I will preface the post by saying that I absolutely LOVE hearthstone and I think it's one amazing card game for what it tries to achieve (more instinctive gameplay with less depth than a more traditional card game that can be played on the go and via mobile phones). Also, I have to be clear and say that I 100% agree with the Blizzard approach to RNG. I know people generally don't like it that much, but the wackiness and RNG is NOT the game's real problem in my eyes, and I love the way it can give a player the option to go after a ridiculous highroll to turn the tables if all other hope is lost. Playing MTG Arena for some time now, the number of concedes is significantly higher because the hope of a crazy highroll is not there to keep a player into the game and the candle of hope lit. Of course, I have a history of playing a dice-based TCG in the past, so I can concede the fact it might be simply personal preference.
What infuriates me however, is that I think the game can be made INFINITELY better with some simple (in my eyes at least) changes, additions and/or a different philosophy in how the team approaches problems, especially buffs and nerfs. To the point:
The main problems hearthstone has for me are:
1) Limited to no experimentation and deck variety.
2) No real Casual mode and lack of many other essential modes for card games, including tournaments.
3) Not enough stirring the meta in between expansion releases.
and ultimately 4) People act like stupid fuckers when hidden behind a computer screen.
How are all those tied together? Well, I will start by number 4. People in digital space can be assholes to the degree they would LIKE to be in real life but the can't for fear of getting punched in the face. This is not a revelation. Browsing forums and reading online comments, one can easily see a lot more toxicity and bad manners than in real life conversations, because of 0 repercussions. This cannot be controlled by any means and by no company, not even Blizzard. Anonymity = People behaving like shit. In a physical card game, a toxic player that would always play to win and that would bad manner you and insult you would not find people to play against in the shop. Hearthstone does not have that luxury and yet the method Blizzard chose to kid themselves they can regulate this was the worst one of all: Taking options away from people. No chat at all, instead of a togglable option to have chat or not in your games, removal of emotes (RIP Sorry), instead of a togglable option to.... you get it. So instead of giving you options Blizzard chose to make a multiplayer game almost a solitaire.
One may start to wonder why am I talking about bad manners that much since they are are one thing that does not have a 100% direct relation to the card game. Deck choice has though, and I'm here to argue that ALWAYS playing at 100% and with the goal to win is bad manners, especially when in non competitive space. This can and must be regulated by Blizzard though. In real life, context is apparent: A world cup final can become blood and sand (or grass in that case) , a 5v5 soccer game with your buds is a place where you can have your fun and compete to a degree, and a 1v1 basketball game with your 6yo cousin is where you should go easy. If you see me dunking in a 6year-old's face and then standing on top it screaming "You suck, noob", I can guarantee you someone would intervene. In trading card game space, one would want to pit competitive deck against competitive deck to test strategies for a tournament, or decide to play silly decks for the lulz and to see who would win in an epic clash between alien unicorns and pygmy dragons, even if those decks were the absolute worst in the game. The key here is communication, the one Blizzard took away from us. I would NOT start a game versus a player with a top-tier deck I have 10% win rate against if the goal was to have fun, nor would I want to run into absolute amateurs if I wanted to prepare for the world championship final. Provided we cannot actually talk to people to see what they would like to do, there's only 1 other way to go:
Have more game modes that each attract the correct audience.
Game modes in Hearthstone are a complete joke. There's the single player content which could be better with some serious AI upgrades that will never come, Tavern Brawls which are supposed to be a little extra thing to do each week rather than a true mode, and Arena. Arena is extremely limited. For example I don't see why there couldn't be a wild and a standard arena. The easy answer is not to split the playerbase, but c'mon it's a successful cross-platform Blizzard game we are talking about, if they don't have the playerbase to give us 10-15 gamemodes then who can? I can see the splitting the playerbase argument as being valid when the game was under development by a small team with 0 clue of how successful it would be, but so many years later? Sorry. Also I don't see why Arena can't coexist with more traditional draft formats and we have to choose the one or the other.
And since I touched the wild arena topic, why stay at standard and wild formats? Why not have custom formats for non-ladder games? Why shouldn't we be able to play a non-dragon game with a limit of 10 legendaries per deck if we so desire and we can put our wallets and dust to good use to craft 10 of each? Why aren't we able to make custom banlists and rules? Older Blizzard games were successful exactly for letting people customise, see TFT for example that created the whole MOBA genre through DotA, or letting people play tower defence games and millions of other stuff. Not having custom formats also makes nerfs hurt more because now I know there doesn't exist a space where I can play my Dreadsteed deck the way I wanted and enjoyed it to, or Yogg-Saron, Hope's End.
Finally, there's ladder. Ladder is the easiest game mode to get right. People are competitive by nature and given free roam will turn anything into competition, from Hearthstone to who can spit further. If parameters don't exist, everything ends up being ladder and that's what we see in Hearthstone today. The geniuses that created current "casual" not only made it so there exist motives to crush people trying to play non-competitively there (gold per 3 wins also at casual), but also added elo matchmaking to make it impossible to swap decks without getting crushed or having to elo farm back to testing levels, punish you for playing the mode by not counting your wins there towards gold heroes and allowing people to use it as a place to do your dailies.
As the game is right now, closest to "casual" is playing ladder in BOTH wild and standard, and having standard as your competitive format where you only play to win and wild as your "casual", where you can play all decks and run into a somewhat wider variety of decks and enemy skill levels provided you willingly concede to keep yourself in the 17-19 rank range. Which is not acceptable by any means.
The lack of other obvious game formats like leagues, tournaments etc is simply baffling after so many years. They could introduce 1 per year and still have so much more than we have now, something that would infinitely improve the whole staleness feeling a lot of the playerbase has as well.
Finally Nerfs and Buffs (or lack thereof) philosophy:
Since we do NOT have a real banned cards list (Hall of fame is very far off) and there's no space where we can play with older versions of cards, each buff or nerf in Hearthstone is a card lost forever. An additional problem is one mentioned in another thread: Making Hearthstone easy to read and to interpret for mobile phones made developers go for smaller numbers, which are harder to change without shifting a card's power a lot. Mana Wyrm nerf was a big nerf, but there was no easy way to make a very small change. 2 health versus 3 is a significant difference but it would not affect the most problematic of the games which are those it snowballs early without an answer, making it 0 attack would not let it act as a real 1 drop but only as a synergy drop, and 2 mana would be a significant slow-down to the point of making it below-average. Ultimately they chose the 2 mana option, and I would have too in their shoes, but still it was NOT a subtle change. Something was lost from the game forever and it affects a lot of decks that used it as a center piece, like the oldschool tempo mage. What doesn't take away things from decks but rather creates more options? BUFFING underpowered cards a little, an option which I really cannot fathom why Blizzard avoids like the plague. But before I give examples of possible buffs and reviewing some of the atrocious nerfs Blizzard has done over the years, let me give you some examples of types of cards I find acceptable even though they aren't "okay" and balanced power level wise:
OKAY UNBALANCED CARDS:
1) The memes / flavour cards / cuteness / vanilla cards: Magma Rager / Explore Un'Goro / Snowflipper Penguin / Worgen Greaser.
A few cards every expansion can be wasted for reasons other than gameplay. I do not mind Magma Rager being a meme, or slowly adding more family members like Ice Rager and Am'gam Rager even if the only reason were in-game jokes and filling packs. If anything, Cursed Disciple was a wasted opportunity. Cute little critters are nice thematically and I don't mind having the cute card of the set award every expansion, and unique cards that mix fantasy/theme and offer new possibilities are allowed to be subpar.
2) The basic mechanic cards that are sure to be reprinted and allow experimentation/change without losing original cards: Silverback Patriarch / Phantom Militia / Lone Champion / Squirming Tentacle
Who cares. They are taunt minions. If they are weak, they will be reprinted with new ways to make them relevant or to see if they can find a spot in a different standard cycle.
3) The underpowered cards that at least have vanilla value or close, with some fantasy behind them: Gruul / Nozdormu
Both those cards will never be playable but at least Gruul is thematically consistent with his constant self buffing effect in WoW and easily beats a vanilla 8 mana 8/9 minion as a card and Nozdormu makes sense lore-wise (time manipulation), unique effect, and isn't too far from a vanilla card to be atrocious.
4) The slightly overpowered cards that add class identity, if they don't overly synergise with the class, don't cover all its weaknesses or they don't allow them to play a style unintended for that class: Frostbolt / Spreading Plague (after nerf) / Power Word: Shield
Mage having more powerful spells, Druid -who has no easy way to kill large-ish and big minions with spells- having a taunt wall and the healing class that has no aggro options having a minion buff to synergise with its hero power are all ok.
NOT OKAY UNBALANCED CARDS:
1)UP cards with unique effects or legendary class cards that are getting power crept by commons:
Princess Huhuran and Terrorscale Stalker. This is NOT right and I would find a way to change/buff Huhuran. If I wanted it to be a deathrattle synergy card I would at least try to make it unique within the class. Raise mana cost and make deathrattle activate twice i.e - we have a similar card in Necrium Vial now. In any way, it should NOT stay that way.
Lightspawn. An effect that is 100% unique. It poses as an overstated minion that can be traded favourably with by the enemy if he has smaller minions. It is primarily a health buff target and as such, a prime silence target. Why in God's name is it a 0/5 base? Must it absolutely get murdered by silence by removing the actual body on top of any buff? Would it break the game if it was a 1/5 or a 2/5 base so that it can at least be useable after silence to trade into a token or something?
Mana Wraith. Understatted vanilla with a mirror effect? Why? It is an interesting effect, no other minion has had that since, and it could possibly be useful to slow down enemy aggro/zoo if it had a normal 2/3 defensive body. We could at least TEST and revert it if it was too good. Instead, it's like it doesn't even exist.
Moorabi. A totally unique shaman legendary meant to boost an entirely new deck archetype. It's a 6 mana 4/4 that "draws" minions you choose provided you can freeze them, not an easy requirement. Then you see Gadgetzan Auctioneer. Really? Would it be unreasonable as a 4/6? And again, why write off a whole deck archetype instead of trying to buff a couple cards a bit and see what happens? No sense to me.
2) OP cards that are given to the wrong class:
Ultimate Infestation. Seems plausible as a card for a class like Hunter i.e that doesn't make it too easily to the later turns so that the 10 cost is relevant, isn't known for his combo potential so the draw 5 isn't so OP and has cheaper ways to damage face if needed so that the 5/5 deal 5 doesn't seem game breaking. Instead, we give it to the class that can ramp to 10 mana way too fast, has ways to exploit drawing too much without repercussions (Aviana-Kun, Jades) and already had amazing survival toolkit to make it to a point where it can use UI.
CRITIQUE OF ACTUAL BLIZZARD NERFS:
Keeper of the Grove / Ancient of Lore / silences:
Example of shitty Blizzard balance. Ancient of Lore and Keeper of the grove had Choose One effects with obviously different value, which is only okay if one option is extremely situational.
So for Ancient of Lore 2 cards versus 5 health, really? a 3 mana versus a 1/1.5 mana effect. We do bring the effects to balance by making them both a 1 mana option but ALSO keep mana at 7, making it 4.5+2.5 for the effect. Absurd. 8 mana with 2 cards / 8 health or 6 with current effect would be both better options.
Keeper of the Grove had 1 mana option in 2 damage and 1 mana in silence. Blizzard eventually decided to nerf silence options so lets call it 1.5. At 2/3 (2 mana) with 1/1.5 mana options it would still have an extra added cost, explained by its versatility (the choose one cost). Why straight to 2/2? All silences are ultra-awkward now. Ironbeak Owl has a less-than-1-mana cost body and pays more than 2 mana for silence. Keeper of the Grove also, but at least it is one of 2 options. Spellbreaker makes absolutely no sense whatsoever in that environment. Cheaper silence is better, but not a 2/2 stat difference better, especially not on a 1 health-body.
Charge:
Charge in Hearthstone was a problematic mechanic, but instead of trying to balance it the sane way, like introducing real defence mechanics (taunt is too weak, a dedicated defence mechanic could help) they decided to kill it with fire. So what did they do? They let some high attack charges unchanged (Kor'kron Elite), and deleted some of the cards from the game. Arcane Golem is abysmal now, couldn't they balance it better? More stats, deathrattle instead of battlecry, etc? 4 mana 5/6 with this effect as deathrattle seems better in example. Let's not even talk about Warsong Commander.
The examples of bad changes are numerous, but in the latest batch they butchered Giggling Inventor. 2 strong 2-drops and a less than an 1mana body do NOT add up to 5, especially when they provide such annoying defence and 3 bodies, plus mech tags. But paying more than 2 extra for packaging is atrocious! I understand not wanting to make it 6 and put it into even decks, but can't you at least compensate some stats for the extra bump, making the inventor a 3/2 in example?
The ultimate question from all of this is why not be more active changing cards around, buffing, nerfing, experimenting more often and refreshing the meta in other ways other than killing cards with fire? The way the game is now, more than 3/4 of the card pool is unusable and with no hope of ever getting relevant, and the only intervention from Blizzard's part is to find out if a card is used way too much and deleting it. If I have 1 wish from the new expansion, it's that it will bring new game modes for casuals and custom game modes, but more importantly a new philosophy that will try to make more cards decent rather than less cards OP.
EDIT: Since the Wall is too big on this one, people who find it TL;DR can post examples of innocent buffs to irrelevant cards with some argumentation on how it could help weaker decks or new decks emerge, or propose game changes that can affect the meta when a new expansion is not in sight.
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I admit I find it unlikely but I suppose it is possible that this finds a place? I mean some solid beasts are needed for beast Druid but I doubt this is it. Hunter could use it if it wanted to try a control deck (something I pray actually works one day). It is technically the same stats as Sen'jin Shieldmasta which is still a decent card, even if not quite good enough right now. On top of that this has a beast tag I guess? I would like to say I am trying to defend what seems a bit lack lustier, I don't think this is quite good enough sadly.
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This is an awesome card, though it depends on what the quest is to get it. That said if you can get stealth, windfury and at least 1 +3 attack buff, that makes an OTK if you follow it up with double Blessing of Kings to do at least 32 damage. Another option is Blessed Champion which could be a turn ten double combo for 64 damage. With 5 adapts that isn't even that unlikely to have happen and you could likely build a deck around getting that set up.
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This isn't too bad. It is an option for Hunter since with the new quest the Glacial Shard and Fire Fly are both elementals that are ideal as activators. That said it is a bit awkward so I could be wrong, but I think it could be decent at least.
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I mean, I don't even fully believe what I am about to say myself...but the Princess isn't strictly worse than this. If played without the effect she had better stats and unlike this card she at least gets to have the beast tag, which is pretty relevant in hunter.
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I LOVE this card. I don't know if this is gonna make control viable in hunter? but they will finally have a way to out value Priests and Mages. This allows you to have 8 1 drops in the deck with fire fly as well, while only putting 4 in your deck. Those plus the Warden make it super likely to get them reasonably soon, and that makes you able to put in a heavier late game since you have a solid early game and the likely hood of getting them raptors from the quest and this guy in the mid game.
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Won't work I bet but still gonna try to make this into a control card. It will just be a deck that has a bowl shaped curve :P I mean you can totally play this against another control deck and just basically say "I have 15 3/2 minions with 'draw a card' attached to them, gonna answer them all?" Then finish it off with King Krush and Dred. XD Will be fun at least.
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Shadow Highlander Priest? XD idk what else they had in mind here but it's interesting at least.