Hearthpwn

Quote from Sahgos »

Quote from Rusery »

You aren't convinced that the card being potentially unplayable is an issue? This means you are telling me that you would put two of this in your deck to gamble on one outcome of:

1) you are playing vs aggro, you draw this and you essentially win.
2) you are playing vs control, you draw this and you can't play it at all.
3) you play this vs mid-range, you draw this and you can't play it because you'll probably lose.

This card reminds of of Kezan Mystic or Hemmit Nessingwary. They fill a niche roll with a great conditional reward and even if they don't give you their conditional reward, you still get a body for an inefficient mana cost. Your card goes as far as to deny this vs many many deck types from every archetype. 

That's precisely the point. They are risky cards that provide significant value or very little (or no value).  Kezan is another example.  Some people run with Kezan understanding the risk/reward and others do not.  This would be just another card that offers a player the option to gamble.

Generally speaking, cards that are so specialized as to instantly win in some matchups and never be played in others are very poor design. Again, you see some of them in games with sideboards, but in a game like Hearthstone where every card counts this would just not be good. Assuming for a moment that this card was printed as is I would never play it in a deck. I would need to be sure that I would be playing aggro decks 75% of the time. That's just never been the case for me, and I can't imagine running a card that I could never play in certain matchups. 

You mentioned the variable cost of Giants as a reason why you weren't concerned with the cost of this card. Giants can change cost in game, based on things you, the player, are doing. That gives them interaction. The cost of this card is set at the beginning of the game and neither player can do anything about it. That's not interactive at all. You've designed a card that relies solely on the deck construction of your opponent to ever do anything and that's not good.

I'm sure some people would play this card, as the hate for aggro is well documented at this point, but I doubt it would see much play beyond angry ladder players. Out of curiosity, perhaps you can explain what kinds of decks you envision playing this?

Quote from Sector7G »

From what I seen of face hunter, its kinda brainless min/maxing and not much fun.

If winning is all you want with no thinking go for it, but not what I was getting at.

The previous point, made in a terrifically sarcastic manner that I'm sure we can all appreciate, is that one of the best decks right now includes no legendaries. Now let's look at the other best decks. Well, pretty much all of them do include legendaries, right? Okay, so we can make an educated guess as to what might happen in this no legendary meta: Most decks get worse, face hunter is as good as ever. So where then is the incentive to play anything else? 

This is of course without getting into the point that in so doing Blizzard would be alienating the players that have given them the most money. Don't get me wrong I do understand what you're getting at, and something along those lines might work at some point, but it needs to be executed in a manner that's a little more complex than just "No legends in this mode." 

This looks needlessly complicated and gives you information about your opponent's deck in a way that seems sorta unhealthy for the game. Letting you know exactly how many cards your opponent has at a certain cost is a pretty big deal, even if it is just 4+. Also, a card that is unplayable, period, against certain decks is really not the kind of card that would see much play. I don't like cards that are this targeted in a game that doesn't have access to sideboards. If we did I might like it better, but even then I don't like the information aspect of it and It probably does waaaaaay too much for the mana cost, if we assume it's a consistent 1-3. 

The most comparable card is probably Feral Spirit. That's a class card, and effectively costs five guaranteed. Also only summons two and they're weaker. You did say zoo, though, which makes me think of Warlock, so in that case the card is probably pretty terrible. It would probably cost a minimum of 8 against the decks as they're built now, and that's pretty bad. Same problem with Mech Mage, though in that case it's probably 7.

In order to fix it I think you should look at a way to make the mana cost more consistent, and hopefully remove the reveal of hidden knowledge aspect. Also summon 2 instead of three almost for sure. 

I actually like the position Hunter is in right now. Everything from hyper aggressive to heavy midrange variants are viable and can be played to success. They can also be beaten with consistency by some other strong decks. The only issue that I have with it is the game speed that encourages Hunter to be over represented. It seems to me that people play a lot more of Hunter not because it's easy or because it wins so much but because you can sit down and jam twenty games in an hour. Control decks are my favorite to play but they can be exhausting to grind. When playing aggro even if you lose it doesn't feel that bad because you didn't sink 20 minutes into it. 

Quote from Tahladnas »

Classic all the way. Fancy cardbacks are for little girls.

I'll take my fancy cardback and my tiara then, thank you very much. 

Quote from Seagull0 »

Quote from Timeiscandy »

It's interesting to see a post that so blatantly assigns some kind of moral virtue to not playing aggressive decks, since that's very obviously what you're talking about. The idea that there are "principles" involved in the game related to what deck you play strikes me as rather ludicrous. It's a strategy people use to console themselves when they lose. "Well, I might have lost, but let me make up a reason why I'm still better than them to make myself feel better." That's all that's really being done here.

If you want to stick to your guns that's great, and I commend you for it, but it would be nice if you didn't pretend that somehow made you more virtuous than other people. 

Yes, you're right, it is what's being done here, but it is the truth. People hate facing hutards, people "hate" themselves for playing hutards, just look at comments on youtube on what people say about people who play this class. You are more virtuous if you play a strategy game for purposes of fun, challenging, and not for success and writing a "vee" in the legend achievement. Yes, you are ruining the game by doing so, that is what I believe.

I can see that your approach to this subject is rather dogmatic, and so I won't bother trying to argue against it. You believe what you believe I seriously doubt any amount of discussion will change it.

I'll just say this on the subject. I play the decks I enjoy playing. If I'm playing a control deck it's because I'm having fun with it. If I'm playing combo it's because I'm enjoying the games. Guess what's happening when I'm playing aggro? I'm having fun. I have fun playing against control, and combo, and aggro. I enjoy this game, and I could not possibly care less what people in youtube comments say about any class. If I took the opinions of every entitled whiner with a chip on their shoulder seriously then I really wouldn't be having any fun.

Try to keep in mind that just because you feel a certain way it doesn't make you right. You're entitled to feel it, but that's worth next to nothing. 

Quote from FireFox83 »

If Blizzard allowed you to buy wings in any order then everyone would wait to see what the good staple cards will be and what wings they will be in and only purchase those.  In order to make as much as they do now they would have to spread the good cards through out each wing evenly and even then it would be hard to judge what exactly is good due to any meta shifting before, during, and after release.

 

I would argue that they probably don't have that great of an idea which of the cards will be meta breakers and which won't. I'm sure they have some idea, and I do think they're good at balancing the cards, but knowing which cards will see play and which ones won't is another story.

As to the other point, I think you underestimate the number of people that would buy the whole thing just to have it. I know I would. Additionally, I think keeping the release schedule as they have it now with an option to unlock individual wings say a month after the final release would be a good way to address that. Also they could keep the final wing locked until all other wings are unlocked, which I think would be a fine choice. 

Echo of Medivh. It's just so much fun. It's not that great these days but it just feels so good when you get it to work. 

This is a point that I've thought about before, and I have to admit I think I agree with the OP. It's hard to know for sure how it would affect sales, but my feeling on it is that what would happen is sales of individual wings would go way up while sales of the full adventure would take a small hit. The problem with the current model is that their exists a not insubstantial number of players that, either through preference or because of limited card pool, only play a specific class. Having to buy all the wings just to get the cards they want to keep playing. They have to end up buying the whole thing, which is something a lot of players don't want to do. Just look at the number of threads that pop up with people asking if they should buy naxx. 

I don't think the current model is terrible, but I do think allowing people to choose which wings they buy would be better overall. 

Quote from H1ghZ3nB0rg »

Quote from Tahladnas »

Maybe don't delete the decks? Try to improve them by changing some cards or try to make better in game decisions. After every defeat, always try to figure out which plays contributed to your loss.

The plays that contribute to my losses are opponents casting force of nature + savage roar, or spamming hunter hero power and charge minion.

Well since you're playing perfectly then I'd say focus on tweaking the decks. There's clearly nothing you can improve upon in game so the issue is probably the decks. 

Quote from Balthier21 »

i dont mind aggro at all except face hunter. maybe face hunter brings a short of balance and punishes greedy decks but a concept where you just put minions on the board hit face and still win is unacceptable for me in a balanced card game. MTG had the red deck which reminds of face hunter. rush minions and direct damage but it was always gimmicky, face hunter should also exist but be gimmicky. instead of blizzard ackowledging it as a deck archtype and even support it with cards like quick shot i think they should do something so this thing will never be viable again. zoo is also fast if you want fast games but the difference between zoo and face hunter is that face hunter doesnt care about their minions board presence or anything like that. if you aoe zoo effectively you pretty much won the game. on the other hand even if you aoe face hunter it doesnt make a difference at all. zoo is the healthy aggro while face hunter is just an abuse of a hero power + bursting tools. people where complaining about undertaker snowballing and they were right cause they were losing the game from turn 1-2. now that they lose the game from mulligan why no one complains? seriously if you face a face hunter and your mulligan is kinda bad you lost right there before even the game starts. how is that healthy for the game?

I'm pretty sure everyone complains. Have you not been reading the things people say about face hunter?

Also, as a quick point of clarification, the red aggressive decks in MTG were and are the opposite of gimmicky. The whole point of them is that they are brutally consistent and full of redundancy. All their cards do basically the same thing. There's no gimmick involved, it just kills you dead. That's the whole point of playing them, and face hunter does essentially the same thing. It's cards are all pretty much the same and serve the same purpose. 

It's interesting to see a post that so blatantly assigns some kind of moral virtue to not playing aggressive decks, since that's very obviously what you're talking about. The idea that there are "principles" involved in the game related to what deck you play strikes me as rather ludicrous. It's a strategy people use to console themselves when they lose. "Well, I might have lost, but let me make up a reason why I'm still better than them to make myself feel better." That's all that's really being done here.

If you want to stick to your guns that's great, and I commend you for it, but it would be nice if you didn't pretend that somehow made you more virtuous than other people. 

Shaman does a pretty good job of wrecking mech mage, at least in my experience. Cheap removal, totems, fantastic board clear, and good midrange minions make it a rough matchup for the mage. This is assuming mech mage versus a shaman with haunted creepers and fire elementals, so midrange/control. 

Raging Worgen

I understand the issue of interactivity, and it is a problem to a degree. But in terms of the actual viability of a mill deck at the top levels of the game, it will take some work before we see that. People seem to feel that there's a good chance this will become even more than top tier and move into the realm of oppressive. I seriously doubt that will happen, for a variety of reasons. 

I think the feeling that it is super powerful comes from the fact that when you lose, it tends to feel like there's nothing you could have done. It gives you this sense that the deck is much more powerful than it actually is. Try playing ten games in a row against mill rogue. You will feel helpless some number of those games. Others, you'll win and it will feel like they never did anything. That's what happens with these kinds of strategies a lot of the time.

As for mill as a strategy, it suffers from one major drawback, which is that until it kills you it doesn't do anything. it's very much all or nothing in that way. In Hearthstone, thanks to hand size having a max and the way bouncing minions to a full hand works, this isn't as big of a problem as it is in some games. I actually think those factors make mill in Hearthstone a lot more fun to play against than in other games. Most of the time in say, MTG, against a mill deck you don't really alter your play. In Hearthstone you alter your play immediately when you know you're up against mill. You have to come up with a new plan, watch what order you play your minions in, how you spend your mana, etc. In that sense, there is interaction, though I get that it's not the "throw minions at each other" interaction people like.