To all those people who don't understand this: You want to play this with a near-empty deck, so b1ak1ce assumes that we will get cards that add more stuff to your deck to mitigate the fatigue problem AFTER you played this card. We have at least Symphony right now, though
I am not comparing the metas because it makes no sense (game has changed a lot) and I am not arguing for or against either arguments. I would just like to point out that the game has a completely different problem and that is the limited design space. When you design new cards and you want to make them attractive enough so that you sell packs, you basically have the option to power creep existing stuff or create new kinds of interactions, win cons or explore new mechanics (take things like Soul Shards, bombs, heros, quests, or these colossal cards as an example). The problem with HS is that it is so old that almost all design spaces have been explored and almost the only thing remaining is power creep.
The only other option that could exist, and I am sad they haven't really done that even though the option once existed, is using the huge amount of card options of the core set to gradually reduce the power level of core and thus new sets. But this takes time because you can't have one year of garbage cards and one year of broken stuff in the same standard meta. I guess the devs are also scared that this will reduce the playerbase because the game might get a lot more boring.
On top of that, people tend to forget some of the broken cards from the past quite easily and look back at sets or metas that they wish to come back. Gods was a good meta indeed, but do people really want that back? Do people want quests from Ungoro back? Lackeys? Frozen Throne? Most of this stuff wasn't really balanced
Card games never had and never will have any form of true balance. There will just be times where it gets better or worse.
Since you asked, it's a mixture of a) and b). It would be great if each class had a 47%-55% win rate deck and if each archtype was represented by 2-4 classes.
"As far as I can remember, the most balanced meta in HS history was Journey to Ungoro."
Ungoro was a great set, no doubt, but I remember a certain quest that got pretty out of hand at some point. I think it wasn't during Ungoro, but soon after though.
The worst meta imo was Druidstone right after Frozen Throne release, but I haven't played in every timeline.
Its probably worth mentioning that many (including myself) play constructed for the season rewards which are ultra valuable to us F2P / low-spend players
I have always been f2p in HS and I used to think that way too. HS put a couple packs in front of me each month and a couple extra cards and I was like "yeah, I have to reach at least rank XY". At some point I realised though that constructed formats have always been boring to me. And now that I can get a lot of wins in Duels or Arena, I realised that I earn a lot more resources (or pay very little gold per pack) just from playing these modes, which is a lot more valuable than what I would get from Ranked. BG, Mercenaries, and Duels also give xp for the rewards tracks, so it feels unnecessary for me to grind constructed anymore. It's also worth noting that I can play Arena, Duels, and BG with rather low dust investment (even after a 1.5 years break), so I kinda don't even need the pack rewards anymore anyway. But it's everyone's decision what mode they prefer. I just don't get the "every card is so broken" mentality when people continue to play. It sounds like people want to be frustrated by their game. A break can really work wonders
Why are you guys playing ranked constructed anyway if all cards and/or decks are annoying to play against? You should go to other modes and relax tbh. Like I grinded Duels very hard in the last couple days and after getting exhausted by the meta (and disappointed by a 5-3 run with the craziest priest deck I have ever seen), I decided to switch to BG and even Mercenaries sometimes. And you know what? I just feel relaxed af. No pressure, no deranking (or at least idc for my BG rank), no stupid OTK combos before you can play 2 cards... Games in BG are quite divers due to quests and you can experiment without getting punished. And mercenaries is PvE quest farming, which is just a chill mode with many lethal quizzes.
Came back to HS recently and focused on Duels and I can tell you that there are several cards and/or abilities that need nerfs or the ban hammer before we should start talking about Shockspitter. Frost DK, for example, just freezes your face 10 turns in a row while dealing damage and you do nothing with your awesome Shockspitter. DK in general seems broken af. I went 0-3 and 2-3 with Brann so far, while I had 10, 11, and 12 wins runs with Illucia, Annoy-o-Tron, and Elise. Brann sucks tbh, Annoy-o-Tron Divine Shields are crazy
It's just weird from Blizzard that they aren't more transparent with the numbers and the costs. Like I get it, there is this FOMO concept, but if people don't know what they might be missing out on, chances increase that they just don't really care about it.
Not giving more info about the costs, both in terms of money and gold, and the rewards (especially in terms of a "dusting" system) will make people (me included) think that it's just going to be very expensive, even if that won't be the case ever. That's one way to kill a hype, if there ever was one.
The gameplay is quite interesting but these boar fights at the beginning of bounties are boring. I can see pretty difficult close matches in PvP, though, where both players have to think hard what the opponent will do to ruin their gameplan. So there is some sort of interaction at least, which standard has been lacking recently.
Because you are supposed to play the most unbalanced, most expensive game mode to spend more money on the illusion that it will be more fun after you spent money.
To add to this, I think someone from Blizzard mentioned that you can get coins from legendary mercenaries in packs and unlock the mercenary if you have enough of these tokens. So, this might help a little bit because you have quite a lot of packs to open, but it's probably like 2-3 legendaries with all bundles.
I am just wondering if it is necessary to have all cards on day for any reason, though. I will certainly not even attempt to get there at some point.
I am always happy to discuss new ideas in this field, but there is a massive problem with this suggestion and that is the "Prince Keleseth" problem where you just auto-win when you happen to draw the quest very early and lose because you didn't.
Also, speaking of quest decks in general and not necessarily wild alone, this would improve the win rate of questlock and quest priest relative to the other quests because they already have huge draw/tutor cards. Dh could do something similar as warlock, but would be a lot less consistent. If you add more tutor cards, they would either need to have a very big downside in deckbuilding or cost 3+ mana and do nothing else at the very least.
I also think that your argument with the Un'Goro quests doesn't work because quest rogue did, in fact, build a deck of 29 cards to finish the quest as early as possible, and could quite consistenly do it.
To sum up my thoughts: This sounds like an idea that might just increase the gap between some quests and others AND the importance of early game draws increases even more while not solving the no-control meta problem. The best counter to these new quests would, unsurprisingly, be aggro.
the only thing that pisses me off to say it mildly is that you need ingame gold to use in this mode when they should rather fix their stupid "real" game first. meaning you have to decide if you pay gold on this or the supercool real one, no irony included
this mode and battlegrounds being aggressively monetized just makes me immediately have no interest in it
I hope you mean duels instead of battlegrounds or else I can't believe what I am reading. I have played Battlegrounds for months as f2p, even at medium to high ranks, and I haven't spent a single cent/gold, so this was a pure 100% gold grab for me.
Regarding mercenaries mode, I am actually quite hyped for this. I have quit when Stormwind released because I couldn't stand standard and wild anymore and lost all motivation. However, I think that, if the progress is quite fine, this mode will be very playable for f2p. You will apparently get 8 of 50 mercenaries for free and as far as I am aware, there is no entry cost. Sure, these mercenaries aren't crazy good legendaries, but you can probably still progress in the game mode. Can someone confirm this or do we have to pay like 1k gold to enter? I might have missed that then. The PvE part will probably also be quite challenging, so this is a great thing. Since upgrading mercenaries will likely take some time, even those who spend some money will not be able to bring a full legendary super broken combo to PvP on day 1 of release, so even in PvP, f2p players will probably not start with a huge disadvantage.
It's also quite fair that they are charging gold for packs and stuff because it looked like you can progress on your rewards track playing mercenaries. Otherwise there would be 0 incentive to spend any resource on the game because you also don't need any dust as far as I understood this. I also wonder what happens when you fully upgrade all heroes of the same rarity and open another pack. Do you get dust or some refund? I am not sure.
My only complaint so far is that the cheapest bundle should be 33% cheaper and contain like 5 packs less so that more players can enter more easily.
2
To all those people who don't understand this: You want to play this with a near-empty deck, so b1ak1ce assumes that we will get cards that add more stuff to your deck to mitigate the fatigue problem AFTER you played this card. We have at least Symphony right now, though
1
I am not comparing the metas because it makes no sense (game has changed a lot) and I am not arguing for or against either arguments. I would just like to point out that the game has a completely different problem and that is the limited design space. When you design new cards and you want to make them attractive enough so that you sell packs, you basically have the option to power creep existing stuff or create new kinds of interactions, win cons or explore new mechanics (take things like Soul Shards, bombs, heros, quests, or these colossal cards as an example). The problem with HS is that it is so old that almost all design spaces have been explored and almost the only thing remaining is power creep.
The only other option that could exist, and I am sad they haven't really done that even though the option once existed, is using the huge amount of card options of the core set to gradually reduce the power level of core and thus new sets. But this takes time because you can't have one year of garbage cards and one year of broken stuff in the same standard meta. I guess the devs are also scared that this will reduce the playerbase because the game might get a lot more boring.
On top of that, people tend to forget some of the broken cards from the past quite easily and look back at sets or metas that they wish to come back. Gods was a good meta indeed, but do people really want that back? Do people want quests from Ungoro back? Lackeys? Frozen Throne? Most of this stuff wasn't really balanced
0
Card games never had and never will have any form of true balance. There will just be times where it gets better or worse.
Since you asked, it's a mixture of a) and b). It would be great if each class had a 47%-55% win rate deck and if each archtype was represented by 2-4 classes.
"As far as I can remember, the most balanced meta in HS history was Journey to Ungoro."
Ungoro was a great set, no doubt, but I remember a certain quest that got pretty out of hand at some point. I think it wasn't during Ungoro, but soon after though.
The worst meta imo was Druidstone right after Frozen Throne release, but I haven't played in every timeline.
1
I have always been f2p in HS and I used to think that way too. HS put a couple packs in front of me each month and a couple extra cards and I was like "yeah, I have to reach at least rank XY". At some point I realised though that constructed formats have always been boring to me. And now that I can get a lot of wins in Duels or Arena, I realised that I earn a lot more resources (or pay very little gold per pack) just from playing these modes, which is a lot more valuable than what I would get from Ranked. BG, Mercenaries, and Duels also give xp for the rewards tracks, so it feels unnecessary for me to grind constructed anymore. It's also worth noting that I can play Arena, Duels, and BG with rather low dust investment (even after a 1.5 years break), so I kinda don't even need the pack rewards anymore anyway. But it's everyone's decision what mode they prefer. I just don't get the "every card is so broken" mentality when people continue to play. It sounds like people want to be frustrated by their game. A break can really work wonders
0
Why are you guys playing ranked constructed anyway if all cards and/or decks are annoying to play against? You should go to other modes and relax tbh. Like I grinded Duels very hard in the last couple days and after getting exhausted by the meta (and disappointed by a 5-3 run with the craziest priest deck I have ever seen), I decided to switch to BG and even Mercenaries sometimes. And you know what? I just feel relaxed af. No pressure, no deranking (or at least idc for my BG rank), no stupid OTK combos before you can play 2 cards... Games in BG are quite divers due to quests and you can experiment without getting punished. And mercenaries is PvE quest farming, which is just a chill mode with many lethal quizzes.
And there are also other games or hobbies btw.
0
Came back to HS recently and focused on Duels and I can tell you that there are several cards and/or abilities that need nerfs or the ban hammer before we should start talking about Shockspitter. Frost DK, for example, just freezes your face 10 turns in a row while dealing damage and you do nothing with your awesome Shockspitter. DK in general seems broken af. I went 0-3 and 2-3 with Brann so far, while I had 10, 11, and 12 wins runs with Illucia, Annoy-o-Tron, and Elise. Brann sucks tbh, Annoy-o-Tron Divine Shields are crazy
2
Cost reduction.
Emperor Thaurissan - Totally fine
Octo-Bot - Could also be fine with fewer card draw options and 1-mana cards
Lady Anacondra and Celestial Alignment - Wtf are you doin, Blizzard?
Also, Lightning Bloom is still a mistake.
0
It's just weird from Blizzard that they aren't more transparent with the numbers and the costs. Like I get it, there is this FOMO concept, but if people don't know what they might be missing out on, chances increase that they just don't really care about it.
Not giving more info about the costs, both in terms of money and gold, and the rewards (especially in terms of a "dusting" system) will make people (me included) think that it's just going to be very expensive, even if that won't be the case ever. That's one way to kill a hype, if there ever was one.
The gameplay is quite interesting but these boar fights at the beginning of bounties are boring. I can see pretty difficult close matches in PvP, though, where both players have to think hard what the opponent will do to ruin their gameplan. So there is some sort of interaction at least, which standard has been lacking recently.
0
Did we get any more info on the costs of the mode?
I have only seen a 200 gold upgrade to unlock heroic mode, I guess?
0
"Brilliant!" - Tyrande
1
Because you are supposed to play the most unbalanced, most expensive game mode to spend more money on the illusion that it will be more fun after you spent money.
Nobody in the community ever understood why.
0
Thank you for the overview.
To add to this, I think someone from Blizzard mentioned that you can get coins from legendary mercenaries in packs and unlock the mercenary if you have enough of these tokens. So, this might help a little bit because you have quite a lot of packs to open, but it's probably like 2-3 legendaries with all bundles.
I am just wondering if it is necessary to have all cards on day for any reason, though. I will certainly not even attempt to get there at some point.
2
I am always happy to discuss new ideas in this field, but there is a massive problem with this suggestion and that is the "Prince Keleseth" problem where you just auto-win when you happen to draw the quest very early and lose because you didn't.
Also, speaking of quest decks in general and not necessarily wild alone, this would improve the win rate of questlock and quest priest relative to the other quests because they already have huge draw/tutor cards. Dh could do something similar as warlock, but would be a lot less consistent. If you add more tutor cards, they would either need to have a very big downside in deckbuilding or cost 3+ mana and do nothing else at the very least.
I also think that your argument with the Un'Goro quests doesn't work because quest rogue did, in fact, build a deck of 29 cards to finish the quest as early as possible, and could quite consistenly do it.
To sum up my thoughts: This sounds like an idea that might just increase the gap between some quests and others AND the importance of early game draws increases even more while not solving the no-control meta problem. The best counter to these new quests would, unsurprisingly, be aggro.
1
I hope you mean duels instead of battlegrounds or else I can't believe what I am reading. I have played Battlegrounds for months as f2p, even at medium to high ranks, and I haven't spent a single cent/gold, so this was a pure 100% gold grab for me.
Regarding mercenaries mode, I am actually quite hyped for this. I have quit when Stormwind released because I couldn't stand standard and wild anymore and lost all motivation. However, I think that, if the progress is quite fine, this mode will be very playable for f2p. You will apparently get 8 of 50 mercenaries for free and as far as I am aware, there is no entry cost. Sure, these mercenaries aren't crazy good legendaries, but you can probably still progress in the game mode. Can someone confirm this or do we have to pay like 1k gold to enter? I might have missed that then. The PvE part will probably also be quite challenging, so this is a great thing. Since upgrading mercenaries will likely take some time, even those who spend some money will not be able to bring a full legendary super broken combo to PvP on day 1 of release, so even in PvP, f2p players will probably not start with a huge disadvantage.
It's also quite fair that they are charging gold for packs and stuff because it looked like you can progress on your rewards track playing mercenaries. Otherwise there would be 0 incentive to spend any resource on the game because you also don't need any dust as far as I understood this. I also wonder what happens when you fully upgrade all heroes of the same rarity and open another pack. Do you get dust or some refund? I am not sure.
My only complaint so far is that the cheapest bundle should be 33% cheaper and contain like 5 packs less so that more players can enter more easily.
2
You get 8 free mercenaries for completeing the prologue of the mode...