the struggle with blizzard's internal testing environment is that they very aggressively try to make specific kinds of decks - the Forced Archetypes meme everyone loves throwing about - and then they test those specific decks against each other
they have very few explorative deckbuilders - i would pretty much assume that no one internally built cubelock, for example
in a vacuum, it's fine to not predict every playable deck. most card games pretty openly accept that it's not possible for them to do so, even! but blizzard's style of testing is why you have an expansion devoted to an incredibly unpushed Freeze Shaman, because it's being tested against equally unpushed decks like Damaged Minions Warrior
I'd say it should be explicitly be the goal that you can't catch everything when testing your (digital) card game, because that means you're creating an environment where deckbuilding is complex and dynamic and interesting. But on the other hand, you have to be willing to actually take action when it becomes clear some of those things are overtuned, rather than just shrugging and say "eh, rotation'll sweep it up eventually."
Yeah, for a digital card game, Blizzard makes changes super rarely. It's weird.
I run DK Valeera in Quest Rogue. Never really excited to play her, she's not like Guldan where you play him and win the game. The turn you play her she's a 9 mana Ice Block, but after you can get good value by being able to play the best card in your hand twice each turn.
Keep in mind, we're all mostly guessing at their testing environment. The simple fact of the matter is card balance is hard, and it's hard to invest too much resources into in-house testing when you know, 24 hours after release, you'll have 10x the amount of data for free...
It's perfectly fine to not know exactly how the metagame will shape out. That's actually probably for the best anyway, so that players feel there's a sense of discovery. The problem is that formats like Druidstone and Shamanstone shouldn't happen. It shouldn't be obvious to everyone a day after the set release what the best deck is and how warping it is. Warrior being so bad that it's basically an extinct class shouldn't happen either. (I fear Druid is moving there).
Players spend a ton of money on this game; Blizzard rakes in more cash than probably any other CCG, and I can't honestly say that they have the best testing team or the best understanding of how their game actually works. This is absolutely a problem that you can partially solve by throwing more money at it. There are many pros that I'm sure would be willing to work on Blizzard's testing team.
I run DK Valeera because she and DK Gul'Dan are the only DK's I own, and I can't make a Rogue deck to save my life.
Her hero power has won me games I should have lost, many times. One time it even let me cycle Headcrack when my opponent had run out of gas, to the point where I just won out of attrition.
I think the situation is more complicated than that regarding card quality. Some of the cards we think or know suck, they have to as well. Some cards aren't designed to be meta warping and some, like that Druid legendary, are just fun ones. They're not interested in every card improving a class (and they shouldn't be, really).
The other issue is if they really are trying to scale back the power creep a lot, it'll be through bad cards and rotations....so a question I have to a lot of the complaints here is, do you want 40 new cards on the level of Gul'Dangerous?
That could be crazy fun or a disaster, I dunno, but reining in power creep it certainly would not do.
Trying to reign in power creep by releasing bad sets and not nerfing cards sucks, because with the rotation schedule they have it takes a full year before it sticks. If barely any cards are added that can compete with Un'Goro/Frozen Throne/Catacombs, then whichever existing class lost the fewest relevant cards in the rotation (Warlock, probably, under current conditions) just becomes unbeatable and the meta stagnates. And it seems impractical to just take a hatchet to every card that was good enough to see play in the last meta.
I'm firmly anti-rotation and this is a hill I will merrily die on.
Rotation is a silly way to deal with power balance.
Rotation in a paper CCG makes sense because of physical inventory and production overhead and the painfulness of dealing with errata lists. But it's still kind of crappy.
CCGs benefit from having large card pools with lots of different archetypes. Limiting the card pool to two years of releases means that formats get "solved" much faster and fewer archetypes are viable. Metagame decisions become "does this deck beat the flavor of the week?"
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Rotation is an extremely good thing, however you need to actually make sure that the formats you create that don't rotate are properly supported. This is the big gut punch on Hearthstone's part. Wild is a red-headed stepchild with almost no tournament support, and gets acknowledged in-game like once a year - usually during a downtime between set releases where they need to give people something to buy!
I'm firmly pro-rotation because it allows new players to join the freaking game. In a couple of weeks I'll finally be on mostly equal footing with other players, and a year from now I'll be on actual equal footing with other players.
Rotation is a far better 'alright time's up, everyone's had enough of you' than the butchering we've seen with cards like Keeper of the Grove. It's a shame we're stuck with the core set and that Blizz are so hands off.
I run DK Valeera because she and DK Gul'Dan are the only DK's I own, and I can't make a Rogue deck to save my life.
Her hero power has won me games I should have lost, many times. One time it even let me cycle Headcrack when my opponent had run out of gas, to the point where I just won out of attrition.
The forever Rogue Problem, Blizzard prints Value Cards for them and no support for running a Value oriented Deck.
I like Pick Pocket. It's fun, it keeps Rogue's "get enemy class cards" mechanic alive, and it has Echo, which will make it fun to use in late-game. I do think it would be broken at 1 mana, with Echo.
Not sure how playable it'll be, though. Maybe I'll run one of 'em? Problem is that you're either using your whole turn on card generation and doing nothing to affect board state, or else, if you're only using, say, half of your mana on it, you're sacrificing a lot of its potential in order to do something else.
I think that doesn't see play primarily because Vinecleaver is probably the better weapon and you only have room for so many High Cost Weapons due to the inherent anti-synergy of weapons
Silver Sword
Paladin Rare Weapon
8 mana 3/4
After your hero attacks, give your minions +1/+1.
oh, check it, it's Better Sword of Justice
i think this could see play though. very strong effect. people said vinecleaver was too slow and that saw play (granted, Dude synergy, but). if this does see play, probably not in any kind of aggro deck, that's for sure (you're looking to close out the game at that point, and Val'anyr is a better lategame weapon for that purpose). so, maybe a midrange deck?
i like it.
edit: i also like the idea that if you happen to draw CTA a bit too late you can instantly buff up your board with this.
Pardon me for skipping a thousand pages of discussion since the reveal started. I finally looked through the cards and they're all garbage except for warlock (lol) and priest. Druid is getting put in a timeout, shaman is in the "wtf" zone and warrior is the sad guinea pig for the new mechanics. The only interesting neutral is dollmaster.
Pardon me for skipping a thousand pages of discussion since the reveal started. I finally looked through the cards and they're all garbage except for warlock (lol) and priest. Druid is getting put in a timeout, shaman is in the "wtf" zone and warrior is the sad guinea pig for the new mechanics. The only interesting neutral is dollmaster.
That about sum it up?
There's a good chunk of cards to go, but a lot of the reactions have been "meh" so far, yes.
Of course, for some of us that leaves us paradoxically excited, since the last big "meh" reaction to card reveals was Un'Goro, which turned out to be a fantastic expansion.
i like splintergraft. it makes for an excellent twig follow-up play on turn 9 - say boar - splintergraft - break twig - 10/10 charger. it also could be cool on that minion only you can target with spells, though druid's buffs are pretty crap at the moment.
i'm also interested in the poor reception echo cards are getting. i'm not so pessimistic, i like value mechanics in general, but i understand why it might not be enough - card draw has become problematically cheap and easy. almost all classes now have reliable ways to refill the hand, so why bother worrying about value or card advantage?
Actually, speaking of Pick Pocket, do we know how Echo works as far as when the Echo is created vs. the effect is played out? For example, if I have 10 cards in hand and play Pick Pocket, does my random card get destroyed or does my echoed Pick Pocket get destroyed?
IlpalaJust this guy, y'knowTexasRegistered Userregular
That sword seems kinda terrible to me. Like, with Vinecleaver your consolation is it's okay as a way to build back up from an empty/sparse board state. This thing is closer to Mukla's Champion than anything, though granted harder to remove and not dependent on the hero power (you're so strapped for mana as paladin on turn 9+ I know)
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Yeah, for a digital card game, Blizzard makes changes super rarely. It's weird.
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It's perfectly fine to not know exactly how the metagame will shape out. That's actually probably for the best anyway, so that players feel there's a sense of discovery. The problem is that formats like Druidstone and Shamanstone shouldn't happen. It shouldn't be obvious to everyone a day after the set release what the best deck is and how warping it is. Warrior being so bad that it's basically an extinct class shouldn't happen either. (I fear Druid is moving there).
Players spend a ton of money on this game; Blizzard rakes in more cash than probably any other CCG, and I can't honestly say that they have the best testing team or the best understanding of how their game actually works. This is absolutely a problem that you can partially solve by throwing more money at it. There are many pros that I'm sure would be willing to work on Blizzard's testing team.
Her hero power has won me games I should have lost, many times. One time it even let me cycle Headcrack when my opponent had run out of gas, to the point where I just won out of attrition.
I'm firmly anti-rotation and this is a hill I will merrily die on.
Rotation is a silly way to deal with power balance.
Rotation in a paper CCG makes sense because of physical inventory and production overhead and the painfulness of dealing with errata lists. But it's still kind of crappy.
CCGs benefit from having large card pools with lots of different archetypes. Limiting the card pool to two years of releases means that formats get "solved" much faster and fewer archetypes are viable. Metagame decisions become "does this deck beat the flavor of the week?"
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The forever Rogue Problem, Blizzard prints Value Cards for them and no support for running a Value oriented Deck.
Not sure how playable it'll be, though. Maybe I'll run one of 'em? Problem is that you're either using your whole turn on card generation and doing nothing to affect board state, or else, if you're only using, say, half of your mana on it, you're sacrificing a lot of its potential in order to do something else.
Silver Sword
Paladin Rare Weapon
8 mana 3/4
After your hero attacks, give your minions +1/+1.
BIG BOIS & BABY BUFFIN': A G&T HEARTHSTONE STORY
Not terrible though
oh, check it, it's Better Sword of Justice
i think this could see play though. very strong effect. people said vinecleaver was too slow and that saw play (granted, Dude synergy, but). if this does see play, probably not in any kind of aggro deck, that's for sure (you're looking to close out the game at that point, and Val'anyr is a better lategame weapon for that purpose). so, maybe a midrange deck?
i like it.
edit: i also like the idea that if you happen to draw CTA a bit too late you can instantly buff up your board with this.
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It's like being able to play 10 5 Burgles!
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2 and a half Burgles. Burgle gives you 2 cards.
I..i got an extra one.
I thought we already established you'd be running two of each Echo card.
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That about sum it up?
But il be sure to reroll that sucker come tomorrow.
There's a good chunk of cards to go, but a lot of the reactions have been "meh" so far, yes.
Of course, for some of us that leaves us paradoxically excited, since the last big "meh" reaction to card reveals was Un'Goro, which turned out to be a fantastic expansion.
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i'm also interested in the poor reception echo cards are getting. i'm not so pessimistic, i like value mechanics in general, but i understand why it might not be enough - card draw has become problematically cheap and easy. almost all classes now have reliable ways to refill the hand, so why bother worrying about value or card advantage?
Wild Aggro Shaman is life.
i'm really, really excited about those two
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Voodoo doll is really interesting, yeah.
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Fuck Joe Manchin
forests have real things in them, like wolves
Wolves and voodoo dolls.
I just wish it didn't synergize so well with Darkpact and Defile.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Source on this?
I can't find it mentioned on my usual sites.
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Yeah, me neither. I'm thinking you got fooled @Muffinatron
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