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Developer Insights Live - Year of the Mammoth Q&A
Today's live edition of Developer Insights featuring Ben Brode and Mike Donais has concluded. You can find our recap of the stream below, or watch the vod further below that.
Top 3 Takeaways
- We're going to see a blog post later this week talking about the upcoming changes to the Arena Mode!
- Hearthstone needs to continue to be a legitimately Free to Play game and they're committing to it.
- Missions within Expansions will be harder than they were in Adventures due to not locking required content behind them, though they will reward card packs.
Recap
This is a work in progress. Formatting will be improved post-stream.
Quote from Ben Brode and Mike DonaisArena
- We will see a blog later this week talking about upcoming Arena Changes!
Year of the Mammoth
- One thing they're focusing on this year is making small changes to make the game better.
- Cards moving into the Hall of Fame set will no longer be found in packs and must be crafted using Arcane Dust.
- Three expansions felt more fun for Hearthstone which is why they decided to do that this year.
- Expansions allow them to have a bigger impact on the meta and explore more mechanics than an Adventure would.
- The missions within future Expansions will reward players with card packs.
- Missions in the Expansions will be harder than they were in Adventures.
- They'll be harder because there isn't any gameplay required cards behind them unlike in previous Adventures.
- They won't be doing Heroics, but this could change in the future.
- There's a lot of potential approaches to fixing the "samey" feeling you get a few months into a new expansion. They're looking at it.
- Power Overwhelming wasn't necessarily an issue going forward for Standard, but they wanted to be able to give Warlocks more variety in future expansions and wanted to get rid of some potential crazy burst.
- Gadgetzan Auctioneer was close to being added to the Hall of Fame but they like that it's a very high skill card.
Free to Play
- Hearthstone needs to legitimately be a free to play game and they're committed to it. They're going to watch this year to see how it feels.
- One thing they've been doing over time is to give players more packs for playing the game.
Standard
- Ben isn't sure if they're going to end up filling Classic card voids, but it could be cool.
- They want to move away from lots of burst damage in Standard.
- The ultimate goal of Standard is to make it feel fresh.
- They'll evaluate their plans for card changes next year once they get through most of this year.
- They don't want to sacrifice fun decks from the game because of Standard.
- There is no hard rule that decides if a card is nerfed or moved into the Hall of Fame.
- Classic cards ultimately need to not be the dominant card set and those cards are more likely to be moved.
- Expansion / Adventure cards are more likely to be nerfed.
Wild
- Ben thinks Wild is going to be awesome this year. They have more work to do with it though and will do so.
- Wild ladder rankings will end up on in a blog, like Standard.
- They're still working on figuring out how they're going to deal with Wild-only content. No announcement to make yet.
Ranked
- Ladder floors in Ranked do not solve all the issues and they know that.
- Floors should help add more stars into the system to push other players up slightly more.
- They don't want to balloon the amount of people in Legend as it could make it lose prestige.
- 40% of all players on ladder are around rank 20.
- They are talking about more ranked ladder changes but aren't ready to announce anything yet. The problems needs to be solved though.
Philosophy
- Buffing cards doesn't feel like there is a good upside. They'd rather add new cards in the future.
- Adding powerful healing to Neutral cards isn't likely to happen again. It makes classes lose their identities and the cards are in a lot of the decks out there on ladder.
- It's important to have a lot of different types of Combo decks within Hearthstone and they try to add something in each expansion to help grow them.
- Good combos are ones that can give you some kind of advantage that doesn't kill your opponent, or those take a few turns to get setup to achieve the effect.
- Bad combos are the ones that can kill you in a turn.
- They're experimenting with Stealth, Deathrattle, and Tricks with Rogues going forward. Some Thievery too!
Decks / Deck Recipes
- Blizzard doesn't feel like they need to be promoting certain decks like many community sites do.
- They're experimenting with Deck Recipes a bit and maybe there's more they can do through those.
Public Test Realm
- A big problem right now is determining how long new content is fun for. A Public Testing Realm could make a new expansion stale on day 1.
- One thing they could do with a PTR is testing balance changes. There is still risks though in that people could solve the new live meta before its actually live.
Video
The stream has concluded but you can watch the vod to experience the magic.
If any aggro deck doesn't kill you by turn 7.. its over already cocnede is the best option you cant beat a full mana control deck with greedy bored clears and heals.. its over...
And nowadays with reno jackson being turn 6.. its almost impossible if you dont kill the greedy decks before turn 6.. unless you play midrange or you have bloodlust and late games... because playing cheap cards with 1 health.. wont win you the late game. so its either win quick before 6 or lose...
That being said, aggro should exsist in the game to punish the OTK + greedy decks... so we dont get bored of the meta with the same greedy decks.... over and over..
And whoever is saying reno jackson counters the aggro.. is dumb. because shamans kills renolocks before they even play the game at turn 4..
This is more of a new player problem than a F2P problem.
The problem is that even if you're able to get 50% of the cards in the expansion with 35 packs it won't matter because you'll just be getting pointless filler cards. 35 packs also isn't enough to even trigger the pity timer on opening a legendary much less getting one that you want. You make crafting a bunch of legendaries seem like such a simple thing. Where are new players supposed to get the dust from? Playing arena? Because new players are going to be soooo good at arena right? Not everyone is good at arena or wants to gamble on it either. Adventures were a fixed price with fixed cards. You knew approximately how much time you need to put in to get exactly what you wanted.
A legendary costs 1600 dust. At 40 dust per pack you'll need 4000g to craft it. That's for a single legendary. It took you 4 months to get the card you needed but you also unlocked all the other cards in the process. Having a card you need be locked behind the last wing of an adventure can be solved much more easily by not requiring wings be locked behind previous wings. Scrapping the concept entirely for a simple fix like that makes no sense.
Secondly, most games aren't won by taunt minions and board clears they're won by taunt minions/board clears AND good healing once control of the board has been acquired. Taunt and clears mean shit if you're stuck at 6hp and about to die.
Remember the most powerful comeback combination back when Naxxramas existed was a board wipe + Antique Healbot. Because clearing the board and acquiring control but having no real way to get up from your 8-10hp remaining means death by direct burst damage anyway.
Which is exactly how Warrior and Shaman seals their games nowadays, they kick you down with minions and then finish you off as soon as you regain board control but are low on hp.
As being free to play i believe that the changes they are making will benefit us a lot with the buffing and nerfing of cards not affecting us that much since we most likely won't have those cards in the first place. I play a control totem shaman that has nearly all common cards except for a few rares which destroys and controls the early and mid game. What hearthstone needs is a more creative and skilled community which does not rely on top aggro or fatigue decks to copy and ruin the diversity of hearthstone. What i am trying to say is that there should be more combo related cards and strategies for the mid to late game which are fair and counterable.
For those players saying the game will be too expensive and F2P is dead: they did announce that they will be giving away free packs for completing the story missions in upcoming expansions. They also said they have been adding more ways to get free packs and are looking into adding more. That right there shows you they are trying to mitigate the cost difference by replacing an adventure with an expansion.
For those players saying they should buff cards: First, if they buff a card and make it too powerful they may have to then nerf it again. Which makes them look bad. If players dust a card that then later gets buffed, the player now feels bad for dusting that card and the loss of dust it takes to now have to craft it when they already had a copy. Yeah, you can be cynical and say "they wont buff to make us buy more packs", but they have never buffed a card yet so nothing has changed between when the game was released and now. All the sudden they are greedy for not doing something they have never done?
To all the players saying they should get rid of aggro: Aggro will never go away. It may be too strong now, but aggro as an archetype is essential to a meta being balanced. If no aggro is viable then we'd just be playing fatigue matches all day which would also be no fun.
To the players complaining about the meta being stale, but then also complaining about them moving cards to the Hall of Fame because it ruins your favorite deck you've played forever: You can't have it both ways.
Last thought: Blizzard is clearly working on making the game better for as much of the player base as they can (not everyone will be happy with every decision, but the player base is large with a lot of different types of players for them to consider). We may not know all of their plans yet, but they have unveiled a ton of new stuff to us over the past week (with even more coming soon), a lot of which is addressing the complaints players have had for awhile. They can't just flip everything on its head at once. It will take time for them to implement the plans they have and collect data to ensure the foundation on which the game is built is solid. Hearthstone is going through growing pains from its origination as a fun and quick mobile app to an eSport. Yeah, it sucks now, but hopefully by the end of next year things will be much better. I bet we've all just lived through the worst of it.
So first of all: Good post!
I aggree that aggro is an important archtype an has to be around to keep control decks in check. The problem is that most of the players will rather play the aggro then the control deck (same winrate given) because it is easier to play and games are shorter. It would be nice if aggro would become a bit less apealing by giving some classes tools to stand up against it.
A huge problem right now is the jade mechanic. It kills every control deck that tries to grind out his opponent. Especially Jade Idol! Maybe they will introduce a card wich resets or lowers the jade count.
The last topic i want to talk about is the F2P aspect. Everytime a new expansion launches i need around 100 packs to get even started with deckbuilding. On top of it some dust to craft the legendays i need. So most of the time i saved enough gold for ~50 packs and i get the special offer for another 50, plus until the next expansion gets revealed i spend all my gold on packs. That gives me the majority of cards i need to play all viable decks. So now it's going to be a lot more cards revaled and time between expansions gonna be way shorter and i don't think that F2P players will be able to get all the cards they need unless it will be possible to get 50+ additional packs by just playing the game.
I'm really excited about the new content coming out this year and i hope the game will take a step in the right direction and Hearthstone will be fun again!
I think part of your post answers the question as to why they don't buff cards and they prefer to change the meta by releasing new content. The example you give is Force of Nature as compared to Doppelgangster. Recall that Force of Nature originally gave the Treants charge. This allowed for huge burst potential with Savage Roar, and Blizzard has stated many times that they don't like huge burst potential combos that can one-turn-kill. So Force of Nature has already been nerfed and on the surface Doppelgangster is just a minion version of Force of Nature that is not classic specific. However, then take a look at Doppelgangster from the perspective of the Goons hand buff mechanic and other effects like Evolve or Brann Bronzebeard. Taking this into account, Blizzard essentially took the Force of Nature template and added a new card to the game that has a bunch of cool combo potential, is also available for multiple classes to utilize, but at the same time doesn't break the game.
In this way you can see how making a new card gives them the opportunity to make a much more diverse/interesting card, rather than buffing old cards to try and fit a meta or upcoming mechanic. Also the new card will eventually be rotated out of Standard at some point, which helps alleviate the need for them to potentially have to nerf it in the future (the problem with Classic is that it doesn't go away so it constantly affects the new cards they want to make) if a new mechanic or card they want to print interacts with it in a way that is too powerful.
I think they will gradually go to Mtg model (no classic set, only 2 year sets in standart), cause most of the decks consist more of classic cards and they can never make fresh decks before all the classic cards moved to Hall of fame
And still not a single word on aggro, insane 1mana drops and going first in arena.
Honestly I wish Blizzard would just fire and replace them with someone else.
Actually they talked about 1-drops and how that affected the pace of the game. They liked the pace of Vanila times and they are experimenting, how could they return it back.
bliizard please DELETE reno jackson card from the game is fuking stupid
"Expansions allow them to have a bigger impact on the meta"
Or they could just balance and change cards from the inside in this digital card game!
But I guess that doesn't sell as many packs huh.
"Buffing cards doesn't feel like there is a good upside."
Translation: There is no monetary incentive to buff cards that have already been paid for, when you can print and sell a new card. This isn't a hard one to figure out.
There are a couple problems with buffing cards. First, if they buff a card and make it too powerful they may have to then nerf it again. Second, if a player dusts a card thinking it sucks, then they buff it later, the player feels bad for having dusted his card he now needs. It makes players worry about dusting a card they might need later which would be a bad thing, especially for F2P players. No need to add in extra stress.
That makes no sense beyond greed and laziness. It's a digital card game, they can buff and nerf a card as often as they want. I would rather they put effort into fixing something than have OP/dead cards hang around for 2 years.
If a player dusts a card they get full dust. If Blizz buffs the same card they use the dust they got from disenchanting it to craft it again. Players lose nothing from that.
Also if people chooses to dust a card and then it gets buffed and become good... well you're the one who made a choice right? You chose to get the immediate dust gain rather than banking on the card hoping it will get better in the future. Deal with your choice and accept the consequences rather than crying that everything didn't work out.
When blizz releases new cards instead of buffing cards players have to get the new cards. Players could just get the buffed card instead. There is no problem.
With the shit card remaining and good cards added there are just more cards in the game, some that are so bad that they are never played outside arena...