Iksar on Basic and Classic - Set Goals and Nerf Philosophy
Hearthstone's Lead Balance Designer, Dean "Iksar" Ayala, was out on reddit early this morning talking about the goals behind the basic and classic sets. Here's our quick recap and his post.
- Basic and Classic sets are meant to be the introductions to the game's mechanics.
- Basic showcases the game before a player invests time and money into it.
- Classic teaches players core mechanics.
He then went on to talk more about why and when some cards in these sets get changed.
- A big problem with cards in these sets is when they become auto-include in all archetypes for that class.
- They make changes to these cards over time but only when it would be positive for the current game.
- Wild Growth and Nourish were nerf targets for a while. They finally pulled the trigger because of how powerful druid was for so long.
- Basic and Classic cards get nerfed instead of rotated when they support class fantasy but are too powerful.
Quote from IksarIdeally the basic and classic set show off the kinds of mechanics each class is about without having too many cards that show up in all possible class archetypes. Basic is important to us because it serves as a set of cards players can use to learn about the game before they choose whether or not to make an investment of their time or money. Classic is important to us because it serves as the secondary jump-off point where you learn the baseline for what each of the individual classes is about along with some of our core mechanics like Battlecry or Deathrattle. From a gameplay perspective, having these sets around forever usually only leads to negativity when the cards are so powerful they show up in every deck in every expansion, making the strategies players use feel more stale than they would otherwise. We've been trying to change some of these power outliers over time, but only when making that change might also be positive for the live game environment. Wild Growth and Nourish were good examples of cards we had thought about changing for some time, so when we arrived in a meta where Druid had been very powerful and popular for a long time, it felt like a good time for those changes. We'd like to continue making these types of changes, as we believe the game will be in a better position to meet the player expectation that the game is new and fresh from expansion to expansion.
We nerf basic/classic cards that are too powerful instead of rotating them when they hit on class fantasy but at too high of a power level. Ramping mana is a strong identifier for what Druid should be about, so it made more sense to us to have some of the simplest forms of mana ramp exist in the base set to teach players what Druids can be about. It also makes more sense to have those cards be medium power level because if we identify mana ramp as an identity for Druids, it would be nice to be able to make some mana ramp cards from time to time without having to create cards even more powerful than two of the (arguably) most powerful cards in the game. Of course, this doesn't mean all basic and classic cards have to be weak. Generally the cards we target for change are ones that exist in every archetype. Cards like Al'Akir, Frothing, Fireball, or Tirion are probably safe. They are powerful and do an awesome job at selling the class fantasy for the class they represent. They also have some weaknesses and you can imagine an archetype within their class that might not play them. This is a pretty good place to be in.
I probably should have included this in the first post. It's true that reducing the amount of auto-include cards in the base set makes cards from expansions more important if the goal is to be able to create every powerful deck. This is something that's more healthy to solve with things like gold injection events like fire festival, increasing the gold on the average quest, or having a new player experience that awards 20+ packs. We keep a close eye on the the kind of investment it takes (time or currency) to obtain a deck archetype that is fun and powerful. The end goal is to make that a painless experience and there is more than one way to go about that. Having a wide variety of forever cards that are so high power level they are included in most decks is one way to go about it, I just don't think it's the right one.
The main point I think is important to get across here is that we don't ever change basic and classic cards just to solve short-term problems. Warrior was fairly powerful at the time we changed FWA which I think makes the change more palatable. If we truly thought that Warrior was better served in the long-term by have FWA as a (2) mana card, then we certainly would have tried to change expansion level cards rather than something in the classic set. Cards like Sul'thraze, Supercollider, Woodcutter's Axe, and Bloodrazer have all had a little more room to breathe and make Warrior feel different expansion to expansion as a result of the FWA change, which was part of the goal.
I said BASIC Hunter cards, not CLASSIC; can't tell the difference?
I said 3/4 builds; so I excluded Cube/Deathrattle Hunter; Spell Hunter is irrelevant; before the Arena changes, Animal Companion was still the BEST 3 slot for Hunter in Arena and Standard, the best other 3 Drop released thus far is Bearshark;
Druid was an effective check against 3/4 Hunter's builds; the bad matchup against Deathrattle Hunter is the reason why it was a "check" not a "counter"; just keeping Secret Hunter, Spell Hunter and Midrange Hunter in check makes Druid a good enough check to Hunter, helps differentiating the format (again, in which 1 class has 4 GOOD builds available at the same time).
Unbalance and making one class over 9 predominant was a MISTAKE as they noted when they stated how pleased they were with Boomsday's "balanced" format (pre nerfs of course) so it should be avoided if possible; in this case it was perfectly avoidable but they went ahead and did it anyway.
Sorry; not going to reply to someone anymore who replies without even reading.
You also said some nonsense about a 55% win rate. When someone is so totally off in their first statement, I tend not to read too carefully. Feel free not to reply. I can let my cats play with my keyboard. I'm sure they will type something more intelligent.
UI is fine... said noone ever. Are you high?
...
I totally agree, I hope this gets seen. I don’t even play Druid (literally have like 40 wins with the class) and I thinks it’s a travesty. Maybe one, but not both. I hope they reconsider.
I have played Druid since the beginning. Innervate, Nourish, and Wild Growth were all taken into account when creating Druid cards. Now we have tons of cards that are too expensive to play without them
The thing everybody hated about Druid recently was actually cards that made drawing your whole deck the goal: Mecha’thun and Togwaggle. But why fix or ban those 2 cards when you can nerf an entire class? Look at any recent tournament. Druid is officially dead due to the nerfs. It will take probably 2-3 expansions of cheaper Druid cards to make it viable again and possibly some cost reductions of classic cards too.
Anybody who plays ladder currently can tell you the balance team has failed. When you play against the same class over 50% of the time (Hunter), they’ve screwed up.
I agree that this is not the place for this discussion but I disagree with you saying that Barnes is long forgotten. Anyone playing Wild knows him. With or without the stupid "no one cares about wild" comments.
Making a long-term decision only when forced, is the world-upside down. Preventing problemes is always better than fixing them. “They only want to make the change when it is better in the current meta” proves p my point perfectly. Making things better should not only benifit short term, but also long term. Only looking at the current meta is not solving anything for th meta after that, or the meta over 2 years.
There are plenty of options for improving things in the long term. You can implement a nerf any time in the future when it makes sense. Making the game worse right now is not necessary.
Feel free to leave. The game will go on without you. And your NaCl levels might return to something resembling normality.
Okay kid, go drink ur Milk, adults are talkin' here =)
Magic figured this out a LONG time ago: EVERYTHING ROTATES!
When you make something evergreen, it becomes evergreen. Rotate all cards. Refresh basic and classic cards. Some cards might always be in, but you have more than enough Hearthstone history to keep that set fresh with reprints.
No need to nerf Nourish when you can rotate it for a few years.
Not really. It is a question of long term vs short term. They are saying that while a nerf may have long term benefits, they only want to make the change when it is better in the current meta. Or the other way, they don’t want to make the game worse right now to make it better next year.
I agree with some points, but the sentence''We've been trying to change some of these power outliers over time, but only when making that change might also be positive for the live game environment''
This made me think. Because he confirms here that something in Hearthstone is sub-optimal. Which means that instead of fixing it all at once, Instead they wait when players are suffering even more from these ''power outliers'' than usual. This means that Hearthstones current long-term strategy is not the best for players. Nobody benefits from delaying solutions, when you have the opportunity to fix them by for example moving them to hall of fame. slowly nerving and keeping the cards, we are already experiencing problems with for the last 5 years is really not something most people benefit from.
It isn't the first time and won't be the last :)
I suppose it's how you define class identity. Mage losing Ice Lance but more importantly Ice Block, instead of them being nerfed and I consider them to part of Mage's freeze archetype. Warlock loses Power Overwhelming which again is very much part of the sacrificing resources for gain/damage.
Judging from the votes at least one person agreed :)
Not saying they shouldn't have been removed from standard necessarily, but they were removed rather than nerfed as per the reddit post. Good for players who still want to play them in wild of course.
Mage decks that freeze to stall the game and then use burn to kill you aren't part of the class identity, that's an archetype. An archetype that was a bit problematic, quite a few players (such a kibler) absolutely hated playing against it. Freeze is a part of the mage class identity, and they have several cards that accomplish that, but the freeze mage deck didn't really need to be in the game for more than the years it had already gotten.
Ice block, in particular, is hard to call a core mage card. It's a secret, but mage had plenty of those, and making your hero immune is far too specific of an effect to really be a part of the core class identity. It was a huge part of how the class was played, but again, that's exactly the problem. There also isn't really any way to nerf it without fundamentally changing what it does, it's much better that they left freeze mage intact as a wild deck for those who want to play it there while dealing with the problem in standard.
You missed one major point. That Nourish and Wild Growth are auto include for every Druid deck, and will be going forward without the nerrfs. The other cards you mention only fit certain types of decks, and are far less auto include in multiple deck types.
Better nerf more, maybe the Staff and the Devs of this game reach a better rank in future. But I would really apreciate if they stop to elaborate moneygrab archetypes/cards to the game then wait almost a year or more than a year in some cases to start the nerfs and make the players spend more dust/time/money in the game.
I started to play Magic Arena and I have to say...BOY! it's awesome, they give u decks as rewards to play the game. And they are really good decks, with some bad cards as ping cards or just less Rares/Myth cards copies for free (u can build insta ones with Joker cards) Last day I won 5 decks just for play and cause 100damage in the game, before that I won a deck each day +/- and they are pretty good to new players learn the game, Specially the Red/White Boros deck.
So maybe hearthstone can learn something from M. Arena. They learnd with Hearthstone how to make a good game and they also are paying 10kk as Championship Pool Prize. Damn!
The future of hearthstone is dark and with lots of feet-shots all the way if they don't start to change the client and the way things are in the game now.
Hearthstone nowadays - Fun 4/10 Difficulty 3/10 Variations 1/10
Magic - Fun 8/10 Difficulty 8/10 Variations 10/10
And I'm a fan of Hearthstone more than Magic and maybe I'll ever be, but the game itself is keeping hard to stay on.
Interesting: they have been forced to destroy Druid's fantasy because the power level was too high BUT they are claiming to be the other way around.
Just to remember: back in early days of Hearthstone, Nourish was not an auto include in Druid decks and almost never used to generate ramp.
Druid was all about ramp up early and then recover the board by playing bigger minions then your oponnent with the help of Innervate.
Then over 2 years they printed a lot of card draw + armor so now Druid can safely ignore the board and ramp with Nourish 100% of the time without the risk of running out of cards. This also incurs in powerplays being played much before they should and most often impossible to react.
Now they realized the only way to fix all this mess in the short term is to deny Druid efficient ways to ramp.
The nerf was necessary, yes, but it was a product of their own mistakes.