Hearthpwn

Finally caught up with this...

I weight in with BB here.  Understood, Magma Rager will most likely always be rubbish, but rather than tinker with existing cards, I think it's pretty sound logic to modify the game by releasing new cards. For example, it is better having both 5/1 Magma Rager and "5/2 Orgasmatron" (or something...) than just the 5/2.  More diversity in the game.  Also, the only cards that are "nerfed" are those which upset the game because they're OP.  You can hardly say that all the shitty cards in your deck are upsetting the game.  One aspect of Hearthstone is navigating your own card collection -- and remember, once upon a time we were all newbies and we all had to figure this out for ourselves.  It does make sense that you start out with rubbish cards and over time your collection improves.

I find Kripp's argument a little bit specious, frankly.  Hearthstone is constantly being updated via the new cards.  The new cards will affect the old cards.  And why bother mulling over the past?  Better to forge onward with new material.  Also, as BB pointed out, where should the line be drawn?  Where to strike the balance between good and bad cards?  There must, by necessity always be good and bad.  If the balance were too fine I think we'd find the game-play would break down or become very boring -- It would almost be like playing Diablo II and only getting magical or better items out of the treasure chests.  Maybe that's a bad analogy.  But the point is, you can have too much of a good thing.  All in moderation and all that.  It could be that by improving several bad cards the complexity of building good decks could reach a critical point, and human players would feel inclined to pass over the responsibility of deck-building to robots.  And then the robots would take over.  Game over, man.  Game over.

Defining cards as 'good' or 'bad' is a mistake. Card games are built around card interaction. Different cards have different interactions. All of the possible interactions in the game cannot be good or bad, they can only be more useful or less useful. On those grounds, it's perfectly legitimate to point out how Blizzard has cards in the game that exist for the sake of variety and nothing else. They don't provide new or different interaction, they just take up space.

This is why players like Kripp think they are bad. They are effectively redundant/not useful, and should be changed/removed.

The other part of your argument doesn't consider the fact that we're talking about a computerized card game. Card gamers are used to cards being released and not changed. Because HS is an ongoing, always online, video game, it's different than a typical card game. Blizzard can continue to change cards, but this reflects poorly in terms of design. No one wants to put forth the effort to acquire X or Y card, only to have Blizzard change it because it's 'too good.' However, no one would really complain if Blizzard did this to cards that aren't good enough to see more regular play.

In my opinion, Blizzard needs to do their due diligence when creating cards in the first place. They need to take a hard stance against making changes later on to buff/nerf cards, and give players confidence in the game they are paying for.

Who the hell is Ben Brode

Whats with the negatives? I was asking this legitimately. Who the fuck is Ben Brode?

He is one of the lead Hearthstone developers at Blizzard.  I assume the negative votes are because if you typed "who is Ben Brode" into Google you would have had that question answered for you in literally 10 seconds (I just tested this).

Ben Broode is a really cool dude

I got déjà vu watching this video.  Here is Mark Rosewater saying almost the exact same thing regarding Magic back in 2002 (yes, I'm old enough to remember reading the article when it first came out.  *sigh*.

http://archive.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr5

Quote from TSMS jump

If I remember correctly, it was Captain Greenskin who drew a card each time you attacked with your weapon and Captain's Parrot effect didn't change, but had better stats at some point.

Quote from kwikill jump

Quote from AIperon jump

Captains Parrot ist actually a nerfed card. He was very powerful. Something with drawing card for every pirate played or something like that. Was surely a draw mechanic.

 If that's true then they very badly overnerfed it

 Found it:

• Previously: Battlecry: Put a random Pirate from your deck into your hand. [2 mana, 1 attack, 2 health, Epic]

I might agree on situational cards with text being harder to buff, but horrible cards like dust devil, magma rager, BBB, silverback patriarch, lord of arena etc? those are obvious underbugdeted cards, do they really need to to test 5/2 rager, 2/4 patriarch, 6/6 lord or 5/5 bbb? for hundreds of games? I dont think so...

I think the point about learning the "badness" of cards was a good thought, but didn't make a lot of sense. The learning curve can still exist in realizing card swaps, such as realizing that Knife Juggler isn't as good as Pyromancer in a control deck. And it's worth keeping in mind that Kripp wasn't actually saying get rid of bad cards completely. We all know that in a game like Hearthstone, every card being perfectly balanced is not physically possible. He was saying just give the cards semi-unique effects, so that maybe in some cases those cards might see some play. Because right now, those unusable cards just serve as a testament of wasted time and money.

Ben doesn't seem to understand the difference between weaker cards and straight-up bad cards. There are weaker cards that are still somewhat viable and see occasional play (think something like Sen'jin Shieldmasta after Sludge Belcher came out) and others that have either always been garbage (stuff like Corruption, Felguard, nearly all paladin secrets, all druid hard removal, etc.) or were nerfed into complete unviability (stuff like Starving Buzzard). I don't buy his arguments that they intentionally have bad cards to show newbies what a bad card is. That's bullcrap. There's no need to learn what a bad card is if these unplayable cards don't exist in their unplayable forms. Even the basic cards should have a decent level of viability, especially the class cards.

There's too much power creep in this game and not enough diversity. There's also far too much inconsistency in the cost of class spells relative to their power and far too many class cards in general that are terrible. Having bad or mediocre neutrals is one thing (because there are a lot more of those), but when you have a limited pool of cards that make each class unique, it shouldn't be the case that half of them just plain suck.

Also, there's the problem that they tend to over-nerf cards when they become too strong (once again, see Starving Buzzard and also stuff like Gadgetzan Auctioneer). Cards like Sylvanas or Blizzard or UTH were handled properly (they were nerfed, but are still very playable), but others were changed too harshly. I don't see why they do this and why they refuse to undo it or why they won't try to make other never-used cards playable. If they are going to keep taking their sweet time to make new cards that combo with the crap ones to make them playable, I would think that that process would take much longer than to simply make the old cards not suck anymore...

Good points by Brode imo.

I'm disappointed Captain's Parrot wasn't mentioned.

Captains Parrot ist actually a nerfed card. He was very powerful. Something with drawing card for every pirate played or something like that. Was surely a draw mechanic.

Quote from AIperon jump

Captains Parrot ist actually a nerfed card. He was very powerful. Something with drawing card for every pirate played or something like that. Was surely a draw mechanic.

 If that's true then they very badly overnerfed it

If I remember correctly, it was Captain Greenskin who drew a card each time you attacked with your weapon and Captain's Parrot effect didn't change, but had better stats at some point.

Wow, that guy is incredibly cool. Never mind the content of the video, this really seems like an honest attempt to communicate with the playerbase, without a shitload of PR phrases mixed inbetween.

I mean the most obvious reason why they don't buff old cards is money, that's simply how it is, but the reasons he gave made absolute sense. Especially the new player experience argument is huge, and I bet everyone can relate to going from shitty cards, to slighty shitty cards, to actually really good cards - and loving it.

Also wow, what a huge push for kripp. Worth more than winning 20.000$ in the lottery.

Quote from McBeard »

Quote from MechBearCat »

Wow, that guy is incredibly cool. Never mind the content of the video, this really seems like an honest attempt to communicate with the playerbase, without a shitload of PR phrases mixed inbetween.

I mean the most obvious reason why they don't buff old cards is money, that's simply how it is, but the reasons he gave made absolute sense. Especially the new player experience argument is huge, and I bet everyone can relate to going from shitty cards, to slighty shitty cards, to actually really good cards - and loving it.

Also wow, what a huge push for kripp. Worth more than winning 20.000$ in the lottery.

A Blizz dev made a Vlog response to a community streamer's video. Can't we just sit back and take in how COOL that is?

About your comment- You accept this video, but you still harbour the cynical opinions of a player base that thinks that each and every design decision is predicated on some bottom line financial figure. You say Ben's reasons make absolute sense even though the #1 reason is money? simply? I don't think that's either true, nor simple. Ben's reasons make sense because they're the reasons. You don't want PR crap and neither do I, so it's best to accept this for what it is - a behind the scenes look at a designers point of view... not a chief financial officer's. And that IS cool.

No need to get upset :)

I do believe that Ben Brode was honest with the reasons he gave, but money talks first - in any business. This has nothing to do with a cynical attitude towards anything, it's just how it is, and I have absolutely nothing against it.

That's why I said that the actual content of the video is secondary. What I take away from it is that Ben Brode is a) passionate about the game and b) he can justify the direction of Hearthstone despite the pressure that comes with working in the industry.

Well, and the obvious c), which is just him being really cool for releasing such a video in the first place. Worlds apart from the guys who currently run World of Warcraft. Sometimes it isn't about pleasing people, it's about showing that you care. And this guy seems to be all about that. +1.