Year of the Mammoth Clarifications Roundup
We've gone through recent posts from the Hearthstone team which help clarify some stuff about the Year of the Mammoth.
- The team is considering unnerfing Molten Giant and putting it in the Hall of Fame set for the 2018 rotation.
- Ben Brode thinks Shatter would make a great Classic card one day.
- No extra cards being added to the Classic set for classes which are losing a card. That isn't set in stone.
- Cards in all the expansions this year will only come from card packs. The missions that come with expansions do not reward cards.
- Missions in expansions do not require payment.
- There are no current plans to make Wild cards available in the shop.
- Druid of the Claw's wording has been updated and will be available in a future patch.
- Yong Woo stated they're thinking of adding a profile page with a player's favorite decks and cards.
Quote from BlizzardCould you please unnerf Molten and put it in Hall of Fame?
We're considering it for the next rotation. (Ben Brode)
I was talking about the one in 2018, sorry for the confusion. You can take your upvotes back. (Ben Brode)Thanks for clarification. Whilst you are available, what is the end goal of Hall of Fame? Will cards being removed from standard-classic possibly be replaced with interesting but weak cards from other wild sets?
Definitely possible. As an example, I think Shatter might make a great Classic card someday. (Ben Brode)
Why do Blizzard put so much care into "returning" players as opposed to their "currently" playing customers
Time and again one of their go to excuses why something cant be done is because of returning players but if they have left they should no longer be the consideration if they ever return anyway
On top of that I feel Blizzard may be missing one part of why players leave which is waning interest in the current game design
Should a developers interest not be in keeping their current customer happy not a customer that may never come back?Often I give several reasons for doing something or not doing something. Sometimes we think about our returning players. But I don't think we've ever made a decision at the expense of current players exclusively because of returning players. People see that one bullet point and assume that's the whole reason.
Part of the reason to keep them in mind is that it helps us find solutions that are good for everyone. If we never think about new and returning players, we miss opportunities to make the game better for them at the same time we are making the game better for current players.
We just take them into account. (Ben Brode)
Maybe not related to 'returning' players, but things like not changing inconsistencies (i.e. Druid of the Claw transformation) because of 'new player experience' do happen.
Inconsistencies are generally understood by the engaged playerbase. Players know Wild Growth gives an extra card at 10 mana, for example.
Inconsistency is worse for players seeing cards for the first time, usually. But you're right, card wording is almost entirely the domain of new players. Experienced players know what a card does just from looking at the art.
Either way, Druid of the Claw's wording has been updated. You'll see the change in a patch later this year. (Ben Brode)
So Hall of Fame cards will disappear from packs?
That is correct. Hall of Fame cards will no longer appear in packs when Hall of Fame is live. (Zeriyah)
So Jesse, does this announcement mean that there will be NO more Single Player Adventures in Hearthstone except for the "optional single-player missions that will help develop the expansions’ thematic narratives"?
As announced, there will not be any new Adventures for Hearthstone this year. I think you will find the new single player missions to be equally enjoyable though! (Aratil)
I'm excited for this news, but I have a big question. Maybe I missed it in the announcements, but will Blizzard be keeping to the old model that Wild Adventures and cards are no longer purchasable through the store?
There are no plans to change that at this time. (Aratil)
Can you explain what you mean by the new design for the expansion? It sounds like to me its the regular single player story modes but this time each wing will be free?
In the new expansion design, you will acquire cards through packs - just as we have in the past. Additionally, there will be free thematic missions to help tell the story and lore of the expansion! (Molly)
Is hearthstone going to replace the phased out classic cards with new ones? Or will these classes have 5 commons instead of 6 now?
for now, it'll be less cards for those classes. But we could change that some day (Ben Brode)
Do you have any plans to provide statstics or game records through official means?
We are thinking of adding a profile page that might have something like a player's favorite decks and cards, but it's not something that we'll add soon. (Yong Woo)
I actually really resonate with the returning players thing.
Many people are seasonal hearthstone players, and only play hearthstone after a new expansion is released or when the meta shifts.
While I tend to play a lot of hearthstone and don't mind card nerfs or changes, another game I only play on occasion, duelyst, has frequent card balancing and new additions.
When it first came out I played it a lot and refused to netdeck or watch content creators for it at all so that I could avoid polluting my own assessments and deck building choices. As a result I ended up with some powerful but original decks. Eventually I stopped playing the game almost entirely due to other games (like hearthstone), and when I decided I should get more into it (hearthstone meta shifted into a rough patch) I realized that they had changed the most core card in my favorite deck. This actually made me decide to quit playing the game altogether. It wasn't even just the most important card in my deck, they changed an entire mechanic that my deck revolved around, and made my high risk/reward control abyssian deck... just gone.. you can't even play it anymore, not because its bad but because the cards function different. Furthermore it wasn't even a popular card, nor was it strong; the main card that they wanted to change was almost completely unrelated, and my favorite card in the game was killed because another card that shared the mechanic was overpowered. The funny thing was that the card probably saw more play afterwards, but it wasn't the same card anymore and was used in a much different manner.
Back to Hearthstone.
It is easier for blizzard to attract players who have phased out of the game than to find entirely new players. It is actually a LOT easier, not only because they are already familiar with the game, but new players are often washed out with their tiny card collection.
This makes changing any of the cards they enjoy extremely risky, and will likely lose their audience, while having little effect on regulars. Buffing a bad card probably won't make it see competitive play if it is bad enough to be considered for a buff, and even buffing cards can still off-put returning players, usually from side effects around the change. That's why the hearthstone team usually (at least in the past) would only change cards that were extremely detrimental to the meta and experience. In these cases nerfing a card might actually make a returning player enjoy the game more, especially if the card had a high rarity or came from an adventure, but nerfing one op card also creates more room for the next op deck to rise up.
>they're thinking of adding a profile page with a player's favorite cards
So will i get dust for every card moving to the HOF set that I have, including duplicates? As in should I just craft like 10 golden azure drakes for free dust?
First, you can't craft more than two. Second, you will get dust for a single legendary and double everything else, if you have more, you still get dust only for one/two. Third, if you have golden and regular, you will get dust only for golden.
P.S. Crafting golden to disenchant it later will give the same amount of dust as for doing nothing (except for commons, it will give 10 more dust)
Yong Woo: "We are planning to add emojis in the chat but it will be available probably in late 2019"
Ben Brode: "Making games is hard"
I'm sorry. Joking aside, even though the last expansion was my worst experience yet in Hearthstone, I have high hopes for this year! The latest announcements have actually made me hype up a bit!
A massive change like standard format needs time to fully form to completion, Im hoping that with the extra rotation both wild and standard will end up in a much better place.
So you bitch about the bitching...Ironic!
Could they perhaps address why they keep making totally worthless legendary cards?
It remains to be seen how these changes will affect how Blizzard structures the main expansion sets. I see a lot of people complaining about expansion sets have too much filler and adventures are super value. While that may be true in the sense that adventures give you more legendaries than you'd get for the same money in packs, many of the rest of the cards in the last few adventures have seen no play, or fringe play at best. So while Naxx and to a lesser extent Blackrock Mountain had a pretty decent amount of playables at all rarities, LoE and Karazhan have had much less so. I think it is premature to complain about this when we don't know how some of these other things will change as well.
We as players need to be patient and let Blizzard make these changes to fix the game without getting up in arms over every little thing. We don't see the whole picture as outsiders to the process and Blizzard can't just flip everything on its head at one time. They need to make gradual changes to ensure that what they are doing works properly before working in the next layer. In other words, the foundation needs to be solid before you can build on it. They're in a tough position since the game was originally designed to be a fun app that you could play on the go. They didn't anticipate it would become this huge eSport. The game is going through growing pains and while it sucks for us to have to go through them, at least Blizzard is beginning to show us that they have been listening and are willing to make changes based on our feedback.
i wish i could upvote this more.. this is so on point with how i feel towards it all and the communities outcry. Just calm down people and be patient. Which is something this community has a major lack of.
I see your point, but LOE has tons of cards that weren't just played, they were meta or at least deck defining.
Reno, Elise, Raven Idol, Ethereal Conjurer, Forgotten Torch, Anyfin, Keeper of Uldaman, Excavated Evil, Entomb, Tomb Pillager and Tunnel Trogg are all widely used (or were when their respective classes still existed)
Actually scrolling through LOE's cards it feels like at least 70% of them were at least playable.
Guess they can do whatever they want,just watch how they will bring back gvg and naxx to standard and make all of us who dis wild cards craft them again... if they do that that would be the end of Hs for me.
Since they can add/remove cards from the Classic Set, I think they should be renamed to something like "Standard Set". Because if you add/remove a card from the Classic Set, it\s not "Classic" anymore.
Yes, it is not clasic, it is Hall of fame
I'm talking about the classic set from the standard format.
No, Ragna.... Nooooooo....
Shatter?In the Classic Set?
Freeze Mage can never die. It can only sit in the refrigerator to maintain freshness.
ther say their gonna add stuf, but its not done till 50 years later lmao