Ben Brode on Evergreen Cards in Standard, Hall of Fame, Player Accessibility to the Meta
With the earlier announcement of incoming card nerfs, Ben Brode has been on reddit this afternoon responding to community questions. View the source below for the full comments or our quick recap.
- The goal with the nerfs was to reduce the ratio of Basic/Classic cards in Standard decks. It's too high.
- Ben thinks 10-ish cards is about right for what Standard decks should include when it comes to Basic/Classic cards.
- It was never the plan to not make changes to Basic and Classic cards.
- Hall of Fame is there to act kind of like a rotating core set that other games have.
- They are hoping to have something to announce early next year to talk about better player accessibility to meta decks.
Source Posts
Quote from Ben Brodewhen reading the justification for the change to Fiery War Axe (and, by extension, the Murloc Warleader change).
I just want to make it clear that those are meant to cover some of the thinking behind why we went with option A over option B - not why we decided to make a change to begin with.
In a world where we are looking at making a change, we felt like these changes are slightly less disruptive and that is upside, in a vacuum.
It's not a vacuum, obviously, but the goal here was to reduce power level because the ratio of basic/classic cards in Standard decks is still too high (they represent the biggest percentage of played cards, still).
Commonly, when we mention that we think about a wide variety of players, it can come off like we are focusing on new players at the expense of currently engaged players. That isn't the way we think about it. Usually we look for win-win solutions, where a change is good for the ongoing fun of playing Hearthstone and is also not disruptive to loosely engaged players. We've definitely made changes that are quite disruptive because it's very important to keep Hearthstone fun for engaged players. Just because we prefer non-disruptive changes doesn't mean we are trying to do that at the expense of other types of players.
Specifically, we made these changes for engaged players who are most affected by imbalance (deck diversity goes down the higher rank you are), and who are most likely to want to see the meta change when new sets come out or during the yearly set rotation. (Source)
isn't that the whole point why classic set is evergreen? not only that, basic cards solidify class identity. not a big fan of war axe, innervate, and warleader changes mr brode.
What do you think the right percentage of evergreen cards in decks should be?
I tend to think 10-ish cards might be right. We're way above that right now, and I think it would be better if it were closer to 10. (Source)
I mean remember when Kibler and a lot of people said that it's gonna be a mistake that you keep Basic and Classic in Standard forever?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUupMooIJYo&feature=youtu.be&t=4m17s
I really do want to believe that you want the best for this game yet so many times we have this "we said you so" moment. I love this game but honestly the evergreen sets policy is the biggest problem that holding back the whole design of the game. A rotating core set with reprints would make much more sense. But whatever, our opinion doesn't mean anything in the end.
Keeping Basic and Classic around with no changes was never the plan. We launched rotation with twelve nerfs, specifically because we knew we couldn't just have evergreen sets as-is. There is value in having evergreen sets, but there is a balance to it. Our Hall of Fame system is similar in some ways to a rotating core set. (Source)
bbrode how will you make the game accessible for new players if they cant build matadecks for even longer than now?
Hoping to have something to announce that will help with these problems early next year. We have a lot of work to do on the new player experience, but some of these problems can be mitigated by matchmaking, to some extent. (Source)
It would be balanced if it drew just one card or two at most.
Just spitballing here, but would a more significant change to Spreading Plague have reduced Jade Druid's power level? I think the issue that Jade Druid ran into during previous metas was the fact that they had to play a much more board-centric game in order to not get steamrolled by aggro. As we all know, Spreading Plague now protects druid from wide boards, giving them more time to accelerate their mana so they can drop Ultimate Infestation. Maybe making the card summon three 1/5's with taunt every time (similar to Force of Nature) would be better? What does everyone think?
Oh for sure! On top of them being able to ramp it out with jade blossom, wild growth, mire keeper, and innervate still means it will more than likely be played before turn 6.. druids weakness has always been aggro/overwhelm board before they can build a board and now thats countered with this card.
Every class now is hindered because it has to be played to beat jade druid which just seems impossible right now without a lucky ass hand.
One of the downsides to spreading plague is that it does not generate minions unless your opponent has them, which makes it suck in some control matchups. Guaranteeing 3 minions would limit upside, but also kill the downside.
In my opinion, the card should have been nerfed by reducing the health of the minions it summons. (i.e. make it summon 1/4 or 1/3 minions with taunt) instead of 1/5. Multiple 1/5 minions essentially creates a gain upwards of 35 health for druid which is substantial and the 1/5s often have to be killed by multiple minions from the opponent which feels terrible.
No matter what it generates 1 minion wgen you cast it
Welcome to HearthStone: Heroes of JadeRakus
*Druidstone: Heroes of Jadecraft
Are they too proud to admit that Jade Idol is a terribly designed card, and that's why they refuse to change/nerf/redesign it?
I think they realize that the card only has 6ish months left in standard and it's better to focus on problem cards that will plague standard for a lot longer than that.
in wild all you see is that naga witch giant deck, every damn time I que up its those giants, however my highlander priest has a good winrate against them but it makes it nearly impossible for many other decks to be played since priest has a lot of mass removal, lightbomb
There is quite a bit of Big Priests on wild atm as well. I changed there for first time this season after getting fed up with all the jade druids and I'd almost go as far as to say that Barnes into ragnaros into 2 revives into 2 eternal servitudes is even worse than anything I faced on standard.
Sure, jade druid really needs some polishing and quite fast but I am quite surprised there was nothing on Big Priests that are almost as oppressive with all the removal tools available to them.
Also, no offense, but Raza + DK Priest combo is sickening.
None of this addresses the fact that these nerfs will not hamper druid's power levels, and that the other non-druid nerfs cripple murlocs and pirates, the two most effective counters to druid, specifically jade.
I'm not thrilled by murloc and pirate decks. They're hyper aggressive and rarely fun to play against, moreso stressful. I'm waaaaaaaaaaaaay more bothered by a whole class continuing to run ramp AND mana manipulation AND incredibly powerful cards that - combined with ramp and m.m. - are over powered.
Ultimate Infestation is not OP when ramp AND mana manipulation are not in the picture. A 10-cost spell should never see the light of day before at least turn bare minimum. When you see Ultimate Infestation dropping on turn 5, that is a huge problem. Spreading Plague is another problem entirely; it easily walls out aggro and wide boards, and this nerf will not stop it's power because ramp and mana manipulation. Adding cost to a card that already largely ignores cost because of the mechanics it is supported by is a milquetoast effort to slow down a deck that can play 10 mana out on turn 5 or 6.
Unfortunately, Blizzard's unwillingness to target druid - the class that is defining how all other classes are constructed and played in the current meta - with more impactful nerfs means that druid will continue to dominate and dictate what happens in Hearthstone.
Am I the only person not whining about new player experience?
I remember when I started playing there were already Naxx and BRM adventures. I got engaged very fast to the game because of WoW lore and good graphic design, large community etc. NOT EVEN ONCE I felt that its unfair that I can not yet get a hang of Sludge Beltcher, Dr Boom or any other card. Instead I focused on getting enough dust to craft my first aggro mage.
Ive started doing quests, meanhwile getting better in ranked with some very budget decks which got me to rank 16. YES there were a lot players with cards better than mine but seeing those cards only made me want to play more to get those cards, try to save some money. It didnt bother me at all because isnt it obvious that odler players or players with more money have MORE PRIVILEGES?! Where on earth people with money have life worse than those who dont.
Then i moved to arena where I got better and better, getting more and more gold and cards. Many times Ive been looking at all the shiny hearthpwn decks and wanted to be better and better have more cards - finally start feeling how it is to play those cards everyone is talking about.
STILL AT THIS POINT not even once Ive felt that I deserved anything for free. It was clear to me that if I want to rank up I will need those adventures. I saved up some money, bought required wings. And thats it. It took me 2 months to get Dr. Boom and cards I needed from Naxxramas. But its not like b4 i didnt enjoy the game. Arena was most entertaining of it all because I had chance to play cards i didnt have dust for. I could get to know them better.
LIKE CMMMNNN is it really so expensive that NONE of you can afford to spend money on a game you LOVE? What is with You guys, why do YOU feel like you should be given everything for free?
Its obvious that if You want to play all the classes, all kind of decks You will have to spend A LAOD of money on it. Either you get your shit together and save money for everything you want or pick 1-2 classes you want to play and enjoy.
Same here started right after Naxxramas there was at least zoolock and face hunter that you can build from one week of playing and they required no legendaries and no Epics, you could even fill decks with cards like Yeti... and honestly they were counterable by a lot of decks, like midrange shammy and priest and they even required some thinking, like minion positionning and playing around board clears, this last expansion there was no viable budget deck introduced, I even noticed that decks creators start uploading decks with adventure cards and a legendary and tag it as a budget deck :/ thus the new players eperience is a bit more difficult cuz they just can't get a good experience on ladder, unless they invest 50 bucks or more...
so in you first 6 months you paid 50 euros and you consider that this is normal (that's the cost for nax and brm)? I don't know how old are you, but in 90s and early 00s you didn't pay that much for a game that you could play for more than a year! Also, people now have less money to spend on games than in 90s!
Many people nowdays can't even find a job, so how exactly they save money?
I don't say not to pay! But in 4 years that I have played, I haven't even spend 100 euros. The only thing that I find accceptable is 50euros per year! Only for a prepurchase patch. Nothing more! For an old player is fine. For a new player this is not enouph to keep up the pace. It's impossible. For the first year at least he needs to buy from all patches 50 packs. And for the second year to give for another 2 patches.
For me it's part of the challenge to be F2P. Buying packs and playing doesn't appeal to me. It would take away goals like "crafting that fun new legendary". The fact that I have less cards also forces me to be more creative when compiling decks. Nothing more satisfying than beating a metadeck with your own B-tier contraption. I always felt like they give plenty of free stuff but some people just like to complain I guess. You don't need ALL the cards.
Those adventures were a bargain at $25. I still go back and play them (just got Naxx Heroic!) and use cards from both sets in Wild and Tavern Brawl. If you haven't spent more than 100 euros in 4 years on this game that releases new content every 4 months, I'm not sure there is a game out there that meets your price level.
Never consider playing Magic: The Gathering. You don't know what expensive means until you play that game.