I have a background in poker and I'm writing this purely for the edification of players who want to improve at this game. I'm not claiming this is secret or high level information; it's not. I'm simply explaining this concept for those who may not know it exists. Read on if you wish to learn more about the importance of RNG.

In a video posted to this subreddit a few days ago, Ben Brode explained that RNG is important to Hearthstone because it creates unique scenarios where you cannot simply memorize your best action in a given turn, unlike games of pure skill like chess. If, however, Ben Brode was not a Blizzard employee, he would explain the importance of RNG differently. RNG is crucial in Hearthstone because it keeps bad players playing.

If you want to become a professional poker player, one of the first things you will learn is that you wantbad players to get lucky. When I sit down at a table to play against someone who thinks poker is a game of luck and then he proceeds to win three hands in a row, his feelings about poker being a game of luck are confirmed. Little does he know, the longer I play against him the more likely it is that he will lose all of his money because I am a strategically stronger player. The exact same principles apply to Hearthstone.

When Ben Brode says that the game includes RNG because they don't want it to be all about memorization, what he is really saying is: if this game was 100% skill, new players would get stomped into the ground repeatedly by anyone who is even slightly better than them. The player would be forced to either commit a ton of time, money, and effort to become good at the game, or quit.

As we all know, it is not uncommon to play better than your opponent and still lose a game to a top-deck. But next time you get top-decked, smile. The reason this game is so popular is because when a bad player top-decks you, he doesn't put a second thought into it and in his eyes he's a winner. Even though in the back of his mind he knows he got outplayed, he doesn't feel a need to recognize his mistakes because he won the game. This is why bad players don't get better. By the same token, when you top-deck someone, you should recognize your mistakes and frown because you were almost always outplayed that game in some aspect.

TL;DR: When a good player gets top-decked, he smiles because he still won in his mind. When a good player top decks someone, he frowns because he lost the game in his mind.

Blizzard stated as follows:

• Over 10,000 accounts were banned from the game for botting.

• Part of the reason why accounts were only temporarily banned for botting in the first ban wave has to do with all the new players of Blizzard games who might not be familiar with Blizzard's policies. Going forward though, zero tolerance; You bot, you're gone for good

This is such a pile of BS.  If people weren't aware botting was illegal that's too damn bad.  And I'm sure 90+% of the players knew precisely what they were doing.

Quote from Pilleri »

Horrible stats for the mana cost. Battlecry does absolutely nothing if you have an empty board. 33% chance of hitting Taunt, which you typically will not want to get.

Very meh.

This is the most absurd critique of a card I've seen in some time.

Nice handlock, miracle rogue counter.

This card should have Porky Pig in the artwork because its looney tunes.  I suspect it'll get limited to a random two minions or perhaps just one minion gets the random effect.