Ben Brode: "We Might Rotate Some Additional Classic Cards to Wild"
Ben's been a busy guy lately! Mr. Brode took to the official forums to discuss the goals behind Standard and wanted to let everyone know that if the team doesn't think enough will change, they have no issues moving problematic cards out of the basic and classic sets.
- The ultimate goal is to keep Standard fresh every year.
- If the same Basic and Classic cards appear too frequently each year, that won't be them achieving their goal.
- Meta will always need to be watched to make plans for the next Standard year.
- Releasing new cards is better than buffing cards from the classic and basic sets.
You can join the discussion over on our forums, or leave a comment below to share your thoughts.
Quote from Ben BrodeThe goal with Standard is to keep the meta fresh for each yearly rotation. There are some benefits to keeping Basic and Classic cards in Standard: Returning players have an entry-point to the new format, and new players experience classics like "Hogger" and "Arcane Missiles" that are iconic and great introductions to the game. People take breaks from Hearthstone, and being able to jump right back in with a few cards you already own and understand makes that experience a lot better.
That upside has a real downside in working directly against the big goal for Standard. It needs to feel different each year, and if Basic and Classic cards are still appearing in large densities year after year, we will not be achieving our goals for Standard.
We knew we weren't going to get there when the Year of the Kraken began, so we nerfed 12 basic/classic cards, to put more of the weight of the meta into the rotating sets. We always knew we'd have to watch the meta to see if any future changes would be needed when we got ready for the next year of Standard. If things are looking like they are going to be too same-y for that next year, we could see more nerfs, or we might rotate some additional classic cards to Wild, like we did with Old Murk Eye. No matter what, we're committed to making Standard fresh and exciting each new year. (Source)
Are you guys considering, besides nerfs, implementing buffs for underused vanilla cards?
Given the goal of Standard is to keep the game fresh each year, it's important to keep a lot of the power of the cards in the expansions, and not in the basic and classic sets. It's not clear what that balance of power should look like (is it ~10 cards from the basic and classic sets on average?), but we're currently skewed so high towards basic and classic cards in decks, that we are at high risk for 'samey-ness' as the years change in Standard. Buffing Basic/Classic cards *increases* that risk. If the goal is to get more cool cards into the meta, just releasing awesome new cards in expansions should make an impact there, and still keep Standard fresh. (Source)
I can get behind it. You can run 2 Azure drakes in most decks from Beta till Hearthstone servers go down. Card is a little too good.
Ben brode and co, how about you fix the Effin Aggro pirate patches problem before you touch non broken classic cards. Can't even play any control decks with all f the Effin Aggro lately since the past year and a half. I've spent over 500 dollars since I started playing, try me with this move and you will lose me and tons of other players. Imbociles
ps: give me back all of my money since u promised us that classics would never be moved to wild. Y'all r dirty rats
they just chucked your Azure Drake from hand and threw it onto your wild board
"Releasing new cards is better than buffing cards from the classic and basic sets." Of course it is, easier way for you to earn more money and you can always just re-print cards that you rotate out, so people will buy them over and over again. You stated that classic and basic set will never rotate out and that those cards are safe to craft, i guess you love money more than you love your players and community.
This will slowly be downfall of Hearthstone and i will not even mention new player experience, which is so bad that after this they will have no chance to play game for free, on a level that it deserves.
I remember them explicitly saying that standard rotation is going to be better for new players. And there were majority of people defending this. If you want to see a time capsule, open my last page of past posts and read the comments in the thread of someone saying he lost a lot of money in HS
Finaly i got all the necessary legendaries,epics/rares in the classic set which i made as a decision to collect since everybody including blizz was saying that those are the safe crafts since they wont leave standard and now i hear this from ben brode.....
There isnt a single card worth crafting if you are planing to play standard it seems.....
Meanwhile wild is a unbalanced mess and it always will be thx to MC,Dr 7, piloted shredder, mad scientist and similar bullshit
As someone who plays a lot of wild it is not as unbalanced as you think. Give it a try sometime with deck that uses cards from wild. Many people play with standard decks and it is true that those are not quite as strong and teched to a different meta. I think you might find that you actually like it. :)
well there's already stuff like Priestess of Elune in there, but yea if most of the set was nerfed it'd suck
If Ben Brodes was a meme... He would be the ultimate trollololol
April 2017 - "Where is my auctioneer" (c) Forsen
Oh god no! Don't kill my favorite class. BibleThump
No matter how you look at it, that is a terrible statement. When you launched standard you needed to know what the fuck you were doing, you can't just "oh well, that didn't work as we expected, let me tweak the rules to create a separate group of cards in an eternal set that will be rotated out". And it sounds weird that you'd say that after claiming that adding 9 deckslots would be very confusing... isn't breaking classic set apart a bit more confusing? Are we getting "wild classic packs" and "standard classic packs"? Are we getting a new expansion symbol?
I would be much more open to the idea of a ban list. The concept exists, it makes sense, no need to break classic apart, and in the future you won't need to destroy fun cards because a crybaby can't take yogg saron until he rotates out. Ban him from standard, leave him intact for wild and GTFO.
Also, ban lists can be edited, meaning that a classic card could come back after a while to check if it's still oppressive. Way more flexible and coherent.
I also love how they've straight-up admitted, and I think just a few days ago, that Wild is pretty much just a hole for them to throw unbalanced or unused cards in forever with "no repercussions."
I was literally telling these things around a year ago when they announced their move to standard and how it was all bullshit and just a huge moneygrab and what implications it made for the future decisions, etc.
The worst nightmare of a doomsayer is being right.
Personally, I don't mind. I love the concept of a format filled with broken cards of the past. I'd rather have a place where I can play all those crazy powerhouses than having them nerfed forever. It'd be great to have more formats, that are concerned about balance, but that is a task that takes a lot of thinking and organising... as long as standard is balanced and wild is wild, I have no complaints.... except when they nerf a yogg, lol.
They have mentioned potentially meddling with Wild cards like MC or N'Zoth if it gets too "stale." Sorry.
People have taken up arms over at Reddit, and they're justified. The dev team has made mistake after mistake, they should start changing things around a bit or they'll face a slippery slope.
And in this case 'somewhere else' means Wild :(