Your thoughts on recent Dev insights stream?

[Pantalaimon]

So for those who already don't know there was a stream where Brode & Dean Ayala talked about the game, and had some particular emphasis on arena & ladder play. If you haven't watched it, or at least read the recap from the link on the main MMO page feel free to check it out.

Overall, these were my takeaways from the stream. Let me know below what you thought about those things the devs had to say.


- I do agree that ladder feels way too grindy for my liking, and I hope that the devs make an adequate enough QoL change to improve it (the extra stars to catch you up to your rank last season feels like a good start to quickly bring you up to speed for the new month without handing out free Legend ranks).

- Not really sure how Brode plans on keeping experienced players and/or strong meta decks away from rank 20ish for both formats.

- I'm not really into arena so I don't have a strong opinion on the arena format split idea, but isn't the idea of arena more or less supposed to be the digital version of the blind pack tournaments in other CCGs, where you do have a high chance of a wide pool of random cards for drafting? *Shrugs* don't see why arena needs to have the same kind of synergy that constructed has.

- It is cool that Blizz is looking at Wild, and also don't want to nerf cards (and breaking them) just for the sake of Standard, but I'm equally concerned that yet again more cards are going to get taken out of the card pack pool so that you have to directly craft them. (Why is craft-only even a thing in HS?)

- Previous metas have always had a strong fast paced aggro aspect to the meta. Not sure why the devs feel that the meta is going to slow down for hunters & pallies considering they always make good aggro cards. *Shrugs*

- Can't be more glad to hear that Blizzard wants players to think of their own tools and plays to counter or play around strong decks in the meta, as opposed to caving to the endless stream of qq's to insta 'fix' the decks those players don't like. Card games should prioritize that over nerfs when possible anyway imo.

[Blueobelisk]

Link for people too lazy to find it. Actually, I had a hard time finding it since it didn't actually say "Hearthstone."

Thoughts:
1. The communication format was alright. I watched the video but an hour is a long time, and I feel like I'd have missed out if I just read the summary. I kinda prefer typed out answers. Otherwise this has to be once a month tops.

2. They didn't mention anything good about new players. I wanna catch up to card collections, not worry about who I'm matched against in casual.

3. Ranked IS grindy. They need to change the entire layout of the ladder.

4. Increasing bonus stars might be okay.

5. Letting bonus stars happen at ranks 5- seems fine to me. I doubt anyone is really riding win streaks THAT hard at those ranks.

6. Standard Arena, yes plx.

7. Arena rankings of top 100 is laughable and hard to manage. I don't think a leaderboard means too much. Not if you can just play OP classes 30 times and afk. It's not really the same as Constructed PVP. I don't think it's comparable.

8. Wow, Wild is more popular than I thought. I kind of scoff at the people on this forum who keep talking about Wild like it matters.

9. Their balancing is good. 52-49% win rates is good, but I'm assuming any netdecking losers just deflate the overall win rates, so meh. But for 55%+ to be considered dangerous...That's actually a good number. They're good.

10. The HS team has 70 people? I thought it was like 15. Wtf is Team 5, anyway?

[Deleted]

1. The communication format was alright. I watched the video but an hour is a long time, and I feel like I'd have missed out if I just read the summary. I kinda prefer typed out answers. Otherwise this has to be once a month tops.

I couldn't be asked to watch the video; it was way too long and listening to Ben Brodes yammer on and on is just grating. I read the summary and that was enough for me. Comparing what I had the patience to watch from the video and to what the summary read it did not seem to miss much, and didn't take more than a couple of minutes either.

8. Wow, Wild is more popular than I thought. I kind of scoff at the people on this forum who keep talking about Wild like it matters.

Actually wild is a lot more pleasing to play than standard, at the moment anyway. I've usually played standard but this season I just couldn't take it. Wild has a lot more variety, building a deck isn't arbitrarily restricted, and there aren't 1-2 decks dominating the ladder.

[Deleted]

I haven't watch it myself did read the main stuff they brought up. Think there is a 10 min version of it some where but don't think there is any additional information there.

Curious how they will change the ladder. Heard they might add thresholds at 15, 10 and 5 which might be a good idea segregate players. Then there is how they will change the season to reflect to this. Since they might change bonus star beyond rank 5, I wonder if they might add some new achievement for reaching legend.

Standard arena sounds interesting.

About balancing not sure about that one, but it's good to see they are at least trying to communicate their intentions. I really hope that if they intent on changing the basic/classic cards, it should be done by rotating it to wild and not nerfed them. That way they wont kill of an archtype entirely. Also classic cards that are rotating to wild should give full dust refund not to piss off a lot of players.

[Deleted]

- Can't be more glad to hear that Blizzard wants players to think of their own tools and plays to counter or play around strong decks in the meta, as opposed to caving to the endless stream of qq's to insta 'fix' the decks those players don't like. Card games should prioritize that over nerfs when possible anyway imo.

I respect the vision of the developers, but
->2 mana Buzzard +2/3 mana UTH made Hearthstone a joke for 2-3 months.
->There was no way a 5 mana draw your deck Auctioneer was not going to be broken. Not fixing it hurt ladder for months.
->There was no way a 1/2 Undertaker ever growing in dmg/hp was not going to be broken. Not fixing it hurt ladder for months.
->There was no way Warsong Commander wasn't broken. Patron Warrior was so bad to have in the game, that it stagnated for months.
-> Druids were literally a FoN Savage Roar for meta after meta.
-> Yogg-Saron...

In some cases, players are right, and the game suffers a lot because Blizzard takes forever to nerf troubled cards. There are still many cards that are broken and you get reminded of it every now and then in Arena(2 mana common 2/2 draw a 3 mana card and play it for 0, 4 mana 7/7).

In the case of Pirates for example, the "Pirate Package" - Small Time Bucaneer+Patches+Low Mana Weapons are plain out too effective. Its a 1 mana 3/2(not class card and with no downside) with a draw a card and play it effect that sometimes will decide the game on its own because your opponent doesn't have a proper response(and no, using a 2 mana card to kill a 1 mana card is not a proper response, specially when it leaves the 1/1 on the board). They mentioned people tech-ing Ooze against the pirates, unfortunately that hurts people playing Jarraxus and Medivh more because they cannot gain value of those large investment weapons.

If a Warrior turn 1 plays STB(summons Patches), and turn 2 plays Fiery War Axe and attacks with STB, your Ooze is not really effective and you're at 22 health.

[Tehalbino]

They killed the game with 'standard' format. In an effort to 'diversify' the playing experience, they accomplished just the opposite.

They just needed to remove the cancerous and blatantly overpowered cards (Shredder, Boom, Avenge, etc) from ladder play. They've lost over half of their player base and seem to be clueless as to the cause.

One of the main original arguments for Standard format was lowering the barrier to entry by 'reducing' number of cards. This also has a side effect of there being less for a player to 'obtain'. As you can see from the expansions pre-Legion for WoW, getting more for less effort never ends well, as players get everything then get bored.

[Blueobelisk]

They just needed to remove the cancerous and blatantly overpowered cards (Shredder, Boom, Avenge, etc) from ladder play. They've lost over half of their player base and seem to be clueless as to the cause.

Do you have a source for that? First time I'm hearing it.

[HisDudeness]

I don't want to watch the video so I don't get irritated but I'll take your guys word for it and go with standard arena is going to suck if they go with it. Will be a mage/pally/rogue fest but even worse. The basic cards for those classes are what make the classes so OP to begin with. Throw in all the other cards and....damn. Of course wild is more popular. Knew that from when standard was announced. A team of 70? Seriously? How many guys does it take to screw up a game? Answer? 70. They have 70 guys and they can't create more game modes?

[Mahourai]

I respect the vision of the developers, but
->2 mana Buzzard +2/3 mana UTH made Hearthstone a joke for 2-3 months.
->There was no way a 5 mana draw your deck Auctioneer was not going to be broken. Not fixing it hurt ladder for months.
->There was no way a 1/2 Undertaker ever growing in dmg/hp was not going to be broken. Not fixing it hurt ladder for months.
->There was no way Warsong Commander wasn't broken. Patron Warrior was so bad to have in the game, that it stagnated for months.
-> Druids were literally a FoN Savage Roar for meta after meta.
-> Yogg-Saron...

In some cases, players are right, and the game suffers a lot because Blizzard takes forever to nerf troubled cards.

Nerfing cards is fundamentally the wrong way to balance cardgames. None of these nerfs should ever have been implemented, and in fact no cards should have been changed past the beta.

Nerfs are fine in a game like WoW, where you have equal access to any class and specs are kept relatively viable. No one had to pay money to get Living Bomb and Pyroblast in WoW. Nerfs are fundamentally unacceptable in Hearthstone where you can pay real money or inordinate amounts of time to acquire cards that quite literally cease to exist due to power level nerfs.

Banning cards is fine, as long as there is still a format where these cards are legal.

[Kralljin]

Nerfing cards is fundamentally the wrong way to balance cardgames.

No it's not.

If you print overpowered cards and it's evident that it there is no serious counter in sight, you have to nerf a card.

By your logic, we would have a Undertaker meta until the very first standard cycle.

[Mahourai]

No it's not.

If you print overpowered cards and it's evident that it there is no serious counter in sight, you have to nerf a card.

No, you do not. Here are two vastly superior options: print counters, or ban the card in Standard.

[Faltemer]

No, you do not. Here are two vastly superior options: print counters, or ban the card in Standard.

There was no realistic way to counter to the undertaker pre nerf that didn't break the game (And even then it would just be every match is a coin flip of does he have undertaker early? And do you have the counter early?), and moving it to wild just means wild is broken forever, meaning it can never be the fun mode just the mode no one would ever want to play.

The easy answer is for them to not print broken cards, but since 70 people wasn't enough it seems pretty clear that whoever is in charge will just continue to make mistake after mistake. And I would prefer the game be playable, then for the less than 1 % of people who misconstrue buying packs (even if they use gold) as buying cards, and nerfs as removing things you "bought" (Who always ignore the fact that you get 100% of what you "paid" back on any card changed after it is changed) getting what they want.

[Deleted]

No, you do not. Here are two vastly superior options: print counters, or ban the card in Standard.

The whole advantage of Hearthstone being online, rather than a printed TCG , is the ability to directly change a card(and issue a full dust refund).

[Mahourai]

moving it to wild just means wild is broken forever, meaning it can never be the fun mode just the mode no one would ever want to play.

Good. Who cares? This is what Wild is anyway. It's not a casual format lol. You can make Casual Wild another format if you'd like.

(Who always ignore the fact that you get 100% of what you "paid" back on any card changed after it is changed)

Only in the literal sense. Practically speaking, drastically nerfing a single card to hurt an archetype depresses the value of every card in the deck. Execute isn't even dustable, for example, and when it was nerfed it reduced the value of Control Warrior, a 10k+ dust deck, but you recouped nothing from crafting all those legendaries. Warsong Commander, a basic Warrior card, was destroyed permanently with nerfs and reduced the value of the other parts of Patron. Call of the Wild being nerfed reduces the value of basically every other hunter card in existence. Etc.

I'm not saying these decks are necessarily crippled, as Control Warrior saw post-nerf success, Shaman succeeded dramatically after the nerfs to Rockbiter and Tuskarr, and so on. I'm saying the calculation isn't as simple as "dust card, problem solved". Similarly, I'm not saying that cards can't be allowed to float up and down in value - I'm saying it shouldn't happen because the devs decided to take a scalpel to the metagame with power level adjustments. Print new cards and let problem ones rotate out. If necessary, rotate them out sooner, but leave them around for people to play with.

The whole advantage of Hearthstone being online, rather than a printed TCG , is the ability to directly change a card(and issue a full dust refund).

This is a capability of Hearthstone, not necessarily an advantage.

[Kralljin]

No, you do not. Here are two vastly superior options: print counters, or ban the card in Standard.

On what kind of powerlevel do these countercards need to be that they counter these powerful 1 drop cards?

I mean i'm asking for decent tech choices against aggro cards, but sometimes these counter cards would have to be way above the powercurve or be designed just to counter that one card.

Only in the literal sense. Practically speaking, drastically nerfing a single card to hurt an archetype depresses the value of every card in the deck. Execute isn't even dustable, for example, and when it was nerfed it reduced the value of Control Warrior, a 10k+ dust deck, but you recouped nothing from crafting all those legendaries.

A big reason why Control Warrior isn't great because Aggro matchup is "even", any heavy Jade deck is an Auto loss and Reno Decks can compete in the value Game.

Control Warrior wouldn't be much better with 1 Mana Execute currently.

Also, Pirate Warrior is better and any game takes 1/4 of the time.

Print new cards and let problem ones rotate out. If necessary, rotate them out sooner, but leave them around for people to play with.

I really don't get why "nerfing cards is bad because people "paid" for it, yet rotating them out sooner should be legit.

[Mahourai]

On what kind of powerlevel do these countercards need to be that they counter these powerful 1 drop cards?

Undertaker may have needed to be banned (which is to say rotated out of Standard), not just to have strong cards printed to counter it. Yes, I'm aware Standard didn't exist at the time - Blizzard needed to be more on the ball with understanding they'd need format distinctions.

I really don't get why "nerfing cards is bad because people "paid" for it, yet rotating them out sooner should be legit.

Because with one option you can still play with the cards, and with the other one you can't?

[Kralljin]

Because with one option you can still play with the cards, and with the other one you can't?

Not much of a point in playing Wild if one Card would dominate the entire Meta, because that is what Undertaker was.

I mean, it's supposed to be about broken shit, but not that kind of broken shit.

[Mahourai]

Not much of a point in playing Wild if one Card would dominate the entire Meta, because that is what Undertaker was.

I'm not even sure pre-nerf Undertaker Deathrattle would be the best deck, much less a totally dominant deck.

[Deleted]

I'm not even sure pre-nerf Undertaker Deathrattle would be the best deck, much less a totally dominant deck.

Actually I have yet to see a "dominant" deck while playing wild. Some decks are more frequent than others, like secret paladin, but it is far from what you see on standard. It's what makes wild so much more enjoyable.

[Kralljin]

I'm not even sure pre-nerf Undertaker Deathrattle would be the best deck, much less a totally dominant deck.

1 Drops that can spin out of control have been meta defining in the past, Tunnel Trogg and Small time Bucaneer being the current examples.

One that even gains health on top of that even more.