Spent literally all day making this graph.
Dunno if anyone wants to pin this up somewhere, but it's basically a cheat sheet on what changes are coming once rotation hits.
100
Spent literally all day making this graph.
Dunno if anyone wants to pin this up somewhere, but it's basically a cheat sheet on what changes are coming once rotation hits.
13
still think the 1000 win portraits should have alternate voicelines.
48
If Jaina's breasts don't get reversed to the 2014 version, this whole thing was for nothing and a missed opportunity. They can finally undue the great injustice and heal our hearts. The North remembers.
4
I don't want to be too judgmental. I want to be cynical and say that many of the answers here sound like excuses, but I'd rather not. It's not easy though.
I don't want to hate the guy. He seems generally pretty reasonable and open when he does these AMAs or shows up on official streams. I'm sure he's intelligent and nice. Then again, when I let him have the benefit of the doubt, many of the answers feel so "out-of-touch", that it's hard to take them for real. I won't go into every single point, just a few that feel particularly weird to me.
Current expansion achievements rewarding XP don't carry over to the next expansion reward track, because they think players would be forced to complete older achievements in order to level up optimally.
Aside from forcing Achievements only in Ranked and Duels, thus discouraging players to do them already, as low winrates can potentially be punished with a lower star bonus, and only because it would otherwise "hurt the experience", I would think most players would be happier having something they can do with old cards they got from events or bundles, than feeling forced to play only the new stuff. Especially when you feel under a time limit for no good reason. It feels like "get all your achievements done before the next expansion rolls out!", which is not exactly fun with achievements that are meant to take a long time, like Greybough, (0-cost) Corrupt cards, etc.
If you place it at the forefront of your game and force everyone through it, those that aren't competitive might have to engage in something that makes them not want to play anymore. Having quests in Hearthstone to go play single-player content or BG is an example of this I think about. If a player doesn't like that content but we say hey here is a reward you better do it.... it toes the line.
You can reroll every Battlegrounds-related quest, and some are not even exclusive to it (like winning 5 games in BG, Duels or Tavern Brawl).
The "5 ranked wins" that you get every week, on the other hand, is the single most rewarding quest and the only one that can't get rerolled, even if you wanted to. So, "forcing" players into Battlegrounds is problematic, but actually forcing players into Ranked, the most competitive mode in Hearthstone, is fine? And that's before considering that Achievements are easiest to complete in Ranked, and that Ranked gains you more Exp than any other mode, and that the monthly Ranked rewards are about the only source of additional rewards in the game, infinite Arena aside. And for the record, it actually does make me want to play less. When I don't like the meta, or my collection just sucks (or both, usually) it is a whole lot less fun to feel forced to play Ranked, because a large portion of the rewards is tied to it.
I know some people will say that Ranked is supposed to be the "real" Hearthstone and the mode that should get the most support, but how does that go with "don't force people to play the game a certain way"? Again, doesn't really sound like an honest answer.
Discover adds a lot to the game even though it's relatively high gameplay complexity. [...] Generally, they are moving away from having too many resources in one card. When control matchups devolve into one infinite generator and 29 removal cards the game gets less fun.
Well... it's nice that Control decks are supposed to change again, because that was (in less extreme forms) basically the identity of Control decks for a long time now. Like Control Warrior in Rise of Shadows with Archivist Elysiana, Galakrond Priest, Kobolds Control Mage with Frost Lich Jaina, more recent Highlander Mages with Dragonqueen Alexstrasza, and many others.
But I don't really see that happening when Discover and Random are treated like the swiss-army-knife of Hearthstone, both in design and gameplay. Especially control decks like Discover for generating answers that you wouldn't want to commit to in initial deckbuilding. Maybe he's talking of future expansions only, but with cards like Palm Reading, Renew, Keywarden Ivory or Envoy Rustwix, just to name a few of the latest additions, I struggle to see anything changing anytime soon.
The original question was, whether "the design team [is] working on moving away from the multiple degrees of random deviation" as "[p]laying against decks that are more created by than not isnt fun". Even if the next expansions should feature close to no random value generators, for a drastic change, it's not going away.
I know that some people will disagree with me here because they really love Discover and Random, and "if you want consistency, play chess". I'm not saying that these things need to get toned down. I mean, I would, but that's not my point here. What I mean to say, is that adding another dozen Discover effects every expansion, because you like this element, will generally push Control decks (or in case of Mage, an entire class) in the direction you apparently want to avoid. I guess you could limit the range of Discover-effects...
"Sounds a lot like I'm blaming players for not getting it, but it really is on us. Players shouldn't have to break out their excel sheets to understand something. It should just be clear right away."
Again... how am I supposed to believe this? The system was (and technically still is) highly intransparent. Where it is transparent, it's still needlessly complicated. And with all the statements about how long they've worked on it to "get it right", this was never, once, noticed during development?
If it wasn't for the (probably not even legal) datamining done by a few, people wouldn't have known what they get (or not get) out of the new system until many weeks and months later. I'm not suggesting that they need to redesign everything, and I will just wait and see how the next reward track looks like. I'm mostly over the whole issue, and I won't be like "never forget the betrayal" or something like that here. But excel sheets are sadly necessary in Hearthstone, because nothing is done straight and few things are ever clear right away. And while it might take a while between realizing that things need to be clear, and making things clear, I wonder what he thinks "clear" actually means.
The bit about expiring exp rewards for achievements is another one of those examples. It isn't mentioned in the game, wasn't mentioned in official blogposts or anything, but only mentioned in these semi-official AMAs, that few people outside of fansites will even take notice of. Is the same true for Duels achievements? Are they going to expire, or are they going to reset with a new rotation? Clear as mud.
You need Excel to keep track of everything, if only to check if made promises are kept and circulated "facts" like "300 exp per hour" are actually true, as trust is easily lost when things seem off. In the current Tavern Brawl, I've had multiple games, even those that I won, just give me 7 or 12 exp. Granted, the games were rather short, but it isn't that much fun to do exp-per-minute (or even seconds) calculations when single games just seem ridiculously undervalued (and on that note, I disagree that we are in a "reasonable place"). But also, because questions like "How much dust will you make in a month?" or "Can you affort to craft a deck if it might drop out of the meta?" or "How many packs do you need from the next expansion and when would you get them?" can only be properly answered if you keep track of everything, make crafting lists, and reevaluate everything on a regular basis. Those are simple questions that I think people should be able to answer without too much effort, but are never really easy to answer.
On that note, Iksar has also said in another tweet that he feels unhappy when players are just sitting on resources because they either can't spend them or decision making is too hard (Source). And I really don't see how latest efforts have contributed to make decisions easier. Just as another example, because of the very unclear future of Classic, that was already hinted at a while ago, I'm sitting on maybe 45 Classic packs, unsure whether I should open them, save them for new additions, or if they expire entirely, because they introduce a new "Classic" (or "Modern"?) set. All I can do is wait, until everything is "clear right away" once again.
Again, I know I will come across as nit-picky and overly critical. I'm a horrible critic that way. Which is why I want to stress once more that I'm not doing this just for the sake of it, or for upsetting people. I'm honestly glad that he chooses to do these things, because any kind of engagement and the will to communicate is an improvement and hopefully makes things go a little easier in the future. When people have a better idea about what is going on and why certain decisions are made, it might prevent another fallout like the one we've seen not too long ago.
But at the same time, it's not so much that I merely disagree with some statements, I struggle to comprehend them. Like, the game clearly coerces you to play Ranked in three different ways, and he's talking about not forcing people to go do things they don't like doing...
Should I ever get the chance to talk to him in person, I'll have to make sure to buy drinks. Both to not be too much of a hard-ass, and because he'd derserve more than one if he would actually sit through my hour-long ramblings.
10
whatever, I don't like any of these portraits.. #_#
2
anduin level 50 portrait be like:
there is no easter bunny there is no tooth fairy and there is good priest level 50 portrait
-1
All of them low effort cheap portraits. Valeera is meh which i chose.
12
Buy it while its cheap. I hear from a reliable source that the next patch will change how card backs works in the game.
You will have to buy seperate card backs for each individual card in your deck. Luckely Blizzard will offer a special bundle for a limited time only. 10 000 gold for a full deck of Lightforged Card Backs (5000 gold discount)
31
So basically what theyre saying is whatever exp we would get from events will be merged in the rewards track and the events that were supposed to give a lot of exp will be simple events like they always were. So basically nothing changed and you guys are happy because you think you won lol.
How ignorant this community is they keep robbing you and you thank them.
Nice
68
"Fuck you blizzard"
-The Community
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2
A (almost) vanilla HS mode? Sign me up, that was the most fun time of HS. Can't wait to play classic Handlock again :)
7
Hopefully they also fixed the super long BG T5 timer.
5
"big changes" usually means "be ready to be screwed".
-6
I really like this one. Give the expensive cards to your opponent and cruise to an easy win :D
1
bs, never been that way. Cards are determined when you open the pack, not a second sooner.
4
Spells in BGs? Interesting but all it does is add even more rng.
2 thoughts on the spells/tiers:
- Tier 4 spells: we'll hardly see them, what game makes it to turn 16 these days? In the current meta half the players are dead by turn 10.
- Ice Block: No. Just no.
-8
So they made the system sliiiightly better but in the end it still is pretty bad.
edit: if you look at it closely they barely did anything and people are getting fooled. 20% less XP required to lvl 50 but they're cutting event XP which probably would've been about the same amount. The shitty quests that everybody re-rolls anyway will have 100 more XP. BGs and TBs count towards quests - that's good - but TBs still don't generate XP.
So in the end we're basically getting 5 packs, 500 gold + 100 extra gold from the reward track to stfu. Nothing really changed, they just made some lateral moves.
2
Same here, nothing.
4
Never thought I'd ever get that achievement. I might have done it once in the past but I'm not sure.
My board doesn't look that strong but it was a very quick game (12 turns I think) and the closest rounds were the first 2. Last 2 rounds I even had 98+ win percentage, I never really was close to not winning a round after the first 3-4 turns.
My BG rating is about 8700 and was around 9k before the reset.
1
I didn't receive a daily quest twice this week and both times I was also unable to re-roll quests.